Remember the 2010 Robin Hood movie? The one directed by Ridley Scott with Russell Crowe in the title role? It struggled at the box office and reportedly resulted in a loss during its theatrical release. Now, 16 years later, Crowe has discussed its various problems, which weren’t helped by comparisons to Scott and Crowe’s blockbuster Gladiator.

IGN’s Robin Hood movie returned a 5/10. We said: “Robin Hood isn't a bad movie. But it is a frustrating, deeply flawed and wholly unnecessary one. Its problems were all on paper and in conceptualization not necessarily in execution. The film ends on an obvious sequel note, but it's equally obvious that this installment is simply too mediocre to ever warrant a sequel. By stripping the story of its core mythology, this Robin Hood will leave you wondering how the hell this legend has managed to survive for so many centuries. Where's the merry in that?”

Crowe took to social media to respond to one fan who said Robin Hood received “unfair” comparisons to Gladiator, which had been released a decade prior. The Master and Commander and L.A. Confidential star said that 17 minutes were cut for the cinema release, and that the director’s cut “is the movie we all thought we were releasing.”

“The director's cut is the movie we all thought we were releasing,” Crowe said. “However, 17 minutes were cut for the cinema release. A minute is a long time on screen. Imagine any of your favourite movies with 17 minutes of the most emotional connective tissue removed… watch the director’s cut.

Then, responding to another fan who said they felt the movie was more than a Robin Hood origin story, Crowe agreed, confirming the plan was to tell the character’s story in three parts.

“That was the idea. To be told in three parts,” Crowe said. “When I started digging in to RH, I found the story and its roots in Greene Man mythology deeply interesting. The tale of Robin lasted hundreds of years, how? It was my idea to show that RH was a title, passed down, not one man.”

Crowe's Robin Hood didn't put Hollywood off from making other movies based on the character. Indeed, another is coming up. Last month we got the first trailer for The Death of Robin Hood, giving us our first look at Hugh Jackman, star of Deadpool & Wolverine, The Greatest Showman, and The Prestige, as the legendary archer.

Photo by Fotonoticias/WireImage.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The developer of Crimson Desert has confirmed that the upcoming open world action adventure game does not have a cosmetic cash shop or microtransactions of any kind.

Crimson Desert, due out March 19 priced $69.99, is set in a huge and seamless open world packed with enemies, NPCs, and all sorts of things to do. But one thing players won’t have to contend with is a cosmetic cash shop.

“I can say that definitively: there is not a cosmetic cash shop,” Will Powers, director of marketing at Pearl Abyss America, told weekly talk show Dropped Frames (via @Okami13_). “This is made to be a premium experience that you buy and you enjoy the world, and not something for microtransactions.

“It’s a monetization model. If you do free-to-play then you need to make up the revenue in a different way. This is a premium experience. That is the transaction. Full stop.”

So, that’s microtransactions ruled out, which is sure to go down well with gamers who are hoping for a traditional single-player experience from Crimson Desert. The game has been slowly gaining hype over recent years, but that’s ramped up significantly in the last few months as Pearl Abyss shared more gameplay footage.

Crimson Desert’s huge open world has been a topic of debate recently. Pywel is divided into five distinct regions: Hernand; Pailune; Demeniss; Delesyia; and the Crimson Desert itself. The main quest revolves around protagonist Kliff’s journey, but you’re free to explore the world in any order, taking faction-driven quests, large-scale battles, fortress sieges and smaller, character-focused missions.

Pearl Abyss confirmed that as the story progresses, two additional playable characters become available, each with unique combat styles, skills and weapons. Exploration is a big part of the game — you travel on horseback, climb terrain, glide across distances, and later access advanced traversal options such as a missile-firing mech and a dragon. You can even ride a bear.

Pearl Abyss said the world is filled with hidden treasures, ancient mechanisms, puzzles and points of interest “designed to reward curiosity and discovery.” As for combat, expect to face enemy soldiers, sorcerers, beasts and machines.

Powers has called Crimson Desert’s open world “absolutely massive,” bigger even than that of Bethesda’s Skyrim and Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2.

Speaking on the Gaming Interviews YouTube channel, Powers said that describing the size of Crimson Desert’s world in terms of numbers doesn’t do it justice, because doing so fails to capture the scope and scale of the game. But he did go as far as to compare it to two of the biggest open-world games around.

