Month: February 2024

From Xbox games on Switch to a new Endless Ocean game, here’s everything we saw at today’s Nintendo Partner Showcase.

Turns out, the Chevrolet Bolt isn’t dead just yet. Chevrolet has announced that it will be building a next-generation Bolt EV on the Ultium platform.

During today’s Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase, Microsoft confirmed that Grounded and Pentiment are coming to the Nintendo Switch soon.

The 2024 MLS season opens when Inter Miami takes on Real Salt Lake today, and we’ve got everything you need to know to watch a live stream of the match.

The next set of astronauts due to visit the International Space Station, Crew-8, have entered quarantine ahead of their launch scheduled for early March.

During today’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, several Rare more titles were revealed for Switch Online. NES titles Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll and R.C. Pro-Am are coming to the base tier today, along with SNES games Battletoads in Battlemaniacs and classic beat-’em-up Killer Instinct. Switch Online + Expansion Pack members will also get access to Nintendo 64 game Blast Corps.

However, there was a more interesting Switch Online announcement for those in Japan: Mother 3. The game debuted on the Game Boy Advance in 2006 at the end of that console’s lifespan and as Nintendo was turning its attention to the DS. The company never released the sequel to Mother (aka EarthBound Beginnings) and Mother 2 (EarthBound) outside of Japan, despite Western fans of the series long yearning to play it. 

Some have taken to translating the game themselves, and one even offered their files to Nintendo in the hopes that the company would release an officially localized version for English-speaking audiences. With that in mind, choosing to limit Mother 3 to Switch Online in Japan may feel like a kick in the teeth for many of those who’ve been waiting nearly 20 years for Nintendo to bring the game to North America (it added the previous games in the series to Switch Online in the US in 2022).

Non-Japanese speaking fans will need to stick to unofficial translations for now, but they’d be forgiven for holding onto a glimmer of hope for a proper English localization. It’s evident that Nintendo has remembered the acclaimed RPG exists and, given that it took the company 26 years to bring EarthBound Beginnings to North America, all is perhaps not yet lost.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mother-3-is-coming-to-switch-online-in-japan-but-not-the-us-150822035.html?src=rss

Google doesn’t have the best track record for naming its products, especially when it comes to messaging and video chat apps, and it looks like that trend is continuing into its AI apps. After announcing its new lightweight AI model Gemma earlier today, Google is also revealing that its Duet AI for enterprises using Workspace has also been rebranded to Gemini. If you’ll recall, that’s the next-generation AI model Google announced late last year, a name which also ended up being used for its Bard AI chatbot too. What’s next, an AI model for smartwatches called Gem?

Businesses will have two Gemini for Workspace plans to choose from: Gemini Business, a new option for $20 a month that’s available to organizations of all sizes, and Gemini Enterprise, a $30 a month offering for larger companies and “heavy uses of generative AI.” Just like before, consumers will also have access to the AI features in Workspace apps by subscribing to a Google One AI Premium plan, which starts at $20 a month.

Consumers and businesses subscribed to these plans will also be able to use the Gemini chat experience at gemini.google.com. The company says it has “enterprise-grade data protections” and copyright indemnification, so it won’t use your conversations for ads, AI training or data sharing. “By leveraging Gemini 1.0 Ultra, one of our largest AI models, we are able to provide insighul and expert responses to help people at work,” Aparna Pappu, General Manager and Vice President of Google Workspace, said in a blog post. “Now, diverse teams in SMBs to large enterprises can use Gemini in more sophisticated ways with confidence that their interactions can be kept private.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-duet-ai-for-businesses-is-now-called-gemini-too-150030242.html?src=rss

Thanks to today’s Nintendo Direct focused on third-party games, we now know the identity of two of the four Xbox titles that Microsoft pledged to release on “the other consoles.” One of them is Pentiment, which is coming to Nintendo Switch on February 22 (i.e. tomorrow). The other is multiplayer title Grounded, which will arrive on Switch on April 16.

