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You can add Ubisoft to the list of companies that won’t be attending the first in-person E3 in four years. Before this week, it was one of the few major publishers to come out in support of the revamped event. On Monday, however, Ubisoft told VGC it would not be at the tradeshow, and would instead host its own event at around the same time.

“E3 has fostered unforgettable moments across the industry throughout the years,” a Ubisoft spokesperson said. “While we initially intended to have an official E3 presence, we’ve made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction, and will be holding a Ubisoft Forward Live event on 12th June in Los Angeles. We look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon.”

There are no two ways about it, Ubisoft’s withdrawal from E3, particularly less than three months before the show is set to return on June 13th, raises serious questions about its near and long-term prospects. Earlier this month, Microsoft said it would not have a presence on the E3 show floor. Before that, Nintendo confirmed it would not attend the event at all. Sony has yet to state whether it will be at E3 2023. Based on its recent attendance record, the company is likely to be a no-show at this year’s conference.

In an executive order signed Monday, President Biden barred federal agencies from using commercial spyware that threatens US national security or carries a risk of improper use by foreign governments and individuals. The order applies to all departments, including those involved in law enforcement, defense and intelligence. It also prohibits the use of spyware that in the past was used to disclose non-public information about the US government.

The executive order the Biden administration published on the White House website doesn’t include a list of affected spyware vendors. Per TechCrunch, government officials declined to name specific firms when asked by reporters. However, the administration said the order includes US and foreign-made spyware. Judging from the criteria laid out in the order, known government spyware makers like Isreal’s NSO Group and Macedonia’s Cytrox are likely affected.

As TechCrunch notes, security researchers have long warned of the dangers posed by commercial spyware. Such programs frequently target previously undisclosed vulnerabilities that make entire software ecosystems unsafe. In the case of NSO Group’s infamous Pegasus spyware, the firm exploited a CoreGraphics vulnerability in iOS that allowed the program to infect an iPhone without the victim needing to tap anything. Moreover, while many governments claim to use spyware sparingly to investigate serious crimes, that hasn’t stopped some from using the software for domestic surveillance and to target political dissidents.

“We are very concerned about the threat of digital authoritarianism and practices around the world but we are also very cognizant that the misuse of technology can occur in any state,” a White House official told The Hill. “So, we are taking steps to make sure that the way that we would like technology to be used is aligned with human rights and democratic principles all around the world.”

On Monday, the Biden administration said at least 50 US federal employees in 10 countries are either suspected or confirmed of having had their devices compromised by spyware. In one recent example, an unknown assailant used the Pegasus spyware to infect iPhones belonging to at least nine US State Department officials stationed in Uganda or whose work involved the East African country. The order follows questions about the US government’s alleged use of commercial spyware. Last fall, The New York Times reported that the FBI had considered using Pegasus in criminal investigations. Between late 2020 and early 2021, agency officials were reportedly in the “advanced” stages of developing plans to brief FBI leadership on the software.

If you own an Apple device, check your notifications: Apple has officially released updates for each of its major Platforms. The MacOS 13.3, and iOS / iPadOS 16.4 and WatchOS 9.4 updates include 21 new emoji, improved voice isolation for calls and a smattering of minor bug fixes.

To start, the emoji keyboard is five new animals, two new hand gestures, three new colored hearts and a handful of household objects such as a folding fan, a flute and maracas. When you're not spamming friends with the new goose emoji, you'll be enjoying the benefits of the more subtle updates. Cellular calls now have Voice Isolation, designed to block out ambient noise. The Duplicates album in Photos will now cross check with images stored in the iCloud Shared Photo Library to keep your albums clean. There's even a new accessibility feature that helpfully dims the screen when it detects flashing lights or strobe effects in video content — all on top of a series of bug fixes that address issues with content management for parents, accidental alarm muting and more.

