Microsoft is planning to launch its Office 2016 suite next month. After releasing a Mac equivalent in July, Microsoft's Office 2016 for Windows won't provide many major changes over the existing version. WinFuture reports that Office 2016 for Windows will arrive on September 22nd, for home and professional users initially. The new desktop release includes a new "colorful" theme that's identical to the latest Mac, iOS, and Android apps. It's also similar to the Windows 10 touch-optimized versions of Office, with a colored look that matches the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications.
The new colorful option arrives alongside a dark theme for those who dislike the traditional look of Microsoft's Office apps. Microsoft is improving Outlook 2016 search, attachments, storage footprint, and email delivery performance, alongside some improvements to image insertion in Word 2016 and Excel 2016. Perhaps the biggest change in Word allows for real-time co-authoring within the desktop version of Office 2016. This feature had previously been reserved for Office web apps, but the extension to the desktop apps is a change that many businesses will welcome.
Microsoft hasn't officially confirmed the September 22nd launch date, but sources familiar with the company's plans tell The Verge that employees are currently testing a final release candidate build of Office 2016. This suggests that the release is imminent, so a September 22nd release date sounds likely.
Hideo Kojima has released his final trailer for the Metal Gear franchise he created back in the 1980s. "Evolution and Harmony" is the launch trailer for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, which will be released on PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 1 September. Kojima is expected to part ways with publisher Konami following the game's anticipated launch, leaving the future of the series in their hands. The cause for the apparent rift, like Kojima's own future, is unknown. You can watch the emotionally-charged trailer below...
The trailer charts the journey of the Solid series to date, from 1998's original to PSP title Peace Walker in 2010. It then shifts tones to show the latest game, and its new metal gear, an enormous machine called Metal Gear Sahelanthropus.
"As the launch is approaching I'm editing new trailer w/less spoiler. 'The evolution & harmony of Metal Gear,'" said Kojima on Twitter back in August. Later he added: "I'm making a new trailer for MGS series fans. It's not a Hollywoody big budget pre-rendered one but it'll be 'hand made' w/ sweet memories."
The Metal Gear series began in 1987 but didn't take off until Metal Gear Solid was released on Sony's PlayStation in 1998. Four console sequels and a number of spin-offs for handheld devices have followed. The Phantom Pain will complete the epic, mind-boggling story, filling in the period of time between 60s-set prequel Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and the very start of the series.
YouTube's big push to gaming, which it first announced in June, is set to release on Wednesday as a standalone website and will also be available via apps on Android and iOS.
YouTube Gaming will compete against Amazon-owned Twitch, which currently leads the game live-streaming business with milestones such as around 2 million concurrent viewers. The launch of YouTube Gaming came months after Google reportedly failed to acquire Twitch due to potential antitrust concerns.
The YouTube Gaming service will offer gamers more than 25,000 game-specific pages to let them quickly find game-related videos and other content. The service will also curate live-streams from thousands of gaming-related channels.
With YouTube Gaming service, the company also wants to make it easier for people to live-stream games on YouTube. The company has launched a new page called Stream, currently in beta, which gives users the option to start streaming at a personal URL.
"YouTube gaming brings you closer to the games, gamers, and culture that matter to you," said Frank Petterson, YouTube engineering manager. "Together, we all make gaming better. Our peers make us better gamers, and games are made better by the communities that surround them."
YouTube Gaming will utilise HTML5 technology to stream content. It will also allow streamers to use a "DVR Mode." DVR Mode will allow gamers to buffer last four hours of a stream and play it at a later time.
The new YouTube Gaming service will be launched on Web on YouTube's new Gaming website and will be available in all countries where YouTube is available. The Android and iOS clients, on the other hand, will be released in the UK and USA on Wednesday, with other countries getting the support soon.
Until Dawn launch trailer shows off the chilling new title
Supermassive Games and Sony have released the launch trailer for their player choice guided horror game, Until Dawn. You can watch the Until Dawn launch trailer below!
