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Author: dpugh007

  • Another Spider-Man PSVR Experience Releases This Week to Coincide with Far From Home

    Get ahead of the cinemas.

    Spider-Man: Far From Home doesn’t hit cinemas until the very beginning of July, but a new PSVR experience coming later this week will give you the chance to don the Spidey suit early.

    The release sounds a lot like the experience that released alongside Spider-Man Homecoming – a short but sweet swing across Queens as Peter Parker himself. There’ll be four different suits to pick between and a dangerous enemy to deal with once the headset is firmly in place. “In breathtaking virtual reality, you’ll finally have the chance to scale and swing from the highest towers in Manhattan.” We assume that this release will once again be free of charge.

    Read the full article on pushsquare.com

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  • EA CEO And Other Execs Gave Up Their Cash Bonuses

    EA CEO And Other Execs Gave Up Their Cash Bonuses

    Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson and a series of other high-ranking executives at the publisher declined their cash bonuses for the latest financial year which ended March 31. This was confirmed in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing dated June 21 and reported on by GameDaily.

    “Our CEO and his staff requested that they receive no performance cash bonus award for fiscal 2019,” reads a line from the filing.

    The filing mentioned that Wilson and other executives declined their cash bonuses due to EA’s poor financial results in Fiscal Year 2019, and “in order to maintain alignment with our pay-for-performance executive compensation philosophy.”

    “While we are disappointed with our fiscal 2019 results, we understand the challenges we face, and we will continue to focus on how we can apply the strengths of our Company to capitalize on our opportunities,” the statement explains.

    EA made $4.95 billion for fiscal 2019, which was down from $5.15 billion during the previous fiscal year. The downturn in revenue might sound surprising given EA landed a huge hit with Apex Legends during the year. However, the title was only released in February 2019, which was just ahead of the end of the fiscal year in March. EA also had a few high-profile misses during the year, including Battlefield V and Anthem, both of which underperformed.

    The other EA executives who declined their cash bonuses for the year included CFO Blake Jorgensen, CTO Kenneth Moss, chief marketing officer Chris Bruzzo, and chief studios officer Laura Miele. Patrick Soderlund, who quit EA in August 2018, also reportedly gave up his bonus. EA reportedly offered Soderlund $20 million in equity bonuses to stay at the company, but even so, he left to establish Embark Studios in Sweden. At the time, it was believed that Soderlund took the $20 million with him, but GameDaily reports that he did not; the funds are instead reportedly going into a pool to help secure new hires, among other purposes.

    According to GameDaily, the EA executives declined their cash bonuses and instead put the money into a bonus pool to be paid to employees. Combined, the bonuses amount to around $4.8 million to be paid to employees, and that doesn’t count the $20 million equity bonus from Soderlund, according to GameDaily.

    The SEC filing also reveals that all of EA’s Named Executive Officers (NEOs) received an increase to their base salary in Fiscal 2019. Wilson now makes $1.192 million annually, while Jorgensen gets $850,000. Moss and Bruzzo make $675,000 every year. Miele, who only just started as chief studios officer, makes $675,000 annually as well. Soderlund, who left EA during fiscal 2019, made $475,572 as a base salary. All numbers are in USD.

    As you can see in the chart below, base salary is just the beginning when it comes to total compensation. Wilson’s total pay package, including stock awards and other compensation, was $18.3 million for the latest fiscal year. That is just about half of what he earned the year prior. The “non-equity incentive plan compensation” is empty for all of the NEOs, and that’s because they declined their cash bonuses.

    No Caption Provided

    In other EA news, Wilson says he believes BioWare’s Anthem can find success in the future following its slow start earlier this year.

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  • EA CEO Explains What Happened With Anthem And Why The Game Will Become “Something Great”

    BioWare’s Anthem released in February this year, and it wasn’t a huge critical success. Part of the reason why the game struggled, according to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, is because it attempts to appeal to two different audiences. He talks about the game’s struggles and opportunities for future growth and success in a new interview.

    “We brought together these two groups of players who were making this emotional value calculation on two different vectors,” Wilson told GameDaily. “One was traditional BioWare story-driven content, and the other was this action-adventure type content. About the 30 or 40 hour mark they really had to come together and start working in on the elder game. At that point everyone kind of went, ‘Oh, hang a minute.’ Now the calculation is off.

    “It’s off because I’ve got a friend who sits in this other category of player. They want to play the game a certain way. I want to play the game a certain way. The promise was we can play together, and that’s not working very well. Oh, by the way I’m used to 100 hours of BioWare story, and that’s not what I got,’” Wilson explained. “Or, ‘I expected that this game would have meaningfully advanced the action component that we’d seen in games like Destiny before, and I don’t feel like it has.’”

    While Anthem might have struggled out of the gate, Wilson said EA is committed to supporting the game in the long-run. In fact, he mentioned that Anthem could have a “7-10 year cycle.” Wilson said EA feels good about investing in Anthem in the long-run because the game has a strong foundation to build on.

    “If we believed that at the very core the world wasn’t compelling people, if we believed at the very core that the characters weren’t compelling for people, or the Javelin suits weren’t compelling, or traversing the world and participating in the world wasn’t compelling then provided we hadn’t made promises to our players… we might not invest further,” Wilson said. “IP lives for generations, and runs in these seven to ten year cycles. So, if I think about Anthem on a seven to ten year cycle, it may not have had the start that many of us wanted, including our players. I feel like that team is really going to get there with something special and something great, because they’ve demonstrated that they can.”

