The Morning After: Sony now owns anime streaming service Crunchyroll

Sony officially owns both Crunchyroll and Funimation. Its Sony Pictures division completed the $1.175 billion acquisition yesterday and the plan now, according to CEO Tony Vinciquerra, is to “create a unified anime subscription experience as soon as possible.”

For anime fans, it might be a relief that Sony’s purchase has gone through. Funimation pulled most of its content from Crunchyroll when Sony acquired a majority stake. This move should mean all this content can happily coexist on the same service (again). 

Sony might have made a smart purchase. In an era of streaming services everywhere, it gets a dedicated audience that continues to grow. When Sony first announced the acquisition, Crunchyroll had 3 million subscribers. Less than a year later, there are 5 million paying for the service and 120 million registered users. 

-Mat Smith

The update adds a ray-tracing mode and a chapter select screen.

A surprise Xbox Series X/S optimization patch for Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has appeared, three years after the action-adventure game arrived on Xbox One. Along with enhanced visuals, you can take advantage of ray-tracing on your next playthrough. A PC update is also in the works, although no word on a PS5 upgrade. Lest we forget, Ninja Theory is now a Microsoft studio. Continue reading.

Can I move those birthdays across?

Facebook has added two new destinations for when you want to move your data from the social network. In a blog post, the company said that users will be able to move their images to Photobucket and event listings to Google Calendar. It also promises a simpler and more intuitive process to move your data across. Continue reading.

Drastic reductions to greenhouse gas emissions are needed to avoid even more warming.

According to a new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it’s no longer possible to prevent the planet from heating over the next 20 to 30 years. Since the mid-19th century, the planet’s temperature has increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, as a direct result of greenhouse gas emissions related to humans burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels for energy. “We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather over the next 20 or 30 years,” climate scientist Piers Forster told The New York Times. “Things are unfortunately likely to get worse than they are today.” Continue reading.

Ahead of the all-digital gaming event.

Before Gamescom 2021 gets officially , Microsoft will kick off the all-digital event with a livestream of its own. The company will share an update on its holiday Xbox lineup on . “Holiday lineup” will probably translate to more details on two of its biggest upcoming games, Starfield and Halo Infinite. Continue reading.

But that’s not all