Apple is also reintroducing the new HomeKit architecture it pulled from iOS 16.2 and MacOS Ventura 13.1 last year. At the time, users were reporting that certain Siri commands weren't working correctly and that smart home devices weren't showing up correctly in the Home App. Not only have those issues apparently been addressed, but Apple also notes that a pairing issue with Matter-compatible has also been resolved.

Ready to send some new Emoji? You can try the latest OS for yourself by navigating to your device's settings app to update.

The NBA’s regular season ends in just a couple of weeks, but Google just surprise-dropped a major overhaul of its popular Pixel Arena feature. The original Pixel Arena was advertised as a virtual space for fans to fully experience the NBA, but there wasn’t much to do other than play trivia and watch 3D shot recaps. The new Pixel Arena, however, is chock-full of activities for the discerning basketball fan, according to an official blog post.

The biggest change is that users can now roam freely around the space, so the emphasis on menu-diving has been reduced in favor of natural exploration. As you roam about the virtual arena, you want to look your best for onlookers, so the avatar creation process has also been significantly overhauled. The updated avatar builder now takes more natural skin tones into consideration, with adherence to the 10-shade Monk Skin Tone (MST) scale.

Google was also not shy about adding new virtual fashion and accessory options, saying there are now over a “trillion style combos inspired by futuristic streetwear and basketball culture.” Of course, each avatar comes with a fake Pixel 7 Pro because brand synergy. Additionally, the highlight clips tool has been updated, allowing users to remix 3D highlights by spotlighting specific viewing angles and the like.

Google and the NBA have added some new mini-games to the roster, though they continue to be trivia-based. Still, the app is loaded with machine learning algorithms that automatically populate new trivia questions based on recent events. For instance, if a player scores a career high, you will likely encounter a relevant question sooner rather than later. All of those modes are available in single-player or multiplayer. If trivia isn’t your bag, try Niantic’s AR streetball app.

Google’s Pixel Arena is part of the official NBA app. Just sign-in with your NBA ID and head to the Discover tab and give it a go. New highlights will continue to be added as the season winds down and the playoffs begin. Despite being a Google offering, Pixel Arena is available for both Android and iOS phones.

There's a vast gulf between the dreamy notion of glasses-free 3D – extra visual depth without any clunky eye-wear! – and the reality: fuzzy imagery, buggy execution, and headaches. Oh, the headaches. So it goes with Acer's Predator Helios 300 SpatialLabs Edition, equipped with the company's glasses-free 3D screen. It's meant to unlock an entirely new dimension of gameplay in titles like God of War and Forza Horizon 5 – and it does, to a degree. But it's also obscenely expensive, starting at $3,499, and its 3D functionality isn't worth losing the higher refresh rates and better quality screens you find on most other gaming laptops.

When I've demoed glasses-free 3D in the past, it's always seemed like a potentially useful feature for deep-pocketed professionals, people who may want to check out their 3D models without slapping on a VR headset. That could very well be true, but the Helios 300 SpatialLabs Edition convinced me that it serves practically no purpose in the gaming world, where players are often aiming to inject as many frames in their eyeballs as possible.

That's just not possible with this computer, since it's limited to a 15.6-inch 4K panel (which scales down to 1080p per eye in 3D mode) running at 60Hz. So at best, this gaming laptop is restricted to 60fps at a time when even budget machines can deliver enough power to fill 120Hz and 144Hz screens. The tradeoff for glasses-free 3D, ultimately, is responsiveness while gaming. The higher the refresh rate, the more silky smooth a game can appear. And when it comes to fast-paced shooters, it could make all the difference between a clutch headshot and digital oblivion.

Now if Acer's 3D technology was truly groundbreaking, perhaps that wouldn't matter so much. But while it can look good, it's a mere curiosity. Acer's TrueGame app lets you play a select handful of games in two different modes: 3D+, which shifts depth buffer pixels to deliver a vague depth effect, and 3D Ultra, which uses a virtual second camera to create a far more immersive sense of space. Eye tracking sensors above the screen help to direct two different sets of images to your eyes, a technique that's typical for glasses-free 3D displays, but that also means only one person can actually use the 3D feature. As for game support, there are only 9 games using 3D Ultra at the moment, including God of War, Psychonauts 2 and A Plague Tale: Innocence. Acer says around 65 titles, mostly older games, work with 3D+.

