Latest news with #FinalFantasyXV
Gizmodo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Magic: The Gathering Has a Final Fantasy XV Cup Noodle Card
With this 'Magic' card, longtime 'Final Fantasy XV' fans will never forget one of its most egregious forms of product placement. Last week, Wizards of the Coast unveiled a sizable portion of its Final Fantasy cards coming to Magic: The Gathering in June. Now, the publisher's revealing some more of what's in store, and Final Fantasy XV fans will get a good laugh out of that game's representation in this set. One of the Artifact cards players can get is 'Instant Ramen'; in Magic terms, it lets players draw a card or gain 3 Life if sacrificed. For those who played the 2016 RPG, it's a cheeky callback to that game's instant meal Noctis and friends can scarf down during their travels. In the game, players can take the 'Perfect Cup' side quest in Chapter 8 and acquire ingredients to make the best cup noodles your party member Gladiolus has ever had. Completing the quest gives Ignis a new recipeh! to cook for everyone else and provides stat boosts. These weren't just any cup noodles featured in Final Fantasy XV: they were the Cup Noodle, from Nissin, a popular food manufacturer in Japan. Billboards for the noodles are placed around the game, and Square Enix later updated the game with even more cup noodle-themed cosmetics. XV was no stranger to product placement; another side quest had Noctis gazing at a dress worn by his lover Luna that was made by Vivienne Westwood, and the American Express logo could be spotted throughout the game. Subtle, this was not, and that's before the two-sided collaboration event with Assassin's Creed. Maybe another card puts Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII in her Versace dress? Magic: The Gathering's Final Fantasy cards release on June 13.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How the Collapse of Prince Harry's Charity Sentebale Has Unfolded Amid 'Bullying' Claims
Prince Harry has been accused of bullying after resigning from a charity he co-founded nearly 20 years ago. Sentebale was launched by the Duke of Sussex — in honor of his mother, Princess Diana — and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho in 2006 to help children and young people in Africa, particularly those with HIV and Aids. The work has been described as integral to Harry's adult life and a source of great pride for him for nearly two decades. More from The Hollywood Reporter BBC Annual Plan Details Content Funding Woes, Truth Focus at "Challenging Time" for Democracy BMG Reports Record Profit for 2024 as Digital Revenue Jumps 16 Percent Yoko Shimomura, Game Composer for 'Final Fantasy XV,' 'Mario & Luigi,' to Receive BAFTA Fellowship This all came to a halt on Wednesday, when Harry and Prince Seeiso released a joint statement saying they are 'truly heartbroken' but would be resigning from their roles as patrons at Sentebale following a dispute with chairwoman Dr. Sophie Chandauka, a lawyer appointed in 2023. 'These trustees acted in the best interest of the charity in asking the chair to step down, while keeping the wellbeing of staff in mind. In turn, she sued the charity to remain in this voluntary position, further underscoring the broken relationship,' Harry and Seeiso said. 'We thank all the trustees for their service over the years and are truly heartbroken they've had to follow through with this act.' 'What's transpired is unthinkable. We are in shock that we have to do this, but we have a continued responsibility to Sentebale's beneficiaries, so we will be sharing all of our concerns with the Charity Commission as to how this came about,' the statement continued. Dr. Chandauka has now began speaking out about her experience as chair of Sentebale. Talking to The Financial Times, the lawyer said she first felt tensions with Prince Harry a year ago. She accused Harry of wanting 'to force a failure and then come to the rescue,' and also claimed the duke's team asked her to defend his wife, Meghan, from negative publicity. 'I said no, we're not setting a precedent by which we become an extension of the Sussex PR machine,' she said. Things worsened for Harry when Chandauka spoke to Sky News on Sunday and criticized the duke's handling of his resignation, describing it as 'harassment and bullying at scale.' She also alleged that he was 'involved' in covering up an investigation into harassment and misogyny at the charity, saying: 'The number-one risk for this organization was the toxicity of its lead patron's brand.' She maintained her work has been 'guided by the principles of fairness and equitable treatment for all,' and that she had reported the trustees to the U.K. Charity Commission, an independent department which regulates charities operating in Britain. Sentebale, meanwhile, has confirmed a restructuring of its board. A source close to the former trustees and patrons has reportedly described Dr Chandauka's accusations as 'a publicity stunt.' 'They remain firm in their resignation, for the good of the charity, and look forward to the adjudication of the truth,' the source added, according to the BBC. The Hollywood Reporter has contacted both Sentebale and Prince Harry's team for comment. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2024: Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Olivia Rodrigo and More
