Jurassic World 3 director Colin Trevorrow has opened up about his decision to bring back Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum for the next movie, which he refers to as "Jurassic Park IV."

In an interview with Empire, Trevorrow, who is co-writing the upcoming trilogy-capper with Emily Carmichael, revealed that he had always wanted the original franchise stars to feature in the Jurassic World trilogy in some capacity, but he needed to establish the best way to continue their legacy.

"We'd have to come up with a reason why Ellie, Malcolm and Grant all went to the theme park on the exact same day it broke down – again," he said, addressing their absence in Jurassic World. "The next film allows the legacy characters to be a part of the story in an organic way."

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Sony has published five new trademarks that secure the company names for up to five generations of potential PlayStation consoles.

The trademarks, initially filed for earlier this month, provide Sony with exclusive use of ther terms PS6, PS7, PS8, PS9, and PS10. The publishing of these trademarks was picked up by trademark blogger Piercesword.

This is not an uncommon approach for Sony. PS2 and PS3 trademarks were filed a year in advance of each console’s release, while trademarks for the PS4 and PS5 were filed back in 2006.

It should be noted that these trademarks don’t indicate that Sony is definitely planning to make these consoles. Rather, it makes sense for the company to own the trademarks to consoles it potentially may make in the future in order to prevent other businesses snapping up the PS branding before Sony does. So even if PlayStation 6 is never made, the trademark is still safe and can’t be used by anyone else to capitalise on a brand Sony has spent over two decades building.

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You stand in a room and the floor is the ceiling, or maybe it's the other way around? No, everything is the floor and you're falling through infinity. Welcome to the Manifold Garden, a game where you need to prepare to have your mind warped by the beauty of repetition and some seriously impressive puzzles. It is an Escher-inspired fever dream of a game--you have the ability to allocate gravity to any side of an environment at any time, and it's surprising just how many different puzzles the game manages to pull from this concept, with new elements gradually being introduced at just the right pace to grant further complexity without being completely daunting.

To start, there are colour-coded cubes which need to be placed on switches to open doors or other mechanisms. It doesn't take long to discover these colours are also relevant to their own personal gravity and as such, cubes can only be moved when the world is in that orientation. Add stairs going in different directions, switch combinations, and staggered environments, and even these relatively basic puzzles take some mind-bending to get accustomed to, which makes for further payoff when solutions come.

It takes a while to adjust to the changes in orientation, so for the first few hours, I often found myself getting lost and even feeling a little nauseous and headachy (though it's worth noting that there are settings to adjust field-of-view, which helps). I found that the more I came to understand the concepts, the less this happened, as my mind stopped fighting what it was seeing. Towards the end of the game, I could rapidly make these changes; I could almost hear the click in my brain when everything started to become intuitive and second nature. Things that weren’t immediately obvious, like understanding that the gravity of one block can be used to stop another from falling in order to trigger a seemingly impossible switch, went from edge-of-the-brain concepts to be instinctual.

There was one particularly devilish puzzle where I had to use several different cubes to hold a single, vital cube in place. It had to be done in a specific way and sequence to take advantage of their individual gravities. When I first approached this problem, it hadn’t previously occurred to me that this was even possible, and I was left stumped for ages. The payoff for working it out, however, was not only immensely satisfying but helped open my mind for further puzzles. I began using cubes to hold various things in place, and even as steps for myself (even when it was unnecessary to solve an actual puzzle). It’s in these moments where I felt like my power in this ever-changing space was growing, where the game made me feel like a master of my own domain.

The aesthetics of Manifold Garden are confrontingly beautiful, in that they are both stark and complex. The music is minimal, though it builds in peak moments with intense synths which seem to mirror the environment. There are practically no textures to speak of and almost everything is made of simple polygons; the environments are littered with stairs which seemingly go in every direction, whether or not you know that's what they are at the time. Some of the environments are simple, like a beautiful block tree with running water displays in a sort of Japanese garden aesthetic. Others are incredibly complex with moving parts in multiple directions. When looked at up close, it can appear dull and barren, but a step back will often reveal the psychedelic beauty in greater patterns.

