Disney will invest $1.5 billion in Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, the company announced on Wednesday. As part of the initiative, Disney and Epic Games will create a brand new “games and entertainment universe” over the next few years, Disney said in a statement.
“Our exciting new relationship with Epic Games will bring together Disneys beloved brands and franchises with the hugely popular Fortnite in a transformational new games an entertainment universe,” wrote Disney CEO Bob Iger in the statement. “This marks Disney’s biggest entry ever into the world of games and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion.”
Players will be able to “play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, and more” in the new entertainment universe, which will be powered by Epic’s flagship Unreal Engine. Disney currently uses Unreal Engine to produce movies, video games, and content used in Disney theme parks around the world. It has also partnered with Epic Games previously to bring characters from Marvel, Tron, and Star Wars to Fortnite.
Neither company disclosed how much the valuation of Epic Games, a private company, would be after Disney's investment. Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent currently owns 40 percent of Epic Games, while Sony owns just over 5 percent.
“[We] are collaborating on something entirely new to build a persistent, open and interoperable ecosystem that will bring together the Disney and Fortnite communities,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney in the statement. “Disney was one of the first companies to believe in the potential of bringing their worlds together with ours in Fortnite[.]”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/disney-is-investing-15-billion-in-epic-games-to-create-a-games-and-entertainment-universe-215015443.html?src=rss
Pickup campers, trailers, and pop-up tents all have one thing in common; they persuade an enthusiast to step out of their driving seat over into the camper of choice filled with most essential amenities for a few days on the road. In the list of exceptional options popping up by the day, a hunting blind manufacturer is putting the tried and tested high density EPE foam material into creating the HitchHiker.
HitchHiker is what its name portrays; a tiny camping solution that rides on the back of your truck or trailer to give you a well-insulated, ultra-lightweight sleeping pod to curl into when the sun goes down. This pick-up camper, as you would have realized, is not the usual one to hitch behind your truck, in fact, the 190-pound fully insulated, hard-walled bare-bones sleeper camper is made to be carried along for an overlanding experience.
Pennsylvania-based mobile shelter manufacturer, Tusca Outdoors, has designed the simple HitchHiker with one motive: to let the enthusiasts retire in it after a long day’s drive. The camper doesn’t intend to include a kitchen or a washing setup or a pop-out skylight – it ideally is an all-weather enclosed camper with a lockable single entry. Owning to its bare-bone construction and single-point simplicity, it is very affordably priced at $2,750.
The construction is ultra-insulated. The company notes it can be heated with body heat even in sub-zero temperatures. Even though it has an electric port on the outside, you can use it to connect an electric or propane heater. For the adventurer, the HitchHiker then does function as a teardrop camper in all four seasons. Measuring 90-inch by 58-inch, the camper is ultra-compact and can fit onto the bed of a 5×8 utility trailer. It can be secured on the pick-up bed with accompanying 2-inch ratchet straps.
As far as features of the HitchHiker interior go, it is made to accommodate a full-size bed (available separately), which can sleep up to two adults comfortably. To ensure the interior is fresh and lighted, the HitchHiker has been fashioned with screened windows on both sides and even has small vents to maintain ventilation when the windows are closed.
What really makes this portable camping pod a good company is the convenience with which you can haul it. With two people, you can pick and set it up on the truck bed or trailer. And when you want to use it as a toy hauler, HitchHiker can be used on a larger trailer (larger than a 5×8). You can station the camper right in front and have the ATV or a bike behind it. IF the HitchHiker gets you excited, Tusca is showing it at the Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Plan a trip this week!
A chair is probably one of the most important pieces of furniture in our home. We spend the majority of our day sitting on chairs, whether we’re working in our home office, enjoying a meal, or simply sitting and reading a book for leisure! Hence, a chair needs to not only be comfortable but ergonomic and aesthetic as well. And, a unique and innovative chair design that is made using super interesting materials is the Mat Chair by Normann Copenhagen.
