TechNews

Jesse McCree, Overwatch’s cowboy hero, has been renamed Cole Cassidy.

The name change is part of a number of updates Blizzard is making to its games to remove references to problematic people or themes that have come to light in the wake of several discrimination and harassment suits filed against the company. Last month, World of Warcraft removed NPCs that referenced former senior creative director Alex Afrasiabi, who was named in the harassment suit as participating in the infamous “Cosby Suite” incident. Jesse McCree — a former lead designer — was also a part of that incident and for whom Overwatch’s cowboy character was named.

When these allegations were publicized, casters refused to say the character’s name during Overwatch League matches. The Overwatch team later stated they were in the process of changing McCree’s name.

In a tweet, the Overwatch team framed the name change as Cassidy coming to terms with his checkered past and giving up his outlaw name, providing a clever in-game explanation for a change that was because of real-world forces.

“To make this new Overwatch better — to make things right — he has to be honest with his team and himself,” the announcement tweet says.

The name change goes live October 26th.

The GTA: The Trilogy release date has been confirmed via Rockstar’s store page.

The store page for the remastered trilogy – which features updated versions of GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas – features two different dates depending on which version of the title you’re buying. The PC, Nintendo Switch, and PS5 versions, which are available digitally, will release on November 11, 2021. If you’re getting the physical-only PS4 or Xbox One editions, your game will launch on December 6, just under a month later.

iFixit has taken apart the Apple Watch Series 7 and showed that despite having minimal changes on the outside, it does feature some big upgrades underneath. As we mentioned in our review, the main difference between this device and the Series 6 is its slightly bigger display, Now, iFixit’s teardown shows that its display uses touch-integrated OLED panel or “on-cell touch,” which debuted with the iPhone 13. 

The website says the move is unusual for Apple, since it typically introduces new display tech — such as OLED, always-on and variable refresh rate — on the lower-volume Apple Watch first instead of the other way around. According to the former Apple engineers iFixit worked with for this teardown, this new display may have caused production delays and made the company release the device later than it would’ve liked.

When the tech giant first announced the Series 7 in September, it didn’t have a concrete release date. The former Apple engineers said that usually signals delays, and the most likely culprit was the manufacturing hiccups caused by the Watch’s display. “[S]creens have some of the most complex supply chains and assembly processes in the industry,” the website explained. In addition to using new technology, Apple also made the display bigger and gave it a refractive edge to make the sides look like they’re slightly curved. 

iFixit also found that the model’s battery is larger than its predecessors. That doesn’t translate to longer battery life, though, since the device’s larger screen likely uses more power. There are a few other more minor changes compared to previous versions of the Watch. You can see the whole teardown on iFixit’s website, along with more photos of what’s inside the Series 7.

Just a day after we heard how the famous video game creator Goichi “Suda51” Suda would love to reboot or remake Nintendo’s older IP, he’s now announced his development studio will be working under the Chinese video game giant NetEase.

Yes, that’s right – Grasshopper Manufacturer is ending its partnership with the Japanese publisher and developer GungHo Online Entertainment to join the NetEase Group – one of the biggest internet and video game companies in the world that also partners with western companies like Blizzard.

Here’s the announcement from Suda himself – who promises the developer will continue to create new and exciting games, just as it always has:

Grasshopper Manufacture most recently wrapped up work on the Switch title, No More Heroes 3. The plan now is to work on three new original IP projects over the next decade.

Here is Suda51’s full statement announcing this new partnership with NetEase:

Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. has just celebrated its 23rd anniversary in March this year. For the past 23 years, our team of creators with various backgrounds and personalities have presented a variety of games to gamers. We are now given a unique opportunity to rethink the game development and organization structure of Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. moving forward. While understanding our own advantages and unique position, we were presented with new possibilities in game creation.

As we all know, NetEase Games has developed many excellent games in the past, and I have long been aware of NetEase’s creative capabilities. When talking with NetEase about “developing more unique console games together”, we resonated. After a lot of thoughts, we’ve unanimously decided to “get together” in the long term through deeper cooperation to create more good content for gamers.

NetEase Games understands the strengths of Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. and is willing to support us, and is an extremely reliable partner. NetEase Games will be mainly responsible for advising on our business planning activities and providing sufficient funding for game development. We will be responsible for the creativity and production of games to ensure that we are able to continue to maintain the consistent “Grasshopper Manufacture flavor” and game quality for which we are known. In addition, we will also receive strong support from the NetEase team composed of thousands of artists and technical experts in terms of game art and quality assurance. We will make the most of this support and strive to offer three even higher-quality “Grasshopper Manufacture Games” to all gamers in the next ten years.