The physical stages themselves actually repeat endlessly into the void of the world, and this is more than just an aesthetic choice--it allows you to fall off a ledge forever and then land back on otherwise unreachable areas, creating another obtuse mechanic that comes into play during later puzzles. In every way, Manifold Garden's world challenges you to think differently while maintaining that you're always safe--there isn't death or fall damage of any kind. This allows you to explore without fear, while also taking the time to internalise the game's logic.

As you progress through the increasingly layered architectural stages, you'll find little-to-no hand-holding and for the most part, this is fantastic. There's just enough direction that you get the satisfying sensation of working things out yourself, which comes with a deep feeling of accomplishment. Even as new, unexpected elements are added, they're grounded with enough familiar imagery that you can eventually decipher new solutions with minimal prompting. For example, cube trees grow cube fruits, which can be planted in special areas and given water to provide new trees and more fruit; water can move a turbine to provide the power that opens a door, allowing you to move forward. I was stumped multiple times throughout my playthrough, but it was never due to an obtuse new mechanic being added. Instead, the puzzles are all legitimately clever and tricky, which required me to look at them from literally all angles in order to work out a solution.

There's also an incredible density of puzzles. Sometimes, even traversing from one room to the next provides you with a new obstacle to reconcile your way around. Very rarely did I feel like Manifold Garden provided much reprieve. Instead, it keeps your mind constantly thinking, always looking for new angles, and firmly on the tips of your toes. But, there's also no pressure--no enemies, no time limits--and this makes Manifold Garden feel like an intensely cerebral experience from start to finish.

There was one puzzle in Manifold Garden that was so tricky I couldn't solve it myself--and I later discovered it was only because I'd missed something from an area I thought was finished. The game doesn't always do enough to provide you with clues to solve its problems--in this one occasion, I wasted possibly over an hour trying to find a solution where there was none. There were a few other moments where I felt that a little more direction would have been welcome, or where I solved a puzzle on accident and missed an important lesson as a result. However, being forced to work out every other problem in the game for myself was so gratifying that in the end, I felt like it was worth the hours lost to obscurity.

As I stood in the impossible world of the Manifold Garden, I felt tested and worthy. Its puzzles are incredibly satisfying and offer a very clever blend of step-by-step knowledge-building with increasingly challenging solutions. The environments are awe-inspiring in their endless repetition, but repetition isn't a trait reflected in the game's challenges. There is always something new, or a new way to look at something old, as you traverse through the infinite horizon. Manifold Garden is a feast for the eyes and the mind, so long as you can wrap both around what it has to offer.

You stand in a room and the floor is the ceiling, or maybe it's the other way around? No, everything is the floor and you're falling through infinity. Welcome to the Manifold Garden, a game where you need to prepare to have your mind warped by the beauty of repetition and some seriously impressive puzzles. It is an Escher-inspired fever dream of a game--you have the ability to allocate gravity to any side of an environment at any time, and it's surprising just how many different puzzles the game manages to pull from this concept, with new elements gradually being introduced at just the right pace to grant further complexity without being completely daunting.

To start, there are colour-coded cubes which need to be placed on switches to open doors or other mechanisms. It doesn't take long to discover these colours are also relevant to their own personal gravity and as such, cubes can only be moved when the world is in that orientation. Add stairs going in different directions, switch combinations, and staggered environments, and even these relatively basic puzzles take some mind-bending to get accustomed to, which makes for further payoff when solutions come.

