Tag: technews

NASA has launched its latest Earth-monitoring mission, a satellite that studies the atmosphere and the oceans, as well as their relationship to climate change.

You can finally buy a graphics card thanks to falling GPU prices. Here’s how Nvidia, AMD, and Intel GPU pricing look in the first quarter of 2024.

If you’re looking to up your Tekken 8 game, it might be time to ditch your joystick and try a hitbox-style arcade controller.

With a few well-received games under its belt in recent months, Ubisoft will be looking to keep up its momentum into 2024 and beyond. The publisher may well be gearing up to host an Ubisoft Forward event in May, as that’s when it’s promised to reveal more details about several of its upcoming projects.

In the company’s latest earnings report, it said it will reveal the bulk of its lineup for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which runs through March 2025, in May. It will unveil more details about Star Wars Outlaws and a Japan-set Assassin’s Creed game codenamed “Red,” as well as free-to-play mobile titles The Division Resurgence and Rainbow Six Mobile. The latter will arrive roughly two years than first expected.

Ubisoft previously indicated that Outlaws, which is slated to be a truly open-world Star Wars game, is scheduled to arrive later this year. We can also now expect Assassin’s Creed Red (or whatever its official name is) to drop before April 2025 as well.

Meanwhile, there’s likely to be some news on the XDefiant front soon too. Ubisofot expects “a limited contribution from XDefiant” to its bottom line this quarter, so perhaps that’s when the free-to-play tactical shooter will arrive. Plus, after many, many delays, Ubisoft will at long last release Skull and Bones next week.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ubisoft-will-reveal-more-star-wars-outlaws-and-assassins-creed-red-details-in-may-184012158.html?src=rss

Microsoft’s post-acquisition layoffs at Activision Blizzard have already caught the FTC’s eye. Now we know more about which subsidiary studios will take the hit. First reported by the San Francisco Chronicle (via Eurogamer), California WARN notices list 86 upcoming scheduled layoffs at Skylanders maker Toys for Bob and 76 cuts at Call of Duty: Vanguard developer Sledgehammer Games.

California requires companies to notify the state of upcoming layoffs, thanks to a 1988 law mandating 60 days’ notice about staffing cuts (if they reach specific thresholds). The latest WARN alerts for Activision Blizzard report 86 upcoming cuts at an address in Novato, CA — matching Toys for Bob’s offices — effective March 30. In addition, the San Francisco Chronicle reports on a California state filing indicating Toys for Bob’s offices will close.

Toys for Bob is known for spearheading the “toys-to-life” concept, which Nintendo later embraced with its Amiibos. The Activision Blizzard subsidiary’s most successful projects include the Spyro the Dragon series, Skylanders and Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. The Gamer reported in late January that Toys for Bob would cut 40 percent of its staff, which would have only been around 35 jobs.

In addition, another 76 Activision Blizzard employees will lose their jobs (also on March 30) at an address in San Mateo, CA, matching the headquarters of Sledgehammer Games. The studio has developed or contributed to several Call of Duty games, including CoD: Modern Warfare 3 (2011), CoD: Advanced Warfare (2014), CoD: WWII (2017) and CoD: Vanguard (2021). The studio was founded in 2009. Insider Gaming reported in January that Sledgehammer Games would close its offices and go fully remote.

In late January, Microsoft said it would slash 1,900 jobs across its Xbox, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax (Bethesda) teams. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a complaint in a federal appeals court on Wednesday, arguing that the substantial round of layoffs “contradicts Microsoft’s representations in this proceeding.” The government agency asked for a temporary pause of Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition, which appeared all but locked up after the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority approved the $69 billion purchase in October.

An estimated 10,500 gaming industry workers fell victim to layoffs in 2023. We’ve already seen 6,000 more in 2024, only slightly over a month into the new year. It’s been part of a devastating year-plus of broader tech-industry layoffs.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-gaming-layoffs-include-86-jobs-at-skylanders-studio-toys-for-bob-182241293.html?src=rss

Octopath Traveler developer Acquire has been purchased by FromSoftware’s parent company, the Kadokawa Corporation, for an undisclosed sum. The Japanese conglomerate announced the acquisition in a quarterly earnings report published today, as revealed by Gamesindustry.biz.

The purchase makes Acquire a sister company to FromSoftware and Spike Chunsoft, among others. For the uninitiated, FromSoftware is the developer behind little known games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Spike Chunsoft is also no slouch, as it’s behind the Danganronpa and AI: The Somnium Files franchises.

Acquire has made many games beyond Octopath Traveler and its sequel, including No Heroes Allowed VR, Akiba’s Beat and Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed. Kadokawa said the purchase should help the company “generate synergies” with its “existing game-related subsidiaries.” We don’t know what that means, but hopefully it refers to a bizarre Octopath Traveler and Elden Ring crossover title.

Kadokawa also says the move will enhance its “line-up of console games.” This is true, as the original Octopath Traveler sold over three million copies and the sequel sold a million copies in just three months. Those are big numbers for JRPGs with old-school mechanics. The company hasn’t announced whether it’ll still rely on Square Enix for publishing future entries in the Octopath franchise, but with those sales numbers it’s a fairly safe bet.

Last year’s Octopath Traveler 2 arrived to mostly positive reviews, though we dinged it for the same reason many people took umbrage with the original. The eight storylines don’t intersect enough, making the whole thing seem kind of random and disconnected. Still, the games are gorgeous and manage to capitalize on nostalgia for retro gameplay mechanics. They “feel” like classic Square Enix RPGs, even if they struggle with some of the execution.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fromsoftwares-parent-company-has-acquired-acquire-the-studio-behind-octopath-traveler-175648777.html?src=rss

The Murena 2, a “deGoogled” smartphone with a kill switch, has finally launched in Europe. Billed as a privacy-centric disruptor to the Apple-Google mobile duopoly, the device is the second handset from French startup Murena.  One new addition to the Murena 2 is a physical privacy button, which instantly disables the microphone and camera. To reactivate them for a video call, users just need to flick the switch again. On the other side of the handset is another button — a disconnection switch. This disables all network activity and mutes the device, providing a “do not disturb” function that taps into growing…

This story continues at The Next Web

Germans love beer. They consume more of it than almost any other nation, and now they can get it delivered on all-electric trucks, too.  Swedish startup Einride has set up a fleet of five battery-electric trucks to transport beer between Heinken’s brewery in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, and its central warehouse in Duisburg on the other side of the German border — a distance of about 135km.  These Mercedes eActros 300 trucks will transport ten full truckloads a day. The daily range for each vehicle will be around 300 kilometres. Once back at the brewery, the freighters will recharge at…

This story continues at The Next Web