Ubisoft released its long-delayed sports game Roller Champions last month on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, and Nintendo Switch players are about to join the fray. A UK eShop listing spotted by Nintendo Life first indicated the free-to-play title will be released on the hybrid console on June 21st. The publisher announced a new season, called Disco Fever, will start on the same day and it mentioned that the game will be available on Switch and the Epic Games Store.
However, Roller Champions isn't listed on either platform's storefront in North America at the time of writing. It is available to download from the New Zealand eShop, though. I snagged the game from there, but haven't been able to log in. The Switch servers may not be online just yet. Engadget has contacted Ubisoft for details of the rollout.
When Ubisoft announced the PC, PlayStation and Xbox release date, it said a Switch version was on the way, along with Stadia and Amazon Luna editions. It seems Roller Champions will arrive on those cloud gaming platforms later.
In any case, the roller-derby-with-a-ball game will have stiff competition on the free-to-play front this week. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout will also arrive on Switch, Xbox and the Epic Store on June 21st as it becomes a free title.
Plastic food wraps might not be a bane to the environment for much longer. Rutgers University and Harvard University researchers have developed a plant-based coating that would be greener and safer than plastic packaging. The approach "sprays" fibers based on biopolymer and polysaccharide (the most common carbohydrate in food) that wrap around your food. The resulting protection is strong enough to protect against bruising, and includes natural antimicrobial agents (citric acid, nisin and thyme oil) that can fight harmful bacteria and viruses in addition to preventing spoilage.
In tests, the coating extended the shelf life of avocados about 50 percent. It takes just three days to biodegrade, and you can rinse the coating off with water. Scientists even envision turning the fibers into sensors that could activate to kill bacteria.
There's no mention of near-term plans to put this spray-on wrap replacement into production. It could be a long while before you're picking up bread or fruit with eco-friendly protection. Still, it may be just a matter of time before this technology reaches your grocery store. The coating could reduce the load on landfills, limit the spread of microplastics and minimize food waste.
It might not be the full-on Direct fans have been hoping for and expecting, but Nintendo will host its next showcase on June 22nd at 10AM ET. The stream will focus on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and will feature around 20 minutes of details on the long-awaited sequel.
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) June 20, 2022
Nintendo previously planned to release Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in September, but it brought the action RPG forward to July 29th. Splatoon 3 now has that September slot. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes place after the events of the previous two mainline games, though it has a new cast of characters. This time around, developer Monolith Soft is bumping up the number of party members from three to seven.
As Sony occasionally does with its State of Play series, Nintendo sometimes holds a Direct that's dedicated to one game or franchise, such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or Pokémon. Nintendo opted not to run a full Direct — which typically includes looks at a variety of first- and third-party games — around the time E3 would have taken place. However, reports suggest a full-fledged Direct is coming next week.
Meta wants to make it clear it's not giving up on high-end VR experiences yet. So, in a rare move, the company is spilling the beans on several VR headset prototypes at once. The goal, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is to eventually craft something that could pass the "visual Turing Test," or the point where virtual reality is practically indistinguishable from the real world. That's the Holy Grail for VR enthusiasts, but for Meta's critics, it's another troubling sign that the company wants to own reality (even if Zuckerberg says he doesn't want to completely own the metaverse).
As explained by Zuckerberg and Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist of Meta's Reality Labs, creating the perfect VR headset involves perfecting four basic concepts. First, they need to reach a high resolution so you can have 20/20 VR vision (with no need for prescription glasses). Additionally, headsets need variable focal depth and eye tracking, so you can easily focus on nearby and far away objects; as well as, fix optical distortions inherent in current lenses. Finally, Meta needs to bring HDR, or high dynamic range, into headsets to deliver more realistic brightness, shadows and color depth. (More so than resolution, HDR is a major reason why modern TVs and computer monitors look better than LCDs from a decade ago.)
Meta
And of course, the company needs to wrap all of these concepts into a headset that's light and easy to wear. In 2020, Facebook Reality Labs showed off a pair of concept VR glasses using holographic lenses , which looked like over-sized sunglasses. Building on that original concept, the company revealed Holocake 2 today (above), its thinnest VR headset yet. It looks more traditional than the original pair, but notably Zuckerberg says it's a fully functional prototype that can play any VR game while tethered to a PC.