It takes a while to adjust to the changes in orientation, so for the first few hours, I often found myself getting lost and even feeling a little nauseous and headachy (though it's worth noting that there are settings to adjust field-of-view, which helps). I found that the more I came to understand the concepts, the less this happened, as my mind stopped fighting what it was seeing. Towards the end of the game, I could rapidly make these changes; I could almost hear the click in my brain when everything started to become intuitive and second nature. Things that weren’t immediately obvious, like understanding that the gravity of one block can be used to stop another from falling in order to trigger a seemingly impossible switch, went from edge-of-the-brain concepts to be instinctual.

There was one particularly devilish puzzle where I had to use several different cubes to hold a single, vital cube in place. It had to be done in a specific way and sequence to take advantage of their individual gravities. When I first approached this problem, it hadn’t previously occurred to me that this was even possible, and I was left stumped for ages. The payoff for working it out, however, was not only immensely satisfying but helped open my mind for further puzzles. I began using cubes to hold various things in place, and even as steps for myself (even when it was unnecessary to solve an actual puzzle). It’s in these moments where I felt like my power in this ever-changing space was growing, where the game made me feel like a master of my own domain.

The aesthetics of Manifold Garden are confrontingly beautiful, in that they are both stark and complex. The music is minimal, though it builds in peak moments with intense synths which seem to mirror the environment. There are practically no textures to speak of and almost everything is made of simple polygons; the environments are littered with stairs which seemingly go in every direction, whether or not you know that's what they are at the time. Some of the environments are simple, like a beautiful block tree with running water displays in a sort of Japanese garden aesthetic. Others are incredibly complex with moving parts in multiple directions. When looked at up close, it can appear dull and barren, but a step back will often reveal the psychedelic beauty in greater patterns.

The physical stages themselves actually repeat endlessly into the void of the world, and this is more than just an aesthetic choice--it allows you to fall off a ledge forever and then land back on otherwise unreachable areas, creating another obtuse mechanic that comes into play during later puzzles. In every way, Manifold Garden's world challenges you to think differently while maintaining that you're always safe--there isn't death or fall damage of any kind. This allows you to explore without fear, while also taking the time to internalise the game's logic.

As you progress through the increasingly layered architectural stages, you'll find little-to-no hand-holding and for the most part, this is fantastic. There's just enough direction that you get the satisfying sensation of working things out yourself, which comes with a deep feeling of accomplishment. Even as new, unexpected elements are added, they're grounded with enough familiar imagery that you can eventually decipher new solutions with minimal prompting. For example, cube trees grow cube fruits, which can be planted in special areas and given water to provide new trees and more fruit; water can move a turbine to provide the power that opens a door, allowing you to move forward. I was stumped multiple times throughout my playthrough, but it was never due to an obtuse new mechanic being added. Instead, the puzzles are all legitimately clever and tricky, which required me to look at them from literally all angles in order to work out a solution.

There's also an incredible density of puzzles. Sometimes, even traversing from one room to the next provides you with a new obstacle to reconcile your way around. Very rarely did I feel like Manifold Garden provided much reprieve. Instead, it keeps your mind constantly thinking, always looking for new angles, and firmly on the tips of your toes. But, there's also no pressure--no enemies, no time limits--and this makes Manifold Garden feel like an intensely cerebral experience from start to finish.

There was one puzzle in Manifold Garden that was so tricky I couldn't solve it myself--and I later discovered it was only because I'd missed something from an area I thought was finished. The game doesn't always do enough to provide you with clues to solve its problems--in this one occasion, I wasted possibly over an hour trying to find a solution where there was none. There were a few other moments where I felt that a little more direction would have been welcome, or where I solved a puzzle on accident and missed an important lesson as a result. However, being forced to work out every other problem in the game for myself was so gratifying that in the end, I felt like it was worth the hours lost to obscurity.

As I stood in the impossible world of the Manifold Garden, I felt tested and worthy. Its puzzles are incredibly satisfying and offer a very clever blend of step-by-step knowledge-building with increasingly challenging solutions. The environments are awe-inspiring in their endless repetition, but repetition isn't a trait reflected in the game's challenges. There is always something new, or a new way to look at something old, as you traverse through the infinite horizon. Manifold Garden is a feast for the eyes and the mind, so long as you can wrap both around what it has to offer.