Designers Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen teamed up with furniture brand Norman Copenhagen to create a collection of plant-based chairs, which were unveiled at Stockholm Design Week. The Mat furniture collection includes two unique chairs – one made from hemp, a type of cannabis plant, and one made from a combination of hemp and eelgrass – a marine plant much like seaweed. These intriguing biomaterials were used to replace injection-molded plastic, creating a shell chair supported by powder-coated steel legs.
In around 2008 Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen started to experiment and trial with the use of hemp. “Now, some 20 years later, the hemp material we have developed in collaboration with Normann Copenhagen is more responsible, a lot sturdier, and with a higher aesthetic appeal than any of the previous prototypes,” Hiort-Lorenzen said. “It’s a one-of-its-kind product.”
The chairs were created in collaboration with hemp specialists from the Danish Technological Institute. The shells are created from hemp stems instead of leaves, and the stems are sourced from farms that usually treat them as a waste product. The hemp fibers are combined with dried eelgrass to build the eelgrass chair. The milled hemp and eelgrass fibers are transformed into a sheet material and then shaped using a specially developed compression machine. The fibers are mixed with a “bico binder” to make the chairs easily recyclable.
“The idea of using a bio-based binder is appealing since it’s a natural material and would reduce the use of oil,” said Søren Stryhn Petersen, chief technology officer at Normann Copenhagen. “However, since the beginning of this project, it has been very important for us that the material we use can be recycled,” he concluded.
Threads is beginning to test a bookmarking feature to allow users to save posts, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri. The update is beginning as a “limited test,” but the “heavily requested” feature will eventually have a permanent place on the service, the company said.
According to screenshots shared by Meta, the “save” button on Threads will look very similar to Instagram’s version of the feature. Users will be able to access their bookmarked posts from the “save” section of the app’s settings.
While the ability to save posts may not seem like the most exciting update, it will help bring a little more organization to the app. threads currently lacks direct messaging, search filtering, lists and a number of other features often requested by power users looking to replace the functionality of Twitter (now known as X).
Threads recently introduced searchable tags, but Meta has so far resisted adding chronological search or trending features. Mosseri has said chronological search could be easily gamed by spammers, though an “internal prototype” of the feature was recently spotted in the wild. Meta employees have also been spotted sharing images of a feature that looks a lot like trending topics, though it’s unclear what the company’s plans for it may be.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the company “will continue listening to community feedback for ways to improve the Threads experience.” The app has climbed to 130 million monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg revealed last week. He has said that the app has the potential to be the company’s next billion-user service.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-threads-app-is-getting-a-bookmarking-feature-to-save-posts-194149279.html?src=rss
Insomniac Games has long-promised a New Game+ mode for its hit superhero sim Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and it’s arriving on March 7. The mode was supposed to drop at the tail-end of 2023, but was delayed until 2024. The forthcoming update won’t just be about New Game+, as Insomniac promises “new suits and more.”
We don’t exactly know what the mode will look like, as the developer urges players to keep an eye on its social media accounts “for a complete list of features closer to release.” However, we can glean some information from the New Game+ option that’s currently available for the original game. This mode lets players restart the story while holding on to items they found during the previous run. It’s possible the New Game+ for Spider-Man 2 will offer more than that, as the developer has advertised that “many more” features will soon arrive for the open-world web-slinging adventure.
The game also currently lacks audio descriptions, which is an accessibility feature intended for players who are blind or have low vision. This is coming, but we don’t know if it’ll be included with March’s update.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 lets you swap between protagonists Peter Parker and Miles Morales with the push of a button. It’s widely regarded as being the rare sequel that’s both bigger and better than the original. We admired the incredibly fun traversal mechanics, engaging open world and the game’s satisfying story. The PS5 exclusive quickly became the fastest-selling first-party title in PlayStation history, with more than 2.5 million copies sold in one day.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spider-man-2s-delayed-new-game-mode-is-coming-on-march-7-193543918.html?src=rss
Even NASA is not immune to layoffs. The agency says it's cutting around 530 employees from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California amid budget uncertainty. That's eight percent of the facility's workforce. JPL is laying off about 40 contractors too, just weeks after imposing a hiring freeze and canning 100 other contractors. Workers are being informed of their fates today.