"Displays that match the full capacity of human vision are going to unlock some really important things," Zuckerberg said in a media briefing. "The first is a realistic sense of presence, and that's the feeling of being with someone or in some place as if you're physically there. And given our focus on helping people connect, you can see why this is such a big deal." He described testing photorealistic avatars in a mixed reality environment, where his VR companion looked like it was standing right beside him. While "presence" may seem like an esoteric term these days, it's easier to understand once headsets can realistically connect you to remote friends, family and colleagues.
Meta's upcoming Cambria headset appears to be a small step towards achieving true VR presence, the brief glimpses we've seen at its technology makes it seem like a small upgrade from the Oculus Quest 2. While admitting the perfect headset is far off, Zuckerberg showed off prototypes that demonstrated how much progress Meta's Reality Labs has made so far.
Meta
There's "Butterscotch" (above), which can display near retinal resolution, allowing you to read the bottom line of an eye test in VR. To achieve that, the Reality Labs engineers had to cut the Quest 2's field of view in half, a compromise that definitely wouldn't work in a finished product. The Starburst HDR prototype looks even wilder: It's a bundle of wires, fans and other electronics that can produce up to 20,000 nits of brightness. That's a huge leap from the Quest 2's 100 nits, and it's even leagues ahead of super-bright Mini-LED displays we're seeing today. (My eyes are watering at the thought of putting that much light close to my face.) Starburst is too large and unwieldy to strap onto your head, so researchers have to peer into it like a pair of binoculars.
Meta
While the Holocake 2 appears to be Meta's most polished prototype yet, it doesn't wrap in all of the technology mentioned above. That's the goal of the upcoming Mirror Lake concept (above), which will offer holographic lenses, HDR, mechanical varifocal lenses and eye tracking. There's no working model yet, but it's a decent glimpse at what Meta is aiming for several years down the road. It looks like a pair of high-tech ski goggles, so it's not as seamless as AR
It’s a weird year for video games. We’re 19 months into a fresh console cycle and support for the PS4 and Xbox One is finally tapering off as developers shift focus to the PS5, Xbox Series X and PC cloud gaming platforms. The pandemic slowed or paused development on a generation of games, and studios of all sizes are being absorbed by the biggest names in the room. The industry is in flux and the rest of the year reflects this instability. Put simply, there aren’t a lot of huge games coming out in the second half of 2022.
Right now, the video game space is made up of delays, big promises and more delays. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to look forward to — between indie and AA developers, cloud libraries and mobile games from Netflix of all companies, this period of transition will still be packed with plenty of things to play.
The 2022 holiday release calendar definitely looks thinner than it did a few months ago, but the first half of the year was fairly busy with games like Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Gran Turismo 7, Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. And those are just the well-funded releases with big, shiny ads — the year has also been good for indie and AA titles like Neon White, The Quarry, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Sifu, Tunic, OlliOlli World and Salt and Sacrifice already available. The summer’s peppered with even more small but fantastic-looking games, like the cyberpunk cat simulator Stray, Sam Barlow’s Immortality and the wildly anticipated Cuphead DLC, all due out by the end of July.
Studio MDHR
Weirdly enough, Netflix is also helping to fill in the gaps with a new push into mobile gaming, and its latest titles are a treat. Poinpy, the new game from the creator of Downwell, is particularly addictive. Netflix is also publishing the next titles from the studios behind Monument Valley and Alto’s Odyssey, and all of them are free, without ads or microtransactions, as long as you have an active Netflix subscription.
On top of all that, mid-tier publishers like Devolver and Annapurna have a steady stream of strange, high-quality games coming out at all times. And, of course, there’s Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus Premium, NVIDIA’s GeForce Now and even Google Stadia — cloud-gaming services that bring hundreds of classic and new titles to essentially any device with a screen.
ustwo
So, yeah, there are plenty of fresh games heading our way this year; it’s just that there won’t be many AAA blockbusters out of Microsoft or Sony. Whether we like it or not, these studios set the pace of the industry, and gaps in their release schedules can make it feel like development has stagnated across the board. And right now, there are a lot of AAA gaps. What makes it worse is the fact that Microsoft and Sony have announced and then abandoned multiple huge projects over the past few years, giving all of us something concrete to miss in every showcase.
In late 2019 and 2020, Microsoft announced massive games including Fable, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Everwild, Avowed and Outer Worlds 2, and it hasn’t said much more about these projects since. On top of that, there’s everything going on at Bethesda, the largest brand under the Xbox Game Studios banner. Bethesda’s shiny new sci-fi RPG, Starfield, was delayed out of 2022 earlier this year alongside Arkane’s online vampire shooter, Redfall. Meanwhile, it looks like Elder Scrolls 6 has at least five more years left in development, and Fallout 5 may not come out until the next console generation. The biggest Xbox exclusives still landing this year are High on Life, As Dusk Falls and Pentiment, three mid-sized games, two of which were literally announced this month.
