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The second installment of Square Enix's ambitious Final Fantasy VII remake saga has a release date. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will arrive on PlayStation 5 on February 29.

Sony provided another look at the sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake during its latest State of Play showcase in the form of a new trailer. The search for Sephiroth continues after Cloud, Yuffie et al escape from Midgar. They go on a globe-trotting adventure in which they tear across grassy fields on a Chocobo, explore new environments and [checks notes] cover ground on a Segway? 

To give you a sense of the scope we're dealing with, Square Enix will release Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on two discs. The publisher also revealed that there's nearly 100 hours of gameplay here. Even so, the game will only take players up to the midpoint of the original Final Fantasy VII.

If you haven't played the previous game, you might be interested in picking up a "twin pack" of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (the upgraded version) and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Pre-orders are open now, and the bundle includes instant access to the first entry in this trilogy.

Baby Steps, an indie game that generated a ton of buzz when it was announced in June, is coming out in summer 2024 for PC and PlayStation 5. This update is a smidgen better than the original reveal, which teased a general release window of 2024. It did so using a Death Stranding pastiche featuring a grown man in a onesie trying his hardest to put one foot in front of the other, and today's news comes alongside a new, silly video that ends in Star Wars-style font.

Baby Steps comes from QWOP and Getting Over It creator Bennett Foddy, and Ape Out developers Gabe Cuzzillo and Maxi Boch. It's essentially a narrative-driven, 3D version of Foddy's original extreme walking simulator, where players control each of the main character's steps independently.

Baby Steps looks just as hilarious and strange as the creators' previous works, and the new trailer highlights the various moans, groans and mumbled curse words of the main character, Nate, as he struggles to learn to walk. Apparently, those sounds all came from the developers themselves, since they're handling voice-acting duties firsthand.

Here's how Boch described the recording process: "The developers themselves are handling voiceover duties, recording and experimenting until they discover the humor of each scene. This seat-of-our-pants approach comes through thanks to the unconventional editing, which leaves in giggles and breaks, as well as the playful rapport between Cuzziilo and Foddy, together lending Baby Steps a slacker-comedy feel."

Baby Steps is being published by Devolver Digital.

It emerged last week that Roblox would finally make its bow on PlayStation some time this October, and Sony revealed the exact date during its State of Play showcase. You'll be able to hop into the ultra-popular sandbox on PS4 and PS5 (albeit through backward compatibility) on October 10. There will be full cross-platform support, so you should be able to check out the many, many experiences Roblox has to offer with your friends, even if they access it via mobile, PC, VR or Xbox. 

Sony had been opposed to having Roblox on PlayStation for some time owing to safety concerns (most of Roblox's 66 million daily active users are younger players). But court documents that emerged during the recent FTC and Microsoft legal battle indicated that Sony's stance on the issue softened as of last year.

If you're a premium subscriber to the social media site X, formerly Twitter, you now can hide your likes tab from the public, the company said in a tweet.

When enabled, the tab for likes is supposed to disappear completely from an X Premium user’s profile. The new feature can be turned on when you change your preferences through the early access period.

This move is the latest appeal Musk’s X is making to paying patrons. It's a continuation of X’s galvanized effort to appeal to more subscribers, especially considering the company’s US advertising revenue is down 60 percent, and also a way for premium subscribers to hide the fact that they are liking hateful or otherwise questionable tweets. You can subscribe as a premium member for as little as $8/month or $84/year, which will also grant you early access to new features, and of course the verified blue check mark.

We may see more public figures and officials take up X on their premium offering after this announcement. Historically, we have seen PR crises ensue for politicians like Ted Cruz, who forgot his likes were public when in 2017, his account “hearted” a pornographic clip that left the internet howling.

Major League Baseball is ready to test its virtual ballpark for a regular-season game. Fans can “enter” the digital stadium on Wednesday, September 20, to watch the Tampa Bay Rays host the Los Angeles Angels. The league debuted the digital park earlier this summer for a celebrity softball game during this year’s All-Star Game activities. Next week’s game will mark the first non-exhibition game to deploy the metaverse-like digital park.

The game will include a “3D representation” of on-field avatars corresponding to the game’s real-time action, tracked using the same Sony Hawk-Eye cameras used for the league’s Statcast data. In addition, participants who prefer a traditional view can watch the game’s television broadcast on the virtual park’s giant Jumbotrons floating around the field and parking lot. There should be plenty to keep you occupied if the on-field play gets dull: The stadium supports spatial audio, and you can talk with nearby fans, play trivia games and take part in a scavenger hunt to win NFT collectible “cards.”

The entire setup sounds like something you’d eventually use with a VR or AR headset like the Meta Quest or Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro. While it may be a precursor to those more immersive experiences, you’ll access this game on flat screens through a web browser. MLB says a desktop or laptop provides the best experience, but it recommends Safari on iOS or Chrome on Android if you want to tune in on mobile.