Grasshopper Manufacture Inc., moving towards the brand-new future of game development, is now reborn and will continue to create history. Stay tuned.

It follows on from the news that the Monkey Ball and Yakuza creator Toshihori Nagoshi was leaving Sega to join NetEase.

What are your thoughts about this announcement? Leave a comment down below.

Twitter first launched Spaces in November 2020 as an attempt to eclipse Clubhouse’s success with its own version of audio-centric chatrooms — but the ability to actually host a Space was limited to Twitter users with 600 followers or more. Now, almost one year later, Twitter is finally giving all of its users the ability to host a Space, which is a privilege that arguably should’ve been granted long ago.

Twitter is a bit behind on its own schedule, considering it promised that everyone would be able to start up a Space back in April. The Spaces team sent out a tweet to announce the change, noting that users on both Android and iOS will now be able to host Spaces. It also offers a GIF that briefly refreshes users on how to host a Space, in case you’ve forgotten after all these months.

Twitter has been getting ahead of itself over the entire year, releasing a slew of new features for Spaces, like the ability to add co-hosts and up to 10 speakers. It created a fund for Spaces creators called the Spark Program and even piloted Ticketed Spaces, otherwise known as audio rooms that require you to pay for entry. This is all without giving all users the most vital ability of all: the option to host their own rooms.

Clubhouse came out of an invite-only state in July, and mobile users have been able to play around with the app ever since. With Twitter only lifting restrictions on hosting privileges now, it might’ve missed an important window to get users interested in using the feature. As Spaces grows, will it hasten Clubhouse’s demise, or will it end up as an abandoned feature like the Stories-like Fleets?

Haunted Chocolatier is the next game from Stardew Valley creator Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone.

Stardew Valley 2 in all but name, Haunted Chocolatier drops you into another cozy-looking town full of resources to collect and people to meet. Its reveal trailer showed off environments both frigid and forested, and the focus of crafting seems to be running and decorating your own sweets shop, which is apparently staffed by cute little ghosts. The art style for this chocolate shop sim is a dead ringer for Stardew Valley, and the general gameplay loop looks mighty similar as well at first blush – not that we’re complaining. More Stardew Valley with an adorable, chocolatey theme sounds delightful. 

As announced earlier this month, Sora became Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s final DLC character. But how did Sora, Keyblade and all, end up in Smash Bros.? In his latest Weekly Famitsu column, creator Masahiro Sakurai explains just that.

Sakurai noted how Sora was the number one choice among players for a new character. The Kingdom Hearts character seems like such an obvious choice, too—especially because the character’s name is the same as Sakurai’s company. (This is something Sakurai humorously acknowledged in the reveal, and in a photo caption in the Famitsu article, writing, “Yeah, his name is the same as my company’s.”)

“As I think some can imagine, the barriers for Sora entering the battle were quite high,” he writes. “Even though players’ expectations were great, I honestly thought it was impossible.” According to Sakurai, the team that handles external negotiations thought the same.

However, one day everything changed. “By chance, I met a higher-up at Disney at an awards show,” Sakurai writes in the column. “I talked about how I’d like Sora to join the battle [in Smash Bros.], and I was told that they also thought it would be good if he was able to join the battle. What a surprise!”

After the chance meeting, Disney, Square Enix, and Nintendo all entered into long discussions about bringing Sora to Smash Bros. And in the end, Sakurai got the okay.

But why did Sakurai originally think it would be impossible? When characters come from other companies to the fighting game franchise, it’s not just a matter of adding them to the game. There are requirements, issues, and concerns about how they are depicted in game—companies are extremely protective of their characters. Sakurai and his team, of course, are incredibly sensitive to all of this; however, considering that he would not only need to approach Square Enix but also Disney, I guess he wasn’t initially optimistic.

“Supervision from both Disney and Square Enix is required for anything that Sora does [in Smash Bros.],” explained Sakurai. “It did feel like the various hurdles were high, and in reality, there were various rules in place for development to go forward.”

The development team created a high-quality character model from the start, and production was going more smoothly than Sakurai had expected. However, things were still difficult. In Kingdom Hearts, Sora uses aerial combat, and the challenge was bringing that style of fighting to Smash Bros. in a way that made sense, worked in-game, and was still true to the character.

“I think we got the feeling of the original games,” writes Sakurai. “What do you think?”