Sony is in a similar situation. It has more AAA exclusives hitting the market in the second half of this year than Microsoft, with Forspoken, God of War Ragnarok and The Last of Us remake on the calendar, but there are still plenty of unknowns in the PlayStation lineup. Final Fantasy XVI was a highlight of the PS5 announcement stream in 2020, but we just got a release window of summer 2023 for that one. There’s been zero to little information about other games Sony’s had in the works for years, including Wolverine, the Knights of the Old Republic remake and Spider-Man 2. A standalone multiplayer mode for The Last of Us is still MIA, and we’ve yet to get details on the “multiple game projects” that Naughty Dog is also working on.
There are a couple of big cross-platform games due to come out this holiday season, including Hogwarts Legacy and The Callisto Protocol, but fanfare for these titles has been fairly muted so far.
As for Nintendo, it’s playing by its own rules, as always, and it has Splatoon 3 and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet on the roster this year, plus whatever it announces during its next Direct showcase. It has its own troubles of course — Breath of the Wild 2 was pushed back to 2023, and then there’s Metroid Prime 4, which was announced in 2017 and… yeah.
Nintendo
The sense of insufficiency in the industry this year is the result of the console makers announcing things too early, with too much fanfare and too many impossible release windows. Of course the pandemic didn’t help, but as it stands, these studios promised the world and then went quiet on multiple massive franchises, and the silence is particularly deafening as we enter an anemic six months of AAA releases. Thankfully, there are so many amazing indie games available right now and coming later in 2022, and between cloud, mobile and PC services, there are more ways to play these titles than ever.
As Jonathan Blow would say, time is a construct anyway, and thinking of life in terms of weeks, months and years is a futile effort to logically contain chaos. Long story short, there’s a lot to look forward to in the video game universe. It may not all be coming this year — or the next, or the next — but with more games to play on more platforms than ever, we should all be plenty entertained.
Google has been trying to nudge Apple into adopting the GSMA’s RCS messaging protocol, from not-so-subtle jabs at I/O 2022 to lengthy Twitter threads from the head of Android. The latest tool from the makers of Android? Drake lyrics.
The official Android Twitter account shared an “unofficial lyric explainer video” for “Texts Go Green,” the third song from Drake’s latest album. Both the title and chorus refer to what happens when an iPhone user blocks someone from contacting them through iMessage, which defaults messages to SMS and loses features like read receipts.
Swiftly demolishing any cultural cachet by referencing lyrics from a recent Drake song, the Twitter account calls it “a real banger.” And I close my Twitter app.
Meta is launching an Avatars Store for digital fashion.
Meta is opening an Avatars Store where you can purchase outfits for your avatar on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. The new looks include designer duds from Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne, and the company expects to add more designers over time. Zuckerberg and Eva Chen, Meta’s VP of fashion partnerships, announced the new store on Instagram Live, calling it the “first live avatar fashion show.” The “fashion show” consisted of Chen holding up paper drawings of Zuckerberg’s avatar wearing increasingly questionable, if metaverse-ready, outfits.
Europe wouldn't be alone in trying to cut e-waste.
US senators Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, calling on her department to develop a "comprehensive strategy" that would lead to a common charging standard. The EU acted in the "public interest" by settling on one port, the senators said, and the US ought to follow suit to reduce the environmental impact of chargers while improving convenience for users. A charger standard would theoretically reduce e-waste by letting people reuse existing cables and adapters for new devices.
Two weeks after release, Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal has earned approximately $24 million according to Appmagic. The analytics firm said the free-to-play game had already been downloaded almost 8.5 million times. Will this inform the rest of the Diablo gaming universe? Possibly not. Diablo franchise general manager Rod Fergusson recently said Diablo IV would feature a different monetization system from Immortal.
The middle of the smartphone road has amazing options that balance price and features. These days, you still get incredible cameras, vivid screens and decent battery life. But there are so many, so where do you start? How about this guide?
If you’ve laid hands on a retro analog TV, have the restoration bug, and you plan to make the final project at least somewhat period-correct, you face a bit of a conundrum: what are you going to watch? Sure, you can serve up just about any content digitally these days, but some programs just don’t feel right on an old TV. And even if you do get suitably retro programming, streaming isn’t quite the same as the experience of tuning your way through the somewhat meager selections as we did back in the analog days.
