It's been a big few months for fighting games between the likes of Mortal Kombat 1, Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 all popping up. There's another would-be major player sitting in the wings though, as Riot is preparing to enter the fray. The publisher has provided an update on Project L, the long-awaited League of Legends spin-off it announced in 2019. The fighting game now has an official name: 2XKO.

Let's be honest, that's a real stinker of a name, It's isn't exactly going to roll off the tongue. Some of those commenting on a YouTube video in which Riot made the announcement suggested that "Double KO" would have been better. It's hard to disagree.

The name stems from the format of 2XKO. It's a 2 vs. 2 tag-based fighting game, borrowing an idea popularized by the Marvel vs. Capcom series. You can play solo or, in a nice touch, recruit a friend as your tag partner and battle another duo. Riot also says 2XKO will have streamlined controls and mechanics to help players jump in, but notes that there will be a "high level of depth and mastery."

In the gameplay teaser, 2XKO looks pretty solid. It appears to have Riot's trademark level of polish with smooth animations and distinct, eye-catching looks for each of the LoL characters. It's just a pity about that name.

Riot plans to release 2XKO on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2025. As with its other tentpole titles, 2XKO will be a free-to-play game.

The publisher will set up demos at fighting game events throughout this year, starting at Evo Japan in April. Riot is also hoping to run at-home playtests and you can sign up at the game's website.

Despite quickly amassing more than 100 million users, Meta’s Threads hasn’t exactly broken through to the zeitgeist the way its main rival, X/Twitter, did. It’s arguably still awaiting its plane-on-the-Hudson moment. Nevertheless, Meta is doing what it can to bring attention to and keep eyes on the text-based platform, including by displaying popular threads on Facebook and Instagram.

Its latest test is out of a previous playbook too. The company is toying with letting users cross post from Facebook to Threads with ease. That could eventually make it easier for heavy Facebook users and/or content creators to share their thoughts, videos and photos on Threads without much more effort. As it stands, some users can share text and link posts from Facebook to Threads. There's no guarantee that Meta will deploy the feature in the long term or expand it to include images.

It makes sense for Meta to at least try this. Users have long been able to post stories and Reels to Facebook and Instagram simultaneously, so adding Threads to the mix is a logical step. Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it's running the test, which is limited to iOS and isn't available in the EU. 

The opt-in approach is far more sensible than automatically sharing a user's Threads posts on Facebook, which Meta was doing for a while to boost awareness of the former. People often have different identities on Facebook and Instagram/Threads, even if they're tied to the same account. They might not want a highly political Threads post or dirty joke to show up in their friends' and family's Facebook feeds. At least this way they'll have the option to share a post on both platforms.

There’s a Borderlands movie coming out, and now we have our very first teaser trailer. This footage gives us a glimpse of all of the major characters, most of which are sourced from the game, and the tone that director Eli Roth is going for.

There’s a definite Guardians of the Galaxy vibe running throughout. Maybe it’s the heavy use of an iconic Electric Light Orchestra song, or maybe it’s the ragtag group of adventurers or the mix of action and humor. In any event, director Eli Roth seems to be channeling his best James Gunn. All things considered, that seems to be the right tone for a Borderlands movie. Color us cautiously optimistic.

Now onto the cast and the characters that franchise fans know and love. Cate Blanchett plays the famously short-tempered Lilith and the actress certainly looks the part. Just look at that hair and outfit. The film follows Blanchett as she looks for a mysterious vault rumored to be stuffed to the brim with sweet, sweet loot. It’s just like the game!

Jamie Lee Curtis plays the scientist Dr. Tannis, an NPC in all three of the mainline Borderlands games. Comedian Kevin Hart portrays the mercenary Roland, a playable soldier in many of the games. Jack Black, following his turn as Bowser in the Super Mario Bros. Movie, plays the robot Claptrap. The well-meaning robot is considered a mascot for the franchise and often acts as comic relief. Black seems well-suited to the role. The cast is rounded out by Ariana Greenblatt as the demolitionist Tiny Tina, star of the spinoff game Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and Florian Munteanu as her enforcer Krieg.

Of course, it remains to be seen if Roth can pull off this kind of big-budget adventure spectacle. The director’s mostly known for horror films. One thing’s for certain, however, the trailer actually looks and feels like Borderlands. The big and bright color palette recalls the cel-shaded aesthetic from the games. The movie hits theaters on August 9.

Elden Ring fans who have been itching for a reason to return to the Lands Between (y'know, other than it being one of the best-received games in recent memory) will soon have one. Publisher Bandai Namco and studio FromSoftware revealed in a gameplay trailer that the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion will arrive on PC, PlayStation and Xbox on June 21. The studio announced the DLC one year ago.

