Prophecy And More November Movies And Shows
If you’re lucky enough to have witnessed the on-stage musical in all its glory, then you won’t want to miss part one of Wicked on November 27. The film features an exceptional cast, including Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Yeoh, and Jeff Goldblum. Wicked reimagines the age-old tale of The Wizard of Oz, following the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch, two unlikely friends, as they traverse life-altering events and situations.
It’s a more authentically adult tale than the children’s movie, full of darkness, tragedy, and mishaps that, more than anything else, warn about unquestioningly loving and trusting those around us. If you’re not a fan of musicals, you’ll likely want to skip this one, as it’s a full-on, head-bopping fantasy.
Black Ops 6 Gives Xbox The W It’s Been Waiting For
Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is the first entry in the annual blockbuster to be announced and released since Microsoft acquired it along with the rest of Activision Blizzard last October. And, by all accounts, it’s giving Xbox the boost it needed during a rough year. On an earnings call this week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called it the “biggest Call of Duty release ever.”
Order Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6: Amazon | Best Buy
The company revealed that Black Ops 6’s three-day launch had the most players, hours played, and total matches of any game in the two-decade-old military shooter series. Nadella added during the call that the game set a record for “Game Pass subscriber adds on launch day,” and that sales were up 60 percent on PlayStation and Steam from last year’s Modern Warfare 3.
“This speaks to our strategy of meeting gamers where they are by enabling them to play more games across the screens they spend their time on,” Nadella said. In addition to being the first entry in the series to launch day one on a subscription service, Black Ops 6 is the first to be supported with cloud gaming. There was also no early access period for the single-player campaign, and no exclusive content or perks for PlayStation users. The whole series recently hit over 500 million sales, and an Activision exec told the Washington Post that the structure of how Call of Duty is made “won’t change” under Microsoft.
We still don’t have any hard numbers. Microsoft is a black box when it comes to sales data. There is no total player count or sales figure to try and chart Black Ops 6‘s success, and we don’t know how many more Game Pass subscribers joined the $20-a-month tier to play it as part of the free Netflix-style library of games. Some analysts have predicted the game’s launch could add another 4 million to the existing 34 million shared last February, though potentially at the expense of 6 million sales.
But what’s clear is that the globetrotting shooter franchise’s dominance hasn’t yet waned. Circana executive director, Mat Piscatella, said its player engagement tracker showed 52 percent of all active Xbox Series X/S players and 34 percent of all active PS5 players launched Call of Duty HQ on October 28, roughly double the number from the week prior and an all-time high. “Over HALF of all daily active players on a platform playing one game is bonkers engagement,” he wrote. And after a string of middling to terrible entries, Black Ops 6 has been garnering some rave reviews.
The jury’s still out on whether this make-or-break moment for Game Pass will ultimately vindicate the subscription service or $69 billion acquisition helping to fuel it. The program, and the broader Xbox platform, are currently at a confusing cross roads as Microsoft at large reportedly cracks down on profitability. Maybe Black Ops 6 will show the needle can be thread on a future Xbox with fewer exclusives and where blockbuster games aren’t completely cannibalized by day-one subscription access.
For now, it’s a much needed win for a platform that was racking up black eyes. From mass layoffs and closures of beloved studios to hit and miss exclusives like Starfield and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, it’s been an uneven year for Xbox. Taking refuge in the best-selling franchise for eight of the last 10 years might not be the exciting future Xbox console diehards had once dreamed of, but it may prove to be a more reliable way to make the numbers go up than anything else Microsoft has done in gaming this generation.
The starkest reality for Xbox at the moment is that hardware sales continue to fall while game and service revenue continues to climb. Console sales were down 29 percent again year-over-year, with that number expected to be even worse over the holiday. Game Pass, on the other hand, “set a new Q1 record for total revenue and average revenue per subscriber,” Nadella said. “And as we look ahead, our IP across our studios has never been stronger.” But the only one he mentioned by name was Call of Duty.
Order Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6: Amazon | Best Buy
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Nintendo Keeps Announcing Things That Aren’t The Switch 2
Where the hell is the Switch 2, folks? It’s the last day of October and Nintendo still hasn’t revealed the one thing every fan is waiting for. Instead, we’ve gotten almost everything else the company could think of, from random ports of cult Wii U games to literal alarm clocks. What else could the gaming giant throw at fans while it continues running out the clock on a new console announcement in 2024?
The signs were there, from mysterious leakers to the company’s own president. “We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year,” Shuntaro Furukawa tweeted back in May. Technically, Nintendo’s fiscal year runs until March 31, but my god, man! Give us a single image of the hardware, an official name, anything! Five months later, fans have survived heart-stopping levels of hype ever since the company ditched its regular September Nintendo Direct and chatter from developers and others about an imminent announcement reached a fever pitch.
With all eyes on the mustachioed plumber, the console manufacturer decided on a different course of action. Instead of revealing the Switch 2, Nintendo announced Alarmo, a $100 device that uses video-game sounds to get you out of bed, at least if you’re single. We got a mysterious online playtest announcement that turned out to be for a weird MMO. On a random Tuesday, Nintendo decided to drop the news that niche Wii U exclusive Xenoblade Chronicles X would all of a sudden, 10 years later, arrive on Switch next spring. And then last night the company busted out even more news: Nintendo music now has a standalone app for smartphone listening as part of Switch Online.
It now feels like time is running out for Nintendo to actually reveal the Switch 2 before the end of 2024. Maybe there’s a small pocket of time in November before the holiday, but why would the company decide to steal thunder from Mario & Luigi: Brothership or its big holiday push to help sell another 10 million more Switches this year. Maybe Nintendo just does not give a fuck anymore, confident in the knowledge that, whenever it chooses to announce its next console, the news will bend the attention economy to its will no matter the manner or timing in which it unfolds. Or maybe this means we really aren’t getting a Switch 2 reveal before mid-January after the holiday break.
In the meantime, here are nine more things I would be less shocked to see Nintendo announce between now and then that aren’t a Switch 2.