But don’t worry — this Raspberry Pi TV simulator can make your streaming experience just like the analog TV experience of yore. It comes to us from [Rodrigo], who found a slightly abused 5″ black-and-white portable TV that was just right for the modification. The battery compartment underneath the set made the perfect place to mount a Pi, which takes care of streaming a variety of old movies and shorts. The position of the original tuning potentiometer is read by an Arduino, which tells the Pi which “channel” you’re currently tuned to.
Composite video is fed from the Pi’s output right into the TV’s video input, and the image quality is just about what you’d expect. But for our money, the thing that really sells this is the use of a relay to switch the TV’s tuner back into the circuit for a short bit between channel changes. This gives a realistic burst of static and snow, just like we endured in the old days. Hats off to [Rodrigo] for capturing everything that was awful about TV back in the day — Mesa of Lost Women, indeed! — but still managing to make it look good.
Samsung has a new lineup of value-oriented monitors for content creators called ViewFinity S8, it announced. The 27- and 32-inch IPS LCD models offer features like 4K 3,840 x 2,160 resolution, accurate colors, a matte finish and professional factory calibration. Better still, the prices appear to be well under $1,000.
The ViewFinity name promises "pinpoint accuracy and consistency" for designers, artists and professionals, Samsung said. To that end, both models offer 98 percent DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, up to a billion colors (probably using 8-bit + FRC and not true 10-bit panels), Pantone validation for accurate colors, and factory calibration. The 32-inch model is certified to VESA's DisplayHDR 600 category so should be bright enough for some HDR work, while the 27-inch model conforms to the more limited VESA DisplayHDR 400 category.
They offer height, tilt and swivel adjustment, along with easy VESA wall mount installation. The IPS panel allows for good brightness even at acute viewing angles, while the matte finish helps reduce reflections. That means a monitor hood isn't needed, Samsung says, which also makes the ViewFinity S8 lineup more practical for vertical screen rotation (portrait mode).
The displays also function as all-in-one docks for desktops or laptops. You can power a phone, tablet or laptop with up to 90 watts of USB-C power delivery, and also get data transfers and even ethernet over USB-C. It also supports intelligent eye care, adaptive picture for optimized quality in any viewing environment, eye saver mode and flicker free technology.
The ViewFinity S8 models will arrive globally by the end of June, with specific dates depending on the region. Samsung didn't announce US prices yet, but the 32-inch model is priced at 820,000 won in Korea ($634), while the 27-inch model is 720,000 won ($557).
Telegram has launched its paid $5 per month Premium subscription tier first revealed last month, it announced in a detailed blog post. Some of the notable features include a larger maximum file upload size, faster downloads, more channels and unique new stickers.
The current limit on file size uploads is 2GB, but Premium users can send files up to 4GB in size, handy for folks who send a lot of video or large ZIP files (all users can download those extra-large documents). Paid users will also be able to download media and files at their full network speeds, rather than seeing restricted speeds.
The Premium plan also doubles limits, letting you follow up to 1,000 channels, create up to 20 chat folders with 200 chats each, add a fourth account to any Telegram app, pin 10 chats and save up to 10 favorite stickers. And users will get unique stickers with full-screen animations visible to all users, along with unique reactions.
Other features include voice-to-text transcriptions, chat management, longer bios, animated profile pictures, more characters for media captions, 400 favorite GIFs, up to 20 public t.me links, premium badges and app icons and an ad-free experience.
Telegram also announced that it became one of the top give downloaded apps worldwide in 2022 and now has 700 million monthly active users. It also unveiled several new features for all users, including verification badges for public figures and organizations, join request for public groups, improved bots, improved chat previews on Android, improved external sharing on iOS and more. The update is rolling out gradually, so if you don't see it now, "the new version will become available soon," Telegram wrote.
Digi-Key Earned 25 Awards from its Suppliers During the 2022 EDS Leadership Summit
Digi-Key Electronics has announced that it has been awarded 25 recognitions from its suppliers during the 2022 EDS Leadership Summit, held May 10-13 in Las Vegas. Digi-Key was recognized for its sales results, customer service, breadth of product, digital presence, and more during the past year. Additionally, Abracon recognized Jason Simoneau, director of passives, at Digi-Key, with the Americas Executive Partnership Award for 2021.
