title: Cyclone

text: Under specific circumstances, upper level cold lows can break off from the base of the tropical upper tropospheric trough (TUTT), which is located mid-ocean in the Northern Hemisphere during the summer months. These upper tropospheric cyclonic vortices, also known as TUTT cells or TUTT lows, usually move slowly from east-northeast to west-southwest, and their bases generally do not extend below in altitude. A weak inverted surface trough within the trade wind is generally found underneath them, and they may also be associated with broad areas of high-level clouds. Downward development results in an increase of cumulus clouds and the appearance of a surface vortex. In rare cases, they become warm-core tropical cyclones. Upper cyclones and the upper troughs that trail tropical cyclones can cause additional outflow channels and aid in their intensification. Developing tropical disturbances can help create or deepen upper troughs or upper lows in their wake due to the outflow jet emanating from the developing tropical disturbance/cyclone.


title: Cyclone

text: A mesocyclone is a vortex of air, to in diameter (the mesoscale of meteorology), within a convective storm. Air rises and rotates around a vertical axis, usually in the same direction as low-pressure systems in both northern and southern hemisphere. They are most often cyclonic, that is, associated with a localized low-pressure region within a supercell. Such storms can feature strong surface winds and severe hail. Mesocyclones often occur together with updrafts in supercells, where tornadoes may form. About 1,700 mesocyclones form annually across the United States, but only half produce tornadoes.


title: Cyclone

text: A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. Also referred to as twisters, a colloquial term in America, or cyclones, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology, in a wider sense, to name any closed low-pressure circulation.


title: Cyclone

text: A dust devil is a strong, well-formed, and relatively long-lived whirlwind, ranging from small (half a metre wide and a few metres tall) to large (more than 10 metres wide and more than 1000 metres tall). The primary vertical motion is upward. Dust devils are usually harmless, but can on rare occasions grow large enough to pose a threat to both people and property.


title: Cyclone

text: A waterspout is a columnar vortex forming over water that is, in its most common form, a non-supercell tornado over water that is connected to a cumuliform cloud. While it is often weaker than most of its land counterparts, stronger versions spawned by mesocyclones do occur.


title: Cyclone

text: A fire whirl – also colloquially known as a fire devil, fire tornado, firenado, or fire twister – is a whirlwind induced by a fire and often made up of flame or ash.


title: Cyclone

text: Cyclones are not unique to Earth. Cyclonic storms are common on Jovian planets, such as the Small Dark Spot on Neptune. It is about one third the diameter of the Great Dark Spot and received the nickname "Wizard's Eye" because it looks like an eye. This appearance is caused by a white cloud in the middle of the Wizard's Eye. Mars has also exhibited cyclonic storms. Jovian storms like the Great Red Spot are usually mistakenly named as giant hurricanes or cyclonic storms. However, this is inaccurate, as the Great Red Spot is, in fact, the inverse phenomenon, an anticyclone.


title: Video game console

text: A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a television or other display devices and controlled with a separate game controller, or handheld consoles, which include their own display unit and controller functions built into the unit and which can be played anywhere. Hybrid consoles combine elements of both home and handheld consoles.


title: Video game console

text: Video game consoles are a specialized form of a home computer geared towards video game playing, designed with affordability and accessibility to the general public in mind, but lacking in raw computing power and customization. Simplicity is achieved in part through the use of game cartridges or other simplified methods of distribution, easing the effort of launching a game. However, this leads to ubiquitous proprietary formats that creates competition for market share. More recent consoles have shown further confluence with home computers, making it easy for developers to release games on multiple platforms. Further, modern consoles can serve as replacements for media players with capabilities to play films and music from optical media or streaming media services.


title: Video game console

text: Video game consoles are usually sold on a 5-7 year cycle called a generation, with consoles made with similar technical capabilities or made around the same time period grouped into one generation. The industry has developed a razor and blades model: manufacturers often sell consoles at low prices, sometimes at a loss, while primarily making a profit from the licensing fees for each game sold. Planned obsolescence then draws consumers into buying the next console generation. While numerous manufacturers have come and gone in the history of the console market, there have always been two or three dominant leaders in the market, with the current market led by Sony (with their PlayStation brand), Microsoft (with their Xbox brand), and Nintendo (currently producing the Switch console and its lightweight derivative).


title: Video game console

text: The first video game consoles were produced in the early 1970s. Ralph H. Baer devised the concept of playing simple, spot-based games on a television screen in 1966, which later became the basis of the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. Inspired by the table tennis game on the Odyssey, Nolan Bushnell, Ted Dabney, and Allan Alcorn at Atari, Inc. developed the first successful arcade game, "Pong", and looked to develop that into a home version, which was released in 1975. The first consoles were capable of playing only a very limited number of games built into the hardware. Programmable consoles using swappable ROM cartridges were introduced with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976, though popularized with the Atari 2600 released in 1977.


title: Video game console

text: Handheld consoles emerged from technology improvements in handheld electronic games as these shifted from mechanical to electronic/digital logic, and away from light-emitting diode (LED) indicators to liquid-crystal displays (LCD) that resembled video screens more closely. Early examples include the Microvision in 1979 and Game & Watch in 1980, and the concept was fully realized by the Game Boy in 1989.


title: Video game console

text: Both home and handheld consoles have become more advanced following global changes in technology. These technological shifts include including improved electronic and computer chip manufacturing to increase computational power at lower costs and size, the introduction of 3D graphics and hardware-based graphic processors for real-time rendering, digital communications such as the Internet, wireless networking and Bluetooth, and larger and denser media formats as well as digital distribution.


title: Video game console

text: Following the same type of Moore's law progression, home consoles are grouped into generations, each lasting approximately five years. Consoles within each generation share similar specifications and features, such as processor word size. While no one grouping of consoles by generation is universally accepted, one breakdown of generations, showing representative consoles, of each is shown below.


title: Video game console

text: Most consoles are considered programmable consoles and have the means for the player to switch between different games. Traditionally, this has been done by switching a physical game cartridge or game card or through using optical media. It is now common to download games through digital distribution and store them on internal or external digital storage devices.


title: Video game console

text: Dedicated consoles were very popular in the first generation until they were gradually replaced by second generation that use ROM cartridges. The fourth generation gradually merged to optical media. It is now common to download games through digital distribution and store them on internal or external digital storage devices.


title: Video game console

text: Some consoles are considered dedicated consoles, in which games available for the console are "baked" onto the hardware, either by being programmed via the circuitry or set in the read-only flash memory of the console. Thus, the console's game library cannot be added to or changed directly by the user. The user can typically switch between games on dedicated consoles using hardware switches on the console, or through in-game menus. Dedicated consoles were common in the first generation of home consoles, such as the Magnavox Odyssey and the home console version of "Pong", and more recently have been used for retro-consoles such as the NES Classic Edition and Sega Genesis Mini.


title: Video game console

text: Home video game consoles are meant to be connected to a television or other type of monitor, with power supplied through an outlet. This requires the unit to be used in a fixed location, typically at home in one's living room. Separate game controllers, connected through wired or wireless connections, are used to provide input to the game. Early examples include the Atari 2600, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Sega Genesis; newer examples include the Wii U, the PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series X. Specific types of home consoles include:


title: Video game console

text: Handheld game consoles are devices that typically include a built-in screen and game controller in their case, and contain a rechargeable battery or battery compartment. This allows the unit to be carried around and played anywhere, in contrast to a home game console. Examples include the Game Boy, the PlayStation Portable, and the Nintendo 3DS.


title: Video game console

text: Hybrid video game consoles are devices that can be used either as a handheld or as a home console. They have either a wired connection or docking station that connects the console unit to a television screen and fixed power source, and the potential to use a separate controller. However, they can also be used as a handheld. While prior handhelds like the Sega Nomad and PlayStation Portable, or home consoles such as the Wii U, have had these features, some consider the Nintendo Switch to be the first true hybrid console.


title: Video game console

text: During the later part of video game history, there have been specialized consoles using computing components to offer multiple older games to players. Most of these plug directly into one's television, and thus are often called plug-and-play consoles. They are also considered dedicated consoles since it is generally impossible to access the computing components by an average consumer, though tech-savvy consumers often have found ways to hack the console to install additional functionality, voiding the manufacturer's warranty. Plug-and-play consoles usually come with the console unit itself, one or more controllers, and the required components for power and video hookup. Many recent plug-and-play releases have been for distributing a number of retro games for a specific console platform. Examples of these include the Atari Flashback series, the NES Classic Edition, and the Sega Genesis Mini.


title: Video game console

text: Early console hardware was designed as customized printed circuit boards (PCB)s, selecting existing integrated circuit chips that performed known functions, or programmable chips like erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) chips that could perform certain functions. Persistent computer memory was expensive, so dedicated consoles were generally limited to the use of processor registers for storage of the state of a game, thus limiting the complexities of such titles. "Pong" in both its arcade and home format had a handful of logic and calculation chips that used the current input of the players' paddles and resisters storing the ball's position to update the game's state and sent to the display device. Even with more advanced integrated circuits (IC)s of the time, designers were limited to what could be done through the electrical process rather than through programming as normally associated with video game development.