EA games are returning to Steam. The company announced that new releases like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will be released on Valve’s digital storefront, while past games will be available through EA Access.

Today, EA has announced that EA Access will be available on Steam next year. This is a subscription service where for $4.99 a month, members can get unlimited access to a select library of EA games including Madden NFL19 and Anthem.

Furthermore, upcoming releases like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will be available directly from Steam. EA also announced that in the coming months other major titles like The Sims 4, Unravel 2, Apex Legends, FIFA 20, and Battlefield 5 will be available on Steam as well.

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Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD is, incredibly, the first Super Monkey Ball game to use a full-size analog stick since the GameCube era. The 3DS and Vita games in the series were beholden to smaller, less precise sticks, but playing with a DualShock 4 is like a homecoming. The original Super Monkey Ball felt designed to take advantage of the precision and range of motion, which the Gamecube controller offered, but only now has the series returned to the purity of the original game's design.

Because of this, the opening moments of Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD, a remake of a Wii launch title with the motion controls ripped out, are lovely. Guiding your monkey through those first few goals is immediately familiar if you've played either of the series' GameCube outings, but even if you're not, there's an inherent pleasure to the precision of the controls here. By tilting the stick you shift the level itself, rather than controlling the ball directly, and having analog control allows for a greater level of finesse than has been possible for a long time--at least at first. At its best, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD feels like the series' latest love letter to the analog stick--you need to be sensitive and subtle with your movements, and being able to make tiny adjustments on the move is satisfying on a level that you might not expect from a game about rolling monkeys around in balls.

Unfortunately, Banana Blitz HD retains some of the original Wii game's problems--terrible boss fights, unimaginative level designs, the questionable addition of a jump button--and adds in a few of its own. It makes for a Monkey Ball game that shows the promise of the series, and reminds you of just how much control an analog stick can give you, but fails to live up to it.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD gives you 100 levels to roll your monkey through--the same 100 featured in the original, updated with a half-hearted graphical upgrade that still makes the game look a little dated. After choosing your preferred primate (each of which have different stats that impact how fast they go and how high they can jump), you're tasked with tackling all 10 worlds, made up of 10 levels each, in order. In each level, you need to roll and jump your way through a treacherous stage to the goal at the end without falling off the edge, and the first 60 or so are easy. This was a game originally designed with motion controls in mind, and it's clear, playing with an analog stick, where concessions were made.

The extra precision afforded in this version makes the game more enjoyable to control, but it also means that I was able to blaze through these stages quickly. Super Monkey Ball was a series praised for its challenge back in the day, and it's hard not to feel disappointed at how easily you can rush through so much of it. There are worse things for a game to be than easy, of course, and I still had some fun with a few of the more imaginative levels, but there's little incentive to go back and try to collect more of the bananas scattered around each level or record a better time. The time trial leaderboards are bizarrely split so that you can't simply go back and record your best time on a single world except for the first, so there's little reason to really become an expert.

But then, for a brief, shining run--around the game's sixth 10-level world--Banana Blitz HD's difficulty curve hits a sweet spot. It's trickier without being obscene or seeming unfair, and the level designs start to get more inventive. You find yourself navigating your monkey through huge rolling wheels, up towers, through moderate maze-like levels, and across other stages that feel like they have a clear sense of purpose and design. The best levels in the series are literal and metaphorical balancing acts--you need to be very careful with your movements, and the level needs to be designed so that you'll keep playing, believing that you can right your own mistakes. Banana Blitz briefly hits that balance and feels like a proper classic Monkey Ball experience, one that pushes your skills and patience but rewards your efforts with the satisfaction of having mastered a difficult task. Unfortunately, the fun doesn't last.

