Publisher Square Enix [5,036 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/companies/square-enix”>Square Enix and developer Live Wire [21 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/companies/live-wire”>Live Wire have released new information and screenshots for life Simulation [174 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/simulation”>simulation Action RPG [472 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/rpg/action-rpg”>action RPG HARVESTELLA [8 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/games/harvestella”>HARVESTELLA, introducing the game’s Quietus Dungeon, Luna [9 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/cloud/luna”>Lunamancer job, Cooking [1 article]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/cooking”>cooking deliveries, and Conellu Dolls.
Get the details below.
■ Adventure: Quietus Dungeon
A dungeon that you can only enter during Quietus, which visits with the changing of the seasons. Entered via a well, the dungeon’s interior is somewhat strange… Defeat fearsome enemies that await you on each floor and press on further into the deepest depths of the dungeon.
Enter into the deep dungeon from a well in a certain location…
■ Adventure: Jobs
Jobs have unique weapons and use characteristic skills. By recruiting a character with a certain job, the player-controlled protagonist will also become able to use that same job.
Lunamancer
A job that excels at wide-range magic attacks and weakening enemies. It can perform attacks that take advantage of the planet’s huge mass.
■ Daily Life: Cooking Deliveries
Residents of the different towns you visit during your Adventure [547 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/genres/adventure”>adventure may ask you to cook a particular dish. By preparing their requested dish, you can earn a range of rewards including money and new recipes.
■ Collecting Conellu Dolls
In a certain town, a hideout lies quietly nestled away. It is said that the owner of this hideout, Chief Conellu, will exchange any Conellu Dolls you find and hand over for some great stuff.
Conellu Dolls are lying around in all kinds of places, around towns or in dungeons. Pick them up and claim your reward from Chief Conellu!
HARVESTELLA is due out for Switch [12,476 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/nintendo/switch”>Switch and PC [16,238 articles]” href=”https://www.gematsu.com/platforms/pc”>PC via Steam on November 4 worldwide. A demo is available now for Switch. Read more about the game here, here, here, here, and here.
Cinderella, Elsa and their friends are moving back in with Barbie.
Mattel Inc.
MAT 9.05%
has won the license to produce toys based on
Walt Disney Co.
DIS 0.59%
’s princess lineup and from the recent blockbuster “Frozen” franchise, wresting the properties back from its rival
Hasbro Inc.,
HAS -2.23%
according to Mattel executives.
The deal reunites the characters with their previous home. Mattel lost the license to Hasbro in 2016, a financial and symbolic setback that precipitated a period of four chief executive officers at Mattel and compounding challenges as they tried to fill the $440 million hole from losing the business.
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Much has changed since then. Mattel CEO
Ynon Kreiz,
who joined in 2018, has stabilized operations with over $1 billion in cost cuts, overhauled leadership, revived key brands such as Barbie and rebuilt relationships with Hollywood studios. Since the day the Disney properties walked away, Mattel executives vowed to win them back.
“It was an important priority, and it’s something we worked hard to win,” Mr. Kreiz said. Mattel showed it could manage evergreen brands that aren’t dependent on big movies, he said.
Mattel will start selling new Disney toys in 2023, and the business will be managed by the same group that has overseen Barbie’s comeback. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
For Hasbro, the change comes as the maker of Nerf guns and Monopoly games is making the transition to a new CEO following the death of its longtime leader,
Brian Goldner,
last year. Under his watch, Hasbro surpassed Mattel in annual sales and made an unsuccessful approach to take over its rival.
Hasbro declined to comment on losing the Disney princess and “Frozen” line but said it renewed its Star Wars license recently and will soon start making Indiana Jones toys too. Both are properties of Lucasfilm, which is owned by Disney.
Hasbro’s products inspired by Disney movies included a princess pop-up play set.
Photo:
Charles Sykes/Invision/Hasbro/Associated Press
Shares of Mattel jumped about 8% in early morning trading, after The Wall Street Journal reported on the deal. Shares of Hasbro slipped about 2.5%.
Mattel’s loss of the Disney license originally represented a high-profile fracturing of a relationship between one of the largest toy manufacturers and one of the most powerful companies in entertainment. It was a rare dust-up between companies whose founders worked together since the 1950s, when Mattel advertised toys during the “Mickey Mouse Club” show.
In the early 2010s, Barbie was floundering, with sales dropping for several years. Mattel devoted more resources to shoring up its marquee property. Disney’s princess dolls, meanwhile, were managed by a separate team in a competing unit.