Pentiment debuted on Xbox, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming in late 2022, and it was well received by critics. The RPG has an eye-catching historical art style that fits the story a small team at Obsidian wanted to tell. Still, it’s a bit of a niche game and one that game director Josh Sawyer admits would never have been possible without Game Pass.

“The old mentality of publishers and developers is generally focused on larger investments with higher [return on investment], and that’s not the point in this environment, in this ecosystem,” Sawyer told Waypoint Radio, as noted by Eurogamer. “[Game Pass] is the only way in which I conceive of [Pentiment] being viable.”

That makes it particularly intriguing that Xbox picked Pentiment as one of the four games it’s bringing to other consoles (it’s worth noting that the number of Game Pass subscribers hasn’t actually grown much over the last couple of years). Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said earlier this month the titles in question had all been on Xbox and PC for at least a year and that they had reached their “full potential” on those platforms. 

Two of the games are community-driven (i.e. multiplayer titles), and Grounded is clearly one of those. The Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-inspired survival game has been around for a few years. It debuted in early access in July 2020 before its full release in September 2022.

The other two games crossing the great divide are “smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives and all the fanfare that goes around that, but games that our teams really wanted to go build,” Spencer said. Pentiment more or less falls into that category and had been rumored as one of the games to hit Switch and/or PlayStation. The other two Xbox games expected to come to other consoles are Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/former-xbox-exclusive-pentiment-is-coming-to-switch-on-february-22-143345195.html?src=rss

Nintendo’s about to kick off its first event of the year with the Direct Partner Showcase focused on upcoming third-party games for Switch. We could see the first news about Xbox titles like Pentiment coming to other platforms and maybe, hopefully more about the much-delayed Hollow Knight sequel, Silksong. The 25-minute presentation kicks off at 9AM ET today (February 21) and you can watch it below.

As mentioned, today’s Direct could be more significant than a typical showcase. Last week, Microsoft announced that it would begin bringing some of its exclusive titles to “other consoles,” likely meaning the Switch and Sony’s PlayStation 5.

Microsoft didn’t elaborate much more than that, but rumors cite Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves and Grounded as likely first titles moving to other platforms. The only thing we know for certain, though, is that Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will remain Xbox exclusives for now. 

Apart from that, there are a few upcoming third-party games without release dates including Contra: Operation Galuga and Penny’s Big Breakaway, so Nintendo might give us more info about those. We’re also hoping to hear about Hollow Knight: Silksong which, last we heard in May 2023, was delayed and had no updated release window. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/watch-the-first-nintendo-direct-of-2024-here-at-9am-et-133026295.html?src=rss

Apple has today announced Sports, a new iPhone app offering real-time stats for a number of major leagues. Once installed, users can set their favorite team and get a trove of data on their lock screen in the live activities box when the team is playing. Available free from today in the US, Canada and the UK, the app presently supports Basketball, Hockey and Soccer Football. The company added that other sports, including Baseball and American Football will debut for their upcoming seasons.

There are plenty of reasons you might not be able to watch your team of choice play live. You may have a prior engagement, the game may not be televised, or Todd Boehly has done so much damage to the club you can’t bear to look at it any more. In those situations, push alerts from major sports apps has been a lifeline, but it’s not always entirely reliable.

Now, it has been possible to get this working since iOS 16, if you fancied messing around in the depths of the Apple TV app. And some third-party platforms, like MLB’s homegrown app, would put this data in your lock screen or Dynamic Island. But Apple says that its own setup offers a “simple and fast way to stay up to speed on the teams and leagues they love.” The setup will also sync up with any sports preferences already stored in the Apple TV or Apple News apps.

Of more concern is that Sports will also offer up live betting odds for the games as they’re in play. It’s worth noting it will be possible to deactivate the live odds feature in settings, but it seems like it would have been smarter and less potentially harmful to make that opt-in, rather than opt-out.

Apple Sports is available to download right now, with support for English, while French and Spanish are supported where available.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-sports-puts-real-time-scores-on-your-iphone-lock-screen-140050382.html?src=rss