Changes made for this version, and the ease of breezing through the less challenging levels, result in a severe difficulty spike in the game's final third. In the original Wii release, several levels featured parallel rails that you could slot your monkey into and roll along. This meant that while you had to make subtle movements and adjustments to ensure that you didn't fall off, there was some protection from plummeting. This design helped to compensate for the added difficulty of motion controls; the HD version replaces these rails with thin beams to roll across, which beefs up the challenge dramatically.

There were a few stages that stopped me dead in my tracks and forced me to retry repeatedly, and it was often levels that had been redesigned since the original Wii release. While I prefer stick controls to motion controls for this series, the fact that these levels were originally meant to be played with motion controls in mind makes for a less satisfying experience--the Wii version had a more refined difficulty curve. Early on the game doesn't beef up its challenges enough for the change in controls, whereas later it feels like it has overcorrected, and it also means that the difficulty can fluctuate--some later levels still feel very simple and a lot easier with stick controls. In other instances, levels simply feel like they lack finesse in their design or clear lines through them, especially the ones where making jumps is a necessity.

It also becomes clear in the later levels just how much of a burden the jump button is. In the Wii version you could control the camera with the Wii Nunchuk stick, since you weren't using it to steer; this option has been excised from the HD release. Jumping in a 3D space without total camera control leads to headaches, especially since you're not actually controlling the monkey, but rather the level below them. Jumping feels like an imprecise act in a game that is all about the pleasures of precise movement, and it makes the game far more frustrating than other, comparably difficult entries in the series.

Every 10 levels you hit a boss fight, which feel uniformly out of place. Boss fights usually take place in small arenas and pit your monkey against an enemy with a glaring weak spot that you need to jump into. The difficulty curve is, again, way off here; the second boss is much more difficult than most that follow, as it fires rockets that you must hop on top of to redirect, which is an extremely fiddly process. Tellingly, the best boss fight plays like a standard level with a "weak point" at the end of it instead of a goal; otherwise, these fights feel completely at odds with what Monkey Ball is all about.

The multiplayer mini-games have been cut back, too. Part of the Wii version's appeal was that the 50 mini-games included showed off the many things the Wii remote was capable of. Banana Blitz HD trims the collection down to 10 games that are all mapped to a controller, and they range from okay to atrocious. The best ones are Dangerous Route (an okay three-level top-down reinterpretation of the series' standard rolling gameplay) and Monkey Target, a hang-gliding game that tasks you with landing on a distant target (which was perfected in the original GameCube Super Monkey Ball and is greatly simplified here, but still enjoyable). None of them are particularly deep, and much of the control mapping from a Wii remote to a controller is terrible. You can compete in the single-player 'Decathlon' mode, which strings all ten games together and lets you place on an online leaderboard, but personally, I never want to play the awful Hovercraft Race or Whack-A-Mole events--both of which control horribly--again.

It's lovely to have Super Monkey Ball back, but Banana Blitz HD is not a good showcase of what made the series work. It's a remake of a game that was originally designed for a very different, specific purpose and control scheme, and the efforts made to update it for 2019 have made for a lesser game. It's a shame, because a glimmer of what made the series great remains, and it's enough to make us hope that someday we get a new entry that properly returns the series to its roots.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD is, incredibly, the first Super Monkey Ball game to use a full-size analog stick since the GameCube era. The 3DS and Vita games in the series were beholden to smaller, less precise sticks, but playing with a DualShock 4 is like a homecoming. The original Super Monkey Ball felt designed to take advantage of the precision and range of motion, which the Gamecube controller offered, but only now has the series returned to the purity of the original game's design.

