It’s hard to believe, but it has been nearly a decade since Minecraft first appeared. On May 10, the game will see the 10-year anniversary of its original pre-classic release. Through years of additions, changes, and being sold to Microsoft, Minecraft became a worldwide phenomenon, selling about as many copies as the Bible.

The development team at Mojang has just released the newest update to the game, version 1.14. This version is formally known as the Village and Pillage Update. It adds loads of new blocks, mechanics, and bugfixes, as well as a new lighting system and reworked textures. On today’s episode of ShackStream, we continue our progress on the homely mountain love shack and will begin to venture outwards into the unknown wilderness.

The fun kicks off at 4:15 PM EDT (01:15 PDT) on the Official Shacknews Twitch Channel.

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As always, we’d like to take a moment and thank our subscribers and followers. These streams only happen due to your support and regular viewings. Another big thanks to those who participate in the Twitch chat. Your interaction means a lot to the streaming folks and is always appreciated. Viewers who have Amazon Prime are given one free Twitch Prime subscription a month if Amazon and Twitch accounts are linked. Check out our guide for more information on how to link your accounts.

I weird bug is preventing owners of the Minecraft video game on Nintendo Switch from backing up their games to the Nintendo Online cloud service.

Many gamers on Reddit and Twitter had begun to wonder if the feature had deliberately been disabled due to Minecraft also using the Xbox Live cloud service for cloud saves and transferring data between devices but a Minecraft community manager chimed in on Twitter and confirmed that it is in fact a bug. A fix will likely be pushed out with an update in the near future.

@HelenAngel I see that cloud saves are no longer supported, why is that?

Uhhhhh that would be a bug312:12 PM – Apr 28, 2019 · Bellevue, WATwitter Ads info and privacySee Helen ‘s other Tweets

Minecraft is an incredibly popular video game made by the, now Microsoft-owned, Mojang game studio. The game is available on most gaming platforms and supports cross-save and crossplay between the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows 10, VR, and mobile devices.

A Minecraft movie is currently in development.

Do you play Minecraft on the Nintendo Switch and have you been affected by this bug? Let us know in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more gaming content.

It’s safe to say Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame” won’t be done breaking records any time soon. Up next, the Marvel box office behemoth has its sights set on securing the biggest domestic second weekend of all time.

That crown currently belongs to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” with its mighty $149 million sophomore outing in North America. “Avengers: Endgame” is already in uncharted territory after its jaw-dropping $357 million opening weekend, making it all the more difficult to predict just how big of a second weekend the superhero blockbuster is heading for. Even so, “Endgame” could endure a massive 57% decline in box office receipts from its debut and still surpass the benchmark set by “The Force Awakens,” which dipped 39.8%.

By comparison, “Avengers: Infinity War,” the precursor to “Endgame,” saw a 55% drop in sales during its second frame. It’s undisputed that the superhero finale will assemble sizable ticket sales this weekend, but even if “Avengers: Endgame” falls short of that particular goal, it will still be in rarified company. Admission for the blockbuster could plunge by 68% (a number that would be dire for many other movies) and still come in ahead of the second weekend’s of “Avengers: Infinity War” ($114 million), “Black Panther” ($111 million), and “Jurassic World” ($106 million).

On Tuesday, “Avengers: Endgame” collected $33 million, bringing its domestic haul to $427 million. After just five days, it’s already the highest-grossing movie of the year in North America, dethroning “Captain Marvel’s” $414 million and counting. Overseas, the tentpole just crossed the billion-dollar mark.

With $1.48 billion globally, “Avengers: Endgame” has now passed “Black Panther” ($1.34 billion) and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” ($1.4 billion) to become the eighth-biggest movie in only seven days in theaters. That stunning bounty has pushed Marvel Studios over $20 billion in ticket sales from the 22 films that comprise the comic-book empire’s cinematic universe.

Despite the clear chokehold “Avengers: Endgame” has over the exhibition industry, there are three new wide releases brave enough to take on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Lionsgate’s “Long Shot,” a comedy starring Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen, is banking on moviegoers needing a fix of laughter to cope with the devastating conclusion to the current phase of Marvel movies. Sony and Screen Gems are releasing psychological thriller “The Intruder,” while STX has “UglyDolls,” an original animated musical featuring Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, and other familiar voices. All three are targeting opening weekends in the low-teens.

“Long Shot,” one of this summer’s few funny movies aimed at adult audiences, is expected to earn between $9 million and $16 million when it opens in 3,100 North American locations. The raunchy R-rated romantic comedy stars Rogen as a journalist trying to win over his former babysitter (Theron), who is running for president. Jonathan Levine, who previously worked with Rogen on the Joseph Gordon-Levitt drama “50/50,” directed the movie, which was penned by comedy writer Dan Sterling and “The Post” scribe Liz Hannah. Rogen produced “Long Shot” with his longtime partner Evan Goldberg, as well as Theron. Reviews were mostly positive (it has an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes), though critics like Variety’s Peter Debruge cautioned that the “undeniably funny” movie fails to reflect a post-#MeToo world.