Competitive online shooters aren't supported at all – Acer claims their anti-cheat software prevents its 3D technology from being applied. That's a shame if you were hoping a bit of depth would make your Warzone or Apex Legends matches more rewarding. Honestly, you wouldn't want to play those in 3D either, as the technology generally makes games look less sharp. You can blame the slightly lower resolution for that, as well as the inherent haziness from having your eyes adjust to a 3D screen on the fly.

Playing Forza Horizon 5 in 3D+ was almost like looking at a Magic Eye puzzle – I had to be in just the right spot to detect any depth. And if my eyes shifted a bit, I would sometimes lose the effect entirely. God of War fared better in 3D Ultra Mode, with a convincing sense of immersion similar to what you'd expect from a 3D film. Throwing Kratos's axe had the uncanny effect of going beyond the screen in my office, and at times the Helios 300 SL felt like a portal into another world.

Still, playing God of War in 3D almost instantly made my eyes tired. 3D Ultra relies on your brain constantly making sense of two different camera views. I sometimes felt motion sick while I was walking around the game, especially if I glanced over to my unmoving, clutter-filled desk. It was almost like playing the game in VR, sans the bulky headset. I found myself resting my eyes every 30 minutes or so, just like I do with VR headsets.

You could, of course, play any PC title in 2D on the Helios 300 SL, but why would you buy a $3,500 glass-free 3D laptop for that? Our review unit was equipped with an RTX 3080 and Intel Core i9-12900H CPU (an updated model with a 40-series GPU is coming in a few months). It was certainly beefy enough for any game I threw at it, especially since the display is limited to 60Hz. But playing Halo Infinite or Overwatch 2 just didn't feel nearly as smooth as it did on the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE I reviewed last year. That $2,300 machine featured a gorgeous 240Hz 1,440p screen, which helped me line up sniper shots with ease.

Beyond its unique screen, the Predator Helios 300 SL looks like a typical Acer gaming laptop. Its matte metal case feels sturdy, and aside from a small lightbar up front, and per-key RGB lighting, there's none of the obnoxious bling we've seen on some high-end gaming PC. There's almost every port imaginable spread around the machine: Two USB 3.2 Type-A connections on the right side; with another Type A USB-port on the left side, beside a gigabit Ethernet and a headphone jack. On the rear, there's a USB-C Thunderbolt 4 connection, MiniDisplayport, HDMI and a DC power port.

Acer probably just wanted to keep the Helios 300 SL low-key, but with a unique feature like glasses-free 3D, it would have been nice to set its design apart from the sea of other black gaming laptops out there. It's also clear that the screen was the major priority: Its keyboard feels a bit too mushy for extended typing (though I appreciated the wide layout), and the trackpad isn't very responsive. I often had to click on icons several times before the trackpad responded.

If it had a better keyboard and trackpad, as well as a higher refresh rate screen, the Helios 300 SL could have been a potential option for professionals working with 3D models. Unfortunately, it's focused on gamers, and it's not nearly compelling enough for that crowd. Its mediocre battery life – 6 hours and 15 minutes, according to PCMark 10's office productivity benchmark – didn't help matters much either.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

If, for some reason, glasses-free 3D is still compelling to you, there are few other options. Acer also sells a standalone 15.6-inch SpatialLabs screen for $1,100 – but I don't need to tell you that's a bad idea. The company's ConceptD 7 laptop also had that screen, but it’s no longer available. There's also ASUS's upcoming spin on glasses-free 3D with its ProArt StudioBook 16, which looked compelling during our CES preview.