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
BBC Annual Plan Details Content Funding Woes, Truth Focus at 'Challenging Time' for Democracy
The BBC on Monday published its annual plan for the fiscal year ahead, outlining a commitment to truth at a 'challenging time for global democracy,' as well as 'unprecedented' content funding issues. 'The role of the BBC has never been more important,' the annual plan began, highlighting conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, the Middle East as well as climate change and a 'renewed battle for control of online spaces'. Tech companies like Meta and X are 'championing the withdrawal of controls and moderators,' the BBC said, and Donald Trump has 'set the tone' for his second term. More from The Hollywood Reporter BMG Reports Record Profit for 2024 as Digital Revenue Jumps 16 Percent Yoko Shimomura, Game Composer for 'Final Fantasy XV,' 'Mario & Luigi,' to Receive BAFTA Fellowship Korean Actor Kim Soo-hyun Denies He Groomed and Dated Late Actress When She Was Underage The broadcaster contextualized the goals are set against a BBC budget down £1 billion ($1.3b) compared to 15 years ago, necessitating the 2,000+ cuts made in the last five years. The corp is entering the coming year with an 'ambitious' program and a 'smaller, leaner workforce following an aggressive savings' program. This will involve strengthening their streaming platform iPlayer by offering breaking news and in-depth documentaries, and reaching younger audiences by expanding BBC News on both TikTok and Instagram. The challenge of global democracy and the rise of social media influencers has hastened the internet's fake news problem. 'Social media companies are relaxing content moderation while positioning themselves as champions of free speech, in a move that is likely to increase misinformation,' the plans detailed while discussing the shift to online news creating difficulties for publishers. Despite this, consumers retain more trust in broadcasters than in social media, according to BBC figures, and the corporation itself remains the U.K.'s number one news source. The plans acknowledge the fallout following the release of Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. 'The trust audiences place in the BBC is crucial so when we get things wrong… we will be prompt in establishing the facts and transparent about any mistakes that may have been made and how we can avoid them happening again.' The continued competition in video streaming is putting pressure on advertising-funded broadcasters, the BBC also acknowledged, noting it is a problem in the U.S., too, as Comcast plans to sell of their NBC Universal networks. Content spending remains high but total commissions are down, the annual plans said. As viewing shifts to international platforms, consumption of British content is therefore 'at risk'. The change in distribution of production revenues has hurt freelancers and the reduction in global TV commissions and co-commissions is putting further pressure on production companies in the U.K. 'The BBC faces an unprecedented content funding challenge, as co-production partnerships with global streamers and media companies have reduced across the sector. Without intervention, it will be difficult to maintain the current ambition and volume of U.K. content,' the plan continued, as content spending for the coming year is set to drop by £150 million ($200 million) to £2.5 billion. The top three most-viewed titles of 2024 in the U.K. were all BBC — the 2024 European Championship final, England v Spain, as well as Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and Gavin & Stacey — as the plans peddled the notion that the BBC is the home of the best British content. Netflix's Adolescence remains the top talking point for British TV audiences this week, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiling on Monday that the show, tackling toxic masculinity and the rising impact of online misogyny on children, will be made available to screen in U.K. schools. 'As a father, watching this show with my teenage son and daughter, I can tell you — it hit home hard,' Starmer said. New 2025 titles the broadcaster highlights include the return of The Night Manager, Sally Wainwright's Riot Women, Lord of the Flies adapted by Jack Thorne and Richard Gadd's Half Man. Their factual slate boasts Once Upon a Time in Space, a documentary on the killing of George Floyd, and Walking with Dinosaurs. New comedies include How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge), a Welsh murder-mystery comedy drama Death Valley and Simon Mayhew-Archer's Can You Keep a Secret? BBC director-general Tim Davie said: 'We are focused on our mission to deliver value for all, through our journalism, our storytelling and our unique ability to bring people together.' 'The U.K.'s creative industry continues to change rapidly, as does the world around us. This plan sets out how the BBC continues to evolve for audiences, both on and off air, but also how we will support and invest in the wider industry.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter The Cast of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' Then and Now 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
The Guardian
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Top of the flops: just what does the games industry deem ‘success' any more?