“UglyDolls,” targeting a much different audience than that of “Long Shot,” is an animated adventure based on the popular children’s toys. STX’s first foray into animation should collect $12 million to $16 million from 3,600 screens. “UglyDolls” takes place in Uglyville, where colorful fabric dolls long for the day they will meet their perfect human match. When Moxy (Clarkson), the group’s fearless ringleader, takes her pals on a journey to Perfection, a town filled with more conventionally appealing dolls, the band of misfits learn to embrace what it means to be unique. Clarkson, Jonas, Janelle Monae, and Pitbull recorded all new music for the musical movie. STX and Alibaba Pictures co-financed the project for $45 million. It was directed by Kelly Asbury, who previously helmed animated movies “Shrek 2” and “Gnomeo & Juliet.” The next few weeks will be especially competitive on the family front, with essentially all ages still purchasing tickets for “Avengers: Endgame,” and Warner Bros.’ “Detective Pikachu,” Universal’s “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” and Disney’s “Toy Story 4” debuting this summer.

“The Intruder,” a PG-13 thriller, anticipates a start between $9 million and $16 million from 2,200 venues. The movie follows a young married couple, who after buying their dream house, realizes the seller (Dennis Quaid) has some shady intentions. It carries an $8 million price tag. Sony’s Screen Gems division has recently found success serving up modestly priced thrillers like “The Possession of Hannah Grace,” “Searching,” and “Slender Man.” Those three titles, which all all brought back solid box office receipts, cost under $10 million to produce. Talk about scary-good.

The band Traffic has probably been getting its heaviest web traffic ever this past week, thanks to the use of a 50-year-old song, “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” that plays briefly but inescapably in the first 10 minutes of the superhero epic. It’s the most prominent of the handful of pop songs that show up during the three-hour running time, at least before an even older oldie, from 1945, brings up the end credits.

And boomers who are well familiar with the Traffic tune as an FM staple for the last half-century may not be that much less initially puzzled by its appearance than millennials: Why isSteve Winwood warbling aboard the starship Benatar?

(Warning: Our answers include mild thematic spoilers, for the hundred or so arthouse partisans and shut-ins who haven’t seen the film.)

Of all the movies you might walk out of saying, “Man, music supervisor Dave Jordan really earned his salary on that one,” “Endgame” does not rank high. Like other “Avengers” movies, it doesn’t interrupt Alan Silvestri’s score for much else, usually throwing in pop only during a few key “Guardians of the Galaxy” crossover moments are happening, referencing the all-but-constant stream of ‘60s and ‘70s songs that figure into that universe as actual story points. So it’s inevitable that even more fanman and fanwoman scrutiny goes toward what few picks there are from Jordan (presumably) in a film like this one that doesn’t much sweat to the oldies. “Dear Mr. Fantasy” is a resonant enough pick that maybe he merits his paycheck after all.

The obvious tonal explanation: Traffic’s observation that (to quote the Eagles) most of us are sad is apropos, coming on the heels of an introductory scene that reminds us half of civilization went ashes-to-ashes at the end of the previous movie, a mass disappearance overseen by the malevolent rapturer Thanos (Josh Brolin). The literal explanation, clear to anyone who’s a little bit up on the Marvel universe: Glum Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) are playing flick football and awaiting certain death in deep space aboard the Benatar, where the Microsoft Zune belonging to absent Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) would have to be their source of tuneage.

(As “Guardians” viewers will recall, Quill/Star-Lord had his mother’s precious Walkman full of vintage songs smashed to bits in “2,” but quickly inherited from the late Yondu an equally dated and emotionally fraught piece of music hardware, the playlist of which will figure into “Guardians of the Galaxy 3,” James Gunn has promised.)

That leaves only the symbolic question to consider: Who’s Mr. Fantasy, in the Marvel, not Dave Mason, universe? Well, he’s Iron Man, of course — who in this sequel merits a more somber theme than either Black Sabbath or AC/DC could provide. “Endgame” may be an ensemble piece, but by the end of it he’s achieved something close to Main Character status. Tony Stark is the class clown whose melancholia creeps up only sarcastically and around the edges — the troupe’s go-to entertainer as well as constant savior, who maybe can’t juggle being both the wisecracking kid and genius-father-knows-best figure forever. “Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy,” sings Winwood, maybe referring — 50 years ahead of time — to Stark’s role as joker. “You are the one who can make us all laugh, but doing that you break out in tears.” Is Tony still an emotionally warped guy, despite all the domestication he’s been through since first appearing as a playboy billionaire in 2008? “Please don’t be sad — if it was a straight mind you had, we wouldn’t have known you all these years.” Maybe the filmmakers are trying to tell us that Tony is still so messed up, even Pepper Potts couldn’t reasonably say, “I will fix you.”

The needle is up almost as quickly as it was dropped: three hours doesn’t mean there’s time to fetishize a record (or MP3) collection. There are a couple of choices that don’t require a lot of overthinking— Steppenwolf’s “Hey Lawdy Mama” gives Stan Lee a chance to go out on a sleazebag cameo, and the Rolling Stones’ “Doom and Gloom,” from a few hits collections back, finally gets some sync love during a time-travel prep scene.

The most fun pick, though, is the Kinks’ “Supersonic Rocket Ship,” which doesn’t just push the obvious button in accompanying the scene where Rocket Raccoon and the Hulk travel to re-recruit Thor, but does actually describe the spirit of inclusiveness the “Guardians” franchise is meant to embody: “On my supersonic rocket ship, nobody has to be hip,” Ray Davies promised in the swingin’ jet age of 1967. “Nobody’s gonna travel second class / There’ll be equality / And no suppression of minorities / Well alright.”

