EA is releasing the remake of Dead Space on January 27th, 2023. Motive, the EA studio behind the game, made the announcement at the company’s Crafting the Tension Art Developer Livestream. The classic sci-fi horror survival game is being rebuilt from the ground up using EA’s Frostbite game engine and will be available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
The original Dead Space was released back in 2008 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC. Motive is upgrading its visuals and made its audio crisper for a more immersive experience on modern consoles. The studio remade all the in-game props, tools and environments for more modern hardware and platforms, and it used “dynamic, volumetric lighting with atmospheric and environmental VFX rendered in full-HDR” to capture the creepy atmosphere of the game.
In Dead Space, you play as engineer Isaac Clarke who’s on a routine mission to fix the mining starship USG Ishimura. What he didn’t know was the the ship’s crew had been slaughtered and infected, transforming them into creatures known as Necromorphs. To find his girlfriend who worked as a medical officer onboard, he has to fight these monsters while also grappling with his growing psychosis.
In addition to announcing the remake’s release date, the Motive team has also given us a look at the development of the game in the livestream. You can see how they incorporated lighting changes and new elements in the video below:
When it comes to retro portable gaming, even the better handhelds usually only emulate the original PlayStation and N64 era. But if you’re a fan of the GameCube or PS2 libraries (and you should be), the number of handhelds capable enough, well-made enough and reasonably priced enough is small.
Engadget
But here comes the Ayn Odin. Editor at Large James Trew has been intrigued by what seems to be a pretty cohesive handheld console, with similarities to the Switch Lite and Steam Deck. In many ways, it’s also very different.
The postal service started testing autonomous deliveries last year.
The UK’s Royal Mail wants to set up 50 drone routes over the next three years to make deliveries to remote communities. The first communities to benefit would be the Isles of Scilly (off the coast of Cornwall in South West England) and the Scottish islands of Shetland, Orkney and the Hebrides.
In April’s test flight, the service used a UAV to deliver mail to Unst, Britain’s most northerly inhabited island, from Tingwall Airport on Shetland’s largest island — a 50-mile flight each way. The twin-engine drone used in the tests can carry a payload of up to 100kg of mail.
Sony’s done it again with its over-ear flagship headphones. The fifth iteration of the WH-1000XM headphones is even more comfortable, sounds even better and will frustrate anyone who just grabbed its predecessor. They are a little more expensive, however. Check out the full review.
There are changes happening at the top of Twitter. CEO Parag Agrawal has fired the company’s General Manager of Consumer Products Kayvon Beykpour to “take the team in a different direction.” Beykpour, who’d been with the company for seven years, was on paternity leave at the time. Bruce Falck, the company’s general manager for revenue, is also leaving, the company confirmed.
The shakeup comes alongside a companywide pause on hiring as Twitter tries to cut costs.
A live-action Resident Evil series is coming to Netflix this summer, and the service has shared a teaser. The story takes place across two timelines and locations: a seemingly pristine New Raccoon City in the present day and a ruined version of London in 2036. You may recognize Albert Wesker from the myriad of games, movies and other spin-off media.
Project Cambria can bring a virtual workout instructor into a physical space.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave us a first proper look at the company’s next mixed-reality headset, codenamed Project Cambria, in action. You can watch Zuckerberg playing with and petting a virtual creature superimposed in the real world. The clip also shows a user in front of a virtual workstation before looking down at a notepad and writing on it. Mmm, working in a VR headset.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference will still mostly be virtual this year, but it’ll have a limited in-person event at Apple Park. The tech giant has started sending invites for the one-day special on June 6th, where attendees will be able to watch the keynote and other videos on-site.
Apple is expected to showcase iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, tvOS 16 and the next version of macOS during the conference. The company might also talk about its upcoming M2 chips for Macs and iPads.
Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is “temporarily on hold” pending confirmation that spam and fake accounts do represent less than 5 percent of users, he tweeted. Attached to the tweet was a Reuters link reporting that Twitter estimated in a regulatory filing that those types of accounts represented 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter of 2022.
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
It appears that Musk may have some concerns about those figures, judging by the tweet. It’s not clear what steps he and Twitter will take to verify them, however.
If you’ve been somehow disconnected from the internet (lucky you!), Musk is in the process of buying Twitter for $44 billion. He aims to quadruple the user base and has said he’ll defeat spam bots, authenticate all humans and make its algorithms open source, while also championing free speech and walking back content moderation. As part of that, he said he’d reverse the Twitter ban on Donald Trump and other users.
However, some experts on social media content moderation have said that those goals conflict with each other. Facebook’s former security chief Alex Stamos, for one, recently tweeted that Musk’s ideals for Twitter may conflict with European laws, pointing out that there’s “a large mismatch between the US and the UK’s Online Safety Bill and EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Acts.” Stamos also noted that Twitter is saturated in the developed world, so any growth “will require even more dealing with the challenges of autocracies and developing democracies.”