Then, in 2013, Mattel came up with a toy line called Ever After High, which featured dolls based on the children of classic fairy tale characters, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. That flew too close to the Disney princess orbit. The following year Disney notified Mattel that it was going to Hasbro. (Mattel no longer sells the Ever After High toys.)
“Losing the franchise was not only a financial challenge for us but a really emotional one,” said Mattel President and Chief Operating Officer
Richard Dickson,
who rejoined Mattel for a second stint months before Disney made its decision. “It was a wake-up call for Mattel.”
The fallout started soon after. In early 2015, Mattel fired CEO
Bryan Stockton.
His successor,
Chris Sinclair,
focused on plugging revenue lost from the license with a range of items without staying power, which added complexity and extra costs to operations. Another CEO, former Google executive
Margo Georgiadis,
lasted about a year before leaving.
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Mr. Kreiz has brought stability to the top job at Mattel. The former television executive cut one-third of jobs and closed several factories to stem ongoing losses. He helped patch up Mattel’s fractured relationships with retailers and Hollywood studios. Key brands such as Barbie and Hot Wheels responded to new marketing and items. Fisher-Price has stabilized, too.
Though sales are still below their peak of $6.5 billion in 2013, Mattel is on pace for more than $5.3 billion in revenue for 2021, according to analysts, up more than 15% from 2020. Projections for net income of $789 million are the highest since 2013. Analysts expect Hasbro to bring in more than $6 billion in 2021 sales, according to FactSet estimates.
A bit of corporate restructuring allowed Mattel to present a stronger case to Disney that the properties would get appropriate attention, Mr. Kreiz said. Instead of organizing its business around boys, girls and infant products, Mattel is now structured around categories such as dolls, vehicles and action figures. The Disney characters will slide into the doll division and be managed by the same group that has overseen Barbie’s comeback.
Barbie has a more open-ended play pattern than the Disney characters, whose stories are imprinted on film and in books. “Side by side, we know that we can exponentially create more value, more play and more business by complementing the narrative rather than competing with it,” Mr. Dickson said.
The transition raises some questions for Hasbro, which aimed to use the Disney princess and Frozen license to build up its catalog of toys geared toward girls. But the property faltered a bit under its new owner, people in the toy industry said.
Jim Silver, CEO of TTPM, an online toy-review site, estimates that the Disney property is about half as big as it was when it left Mattel, in part because of a lack of new content to boost consumer interest in the characters. The Disney deal didn’t reach the levels Hasbro was hoping to achieve, he said.
Mr. Silver said Hasbro has other toys for girls on the upswing, including My Little Pony toys boosted by a recent Netflix movie, so the shift of the Disney license might not be as dramatic as it was when Mattel lost it. “I think Mattel will do very well with it, and for Hasbro, I don’t think the economics made sense,” he said.
UBS analyst Arpiné Kocharyan estimates the Disney princess and Frozen license could bring in about $300 million in a nonmovie year. Even after paying royalties to Disney, it could still produce a higher profit margin for Mattel than it did at Hasbro, she said, because Mattel owns much of its doll manufacturing, making it more economical to produce incremental units.
Ms. Kocharyan said Hasbro’s addition of the Indiana Jones license, with a feature film due in 2023, could offset more than half of the lost revenue. Hasbro also has the Disney license for Marvel characters.
aims to shake up the game industry by expanding the software giant’s library of blockbuster videogames and bolstering its efforts to entice consumers to its cloud-gaming service.
The planned $75 billion deal would be Microsoft’s biggest ever and its most ambitious investment yet in its plan to turn its Game Pass subscription service into the
Netflix
of gaming. Once the acquisition closes, Microsoft said it would be the world’s third-largest game company by sales, with 30 game studios under its belt, including the developers of popular franchises Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush.
Around a decade ago, Microsoft shifted to bringing its corporate clients to subscription-based cloud services. The move has helped lift its market value to $2 trillion and maintain its status as one of the world’s top tech companies. The Activision acquisition positions Microsoft to use the same tactic on consumers by persuading gamers to abandon their expensive hardware and play on the cloud.
“Together with Activision Blizzard, we have an incredible opportunity to invest and innovate, to create the best content, community and cloud for gamers to build substantial new value for our shareholders,” said Microsoft Chief Executive
Satya Nadella
on an investor and media call Tuesday.
With more gamers playing on smartphones rather than pricey game consoles and computers, companies around the world are racing to develop services for streaming high-end games to all kinds of devices the same way movies and TV shows are streamed.
Amazon.com Inc.,
Alphabet Inc.’s
Google,
Sony Group Corp.
and a host of smaller players are trying, but Microsoft has taken a large early lead in the emerging cloud-game space by spending billions of dollars on acquisitions and infrastructure, analysts said.
