Amazon’s God of War series will tell the story of the 2018 Norse reboot

Earlier this year, Sony announced that God of War would be developed as an Amazon Video series, and since then, the latest installment Ragnarok has become a huge hit on PlayStation. Now, the series is officially a go and we’ve learned more about what will take place, according to The Hollywood Reporter

The series will follow the main character Kratos, The God of War, through roughly the events of the 2018 reboot based on Norse mythology. In that, he has quit his violent past and exiled himself to the Norse Midgard realm. 

“When his beloved wife dies,” Amazon’s description reads, “Kratos sets off on a dangerous journey with his estranged son to spread her ashes from the highest peak — his wife’s final wish. [The quest] will test the bonds between father and son, and force Kratos to battle new gods and monsters for the fate of the world.” 

The series will be produced by Sony Pictures Television and Amazon Studios in association with PlayStation Productions. The showrunner will be The Wheel of Time‘s Rafe Judkins, aided by Oscar nominees Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Children of Men, Iron Man) who will take on writing and executive producing duties.

The original God of War series revolves around Greek mythology wrapped up in 2013 with God of War: Ascension (PS3). It rebooted with 2018’s Norse mythology-based God of War for PlayStation 4, which led to God of War Ragnarök, released last month to rave reviews.

Amazon is also producing a Fallout series for Prime that started production early this year and should be arriving soon. Other series based on high-profile games either released or coming soon include The Last of Us (HBO), Halo (Paramount) and Horizon Zero Dawn (Netflix). 

Epic is taking over a dozen games offline, including Rock Band and Unreal titles

Epic Games is shutting down “out-of-date online services” and servers for several of its older games, including multiple Rock Band and Unreal titles, starting today. The company notes that most affected games will still be available offline, but others will no longer work. It says the move is part of a shift that will only see it support online functions through Epic Online Services, which offers a unified friends system, voice chat, parental controls and parental verification.

Epic is removing the mobile title DropMix and the Mac and Linux versions of Hatoful Boyfriend and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star from storefronts today. You’ll still be able to play these games if you already own them.

Servers for several games will be shut down on January 24th, but Epic has already started delisting them from digital storefronts and turning off in-game purchases. After that date, you’ll still be able to play the following offline in single or local multiplayer modes:

  • 1000 Tiny Claws

  • Dance Central 1-3

  • Green Day: Rock Band

  • Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess

  • Rock Band 1-3

  • The Beatles: Rock Band

  • Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars

  • Unreal Gold

  • Unreal II: The Awakening

  • Unreal Tournament 2003

  • Unreal Tournament 2004

  • Unreal Tournament 3

  • Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition

Dance Central VR and Rock Band 4 online multiplayer features will remain available. Epic also plans to restore online features to Unreal Tournament 3 down the line. It will integrate Epic Online Services into the game.

Battle Breakers, a hero collector RPG that a small team of Epic developers built inhouse and released in 2019, will shut down on December 30th. Epic will refund all in-game purchases made through its direct payment system in the 180 days before today. As of January 24th, the alpha of the Unreal Tournament reboot, Rock Band Blitz, the Rock Band companion app and SingSpace will no longer be available.

It’s unclear how many people are still playing the Unreal Tournament and Rock Band titles but at their peaks, they were among the biggest franchises around. It’s a shame to see Epic sunsetting these games and all the others on the list. Still, if you happen to have a Rock Band guitar or drum set gathering dust, this may at least be a decent reminder to bust those out and play along to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “Basket Case.”

Meanwhile, Rock Band developer Harmonix, which Epic bought last year, recently announced that its most recent game, Fuser, will go offline. The studio will also stop selling the game and in-game purchases on December 19th.

Tidal now lets you DJ for other paid users in real time

Tidal users in the US can now become DJs on the streaming service. The company is testing a feature called DJ, which enables those on the $20 per month HiFi Plus tier to share songs or a playlist they’re listening to with other paying users in real time. Tidal added a proper playlist sharing option just last month. 