The three-minute trailer is suitably epic in scope. It features new locales and more devious bosses to take down. One looks like a giant burning Wicker Man, while another has a lion-esque head and lightning powers. We also got a look at a gross, worm-like enemy that can almost swallow the player character.

It seems there will be new hand-to-hand combat options as the protagonist is shown attacking an enemy with a combination of kicks. At the end of the clip, our hero sprouts wings for what appears to be an aerial attack.

According to Bandai Namco, players will be entering "the Land of Shadow to explore a new adventure full of mysteries and danger," where they'll "unravel the dark side of the Elden Ring story." Pre-orders for the $40 expansion are open and newcomers will be able to pick up a bundle that includes the base game. Various special editions include extras such as an artbook, soundtrack and a figure of Messmer the Impaler, who appears to be the expansion's big bad.

If the image itself isn’t unappetizing enough, the description might put you off. South Korean researchers have made a hybrid rice variant, infused with cow muscle and fat cells, creating a bright pink grain that is one part plant and one part meat. The team hopes to eventually create a cheaper and more sustainable source of protein, with a much lower carbon footprint than actual beef. But please: change the color.

Yonsei University

The meat cells grow both on the surface of the rice grain and inside of the grain itself. After around ten days, you get the finished product. The study, published in Matter, suggests the rice grains taste like beef sushi, which is made of cow and rice. So yes, that tracks.

— Mat Smith

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Bose Ultra Open Earbuds review

Function meets fashion.

Engadget

Bose’s $299 Ultra Open Earbuds sit outside of your ear canal and clip onto the ridge of your ear to stay in place. Due to the open nature of the design, active noise cancellation (ANC) is moot. Open-type earbuds have become increasingly popular, mostly for the allure of “all day” wear by allowing you to stay in tune with your surroundings, so Bose developed this model that fixes all the issues of its previous design. They seem more of a fashion accessory than a wearable, however.

Continue reading.

Xbox confirms four of its games are coming to more popular consoles

Not Starfield or Indiana Jones, however.

On the latest episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said the company is bringing four of its games to "the other consoles." Contrary to previous rumors, Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are not coming to PS5 or Switch for now. Reports have suggested that Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Halo and Gears of War may appear on Nintendo and Sony hardware. Both of those consoles have a far larger install base than Xbox Series X/S, which are estimated to have shipped a combined 27 million units, compared with 54.8 million PS5s and nearly 140 million Switches.

Continue reading.

OpenAI’s new model can generate minute-long videos from text prompts

It’s still in testing before being offered to the public.

OpenAI on Thursday announced Sora, a brand new model that generates high-definition videos up to one minute in length from text prompts. Sora, which means “sky” in Japanese, won’t be available to the general public any time soon. Instead, OpenAI is first offering it to a small group of academics and researchers who will assess harm and its potential for misuse. The company said on its website: “The model understands not only what the user has asked for in the prompt, but also how those things exist in the physical world.” Other companies including Meta, Google and Runway, have either teased text-to-video tools or made them available to the public. Still, no other tool can generate videos as long as 60 seconds.

Continue reading.

Disney+ has released the first trailer for its upcoming animated series X-Men '97, and it feels like a blast from the past for fans of the animated series that aired in the 90s. Its story picks up from where the old series left off, with the trailer showing how the team makes an effort to work together after the death of Professor X who was seriously injured by the end of the Saturday morning cartoon. That means viewers can expect the same roster of mutants from the original show, including Cyclops as team leader, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Beast, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Jubilee and Bishop. By the end of trailer, we also get a glimpse of Magneto, who apparently inherited everything Professor X had left behind. 

X-Men: The Animated Series was arguably the best adaptation of the comic books. The new show has a similar look and feel to it, but its animation quality thankfully looks a lot better. It features voice actors already known for the role, including Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm and Cal Dodd as Wolverine, but it also features new ones like Ray Chase as Cyclops. According to Entertainment Weekly, Divergent star Theo James is also part of the cast, but showrunner Beau DeMayo refused to reveal who he's voicing other than saying that it's a "fan-favorite character." Marvel Animation's X-Men '97 starts streaming on Disney+ on March 20 and will have 10 episodes in all. The streaming service has yet to reveal its release schedule, but it typically adds an episode a week for its shows — whether it'll also release an episode every Saturday morning remains to be seen. 

OpenAI on Thursday announced Sora, a brand new model that generates high-definition videos up to one minute in length from text prompts. Sora, which means “sky” in Japanese, won’t be available to the general public any time soon. Instead, OpenAI is making it available to a small group of academics and researchers who will assess harm and its potential for misuse.

“Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background,” the company said on its website. “The model understands not only what the user has asked for in the prompt, but also how those things exist in the physical world.”

One of the videos generated by Sora that OpenAI shared on its website shows a couple walking through a snowy Tokyo city as cherry blossom petals and snowflakes blow around them.

Another shows realistic-looking wooly mammoths walking through a snowy meadow against a backdrop of snow-clad mountain ranges.

OpenAI says that the model works as a result of “deep understanding of language,” which lets it interpret text prompts accurately. Still, like basically all AI image- and video-generators we’ve seen, Sora isn’t perfect. In one of the examples, the prompt, which asks for a video of a Dalmatian looking through a window and people “walking and cycling along the canal streets,” omits the people and the streets in the video entirely. OpenAI also warns that the model can struggle to understand cause and effect — it can generate a video of a person eating a cookie, for instance, but the cookie may not have bite marks.

Sora isn’t the first text-to-video model around. Other companies including Meta, Google and Runway, have either teased text-to-video tools or made them available to the public. Still, no other tool is currently able to generate videos as long as 60 seconds. Sora also generates entire videos at once, instead of putting them together frame-by-frame like other models, which makes sure that subjects in the video stay the same even when they go out of view temporarily.

The rise of text-to-video tools has sparked concerns over their potential to more easily create realistic-looking fake footage. “I am absolutely terrified that this kind of thing will sway a narrowly contested election,” Oren Etzioni, a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in artificial intelligence, and the founder of True Media, an organization that works to identify disinformation in political campaigns, told The New York Times. And generative AI more broadly has sparked backlash from artists and creative professionals concerned about the technology being used to replace jobs.

OpenAI said that it was working with experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content and bias to test the tool before making it available to the public. The company is also building tools capable of detecting videos generated by Sora and including metadata in the generated videos for easier detection. The company declined to tell the Times how Sora had been trained, except stating that it used both “publicly available videos” as well as videos licensed from copyright holders.

YouTube just released a new feature that lets users remix music videos and turn them into Shorts. This allows you to adjust various parameters from a full-length music video to create something wholly unique. Does this sound like TikTok? It definitely sounds like TikTok.

Here’s how it works. Just tap “remix” on a music video. You’ll be presented with four options: Sound, Green Screen, Cut and Collab. You can only pick one, so choose wisely. The Sound tool does what you think. It strips the audio and lets you use it in your own YouTube Short. This is the kind of thing that’s hugely popular on TikTok, with many users lip-syncing to various audio clips. This Sound tool is available to any music video and most songs that were automatically uploaded to the platform.  

Green Screen takes things a step further. It turns the video into a background, which you can then dance in front of or whatever. The Cut tool just clips out a five second portion of the video that you can add to any Short. Finally, Collab creates a side-by-side video that places your Short next to the original content. YouTube says this is the perfect option when “you and your friends” want to show off choreography alongside the original artist.

The feature’s already available on the mobile app, though it may not have rolled out to every user yet. If you want to check, just open the app, click on a music video and look for that “remix” option. It’s worth noting that many of these features were already available to Shorts creators, but not in one handy tab.

YouTube/Lawrence Bonk

YouTube Shorts was already a TikTok-alike when it released back in 2021, but these features make it even more, uh, TikTok-ier. With that in mind, YouTube picked the perfect time to officially launch the toolset. Universal Music has pulled its roster from TikTok after a breakdown in financial negotiations. UMG artists include Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish and many more. 

This has forced TikTok creators to swap out music tracks, as anything sourced from Universal is automatically muted. The record label has accused TikTok of wanting to pay a “fraction” of rates offered by other social media sites. YouTube’s Remix tool has access to Universal’s entire roster.

Nintendo’s next first-party Switch title is almost here. Princess Peach: Showtime will be available on March 22 and the company just dropped a brand new trailer to keep the hype train rolling. The game’s primary hook is that the oft-kidnapped princess can transform into a number of different professions, each with its own move sets and challenges.

The new trailer gives us a look at four never-before-seen transformations, including a figure skater, a superhero, a thief and a mermaid. Each transformation shakes up the gameplay, so while figure skater Peach stars in a 2.5D platformer, superhero Peach pummels her way through a side-scrolling beat-em-up. Mermaid Peach seems to spend most of her time singing.