“Microsoft has big aspirations in gaming,” said
Mark Moerdler,
a Bernstein Research analyst. “Microsoft has been buying a number of studios because of what they’re trying to build with Game Pass and subscription gaming.”
If the company can convert some of Activision’s nearly 400 million monthly active users into subscribers, it could significantly bolster its cloud-game business, Mr. Moerdler said.
Subscribers to Microsoft’s Game Pass have increased 39% in the past year to 25 million, the company said. A billboard in New York pitching Activision’s ’Call of Duty: Vanguard.’
Photo:
Richard B. Levine/Zuma Press
Cloud gaming is an emerging technology that allows people to stream games using nearly any internet-connected device with a screen, much as they stream videos on Netflix, Hulu and other platforms. Streaming games is more challenging, though, because games are interactive and require a lot more data to run smoothly. While Netflix moved into mobile games last year, it has so far offered only a handful of games that subscribers must download to an Android or iOS device—not games that can be streamed via the cloud.
Consumer spending on cloud-game services reached $3.7 billion last year, with Microsoft’s Game Pass accounting for 60%, according to research firm Omdia, which forecasts total cloud-game revenue will hit $12 billion by 2026.
Along with announcing its planned acquisition, Microsoft said Tuesday that subscribers to Game Pass—which includes cloud gaming, online multiplayer support and access to a large, rotating library of games—have increased 39% in the past year to 25 million.
Mr. Nadella said Microsoft plans to bring as many Activision games as it can to Game Pass. As it has done with games from developers it has acquired previously, Microsoft could make future games from Activision exclusive on Game Pass and Xbox consoles, analysts said.
“We do think our investment in cloud creates a unique capability for triple-A content to reach any screen on any device,” Microsoft game chief
Phil Spencer
said after the Activision deal was announced.
Growing its cloud-game business will help Microsoft diversify further into consumer-facing businesses. That could narrow the leads Sony’s PlayStation has on Microsoft in game hardware and Amazon’s in cloud services. Mr. Nadella’s broader strategy for Microsoft puts cloud computing at the center of a collection of disparate businesses, from corporate software and enterprise data storage to social media and digital advertising.
Microsoft’s commitments to gaming and the cloud have been years in the making. Since taking over in 2014, Mr. Nadella has leaned heavily on offering the company’s enterprise customers cloud-computing services to power their businesses. This strategy has been the primary driver behind Microsoft’s ascent to become the world’s second-most-valuable company behind
Apple Inc.,
with a market valuation of nearly $2.3 trillion.
Ms. Wu, a target of the GamerGate scandal, says Activision Blizzard’s CEO led a culture of non-accountability, during an interview at WSJ’s Women In: The Tech Industry event.
For years, gaming took a back seat at Microsoft, where consumer-facing businesses got less attention, former and current employees said. The Xbox team was slotted under the Windows operating system and didn’t directly report to the CEO, as Mr. Nadella focused on selling the Office 365 business-software suite and developing the cloud-computing business. The Xbox group struggled to find its place in this structure, the employees said, as the unit was always competing with Windows priorities for investments, typically without success, they said.
“Under Windows, we had to make trade-offs between investing in big gaming initiatives and features for Windows enterprise customers,” said
Richard Irving,
who spent 12 years working on Xbox before leaving Microsoft in 2016. “That was the challenge of being in the Windows division.”
A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on the company’s previous management of its game business.
A few years ago, Microsoft decided to become more aggressive about expanding its cloud usage to gaming, its main touch point with consumers. Internally, there has been concern that Microsoft is too dependent on enterprise for growth, said people familiar with company strategy. The decision to do more in gaming came after Microsoft looked at the possibility of buying consumer-facing businesses including TikTok,
Pinterest
and Discord, the people said.
It started snapping up game makers, spending more than $10 billion to buy game studios and build a vast library. The company has added popular titles such as the Doom franchise, acquired last year.
Microsoft isn’t alone. The global videogame industry has been riding a wave of consolidation and investing in recent years. Spending on mergers and acquisitions nearly tripled to $26.2 billion in 2021 from $8.9 billion in 2020, data from PitchBook show. And venture-capital deals nearly doubled to a record $11.2 billion from $6.4 billion, according to the private-market-data firm.
Write to Aaron Tilley at aaron.tilley@wsj.com and Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
Cardi B is delivering some bad news to fans hoping to get their hands on one of her dolls … the product won’t be released over production delays and concerns about the product’s quality.