"After exhausting all other measures to adjust to a lower budget from NASA, and in the absence of an FY24 appropriation from Congress, we have had to make the difficult decision to reduce the JPL workforce through layoffs," NASA said in a statement spotted by Gizmodo. "The impacts will occur across both technical and support areas of the Lab. These are painful but necessary adjustments that will enable us to adhere to our budget allocation while continuing our important work for NASA and our nation."
Uncertainty over the final budget that Congress will allocate to NASA for 2024 has played a major factor in the cuts. It's expected that the agency will receive around $300 million for Mars Sample Return (MSR), an ambitious mission in which NASA plans to launch a lander and orbiter to the red planet in 2028 and bring back soil. In its 2024 budget proposal, NASA requested just under $950 million for the project.
“While we still do not have an FY24 appropriation or the final word from Congress on our Mars Sample Return (MSR) budget allocation, we are now in a position where we must take further significant action to reduce our spending,” JPL Director Laurie Leshin wrote in a memo. "In the absence of an appropriation, and as much as we wish we didn’t need to take this action, we must now move forward to protect against even deeper cuts later were we to wait."
NASA has yet to provide a full cost estimate for MSR, though an independent report pegged the price at between $8 billion and $11 billion. In its proposed 2024 budget, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee ordered NASA to submit a year-by-year funding plan for MSR. If the agency does not do so, the subcommittee warned that the mission could be canceled.
That's despite MSR having enjoyed success so far. The Perseverance rover has dug up some soil samples that contain evidence of organic matter and would warrant closer analysis were NASA able to bring them back to Earth. The samples could help scientists learn more about Mars, such as whether the planet ever hosted life.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nasas-jet-propulsion-laboratory-is-laying-off-570-workers-185336632.html?src=rss
The Biden administration recently announced that it would be requiring large cryptocurrency mining operations to report electricity usage, via a press release from The Energy Information Administration. This follows concerns that the industry could pose a threat to the nation’s electricity grids and hasten the impacts of climate change.
To that end, the EIA has targeted 137 “identified commercial cryptocurrency miners” working in the US. These operations account for around 2.3 percent of national energy usage. This breaks down to 90 terawatt-hours per year, which is more than Finland, Belgium and Chile use in that same time period. The world’s crypto miners used as much electricity in 2023 as the entire country of Australia. That's a whole lot of energy for Shiba Inu-branded internet money with no practical application.
The data collection started this week. The survey aims to get a sense of the industry’s growing demands and which parts of the country are the biggest crypto hotbeds, so as to refine policy later on. The EIA has already discovered that nearly 38 percent of all bitcoin is mined in the US, which is up from 3.4 percent in 2020.
“As cryptocurrency mining has increased in the United States, concerns have grown about the energy-intensive nature of the business and its effects on the US electric power industry,” the EIA said in a report that offered further details behind the survey.
The EIA went on to note that large crypto mining operations could strain the electricity grid during peak periods, force higher energy prices for average consumers and negatively impact energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Most of the electricity generated throughout the world comes from burning fossil fuels, and that process releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The clean energy advocacy group RMI estimates that US cryptocurrency mines release 25 to 50 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. That’s around the same amount as the yearly diesel emissions from the US railroad industry.
The biggest mining operations in the country are scattered throughout 21 states, but largely clustered in Texas, Georgia and New York. This is especially dangerous for Texans, as the state’s energy grid is already notoriously fragile. Ben Hertz-Shargel, who leads energy research consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie, told Ars Technica that crypto mining operations are not only placing a higher burden on the state’s energy grid, but increasing prices for consumers.