The artists who gets the most audio time in “Endgame,” though?  Harry James (and his orchestra) and Kitty Kallen, who get a reprise of Jule Styne’s and Sammy Cahn’s end-of-WW-II-celebrating “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” reprised from a “Captain America” movie for a twist on bringing the boys back home. It doesn’t seem like Steve Rogers’ taste, necessarily, but it’d be nice to think he took advantage of his time-travel sojourn to take in a Traffic show.

It’s the bittersweetly cheerful bookend to that bummer-iffic opening. “Dear Mr. Fantasy” resonates in part because it was one of the early songs to make the Summer of Love feel like winter was coming. That it can serve a similar, lightly ominous purpose in a comic book franchise laden with heartache in 2019 is an interesting addition to the zeitgeist in a year when we’re trying to decide whether resuscitating Woodstock is a good idea or not. Tony Stark, hippie jester in billionaire-industrialist-superhero’s clothing, we hardly knew ye.

Looking for a great new Minecraft 1.14 seed to try? Here are a few of our favorites

Minecraft’s much-anticipated Village and Pillage update (1.14) released this week, and what better way to get into the spirit of the new content than with some brand new seeds. With Village and Pillage just releasing, we’re sure to see a ton of new 1.14 seeds cropping up in the upcoming weeks and months. For now, we’ve put together a list of seven cool Java seeds to use in the latest Minecraft version 1.14. Enjoy!

Best Minecraft 1.14 Seeds: 7 New Java Seeds To Try

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 10101010MICROSOFT

Double Village Seed – 10101010

Coordinates –  x: -500 z: 263

This is a beautiful new 1.14 seed has two villages right by spawn.  This is the more cool looking one. The seed includes a castle with a drawbridge. The terrain is beautiful and varied and both villages are within eyesight of an iceberg. More photos of the seed can be found, here. 

Taiga Seed – 1456770887

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 1456770887MICROSOFT

If you’re looking for a seed that will spawn you inside a Taiga village, this one is quite good. The seed includes a mineshaft at coordinates x: 163, y: 33, z: 245 and a zombie village at coordinates x: -816, y: -192.

Savannah Village Seed – 8610880672223669423

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 8610880672223669423MICROSOFT

Coordinates – x: 276, y: 1049

This stunning seed has a Savannah village that climbs up a mountainside The seed even includes a pirate ship nearby.

Desert Well Seed – 2209676534823432504

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 2209676534823432504MICROSOFT

Coordinates x: 2247, y: 281

This seed spawns you near a village to the northeast. Exploring this seed, you’ll find things like a desert well, pyramid and a ship with a couple of chests.

Stronghold Seed – 6338394802327870500

MInecraft 1.14 Seed – 6338394802327870500 REDDIT

Stronghold Coordinates – x:1432, y: 952

This seed is a Taiga spawn. There is a ravine to cross and players can find a stronghold and a mineshaft here.

Frozen Polar Biome Seed – 2646137890119988483

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 2646137890119988483REDDIT

Coordinates- x: -1637, y: 63, z: 1416

If you’re looking for a frozen wonderland, complete with polar bears, this is your seed!

Large Mountain Seed – 8229589436093457009

Minecraft 1.14 Seed – 8229589436093457009REDDIT

Coordinates –  x: 329 z: 267

If you love a detailed terrain, you won’t be able to resist this large mountain seed. You can check out additional images, here. https://imgur.com/a/9p3mqPp

Multiple Biomes Seed -7358942493423380506

Minecraft 1.14 Seed -7358942493423380506REDDIT

Coordinates – x: -175, y: 90, z: -245

This seed is perfect for the biome explorer. It includes a swamp, plains, savanna, and desert all right near the spawn point.

Gaming news these days often revolves around Fortnite, PUBG, and the other battle royale clones that have sprung up because of those two. That was a prestige once enjoyed by Minecraft, which helped bring about other voxel-based survival and building games. It may no longer have the spotlight but Minecraft’s latest update has just started to roll out to prove that it still has what it takes to be popular and profitable, without the shooting mayhem that seems to be the fad these days.

As the name not so subtly points out, this update is all about the new villages that have popped in plains, deserts, and other biomes. These aren’t just simple villagers, though, as each has their jobs and lives, denoted by the clothes they wear. They can even sleep on beds because why wouldn’t they.

No peaceful in-game village would be complete, however, without someone messing things up. Thankfully, these pillagers are not the sharpest knives in the drawer but you’ll still want to equip yourself with the new crossbow and shield items.

Non-humanoid mobs have also been given an update, making them behave more realistically in the process. Pandas can roll and foxes can leap. And Ravagers can headbutt anything in their path, including you. A bit unfair that illagers can ride on them.ADVERTISING

Village and Pillage is such a big update to the Minecraft world and, thankfully, it’s available on all supported platforms. That means both Bedrock (Xbox One, Windows 10 Edition, iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch) and old-school Java editions will get the update, though exact arrival times may vary.

Here’s an odd change to Minecraft on Switch. Apparently the game has had its save cloud data backup option removed. The feature was in there recently, but has now been yanked without any explanation. We’ll keep tabs on the situation to see if an explanation is given, or if the feature returns.