You can choose a name for the DJ session and share a link that others can use to access it. Unfortunately, Tidal says that those tuning in won’t be able to listen to whatever the DJ’s playing at high-resolution or lossless quality for the time being. The songs will play in regular AAC quality (160 Kbps) — higher-resolution streams will be available at a later date.

Budding DJs will need to be enrolled in Tidal’s Early Access Program to access the beta. They’ll only be able to start a session on iOS for now, but Android support is coming soon. All paying Tidal users can listen to a DJ session on either iOS or Android.

The feature is different from Tidal for DJs, which enables producers and DJs to plug songs from the streaming service into professional audio software, as The Verge notes. So, this new feature is geared toward amateur tastemakers. However, the fact that listeners also need to be paid Tidal users might prevent folks from sharing their live DJ sessions with friends who typically use Spotify or Apple Music. At least Turntable.fm is still around, while Amazon’s Amp enables people to host their own radio shows with chat and licensed music.

Twitter suspends account that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet

A Twitter account that tracked the flights of Elon Musk’s private jet is no more. The company has permanently suspended @ElonJet, as Jack Sweeney, a college student who ran the account, noted.

Sweeney used publicly available flight data to operate @ElonJet and accounts that track flights of other public figures. Over the weekend, Sweeney said screenshots provided by a Twitter employee indicated that the company limited the reach of @ElonJet. On Monday, Sweeney said it seemed there were no longer any restrictions on the account, but Twitter has since dropped the banhammer. By Wednesday afternoon, Twitter had suspended Sweeney’s personal Twitter account too. Later that same day, Twitter revealed an update to its private information policy, noting that sharing “live location” information about another person is now prohibited. 

In January, a few months before Musk announced a deal to buy Twitter, he offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete the account. Sweeney rejected the overture, instead asking for $50,000. As CNBC notes, @ElonJet had more than half a million followers. Sweeney also runs a version of the bot on Instagram.

Self-proclaimed free speech absolutist Musk, who has caused chaos at Twitter since taking over the company, suggested in November that he would not ban @ElonJet, despite claiming the account “is a direct personal safety risk.” It’s unclear whether Musk himself reversed course or one of his employees made the call to suspend @ElonJet. Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment.

Update 12/14 2:36PM ET: Noted that Twitter has suspended Sweeney’s personal Twitter account.
Update 12/14 8:00PM ET: Added information about Twitter’s updated private information and media policy.

Spotify is reportedly pulling back on its live audio ambitions

Fans of several Spotify live audio shows will soon have to say goodbye to their favorite programs. According to Bloomberg, the music and audio streaming service is ending the production of shows such as Doughboys: Snack Pack, Deux Me After Dark, which describes itself as the “place for the latest tea on your favorite celebrities,” The Movie Buff with comedian Jon Gabrus, and A Gay in the Life, which provides a safe space for conversations about the LGBTQ+ experience. The aforementioned shows have either already ended or have announced that they’re going off the air soon. 

A company spokesperson has confirmed the cancellations to Bloomberg. The news organization also heard from sources that Spotify ended some of the programs before their creators’ contracts were up but that the service will still pay them the entire amount it promised. 

Several companies, including Spotify, saw live audio programming a new area for growth during the height of the pandemic when Clubhouse blew up in popularity. In Spotify’s case, it gave Locker Room, the audio-based social network for sports fans that it acquired in March 2021, an overhaul and renamed it Greenroom. It launched a dedicated Greenroom app last year before rebranding it again as Spotify Live in April and integrating live audio inside of its main app. While cancelling multiple shows indicate that the company is stepping back from live audio, it’s not killing the format completely. Bloomberg says The Fantasy Footballers and The Ringer MMA Show will continue as usual.