Energy costs in Texas are based on real-time demand, so Hertz-Shargel estimates that state residents see an increase of 4.7 percent in their monthly utility bills due to cryptocurrency mining. He also said that mining operations tend to open up shop next to pre-existing renewable energy facilities, which draws clean power away from nearby homes and businesses.
It’s not all doom and gloom in the crypto world. Back in 2022, Ethereum announced a software update to make mining ether more eco-friendly. The Ethereum Foundation claims this reduces the carbon emissions of its mining operations by more than 99 percent. However, ether accounts for just 17 percent of the global cryptocurrency market share.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-biden-administration-now-requires-large-cryptocurrency-miners-to-report-their-energy-use-182831778.html?src=rss
It might be weird to see a new device call back to a time less than a decade ago. But tech moves fast and with the OnePlus 12, it feels like someone made a phone for the pre-AI era. Instead of magic editors and a bunch of machine learning, OnePlus’ latest flagship is incredibly simple. It has a nice screen, a solid build, reliable cameras, great performance and even better battery life. So while it won’t help you summarize a meeting or remaster a photo, the OP12 covers all the basics with aplomb. And with a starting price of $800 ($200 less than a similarly equipped S24+), it’s a great deal too.
Design and display: A old-school silhouette with modern specs
The shape of the OnePlus 12 seems to be inspired by older phones like the Galaxy S10+, featuring tapered edges and rounded corners. This makes the phone very comfortable to hold, the downside is that there is some distortion around the screen where it curves. Thankfully, OnePlus’ 6.8-inch 3,168 x 1440 panel looks so good you may not notice. It features a nominal peak brightness of 1,600 nits that can go all the way up to 4,500 nits in certain situations (like direct sunlight), so it never looks dull or washed out. The screen also supports a 120Hz variable refresh alongside a new 2,610Hz PWM (pulse width modulation) technique to help prevent the screen from flickering when set to very low brightness (under 70 nits).
Around back there’s a huge and somewhat ungainly camera module surrounded by a sheet of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 with a lovely matte finish. It’s more textured than your typical frosted glass but not as scratchy as the company’s old-school sandstone backs and it feels so good I would have a hard time covering it with a case. The OP12 also sports an IP65 rating for dust and water resistance, which isn’t quite as good as what you get from rival Samsung and Google phones. However, this is the highest rating ever on a OnePlus and it’s still more than enough to handle things like rain and splashes. And unlike most handsets these days, OnePlus included an IR blaster so you can easily adjust settings on your TV or soundbar without needing a dedicated remote.
Performance: Super speedy
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
While the OP12 may have a nostalgic design, its performance is as good as it gets for Android handsets. It features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip along with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. Despite some underwhelming benchmarks (which other outlets have also encountered), the phone feels incredibly fluid. Flipping between apps is super smooth while games load and play without a hint of stuttering. To help ensure frequently used apps are always at the ready, OnePlus has a memory optimization feature that can keep up to six apps suspended in the background for up to 72 hours, so you don’t need to reload your favorite game unnecessarily.
Cameras: Hasselblad’s bulky module delivers
The OP12’s triple-lens setup holds up well against the Galaxy S24 family with a 50-MP main cam, a 48-MP ultra-wide and a 64-MP telephoto camera. During the daytime, photos were bright and lively and I appreciate OnePlus’ more neutral white balance compared to Samsung’s warmer tones. At night, while images were just a touch softer and darker than comparison shots I took using the S24 Ultra, they weren’t far behind. Finally, using the 3x telephoto camera I managed to capture a very sharp picture of a squirrel despite its best efforts to dart away. Just make sure you disable the option to add a Hasselblad watermark to your photos the first time you launch the camera app.