Back in 2013, having bought the series from Eidos, Square Enix released a reboot of the hit 1990s action game Tomb Raider starring a significantly less objectified Lara Croft. I loved that game, despite a quasi-assault scene near the beginning that I would later come to view as a bit icky, and I wasn't the only one – it was extremely well received, selling 3.4m copies in its first month alone. Then Square Enix came out and called it a disappointment. Sales did not meet the publisher's expectations, apparently, which raises the question: what were the expectations? Was it supposed to sell 5m in one month? If a book sells 10,000 copies in a week it's considered a bestseller. Even at the height of its popularity in the 90s, no Tomb Raider game ever sold more than a few million. Square Enix's expectations were clearly unrealistic. It wouldn't be the last time; in a 2016 interview with Hajime Tabata, Final Fantasy XV's director, he told me that game needed to sell 10m to succeed. Last week in an earnings call, EA's executives had to explain a shortfall in profits. It was driven mostly by EA FC, the ubiquitous football series whose revenue was down on the previous year, but CEO Andrew Wilson also singled out the long-awaited RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which came out last October. 'Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well reviewed by critics and those who played. However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market,' he said. Dragon Age has 'reached 1.5 million players' in the months since launch, which presumably includes people paying via subscription services as well as direct sales. If 3.4m was a disappointment for Square Enix in 2013, you can only imagine that 1.5m was a disaster for EA in 2024, when games cost multiples more to make. However, as Polygon's Maddy Myers points out in a detailed analysis of comparable games, 1.5m is more than Metaphor: ReFantazio (1m), and not much less than the second part of the Final Fantasy VII remake (2m) over comparable time periods. Dragon's Dogma, the genre's breakout hit last year, sold 3.3m over six months. In those terms, Dragon Age was certainly not a flop. I can only come to the same conclusion as Myers: EA's expectations were unrealistic. The company was expecting an instant mega-hit from a game in a series that had sat dormant for 10 years. The Veilguard had been rebooted and reworked several times over a tortuous development period, during which time BioWare struggled enormously. Having previously made standard-setting role-playing games in Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Star Wars: The Old Republic, its only releases since 2014 were Mass Effect: Andromeda (disappointing) and mech shooter Anthem (broken). Meanwhile, a different developer had an enormous hit with a series that BioWare itself established: Baldur's Gate, which sold 15m. The developers at BioWare have suffered the fallout from this. The studio is now down to a relatively bare bones staff of 100, and it seems EA will not be giving it the chance to build on what it achieved with The Veilguard. It's a miracle that game exists at all. I've written a lot in this newsletter about the ridiculously high stakes of modern video game development; it's clear that a more sustainable path needs to be forged. But in 2025 as in 2013, short-termism and unrealistic expectations on a corporate level stand in the way. That Tomb Raider reboot ended up selling more than 14m over time, more than any other game in the series. First-quarter sales cannot be used as the first and final measure of a game's success. Nintendo's principle of selling the same games for literally decades has meant that plenty of mid-selling titles have become million-sellers over time. There was also a point in EA's history – indeed in most publishers' history – where the portfolio was more important than each individual game's profitability. The likes of EA FC and Call of Duty were the bankable successes that could fund the rest of the slate, allowing those publishers to make room for the next surprise success. Not every game released in a year by a given company was expected to be a mega-hit. As long as the overall slate was profitable, there was space for the critically acclaimed or fan-pleasing games that didn't break out of their niche. The space for those games now appears to be confined to independent developers and the smaller publishers that overtly support them. Mike Laidlaw, the director of the first three Dragon Age games, left BioWare in 2017 and formed a new studio in 2020; its first game, Eternal Strands, came out last month and is picking up great word-of-mouth buzz. By all accounts it's a banger – and its team haven't had to labour under the expectation of instant success. While Waiting came out a few days ago, an unusual game that feels like a playable version of those slice-of-life newspaper cartoons. You play through the life of an incredibly regular guy, from birth through waiting for exam results through all the banal moments of his existence at the doctor's surgery, crossing the road, waiting for new software updates to finally finish their endless install cycles. You can do absolutely nothing, or mess around in each scene to amuse yourself. It's an interactive version of the adage that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans, a small celebration of embracing the mundane. Available on: PC, Nintendo Switch Estimated playtime: 5 hours Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion PlayStation Network went down for almost a whole day at the weekend, prompting an tsunami of complaints from disappointed gamers looking forward to their weekend multiplayer sessions. Sony called it an 'operational issue' and apologised by giving PlayStation Plus subscribers five extra days of play. A Bloomberg report (£) digs into the absolute state of things at Warner Bros' game division, whose CEO recently departed after a string of underperforming titles, culminating in last year's Suicide Squad. Even ongoing sales of mega-hit Hogwarts Legacy couldn't save it from a $300m loss last year. Two pieces of consumer-rights-related news: Steam has quietly added warning labels to early access games that have been 'abandoned' by their developers (ie, they've had no updates for many months); and the UK government has responded to a petition urging it to prohibit game developers from shutting down their live games, thus rendering them unplayable. Wait! The Sims is a lot bleaker than I remember Football Manager 25 video game cancelled after series of delays Loads of you recommended your favourite video game stories for last week's questioner, Natalie. There are so many banger recommendations that I've been shouting 'YES!' at my inbox all week. Thanks to Lawal, Emma, Jude, Toby and Phill for these picks: The Forgotten City (branching narrative indie mystery game), Mass Effect 2 (perilous science-fiction), 80 Days (globetrotting illustrated text adventure), Her Story (wonderfully clever detective game), Kathy Rain: A Detective is Born (well acted 90s-style point-and-click adventure), We Happy Few (dodgy gameplay but characters that really stay in your head), Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader (nails its worldbuilding), Xenogears (a weird and iconic classic), Breath of Fire III (poignant retro RPG), Red Dead Redemption II (long-winded but peerless western), Eliza (sparsely written and well acted), The Witcher trilogy (grimy dark fantasy, 3 is my fave), Half-Life and its sequel (the ultimate first-person story), What Remains of Edith Finch (anthology style magical realist tragedy), and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (uneasy pastoral English supernatural mystery). I'll tackle a fresh question next week. If you've one to send in – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@