title: Video game console

text: Improvements in console hardware followed with improvements in microprocessor technology and semiconductor device fabrication. Manufacturing processes have been able to reduce the feature size on chips (typically measured in nanometers), allowing more transistors and other components to fit on a chip, and at the same time increasing the circuit speeds and the potential frequency the chip can run at, as well as reducing thermal dissipation. Chips were able to be made on larger dies, further increasing the number of features and effective processing power. Random-access memory became more practical with the higher density of transistors per chip, but to address the correct blocks of memory, processors needed to be updated to use larger word sizes and allot for larger bandwidth in chip communications. All these improvements did increase the cost of manufacturing but at a rate far less than the gains in overall processing power, which helped to make home computers and consoles inexpensive for the consumer, all related to Moore's law of technological improvements.


title: Video game console

text: For the consoles of the 1980s to 1990s, these improvements were evident in the marketing in the late 1980s to 1990s during the "bit wars", where console manufacturers had focused on their console's processor's word size as a selling point. Consoles since the 2000s are more similar to personal computers, building in memory, storage features, and networking capabilities to avoid the limitations of the past. The confluence with personal computers eased software development for both computer and console games, allowing developers to target both platforms. However, consoles differ from computers as most of the hardware components are preselected and customized between the console manufacturer and hardware component provider to assure a consistent performance target for developers. Whereas personal computer motherboards are designed with the needs for allowing consumers to add their desired selection of hardware components, the fixed set of hardware for consoles enables console manufacturers to optimize the size and design of the motherboard and hardware, often integrating key hardware components into the motherboard circuitry itself. Often, multiple components such as the central processing unit and graphics processing unit can be combined into a single chip, otherwise known as a system on a chip (SoC), which is a further reduction in size and cost. In addition, consoles tend to focus on components that give the unit high game performance such as the CPU and GPU, and as a tradeoff to keep their prices in expected ranges, use less memory and storage space compared to typical personal computers.


title: Video game console

text: In comparison to the early years of the industry, where most consoles were made directly by the company selling the console, many consoles of today are generally constructed through a value chain that includes component suppliers, such as AMD and NVidia for CPU and GPU functions, and contract manufacturers including electronics manufacturing services, factories which assemble those components into the final consoles such as Foxconn and Flextronics. Completed consoles are then usually tested, distributed, and repaired by the company itself. Microsoft and Nintendo both use this approach to their consoles, while Sony maintains all production in-house with exception of their component suppliers.


title: Video game console

text: All game consoles require player input through a game controller to provide a method to move the player character in a specific direction and a variation of buttons to perform other in-game actions such as jumping or interacting with the game world. Though controllers have become more featured over the years, they still provide less control over a game compared to personal computers or mobile gaming. The type of controller available to a game can fundamentally change the style of how a console game will or can be played. However, this has also inspired changes in game design to create games that accommodate for the comparatively limited controls available on consoles.


title: Video game console

text: Controllers have come in a variety of styles over the history of consoles. Some common types include:


title: Video game console

text: Numerous other controller types exist, including those that support motion controls, touchscreen support on handhelds and some consoles, and specialized controllers for specific types of games, such as racing wheels for racing games, light guns for shooting games, and musical instrument controllers for rhythm games. Some newer consoles also include optional support for mouse and keyboard devices.


title: Video game console

text: A controller may be attached through a wired connection onto the console itself, or in some unique cases like the Famicom hardwired to the console, or with a wireless connection. Controllers require power, either provided by the console via the wired connection, or from batteries or a rechargeable battery pack for wireless connections. Controllers are nominally built into a handheld unit, though some newer ones allow for separate wireless controllers to also be used.


title: Video game console

text: While the first game consoles were dedicated game systems, with the games programmed into the console's hardware, the Fairchild Channel F introduced the ability to store games in a form separate from the console's internal circuitry, thus allowing the consumer to purchase new games to play on the system. Since the Channel F, nearly all game consoles have featured the ability to purchase and swap games through some form, through those forms have changes with improvements in technology.


title: Video game console

text: While magnetic storage, such as tape drives and floppy disks, had been popular for software distribution with early personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s, this format did not see much use in console system. There were some attempts, such as the Bally Astrocade and APF-M1000 using tape drives, as well as the Disk System for the Nintendo Famicom, and the Nintendo 64DD for the Nintendo 64, but these had limited applications, as magnetic media was more fragile and volatile than game cartridges.


title: Video game console

text: In addition to built-in internal storage, newer consoles often give the consumer the ability to use external storage media to save game date, downloaded games, or other media files from the console. Early iterations of external storage were achieved through the use of flash-based memory cards, first used by the Neo Geo but popularized with the PlayStation. Nintendo continues to support this approach with extending the storage capabilities of the 3DS and Switch, standardizing on the current SD card format. As consoles began incorporating the use of USB ports, support for USB external hard drives was also added, such as with the Xbox 360.


title: Video game console

text: With Internet-enabled consoles, console manufacturers offer both free and paid-subscription services that provide value-added services atop the basic functions of the console. Free services generally offer user identity services and access to a digital storefront, while paid services allow players to play online games, interact with other uses through social networking, use cloud saves for supported games, and gain access to free titles on a rotating basis. Examples of such services include the Xbox network, PlayStation Network, and Nintendo Switch Online.


title: Video game console

text: Certain consoles saw various add-ons or accessories that were designed to attach to the existing console to extend its functionality. The best example of this was through the various CD-ROM add-ons for consoles of the fourth generation such as the TurboGrafx CD, Atari Jaguar CD, and the Sega CD. Other examples of add-ons include the 32X for the Sega Genesis intended to allow owners of the aging console to play newer games but has several technical faults, and the Game Boy Player for the GameCube to allow it to play Game Boy games.


title: Video game console

text: Consumers can often purchase a range of accessories for consoles outside of the above categories. These can include:


title: Video game console

text: Console or game development kits are specialized hardware units that typically include the same components as the console and additional chips and components to allow the unit to be connected to a computer or other monitoring device for debugging purposes. A console manufacturer will make the console's dev kit available to registered developers months ahead of the console's planned launch to give developers time to prepare their games for the new system. These initial kits will usually be offered under special confidentiality clauses to protect trade secrets of the console's design, and will be sold at a high cost to the developer as part of keeping this confidentiality. Newer consoles that share features in common with personal computers may no longer use specialized dev kits, though developers are still expected to register and purchase access to software development kits from the manufacturer. For example, any consumer Xbox One can be used for game development after paying a fee to Microsoft to register one intent to do so.


title: Video game console

text: Since the release of the Nintendo Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System, most video game console manufacturers employ a strict licensing scheme that limit what games can be developed for it. Developers and their publishers must pay a fee, typically based on royalty per unit sold, back to the manufacturer. The cost varies by manufacturer but was estimated to be about per unit in 2012. With additional fees, such as branding rights, this has generally worked out to be an industry-wide 30% royalty rate paid to the console manufacturer for every game sold. This is in addition to the cost of acquiring the dev kit to develop for the system.


title: Video game console

text: The licensing fee may be collected in a few different ways. In the case of Nintendo, the company generally has controlled the production of game cartridges with its lockout chips and optical media for its systems, and thus charges the developer or publisher for each copy it makes as an upfront fee. This also allows Nintendo to review the game's content prior to release and veto games it does not believe appropriate to include on its system. This had led to over 700 unlicensed games for the NES, and numerous others on other Nintendo cartridge-based systems that had found ways to bypass the hardware lockout chips and sell without paying any royalties to Nintendo, such as by Atari in its subsidiary company Tengen. This licensing approach was similarly used by most other cartridge-based console manufacturers using lockout chip technology.


title: Video game console

text: With optical media, where the console manufacturer may not have direct control on the production of the media, the developer or publisher typically must establish a licensing agreement to gain access to the console's proprietary storage format for the media as well as to use the console and manufacturer's logos and branding for the game's packaging, paid back through royalties on sales. In the transition to digital distribution, where now the console manufacturer runs digital storefronts for games, license fees apply to registering a game for distribution on the storefront - again gaining access to the console's branding and logo - with the manufacturer taking its cut of each sale as its royalty. In both cases, this still gives console manufacturers the ability to review and reject games it believes unsuitable for the system and deny licensing rights.


title: Video game console

text: With the rise of indie game development, the major console manufacturers have all developed entry level routes for these smaller developers to be able to publish onto consoles at far lower costs and reduced royalty rates. Programs like Microsoft's ID@Xbox give developers most of the needed tools for free after validating the small development size and needs of the team.


title: Video game console

text: Consoles, like most consumer electronic devices, have limited lifespans. There is great interest in preservation of older console hardware for archival and historical purposes, as games from older consoles, as well as arcade and personal computers, remain of interest. Computer programmers and hackers have developed emulators that can be run on personal computers or other consoles that simulate the hardware of older consoles that allow games from that console to be run. The development of software emulators of console hardware is established to be legal, but there are unanswered legal questions surrounding copyrights, including acquiring a console's firmware and copies of a game's ROM image, which laws such as the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act make illegal save for certain archival purposes. Even though emulation itself is legal, Nintendo is recognized to be highly protective of any attempts to emulate its systems and has taken early legal actions to shut down such projects.


title: Video game console

text: To help support older games and console transitions, manufacturers started to support backward compatibility on consoles in the same family. Sony was the first to do this on a home console with the PlayStation 2 which was able to play original PlayStation content, and subsequently became a sought-after feature across many consoles that followed. Backward compatibility functionality has included direct support for previous console games on the newer consoles such as within the Xbox console family, the distribution of emulated games such as Nintendo's Virtual Console, or using cloud gaming services for these older games as with the PlayStation Now service.