"I don't think numbers really do it justice because, how big is that in terms of scope and scale?” he said. “But what we can say is that the world's at least twice as big as the open world, the playable area, of Skyrim. It's larger than the map of Red Dead Redemption 2."

Powers went on to insist that the size of Crimson Desert’s open world wouldn't determine its quality. Rather, what you actually do in it is the key factor. "The continent of Pywel is absolutely massive, but size doesn't really matter if there's nothing to do,” he said. “Open-world games are about doing things, having activities, having distractions. So we wanted to create a world that's not only massive, but is also incredibly interactive."

Last month, Powers said the developers were doubling down on the "optimization phase” in a bid to get performance as smooth as possible across all platforms ahead of Crimson Desert's release date.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Barack Obama has clarified a recent interview in which he said aliens are “real,” insisting he saw “no evidence” that extraterrestrials have made contact with us while he was U.S. President.

Obama set the internet alight over the weekend when he told American podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen that aliens are “real but I haven’t seen them” during a quickfire "lightning" round of questions.

"They're not being kept in Area 51,” he continued. “There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States. Obama then admitted his first question after becoming President of the United States of America on November 4, 2008, was where are the aliens?

Now, Obama has issued a clarifying statement on Instagram, insisting he issued the comment with "the spirit of the speed round" of questions. He then expanded on his prior thoughts.

"I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention let me clarify," he said.

"Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!"

This isn’t the first time Obama has spoken about aliens, of course. In 2021 he told late night TV host James Corden that once he became President, he asked whether there was a lab "where we're keeping the alien specimens and space ship." "They did a little bit of research and the answer was no," he added. However, Obama acknowleged footage and records of objects in the skies "that we don't know exactly what they are."

In 2023, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report detailing official sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). Many of the phenomena continue to defy explanation, and were described as exhibiting “unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities.” According to the report, UAP reporting was "increasing," which is "enabling a greater awareness of the airspace and an increased opportunity to resolve UAP events." As of August 2022 there had been 510 UAP reports.

The Pentagon’s public attitude toward sightings of UFOs — now rebranded as UAPs — has shifted dramatically in recent years. Notably, in April 2020, the government made a surprise move to declassify three videos captured by instruments aboard U.S. Navy aircraft, which, having previously been leaked to the public in 2017, depicted encounters with fast-moving unknown objects.

After the report was published, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson pledged that the agency would not conceal the existence of aliens, if they were discovered to be the cause of any UAP it is working to investigate.

Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Shutaro Ida has passed away aged 52 after a one-and-a-half year battle against pancreatic cancer. The news was announced by his family via a statement on Ida’s official X account on February 15. Longtime colleague Koji Igarashi has vowed to finish the designer and director’s upcoming metroidvania Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement, the sequel to 2019’s Castlevania-infused Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

Shutaro Ida (sometimes romanized as Shutaro Iida) worked at Konami from 1996 to 2015, mainly as a programmer. His biggest contribution was to the Castlevania series. Starting with the GBA title Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and PS2 game Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Ida played a key role in bringing the gothic action games into the sixth and seventh console generations, even directing Castlevania: Harmony of Despair on Xbox 360 and PS3. He was also a lead programmer on Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain.

Upon the invitation of former Castlevania series producer Koji “Iga” Igarashi, Ida joined ArtPlay, the indie dev company Igarashi co-founded. There, Ida designed and directed the crowdfunded game Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, with Igarashi as producer. The game was well-received, and widely seen as a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series. In our review, we gave it 8.8, noting it “plays and feels almost exactly like the legendary Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.”

Reflecting upon two decades of making games with Ida, Igarashi noted in his tribute: “I’ve been working with him ever since Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. It’s not an exaggeration to say that many games hailed as masterpieces would not have succeeded without his contributions. His talent was exceptional.”

“I feel that Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night’s success was also in a large part down to his incredible support," Igarashi continued. "Looking back, he’s been supporting me for over 20 years. He was the kind of person who always thought about games, tackling game development like he was burning his life away. I hope he can rest peacefully now as he was always running at full throttle.”

Ida’s final game, Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement is still in development and is due out later this year. Igarashi described it as an invaluable work that Ida poured himself into. “We will take on his aspirations for the game and see that it is properly completed, so as not to disappoint him.”

