Gaming

And you may be surprised to learn that it’s based on the reality show Too Hot to Handle. Here’s a first look. Netflix says it’ll be available to subscribers “soon.”

Lengyel’s two-year deal with Kick is for about $70 million, with incentives making up the rest.

The deal isn’t exclusive — Lengyel says he will still be streaming on Twitch, though “not nearly as often” as before he signed this deal.

Meanwhile, Twitch walked back unpopular changes this month and introduced a new 70/30 split revenue sharing program as other platforms have begun to more aggressively court streamers.

If you’re looking to stream something at home this weekend, there’s a brand-new season of Black Mirror with five episodes spanning everything from true crime to demonic horror.

Meanwhile, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and Pixar’s Elemental are both in theaters, and Apple Arcade added a racing game called Jet Dragon from Grezzo, a studio best-known for working with Nintendo on various Zelda games.

Also: a pair of demos for Final Fantasy XVI and Ghost Trick will let you not only try the games early, but bring your progress over when the full versions launch.

There will soon come a time when Tears of the Kingdom sickos will weep for they will have no more mind-blowing machines to engineer. But by Hylia, that day is not today.

The GBA version of Fire Emblem will be available to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack members on June 23rd. This was my first Fire Emblem; I might have to give it a whirl for the nostalgia.

Github’s Christina Warren (a former tech reporter and notable Friend of The Verge) takes a dive into Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit, which is a translation layer that allows Windows DirectX 12 games to run near-natively on Apple silicon. Tom wrote it up when it was announced, but now people are using it — and there’s a ways to go, but the promise is there.

What the hellllllll

(For more, read this fun piece at Wired by Verge alum Megan Farokhmanesh)

At its big showcase event on the weekend, Xbox announced a pair of Persona games coming its way. Now, a few days later, developer Atlus has confirmed that both Persona 3 Reload (PC and PlayStation) and Persona 5 Tactica (PC, PlayStation, and Switch) will be coming to other platforms after all.

Match made in heaven, if you ask me, especially since the best Game Boy Color came in purple.

Neil Druckmann promised Ellie and Joel “will grace the Steam Deck,” and it took a few months following the game’s disappointing PC launch, but the game is officially verified Valve’s handheld gaming PC. The v1.1.0 patch is live on PC, too, though be warned: downloading the patch will trigger a full shader rebuild, according to Naughty Dog.

Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer, on Giant Bomb:

I think Matt [Booty] says we have every QA person in our entire company playing Starfield right now.

Xbox studios head Matt Booty:

I see bug counts and just by the numbers if it shipped today, Starfield would already have the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped.

I’m taking this with a grain of salt, particularly because Video Game Apology Notes are in vogue. But maybe? Microsoft’s reputation can’t afford another Redfall, and Spencer knows it.

Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest is happening again in June 2024. There will be another big live show (here’s all our coverage of this year’s) and an in-person Play Days event (which, for the past two years, has been an invite-only event). And I’m guessing “Game Fest” will once again encompass a bunch of summer gaming shows — this year, those included the Xbox Games Showcase, Ubisoft Forward, and Capcom Showcase.

The summer gaming fun isn’t over: there’s an Annapurna Interactive showcase on June 29th, and Keighley will be hosting Gamescom’s Opening Night Live show on August 22nd. (Busy guy!)