Author Archives: Kris Holt

Amazon’s Echo Dot drops to just $28

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Not all connected speakers have a voice assistant built in. The Sonos One SL, for instance, doesn't have a microphone. So, if you want to use your voice to control such devices, you may need to pick up a secondary smart speaker, such as Amazon's Echo Dot. As luck would have it, that little Alexa-enabled device is on sale for $28. That's 44 percent off and just $5 more than the record-low price.

That's not to say the Echo Dot isn't a decent speaker in its own right. In fact, we think it's the best smart speaker under $50.

Amazon has been steadily improving the Dot's audio quality over the years and the most recent version from 2022 pumps out far louder and clearer audio than could be reasonably expected from a sub-$50 speaker. The globe-shaped speaker has some physical buttons, including ones for volume control and another that mutes/unmutes the microphone if you don't want Alexa to remain alert for voice commands at all times.

If you'd prefer to save a few extra bucks, you could instead opt for the Echo Pop. That Alexa-enabled speaker is currently half off at $20. The colorful speaker also has a mic mute switch. It could prove to be a handy bedside speaker for listening to podcasts or a sleep story when it's time to nod off.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-echo-dot-drops-to-just-28-162815137.html?src=rss

The Rogue Prince of Persia is delayed because Hades II is a juggernaut

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A Prince of Persia game from the studio behind Dead Cells was supposed to hit early access on PC on May 14. That’s no longer the case. Evil Empire says The Rogue Prince of Persia’s debut is delayed until later this month, and it’s because of a little game called Hades II.

Soon after a technical test wrapped up, Supergiant Games released Hades II into early access on Monday. It skyrocketed up the Steam charts and quickly reached a peak of 102,000 concurrent players. Evil Empire suggested that “everyone and their mom” is playing Hades II, including its own team, so it’s getting out of that game’s way. 

“While we have every confidence in The Rogue Prince of Persia, it’s not every day that a game in the same genre as you, which is one of the most anticipated upcoming games of 2024, will release into early access a week before you plan to do the same,” Evil Empire wrote on X. “We are not prideful enough to ignore the implications of that, and we truly believe that this short delay is the best decision for us and our early access journey.“

As it happens, the delay will also give Evil Empire some extra time to polish up The Rogue Prince of Persia. While the whole point of releasing a game in early access is to get feedback from players on a project that’s far from the finished article, developers still want their games to be in as good a shape as possible when the public goes hands on with them for the first time.

Evil Empire says it can “add even more cool things” and try to squish some bugs before the game’s debut. The team also has a bit more time to test and refine the “hefty” day one patch.

The new early access date for The Rogue Prince of Persia, which will cost $20, is May 27. However, Evil Empire somewhat jokingly suggested the release date may shift again if Hollow Knight: Silksong suddenly arrives in the meantime.

Getting out of Hades II’s way is a smart idea given the two games are both roguelikes. It’s nice to see Evil Empire being transparent about the reasons for the delay too. But there are a bunch of other indies that were released this week that reviewed well and have been overshadowed at least to some degree by that blockbuster sequel.

Another Crab’s Treasure (a cute spin on From Software's Soulslike format), PS1-style survival horror Crow Country, sci-fi title 1000xResist and adorable-looking adventure Little Kitty, Big City all debuted to strong reviews this week. So too did Animal Well, a Metroidvania about which the word “masterpiece” has been invoked by some reviewers (though that’s actually the number one best-selling game on Steam at the time of writing, just above Hades II).

The train doesn’t stop there as some other buzzed-about indies are arriving over the next couple of weeks, including Lorelei and The Laser Eyes (we’re very excited about that one) and Paper Trail. There’s another one coming next week that I’ve been playing and is worth checking out, though I can’t talk about it just yet.

Although there might not be too many AAA games from the likes of Sony, Microsoft and EA dropping at the minute, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff going on in the indie scene. So maybe go check some of those games out if you haven't already.