title: Video game console

text: Consoles may be shipped in a variety of configurations, but typically will include one base configuration that include the console, one controller, and sometimes a pack-in game. Manufacturers may offer alternate stock keeping unit (SKUs) options that include additional controllers and accessories or different pack-in games. Special console editions may feature unique cases or faceplates with art dedicated to a specific video game or series and are bundled with that game as a special incentive for its fans. Pack-in games are typically first-party games, often featuring the console's primary mascot characters.


title: Video game console

text: The more recent console generations have also seen multiple versions of the same base console system either offered at launch or presented as a mid-generation refresh. In some cases, these simply replace some parts of the hardware with cheaper or more efficient parts, or otherwise streamline the console's design for production going forward; the PlayStation 3 underwent several such hardware refreshes during its lifetime due to technological improvements such as significant reduction of the process node size for the CPU and GPU. In these cases, the hardware revision model will be marked on packaging so that consumers can verify which version they are acquiring.


title: Video game console

text: In other cases, the hardware changes create multiple lines within the same console family. The base console unit in all revisions share fundamental hardware, but options like internal storage space and RAM size may be different. Those systems with more storage and RAM would be marked as a higher performance variant available at a higher cost, while the original unit would remain as a budget option. For example, within the Xbox One family, Microsoft released the mid-generation Xbox One X as a higher performance console, the Xbox One S as the lower-cost base console, and a special Xbox One S All-Digital Edition revision that removed the optical drive on the basis that users could download all games digitally, offered at even a lower cost than the Xbox One S. In these cases, developers can often optimize games to work better on the higher-performance console with patches to the retail version of the game. In the case of the Nintendo 3DS, the New Nintendo 3DS, featured upgraded memory and processors, with new games that could only be run on the upgraded units and cannot be run on an older base unit. There have also been a number of "slimmed-down" console options with significantly reduced hardware components that significantly reduced the price they could sell the console to the consumer, but either leaving certain features off the console, such as the Wii Mini that lacked any online components compared to the Wii, or that required the consumer to purchase additional accessories and wiring if they did not already own it, such as the New-Style NES that was not bundled with the required RF hardware to connect to a television.


title: Video game console

text: Consoles when originally launched in the 1970s and 1980s were about , and with the introduction of the ROM cartridge, each game averaged about . Over time the launch price of base consoles units has generally risen to about , with the average game costing . Exceptionally, the period of transition from ROM cartridges to optical media in the early 1990s saw several consoles with high price points exceeding and going as high as . Resultingly, sales of these first optical media consoles were generally poor.


title: Video game console

text: When adjusted for inflation, the price of consoles has generally followed a downward trend, from from the early generations down to for current consoles. This is typical for any computer technology, with the improvements in computing performance and capabilities outpacing the additional costs to achieve those gains. Further, within the United States, the price of consoles has generally remained consistent, being within 0.8% to 1% of the median household income, based on the United States Census data for the console's launch year.


title: Video game console

text: Since the Nintendo Entertainment System, console pricing has stabilized on the razorblade model, where the consoles are sold at little to no profit for the manufacturer, but they gain revenue from each game sold due to console licensing fees and other value-added services around the console (such as Xbox Live). Console manufacturers have even been known to take losses on the sale of consoles at the start of a console's launch with expectation to recover with revenue sharing and later price recovery on the console as they switch to less expensive components and manufacturing processes without changing the retail price. Consoles have been generally designed to have a five-year product lifetime, though manufacturers have considered their entries in the more recent generations to have longer lifetimes of seven to potentially ten years.


title: Video game console

text: The competition within the video game console market as subset of the video game industry is an area of interest to economics with its relatively modern history, its rapid growth to rival that of the film industry, and frequent changes compared to other sectors.


title: Video game console

text: Effects of unregulated competition on the market were twice seen early in the industry. The industry had its first crash in 1977 following the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, Atari's home versions of "Pong" and the Coleco Telstar, which led other third-party manufacturers, using inexpensive General Instruments processor chips, to make their own home consoles which flooded the market by 1977. The video game crash of 1983 was fueled by multiple factors including competition from lower-cost personal computers, but unregulated competition was also a factor, as numerous third-party game developers, attempting to follow on the success of Activision in developing third-party games for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision, flooded the market with poor quality games, and made it difficult for even quality games to sell. Nintendo implemented a lockout chip, the Checking Integrated Circuit, on releasing the Nintendo Entertainment System in Western territories, as a means to control which games were published for the console. As part of their licensing agreements, Nintendo further prevented developers from releasing the same game on a different console for a period of two years. This served as one of the first means of securing console exclusivity for games that existed beyond technical limitation of console development.


title: Video game console

text: The Nintendo Entertainment System also brought the concept of a video game mascot as the representation of a console system as a means to sell and promote the unit, and for the NES was Mario. The use of mascots in businesses had been a tradition in Japan, and this had already proven successful in arcade games like "Pac-Man". Mario was used to serve as an identity for the NES as a humor-filled, playful console. Mario caught on quickly when the NES released in the West, and when the next generation of consoles arrived, other manufacturers pushed their own mascots to the forefront of their marketing, most notably Sega with the use of Sonic the Hedgehog. The Nintendo and Sega rivalry that involved their mascot's flagship games served as part of the fourth console generation's "console wars". Since then, manufacturers have typically positioned their mascot and other first-party games as key titles in console bundles used to drive sales of consoles at launch or at key sales periods such as near Christmas.


title: Video game console

text: Another type of competitive edge used by console manufacturers around the same time was the notion of "bits" or the size of the word used by the main CPU. The TurboGrafx-16 was the first console to push on its bit-size, advertising itself as a "16-bit" console, though this only referred to part of its architecture while its CPU was still an 8-bit unit. Despite this, manufacturers found consumers became fixated on the notion of bits as a console selling point, and over the fourth, fifth and sixth generation, these "bit wars" played heavily into console advertising. The use of bits waned as CPU architectures no longer needed to increase their word size and instead had other means to improve performance such as through multicore CPUs.


title: Video game console

text: Generally, increased console numbers gives rise to more consumer options and better competition, but the exclusivity of titles made the choice of console for consumers an "all-or-nothing" decision for most. Further, with the number of available consoles growing with the fifth and sixth generations, game developers became pressured to which systems to focus on, and ultimately narrowed their target choice of platforms to those that were the best-selling. This cased a contraction in the market, with major players like Sega leaving the hardware business after the Dreamcast but continuing in the software area. Effectively, each console generation was shown to have two or three dominant players.


title: Video game console

text: Competition in the console market in the 2010s and 2020s is considered an oligarchy between three main manufacturers: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. The three use a combination of first-party games exclusive to their console and negotiate exclusive agreements with third-party developers to have their games be exclusive for at least an initial period of time to drive consumers to their console. They also worked with CPU and GPU manufacturers to tune and customize hardware for computers to make it more amenable and effective for video games, leading to lower-cost hardware needed for video game consoles. Finally, console manufacturers also work with retailers to help with promotion of consoles, games, and accessories. While there is little difference in pricing on the console hardware from the manufacturer's suggested retail price for the retailer to profit from, these details with the manufacturers can secure better profits on sales of game and accessory bundles for premier product placement. These all form network effects, with each manufacturer seeking to maximize the size of their network of partners to increase their overall position in the competition.