Barring a miraculous advancement in holographics sometime soon, I'm ready to give up on the entire notion of glasses-free 3D. It just doesn’t make sense to spend $3,500 on the Helios 300 SpatialLabs Edition. While there's a chance the technology could eventually help a certain subsection of professionals, those folks would likely be served better with VR headsets, and potentially AR devices like the Magic Leap 2 in the future. Either option would deliver a better dose of 3D without the headaches of glasses-free tech.

Add Binance to the list of crypto heavyweights facing serious legal trouble. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has charged Binance, founder Changpeng Zhao and former compliance chief Samuel Lim with allegedly violating both the agency's regulations and the Commodity Exchange Act. The company supposedly offered unregistered crypto derivatives, didn't ask users for mandatory identity verification, structured itself to avoid US regulation and even told customers how to dodge its own compliance system for US-based customers.

Zhao directed much of the rulebreaking himself, the CFTC claims, and there are reportedly chats and emails as evidence. Lim, who left Binance in 2022, is accused of knowingly aiding in the scheme. Among other things, he purportedly encouraged American users to mask trades through a VPN and even create new accounts through shell companies. The activity indicates that Binance's compliance mechanisms "have been a sham," CFTC chief counsel Gretchen Lowe says.

The Commission hopes to permanently ban Binance's registration and trading. It also hopes to levy fines and make the firm disgorge its gains. There's no estimated financial penalty.

We've asked Binance for comment and will let you know if we hear back. The company has historically defended itself against accusations. Zhao's brand is also facing a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation over its BNB token, and a long-running probe has looked into possible insider trading. Senator Elizabeth Warren recently sent Zhao a letter accusing him of creating a "hotbed of illegal financial activity" that enables crooks and sanction-dodgers.

The charges come in the wake of multiple scandals rocking the crypto industry. The fraud charges levelled against FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried are the most notable examples, but there are also allegations and investigations targeting Celsius' former CEO, Coinbase and Terraform Labs, among others. Binance is the largest crypto exchange left, and a US ban could significantly affect the industry as customers are forced to move to smaller outfits.

The CFTC is also staking out territory with this move. Both it and the SEC have argued that they should regulate crypto in the absence of laws outlining their roles. With these charges, the CFTC is signalling that it wants to be the de facto regulator for crypto trading. House and Senate members may limit the Commission's authority if they pass legislation, but the agency clearly isn't willing to wait before cracking down.

Microsoft is overhauling Teams to make it faster and easier to use. In a blog post published Monday, the company said Teams users can look forward to a redesigned app that is up to two times faster than the current release, with tasks like launching the program and joining video calls taking half as much time. The overhauled app also offers smoother scrolling while avoiding the use of placeholder assets. At the same time, Microsoft says the new Teams uses 50 percent less memory.

Separately, the company has redesigned the interface to reduce the number of clicks it takes to do things like manage your notifications, search for information and organize channels. It has also added more robust authentication, synchronization and notification systems to make jumping between different accounts and tenants easier.

Naturally, the new Teams will support AI features, starting with the intelligent recap and Copilot ones Microsoft announced earlier this year, and with more to come in the future. “We will use AI to take the work out of working together by getting you up to speed on what happened before you joined a meeting or chat and answering your questions all in the flow of the discussion,” the company said. “We’re only just beginning to see the potential of AI inside of Teams, and we will have lots more to share in the future.” 

Not mentioned in Microsoft's blog post are the 3D avatars the company has been testing for more than a year. The company recently said it anticipates those will become publicly available sometime in May, so expect them to be part of the new Teams experience too. 

A public preview of the new Teams is rolling out on Windows today, with general availability to follow sometime later this year. A Mac preview should arrive before the end of 2023 as well. If your organization uses Teams, your IT department will need to enroll you in the preview before you can try out the new experience. Notably, the redesigned app will ship with a toggle at the top that will allow you to switch between the two versions of Teams. 

