Sega announced today that the Mark Strong will lead players in the course of the opening moments of Total War: Rome II on September 3. Strong is a movie actor known for roles similar to Lord Blackwood in 2009’s Sherlock Holmes and Frank D’Amico in Kick-Ass. He plays the Roman consul Silanus in Rome II.

Rome II also incorporates a live-recorded soundtrack from the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. That’s the same orchestra that headlined the 2008 album Games Live: Volume 1, which featured tracks from Kingdom Hearts, Halo, and Castlevania. 

Jeff Atmajian is conducting the soundtrack orchestra. Atmajian did orchestration for The Dark Knight, The Bourne Legacy, and Terminator: Salvation. 

All of this sound work is featured in additional detail in a brand new video from The Creative Assembly titled, Lend Me Your Ears. Test it out below. 

Our Take
There looks a rising trend from game studios to add popular actors and other talents from the film world. For a game like Total War: Rome II, this makes perfect sense. As seen within the Lend Me Your Ears video above, a game with the scale and scale of Rome II can only enjoy the narrative depth provided by quality acting and a whole orchestra.

Update: Brett McMurphy of ESPN has received information from sources indicating that this may not be the tip of EA’s college football franchise.

Update: Microsoft has announced its reorganization plans. We’ve detailed how this impacts the Xbox One here.

Original Story:

Microsoft hasn’t had a quiet week to construct positive buzz for the Xbox One for the reason that console was announced in late May. Most recently, interactive entertainment president Don Mattrick left the corporate for Zynga and reports have indicated an enormous shakeup in Microsoft’s organizational structure. New reports indicate that things will come into focus today.

According to All Things D, the shift in approach is designed to eliminate overlap and organize around hardware and software offerings. As we reported last week, current Windows chief Julie Larson-Green is the present front-runner from the hardware post. This will put Larson-Green on the head of Surface tablets and the Xbox One launch.

[Source: All Things D]

Our Take
What I’m searching for out of this reorganization is what it means for the Xbox One. A post-shuffle structure should be taken with rebuilding consumer loyalty inside the gaming space and addressing the negative buzz surrounding the Xbox One. It’s already a tough situation to navigate, and setting the correct tone and staying on message might be key to wooing back those disappointed with the Xbox One’s current trajectory.

Hello Games has released an update for Joe Danger Touch, and likewise put the sport on sale. Here is the primary time the sport have been discounted, which makes it a good time to select up the universal iOS app.

The game, that is ordinarily priced at $2.99, is accessible for $.99 for a short while. The sale coincides with the recent Calendar Tour update. This new mode gives players new levels to conquer day by day. Players who beat a week’s worth of challenges can then progress through to the subsequent week. There also are five new characters to unlock, including a ninja and a pirate, in addition to a brand new lab environment with new obstacles and props.

Wasteland 2 was one of the vital first mega-successes of the Kickstarter boom, and a brand new announcement today puts the title one step towards release. This morning, inXile announced that it has entered right into a distribution agreement with Saints Row IV publisher Deep Silver.

The arrangement is identical to EA’s now defunct Partner program. Deep Silver will only be handling retail distribution, Kickstarter reward fulfillment, and assistance with quality assurance testing for localized international releases. Creative control remains with inXile. 

According to inXile, this enables the developer to concentrate on their core competencies (making the sport) while offloading distribution and fulfillment to a different entity that handles these elements as portion of its core business.

Our Take
This is a superb move by both inXile and Deep Silver. Such a arrangement allows the developer to target making the sport without inefficient and expensive distribution. Deep Silver can be capable of leverage its extensive international profile and expertise on a contractual basis, which helps defray overhead costs of running the business. 

Most importantly, this arrangement doesn’t impact the creative product whatsoever. This is not a normal publishing agreement. It is a contractual arrangement for a particular scope of services.

As we suspected earlier this morning, Microsoft has made its reorganization official. CEO Steve Ballmer has sent an email to staff titled “One Microsoft,” through which he details the recent way the business would be operated.

The company should be organized right into a collection of divisions: Engineering, Marketing, Business Development and Evangelism, Advanced Strategy and Research, Finance, HR, Legal, and Operations. Within engineering (the house of Xbox One), there’ll be four units: Operating Systems, Applications and Services, Cloud and Enterprise, and Devices and Studios.

Ballmer’s vision for a monolithic Microsoft has significant implications for the Xbox One creation, that’s now split in half. Terry Myerson, formerly head of Windows Phone, will head the Operating System unit, such as the Xbox One’s core functions. Following Don Mattrick’s departure, Julie Larson-Green is now in control of hardware (Devices and Studios), which incorporates the Xbox One’s tangible components. Additionally, this new organization puts Skype head Tony Bates in command of developer relations and evangelism, that may have impact for the Xbox One at the post-launch software side. 

Ballmer’s email stresses collaboration as a key focus of the reorganization. “Improving our performance has three big dimensions: focusing the entire company on a single strategy, improving our capability in all disciplines and engineering/technology areas, and dealing including more collaboration and agility around our common goals,” Ballmer told employees. For those intently watching the Xbox One’s communication issues, one passage might offer some hope. “We’re going to reshape how we interact with our customers, developers and key innovation partners, delivering a more coherent message and family of product offerings,” Ballmer offers. 

Other implications include a path toward a brand new financial reporting structure that may now not get away different business units. This may make it much harder for investors to discern what products are underperforming. As with every change in financial reporting, comparison becomes difficult inside the periods immediately following a shift.

Microsoft may be holding a town hall meeting at 10 am Pacific for workers. We’ve reached out to the corporate for comment. The whole transcript of Ballmer’s email to staff are located here.

[Source: All Things D]

Our Take
I am skeptical about how this can help the Xbox One come back on its feet. The reorganization may be good for Microsoft as an entire, but splitting the finalization of the Xbox One across two engineering divisions with two different, new leaders seems ill advised. Once the console is launched, Myerson’s group shall be accountable for refining the user experience, which likely won’t require the identical level of interactivity with the hardware team.

We’re wanting to hear from Larson-Green about her plans for the Xbox One launch, how she’ll be using existing staff like Phil Spencer, and the way she and Myerson will navigate the launch with two separate divisions handling crucial functions.