title: Video game console

text: Of the three, Microsoft and Sony, both with their own hardware manufacturing capabilities, remain at a leading edge approach, attempting to gain a first-mover advantage over the other with adaption of new console technology. Nintendo is more reliant on its suppliers and thus instead of trying to compete feature for feature with Microsoft and Sony, had instead taken a "blue ocean" strategy since the Nintendo DS and Wii.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Fearless is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released November 11, 2008, by Big Machine Records in the U.S. and Canada, and an international edition was released on March 9, 2009. Written largely by Swift while she was promoting her 2006 eponymous debut album in 2007–2008, "Fearless" features additional songwriting credits from Liz Rose, Hillary Lindsey, Colbie Caillat, and John Rich. Swift wrote seven of the thirteen songs on the standard edition by herself and, in her debut as a record producer, co-produced all songs with Nathan Chapman.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: "Fearless" is a country pop album featuring traditional country instruments such as banjos, fiddles, mandolins and acoustic guitars, intertwined with electric guitars. Music critics noted the album's crossover appeal brought by the influences of different styles including pop, folk, and rock. Inspired by Swift's feelings as a teenager, the lyrics explore themes of romance, heartache, and aspirations. The album's title refers to the overarching theme of all of its tracks, as they altogether depict Swift's courage to embrace the challenges of love.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: After the release of "Fearless", Swift embarked on the Fearless Tour, which ran from April 2009 to July 2010. Five songs were released as singles, including three US "Billboard" Hot 100 top-ten entries: "Love Story", "You Belong with Me", and "Fearless". "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me" were successful on both country and pop radio. The album spent eleven weeks atop the U.S. "Billboard" 200 and was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America. It peaked in the top five of albums charts and received multi-platinum certifications in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K., and has sold twelve million copies worldwide by April 2021.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Music critics complimented Swift's songwriting craftsmanship on "Fearless" for offering radio-friendly tunes and engaging narratives, though some deemed the production formulaic. "Fearless" won Album of the Year at both the Country Music Association Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards in 2009. At the 2010 Grammy Awards, it won Album of the Year and Best Country Album. The album featured on "Rolling Stone" 2022 list of the 100 Greatest Country Albums of All Time. Following the 2019 dispute regarding the ownership of Swift's back catalog, she released a re-recording, "Fearless (Taylor's Version)", in April 2021.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Taylor Swift signed a publishing contract with Sony/ATV Tree Publishing in 2004 to become a songwriter; at fourteen years old, she became the youngest Sony/ATV signee in its history. After signing a recording contract with Nashville-based Big Machine Records in 2005 to become a country music singer, Swift wrote songs with other Music Row songwriters and recorded her eponymous debut album with producer Nathan Chapman for four months near the end of 2005. Released on October 24, 2006, it was the longest-charting album on the U.S. "Billboard" 200 of the 2000s decade, and established Swift as one of country music's rising stars. Its third single, "Our Song", made Swift the youngest person to single-handedly write and sing a number-one song on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs chart. Her success was rare for a female teenage artist, as country music had been dominated by mostly middle-aged male musicians.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: To promote "Taylor Swift", Swift toured as the opening act for other country musicians, including Rascal Flatts and George Strait, during 2007–2008. While on tour, she continued writing songs for her follow-up album mostly by herself on the road, "at the concert venue... a quiet place in some room at the venue, like the locker room". In addition to self-penned material, Swift had songwriting sessions with Liz Rose, with whom she had largely collaborated on her first album. She also wrote with musician John Rich and singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Swift first came up with the direction for her second studio album after writing "Fearless", a song about an imaginary "best first date", while touring with Brad Paisley in mid-2007. Swift's songwriting was influenced by Paisley and Sheryl Crow's approach to expressing emotions. Continuing on the romantic themes of her first album, Swift chose to write songs about her personal feelings and observations of the world around her from the perspectives of a teenage girl, instead of the luxurious lifestyle brought by her newfound fame, to ensure her fans could relate to her songs: "I really try to write more about what I feel and guys and love because that's what fascinates me more than anything else – love and what it does to us and how we treat people and how they treat us. So pretty much every song on the album has a face that I associate with it."


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Swift usually started writing by identifying a core emotion she wanted to convey through the melody on guitar. For other songs, she sometimes came up with the title first before writing the hook. While some songs were inspired by Swift's personal relationships, she said that most songs were dramatized observations rather than real-life experiences: "I've gone through breakups and the core emotions behind them, but it doesn't take much to get that sort of emotion out in a song, luckily for me." She explained that certain emotions on her songs such as frustration or heartbreak came easily without her actually going through emotional turmoil. By July 2007, Swift had written as many as 75 songs. She recorded the album within a few months after touring with George Strait. Chapman, who produced Swift's debut, returned as producer, and recording took place at studios in Tennessee, including six in Nashville and one in Franklin.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: During the recording sessions, Swift emphasized the authenticity of the songs' emotional sentiments over technical rigidity: "I think it's the writer in me that's a little more obsessed with the meaning of the song than the vocal technique." By March 2008, Swift had recorded six songs, including one co-written by and featuring Caillat, "Breathe"; Swift had used Caillat's 2007 song "Bubbly" as a reference point during the recording sessions, because of its simple arrangements and honest sentiments. Apart from newly penned songs, Swift recorded a few that she had written for her debut album, believing there were stories that deserved to be put out. Swift made her debut as a record producer, co-producing all tracks with Chapman. The standard edition consists of thirteen tracks, which Swift had planned because she considered thirteen her lucky number. Of the thirteen tracks, Swift wrote seven by herself; the remaining were co-written with Caillat, Rose, Rich, and Hillary Lindsey. Recording took place within eight months and finished in October 2008, when Swift completed the track "Forever & Always" just before "Fearless" was mastered and published.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Like Swift's debut album, "Fearless" prominent themes are love and life from a high school teenage girl's perspective. The songs in "Fearless" examine those themes with a more nuanced and mature observation. Swift embraced country music's narrative songwriting to convey her coming of age. She wrote the track "Fifteen" during her freshman high school year in Hendersonville, Tennessee. In the narrative, Swift and another girl named Abigail—her real-life high school friend—go through teenage love and heartbreak together. As the song concludes, Swift realizes she could accomplish more than dating high school senior boys. Music critics highlighted "Fifteen" as an example of Swift's songwriting about teenage themes, both with a starry-eyed innocence and a sense of nostalgia.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Many of "Fearless" songs are about starry-eyed romance and use imagery associated with fairy tales, such as princes, princesses, white horses, and kissing in the rain. The title track "Fearless" is Swift's imagination of a perfect first date, on which she is caught in her "best dress" in the rain. Inspired by a love interest unpopular to Swift's family and friends, "Love Story" is based on "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare. In the lyrics, Swift replaced the original story's conclusion with a marriage proposal, an ending she believed the two characters deserved. The optimistic "Love Story" is contradicted by "White Horse", which was inspired by the same love interest. In "White Horse", Swift is disillusioned that the love interest is not her ideal Prince Charming who could treat her like a princess after his unfaithfulness. "Hey Stephen" is about Swift's hidden feelings for Stephen Barker Liles of Love and Theft, a country-music band that had opened shows for her. Heartbreak and emotional tumult are explored in songs such as "Tell Me Why", about an on-and-off relationship with an informal love interest; "You're Not Sorry", with lyrics describing an unfaithful man; and "Forever & Always", inspired by Swift's breakup with singer Joe Jonas.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Other songs were inspired by romantic relationships of Swift's friends. Swift wrote "You Belong with Me" after overhearing one of her band members speaking to his unsympathetic girlfriend over the phone. Out of sympathy, she wrote a story in which the protagonist harbors feelings for an out-of-reach love interest. The lyrics feature high school iconography, describing the protagonist as an ordinary girl "on the bleachers", and the antagonistic girlfriend as a popular cheer captain. In "The Way I Loved You", Swift sings about her passionate feelings for a complicated ex-lover, despite her current relationship with a decent boyfriend. Apart from romance, "Fearless" explores friendship, family love, and life lessons from Swift's underdog perspective. "Breathe" is about a fallout with a close friend. She dedicated "The Best Day" to her mother after they went shopping together because Swift was turned down by her schoolmates. The lyrics of "Change"—the closing track of the standard edition—detail Swift's determination to succeed despite her underdog status as a singer from a small, independent record label in Nashville. She finished writing "Change" the night she won the Horizon Award at the 2007 Country Music Association Awards.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: A country pop album, "Fearless" follows the country styling of Swift's debut album. The tracks are characterized by instruments associated with country music such as fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and acoustic guitar, intertwined with dynamic electric guitar and strings in the build-up. The production is consistent throughout: each song follows a recurring verse-chorus-bridge structure and has a dramatic bridge, a stripped-down final verse, and a dramatic final refrain.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Music critics debated the album's genre. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic and Hazel Cills of "Pitchfork" asserted that "Fearless" is more pop than country; Cills wrote that the only country elements on "Fearless" are Swift's "faux-country accent" and "a few bits" of banjo and fiddle scattered throughout the songs. Alison Bonaguro of The Chicago Tribune stated that Swift's music on the album was built upon "pop-leaning country arrangements". In mainstream reviews, critics wrote "Fearless" had crossover appeal with its styles ranging from teen pop and pop rock to soft rock and folk. Swift, in an interview with "The Philadelphia Inquirer", responded to the critical debate: "[Whether] you tell stories about how you live on a farm and cherish your family and God, or whether you tell stories about being in high school and being cheated on, they're stories about your life. That's what makes me a country artist." In a retrospective review in 2021, Lindsay Zoladz from "The New York Times" wrote that "Fearless" is "still a country record, a snapshot of the moment" before Swift's transition to "pure pop". Chris DeVille from Stereogum agreed, noting that even though Swift herself was already making "pop star moves" in 2008, the music on "Fearless" was still "steeped in the sound of mainstream country".


