HomeHello again on this lovely summer’s day in Melbourne. Been busy this week, so not as much news as I had wanted to bring you, but at least we’ll get through this quickly!
New award contention flicks have been uploaded to the usual places
With award season just starting to build up, we already have a good idea what this year’s most awarded films may be. What has been strangely lacking so far though has been the widespread availability of pirated versions of these box office and/or critically acclaimed hits.
All that changed last week when no less than five award favourites found themselves at the usual piracy hangouts, thanks to prolific groups such as ‘Hive-CM8’ and new comers like ‘4rrived’. The movies that have been made available are ‘Moonlight’, ‘Arrival’, ‘La La Land’, ‘Patriots Day’ and ‘Hidden Figures’, many of which are still showing in theaters.
The late arrival of these pirated downloads may be largely due to the fact that ‘Hive-CM8’ decided not to release movies before they’re released publicly, which is something they have done in the past and have regretted doing so. And while there is a crackdown on the proliferation of award season screeners, release groups do have ways to protect the identity of sources, and it seems many of them are already in possession of leaked copies. We will start seeing these copies being uploaded soon, I think.
PS4 Pro not what developers wanted
Gamers have given the PS4 Pro a warm, if not exactly hot, welcome, but it seems game developers aren’t quite sure what to make of it and Microsoft’s effort to introduce a mid-generation console update. While very few developers, 5 percent, actually view the update as something completely negative according to the GDC’s survey, most remain neutral or undecided as to how they can best take advantage of it, and how it can lead to more profits.
Most are worried about being forced to do more work in order to make the enhanced graphics on the PS4 Pro and Scorpio really stand out (and not just some lazy upscaling effort), and with more work and more features, it also means more room for things to go wrong. Basically, it means more uncertainty, and that’s not what developers and publishers want.
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Sorry again for the shortness of this WNR. Normality to resume next week, hopefully.