Eight friends trapped together on a remote mountain retreat, and they aren’t alone. Gripped by dread, with tensions running high, they must fight through their fear if they all hope to make through the night in one piece. Play as each of the eight characters and experience fear like you never have before. Every decision you make in your terrifying search for answers could mean the difference between life and death, but for whom? Your actions alone will decide who survives Until Dawn.
Make the impossible choices, where every decision in your terrifying search for answers could mean the difference between life and death, but for who? Harnessing the power of an evolved Killzone Shadow Fall engine, Until Dawn will shock you with realistic graphics and terrify you edge-of-your seat gameplay. Carve your path to survival with branching story lines that promise no two experiences will be the same. The choices you make may ripple unseen into moments of grave peril, or they may very well save a life. Immerse yourself in a truly spine-tingling story written in collaboration with famed cult writer/directors Larry Fessenden & Graham Reznick.
Dell has introduced Datacenter Scalable Solutions (DSS), a new line of business within Dell’s Enterprise Solutions organization designed to meet the specific needs of web tech, telecommunications service providers, hosting companies, oil and gas, and research organizations. These businesses often have high-volume technology needs and supply chain requirements in order to deliver business innovation.
Image: Reuters
Dell addresses this segment of web tech, hosting companies, telecommunications service providers, oil and gas, and research organizations differently from others in the IT industry. With a new operating model that leverages the high quality and stability of Dell’s enterprise and Data Center Solutions (DCS) portfolio, along with its global support and supply chain capabilities, Dell DSS is able to design optimized solutions to meet customers’ precise needs.
Web tech, hosting companies, telecommunications service providers, oil and gas, and research organizations often require specific technologies or deployment models to address their unique business challenges and application needs. For example, one company might have software requirements in order to better manage data and provide competitive insights. Another might choose to install a non-traditional operating system and another might need thousands of additional servers around the world by the end of the week to meet unplanned demand. With a fast and nimble operating model that builds on Dell’s deep experience in understanding customers’ challenges, Dell DSS is able to meet these high-volume needs and create differentiated and optimized offerings for customers.
In addition to supply chain optimizations and custom configurations, Dell DSS is able to quickly build new system designs for this market. Dell will introduce its first DSS-branded products later this fall.
"Dell Datacenter Scalable Solutions is a prime example of how Dell, as a private company, is able to be more nimble, make faster decisions and – most importantly – drive innovation on behalf of its customers," said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, vice president and general manager, Server Solutions, Dell. "While others in the IT industry have been focused on marketing hype or reducing capex costs only, we’ve created a new operating model that is centered around flexibility. DSS is about understanding customers’ goals and enabling them to achieve those objectives by giving them purpose-built solutions that are designed when and how they want it."
Dell DSS has also partnered closely with Dell Financial Services.
If you own a Windows Phone-powered handset and it has less than 8GB of internal storage, don't expect it to receive the forthcoming Windows 10 Mobile software update. Microsoft has quietly mentioned in one of Windows 10 information pages that Windows 10 Mobile won't be compatible with handsets that have 4GB of internal storage (or officially 'at least 8GB'), irrespective of the presence of a microSD slot.
Microsoft detailed in March that Windows 10 Mobile will be compatible with devices that have at least 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage (provided the device has a microSD card slot). But now it seems you need to have at least 8GB of built-in storage in the device. Our attempt to get a clarification from Microsoft did not bear anything meaningful as the company said it doesn't have anything more to share as of now.
Earlier this month, smartphone manufacturer Kazam told WMPowerUser that its Windows Phone handsets -- Thunder 450W and 450WL -- won't be receiving Windows 10 Mobile update because they sport 4GB of internal storage. Both phones have a microSD card slot, and support expansion up to 32GB of storage.
Windows 10 Mobile, the edition of Windows 10 operating system for mobile devices, would release with a number of interesting features. The new OS comes with a refreshed user interface with several design tweaks, new Photos app, and a messaging client, among others.