You don't have to settle for trailers if you're curious to know how The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will play. Nintendo and series producer Eiji Aonuma will showcase 10 minutes of Tears gameplay in a live premiere on the company's YouTube channel. It's not clear just what you'll see, but it's safe to presume the demo will feature new mechanics and steer clear of major plot spoilers.

The new title shares the open-world experience that made Breath of the Wild a hit when the Switch launched, but adds both a new environment (the floating islands above Hyrule) and an abundance of new ways to traverse the landscape. You can fly on a giant hoverboard, cross the ground in a motorized chariot and even grind rails. While Nintendo hasn't revealed everything there is to know about Tears of the Kingdom, we'd expect numerous other gameplay tweaks.

The sequel will debut on May 12th, with pre-orders available now. There's a lot riding on Tears. Its predecessor was the Switch's stand-out launch title, and arguably helped Nintendo's system become one of the best-selling consoles of all time. This new game is arriving six years later with lofty expectations and a much larger potential fan base.

The Nintendo eShop for the Wii U and 3DS game consoles officially closed for business on March 27th, 2023, permanently disabling all new purchases on the platforms. We knew this was coming. Nintendo quietly announced the eShop's closure over a year ago, asserting that it was the "natural life cycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time." That's true. It's even a reasonable business justification. That doesn't make it any less of a loss for Nintendo fans, because legally playing some of these console’s best games is now not only harder, but in some cases, nearly impossible.

The time to argue that Nintendo should keep this aging digital storefront open has long since passed (though yes, they should have). The eShop is closed, but it's worth reflecting on what consumers are losing with it: one of the last affordable, convenient and legal options for buying a vast library of games. And not just Nintendo's retro library of "Virtual Console" titles from its classic era, either. Between the 3DS and Wii U eShop's closure, consumers have lost easy access to modern and classic games from a dozen platforms — from more recent systems like the Wii U and 3DS, to the original Wii, the DS and DSi, three flavors of Game Boy handhelds (Advance, Color and original), the Sega Game Gear, the TurboGraphix-16, as well as the Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo and original Nintendo Entertainment System. Losing these libraries now is especially painful, as it's becoming harder than ever to find and play older games.

It used to be easy. Unless you were looking for something rare, building a modest library of classic and recent games was fun and affordable. Recently, that changed. Prices for used games shot up dramatically since March of 2020 — a 2021 analysis from Pricecharting.com found that retro game prices shot up 33% in just a year — and prices have remained high. To make matters worse, the retro market has also been flooded with bootleg cartridges, which often aren't properly labeled as reproductions.

Digital storefronts like the Nintendo eShop offered an affordable alternative. Let's say you wanted to play Metroid Prime, for example. You could pick up Metroid Prime Remastered on the Nintendo Switch for $40 and enjoy the updated visuals and new features, but if you wanted to play the other two games in the series, you'd have to find a copy of Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii. According to PriceCharting.com, that'll set you back between $80 and $90 — $117 if you want it in the original case. The Wii U eShop, on the other hand, sold a digital copy for just $19.99.

There are countless similar examples. Game & Wario sells for between $30 and $80 on eBay, but it could have been had for $30 on the eShop. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, which still hasn't been ported to the Switch, goes for between $30 and $100 used — but the eShop let you play it for just $20. If you are itching to play the 3DS versions of Dragon Quest VII and VIII, you'd have to pay in the ballpark of $100 each on the secondhand market, but the 3DS eShop sold them for $49.99, their original retail price.

The eShop was also home to a lot of exclusives we may never see again, like Pushmo, Attack of the Friday Monsters, Dr. Luigi and more. All gone, now that consumers no longer have convenient, legal access to the eShop’s library. In the past, Nintendo has pointed to the Nintendo Switch Online subscription as the future home for classic games, but the service's current offerings are a paltry sampling of was available before. Not only is this solution limited, and only available if you’re subscribed to a service, but it offers only a modest selection of nostalgic classics, without the depth of the eShop’s back catalog of retail games. Players looking for affordable ways to play hard to find Wii, Wii U and 3DS games are now just out of luck.