Earlier this year, we supported charity: water, an incredible organisation that’s on a mission to bring clean water to every person on the planet. You can read about the $10,000 donation we made here. But that’s enough.

Wait a minute, no it isn’t! 663 million people currently lack access to clean water (that’s almost 1 in 10 people), which makes the great work of charity: water absolutely essential. They want to bring clean water to as many people as possible, and we want to help them more.

So we teamed up with the excellent content creators Jigarbov Productions. They’ve crafted together a fantastic new map and skin pack, The Travelling Trader. Go to the Minecraft Marketplace on Xbox One, Windows 10 Edition, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch and you can download it for free! Shall we watch a trailer of this terrific new Minecraft adventure? Let’s!

“But hang on,” I hear you cry. “Does this mean I get a free llama skin? Also, what does this have to do with charity: water?” Well, to answer both your questions, you actually get two llama skins, and as soon as The Travelling Trader has been downloaded from the Minecraft Marketplace 100,000 times, we’ll make a new donation to charity: water of $90,000. That’ll bring us to $100,000 donated, which means ten water projects supported by Minecraft!

Charity: water estimates that the number of people impacted by a $100,000 donation is over 3,300. So all you have to do is download a great map and skin pack, and you’ll help us help a fantastic cause! Every time we call on you to do something like this, you always smash the target in an incredibly short amount of time, and once you’ve downloaded the map 100,000 times, we’ll share the great news on Twitter!

Head to the Minecraft Marketplace now and thank you for helping us help charity: water!

I didn’t think one of the biggest stories of the year for TweakTown would be something covering Minecraft with ‘ray tracing’ style effects with the SEUS Renewed mod that uses path tracing that provides ray tracing-like effects. First we had screenshots and small videos, but now there’s a detailed video of Minecraft with the ray tracing-style effects and it looks awesome.     The shader pack provides beautifully realistic lighting, shadow and reflection effects to shiny surfaces, light shafts, and more. The demo video from Digital Foundry was run on an Intel Core i9-7900X, 32GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Even with this horsepower running Minecraft with the path tracing effects at 1080p was still struggling to hit 60FPS.   The team at Digital Foundry do an amazing job at showing off the different effects that path tracing brings to Minecraft, with one of the best uses seeing light hitting a wall, and then shining light again behind it causing different shadows to be cast. This can’t be done with pre-baked lighting, and is only achievable with path tracing or real-time ray tracing effects.   It makes for a beautiful experience in something like Minecraft, which has otherwise basic graphics. This makes Minecraft the perfect playground for developers to play around with path tracing to see what real-time ray tracing would be like in a world where you can literally build it from building blocks right in front of you with real-time adjustments to the lighting.   If you want to check more out on SEUS Remastered for Minecraft, download the mod, or support the developer – check out the Patreon page.

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65690/minecraft-ray-tracing-mod-shown-new-video/index.html

TechSpot regulars may recall that earlier this month, Minecraft — one of the most popular games of the modern generation — got its very own version of ray tracing in the form of a third-party shader pack. The pack adds “path tracing” rendering to the game, which creates effects that are remarkably similar to what we’ve seen in Nvidia RTX-powered titles like Metro Exodus and Battlefield V.

The shader pack adds reflections to shiny surfaces, light shafts, and more. To give us a deeper glimpse of the pack in action, Digital Foundry’s Alex Battaglia and John Linneman have decided to take viewers on a 30-minute in-game ray tracing tour.

Prior to publishing the video, Battaglia constructed a number of rooms, each of which were designed to show off the power of path tracing in a different way. We see specular bounce lighting as light pours into rooms and hits various blocks, and one room even shows the differing levels of reflectivity for various block types – light bounces of metallic blocks more easily than wool blocks, for example.

As Linneman says, this approach to creating ray tracing-like effects is more software-driven than hardware-driven, but it still takes a pretty big bite out of performance. Despite the beefy specs of Linneman’s rig — it was powered by an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, 32GB of RAM, and an Intel Core i9 7900X — he still struggled to achieve a smooth 60 FPS at 1080p.

Battaglia’s system was considerably weaker, with a GTX 1070, AMD’s Ryzen 1700X, and 16GB of RAM. As you might expect, his performance was even worse – indeed, he had to knock Minecraft’s resolution down to 720p and cap the FPS at 30 to make the game playable.

Apparently, even that level of playability is only possible because of the very nature of Minecraft: the entire world is made up of blocks, which aren’t very complex. They’re either deleted or existing and remaining still. With very few exceptions (such as sand or gravel, which fall straight down), almost every block in Minecraft is completely static.

Due to these unique qualities, if one were to try to implement this tech in another ordinarily non-performance-intensive game, such as Fortnite, there’s a good chance it’d be near-impossible to run on modern rigs without some form of hardware-based optimization.

Still, performance aside, it’s interesting to see Minecraft from such a different perspective. If you have a rig that can take full advantage of this mod (created by Sonic Ether), you can download it from the modder’s Patreon page right here (https://www.patreon.com/sonicether ) .

Taking over two months to complete, we now have a pristine rendition of Hyrule Castle from Zelda: Breath of the Wild in Minecraft.

Undertaken by 13 members of Team Kyo that were part of the Minecraft Partner Program, they managed to recreate the entirety of Hyrule Castle from Breath of the Wild.

Not only did they manage to build the exteriors of the castle to a wonderful level of detail but also did a great deal of work bringing the interiors to life as well.