Battery life and charging: The best yet
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
One of the best things about the OnePlus 12 is its battery life and charging speeds. On our local video rundown test, the phone’s 5,400 mAh cell lasted 26 hours and 40 minutes, which is the longest time we’ve seen on any handset. That’s more than two hours longer than the S24 Ultra (24:29) and a more than six hour improvement on last year’s OP11 (19:45).
OnePlus proprietary charging tech also delivers breakneck wired and wireless charging speeds. When using its included power brick and cable, the phone went from 10 to 55 percent battery in just 10 minutes. Alternatively, when placed on the company’s wireless pad (which is available separately for $50), the OP12 went from 10 to 37 percent battery in 10 minutes. To put that into context, when I performed the same test with the S24U, it only managed to go from 10 to 30 percent battery in 10 minutes using a Samsung charger and a compatible cable. Unfortunately, you’ll only get those speeds with OnePlus’ first-party accessories, so if you use standard USB-PD or Qi chargers, things are slower.
Wrap-up
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Compared to other big-name phones that are turning to AI to improve their capabilities, the OnePlus 12 is an uncomplicated device that combines good hardware with a solid build. It has a large, punchy display with great performance and unparalleled battery life. And while OnePlus does plan on adding AI features via future software updates, the 12 doesn’t need them to offer a compelling package. And with a starting price of $800, it’s $200 cheaper than an equivalent Galaxy S24+ and that’s before you consider OnePlus’ offer that knocks off another $100 with the trade-in of any phone, regardless of age or condition. In a world where smartphones are becoming increasingly complex, the OnePlus 12 is a straightforward alternative that handles all the most important things with ease.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/oneplus-12-review-a-no-nonsense-flagship-for-a-great-price-180050960.html?src=rss
The production pipeline for mainstream video games has always been hectic. The AAA factory is powered by rigid marketing plans and periods of soul-sucking crunch, and while this process has resulted in incredible games over the years, it's also been detrimental to developers' mental health and long-term job stability. Layoffs have long been baked into the video game industry, but in recent months, this trend has been running in overdrive, and it's happening at studios of all sizes.
This week's stories
Kojima Films
Hideo Kojima is partnering with Sony to build a new game that’s actually more like a movie. Of course, you could say this about any of Kojima’s games since Snatcher, but this time around, he’s doing the Hollywood thing on purpose. The new project is codenamed PHYSINT., and it’s a return to Kojima’s action-espionage roots, but it’s definitely not Metal Gear. Apparently it’s going to blur the boundaries between film and games, and it’ll take advantage of Sony’s connections in movies and music. Kojima Productions will start working on the new IP after finishing Death Stranding 2, which is set to come out in 2025. Kojima is also building OD, an Xbox movie — sorry, game — made in collaboration with horror director Jordan Peele.
Xbox on other platforms
It looks like Xbox is preparing to release some of its exclusive titles on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms. A handful of reports rolled out this week suggesting Starfield, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Sea of Thieves and Gears of War are all slated to hit PS5 or Switch in the near future. Xbox head Phil Spencer neither confirmed nor denied the reports, and instead teased an event next week that should clarify the studio’s multiplatform plans.
Layoffs in 2024
Both Sony and Microsoft have delivered their first showcases of 2024, highlighting all of the big, shiny games coming out soon, like Hellblade 2, Avowed, the Silent Hill 2 remake and Stellar Blade. The trailers for these titles are as vibrant as ever and the marketing beats are just as breathless — but, man, it’s really hard to get excited about video games right now. Rampant layoffs have cast a shadow over the industry, and even if 2024 turns out to be a banner year for video game debuts, it still feels shitty.
In the first month of 2024, an estimated 6,000 people in the video game industry lost their jobs. This figure is steadily climbing and it’s building on a rash of layoffs in 2023, when an estimated 10,500 video game jobs were cut. I don’t want to just drop these numbers without context — 2022 saw about 8,500 layoffs and this was considered terrible. 2023 eclipsed this total and, just six weeks in, 2024 is on track to do the same.