    The full interview at GameDaily is in-depth and wide-ranging, touching on a number of other subjects including loot boxes, layoffs, and a wider look at the future of EA. Go read it.

    At E3 this year, Anthem lead producer Ben Irving said he believes Anthem has a “very bright future.”

    “We’ve learned a lot these last few months, we really want to make the game better, we believe Anthem can be a really amazing game,” he explained. “We know we have some work to do, we just want to work with the community and build it together and make it the game that everyone wants it to be.”

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  • Official Trailer for Pippa Bianco’s High School Drama ‘Share’ on HBO

    Official Trailer for Pippa Bianco’s High School Drama ‘Share’ on HBO

    Share Trailer

    “I don’t want help; I just want to know what happened.” HBO has unveiled an official trailer for an indie drama titled Share, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and also played at the Cannes Film Festival and New Directors/New Films. From writer/director Pippa Bianco, the film is about a timely topic and how it relates to the high school experience nowadays. After discovering a disturbing video from a night she doesn’t remember, sixteen-year-old Mandy must try to figure out what happened and how to navigate the escalating fallout. Rhianne Barreto stars as Mandy, with Charlie Plummer, Poorna Jagannathan, J.C. MacKenzie, Nicholas Galitzine, Lovie Simone, & Danny Mastrogiorgio. This received mixed reviews at the fests, with some positive and others saying it’s “fragmented and disorienting.” ›››

    Continue Reading Official Trailer for Pippa Bianco’s High School Drama ‘Share’ on HBO

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  • Review: Pixar’s Latest Sequel ‘Toy Story 4’ Plays With Your Emotions

    Review: Pixar’s Latest Sequel ‘Toy Story 4’ Plays With Your Emotions

    Pixar's Toy Story 4 Review

    Pixar’s original Toy Story (1995) movie was a major milestone in filmmaking. It was nominated for three Oscars (Best Original Screenplay; Best Original Song; Best Original Score), and two Golden Globes (Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical; Best Original Song). Director John Lasseter won a special achievement award from The Academy “for the development and inspired application of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film.” Made by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures, Toy Story was a massive commercial success, launching toys (of course), video games, theme park attractions, spin-offs, and two fantastic sequels — Toy Story 2 (1999) and Toy Story 3 (2010). Now, after creating the perfect animated trilogy, Pixar & Disney are extending – and perhaps concluding – the franchise with Toy Story 4, a very weird, melancholic epilogue to the series and to childhood itself. ›››

    Continue Reading Review: Pixar’s Latest Sequel ‘Toy Story 4’ Plays With Your Emotions

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  • Here’s a Better Look at Gran Turismo Sport’s Awaited Rain Update

    Wet and wild.

    Update: Above is direct-feed footage of Gran Turismo Sport’s tasty rain update from an ongoing tournament taking place in Germany this weekend. Are you impressed?

    Gran Turismo Sport is almost unrecognisable from the racer that released a few years back, but developer Polyphony Digital is not done expanded on the ever-evolving exclusive just yet. There has been strong speculation for a while that rain would be added in an upcoming update, and now off-screen footage of the feature has emerged, ahead of an FIA Championship event at the Nürburgring this weekend.

    Read the full article on pushsquare.com

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  • Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? – Issue 277

    Crash bash.

    Oh goodness, here comes the sun. What should we do? Well, after months of moaning about the chilly weather, it’s probably time to complain that it’s too hot. That’s certainly what this author will be doing.

    Stephen Tailby, Associate Editor

    Now that the Sun has finally come out, I’m going to completely ignore it and play some video games instead. In addition to getting a good kicking online in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, I’ll be strapping a box to my face and going on holiday with Vacation Simulator. Expect a review of my time away once I’m back.

    Read the full article on pushsquare.com

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  • Neon Genesis Evangelion Is About The Cost And Trauma Of Existence

    Neon Genesis Evangelion Is About The Cost And Trauma Of Existence

    Neon Genesis Evangelion’s characters suffer a lot.

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  • What Is Your Favorite Game On A Portable System?

    What Is Your Favorite Game On A Portable System?

    Up until recently, I didn’t play many portable games. Even when I did, I liked to play them on a TV screen, which is why I used the Game Boy Player for my GameCube to play many of my favorite GBA games like Metroid Fusion, Astro Boy: Omega Factor, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages,…

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  • Microsoft Lays Off Original Content Team Members

    Microsoft Lays Off Original Content Team Members

    Microsoft looks to have laid off a number of employees working at on the company’s original content creation side, as employees are reporting they have been let go or had their contracts ended by the company.

    Now-former Microsoft producer Kate Yeager tweeted a video indicating a portion of Mixer’s content staff had been laid off.

    Along with hosting various livestreams as a Twitch competitor, Mixer also hosts original shows on the platform, including Tips and Tricks and This Week In Esports, the latter of which had aired an episode as recently as June 20.

    It’s unclear whether the layoffs are part of an overall move away from original content on Microsoft’s part, or if the company plans to replace the employees, either with new talent or with already-proven content streamers.

    We’ve reached out to Microsoft regarding the layoffs and will update this story should we hear back.

    [Source: Kate Yeager on Twitter via GameDaily.biz]

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