The physicist proposes information isn’t stored on the interior of the black hole, but that it escapes in radiation
Physicist Stephen Hawking has offered up a new theory about how information might escape the powerful clutches of a black hole, an idea he hopes will help resolve one of the most vexing enigmas of physics. Photo: Gautam Naik/The Wall Street Journal
STOCKHOLM—Physicist Stephen Hawking offered up a new theory about how information might escape the powerful clutches of a black hole, an idea he hopes will help resolve one of the most vexing enigmas of physics.
Prof. Hawking of the University of Cambridge presented his idea at a small conference being held at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The six-day meeting, titled “Hawking Radiation,” is a closed-door gathering of about three dozen eminent physicists who have come to hash out a puzzle related to black holes known as the “information paradox.”
Black holes are cosmic entities that form when stars of a certain size run out of fuel and collapse inward. Their remaining matter gets squeezed into a tiny area, which then leads to the creation of an immensely powerful gravitational field. For a long time, scientists believed that nothing could escape the gravity of a black hole—not even light, the fastest phenomenon in the universe.
In 1974, Prof. Hawking famously described how black holes—contrary to expectations—would emit radiation. Most physicists today believe that idea is correct and have dubbed it “Hawking radiation.” However, Prof. Hawking’s research also indicated that a black hole that emits radiation will eventually evaporate and all the information about every particle it has ever swallowed should disappear for good.
‘I have now discovered how information is returned from black holes.’ —Stephen Hawking
There lies the source of the enigma. Quantum mechanics—a highly successful theory that describes physical phenomena at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles—says that information can never be lost, even when it falls into a black hole. It is widely believed to be an inviolable law of nature.
How to get around this so-called information paradox? Some physicists suggested that perhaps information did somehow escape a black hole. Prof. Hawking vociferously maintained that this could never happen. Then, some three decades later, he presented calculations that showed how information could leak out of a black hole, after all. The challenge has been to figure out how that might happen.
On Monday night, Prof. Hawking delivered a talk about black holes for a lay audience in Stockholm. At the end of his sold-out lecture, which was attended by about 3,000 people, Prof. Hawking couldn’t resist throwing out a teaser.
“I have now discovered how information is returned from black holes,” Prof. Hawking said from the dimly lit stage, as a strong spotlight lit up his small, wheelchair-bound frame. “I will talk about it at the conference tomorrow.”
At KTH today, Prof. Hawking made good on his promise. In a highly technical presentation delivered to fellow physicists and a handful of other observers, he concluded: “I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but in its boundary, the event horizon.”
Prof. Hawking, 73 years old, had originally suggested that even though a black hole leaks out radiation, that radiation doesn’t carry any information about the material swallowed up inside it. His new idea is that everything that falls in affects the way the Hawking radiation comes out. So information about what gets sucked in is really stored in the Hawking radiation after all. It is thus not lost and quantum mechanics’ crucial tenet isn’t violated.
Physicists at the conference, which was co-organized by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Stockholm, said it was an interesting theory but needed to be fleshed out further.
“I wouldn’t say the solution to the information paradox has been found because there are several competing ideas,” said Carlo Rovelli, physicist at the Aix-Marseille Universite in France and one of the attendees. “But Stephen being Stephen, everybody’s going to take it seriously.”
Prof. Hawking’s theory, if fact, echoes one posed by Gerard ‘t Hooft of Utrecht University and winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics. Prof. ‘t Hooft published his idea in 1996 but he says it was buried in a long article and didn’t cause much of a stir.
In that article, “I said that Hawking radiation does carry information out of the black hole,” said Prof. ‘t Hooft, who was also present at the conference. But, he added, the 1996 approach didn’t seem too promising “because I made some assumptions and my calculations showed that I get too much information” escaping from the black hole.
Prof. ‘t Hooft said it wasn’t clear whether Prof. Hawking’s version of the same theory would go much further. “I claim he is now where I was 20 years ago,” he said. “If he announces this as a new idea, I won’t be thrilled.”