Here are some stats from January alone: Riot Games laid off 530 people, or about 11 percent of its workforce, and closed down its experimental publishing label. Devolver Digital laid off 28 people at Artificer, a team it purchased in 2021. Dead by Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive lost 45 people. Sega of America fired 61 workers. Microsoft laid off nearly 2,000 employees across Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Xbox the same week that it became a $3 trillion company. Unity plans to drop 1,800 employees by March, and this is on top of the 1,000 jobs that the studio eliminated in 2023. Embracer Group gutted the team behind Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and laid off 97 people at Eidos Montreal, canceling a new Deus Ex game in the process. The holding company already terminated about 1,000 jobs in 2023 and its restructuring efforts are expected to last until March.
Recent layoffs have affected studios of all sizes, and they’re happening even as the industry’s leading companies grow financially. If it sounds like I’m repeating myself, that’s because I am — I reported on the layoffs crisis at the end of last year, and things have only become more concerning in the first weeks of 2024. The video game industry received an influx of attention and cash during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and today’s layoffs are a response to a period of unchecked growth and corporate consolidation.
All of this instability provides an unsettling backdrop for the hype coming out of the video game industry this year. It’s tough to get excited about Xbox’s Avowed when we know people lost their jobs during production, and it’s hard to enjoy Devolver’s next edgy showcase when it just downsized a studio it didn’t need to buy in the first place.
At the same time, we’re seeing how unionization can help protect the people who make video games. Though dozens of people lost their jobs at Sega of America this year, the studio’s AEGIS-CWA union negotiated to save some roles and offer severance to temp workers. Unionization efforts have been on the rise since 2021, and the appeal of collective bargaining is only clarifying as the firing squads take aim.
Through our union efforts, we’ve been able to more than double the number of saved jobs, and to offer severance to our temp workers.
The futuristic action-RPG Stellar Blade is coming out on April 26, exclusive to PS5.
Dave the Diver, the pixelated non-indie game that somehow got nominated for Indie Game of the Year, is coming to PS4 and PS5 in April, and it’ll get Godzilla DLC in May.
Johanna Faries has replaced Mike Ybarra as the president of Blizzard. Ybarra quit during Microsoft’s downsizing in January, and Faries was previously the head of Call of Duty under Activision.
Now Playing
Now that I can actually talk about it, I want to say that Persona 3 Reload is absolutely delicious. The Morning After host Mat Smith wrote our review, go give it a read if you’re a freak like us.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/layoffs-are-sucking-the-joy-out-of-video-games--this-weeks-gaming-news-174541450.html?src=rss
One year after fully embracing generative AI chatbots, Microsoft is giving Copilot a fresh lick of paint. Copilot now has a more streamlined design on the web and in its mobile apps. The company says there's a cleaner look and feel for the chatbot's responses, while Copilot will display a carousel of suggested prompts to highlight what it can do.
The redesign comes just ahead of the Super Bowl. Microsoft is running an ad for the big game for the first time in four years. The commercial shows off Copilot (surprisingly enough) and some of the things users can do with the chatbot's mobile app.
Microsoft debuted the AI-powered Bing Chat a year ago today. The company says that so far, folks have taken part in 5 billion chats and generated 5 billion images through its various Copilot experiences. It notes that Copilot (which is now its catch-all branding for chatbots with "Bing Chat" being phased out) has helped it increase the market share of Bing and Edge, though perhaps not by as much as it would have hoped.
Meanwhile, Copilot now has more image-editing and creation options. Designer in Copilot (at least in some territories) now allows you to edit images you've generated without having to leave the chatbot. You can turn an image into pixel art or blur the background, for instance. Copilot Pro subscribers can resize images between landscape and square formats and regenerate them without having to exit the chat. Microsoft will also soon debut Designer GPT inside Copilot. It says this will provide users with "an immersive, dedicated canvas inside of Copilot where you can visualize your ideas."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-redesigns-copilot-for-the-web-and-mobile-173036164.html?src=rss