TikTok is testing full screen horizontal videos

TikToksaid last year that it reached one billion monthly active users worldwide, so whatever it’s doing is clearly working. That hasn’t stopped the ByteDance-owned company from testing and introducing new features, though, including those that put it in direct competition with YouTube. Case in point, its latest experiment that gives select users worldwide access to a horizontal full screen mode for videos they watch on their phones. 

The company has confirmed to TechCrunch that users chosen to be part of this test will see a button on square or rectangle videos in their feed. If they tap on that button, the video will expand horizontally to take up the whole screen. TikToks are famous for being short vertical videos, and creators still have to put a “turn your phone” message at the beginning of theirs if they filmed in landscape mode. If the company does launch this feature, they wouldn’t have to do that anymore, and other creators might be more inclined to film landscape videos. Of course, a wide release depends on testers’ response to the feature, among other factors. 

This is but the latest move the company has made in an effort to capture audiences who might like YouTube’s format better. Earlier this year, for instance, TikTok extended its maximum video length from three minutes to ten minutes. That said, it’s not exactly lagging behind the Google-owned video platform: According to a previous TechCrunch report, kids and teens have been spending more time on TikTok than YouTube since the middle of 2020. 

‘Hogwarts Legacy’ delayed for Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment today delayedHogwarts Legacy yet again, but the most demanding versions of the game are spared. Instead, the postponement pushes the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions back to April 4th, 2023, with the Nintendo Switch variant arriving on July 25th.

Previously, the last-gen versions were scheduled to launch on February 10th alongside the PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC iterations. Although today’s delay will disappoint Harry Potter fans with older consoles, you need to look no further than Cyberpunk 2077 for an example of a game that just wasn’t ready for last-gen hardware. This latest reshuffling should give developer Avalanche Software time to polish the Harry Potter-themed game for older systems.

Warner Bros. initially slated the wizarding title for a 2021 launch but later pushed it back to this year and, finally, to 2023. Starting on February 7th, people who buy the Deluxe Edition for PS5, Xbox Series X/S or PC will have 72 hours of early access to start their adventure. However, the delayed versions won’t have an early-access period.

A student practicing magic in a gameplay still from 'Hogwarts Legacy'
Avalanche Software/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world action RPG set in the 1800s. You play as a custom-created Hogwarts student in the century before the events in the Harry Potter books and movies. You will craft potions, learn spells and make friends while embarking “on a dangerous journey to uncover a hidden truth of the wizarding world.”

Warner Bros. notes that the game isn’t a new story from author JK Rowling, but it collaborated with her team to ensure it remains true to her original vision. However, the RPG’s character creator may let you make transgender characters, a welcome departure from Rowling’s opinion on that topic.

‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is the first great high frame rate movie

Avatar: The Way of Water is a triumph. As a sequel to the highest-grossing film ever, which was criticized for its formulaic story (and the surprisingly small ripple it had on pop culture), the new movie is a genuine surprise. It’s a sweeping epic that reflects on the nature of families, our relationship to the natural world and humanity’s endless thirst for violence and plunder. Fans of the original film often had to make excuses for writer and director James Cameron’s stilted script, but that’s no longer the case for The Way of Water, thanks to additional help from Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (who both worked on the recent criminally under-loved Planet of the Apes trilogy).

Perhaps most impressive, though, is that James Cameron has managed to craft the best high frame rate (HFR) movie yet. Certain scenes play back at 48 frames per second, giving them a smoother and more realistic sheen compared to the standard 24fps. That leads to 3D action scenes that feel incredibly immersive — at times HFR can make you forget that the lush alien wildlife on Pandora isn’t real.

Avatar: The Way of Water
Fox/Disney

Unlike the handful of high frame rate movies we’ve already seen – The Hobbit trilogy, as well as Ang Lee’s Gemini Man and Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk – the Avatar sequel deploys the technology in a unique way. Rather than using HFR throughout the entire movie, Cameron relies on it for major action sequences, while slower dialog scenes appear as if they’re running at 24fps. To do that, the entire film actually runs at 48fps, while the calmer scenes use doubled frames to trick your brain into seeing them at the typical theatrical frame rate.

