Sony is looking into ad-supported games now, too

Microsoft might not be the only console maker hoping to place more ads in games. Insidersources (sub. required) say Sony is testing an initiative that would sell and place ads in free-to-play PlayStation games through a private marketplace. This would include billboards and other environmental ads, but also character skins and similar collectible items.

Some details are reportedly in flux. Sony isn’t certain if it will take a slice of any ad revenue, the tipsters claimed, and it might instead ask studios to pay for data. The PS5 creator is apparently “strict” about screening the ad tech companies it works with, however, and won’t allow the collection of personal information like email addresses.

If accurate, the leak has Sony launching the PlayStation ad program by the end of 2022. We’ve asked the company for comment.

The rumor comes just a week after Microsoft was said to be planning a very similar strategy. The objective would be simple: the easier it is for developers to place in-game ads, the more likely they are to release free-to-play games. While that could irritate gamers who’d rather not see obvious product plugs, it could also help companies release free-to-play games that don’t rely quite as much on paid skins, season passes and other gated content.

Pixar’s new ‘Lightyear’ trailer portrays Buzz as a victim of relativity

Pixar has shared a second trailer for Lightyear, and the new clip sheds considerably more light on Buzz’s origin story. As it turns out, the explorer turned action figure is the victim of Einstein’s theory of relativity. When Lightyear conducts a “hyperspeed” test, he comes back 62 years later — many of the people and places he knows have changed. Naturally, it’s up to him to set things right.

While the trailer shows considerably more of the story, it still leaves some mysteries unanswered. It doesn’t show how Buzz becomes immortalized as a figurine in the Toy Story movies, or shed much light on other personas like Emperor Zurg.

The movie premieres in theaters on June 17th, with Chris Evans replacing Tim Allen as the voice of Buzz Lightyear. Sorry, folks, there won’t be a prompt Disney+ launch this time. If there’s anything that might coax people back into the real world, though, a spinoff of Pixar’s best-known franchise might do the trick.

Godzilla and King Kong are coming to ‘Call of Duty: Warzone’

Crossovers between gaming and other areas of entertainment are becoming more and more common. On the same day it emerged Wu-Tang Clan is coming to Fortnite(?), Activision Blizzard confirmed a long-rumored crossover for Call of Duty: Warzone. Godzilla and King Kong will arrive in the battle royale on May 11th.

The event is called Operation Monarch and it isn’t entirely clear just how exactly these movie monsters will fit into Warzone. However, a blog post notes that the event will introduce a new four-player Quads mode “based on several classic experiences with a titan-sized twist.”

Despite their militaristic vibes and settings, Warzone and the Call of Duty series at large aren’t exactly known for hyper-realism. They’ve long had zombie modes. Still, this seems like an odd crossover, especially given that the Godzilla vs. Kong movie came out over a year ago.

For $200, Best Buy will haul away your two biggest hunks of tech junk

Big box electronics retailer Best Buy announced the launch of a new appliance recycling program Thursday that will allow customers to have up to two large pieces (and an unlimited amount of small items) of unwanted tech hauled away for a $200 fee.

Best Buy already operates a number of consumer electronics recycling programs, with customers either dropping off items in-store for gift cards or paying a $30 to 50 fee to have their old appliances taken away when their Best Buy-bought replacements are delivered. This new Standalone Haul-Away service does not require any additional purchases and comes with a 20 percent discount to Best Buy TotalTech subscribers (a $200-a-year scheme that includes on-demand GeekSquad access). However Haul-Away is limited in what it can take. 

Customers can get rid of up to two (2) all-in-one computers, TVs, large appliances and refrigerators as well as as many hard drives, gaming consoles, laptops and un-regiftable immersion blenders as they are willing to part with. If you’re looking to offload old musical instruments, DVDs, software, or legacy formats, on the other hand, you’d best look elsewhere because Best Buy won’t take them. 

This will be the first US spacecraft to land on the Moon since Apollo

Astrobotic has finally offered a good look at the vehicle that will carry scientific payloads to the lunar surface. The company has revealed the finished version of the Peregrine Moon lander ahead of its launch in the fourth quarter of the year. It’s an externally simple design that resembles an upside-down pot, but that will be enough to carry 24 missions that include 11 NASA items, a Carnegie Mellon rover, private cargo and even “cultural messages” from Earth.