Not that accessing those games was remotely easy. The Wii U and 3DS digital libraries (not to mention Sony’s counterparts for the PS3 and PS Vita) may be vast archives containing multiple generations of playable gaming history, but each of these storefronts is chained to an aging platform. As Nintendo Fans dusted off their old consoles before the eShop’s closure, some found that their Wii U consoles were suffering from memory corruption, potentially the fallout of having sat unused for so long. Even accessing these stores on a healthy device presented a fair share of hurdles: all of these platforms have disabled native payment options, forcing users to add funds through other consoles, web portals or by redeeming retail points cards.

It’s a frustrating situation, because historically, Nintendo has taken a strong stance against piracy. Now, it's leaving its fans with fewer options than ever. In a now deleted section of a FAQ about the eShop’s closure, Nintendo dodged its own question about having an obligation to preserve its back catalog — stating that it has “no plans to offer classic content” apart from the previously mentioned Nintendo Switch Online subscription service.

In lieu of Nintendo’s discarded ‘obligation,’ independent games preservationists have taken up the task. Jirard Khalil, creator of The Completionist on YouTube, recently bought every piece of content on the 3DS and Wii U eShops. The effort cost $22,791 and took almost a year to complete, due to wallet limits, interface frustrations and the limited storage capacity of the consoles themselves. He’s donating the completed archive of 866 Wii U games and 1,547 3DS games, plus all relevant DLC, to the Video Game History Foundation. That’s a noble endeavor, but that doesn’t help the average consumer that wants to play these games. As VGHF co-founder Kelsey Lewin recently told Ars Technica, even if these games were made available from a preservation entity like VGHF, the only way one could legally play one of them would be to physically visit the library themselves and sign a consent form to play it on-site.

Thanks to the work of games preservationists and the emulation community, almost no game is truly out of reach if someone wants to play it, so long as you’re comfortable exploring the hobby pirate scene. But there's still a big market for those of us who want legal, convenient access to older games. It's why the NES and SNES Classic both sold so well. It's why Sony reversed course on closing the PlayStation 3 and Vita stores in 2021. And it’s why the closure of the 3DS and Wii U eShops is such a loss for keeping video game history accessible to consumers.

We can’t rely on the commercial games industry to preserve its own history. Publishers have proven to us time and time again that these fleeting windows into nostalgia will be closed when they are no longer profitable. Publically mourning the loss of Nintendo’s digital stores, and fearing the eventual end of PlayStation Store support for the PS3 and Vita, won’t likely stop these companies closing them in favor of streaming, subscription services and other, newer trends. Still, I hope one day these companies will realize that while their back catalogs may not be the most lucrative part of their business, they still hold a lot of value for many fans. And we’ll happily pay to access them – if you let us.

You didn't have to wait long for Samsung's latest phones to receive steep discounts. Amazon is running a sale on the Galaxy S23 series that brings the flagship devices to record-low prices. Most notably, the Galaxy S23 Ultra with 512GB of storage and 12GB of RAM is down to $1,200 (normally $1,380). You can roll the savings into wireless earbuds, a case and other accessories.

You're still poised to save money if the Ultra is more than you need. The Galaxy S23+ 512GB is on sale for $1,000 (normally $1,200), while the standard S23 with 256GB is available for $800 (usually $860). You don't have to skimp on capacity just to get one of the more affordable models.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra is our favorite Android phone, and for good reason. While it's an iterative upgrade to last year's model, it delivers improvements where they matter most: better cameras, longer battery life and faster performance. So long as you're okay with a large screen, this is a versatile device that can handle just about any situation.

Not that the other models are slouches. We liked the Galaxy S23+ for its exceptionally long battery life, vivid display and speedy chip, and the base model won't be far behind. While the low-light photography isn't quite as strong as with other high-end phones, this is a straightforward pick if you're either upgrading from an earlier Samsung phone or want more power than the Pixel 7 line can deliver.

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