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Many of the songs contain radio-friendly country pop hooks, demonstrated through tracks such as "Fearless", "Fifteen", "Love Story", "You Belong with Me", "Tell Me Why", "The Way I Loved You", and "Change". Music scholar James E. Perone commented that the songs contain hints of country, pop, folk, and alternative rock with their instrumental mix. On "You Belong with Me", in addition to a banjo-led country pop production, the instrumental incorporates new wave-inspired electric guitar; Perone noted elements of 1980s new wave rock through the track's repeated eighth notes joined by fiddle, mandolin, and guitar. "Tell Me Why" opens with country fiddles and, in the mix, incorporates 1990s alternative rock and hip hop-inspired syncopated drum beats and rock-inspired guitars. The dynamic "The Way I Loved You" features distorted electric guitars with textual shifts that recall 1990s grunge. Other tracks with a more balladic production also feature pop hooks, such as "White Horse" and "You're Not Sorry". The standard edition's closing track, "The Best Day", features a stripped-down country rock production with guitar strums.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Swift named the album "Fearless" inspired by the title track: "[Being] fearless doesn't mean you're completely unafraid and it doesn't mean that you're bulletproof. It means that you have a lot of fears, but you jump anyway." All the songs on the album reflected her "fearless" attitude to embrace the hardships and challenges in love and life. Swift was the booklet designer; Joseph Anthony Barker, Ash Newell, and Sheryl Nields were responsible for the photography; and Leen Ann Ramey designed the cover artwork. The thirteen-track standard edition was released on November 11, 2008, by Big Machine Records. An international edition, featuring three additional tracks—"Our Song", "Teardrops on My Guitar", and "Should've Said No"—was released on March 9, 2009, by Big Machine in partnership with Universal Music Group.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Swift announced a reissue of "Fearless", subtitled "Platinum Edition", on September 10, 2009. The reissue was released on October 26, 2009. The "Platinum Edition" package includes a CD and a DVD; the CD features six additional songs—"Jump Then Fall", "Untouchable", "Forever & Always" (Piano Version), "Come in with the Rain", "SuperStar", and "The Other Side of the Door"—placed prior to the original tracks. The DVD comprises the music videos for "Change", "The Best Day", "Love Story", "White Horse", and "You Belong with Me"; behind-the-scenes footage for the latter three; behind-the-scene footage from the first concert of the Fearless Tour; and "Thug Story"—a video Swift filmed with rapper T-Pain exclusively for the 2009 CMT Music Awards. "Untouchable" is a cover of rock band Luna Halo's 2007 song that had its lyrics and arrangement rewritten by Swift.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: On June 8, 2008, Swift performed songs from "Fearless" on Clear Channel's "Stripped"; the performance was recorded and included in the "Platinum Edition" reissue. Prior to the album's commercial release, "Change" was made available via the iTunes Store on August 8 as a promotional single. It was included on the "AT&T Team USA Soundtrack", a compilation of songs played during the United States' participation in the 2008 Summer Olympics. A digital campaign launched through the iTunes Store, called "Countdown to "Fearless"", featured one song released each week during the five weeks leading to the album's release. "Breathe" was released as a promotional single exclusively via Rhapsody on October 21, 2008.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Swift made many television appearances to promote "Fearless" throughout late 2008, performing on shows including "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", "Good Morning America", and "Late Night with David Letterman". A special "CMT Crossroads" episode featuring Swift and rock band Def Leppard singing each other's songs was recorded on October 6 at the Roy Acuff Theater in Nashville, and aired on CMT on November 7, 2008. Her performances at awards shows that year included the Country Music Association Awards and the American Music Awards.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Besides live appearances, Swift used her MySpace account to promote to a young audience, sharing snippets of songs for streaming before they were released to radio, as she had done with her debut album. She continued to appear on televised events through 2009, hosting "Saturday Night Live", and performing at awards shows including the 51st Annual Grammy Awards, the CMT Music Awards, and the Country Music Association Awards. At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, rapper-producer Kanye West interrupted Swift's acceptance speech for winning Best Female Video with "You Belong with Me"—an incident known as "Kanyegate", which prompted many internet memes and media coverage.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Five songs were released as singles from "Fearless". The lead single, "Love Story", was released on September 15, 2008. It peaked atop the Hot Country Songs, and was the first country song to reach number one on the Mainstream Top 40, a "Billboard" chart monitoring pop radio in the U.S. The single peaked at number four on the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100, and at number two on the UK Singles Chart, and was Swift's first number-one single in Australia. The four remaining singles were "White Horse" (December 8, 2008), "You Belong with Me" (April 20, 2009), "Fifteen" (August 31, 2009), and "Fearless" (January 4, 2010). All four peaked within the top forty of the "Billboard" Hot 100, with "You Belong with Me" peaking at number two as the highest-charting "Fearless" single, and within the top ten of the Hot Country Songs, with "You Belong with Me" reaching number one. "You Belong with Me", similar to "Love Story", was a crossover success. The song was the first country song to top the all-genre Radio Songs chart, driven mostly by non-country airplay.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Swift announced the Fearless Tour, her first headlining tour, in January 2009. The tour started in Evansville, Indiana on April 23, and visited the U.S. and Canada over six months. Prior to the Fearless Tour, Swift headlined three U.S. music festivals: the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo in February 2009, and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and the Florida Strawberry Festival in March. In October, when the first North American leg finished, Swift announced a second North American leg beginning on March 4, 2010, in Tampa, Florida. Outside North America, the Fearless Tour visited Australia and Japan in February 2010. The tour was met with high demand, selling out tickets within minutes. Swift wrapped up the Fearless Tour at the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on June 5, 2010. The tour grossed over $63 million and played to over 1.1 million fans.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: "Fearless" was a commercial success in the U.S., setting many chart records and catapulting Swift to mainstream prominence. It spent eleven non-consecutive weeks at number one on the "Billboard" 200, the longest run of the 2000s decade. It holds the record for the most weeks at number one for a female country album. Thirteen album tracks (including from the "Platinum Edition") peaked within the top forty of the "Billboard" Hot 100, setting a record for the album with the most such entries. Five tracks peaked within the top ten: "Fearless", "Love Story", "You Belong with Me", "Change", and "Jump Then Fall"; "Fearless" was the first album since Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." (1984) to have five top-ten songs with none reaching number one.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: With 3.217 million copies sold in the U.S. throughout 2009, it was the year's best-selling album in the country. The achievement made Swift, then twenty years old, the youngest artist and the only female country musician to have a best-selling album of a calendar year. It was the only album to spend its first full year in the top ten of the "Billboard" 200 of the 2000s decade, totaling fifty-eight weeks in the top ten, a record for a country musician. On the Top Country Albums chart, "Fearless" spent thirty-five weeks at number one. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified "Fearless" diamond in December 2017, recognizing ten million units based on sales and stream. All singles were certified platinum or multi-platinum; the tracks "You're Not Sorry" and "Forever & Always" were certified platinum; and "Hey Stephen", "Breathe", "The Way I Loved You", "The Best Day", "Change", and "Jump Then Fall" were certified gold. By October 2020, the album had sold 7.21 million copies in the U.S.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: "Fearless" marked Swift's first international chart success, peaking atop the charts of Canada and New Zealand. It peaked within the top five of the charts in Australia (number two), Scotland (number four), and Norway and the U.K. (number five). The album received multi-platinum certifications in multiple English-speaking countries, including double platinum by both the Irish Recording Music Association (IRMA) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), triple platinum by Recorded Music NZ (RMNZ), four times platinum by Music Canada, and seven times platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA).


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: The album reached the top ten on charts in Japan, and top twenty in Austria, Brazil, Germany, Greece, and Sweden. In Europe, it was awarded gold certifications by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI) in Germany, the IFPI Austria, and the IFPI Norway; and a platinum certification by the IFPI Denmark. In Asia, "Fearless" was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), nine times platinum by the Philippine Association of the Record Industry and platinum by the Recording Industry Association Singapore (RIAS). As of April 2021, the album had sold twelve million copies worldwide.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: "Fearless" received generally positive reviews from music critics in the press. On Metacritic, which assigns an aggregated score out of 100 to reviews in mainstream publications, the album earned a score of 73, based on fourteen reviews.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Many critics lauded Swift's songwriting craftsmanship. Reviews published in "The Boston Globe", "Blender", "Entertainment Weekly", "The Village Voice", and "USA Today" remarked that "Fearless" was an honest and vulnerable record contrasting with albums by other teenage singers, thanks to Swift's self-penned songs. Other reviews from AllMusic, "Billboard", and "The Observer" deemed the lyrics mature for her age. In "MSN Music", Robert Christgau found the album's romantic idealism distasteful, but lauded Swift's songwriting skills as remarkable for a teenage artist. Jonathan Keefe from "Slant Magazine" agreed the songs were well-written, but felt they fell short of refinement.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Some critics praised "Fearless"s crossover appeal. AllMusic Stephen Thomas Erlewine and "The Boston Globe" James Reed remarked that the album straddles the perceived boundary between country and pop; the former called it "one of the best mainstream pop albums of 2008". In "Rolling Stone", Jody Rosen hailed Swift as a "songwriting savant with an intuitive gift for the verse-chorus-bridge architecture". Christgau commented that the songs are effective partly because of "the musical restraint of a strain of Nashville bigpop that avoids muscle-flexing rockism".


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Other reviewers were divided over the production. Chris Richards of "The Washington Post" commended the radio-friendly tunes, but commented that the album is repetitive overall. Although Richards praised Swift's vocals, Keefe deemed them weak and strained, which blemishes the album with occasional breath controls and nasal tones. Alexis Petridis, reviewing "Fearless" for the British newspaper "The Guardian", found the praise in the American press surprising. Petridis agreed Swift's songwriting was remarkable, but found the music "bland and uninventive", which left the audience "wondering if the world really needs any more music like this". The British magazine "Q" wrote: "Her giggly peers will find she speaks their language, while grown-ups will prefer her to keep quiet."