Ida last tweeted back on January 30, saying that he felt the end was near as he was getting weaker each day. He finished with a simple request: “Please love Bloodstained 2 and all the games I made.”

The statement from Ida’s family echoed this sentiment: “Shutaro’s adventures in this world have come to an end, but his creations remain. We would be happy if people could continue to enjoy the games he made.”

Image credit: Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement YouTube channel.

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

The AI-fueled chip crisis has reportedly upended Sony and Nintendo’s console plans, and may cause a delay to the release of the PlayStation 6 and a price rise for the Switch 2.

Memory is in high demand because companies like Nvidia and Google require so much of it for their AI chips, with a recent CNBC report pointing out that these companies "are the first ones in line for the components." This will likely push up RAM prices and have a knock-on impact on both console retail prices and availability.

As part of a sweeping Bloomberg report on the impact of the ongoing shortage of memory chips, its sources indicated two crucial points on PlayStation and Switch.

The first is that Sony is now reportedly considering pushing back the debut of the PS6 to 2028 or even 2029, which it described would be a “major upset” to the company’s plans. Meanwhile, Nintendo is reported to be considering raising the price of the Switch 2 this year. Neither company has issued a comment in response to the report.

But would Nintendo actually go through with a Switch 2 price rise so soon after its launch? Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa recently addressed the possibility of a Switch 2 price rise caused by rising prices for components and the potential impact on profitability on the hardware, saying in vague terms that he didn't think there would be any impact any time soon. “We do not disclose details regarding individual components, but we can say that we are working to secure stable supplies of memory components by holding discussions from a long-term perspective with our business partners,” Furukawa explained.

“As a result, the recent rise in memory prices did not have a significant impact on hardware profitability in the third quarter. In addition, we do not expect any significant impact in the fourth quarter. However, if this rise in component prices lasts longer than expected and runs through the next fiscal year and beyond, it may put pressure on profitability. If the situation deteriorates significantly, we will carefully assess market trends and respond.

“As for any future change in the price of Nintendo Switch 2 hardware, no decision has been made at this time. Any decision to change the price will be determined comprehensively, taking into consideration not only profitability, but also other factors like the platform’s installed base, sales trends, and the market environment.”

Furukawa was then asked if Nintendo would consider selling the Switch 2 at a loss in a bid to expand the console’s install base. “The current rise in memory prices is happening at a pace that exceeds our expectations,” he said. “In general, the profitability of hardware tends to improve with economies of scale, and we want to continue to reduce costs as much as possible through mass production of Nintendo Switch 2 hardware.

“With regard to not selling hardware at a loss, what we are focusing on is profitability on a global basis. There are various external factors, such as fluctuations in exchange rates, but looking at the global picture, we have traditionally tried to avoid situations where individual units are sold at a loss as much as possible.

“It is difficult to predict the changes in the external environment that are currently taking place, but I think it is not an appropriate approach to be excessively influenced by short-term trends. The second and third years for Nintendo Switch 2 are very important, and if we can expand the hardware installed base, we can use that as a basis to greatly expand software sales. We will take this into account when making business decisions and flexibly consider various options.”

Also earlier this month, Sony waved away concern about potential further PlayStation 5 price rises as a result of the rising cost of memory, insisting it’s already in a position to secure the minimum quantity necessary to manage the year-end selling season of its next fiscal year.

“Going forward, we intend to further negotiate with various suppliers to secure enough supply to meet the demand of our customers,” Lin Tao, Sony’s chief financial officer, said. “Given the stage of our console cycle, our hardware sales strategy can be adjusted flexibly and we intend to minimize the impact of the increased memory cost on this segment going forward by prioritizing monetization of the install base to date and striving to further expand our software and network service revenue.”

In January, an analyst report suggested that Sony may push the launch of the PS6 beyond 2028 and lengthen the PS5 lifecycle. David Gibson, senior analyst at MST international who focuses on game and tech companies, predicted that “rising memory prices will not impact short-term performance thanks to Sony’s existing inventory.” However, he noted that increased memory costs could become an issue for Sony in the next fiscal year (ending in March 2027), saying “Sony might pass future cost increases onto consumers.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.