You will also notice in the video below, that this version of Hyrule Castle is actually pre-Calamity Ganon and is consequently not the ruined wreck you see in the game.

While I don’t rate Breath of the Wild as the best Zelda game ever made, it is still one of the best games in the series and definitely a must have game if you own a Switch.

That said, I found traversing Hyrule Castle in the game to be both fascinating and somewhat haunting, not least due to the amazing musical score.

Anyway, this Minecraft rendition of Hyrule Castle is amazing and with any luck, we will see it become available on the Minecraft Marketplace at some point.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and do toy reviews over at hobbylink.tv.

Like many a major media property, Minecraft is set to get its own movie. There have been plans for a Minecraft movie since 2014 — in fact, it was originally set to release next month — but now it seems some progress has been made with Mojang partnering with Warner Bros and a director attached to the project. That director is Peter Sollett, who has directed a variety of film and TV shows and is most known for 2008’s Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist. 

Aside from the director, it was revealed by Mojang that it will be a live-action film. Not only that, but they revealed a basic — they don’t want to spoil everything, after all — storyline for the film:

We’ll tell you the story of a teenage girl and her unlikely group of adventurers. After the malevolent Ender Dragon sets out on a path of destruction, they must save their beautiful, blocky Overworld.Now, given the infamous track record of video game film adaptations, you might want to avoid buying tickets right away. But who knows, I was personally extremely sceptical about what seemed like the equally nonsensical idea The Lego Movie, and that turned out to be pretty great. Whatever the case is, we should find out on March 4, 2022, and of course, we’ll bring you other details when we know more.

We’ve got the full list of Minecraft achievements – check the list for guides to unlocking them.

It shouldn’t be too much longer until the final Village and Pillage update is out to players. In the meantime, the Microsoft Marketplace is running a Spring Sale today, featuring “up to 75% off” in-game items such as world, skins, textures, and other content.View image on Twitter

Minecraft✔@Minecraft

Spring is here, and with it – the Minecraft Marketplace Spring sale! Between April 19-21, get up to 75% off worlds, skins, texture packs and more. One of our biggest sales ever has new discounts every day, so spring into action and check it out!

↣ http://redsto.ne/mpspringsale  ↢1,05011:03 PM – Apr 19, 2019160 people are talking about thisTwitter Ads info and privacy

The sales will run this weekend between April 19 and the 21, and each of the three promotional days will see a different set of sales. So, if you (or a friend or child) have been looking to spice up the game with a new texture or map to explore, now is the perfect time to try something new.

At least for now you’ll have something to do while you patiently wait for the rest of the Village & Pillage update—which will add raiding, Illager patrols, and many additional blocks such as the Campfire, Carrel, Smoker, and Stonecutter (which are all available though expirimental gameplay.

If you don’t yet have Minecraft, you can download it using one of the links below. And if you do, you can check out the Minecraft Marketplace from here to see what peaks your interest.

DownloadQR-CodeMinecraftDeveloper: MojangPrice: $6.99⁺

DownloadQR-CodeMinecraftDeveloper: MojangPrice: $6.99⁺

DownloadQR-CodeMinecraftDeveloper: Microsoft StudiosPrice: $19.99⁺

Nintendo’s latest system is a console/portable hybrid, and Google’s first serious entry into the world of video games is a streaming service. Microsoft has recently called Google’s streaming news a “validation” of Microsoft’s own strategy, and the company described Xbox as a platform that could work across multiple devices, including your cell phone, at last year’s E3.

While we still have plenty of questions about each strategy — except for the Switch, which is a relatively known quantity these days — it’s worth looking at the details that each company first chooses to share about their next-generation plans. Nintendo wanted you to play the Switch everywhere, Google doesn’t care about selling you hardware, and Microsoft is betting on a subscription model that can be used across multiple devices. Each of these approaches is a drastic shift from what came before.

Now we have Sony sharing details of the “PlayStation 5,” the as-yet-unnamed sequel to the PlayStation 4. And based on what the company has chosen as the first details to share, it sounds like the PlayStation 5 is going to be … a pretty traditional console with some speed and power upgrades.

This is a very smart strategy for a next-generation console.

THE POWER OF THE KNOWN

Nintendo hasn’t competed directly against Microsoft and Sony for years, although you could argue that each company’s consoles and games are fighting for your limited video gaming dollar. But Microsoft and Sony have long been in direct competition, both offering roughly analogous hardware that sits near your television and plays games.

So how did that play out during this current generation of consoles? Microsoft tried to sell a console that would let you wave your arms around and yell at it until you were watching cable TV — a console with an aggressive digital strategy that would have all but eliminated the market for used games. It was an ambitious, and expensive, mess.

The digital strategy was eliminated before the system launched. The Kinect hardware lasted a bit longer, but there is no longer any version of the Xbox One that includes the Kinect. The motion-sensing accessory is dead.

Sony dominated this generation by ignoring Microsoft’s strategy in order to create a traditional gaming console that played used games, allowed you to lend games to friends, and cost $100 less than the Xbox One. There were very few gimmicks: just a lower price, powerful hardware, and a great selection of exclusive games. It was a back-to-basics approach that players appreciated after trying to wrap their heads around all the new ideas that Microsoft tried to sell.