Because of this, the opening moments of Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD, a remake of a Wii launch title with the motion controls ripped out, are lovely. Guiding your monkey through those first few goals is immediately familiar if you've played either of the series' GameCube outings, but even if you're not, there's an inherent pleasure to the precision of the controls here. By tilting the stick you shift the level itself, rather than controlling the ball directly, and having analog control allows for a greater level of finesse than has been possible for a long time--at least at first. At its best, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD feels like the series' latest love letter to the analog stick--you need to be sensitive and subtle with your movements, and being able to make tiny adjustments on the move is satisfying on a level that you might not expect from a game about rolling monkeys around in balls.

Unfortunately, Banana Blitz HD retains some of the original Wii game's problems--terrible boss fights, unimaginative level designs, the questionable addition of a jump button--and adds in a few of its own. It makes for a Monkey Ball game that shows the promise of the series, and reminds you of just how much control an analog stick can give you, but fails to live up to it.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD gives you 100 levels to roll your monkey through--the same 100 featured in the original, updated with a half-hearted graphical upgrade that still makes the game look a little dated. After choosing your preferred primate (each of which have different stats that impact how fast they go and how high they can jump), you're tasked with tackling all 10 worlds, made up of 10 levels each, in order. In each level, you need to roll and jump your way through a treacherous stage to the goal at the end without falling off the edge, and the first 60 or so are easy. This was a game originally designed with motion controls in mind, and it's clear, playing with an analog stick, where concessions were made.

The extra precision afforded in this version makes the game more enjoyable to control, but it also means that I was able to blaze through these stages quickly. Super Monkey Ball was a series praised for its challenge back in the day, and it's hard not to feel disappointed at how easily you can rush through so much of it. There are worse things for a game to be than easy, of course, and I still had some fun with a few of the more imaginative levels, but there's little incentive to go back and try to collect more of the bananas scattered around each level or record a better time. The time trial leaderboards are bizarrely split so that you can't simply go back and record your best time on a single world except for the first, so there's little reason to really become an expert.

But then, for a brief, shining run--around the game's sixth 10-level world--Banana Blitz HD's difficulty curve hits a sweet spot. It's trickier without being obscene or seeming unfair, and the level designs start to get more inventive. You find yourself navigating your monkey through huge rolling wheels, up towers, through moderate maze-like levels, and across other stages that feel like they have a clear sense of purpose and design. The best levels in the series are literal and metaphorical balancing acts--you need to be very careful with your movements, and the level needs to be designed so that you'll keep playing, believing that you can right your own mistakes. Banana Blitz briefly hits that balance and feels like a proper classic Monkey Ball experience, one that pushes your skills and patience but rewards your efforts with the satisfaction of having mastered a difficult task. Unfortunately, the fun doesn't last.

Changes made for this version, and the ease of breezing through the less challenging levels, result in a severe difficulty spike in the game's final third. In the original Wii release, several levels featured parallel rails that you could slot your monkey into and roll along. This meant that while you had to make subtle movements and adjustments to ensure that you didn't fall off, there was some protection from plummeting. This design helped to compensate for the added difficulty of motion controls; the HD version replaces these rails with thin beams to roll across, which beefs up the challenge dramatically.

There were a few stages that stopped me dead in my tracks and forced me to retry repeatedly, and it was often levels that had been redesigned since the original Wii release. While I prefer stick controls to motion controls for this series, the fact that these levels were originally meant to be played with motion controls in mind makes for a less satisfying experience--the Wii version had a more refined difficulty curve. Early on the game doesn't beef up its challenges enough for the change in controls, whereas later it feels like it has overcorrected, and it also means that the difficulty can fluctuate--some later levels still feel very simple and a lot easier with stick controls. In other instances, levels simply feel like they lack finesse in their design or clear lines through them, especially the ones where making jumps is a necessity.

It also becomes clear in the later levels just how much of a burden the jump button is. In the Wii version you could control the camera with the Wii Nunchuk stick, since you weren't using it to steer; this option has been excised from the HD release. Jumping in a 3D space without total camera control leads to headaches, especially since you're not actually controlling the monkey, but rather the level below them. Jumping feels like an imprecise act in a game that is all about the pleasures of precise movement, and it makes the game far more frustrating than other, comparably difficult entries in the series.

