Month: April 2017

EA

A new cinematic trailer for the next announced Star Wars video game, Battlefront II, was briefly advertised on an official EA Twitter account before being deleted. As of press time, mirrors of the video still haven't been taken down. Normally, an all-sizzle, no-gameplay trailer doesn't constitute a reason to break into your regularly scheduled news feed, but the trailer does hint at new things for the multiplayer-focused series, including an expansion to "all eras" and a possible new-character campaign.

The trailer opens by focusing on an unidentified woman, and she shows up at the same time as the climactic moment of Return of the Jedi. We see the woman among a group of apparent Imperial guards—clad in mostly black, helmeted armor with red accents—who look up and see the in-construction Death Star explode. This unnamed woman is the only one without a helmet on, and she looks up at the explosion with astonishment, not anguish. Moments later, a TIE Fighter flies through the busted Death Star's debris, and then we see the same kind of black-and-red helmet in a TIE Fighter cockpit engaging hyperdrive. Since this was combined with teaser text about "a new soldier's story," it's not crazy to expect a structured campaign as a result, in which players use the new character to complete missions within the game's multiplayer battlegrounds.

Enlarge / Bixby didn't really work during our late March demo, but here are some Bixby cards. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Reports indicate that Samsung will delay the English-language version of its first voice-assistant app instead of launching it simultaneously with the Galaxy S8 smartphone on April 21. The app is named Bixby.

The Wall Street Journal credits "people familiar with the matter" with the discovery. These sources also tell the WSJ that Bixby's English version could be delayed until as late as "the end of May." That estimate was not based on a "final" decision, the report warns. No information was given about when other language versions of Bixby should be expected to launch.

Enlarge / Heather Bresch, chief executive officer of drugmaker Mylan Inc. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

Mylan—the pharmaceutical company infamous for raising the price of EpiPens—is in hot water with the Food and Drug Administration. This time, the dust-up is related to the quality control practices at one of the company’s drug facilities making antiretroviral therapies (ARVs) used to treat HIV, Reuters reports.

In a letter to Mylan, the FDA outlined several violations at the facility, based in Maharashtra, India, and warned Mylan to shape up. Specifically, the FDA said that investigators found that facility employees inexplicably invalidated quality control data that showed that drug batches didn’t meet standards. The agency also claimed that employees didn’t bother trying to investigate those failures or prevent them from reoccurring.

“Your quality system does not adequately ensure the accuracy and integrity of data to support the safety, effectiveness, and quality of the drugs you manufacture,” the FDA wrote. The letter was dated April 3, but it was released by the agency Tuesday.

Enlarge / Ishi, Ishi, calm down. I'd be angry at Duke Nukem after seeing how weirdly he was shoehorned into Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, too, but there's more to blame. (credit: Gearbox / People Can Fly)

Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition launched on modern consoles and PCs last week. In a different universe, maybe the remaster of this 2011 first-person shooter would have had some obvious, significant care poured into it. Maybe it would come with new modes or twists, or maybe it would be paired with an event, an anniversary, or a beloved character in a way that reestablished its context as a quality, one-of-a-kind shooter. Any of those things might have given the game a decent shot both critically and commercially.

Instead, the game launched as both a bad product and a clueless answer to the ongoing question of how we should value video game purchases.

Kill really stupid enemies, but with skill