Update 5/13 11:42AM ET: Added pricing and the new early access release date for The Rogue Prince of Persia.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-rogue-prince-of-persia-is-delayed-because-hades-ii-is-a-juggernaut-144229150.html?src=rss

Dungeons and Dragons is coming to Dead by Daylight

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Dead by Daylight's next chapter isn't too far away and it's another crossover rather than an original creation. Behaviour Interactive likes to keep fans on their toes with some unexpected partnerships and the latest one is no exception. This time around, Dungeons and Dragons is entering the fog. It's a bit of a surprising turn as D&D isn't normally associated with horror, but there's enough connective tissue for it to make sense.

Behaviour revealed the crossover in a short teaser trailer with no further details about what to expect. It remains to be seen what the chapter will bring in terms of a killer, survivor and/or map. But you won't have to wait too long to find out.

The Dead by Daylight anniversary stream will take place on May 14, starting at 11AM ET (for what it's worth, a new player test build will go live that day). You can tune in to find out more details about the Dungeons and Dragons chapter as well as what's ahead for Dead by Daylight as a whole in the coming months. Perhaps we'll find out a bit more about the spinoff games that are in the works. And given Behaviour's track record, it may just have some other surprises in store...

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dungeons-and-dragons-is-coming-to-dead-by-daylight-161537165.html?src=rss

Asteroids and Resident Evil join the World Video Game Hall of Fame

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The Strong National Museum of Play has revealed this year's inductees into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Asteroids, Myst, Resident Evil, SimCity and Ultima have made the cut. While that means the likes of Guitar Hero, Metroid and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater miss out from the slate of finalists, it would be hard to make a case against any of the five inductees.

Games are selected for the hall of fame based on a number of criteria, including cultural impact and their influence on the industry. Asteroids absolutely fits the bill. The 1979 game was an enormous hit. Atari sold more than 70,000 arcade units, making Asteroids its best-selling coin-op machine. The home version on the Atari 2600 was very popular too. While the vector graphics were rudimentary, that didn't take away from the immensely satisfying gameplay loop of blowing up a ton of space rocks.

Slow-paced puzzle game Myst was also a big hit in the '90s, selling more than 6 million copies. Resident Evil is probably the most relevant name on the list for modern audiences. The series is still going strong nearly three decades after the original 1996 game popularized the survival horror genre.

Back in 1989, Maxis released a city builder game called SimCity. Its intricate systems of urban design and problem management spurred a bunch of sequels and inspired the creators of other real-time strategy games, such as Command & Conquer and Age of Empires. As for Ultima: The First Age of Darkness, that 1981 game is one of the foundations of the role-playing genre. The developers of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are among those who've cited it as an influence, as GamesBeat notes.

These five games are joining a whole bunch of other notable names in the World Video Game Hall of Fame, including last year's inductees The Last of Us, Wii Sports, Barbie Fashion Designer and Computer Space. The inductees are on permanent display at The Strong in Rochester, New York.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/asteroids-and-resident-evil-join-the-world-video-game-hall-of-fame-154647663.html?src=rss

Apple’s AirPods Max are $100 off and close to a record low

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Most headphones don't last forever, especially wireless ones as the battery life will inevitably dwindle. If you're ready for an upgrade and you're willing to splash a little cash, Apple's AirPods Max are worth considering. Those headphones are currently on sale at Amazon. The price has dropped by $100 to $450, putting it at just $20 above the lowest price we've seen for the cans to date. The offer applies to all colorways.

The price was one of our major drawbacks when we reviewed the AirPods Max back in 2020 so the sale mitigates that a bit. We gave the headphones a score of 84, with the audio quality and aesthetics proving to be major plus points.

We felt that the AirPods Max had great balanced sound and capable active noise cancellation (ANC). With both spatial audio and ANC enabled, we had no trouble getting 20 hours of use out of the headphones on a single charge, just as Apple pledged.