Peregrine is slightly over six feet tall and can hold up to 100 kilograms (about 220 pounds on Earth). More importantly for customers, it’s relatively cheap— it’ll cost $1.2 million per kilogram to ferry payloads to the Moon’s surface ($300,000 to orbit). That sounds expensive, but it’s a bargain compared to the cost of rocket launches. SpaceX is currently charging $67 million for each Falcon 9 launch, and that ‘only’ reaches Earth orbit.

The Astrobotic team still has to finish integrating payloads, conduct environmental testing and ship Peregrine to Cape Canaveral, where it will launch aboard a ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket. The payloads are already integrated into the flight decks, however.

The machine should make history if and when it’s successful. Peregrine is expected to be the first US spacecraft to (properly) land on the Moon since the Apollo program ended. Past missions like Lunar Prospector, LCROSS, GRAIL and LADEE all ended with deliberate crashes. Astrobotic’s effort won’t be quite as momentous as the crewed Artemis landing, but it will help mark humanity’s renewed interest in a lunar presence.

Amazon reportedly paid no income tax on $55 billion in European sales in 2021

Although Amazon’s main European business saw an increase in sales to around $55 billion last year, the company avoided paying income tax. It posted a loss of €1.16 billion euros ($1.26 billion) and it even received €1 billion in tax credits. According to filings obtained by Bloomberg, the credit was “mainly due to the use of net losses carried forward in accordance with the tax consolidation system.”

The Amazon EU Sarl unit is based in Luxembourg and reports revenue from its divisions in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Its sales increased by 17 percent in 2021.

“Across Europe, we pay corporate tax amounting to hundreds of millions of euros,” an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg. They said revenue, profit and tax are reported to local authorities in each country. The company said it posted a loss after opening more than 50 new sites across the continent last year.

Amazon has been the subject of criticism for years for tax breaks it receives and how it reports income. In 2017, the European Union slapped Amazon with a €250 million ($280 million) tax bill over alleged illegal state aid practices dating back to the early 2000s. Amazon successfully appealed the bill last year. The European Commission has filed an appeal against that decision in the European Court of Justice.

Sonos is reportedly releasing a $250 soundbar in June

Sonos isn’t exactly known for affordability, but the company has released a few more inexpensive products in recent years like the portable Roam speaker. Now, according to The Verge, Sonos is going to release its first budget soundbar in the first week of June. Apparently codenamed “Fury,” this product is expected to cost around $250, which makes it significantly cheaper than the $449 second-generation Beam (pictured above) and the $899 Arc.

As for what Sonos will leave out to hit this lower price point, the Fury won’t be able to output Dolby Atmos content like the Beam and Arc, and it may not even have an HDMI port; you’d hook it up to your TV with an optical audio cable. As such, it has fewer speaker drivers in it than other Sonos soundbars. It will be able to be part of a 5.1 surround sound setup using other compatible Sonos speakers — we presume that you can use speakers like the Sonos One as rear surrounds like you can with other Sonos soundbars. 

It sounds like Sonos will also skip including microphones for a voice assistant on this model to cut costs, like they did with the $159 Sonos Roam SL that was recently released.

One potentially intriguing feature is that Sonos will let the Fury work as rear surround speakers for a bigger soundbar like the Arc. As such, Sonos is apparently making vertical mounting stands for the Fury so that it can be used for Dolby Atmos content. 

There are plenty of budget soundbar options on the market from the likes of Vizio and Roku, while Sonos recently raised the prices on nearly all of its products. The original Beam sold for $399, but the new one costs $50 more, making for an even bigger gap between Sonos home theater options and those from more affordable competitors. As such, this is a pretty logical part of the market for Sonos to get into, and it’s not hard to imagine a $250 soundbar being a good product to get people into the company’s ecosystem. 

Sonos declined to comment on today’s leak.

Elektron’s Syntakt wants to be the only groovebox you’ll ever need

The Syntakt has been one of the worst kept secrets in the music world. But it wasn’t until today that the world finally got to see what Elektron’s latest groovebox is capable of. It combines the company’s legendary sequencer with four analog four analog synth tracks and 10 digital tracks. While the Syntakt is focused primarily on percussion, it’s capable of handling bass and melody as well. And, if you’re not happy with the internal synth sounds, you can control external gear by switching any of the 12 tracks to be MIDI. Those MIDI tracks by the way are four-note polyphonic

The Syntakt takes an everything and the kitchen sink approach, and borrows a bit of its sound design workflow from previous Elektron instruments like the Machinedrum and Model:Cycles. It starts by selecting a “machine,” of which there are 37 spread across the three different core types of synthesis. There are 10 digital synths, 15 analog drum, and 12 analog cymbal machines. Each one is designed to do a specific thing, just like on the Cycles, but the level of control offered here is far greater. 