BlueData, a company that helps customers generate virtualized big data clusters, announced a $20 million Series C round and a partnership with Intel today.
Intel Capital led the round. Also participating were Amplify Partners, Atlantic Bridge, Ignition Partners, as well as a strategic investor who chose to remain anonymous. As part of the deal, Doug Fisher, senior vice president of Intel and general manager of its Software and Services Group, will join BlueData’s board of directors.
BlueData’s founders have their roots in VMware. The goal with BlueData has been to make it as easy to spin up a Hadoop cluster as it is a virtual machine, company founder and CEO Kumar Sreekanti told TechCrunch.
“Enterprises require efficient and agile implementations for their on-premises big data solutions. Speed and innovation are essential in big data analytics, and the infrastructure can’t slow this down.” Sreekanti wrote in a blog post.
The product is essentially Hadoop- or Spark-as-a Service, but instead of living in the cloud, it resides on-premises on customer hardware. It combines the agility, speed and multi-tenancy of the cloud with the performance of running on bare metal in the data center.
What’s more, it works with any version of Hadoop or Apache Spark. The company is also planning on supporting Docker containers in an upcoming release.
The deal with Intel will involve several levels including engineers from both companies working together. BlueData will also have early access to new hardware releases. The idea is that BlueData will work to optimize its products on Intel architecture, particularly Intel Xeon chips.
The two companies will also work together on joint marketing and sales projects, and Intel will provide BlueData with the entree at the large enterprise customers it craves.
The partnership has the potential to be a huge boost to a small company like BlueData, which currently has 35 employees. The agreement is part of Intel’s ongoing effort to support big data companies, and comes on the heels of a similar deal with Cloudera, a BlueData partner, last year.
This isn’t the first time, Intel has shown interest in BlueData. It also contributed to the company’s Series A and B round.
Since it launched in 2012 BlueData has raised a fairly modest $39 million across three rounds including today’s announcement — and it wasn’t looking for a big score this time.
“We weren’t looking for a huge amount of money. It’s too early for that,” Sreekanti said.
Intel rolled out a new motherboard at its developer conference that offers more power than a NUC, but less than the mini-ITX.
A lot of exciting technology was on display at Intel's IDF conference last week, but traditional PC hardware seemingly took a backseat to smart devices and the Internet of things. So much so, in fact, that one exciting PC-related tidbit that could’ve made more noise than button-sized chips and Wake on Voice was lost in the shuffle: The introduction of new compact motherboard that sits between the mini-ITX and Intel NUC in terms of size. The addition now offers a wide range of possibilities for compact PCs, from the Intel Compute Stick all the way up to the aforementioned mini-ITX form factor. Dubbed the 5x5, the new motherboard doesn't quite live up to its name, measuring 5.5 inches by 5.8. Nevertheless, it’s still smaller than the 6.69-by-6.69 mini-ITX and a bit larger than the 4-by-4 NUC board. Unlike the NUC, which ships with chips soldered to the motherboard, the 5x5 includes an LGA socket to house an Intel Core processor of your choice, with support for 35W or 65W thermal designs. The board also works with both M.2 or traditional 2.5-inch SATA interface SSDs. The 5x5 offers two channels for SODIMM memory, like the smaller NUC, but it lacks a PCIe slot, meaning discrete graphics cards are out. For that, you’d have to look to a mini-ITX build. The basic idea with the 5x5 is to provide a motherboard with an upgradeable LGA socket that stays under the ultra-compact volume benchmark of one liter. That may not be the case if it’s loaded with a 65W processor and a 2.5-inch SATA drive, but a 5x5-based PC is still going to be far smaller than a mini-ITX system—with potentially much more bite than a NUC. The impact on you at home: Anyone looking to build a home theater PC that's still compact, yet more powerful than the NUC should be able to put the 5x5 to good use. With the right processor—say, the new 65W Broadwell Core i7-5775C chip with integrated graphics that outshine even AMD's vaunted APUs—even basic 3D gaming should be possible with less-strenuous titles. Information about pricing or a release date for 5x5 boards are not available.