Given that it's been a few years since the AirPods Max debuted and the fact Apple is in the midst of switching out the Lightning charging port for a USB-C one across all of its devices, a new version of the headphones may be on the way. That may result in Apple bringing the price of the original model down even further to clear out the stock. That said, if you don't want to wait, this is a solid deal on a good set of headphones, particularly if you're already entrenched in the Apple ecosystem.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-airpods-max-are-100-off-and-close-to-a-record-low-143019278.html?src=rss

Ugh, Max subscription prices might be going up again

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Your cable streaming bill may be getting more expensive once again. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is reportedly planning another price increase for Max. Bloomberg didn't reveal how much WBD is expected to jack up the subscription by. The cheapest ad-free plan is currently $16 per month after a $1 increase in early 2023. WBD is said to be aiming for $1 billion in earnings from Max and Discovery+ next year.

We could find out about any Max price increase as soon as Thursday. That's when WBD will report its earnings for the first three months of the year.

The price increase may be on the way as part of WBD's seemingly never-ending cost-cutting drive. As part of that, more layoffs may be in the pipeline. Over the last year, the company has fired more than 2,000 people and eliminated their positions.

Very soon after WBD formed in 2022 following a merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery, CEO David Zazlav went into extreme costcutting mode as the company was saddled with over $50 billion in debt. The company quickly axed the just-launched CNN+, laid off staff, canceled projects, moved shows and movies from Max to ad-supported streaming services and shelved completed or nearly finished movies in favor of tax breaks.

Zazlav has reduced WBD's debt load by around $10 billion so far, according to Bloomberg. However, his decisions have infuriated creatives and many fans, such as those who are clamoring for the company to release the highly regarded live-action Looney Tunes film Coyote vs. Acme instead of canning it for a tax rebate.

Coincidentally, Variety on Wednesday published a list of media and tech CEOs' pay packages for 2023. Zazlav's compensation is said to have shot up by 26.5 percent to $49.7 million. That's around 290 times what the median WBD employee makes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ugh-max-subscription-prices-might-be-going-up-again-181332420.html?src=rss

FTX plans to refund defrauded customers with interest

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FTX has filed a plan with a bankruptcy court to pay back creditors who held cryptocurrency at the embattled exchange. The vast majority of customers are set to get their money back with interest, though they (and the debtors) missed out on major gains in the crypto market since FTX’s dramatic collapse in November 2022 — the price of Bitcoin has more than tripled since then.

FTX aims to fully pay back non-governmental creditors based on the value of their claims as determined by the bankruptcy court. That means 98 percent of creditors (those who have up to $50,000 in claims) will get 118 percent of the amount of their allowed claims. Other creditors will get their money back, plus what FTX describes as billions of dollars in compensation “for the time value of their investments.”

Government creditors are in line for payouts with a nine percent interest rate. The Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice are among the stakeholders with which FTX has agreed settlements.

The company suggests that, if its plan of reorganization is rubber stamped, it would be able to resolve disputes with private and government stakeholders “without costly and protracted litigation.” All told, FTX says that it will be able to distribute between $14.5 billion and $16.3 billion in cash.

But, you may be wondering, where exactly is all this money coming from? After all, when FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 17 months ago, it held just 0.1 percent of the Bitcoin and 1.2 percent of the Ethereum that its customers thought it had.

FTX said it was able to monetize “an extraordinarily diverse collection of assets, most of which were proprietary investments held by the Alamedaor FTX Ventures businesses, or litigation claims.” As TechCrunch reports, the assets that FTX CEO John J. Ray III and his team tracked down included around $8 billion in real estate, political donations and venture capital investments.

The company filed the updated plan of reorganization just a few weeks after co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (aka SBF) was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was found guilty in November of charges including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ftx-plans-to-refund-defrauded-customers-with-interest-143555536.html?src=rss

Apple’s 2023 iMac drops to a record-low price

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It's been a busy day of Apple news thanks to some new iPads, but the company has plenty of other M-series devices, including the iMac. Apple slotted M3 chips into its desktop computers late last year, and now the base version of the 2023 iMac is cheaper than ever. Thanks to a coupon at Amazon (make sure to clip it!), you can snap up an iMac with an M3 chip, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage for $1,149. The deal is available for the silver, pink, green and blue versions of the system.