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: "Fearless" featured on 2008 year-end lists by the Associated Press (7th), "Blender" (32nd), "Rolling Stone" (39th), and "The Village Voice" Pazz & Jop (58th); and 2009 year-end list by "The Guardian" (40th). Jon Caramanica in "The New York Times" placed the album at number four on his list of 2008's best albums and called Swift "one of pop's finest songwriters". The most awarded country-music album in history, "Fearless" won Album of the Year at both the Country Music Association (CMA) Awards and the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards in 2009. It was awarded as the Top Selling Album by the Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) twice in a row, in 2009 and 2010. At the American Music Awards of 2009, "Fearless" won Favorite Country Album and was nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Album. Its other accolades included a Teen Choice Award for Choice Female Album, a Sirus XM Indie Award for International Album of the Year, and a Juno Award nomination for International Album of the Year.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: At the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards in February 2010, "Fearless" won Album of the Year and Best Country Album. The Album of the Year made Swift, then twenty years old, the youngest artist to win the award, a record she held until the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2020, when Billie Eilish won Album of the Year at age eighteen. Swift is the second country-music artist to win the three highest awards for a country-music album by the ACM, the CMA, and the Grammys—after the Chicks with their 1999 album, "Fly"—and the first to further win the Grammy for Album of the Year for the same album. "White Horse" won two Grammy Awards that year: Best Female Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Song.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: According to "Billboard", as of 2022, "Fearless" is one of the 15 best-performing 21st-century albums without any number-one singles on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The album's critical and commercial successes established Swift as a mainstream star beyond the country-music scene. Though Swift identified as a country music-artist, some critics considered Swift more of a pop artist after the crossover success of "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me"; she officially abandoned country with the release of her fifth studio album, "1989" (2014). Perone remarked that "Fearless" moved Swift's status from a "singer-songwriter prodigy to singer-songwriter superstar". In addition to Swift's musicianship, Perone attributed the album's commercial success to her marketing strategy; with enhanced bonus material for the CD instead of download, "Fearless" became "indicative of a 21st century marketing trend in CD recordings".


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Swift's songwriting on "Fearless" cemented her trademark confessional narratives. Writing for "Slate", critic Carl Wilson dubbed this technique "Swiftian". In a 2019 retrospective review of the album for "Pitchfork", Cills commented that "Fearless" was a testament to Swift's abilities of writing timeless songs, noting the album's simplicity and earnestness. Cills remarked that amidst sexualized teen idols, "there was something novel about Swift being a teenager and writing about her reality in her own terms coming into that same mainstream space, redefining what 'teen pop' could sound like in the process". Other retrospective reviews attributed the album's enduring popularity to songs about universal feelings—heartbreak, frustration, first love, and aspirations. It placed number 99 on NPR's 2017 list of the "150 Greatest Albums Made by Women" and number 10 on "Rolling Stone" 2022 list of the "100 Greatest Country Albums of All Time". "Billboard" in 2022 reflected that the Grammy Award for Album of the Year that Swift was honored for the album attested to her 20-year-old talent as "one of the most important singer-songwriters of her generation".


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Swift began re-recording her first six studio albums, including "Fearless", in November 2020. The decision came after a public dispute between her and talent manager Scooter Braun, who acquired the masters of Swift's first six studio albums—which Swift had been trying to buy for years—following her departure from Big Machine Records in November 2018. The re-recording of "Fearless", subtitled "Taylor's Version", was released on April 9, 2021, through Republic Records. The "Taylor's Version" feature all tracks from the "Platinum Edition", the "Valentine's Day" soundtrack single "Today Was a Fairytale" (2010), and six unreleased "From the Vault" tracks. Following the release of "Fearless (Taylor's Version)", the original reappeared on albums charts of several European countries, reaching a new peak at number two in Austria, Germany, and Norway, and number three in Switzerland.


title: Fearless (Taylor Swift album)