The Xbox One never recovered. This generation of consoles belongs to Sony, at least in terms of raw units sold.

Sony may be hoping that a similar thing happens during the next generation, as Microsoft once again sounds like it wants to shake up how we buy and play games.

“Our focus is on bringing console quality games that you see on TV or PC to any device,” Microsoft’s Phil Spencer told the Guardian last year. “I want to see the creators that I have relationships with reach all two billion people who play games, and not have to turn their studio into something that makes match-3 games rather than story-driven single-player games. Because that’s the only way to reach a bigger platform. That is our goal: to bring high-quality games to every device possible on the planet.”

Compare all this rhetoric to how Sony introduced the ideas behind its upcoming system on Tuesday: Sony said that it’s powerful — the system is capable of 8K graphics and ray tracing — and it will use a specifically engineered solid-state drive to keep data flowing between the hard drive and the rest of the system as quickly as possible. The console will include a drive for physical discs, and it will support current PlayStation VR hardware. Backward compatibility for PS4 games will also be included, a welcome addition for fans who like returning to the their favorite games — and something of an about-face from Sony on the topic.

These details make the PlayStation 5, or whatever it will ultimately be called, sound like a strong but expected update to the PlayStation 4. Sony may be holding back details of a possible cloud gaming service or other, bigger updates to the PlayStation formula, but so far there is nothing here that’s very surprising.

I’m not criticizing Sony, just to be clear. Making a console with new architecture that gets the most out of an SSD and a new CPU and GPU isn’t easy, especially when you know you’re going to have to sell it at a mass-market price. But Sony is playing it pretty safe with the news it’s releasing so far, and that sounds like a smarter plan than what Microsoft has been hinting at.SONY DOMINATED THIS GENERATION BY IGNORING MICROSOFT’S STRATEGY

Is there any evidence that players want to stream their console-style games on multiple devices? Are players begging for subscription services that replace the per-purchase cost of games? Does anyone want the basic console formula to change? Is the mass market ready for a console that can also be used as a portable device?

I’d argue that you can only definitively answer “yes” to one of those questions, and Nintendo already owns that market with the Nintendo Switch.

Based on what we know today, Sony is playing it very safe with its latest console, but that strategy has done wonders for Sony’s hardware. Sony is used to giving players what they want rather than selling them on something completely new, and we don’t have a lot of evidence that suggests players want to rethink the basic ideas behind game consoles.

So while the competition may have a hard time convincing players that device-agnostic streaming options or first-party subscriptions for major games is the way to go, Sony just has to remind them that they’ve always liked fast, capable boxes that plug into a television to play $60 video games.

In a world where everything is changing, maybe the best approach is to offer players what they already know they like. Sony, so far, doesn’t have to sell you on anything new or hard to explain: The next system in the PlayStation line will take discs, will make games look better, and will allow those games to load much faster. It will sit close to your TV and play video games.

And, at least for now, that might be all players want out of their next console purchase.

This week, after hearing Sony confirm, and then describe, the next PlayStation under development, you may be wondering what exactly “ray tracing” is and why it’s such a differentiator when it comes to high performance video game hardware. Here is a surprisingly watchable technical demonstration from Digital Foundry — using Minecraft of all things — to point out its applications — like your username casting a shadow.

Minecraft, using the mod Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shadows, makes for a surprisingly good test space. It’s not just because Digital Foundry’s Alex Battaglia and John Linneman can build rooms that call attention to concepts like “specularity,” and “bounce lighting” and “differentiated reflective surfaces.” Its because the voxelized world is optimal for the real-time demands of ray tracing.

“To have the entire world always be known [by the CPU] as being made of blocks is what mes this so performant,” Battaglia explains.

“Because these objects are non-moving and in a binary, present-or-deleted situation, that makes the calculations easier,” Linneman adds.

The rooms they’ve built show off not just those highly coveted godrays of sunshine, and indirect lighting, but also how a room can be indirectly lit off multiple reflections of a light source, and how colored surfaces’ reflections, will also mix and change when they bounce onto another colored surface. It is a highly technical discussion, of course, but the visuals are always there to fall back on, to illustrate what kind of a load the hardware has to carry to pull it off.

“It honestly just looks like an architectural rendering,” Battaglia says at one point.

“This is how light functions in the real world,” Linneman says simply. “Many games have a way of faking this effect, but this is generated in real time.”

Battaglia’s hardware for this technical demonstration is more powerful than an Xbox One X, and yet with this path-tracing* mod installed, it’s running at 720p locked to 30 frames per second — if that gives you a sense of how much this kind of rendering asks. Or as one joker put it in the YouTube comments: “2007: But can it run Crysis? 2019: But can it run Minecraft? Oh how the times have changed.”

A video game like Minecraft in schools might trouble some parents. As a Canada research chair in technologies and education, my hope is both parents and educators take the time to learn about how using Minecraft at school could be beneficial.

Firstly, parents and teachers are right to ask questions about video gaming, particularly given sometimes conflicting messages about its impact. Some researchers caution about the possible impacts of child and youth exposure to violence or problems of gaming addiction or screen saturation, while others say fears may be exaggeratedand it’s a matter of balance.

Parents’ potential skepticism of Minecraft is understandable, given its immense appeal among youngsters. It is one of the most popular video games of all time, with more than 150 million copies sold.