Each engine also has a specific set of effects and parameters associated with it. The digital tracks each have a digital overdrive, a digital multimode filter and a digital base width filter, in addition to a pair of LFOs. While the analog tracks each have an analog overdrive, an analog multimode filter and a pair of LFOs. There’s also an FX track where you can automate an analog overdrive, an analog multimode filter, as well as digital reverb and delay. 

In addition to controlling external gear with the Syntakt’s MIDI channels, you can also feed external audio through its master effects, allowing you to treat it as both a master sequencer and a mixer — it can be the brains of an entire performance setup.

The entire thing lives inside the same chassis Elektron uses for its Digitakt and Digitone instruments, which means it’s small and portable(ish), but also quite rugged. It weighs just 3.6lbs, but is housed in steel casing.

Of course, all that power and roadworthiness doesn’t come cheap. The Syntakt is available now in limited quantities from Elektron and to preorder from select retailers for $999.

Sheryl Sandberg reportedly used Facebook resources to help embattled Activision CEO

Meta is reportedly investigating whether Sheryl Sandberg broke company rules in her dealings with a publication that was reporting on Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who she was dating at the time. According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the Meta COO used company resources to help kill negative reporting about Kotick. Meta is now reportedly conducting a “review” of her actions and “whether she violated the company’s rules.”

According to the report, the British tabloid MailOnline was pursuing a story based on allegations made by a former girlfriend of Kotick’s, and a temporary restraining order she had received against him. But Sandberg and Kotick worked together on two separate occasions, in 2016 and in 2019, to strategize on how to “persuade the Daily Mail not to report on the restraining order.”

The report states that Facebook and Activision staff were both directly involved in the effort, and that there was concern internally at Facebook that the story would “reflect negatively on her reputation as an advocate for women.”

The Wall Street Journal report also questions whether Sandberg inappropriately wielded her influence as Facebook COO in her dealings with the MailOnline management. One of the paper’s unnamed sources states that Kotick “told people that Ms. Sandberg threatened the Mail in 2016 by saying that such an article, if published, could damage the news organization’s business relationship with Facebook.”

In a statement, a Meta spokesperson denied Sandberg had “threatened” MailOnline. “Sheryl Sandberg never threatened the MailOnline’s business relationship with Facebook in order to influence an editorial decision,” the spokesperson said. “This story attempts to make connections that don’t exist.” Kotick told The Journal he “never said anything like that.”

The MailOnline never published its story on Kotick, who has recently faced scrutiny over his handling of allegations of sexual harassment and other misconduct at Activision. The company was acquired by Microsoft for $68.7 billion in January.

In a statement, Activision’s board of directors said that it had done a “thorough investigation” into “an incident in 2014,” and that they have “full confidence in Mr. Kotick’s leadership.” 

“The Board has been aware of the circumstances reported involving an incident in 2014. Around the time of the incident in 2014 , Mr. Kotick notified the senior Independent Director of the Board, has subsequently updated the full Board and has been fully transparent with the Board. The Board, through its counsel Skadden Arps, has done a thorough examination of the facts and circumstances of the events, satisfied itself that there was no merit to the allegations, and notes that they concern a personal relationship that has nothing to do with the business of the Company. The Board continues to have full confidence in Mr. Kotick’s leadership and his ability to run the Company.”

FAA revokes YouTuber’s pilot license, saying he deliberately crashed his plane

On November 21st, Trevor Jacob’s single-engine airplane fell out of the sky — a harrowing experience that the YouTuber just so happened to catch on film and upload to social media. In January, aviation experts began investigating the incident (as they are wont to do in the event of most every aviation crash) and, on Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration formally accused Jacob of staging the entire incident and intentionally crashing his 1940 Taylorcraft for online clout.

At the time, Jacob, a former Olympic snowboarder, claimed that his plane had malfunctioned, forcing him to bail out and parachute to safely while the aircraft crashed into the Los Padres National Forest in Southern California. However, in a letter dated April 11th, the FAA informed him that he had operated his plane in a “careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another,” a violation of aviation regulations. The FAA also revoked his pilot’s license effective immediately.

When reached by the New York Times this week, Jacob claimed to not be aware of the April 11th letter but declined to comment, on advice of his attorney. Although the FAA can’t actually prosecute anybody for violating regulations, should Jacob fail to surrender his pilot’s license he can be held liable for “further legal enforcement action” and fined up to $1,644 a day until he does.