Update: 05/13/22 – 7:51am ET: Musk has since tweeted that he is still “committed to [the] acquisition.” Twitter shares are down 10 percent in pre-market at the time of this update.
Starlink’s internet service is now available in 32 countries around the world, the Elon Musk-owned company tweeted. Countries and regions marked on its map as “available,” including parts of Australia, Brazil, Chile, the US, Canada and most of Europe, can have their equipment shipped “immediately.” The service has steadily expanded since exiting beta last year, with availability in 12 countries as of September 2021 and 25 countries last February.
Starlink is now available in 32 countries around the world. People ordering from areas marked “available” will have their Starlink shipped immediately → https://t.co/slZbTmHdmlpic.twitter.com/CecM1pkf5D
Starlink’s map shows areas marked as “available” (light blue), “wait list” (medium blue) and “coming soon” (dark blue). The service has a potential near-global reach at latitudes below around 60 degrees north, but availability is granted on a country-by-country basis.
The kits recently rose in price and now cost $549 for reservation holders or $599 for new orders, and include a satellite antenna dish, a stand, a power supply and a WiFi router. Service prices also shot up from $99 to $110 per month. Users can also now add a portability feature, letting them take the kit while traveling, for an additional $25 per month fee.
The company is primarily targeting remote regions that can’t get connected otherwise, to start with. It offers very respectable speeds of 104.97/12.04 Mbps (download/upload) in the US as of Q4 2021, nearly up to fixed US internet speeds. In theory, speeds climb as the company adds more satellites and ground stations. Latency is slower than fixed broadband (40 compared to 14 milliseconds) but far better than other satellite options including HughesNet (729 milliseconds) and Viasat (627 milliseconds).
Starlink has not been without controversy. Astronomers have complained that the thousands of satellites in its constellation have interfered with Earth telescope observations, and the company recently lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm. In addition, Starlink’s license to operate in France was temporarily cancelled by the nation’s regulator ARCEP, with a final decision expected soon.
As workers at some of its Stores attempt to unionize, Apple is giving talking points to managers to tamp those efforts down, Vice has reported. It’s telling employees that they could lose career opportunities, personal time off and work flexibility, adding that the company will pay “less attention to merit” in union stores.
The scripts have been given to leaders at multiple Apple Stores, according to Vice. Managers have used the scripts during “downloads,” or employee meetings that start shifts. “There are a lot of things to consider. One is how a union could fundamentally change the way we work,” they reportedly read. “What makes a Store great is having a team that works together well. That can’t always happen when a union represents a Store’s team members.”
Employees of Apple’s Atlanta Cumberland Mall Store were the first to try to unionize, hoping to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA). They’ve complained about relatively low pay for their region, difficult working conditions and limited promotion opportunities.
“Everybody deserves the opportunity to be able to not worry about whether they can afford food or pay their bills. Everybody deserves to be able to afford to live in the city that they work in,” employee Elli Daniels told Engadget last month.
Apple didn’t respond directly to Vice about the report, but repeated a statement it has given before. “We are fortunate to have incredible retail team members and we deeply value everything they bring to Apple. We are pleased to offer very strong compensation and benefits for full time and part time employees, including health care, tuition reimbursement, new parental leave, paid family leave, annual stock grants and many other benefits,” it told Vice. Engadget has reached out for comment.
Apple has reportedly hired the same law firm Starbucks is using for its anti-union campaign and its talking point rhetoric resembles arguments used by Amazon and Starbucks during worker meetings. One Amazon union buster warned employees they could end up with lower pay after unionization, before walking that back under employee questioning.
However, research has shown that unions improve wages and benefits compared to non-union workers in the same industries, while also narrowing race and gender disparities, as Vice noted. The Atlanta union vote is set for next month, and other stores in Maryland and New York are also reportedly pursuing unionization bids.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference will still mostly be virtual this year, but it will hold an in-person event for a limited number of people at Apple Park. Now, the tech giant has started sending out invites for the one-day special on June 6th, where attendees will be able to watch the keynote and State of the Union videos on-site. While Apple’s last two developer conferences were pure online experiences due to the pandemic, it doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s offering a hybrid experience this time when its corporate employees have already started working in the company’s offices again at least once a week.
Members of the Apple Developer Program and Apple Developer Enterprise Program were given the chance to apply for invites from May 9th to May 11th. Apple said it will choose participants through a random selection process, and as you can see above, invitations aren’t transferrable. Chosen participants will have to RSVP by May 18th at 6PM PT/9PM ET, though, and their invite will be offered to another applicant if they fail to do so on time.
Apple is expected to showcase iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, tvOS 16 and the next version of macOS during the conference. The company might also talk about its upcoming M2 chips that it’s reportedly testing on at least nine new Mac models.
US Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) wants to establish a federal watchdog that would focus on overseeing digital platforms and tech giants. The lawmaker has introduced the Digital Platform Commission Act (PDF) in Congress in hopes of establishing a five-person federal body appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. They would be experts in relevant fields, including computer science, software development and technology policy.
The commission would be in charge of assuring “the fairness and safety of algorithms on digital platforms” as well as promoting competition. It would also have the authority to conduct investigations, impose penalties and to set new rules, such as those that ensure moderation transparency and the protection of consumers. The commission would create requirements for regular public risk assessments on the distribution of harmful content on digital platforms, as well.
Under the commission, a “Code Council” comprised of technologists and public interest experts will conjure up standards and policies that could be implemented. In addition, the commission will establish a research office with 20 dedicated employees to conduct internal research and coordinate with outside academics and experts.
As mentioned in the legislation’s announcement, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are in charge of overseeing digital platforms today. Bennett argues, however, that they lack the expert staff and tech-oriented culture necessary for robust oversight.
The Washington Post reports that Bennett’s motivation was his personal experience viewing disinformation as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as seeing how social media has affected his children. As the publication notes, though, it remains to be seen whether the legislation would be approved by the Senate, where Democrats have a 50-50 majority.
Spotify has promoted The Ringer’s Bill Simmons to a new role as head of global sports strategy, reported Deadline. Simmons has worked under the streaming service’s umbrella since it bought his sports and culture podcast network The Ringer back in 2020….
Fans of Alan Wake aren’t getting an update on the sequel this summer — but can look forward to a new TV series and a remastered version of the original game for the Switch. Remedy Entertainment’s creative director Sam Lake today revealed what’s in store for the franchise during the game’s 12th-anniversary celebration video. Switch owners can anticipate Alan Wake Remastered to be available on Nintendo’s eShop sometime this fall. The remastered original title is already available on the PS5, Xbox and PC.
The original 2010 Alan Wake game — which features a thriller novelist who tries to solve the mystery of his wife’s disappearance — has become a cult classic in recent years. Remedy and Microsoft Studios then released Alan Wake’s American Nightmare in 2012. Since then, the franchise has mostly been dormant, but that’s about to change.
Lake revealed that AMC bought the rights to the Alan Wake franchise and will be adapting it into a TV series. “We have been collaborating on making a TV show happen. Nothing more to share at the moment, but we will certainly let you know when there is something to announce,” said Lake.
Alan Wake 2, which many expected to preview this summer, is currently deep in the development stages. Unfortunately, Lake confirmed that the studio won’t be releasing any further updates on the game. It did release a number of stills from the upcoming sequel. As we’ve known for a while, the game is slated to arrive in 2023 for PS5 and other platforms.
“Everything [with Alan Wake 2] is going really well, and a great deal of the game is playable,” Lake said. “But we’ve been talking for the past couple of months and have come to a decision that we will not be showing anything big this summer,” said Lake.
Alan Wake devotees should watch the anniversary video in full, which also includes interesting behind-the-scene details about the remastered original and upcoming sequel. You can watch it below:
Arcane Studios has released the third major update for Deathloop, which adds a slew of accessibility features. There’s now an accessibility category in the options menu that includes the previously introduced settings (some of which have been upgraded) in addition to the new ones.
Players will be able to adjust various gameplay elements, though some settings will be limited to the single-player mode — i.e., when you play as Colt and Julianna is controlled by AI rather than an invading human. These include slowing down the game speed, adjusting the number of reprises (or lives) you have and making the combat easier or harder. There are more user interface options as well, such as the ability to change the color, size and opacity of some text and graphical elements.
In addition, players will, at long last, be able to navigate menus using the directional buttons instead of having to use a cursor. What a concept! If you prefer to use a cursor through, you can now adjust its movement speed.
NEW ACCESSIBILITY UPDATES IN #Deathloop!! – Game Speed – Difficulty options – You can change number of Reprises – New HUD and subtitle options – Easier menu navigation (using D-Pad and including changing cursor speed)
When Deathloop landed on PS5 and PC last September, it was widely acclaimed, with critics praising its well-constructed gameplay, art style, level design and story. However, accessibility advocates pointed out issues that made the game difficult for disabled players to enjoy, such as the text size, lack of a controller remapping option and low contrast. Hopefully, this update will address most, if not all, of their concerns.
“We are truly grateful to the players and the ally community who gave us so much feedback when Deathloop was released,” lead UI/UX designer Yoann Bazoge told the PlayStation Blog. “We took the time to read all of the accessibility reviews and watch the videos of players explaining why they couldn’t play Deathloop. We then worked on a document listing all of the feedback and drew up a roadmap of what the additions would be for Game Update 3.”
Meanwhile, Arcane has added another much-requested feature: photo mode. This will only be available in single-player mode and you’ll be able to use poses, filters and stickers. Players can switch between Colt and Julianna, and choose a different outfit or weapon to capture the exact shot they want.