The experience begins at 6:40PM ET on September 20. You’ll need to create an MLB profile to join. After that, you can head to the park’s webpage to create a custom avatar (rocking your favorite team’s apparel) and start exploring.

The CEOs of leading AI companies — including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Tesla's Elon Musk and Open AI's Sam Altman — appeared before Congress once again on Wednesday. But instead of the normal bombast and soapboxing we see during public hearings about the dangers of unfettered AI development, this conversation reportedly took on far more muted tones. 

In all, more than 20 tech and civil society leaders spoke with lawmakers at Wednesday's meeting, organized by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to discuss how AI development should be regulated moving forward. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Todd Young (R-IN) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) who were also in attendance and reportedly working with the majority leader to draft additional proposals. 

The word of the day: consensus. “First, I asked everyone in the room, ‘Is government needed to play a role in regulating AI?’ and every single person raised their hands even though they had diverse views,” Schumer told reporters Wednesday. 

But as Bloomberg reports, "areas of disagreement were apparent throughout the morning session" with Zuckerberg, Altman and Bill Gates all differing on the risks posed by open-source AI (three guesses as to where old Monopoly Bill came down on that issue). True to form, Elon Musk got into it with "Berkeley researcher Deb Raji for appearing to downplay concerns about AI-powered self-driving cars, according to one of the people in the room," Bloomberg reports.

“Some people mentioned licensing and testing and other ways of regulation … there were various suggestions as to how to do it, but no consensus emerged yet,” Schumer said following the event.

“That’s probably the worst wedding to try to do seating for,” Humane Intelligence CEO Rumman Chowdhury said of the event as an attendee. She also noted that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg did not interact and sat at opposite ends of the room-width table — presumably to keep the two bloodthirsty cagefighting CEOs from throwing down and Royal Rumbling the esteemed proceedings.

The meeting participants generally agreed that the federal government needs to “help to deal with what we call transformational innovation,” one unnamed participant suggested. That could entail creating a $32 billion fund that would assist with “the kind of stuff that maximizes the benefits of AI,” Schumer told reporters.

Following the seven-hour event, Facebook released Mark Zuckerberg's official remarks. They cover the company's long-standing talking points about developing and rolling out the technology "in a responsible manner," coordinating its efforts with civil society leaders (instead of say, allegedly fomenting genocide like that one time in Myanmar) and ensuring "that America continue to lead in this area and define the technical standard that the world uses." 

In a departure from his rhetoric in recent years warning of perceived growing threats from China, Zuckerberg pointed to a new boogieman: "the next leading open source model ... out of Abu Dhabi."  This appears to have been a thinly-veiled reference to the UAE's recent entrance into AI development. 

Elon Musk, famed libertarian and bloodsworn enemy of the FTC, warned reporters corralled outside of the hearing about the "civilizational risk" posed by AI. He wants a Federal Department of AI to help regulate the industry. He reportedly envisions it operating similarly to the FAA or SEC (two more agencies Musk has been variously scolded by) but did not elaborate beyond that. “I think this meeting could go down in history as important to the future of civilization,” he told reporters.

Sony is hosting a State of Play livestreamed event today. Sony says the announcement will include “something for everyone,” focusing primarily on indie and third-party titles and promising updates on flagship games and PS VR2.

The State of Play follows the Nintendo Switch Direct from earlier today. Upcoming titles revealed in that event included the Switch games Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Princess Peach: Showtime, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Dave the Diver.

The PlayStation State of Play stream starts at 5PM ET today and will be available on PlayStation’s YouTube, Twitch and TikTok accounts. Or you can watch the embedded video below.

The Steam Deck is on sale again, for those on the fence about purchasing the ubermensch of portable gaming consoles. This is part of Steam’s 20th anniversary celebration and new buyers get 10 to 20 percent off, depending on which model you choose. The bare-bones 64GB version now costs $360 instead of $400, the mid-level 256GB iteration costs $450 instead of $530 and the baddest of the bunch, the 512GB behemoth, sets you back $520 instead of $650.

This matches a sale from earlier this summer for the console. Previous discounts have capped out at around ten percent, so a deep cut of 20 percent for the 512GB model is nothing to sneeze at. You’ll have to wait one to two weeks to get your precious portable console, but early adopters had to stand by for months and months, so consider yourself lucky.

The Steam Deck is a powerful portable console that plays AAA titles like Elden Ring and even Baldur’s Gate 3, in addition to hundreds upon hundreds of unique indie games. Some of the more popular releases that excel on the platform include Hogwarts Legacy, The Witcher 3 and, of course, Vampire Survivors.

Valve’s anniversary sale also extends to games, with deep discounts on self-published titles like Half Life 2 and standout hits from the past 20 years, such as Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead. Newer games are also getting in on the fun, as Resident Evil: Village, Valheim, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and other modern classics are on sale. The discounts stop on September 19th, so grab your games or console while you can.