text: Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes. Except where noted, all tracks are written by Taylor Swift.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Bastian Schweinsteiger (; born 1 August 1984) is a German former professional footballer who usually played as a central midfielder. Earlier in his career, he primarily played as a wide midfielder. Schweinsteiger is regarded as one of the greatest midfielders of all time, due to his tactical awareness, positioning, passing and also due to his ability to read and control the flow of the game. Joachim Löw has referred to Schweinsteiger as one of the greatest players Germany has ever produced.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: He spent 17 seasons at Bayern Munich, playing in exactly 500 matches across all competitions and scoring 68 goals. His honours at the club include eight Bundesliga titles, seven DFB-Pokal titles, a UEFA Champions League title, a FIFA Club World Cup title and a UEFA Super Cup title. He joined Manchester United in 2015, playing sparingly for 18 months before moving to Chicago Fire. He announced his retirement from playing in October 2019.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger played for the German national team from 2004 to 2016. He is Germany's fourth-most-capped player of all time, having earned 121 caps and scored 24 goals. He was selected in their squads for four European Championships and three World Cups, including their victory at the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Also, in 2014 FIFA World Cup, he was widely regarded as one of the most important contributors in Germany's victorious campaign, playing an especially important role in defending Lionel Messi in the Final. Following Philipp Lahm's international retirement on 2 September 2014, Schweinsteiger was named captain of the national team. He played his last match for Germany against Finland on 31 August 2016, after which he retired from international football.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger signed with FC Bayern Munich as a youth team player on 1 July 1998 and rose through the club's youth sides. A talented youth ski racer, he had to decide between pursuing a professional career in skiing or one in football. Having won the German youth championship in July 2002, Schweinsteiger quickly earned a place in the reserves, producing a string of solid third-division displays. He initially earned a reputation for being a rebel off the pitch, making headlines for the wrong reasons but has since settled down.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: During his first appearances in the titular eleven, he played left-back. After just two training sessions with the first team, coach Ottmar Hitzfeld gave Schweinsteiger his debut, at the age of 18, as a late substitute in a UEFA Champions League game against RC Lens in November 2002, and the youngster made an immediate impact, creating a goal for Markus Feulner within minutes. He signed a professional contract the following month and went on to appear in 14 Bundesliga games in 2002–03, helping Bayern to a league and cup double. The next season, he played 26 Bundesliga games. He scored his first Bayern goal against VfL Wolfsburg in September 2003.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Surprisingly sent back to Bayern's reserve team by new coach Felix Magath at the beginning of the 2005–06 season despite his international exploits of the summer in the Confederations Cup, Schweinsteiger swiftly returned to play a role in the double-winning campaign and scored in Bayern's Champions League quarter-final first leg defeat at Chelsea.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Over the next three seasons, up until the end of 2007–08, Schweinsteiger made 135 appearances in all competitions for Bayern Munich (Champions League, Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal), scoring 10 goals in the process.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: On 15 August 2008, Schweinsteiger scored the first Bundesliga goal of the 2008–09 season. In December 2010, he extended his contract with Bayern until 2016.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: On 25 April 2012, Schweinsteiger scored from the last and match-clinching penalty kick against Real Madrid to send Bayern through to the 2012 UEFA Champions League Final, where they would face Chelsea. The match, played at Bayern's Allianz Arena, ended 1–1 and went to a penalty shoot-out. With the shoot-out poised at 3–3, Petr Čech tipped Schweinsteiger's shot onto the post, allowing Didier Drogba to seal the title for Chelsea with the next kick.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: In the 2012–13 season, Schweinsteiger performed considerably well, continuing his duties as central midfielder along with new signing Javi Martínez. On 6 April 2013, Schweinsteiger scored a backheel flick goal against Eintracht Frankfurt which sealed the Bundesliga title for Bayern. The season ended on a high for Schweinsteiger, as Bayern secured a treble of Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal and Champions League.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger received the 2013 German player of the year due to his performance for Bayern Munich. He was described by then manager Jupp Heynckes as the best midfielder in the world and Heynckes wanted either Schweinsteiger, Ribéry or Thomas Müller to win the Ballon d'Or.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: He scored an equaliser goal in the match against Manchester United in the first leg of their 2013–14 UEFA Champions League quarter-final at Old Trafford but saw a red card later in that match.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: He made his 2014–15 season debut in a 4–0 win against 1899 Hoffenheim. He came in for Mario Götze in the 78th minute. On 16 May 2015, with Bayern having already won the league, he scored the opening goal in a 2–1 defeat at SC Freiburg. On 23 May 2015, Schweinsteiger scored on his 500th appearance for Bayern. This proved to be his last match with the club. He transferred to Manchester United on 13 July 2015, having been at Bayern for 17 years.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger was a fan favourite at Bayern and was usually called "Fußballgott" (football god) by Bayern's fans.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: On 13 July 2015, Manchester United completed the signing of Schweinsteiger on a three-year contract for a fee of €9 million (£6.5 million). Manchester United had never before fielded a German in the first team; Markus Neumayr and Ron-Robert Zieler were at the club before him, but neither made it into the first team. Schweinsteiger was given shirt number 23 in pre-season, but switched to 31, which he wore at Bayern, before the official start to the season.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger made his pre-season debut for Manchester United in a friendly match against Club América on 17 July 2015. United defeated the Mexican club 1–0 in Seattle. His Premier League debut came on 8 August, as a 60th-minute substitute for Michael Carrick as the season began with a 1–0 home victory over Tottenham Hotspur, being booked eight minutes into his first appearance for a foul on Nacer Chadli. On 28 November he scored his first goal for the club, equalising with a header in a 1–1 draw against Leicester City.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: On 7 December 2015, Schweinsteiger was punished with a three-match retrospective ban by The Football Association for striking West Ham United's Winston Reid in the throat in their meeting two days earlier.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: After the arrival of new manager, José Mourinho, Schweinsteiger was demoted and sent to training with the under-23 team. A number of high-profile former teammates have criticised Mourinho's handling of the matter, accusing Mourinho of showing a lack of respect for Schweinsteiger. He returned to first team training towards the end of 2016, and made his first appearance since March when he came on as a late substitute in the EFL Cup quarter-final against West Ham United on 30 November 2016. He made his first start in over a year in a 4–0 win in the FA Cup fourth round home tie against Wigan Athletic on 29 January 2017, in which he scored his first Old Trafford goal for Manchester United with an overhead finish. For his goal, as well as his assist to Marouane Fellaini for the opening goal, he was voted "Man of the Match" by the fans.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: On 21 March 2017, Manchester United allowed Schweinsteiger to join Major League Soccer side Chicago Fire, subject to a medical and a visa being secured. The move was completed on 29 March. A few days later, Mourinho stated that he "regretted" the way he had treated Schweinsteiger. On 1 April, Schweinsteiger debuted for Chicago Fire, scoring in a 2–2 home draw against Montreal Impact. By mid-season, he would help guide Chicago to the top of the MLS standings and be voted into the "MLS All-Star Fan XI" (along with teammate Nemanja Nikolić) to face Real Madrid at the 2017 MLS All-Star Game in Chicago. After guiding the Fire back into the playoffs after a five-year drought, Schweinsteiger was awarded the contract option of another year in 2018. Schweinsteiger netted a goal and also provided an assist to Alan Gordon's equalising goal in the stoppage time in a 2–2 draw against Toronto FC on 29 April 2018. On 5 August, he scored a long-range goal to level the scoreline after coming on as a substitute in the second half, but his side were defeated in a 2–1 away loss against Real Salt Lake. On 11 July, Schweinsteiger scored a goal in the stoppage time and provided one assist to Aleksandar Katai's goal in a 4–3 home defeat against Philadelphia Union.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: On 8 October 2019, Schweinsteiger announced his retirement from professional football. A few days after his retirement from active sports in October 2019, the ARD announced that Schweinsteiger will be accompanying live broadcasts of football matches as an expert in Qatar for the next three years up to and including the 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger made his international debut in June 2004 in a friendly against Hungary and earned 121 caps before his retirement from international football in 2016. He was part of the Germany squad for every major tournament from UEFA Euro 2004 until Euro 2016.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Right after taking part in the under-21s' disappointing run at the 2004 European Championships, he was called up for Euro 2004. He set up the opening goal for Bayern teammate Michael Ballack in Germany's 2–1 loss against the Czech Republic.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: He scored his first two international goals on 8 June 2005 against Russia and scored his first goal in a competitive match against Tunisia on 18 June 2005 at the Confederations Cup in Germany. He was called up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup on home soil and shot into prominence at the tournament with his two brilliant long-range strikes in the third-place match against Portugal, which won him the Man of the Match award. The match ended 3–1 with the 21-year-old nearly claiming a hat-trick but his deflected free kick was credited as an own-goal to Armando Petit.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: At the age of 22, he had already played 41 matches for the German national team, a record for any German player at the time. This record was soon broken, however, by Lukas Podolski who was capped 44 times at the age of 22. At the same age, Lothar Matthäus (the German all-time record holder with 150 caps) had only played 13 times for the German national team.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: During Euro 2008 qualifiers, he scored two goals en route to a record 13–0 win over San Marino in San Marino. He scored the third goal in Germany's 4–1 win over Slovakia in Bratislava.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger lost his place in the starting 11 when Germany manager Joachim Löw moved striker Lukas Podolski to Schweinsteiger's usual position on the left wing to accommodate the strike partnership of Miroslav Klose and Mario Gómez, and he made two substitute appearances in the group stage. In the second match against Croatia, he was shown a straight red card for reacting to a challenge from Jerko Leko as Germany succumbed to a shock 2–1 defeat. After serving his suspension by missing the game against Austria, he returned to the starting line-up in the quarterfinal against Portugal, as Löw reverted to the old 4–4–2 formation when Gómez was benched after failing to make an impression. Once again he was instrumental in Germany's 3–2 win, scoring one goal and setting up the other two. He also scored his country's first goal in the 3–2 semifinal victory against Turkey. He captained the team for the first time in a friendly against the United Arab Emirates.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger featured often in 2010 World Cup qualifying, playing nine of the 10 games and contributing three goals. He started in Germany's third pre-warm-up game vs. Bosnia on 3 June 2010, and scored two penalties in a 3–1 victory in the space of four minutes, but in the 87th minute he was substituted off for Bayern Munich teammate Toni Kroos.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Schweinsteiger was charged with replacing the injured Michael Ballack at the centre of midfield. He performed admirably in this role, adding valuable leadership and international experience to a very young German side. He was vital to both the German attack and defence, as was apparent when he was named the Man of the Match after the quarter-final match against Argentina, where he provided two assists while also managing to contain Lionel Messi. Germany subsequently lost to Spain in the semi-finals. Germany was able to rally for a 3–2 victory over Uruguay in the third-place match, and, with Philipp Lahm resting on the bench because of illness, Schweinsteiger served as captain.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Overall, Schweinsteiger recorded three assists in seven matches in South Africa, which tied him for the most assists in the finals with Dirk Kuyt, Kaká, Thomas Müller and Mesut Özil. In recognition of his excellent play throughout the tournament, he was chosen as one of 10 finalists for the prestigious Golden Ball, awarded to the most outstanding player of the tournament.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger established himself as first choice as defensive midfielder in Germany's qualifying group. He played five matches – once against each opponent: Belgium, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Austria and Turkey – and helped Germany win 10 out of 10 games, scoring once and providing one assist.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger started all five of Germany's matches at the UEFA Euro 2012 finals and assisted both of Mario Gómez goals in the 2–1 Group B win over rivals the Netherlands.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger made five appearances as Germany qualified for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. On 15 October 2013, he won his 100th cap for the national team in a 5–3 win over Sweden.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: After making a substitute appearance in the team's second match against Ghana, Schweinsteiger was selected to start in the third group game against the United States. He retained his place in the team for Germany's round of 16 match, a 2–1 win against Algeria. He was instrumental in the World Cup finals against Argentina and led the mid-field with sweeping passes for the German attack. Germany won the World Cup final 1–0 through Mario Götze's 113th-minute goal.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Prior to the start of qualification, Schweinsteiger was appointed as the new captain for Germany after Philipp Lahm's retirement. On 23 March 2016 he sustained damage on his knee while he was training with the German national team which made him miss the rest of the Premier League season but he recovered just in time to be selected for Germany's 27-man provisional squad for UEFA Euro 2016. On 31 May, Schweinsteiger was selected for Germany's final 23-man squad for UEFA Euro 2016.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: On 12 June 2016, Schweinsteiger scored in stoppage time after coming on late in a 2–0 group stage victory over Ukraine. Nine days later, Schweinsteiger set a new record for German player with the most appearances in a European Championship match. After the tournament, Schweinsteiger announced his retirement from competitive international football, having played in 120 games, scoring 24 goals. One month later, he participated in his last ever international appearance for Germany, against Finland in a friendly match. He was succeeded as captain by Manuel Neuer.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger largely operated in the centre, but he was versatile enough to provide an option on the wing, either on the left or right flank. During his years with Bayern, he was regarded as one of the best midfielders in the world. Schweinsteiger possessed a fearsome shot from range, as well as excellent crossing and a wicked delivery from set-pieces, while his boundless energy also serves him well. Described as a "two-way player" by Nick Amies, he was also used in a variety of other roles, including as a holding midfielder, as an attacking midfielder, in a box-to-box role, as a playmaker, in a deep-lying midfield role, or even as a right-back. A powerful, physical, and elegant player, who also possessed good technique, skill, passing ability, vision, and creativity, Schweinsteiger was known for his ability to control and dictate the flow of his team's play in midfield, build attacks, and create chances for his teammates with his distribution. Dubbed the "Midfield Motor", Schweinsteiger was also a superb reader of the game and scored spectacularly due to his good positioning. He was called "the brain" of the German national team by coach Joachim Löw, and was also described as a "midfield mastermind".


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Beyond his offensive and creative capabilities, he was also known for his defensive skills, work-rate, and tackling ability. For his performances, he was voted as the best German player of the year in 2013. Jonathan Wilson, when writing for "The Guardian" during the same year, labelled Schweinsteiger as a type holding midfielder that he described as a "carrier" or "surger," namely "a player capable of making late runs or carrying the ball at his feet." During his time with Chicago, Schweinsteiger was also occasionally deployed as a central defender or sweeper in a three-man back-line, in addition to his usual role in midfield, courtesy of his vision and defensive skills; in this deeper role, he was not only given defensive responsibilities, such as marking opposing players, but was also given offensive duties, and was tasked with playing the ball out from the back, retaining possession, advancing into midfield, and controlling the play. Because of Schweinsteiger's wide range of skills, his former Chicago Fire manager, Veljko Paunović, described him upon his retirement in 2019 as "unique and special," also commenting: "He's a complete player, a total player. In Germany, where they know him even better than us, they call him a 'Fussballgott' [a "football god," in German] because he represents everything."