September 1st sees the much-anticipated release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on both consoles and PC. It's set to be Hideo Kojima's final Metal Gear outing and if you're planning on playing on PC then you're in for the best version of all. The PC edition of the game boasts a slew of enticing features including larger resolutions, Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR), the possibility of frame uncaps and even the ability to play the game on an NVIDIA SHIELD device via its support for NVIDIA GameStream.
Just to prove the point, Konami has released a trailer for The Phantom Pain, showing the game running on PC at 4K resolution and detailing just how great it looks on a well-specced hunk of PC hardware. Naturally you'll need a newer GPU if you want to see it running in 4K on your machine, but NVIDIA – which is working with Konami to ensure the game looks top notch – is riding to the rescue with a sweet offer: it's bundling The Phantom Pain with select GeForce GTX 980 Ti, 980, 970 and 960 graphics cards and systems, as well as select GeForce GTX 980M and 970M notebooks.
If you played Ground Zeroes, its sweet but short prologue, then you'll have an idea of the sort of action that Phantom Pain has to offer: as befits a Metal Gear game the focus is on stealth, but with vast open areas to play in, presenting you with a dizzying assortment ways to complete any given mission. You can check the lay of the land on your iDroid – an all-in-one map, communication and inventory device that looks a lot more advanced than the game's 1984 setting would suggest – work out where the guards are and plan your best approach, all from a safe distance.
At roughly 200 times the size of Ground Zeroes it's absolutely vast, requiring the use of vehicles to get around locations, and it further mixes things up with the addition of a full day/night cycle and changeable weather that can seriously impact your mission strategy.
Following Snake – voiced by 24 star Kiefer Sutherland – on a mission of revenge that takes him from Africa to Afghanistan, The Phantom Pain backs you up with a crew of AI buddies, including mute sniper Ghost, a trained wolfdog called D-Dog, D-Walker the battle mech and D-Horse, who's a horse (and useful for carrying extra gear). You also have a massive offshore Mother Base at your disposal where you can train your own mercenary army and research new weapons and equipment; subdued enemies and dropped gear can be hooked to a Fulton recovery system and sent straight to Mother Base.
The Metal Gear series has mostly been a stranger to the PC, but Ground Zeroes changed all that and now The Phantom Pain is shaping up to be one of the games of the year.
NVIDIA has announced the availability of a new GeForce hotfix package, namely version 355.80, which fixes the excessive virtual memory consumption spotted on SLI configurations running Windows 10 platforms.
In terms of compatibility, the producer has provided 4 downloadable packages suitable for desktop and notebook configurations running either 32- or 64-bit variants of Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system.
As for installation, simply save and run the appropriate package designed for your computer, wait for all files required for the installation to be extracted, and follow all instructions displayed on screen for a complete and successful upgrade.
In addition to that, it would also be a good idea to perform a system restart in order to allow all changes to take effect properly. If this task isn’t requested automatically by the wizard, make sure to carry it out manually so that no problems will be encountered.
Moreover, bear in mind that trying to install NVIDIA’s 355.80 hotfix release on OSes other than the aforementioned one isn’t recommended and might cause various malfunctions, even if it might seem to work.
At the end of July Nvidia issued a recall affecting many SHIELD tablet owners. If you bought such a tablet between July 2014 and July 2015 and found, via the system status control panel, that your device had a battery type 'Y01' you were advised to take part in the recall process to get a new one. Put simply, Y01 battery equipped SHIELD tablets are a fire hazard, though we never saw any reports of this hazardous nature in the media.
According to a recent report on Fudzilla, those who participated in the recall program have now started to receive new Nvidia SHIELD tablets. It says that "Nvidia doesn’t want the old tablet back; it will remotely kill the device, how nice is that". Furthermore the report states that Nvidia suggests you rid yourself of the old tablet following your country's guidelines for electronics waste disposal.
If you do have received a replacement for your old hazardous tablet Fudzilla advises you to backup the old one properly before you turn on and register the new one and Nvidia remotely kills your old device.