Blackmagic Design has unveiled the Cinema Camera 6K, its debut model with the L-Mount alliance and first full-frame camera. It comes with an all-new 24.6-megapixel sensor (6,048 x 4,032), shoots up to 6K and has dual native ISO for "incredible low-light performance," the company said. Instead of using Canon's EF mount as it has in the past, it will work with L-mount lenses from Panasonic, Leica, Sigma and other partners in the L-mount alliance. As with other Blackmagic Design cameras, it's designed for cinema shooting so it lacks basic features like continuous autofocus and built-in stabilization. 

"With the new Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K, we wanted to create the most portable camera possible for high end, large format cinematography," said CEO Grant Petty. "That’s why we took the Pocket Cinema Camera platform but completely re-engineered the electronics inside around a full frame sensor and L-Mount."

Blackmagic Design

The new sensor offers a number of advantages for film shooters, namely shallower depth of field and better performance in low light. To that end, the company is promising 13 stops of dynamic range and dual ISO performance up to 25,600. With the L-mount, it's also Blackmagic Design's first mirrorless style mount, with a relatively short flange distance that makes it slimmer than past models. The disadvantage to that, though, is that there's no room for the built-in ND filter found on past models.

The Cinema Camera 6K can shoot in all standard resolutions and frame rates up to DCI 4K and 6K, and stills at up to 24.6 megapixels. 6K open gate (3:2) is available at up to 36fps, or 60fps at 6,048 x 2,520 (2.4:1) and 60fps at 4,096 x 2,160 (4K DCI). "Customers can even work in true anamorphic 6:5 at much higher resolutions than other cameras using anamorphic lenses in 4.8K 24fps at 4,838 x 4,032," the company said. The maximum 120fps frame rate is available in HD.

Blackmagic Design

It comes with a very bright 1,500 nit 5-inch tilting (but not fully articulating) HDR touchscreen that makes it possible to check HDR video straight from the camera, even in bright conditions. Blackmagic offers the usual shooting aids like histogram, focus peaking, levels, frame guides and more. You can also apply your own 3D LUTs for monitoring. It has the Blackmagic's touch interface that's intuitive and pleasant to use.

Video is recorded in the 12-bit Blackmagic RAW (BRAW) or H.264 proxy formats, either to CFexpress B or an SSD via the USB-C port. Other features include a wide range of audio ports, including a locking XLR port, an HDMI output, NP-F570 batteries (along with a locking DC power connector) and an optional BMPCC Pro Grip. The Cinema Camera 6K is now on sale for $2,595 — making it the lowest-price full-frame cinema-specific camera out there. 

Blackmagic Design

Along with the Cinema Camera 6K, Blackmagic Design debuted the Blackmagic Camera iPhone app that gives users cinema-like camera controls and looks. "Customers can adjust settings such as frame rate, shutter angle, white balance and ISO all in a single tap. Or record directly to Blackmagic Cloud in industry standard 10-bit Apple ProRes files up to 4K," the company wrote. It also works with Blackmagic Cloud, letting creators collaborate with other users. It's now available on the App Store as a free download. 

A new lineup of COVID-19 vaccines are now becoming available in the US. The updated shots will arrive at select pharmacies as retailers continue to receive inventory. CVS says it expects all of its pharmacies to have the new vaccines in stock by early next week, and some stores appear to already have the latest shot. Appointments at Walgreens will start opening up scheduling today, with appointments beginning for the public starting Monday.

The CDC is urging most Americans to get an updated COVID-19 vaccine, however, it does not specify if at-risk populations or immunocompromised people should get priority access. The CDC does mention that vaccination will reduce chances of “suffering the effects of Long COVID.” This CDC recommendation comes in light of an eight percent uptick in COVID-related hospitalizations this week.

Availability follows the FDA’s decision to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax shots for emergency use earlier this week. Novovax’s booster was recommended for use by the CDC, but is still awaiting emergency use authorization by the FDA. The jabs being made available are essentially updated versions of existing Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines and that have been formulated to protect against the recent omicron subvariant called the Omicron variant XBB.1.5, the current dominant strain circulating in the US.

CDC

The CDC has also launched a Bridge Access Program, which earmarks $1 billion to ensure continued free coverage for COVID-19 vaccines to uninsured Americans.

The FDA says the timing and number of doses to get will depend on previous COVID-19 vaccines received. The FDA anticipates that COVID-19 vaccines may need to be updated annually and will likely be revised like seasonal influenza vaccines. Side effects from the vaccine may also vary from individual to individual, however the CDC notes that the most common side effects from COVID-19 vaccination include pain at the injection site, fatigue, muscle aches and headaches.

Later this week, the CDC says vaccines.gov will be updated with COVID-19 availability information as the vaccine is distributed. This government site can show which boosters are being offered at which local pharmacies using an interactive map.