But I’ve learned through my research that many are largely unaware of the enormous educational potential of Minecraft. Many people also don’t know Minecraft Education Edition was released in the fall of 2016 and this version has been rapidly catching on at schools.

Since 2013, American and Swedish schools have been systematically integrating Minecraft into their schools, and it is being used around the world to teach science, urban planningand foreign languages. Masses of educational applications and experiences using Minecraft are available on online sites and forums.

In Montréal, a number of schools joined a contest in which students use Minecraft to reproduce historic sites and events in celebration of the city’s 375th anniversary, called Mission 375. With my team at the University of Montréal, we felt it important to investigate the educational potential of Minecraft in order to provide a deeper understanding of the impacts on young learners.

Gaming for learning

So why all the interest in video games? Compelling research exists about the benefits of gaming for learning. Educational technology researchers have found that video games capture children’s attention and provide particularly favorable conditions for learning and have shown positive effects on cognitive, affective and psychomotor functioning.

When players are fully engaged in a gaming task, they enter what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the “flow state,” also known as “the zone,” a state highly conducive to learning.

While becoming deeply engrossed in gaming is sometimes depicited in a negative light or only associated with addiction, in fact this state can be harnessed to support or advance learning goals. For example, in this task-focused state, players are highly receptive to learning embedded in the game scenario. Creativity, student engagement and collaboration between users are just some of the aptitudes that are known to be developed through gameplay.

In addition, video games can help today’s youngsters cope with a future world requiring more and more digital literacy. In other words, they will need 21st century skills.

Minecraft to teach curriculum

My team and I adopted an exploratory research design to highlight the main uses of Minecraft in a school setting and to identify any benefits of using Minecraft at school. We developed a program called Minecraft Master where students had to complete more than 40 different tasks. Tasks were closely linked to the school curriculum; for example, students have to create a navigable map, making use of language, mathematics and spatial design, something we asked them to do with Minecraft.

We formed a partnership with one Montréal school. Participation was open to 118 Grade 3 to 6 students in an after-school program based on computers available. Registration took place during recess, on a first-come-first-served basis and parental consent was compulsory. Most of the students took four blocks of six weeks of Minecraft during the school year (an equivalent of about six months).

With the support of a program facilitator, students worked individually and in teams to digitally build structures such as impressive houses, a soccer stadium, a space ship, a railroad track to the Titanic and the Titanic itself.

Researchers also attended some sessions. We studied the main impacts on learning to investigate how gamified learning interventions may increase student engagement and enhance learning. We used a combination of data collected from surveys, interviews,”think aloud” protocols (where students speak their problem-solving strategies out loud), journals, tracking of studentprogress and digital footprints. Using these various methods allowed substantial data triangulation and validation.

The educational impacts we found were encouraging. The students showed a heightened motivation towards school, stronger computer skills, greater problem-solving skills, expanded reading and writing skills, a development in creativity and autonomy and increased collaboration with classmates.

The results of the studies we conducted confirm that Minecraft has real educational value. Notably, gaming allowed the students to fully engage in activities that were both educational and fun.

Planned, supported, purposeful

However, it is important to understand that the use of Minecraft in our context was planned, supported and purposeful. This structure is crucial for a successful educational use of the game. Without such boundaries, students might not want to stop playing and learning advantages could be wasted.

Technologies, games and other “screen-related” activities can be a fun experience for students. But it is important to balance screen time with other activities that are essential for students’ development such as physically active play, reading, etc. Both parents and teachers can help students find this balance by working together on some rules about technology use.

Therefore, it is incumbent on both parents and teachers to structure the use of video games such as Minecraft to ensure that they provide students with appropriate support for the use of educational technologies. Such supervision would allow them to fully benefit from the incredible potential of this game.

A demon and an angel need to kill lots of people to stop Armageddon. That’s the premise of God’s Trigger, a gory top-down shooter whose slick combat and interesting levels help make it more than just another Hotline Miami wannabe.

Out this week on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, God’s Trigger sees you play as Harry, an angel cast out of heaven, and Judy, a demon condemned to live out her days on earth, as they team up to take down the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Each of these villains plays the role of a mob boss, with chapters broken up into individual levels where you fight through bars, warehouse, and other grindhouse locales on your way to assassinate each one.Outstream Video

These levels can be quite expansive, spanning several checkpoints and offering a number of alternate paths through the chaos. You might decide to play it cautious, sneaking up on enemies to kill them from behind, which gives you bonus experience points and keeps you hidden from the rest of the enemies. Before bursting into a new room, you can also pre-select targets so that you’ll automatically aim at the next enemy as the previous one is killed. Or, as I quickly figured out, it’s often possible to dash into enemies, slice out their throats, and then quickly dash back out of the room and wait for the remaining mob to come through the door.

Rather than pushing you to find the best, most efficient route through each level, God’s Trigger encourages more experimentation. Both Harry and Judy, who you can swap between at any time, have a range of different abilities they unlock over the course of the game. Some, like the ability to teleport short distances, are basic and have rapid cooldowns. More powerful moves require you to first fill up a gauge by defeating enemies. These include slowing down time, turning invisible, or mind-controlling enemies to get them to fight one another.