If this sounds a bit confusing, your brain may have a similar reaction while watching the film. The Way of Water often jumps from hyper-real HFR to pseudo-24 fps in the same scene — at one point, I counted around a dozen switches in a few minutes. This is a strategy Cameron has been discussing for years. In 2016, he noted that HFR is “a tool, not a format,” and later he rejected Ang Lee’s attempt at using HFR for Gemini Man’s entire runtime.

Cameron’s dual-pronged approach to HFR is bound to be controversial. Even for someone who appreciates what the technology has to offer — pristine 3D action scenes with no blurring or strobing — it took me a while to get used to flipping between high frame rate and 24 fps footage. With Gemini Man, my brain got used to the hyper-reality of HFR within 15 minutes. In The Way of Water, I was almost keeping an eye out for when the footage changed.

Avatar: The Way of Water
Fox/Disney

Despite the distracting format changes, The Way of Water’s high frame rate footage ultimately worked for me. At times, the film appears to be a window into the world of Pandora, with breathtaking shots of lush forests and lush oceans. It makes all of Cameron’s creations, from enormous flying fish-like creatures that you can ride, to alien whales with advanced language, appear as if they’re living and breathing creatures. HFR also works in tandem with the sequel’s more modern CG animation, making the Na’vi and their culture feel all the more real.

 Over the film’s three hour and twelve-minute runtime, I eventually managed to see what the director was aiming for, even if his ambition exceeded his grasp.  (Cameron, who has the world’s first [Avatar] and third-highest grossing films [Titanic] under his belt, and who dove into the Marianas Trench in a self-designed personal submarine, suggests you can use the bathroom anytime you want during The Way of Water. You’ll just catch up the next time you see it in theaters. Baller.)

The re-release of Avatar earlier this month also used a combination of HFR and traditional footage (in addition to brightening the picture and upscaling the film to 4K). But even though that revamp grossed over $70 million on its own, there hasn’t been much discussion about how it integrated high frame rate footage. (I saw it on a Regal RPX screen, which offered 3D but no extra frames, sadly.) There’s a better chance you’ll be able to catch Avatar: The Way of Water exactly how Cameron intended. It’ll be screening in 4K, HFR and 3D at all AMC Dolby Cinema locations and select IMAX theaters (single laser screens get everything, some dual-laser screens will only offer 2K 3D with HFR). While you could see it in 2D, why would you?

Avatar: The Way of Water

After suffering through the interminable Hobbit movies in HFR, I figured the technology was mostly a waste of time, yet another money-grab that Hollywood can use to pump up ticket prices. Director Peter Jackson struggled to recreate the magic of his Lord of the Rings trilogy, and amid production issues, he also failed to change the way he shot the Hobbit films to account for HFR. So that led to sets that looked like they were ripped from B-grade fantasy movies and costumes that seemingly came from a Spirit Halloween pop-up.

Ang Lee’s more studious attempts at using the technology, especially with the action scenes in Gemini Man, convinced me HFR still had some potential. But even he struggled along the way. Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk is a cinematic curiosity, where HFR makes slow dialog scenes appear too distractingly real. Gemini Man was cursed by a messy script and the need to be a big-budget Will Smith blockbuster.

Avatar: The Way of Water
Fox/Disney

Avatar: The Way of Water benefits from the creative failures of all of the earlier high frame rate films. For many, it’ll be their introduction to this technology, so it’ll be interesting to see how general audiences respond. Video games and hyper-real YouTube action footage have made 60fps footage far more common, so I could see younger audiences, those raised on hundreds of hours of Minecraft and Fortnite, vibing with Cameron’s vision. Everyone else will need more convincing. For me, though, I’m just glad there’s finally a high frame rate film that’s genuinely great, instead of just a technical exercise.