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: Schweinsteiger is a Roman Catholic. He is known to fans as "Schweini" or "Basti", the latter to distinguish him from his elder brother, Tobias, a professional footballer who also played for Bayern Munich, albeit in the reserve team. Schweinsteiger was in a relationship with model Sarah Brandner from 2007 until July 2014. They lived in Munich together.


title: Bastian Schweinsteiger

text: In September 2014, he began a relationship with Serbian tennis player Ana Ivanovic. The couple married on 12 July 2016 in Venice, Italy. They have two sons, born in 2018 and 2019.


title: Survivor 41

text: Survivor 41 is the forty-first season of the American competition television series "Survivor". The season was first broadcast on September 22, 2021, on CBS in the United States and Global in Canada. It ended on December 15, 2021, when Erika Casupanan was voted the Sole Survivor, defeating Deshawn Radden and Xander Hastings in a 7–1–0 vote. Casupanan also became the first Canadian castaway to win the title, the third Asian castaway to win (following Yul Kwon in "" and Natalie Anderson in ""), the first of Filipino descent to win, and the first woman to win in seven seasons, the last one being Sarah Lacina in "".


title: Survivor 41

text: Both the 41st and 42nd seasons of "Survivor" were originally ordered in May 2020. Production and broadcast of the season was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming in Fiji, the ninth consecutive season at that location, had been planned to start filming from March to May 2020, with the season scheduled to air on CBS starting in September 2020 as a part of the 2020–21 television season, but worldwide travel restrictions and Fiji's border closures forced production to postpone to a year in March 2021, and the broadcast pushed into the 2021–22 television season.


title: Survivor 41

text: This season was originally to be entitled "Survivor: Dawn of a New Era" according to Jeff Probst, although production and filming was initially scheduled to start on March 24, 2020, and was to conclude on May 1 onto a standard 39 days of gameplay, but it was pushed back until 2021 due to surrounding international travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Usually, the show releases two seasons per television season year—one debuting around the fall (September) and the other debuting around late winter/early spring (February or March). But due to the pandemic, the "Survivor" crew was not able to produce this and the subsequent 42nd season in 2020. Production had considered filming domestically in Georgia or Hawaii, but the unpredictability of the pandemic pushed filming back to 2021. On February 11, 2021, Faiyaz Koya, the Fijian Minister of Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport, approved filming for this season with the crew required to arrive in groups and quarantine before filming. On March 22, 2021, Jeff Probst announced on-location that production of this season was set to start and filming finally began on April 15. The forty-first season debuted in September 2021.


title: Survivor 41

text: Unlike most "Survivor" seasons, it is a shortened season spanning only 26 out of the usual 39 days, due to the COVID-19 pandemic requiring all cast and production members to quarantine for 14 days and taking up some of the short production time. For the first time since "", the season's winner was revealed during the Final Tribal Council as production was unsure on the ability to have a live finale due to the concerns of a potential COVID-19 resurgence. The vote reveal was then followed by a "Survivor After Show" special with the final players and the jury instead of a live reunion.


title: Survivor 41

text: This is the first "Survivor" season to impose a significant change in the personal safety protocols following allegations of "inappropriate touching" against a contestant during the filming of "" in 2019.


title: Survivor 41

text: This season introduced many new twists, including the "Shot in the Dark" which offered players at Tribal Council a chance for immunity in exchange for giving up one's vote, the "Beware Advantage" which restricted players' ability to vote until their immunity idols became active, and decision games which forced players to make game-altering choices. One such decision game featured players making opposing—but not necessarily different—choices to either risk or protect their votes in a manner similar to a game of Chicken. Other games of decision included the "Hourglass" twist which gave one player the opportunity to reverse the outcome of a group immunity challenge at the risk of earning tribemates' ire, and the "Do or Die" twist which, in one instance, made the first player to lose an Immunity Challenge perform a risky game of chance similar to the Monty Hall problem just to be able to stay in the game.


title: Survivor 41

text: According to Jeff Probst, a planned expansion of the Fire Tokens element, featured in "", was scrapped after "" runner-up Mike White expressed disapproval of the idea.


title: Survivor 41

text: In addition, Probst announced a new interactive element called "The Game Within the Game", in which children watching at home were invited to play along with the show, solving a rebus puzzle hidden somewhere within the episode. Also, at-home viewers could solve a word-scramble puzzle online and be given a strategy discussion test in which the viewers could discuss the strategy and later compare it with what really happened during the next episode's airing.


title: Survivor 41

text: The cast was composed of 18 new players, divided into three tribes: Luvu, Ua, and Yase. The tribe names come from the Fijian words for "flood", "wave", and "lightning" respectively. The merged tribe was named Viakana, which comes from the Fijian phrase for "hungry", was suggested by Erika Casupanan.


title: Survivor 41

text: The cast included retired National Football League player Danny McCray. Erika Casupanan became the first Canadian resident to compete on the show since the casting process was opened to Canadian residents in 2018.


title: Survivor 41

text: Eighteen new castaways were divided into three tribes of six: Luvu, Ua, and Yase. Luvu went undefeated in immunity challenges, while Yase got off to a rough start, losing the first two. Dominated by a women's alliance, they made up for the numbers deficit while Ua dwindled down to just Shan and Ricard. Their strong partnership enabled them to reach the merge, where they initially aligned with Luvu against the surviving Yase members. Liana turned against her old tribe to align with Danny, Deshawn, and Shan in a final four deal. However, Danny and Deshawn aligned with the others under Ricard and Erika's lead to take out a power player in Shan, busting the game open.


title: Survivor 41

text: When there were six players left, Deshawn tried to pit longtime allies Erika and Heather against each other, to no avail. Despite being targeted for this, he and the others voted out a big threat in Ricard when he was not immune. Xander won the final challenge and brought Erika to the end in hopes that she wouldn't get to add beating someone at fire to her resume. Deshawn narrowly beat Heather to join them in the final three. In the end, Erika's subtly strong strategic and social game earned her the victory in a 7–1–0 vote over Deshawn and Xander.


title: Survivor 41

text: The season received a mixed response, with many praising the cast and their gameplay as well as the entertaining episodes and unpredictability of the season and Erika’s win, but criticizing the overabundance of twists and advantages, as well as the overall edit and new format of the season. Dalton Ross of "Entertainment Weekly" ranked this season 21st out of 41. Gordon Holmes of Xfinity called it a mid-level season saying "I think I'll remember this season as having an awesome diverse cast, that was somewhat overshadowed by the need to cram 20 pounds of advantages into a 10-pound bag." Andy Dehnart of "reality blurred" praised the cast but was highly critical towards the overabundance of twists and advantages. Outlets including "TVLine", Insider, and "Screen Rant" expressed similar criticisms towards the number of twists in this season. Harper Lambert of "TheWrap" was more critical of the cast due to a "near-total lack of conflict and striking personalities." Riley McAtee of The Ringer was more positive towards this season due to the fewer amount of twists after the merge saying that it was "against all odds, given the changes to the format–a pretty good season of "Survivor"."


title: Harmony Korine

text: Harmony Korine (born January 4, 1973, some sources report September 1, 1974) is an American filmmaker, actor, photographer, artist, author, and skateboarder. He is best known for his films, which feature his erratic, loose and transgressive aesthetic, exploring taboo themes and incorporating experimental techniques, as well as his various endeavors into art, music, fashion and advertising.


title: Harmony Korine

text: He has been acclaimed for his films "Gummo" (1997) and "Julien Donkey-Boy" (1999) which explore unconventional narratives and themes of dysfunctional families, as well as "Mister Lonely" (2007), "Spring Breakers" (2012) and "The Beach Bum" (2019).


title: Harmony Korine

text: Korine was born to a Jewish family in Bolinas, California, the son of Eve and Sol Korine. His father was an Iranian Jewish immigrant. His father was a tapdancer and produced documentaries for PBS in the 1970s about an "array of colorful Southern characters"; he would take Korine to carnivals and circuses and taught him how to use a Bolex camera. As a child, Korine watched movies with his father, who rented Buster Keaton films for Korine and took him to see Werner Herzog's "Even Dwarfs Started Small" (1970) in the theater. Korine reminisced that "I knew there was a poetry in cinema that I had never seen before that was so powerful."


title: Harmony Korine

text: Korine spent his early childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area living with his family on a commune. In the early 1980s, they relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended Hillsboro High School before moving to New York City to live with his grandmother. As a teenager, Korine spent his summers in San Francisco, "skateboarding, living on rooftops, running away from my parents, getting in fights. You know, girls. At that point I was just getting into movies, but the idea of making films happened later in high school." He began frequenting revival theaters, watching films by John Cassavetes, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alan Clarke. In an interview with Bruce LaBruce, Korine briefly mentioned that he studied Business Administration in college. Other sources state that he studied Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for one semester before dropping out to pursue a career as a professional skateboarder.


title: Harmony Korine

text: Korine was skating with friends in Washington Square Park when he met photographer Larry Clark. Impressed, the photographer asked him to compose a script about skaters and to include in the plot a teenage AIDS experience. Korine told Clark, "I've been waiting all my life to write this story." Within three weeks, Korine wrote "Kids", a film about 24 hours in the sex- and drug-filled lives of several Manhattan teenagers in New York City during the AIDS crisis. "Kids" received mixed reviews at the time of its release in 1995, but has since become a significant cult film. Among others, the film features Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson in their first movie roles. The film, while controversial, jumpstarted Korine's career. This put him into contact with film producer Cary Woods who budgeted about $1 million to produce "Gummo", Korine's personal vision.