It can be fun to take a few seconds, stare at a set of rooms, and then stitch together a set of quick plays to try and take everyone out as ruthlessly as possible. It’s also satisfying enough just to survive. It only takes one stray bullet or slash of a knife to kill you, so every mistake is fatal. After spending a few hours leveling up and upgrading the speed, cooldowns, or range of various abilities, it begins to feel somewhat like a more tense, fast-paced beat ‘em up. You’ll start to develop various short, go-to combos—two shots from a handgun, dash, slash, slash—that you can mix and match as needed to slowly make your way through each stage.

While the few hours I’ve spent with God’s Trigger have mostly been solo, I enjoyed the mission I played co-op the most. The game lets you swap between characters at any time when playing alone, but it’s only with both on the screen simultaneously that the true range of ruthless possibilities opens up. Many of the characters’ abilities synergize, like having one summon a wall of fire while the other shoots bullets through it, causing them to explode on the other side and kill multiple enemies at once. Occasionally, my co-op partner and I got in each other’s way, but more often than not our instincts synced up to create cool, unexpected new death traps. God’s Trigger can still be a delight on its own but, perhaps like the end of the world itself, better with company.

The fighting game extravaganza MIXUP returns for its third year this weekend in Lyon, France. While it’ll showcase tournaments in all the current major games like Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, and Dragon Ball FighterZ, it’ll also be home to a number of more niche side events, including one for the beloved Capcom arcade classic, Darkstalkers 3.

Despite all of the re-releases over the past two decades, there hasn’t actually been a new Darkstalkers game since Darkstalkers 3 was released on Capcom Play System II arcade cabinets in 1997. There have been numerous updates, console ports, and compilations released in the years since, including 2013’sDarkstalkers Resurrection, which put the second and third games in HD, but never anything that could be considered Darkstalkers 4.Outstream Video

While it’s easy to be disappointed that Capcom has allowed one of its cult classic series to languish for over a decade, the long life of Darkstalkers 3 has also allowed history to stay alive, with fans and veteran players continuing to compete at various fighting game events the world over even as the field becomes crowded with newer fighting games. MIXUP is one of those events. Though the main spotlight will be on recent releases like Soulcalibur IV, Darkstalkers 3 diehards will have the chance to duke it out on actual arcade cabinets.

The game’s top 32 bracket will get underway on Sunday, April 21, at 10:00 a.m. ET, with all of the action streamed live from the MIXUP arcade mainstage. You can find a full list of streams and times for the rest of the event’s tournaments at Smash.gg, with the festivities wrapping up Sunday at 1:00 p.m. ET with the top 8 for Tekken 7.

Meanwhile in the world of Smash Bros., Pound 2019 kicks off today in Maryland with tournaments for both Ultimate and Melee. Almost every top player of note, from Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma to to Eric “ESAM” Lew, will be in attendance, with a special Squad Strike battle going down Saturday evening starting at 5:00 p.m. ET. Everything will be streamed live on Twitch channels VGBoot Camp 1 through 3.

Finally, Dota 2 veterans Natus Vincere look to claim some glory in India at the $300,000 ESL One Mumbai Major. The grand finals will take place on Sunday at 6:30 a.m. ET and will stream on ESL’s Dota 2 Twitch channel.

By the time Link wakes up in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Castle has already been partially destroyed, thanks to the work of Calamity Ganon a hundred years prior. Recently, players have set about restoring the castle in Minecraft.

Nintendo highlighted the project today over on the company’s Japanese website along with a video showing some of the incredible detail that went into creating the castle and a brief interview with one of the people behind it. While the exterior shots help show the scale of the castle, the interior shots demonstrate just how much painstaking work went into every little feature, from the grand arches of the central hall to the floating plants in the multi-floor library.

It was all done by members of the Minecraft Partner Program group Team Kyo, who told Nintendo that they began by first looking at promotional screenshots of the castle as it appeared prior to Calamity Ganon’s arrival. Based on those images, they laid out the entire design ahead of time in one-block increments. It then took 13 people working for approximately two months to realize that vision within the game.

Some players had previously hoped we might get to explore Hyrule Castle prior to its collapse in one of Breath of the Wild’s DLCs, but sadly, that hasn’t happened. Team Kyo’s latest creation might be as close as some players get to experiencing its original grandeur, at least if it becomes available on the Minecraft Marketplace at some point.

It’s even being promoted by Nintendo

It’s no secret now that Nintendo and Microsoft are getting a bit chummy with one another. The two companies have advertised Minecraft together, former Xbox console exclusives have started popping up on Switch, and they never shy away from gloating about how players on either console can play with one another in some of the biggest games on the market. It’s nice to be past the days of the idiotic and juvenile “console wars,” to be in a period where we can all focus on just having fun instead of arguing until we’re blue in the face about which piece of hardware is better.

There are plenty of examples of this “Kum by yah” attitude out there, but this new video, being promoted by Nintendo of Japan, showcasing a magnificent Minecraft recreation of Hyrule Castle from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, may be my favorite. Take a look:

I am in awe. This spectacular piece of craftsmanship was created by Team Kyo, a 17-member Minecraftgroup that has produced recreations of real cities in the past. Thirteen of those team members participated in the construction of the castle over a period of about two months. The team used screenshots and promotion materials to help get every detail right.

If it’s not obvious now, I’m simply dumbfounded by what Team Kyo was able to pull off here and can’t wait to see what they create next. May I suggest sticking with Nintendo and giving us a recreation of Blackbelly Skatepark from Splatoon?