Every 10 levels you hit a boss fight, which feel uniformly out of place. Boss fights usually take place in small arenas and pit your monkey against an enemy with a glaring weak spot that you need to jump into. The difficulty curve is, again, way off here; the second boss is much more difficult than most that follow, as it fires rockets that you must hop on top of to redirect, which is an extremely fiddly process. Tellingly, the best boss fight plays like a standard level with a "weak point" at the end of it instead of a goal; otherwise, these fights feel completely at odds with what Monkey Ball is all about.

The multiplayer mini-games have been cut back, too. Part of the Wii version's appeal was that the 50 mini-games included showed off the many things the Wii remote was capable of. Banana Blitz HD trims the collection down to 10 games that are all mapped to a controller, and they range from okay to atrocious. The best ones are Dangerous Route (an okay three-level top-down reinterpretation of the series' standard rolling gameplay) and Monkey Target, a hang-gliding game that tasks you with landing on a distant target (which was perfected in the original GameCube Super Monkey Ball and is greatly simplified here, but still enjoyable). None of them are particularly deep, and much of the control mapping from a Wii remote to a controller is terrible. You can compete in the single-player 'Decathlon' mode, which strings all ten games together and lets you place on an online leaderboard, but personally, I never want to play the awful Hovercraft Race or Whack-A-Mole events--both of which control horribly--again.

It's lovely to have Super Monkey Ball back, but Banana Blitz HD is not a good showcase of what made the series work. It's a remake of a game that was originally designed for a very different, specific purpose and control scheme, and the efforts made to update it for 2019 have made for a lesser game. It's a shame, because a glimmer of what made the series great remains, and it's enough to make us hope that someday we get a new entry that properly returns the series to its roots.

A little over a year ago Xbox announced it was going to introduce a gaming streaming service called Project xCloud that could run on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, and virtually any device you own. A few weeks ago, Microsoft finally revealed xCloud to the world with a pubic preview and after a long while with it, I’ve come away impressed.

Now when I say impressed, I’m only speaking towards its performance. As a public preview, xCloud still fairly limited right now to only working on Android devices and offering four first-party games: Halo 5: Guardians, Gears 5, Killer Instinct, and Sea of Thieves.

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Former President of Nintendo of America,  Reggie Fils-Aimé will collect the Andrew Yoon Legend Award at the 9th annual New York Game Awards.

The Andrew Yoon prize is awarded to those who "exhibit a significant, sustained body of work that shows exceptional achievement and innovation". Speaking to IGN via email, Fils-Aimé said:

"It’s an honor to be recognized by the New York Game Awards for my work in an industry that I’ve committed so many years to. But, it’s not just about the time I’ve committed to the gaming industry and specifically to Nintendo, it’s about the people along the way I’ve had the opportunity to lead, influence and inspire. Receiving this honor is a great reminder that my goal of being (and remaining) a strategic and leading force in the industry is recognized by my peers."

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I think probably the easiest way to sum up Reggie’s legacy for Nintendo is the very fact that we all call him by his first name. In 2004, as the games industry morphed into the often faceless fiscal behemoth it is today, Nintendo – itself on the verge of releasing one of the most successful consoles of all time in the Wii – appointed an American company spokesman that wanted us to treat him more like a friend than a corporate overseer. And we did. There are thousands of Reggies in the world but, in the context of games, there’s really only one.

15 years later, we’re still calling him Reggie, and he still feels like some far-flung friend. His retirement from Nintendo in April led to outpourings of woe, bittersweet tributes, and a tidal wave of meme compilations. This was not a normal response to a company president leaving his job. That sheer approachability, exemplified by us being on first name terms, is so much a part of his success that it’s one of the stated reasons that he’ll be presented with the Andrew Yoon Legend Award at next year’s New York Game Awards.

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