Here’s the deal … Cardi and Real Women Are — a fashion doll brand — joined forces to make a limited edition Cardi B doll, which they started taking pre-orders for in March at $35 a pop, but shipping deadlines were missed and folks started thinking it was all a scam.
The Real Women Are Instagram started to get flooded with unhappy customers wanting to know where their Cardi B-inspired doll was and demanding refunds.
Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.
Welp, brace yourself Bardi gang.
The role of Grinch will now be played by a rep for Cardi B, who tells TMZ … the dolls will not be released as a result of COVID-related manufacturing and shipping delays. We’re also told Cardi herself had concerns the dolls wouldn’t meet her high-quality standards.
We’re told CB asked the company to refund all pre-sale purchases and RWA agreed — and Cardi’s encouraging anyone who shelled out $35 for a doll to immediately request their refund, if they haven’t already.
Nicole Scherzinger agreed to a reunion of The Pussycat Dolls, the big girl group musical act of the early 2000s. Then, COVID-19 hit. Now, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, she’s threatening to walk away from the big tour unless she’s given a majority share and complete creative control in relaunching the group.
The complaint comes from Robin Antin, who founded The Pussycat Dolls and then brought this dance/singing troupe into the mainstream upon a tip from Jimmy Iovine. The suit will determine the group’s future as its target is Scherzinger, undoubtedly the biggest breakout from The Pussycat Dolls and a prominent face on various music-themed competition shows (X-Factor, Dancing with the Stars, Masked Singer). She’s also branched into TV and film work (Moana, Dirty Dancing).
Antin, represented by notable attorney Richard Busch, alleges that near the end of 2019 that she and Scherzinger came to a deal for a reunion tour and new Pussycat Dolls business venture. Scherzinger would get 49 percent, under a short-form agreement she’s characterizing as a Memorandum of Understanding.
Scherzinger did promote the tour, it’s acknowledged in the complaint, but then the pandemic halted music touring worldwide.
She “now refuses to participate in the tour,” states the complaint, adding she “demanded to renegotiate the terms of the MOU.”
According to the complaint, Scherzinger now wants to be a 75 percent owner with final decision-making authority, and she’s refusing to participate in the reunion tour unless she gets what she wants. And now because tour dates can’t be confirmed, Live Nation is said to be demanding $600,000 that it put up.
Because of COVID, tours are only slowly ramping up at this point, and this suit comes with a not extremely common claim of anticipatory breach of contract (along with other contract claims and one for fiduciary duty).
Scherzinger’s attorney didn’t immediately have comment.
Square Enix is hosting a 14-hour-long livestream to celebrate Final Fantasy XIV, and a couple of collaborations have been announced.
Published onGiuseppe Nelva
Home » Uncategorized » Final Fantasy XIV Is Getting Its Own Fried Chicken (Again) and Daruma Dolls
Square Enix is hosting a 14-hour-long livestream to celebrate Final Fantasy XIV, and a couple of interesting collaborations have been announced.
First of all, Japanese convenience store chain Lawson will get another chance at creating the game’s official Karaage Kun fried chicken.
The delicious (I’m assuming, but the original flavor was good) nuggets will come in a special “Light and Dark Crystal Flavor.” It’ll actually include two flavored layers, one will taste like dark petter, and the second will be flavored with light tartar sauce.
Of course, the flavor has been better by the Final Fantasy XIV team.
For something a bit more traditional, the game is also getting a duo of traditional-like Daruma Dolls crafted by the prestigious Yoshida Daruma Company that has been creating them for over a century.
Pre-orders in Japan will be limited, as the daruma will be hand-painted. No info was promised about an (unlikely) western release. The price will be 3,500 yen (approximately $32).
The product will be delivered with blank eyes, as you’re traditionally supposed to paint your own.
You can check out both products in the gallery.
Incidentally, the new Final Fantasy XIV expansion Endwalker will release on November 23, 2021, for PS5, PS4, and PC. A benchmark will be released tomorrow for PC, including the male viera character creation.
If you want to see more about it, you can check out the reveal of the extended trailer and the reaper job, and that of the male viera, locations, and release date.
You can also take a look at plenty of official screenshots and art, the original announcement, tons of initial details, and the first official screenshots and art.
If you’re unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV, it’s currently available for PlayStation 4, PS5, and PC. The upgrade to PS5 is offered free of charge to those who own the PS4 version.
You can also read our latest interview with producer and director Naoki Yoshida, another with composer Masayoshi Soken, and our review of Shadowbringers.
We recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the advent of Yoshida-san as director and producer.