Some SHIELD owners say that they got a return mailing box to send the faulty unit away for recycling/fixing but apparently you can just say that you've already binned it without Nvidia causing any fuss – and that may indeed be true. After all who wants a device which is a fire hazard in their home?
Apparently some users are living dangerously by installing a custom ROM on the Y01 SHIELD before it is 'killed' so they can use it as a spare Android tablet. For those who have taken that path, and are technically inclined, doing a DIY battery replacement on a Y01 SHIELD appears to be possible (including video walkthrough) and should make your old SHIELD safer. (This paragraph - no advice intended.)
One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 brings back the hectic battles of the previous two games, along with another extensive roster. Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper Pirate Warriors game if the characters didn’t have different costumes to change into. After all, everyone knows that it’s the clothes that make the fighter.
To unlock costumes for characters, you have to make sure to complete certain missions. For the ones that state you must complete a One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 mission with a specific character, you will have to first unlock that character.
When you unlock a costume in One Piece Pirate: Warriors 3, you will be rewarded in one of three ways. It will either be unlocked immediately, given to you in the form of a coin, or unlocked in the shop where you can purchase it using Beli. Also, keep in mind that all costumes are obtained within One Piece: Pirate Warrior 3‘s Legend Log unless specifically stated otherwise.
Fleet Admiral Akainu
New World (Shop) – Complete any Stage using Akainu.
Kuzan/Aokiji
New World (Shop) – Complete any Stage using Kuzan/Aokiji.
Admiral Kizaru
New World (Shop) – Complete any Stage Using Kizaru.
Smoker
New World – Complete Ep. 2 in the Final Chapter.
Tashigi
New World – Complete Ep. 2 in the Final Chapter.
Trafalgar Law
New World – Complete Ep. 2 in the Final Chapter.
Buggy the Clown
Prison Uniform (Shop) – Complete Ch. 4, Ep. 2.
Marineford (Shop) – Complete Ch. 4, Ep. 4.
Crocodile
Marineford (Shop) – Complete Ch. 4, Ep. 4.
Marshall “Blackbeard” D. Teach
Impel Down (Shop) – Complete any Stage with Blackbeard.
New World – Complete Dream Log: ” The Great Pirates” using Blackbeard.
There you have it, now you can decimate enemies in style as you rise through the ranks in One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3.
After saying back in July that the next installment in the "Naruto" video game franchise will not have a playable demo before its release, Bandai Namco and game developer CyberConnect2 studio changed their minds and revealed that they are now working on it.
In the game's official Twitter account, the game developer announced that a playable preview is already in development after receiving a lot of questions regarding the demo. However, they offered no information regarding its possible release date.
But while the rest of the fans will have to wait until Bandai Namco releases the demo, Shacknews was given the opportunity to try out the game before its public release next year.
According to the report, the gameplay for the soon-to-be released game can suit first-time players in the franchise. It also employs the same gameplay features that were earlier included in the previous games in the long-running series, wherein players combat each other in 3D arenas. It will also have the Wall Run that was last seen the original "Ultimate Ninja Storm" title.
Also, for the first time in the franchise, the game will feature the ability to change characters during battle, as well as the ability to break weapons and armor during an ongoing normal or boss battle. The latter was made possible when the game developer made the ability to create elemental damage in the game.
Meanwhile, new screenshots were revealed earlier this month. They showed the title's new gameplay mechanic dubbed as Team Awakening, wherein players could activate the entire team while continuously using characters for support.
"Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4" was supposed to be released this fall for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, but the game developer revealed that it will be delayed until February 2016.
The "Naruto: True Legend of Itachi" novel will tell the complete backstory of Itachi Uchiha, the mysterious ninja and older brother to Sasuke Uchiha. The first part will be released on Sept. 4 but according to a report from Shueisha via AnimeNewsNetwork, the second volume won't be coming out until October with no specific date attached to it yet.