A word of warning: while this is a decent deal on the surface, we do feel that the specs of the base 2023 iMac aren't quite up to scratch. It's difficult in this day and age to earnestly recommend a computer with just 8GB of RAM as apps become more and more demanding. That's why the iMac didn't score higher than 86 in our review.

On the plus side, the M3 chipset is very fast and the iMac's display remains terrific. Although this is a desktop system, it's lightweight, so it's not too difficult to move from one room to another or prop it up on something — the inability to adjust the screen vertically is a little disappointing.

There are some caveats to keep in mind here, but if you're looking for a nice, pretty new computer for relatively basic tasks (you're not going to be doing much gaming or video editing on a system with these specs) and don't mind splashing some cash, then this iMac might do the trick for you.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-2023-imac-drops-to-a-record-low-price-203841344.html?src=rss

The Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds are on sale for $160 right now

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Beats might have some new audio gear to blab about, but its older models are nothing to sniff at, especially when you can score solid deals on them. Take, for instance, the Beats Fit Pro. Those true wireless earbuds have dropped by $40 to $160. That matches the Black Friday price and it's just $10 more than the all-time low.

The Beats Fit Pro are our pick for the best workout headphones as well as our top choice for headphones for running. They're rated for IPX4 water resistance, which is always welcome to have while you're working up a sweat. They're comfortable to wear and have solid battery life (six hours plus an extra 21 hours from the charging case).

None of that would matter if the Beats Fit Pro sounded terrible, but they deliver great sound quality with the help of Adaptive EQ. Spatial audio is always a nice feature to have, while the active noise cancellation and transparency modes are solid. Multipoint connectivity is a plus too.

On the downside, we thought that the charging case felt cheap with a poor build quality. We also found it too easy to accidentally press the onboard controls. Still, if you're looking for a pair of earbuds for your workouts, you can't get much better than the Beats Fit Pro right now.

Elsewhere, the Beats Studio Pro are also on sale. At $180, they're effectively half off and just $10 more than the record low of $170.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-beats-fit-pro-wireless-earbuds-are-on-sale-for-160-right-now-190035110.html?src=rss

Disney+ will start showing some live sports from ESPN this year

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Some live sports and studio shows from ESPN will start appearing on Disney+ this year. Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors on an earnings call that this follows an encouraging start for Hulu programming on the company's namesake streaming service. 

"By the end of this calendar year, we will be adding an ESPN tile to Disney+, giving all US subscribers access to select live games and studio programming within the Disney+ app," Iger said. "We see this as a first step to bringing ESPN to Disney+ viewers, as we ready the launch of our enhanced standalone ESPN streaming service in the fall of 2025." Iger also noted that ESPN+ subscribers will also be able to access content from that service through the new Disney+ tile, so Disney bundle subscribers will more or less have everything in one app.

Iger didn't reveal exactly what sports Disney would make available to everyone on Disney+, but made it clear that it would only bring a “modest” amount of programming over from ESPN. The company is also working with Fox Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery on another sports streaming service that's slated to arrive later this year and will include games from the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA. 

Meanwhile, Disney+ just had its first profitable quarter in its four and a half years of existence. The service had been expected to lose $100 million in the first three months of 2024, but it actually posted a $47 million profit — surely aided by Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concert film debuting on the platform in March.

However, Disney's streaming business as a whole (which also includes Hulu and ESPN+) lost $18 million during the quarter. That's still a vast improvement over the $659 million that side of the business lost a year earlier as Disney edges toward overall profitability in streaming.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/disney-will-start-showing-some-live-sports-from-espn-this-year-173524610.html?src=rss