The novel is meant to be a single piece but was split in half in order to give fans something to read until the latter portion is complete. Part one is titled "Glory Volume" while the second one is officially titled the "Dark Knight Volume."
In the "Naruto" manga and anime series, Itachi was presented as a major antagonist who killed his whole family except for his little brother Sasuke. However, it was later revealed that he did all of these in order to help preserve his clan and to see the dream of an Uchiha become one of the Hokage.
While the first volume will focus on the childhood of Itachi and his first encounter with Shisui, the second volume will focus on his take on the dark path as an Anbu.
The first novel is already listed on Amazon with an in-depth synopsis posted, minus the second novel. This is likely to change within the next month as the second volume prepares for its official launch.
Following the launch of the "Dark Knight Volume" is the release of the "True Legend of Sasuke" novels. These will focus on Sasuke's perspective, telling his story from childhood to adulthood. It will cover the death of his family, key plot points surrounding his journey with Naruto and Sakura, and his eventual turn to the dark side and his redemption.
The novels will be the first installments in a long line of "Naruto Shinden" or "Naruto: True Legends" novel series. No official announcements have been made regarding who the next set of "True Legends" novels will focus on.
When "Naruto" first came out, fans were coming out of the "Dragon Ball Z" trance of intense explosions and overzealous aliens screaming about their every action. After tuning in to 'Naruto', it was refreshing to see a new kind of anime that involved a great storyline and a different kind of fighting.
After all, who would've thought that ninjas would have taken over the anime scene that Super Saiyans so long mantled?
The storyline and precision of the original 'Naruto' series is what got fans so hooked. No longer was anime action about who had the highest power levels. The original 'Naruto' series was about strategy, precision and storyline development. Even supporting characters had their shine. Remember when Neji Hyuga squared off with the sound ninja Kimmimaro? What about Rock Lee's epic battle with Gaara?
The show concluded as it should have - in a super climactic way, leaving fans drooling for what was next.
Then "Naruto Shippuden" hit the scene and it started off very well actually. We saw action from all the supporting characters and the storyline seemed to be progressing as well as the first series.
But here are three reasons why the show never lived up to its potential, or the hype that the original series had created for it.
1. The show took a turn and focused entirely on the Uchiha Clan
No longer did we see struggles with other ninja villages. No longer did we hear about enemies outside of the Akatsuki. Everything was about the Uchiha clan and how evil they were and why they were eradicated. The original reason why war existed? The Uchiha. The original leader of the Akatsuki? An Uchiha.
We weren't learning about the other characters anymore, that by the way had just as much potential for story as the Uchiha.
2. The show was no longer strategic and precise
Fans will always remember how epic it was to see Kakashi defeat Zabuza the way he did. It showed that massive chakra was not the main way a ninja would become powerful in the Naruto world.
In Shippuden, Naruto seldom ever learned anything besides continuous upgrades to the Rasengan and Shadow clone jutsu. To worsen things, he spammed the Jutsu, aiming to create the biggest exploding effects he could. This was nothing like the original series and reminded one much more of Dragon Ball Z.
3. The characters (AKA. Just Naruto and Sasuke) became too overpowered
The two became so powerful in such a short amount of time that it was hard to be excited about challenges they would face because quite simply, it didn't exist. A super power from the past had to be revived to face them and even he was trolled out of the show for the sake of Naruto and Sasuke's triumph and glory.
Other characters were talked about being strong but we never saw them in real action. The development for other characters besides Naruto and Sasuke all but vanished.
4. PLOT
This is the ultimate reason why Naruto Shippuden failed to live up to the paragon set by the original series. The ending plot was absolutely terrible. Besides the epic Pain saga, the entire idea of an Uchiha long past his prime masterminding the world into a fourth Ninja World War and the whole world uniting against an enemy that did not exist (Zetsu clones and reanimated ninja) was ludicrous.
To add to fans' horror, how about the way the show ended? It's a spoiler and a rant for another time, but seriously?
What do you guys think? Which of the two were better, the original Naruto series or Naruto Shippuden?