A previously-released trailer showed Peach turning into a swordfighter, a detective, a pastry chef and a kung-fu master. It remains to be seen just how many other jobs the princess has experience with. Nintendo has shown off ten so far, but it’s likely keeping several as a surprise. Peach sure has a diverse resume, and she does all of it while running a kingdom filled with excitable little fungi. Meanwhile, Mario golfs and plays tennis on his days off.

Princess Peach: Showtime will cost $60 when it hits next month, and pre-orders are open now. To commemorate the release, Nintendo is also dropping a pair of pastel pink Joy-Cons. The controllers will be available on March 22, alongside the game, and will set you back $80.

If you can’t wait until March to dive into some Mario-adjacent tomfoolery, a remake of the Game Boy Advance puzzle platformer Mario vs. Donkey Kong releases this Friday. This updated version includes local co-op.

There aren't enough games with queer characters and themes — and GLAAD, the world's largest LGBTQ media advocacy group, has the statistics to prove it. GLAAD's first annual report on the video game industry found that nearly 20 percent of all players in the United States identify as LGBTQ, yet just 2 percent of games contain characters and storylines relevant to this community. The report highlights three critical truths: Representation matters a lot to LGBTQ players, the remaining gaming audience largely welcomes these themes, and new generations of gamers are only becoming more open to queer content.

GLAAD has the numbers, so let's take a deeper look alongside a few bits of gaming news from the past week:

This week's stories

Xbox rumor mill

Xbox is preparing to address a bunch of rumors on Thursday about the company’s plans to bring its exclusive games to PlayStation, Switch and other platforms. The rumors have centered on major releases like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Starfield, but according to The Verge’s Tom Warren, the first titles scheduled to make the leap are Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but Xbox’s top gaming executives, Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty, will chat about all of it on the next installment of the Official Xbox Podcast, which drops at 3PM ET on Thursday.

Ubisoft pledges to be good again

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said on an investor call last week that the studio is officially going to make good games again. Talking about the company’s positive third quarter, Guillemot said it “marks the beginning of our turnaround to consistently creating and delivering high-quality, long-lasting games,” which sounds like a tacit admission that Ubisoft hasn’t been producing great games recently. This is something I’ve talked about a lot — it feels like the studio has been coasting on NFTs and free-to-play mobile titles since a period of financial turmoil in 2015, and I’m actually excited to see a return to its weird, more focused roots. Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown were great first steps. Ubisoft plans to reveal more details about Star Wars Outlaws, the new Assassin’s Creed set in Japan and its mobile lineup in May.

Gaming has never been gayer

“The game industry is out of step with contemporary media in terms of LGBTQ representation, and it is failing its LGBTQ customers.” That’s one of the breakout lines from GLAAD’s first annual gaming report, which analyzes the state of the video game industry from the perspective of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender players in the United States.

In its survey, GLAAD — the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy group — found that 17 percent of the total gaming audience identifies as LGBTQ, or about one in every five players. This figure falls in line with statistics for Gen Z. Still, just 2 percent of all games on the market contain LGBTQ content, a saturation level that falls miserably short of those in film, TV and other forms of media.

GLAAD ran the numbers itself: In November 2023, the Xbox store had 146 games with LGBTQ content, while PlayStation offered a list of 90 titles with these themes, and the Switch eShop had 50 games tagged LGBT. Steam had 2,302 English-language games under its LGBTQ+ tag, but that figure dropped to 1,506 when filtering out “adult only sexual content” titles. All told, queer games composed roughly 2 percent of the stores’ libraries.

In contrast, GLAAD found that almost one in three films from the top distributors in 2022 contained an LGBTQ character, and LGBTQ characters appeared as series regulars in 10 percent of primetime scripted broadcast shows in 2022 and 2023. GLAAD Associate Director of Gaming Blair Durkee said that, with queer representation at just 2 percent, gaming remains woefully behind other entertainment industries.

The report also tried to identify why this gap exists. It suggested some developers simply don’t think about including LGBTQ people, or they worry about pushing away a core audience that they assume is hostile toward LGBTQ content. However, the report says, “This imagined core audience is a myth,” considering LGBTQ people compose nearly 20 percent of the market on their own. Critically, GLAAD found that more than 60 percent of non-LGBTQ players weren’t bothered by queer protagonists in their games, and 70 percent said they were fine with titles that presented the option to play as an LGBTQ character.

So this type of representation doesn’t bother most straight, cisgender people, but it means a lot to LGBTQ players. 72 percent of LGBTQ players said that seeing characters of their gender identity or sexual orientation portrayed well made them feel better about themselves, and this number was even higher among younger players. Overall, 36 percent of LGBTQ players reported that video games helped them discover their sexual orientation or gender identity, and this percentage rose to 41 percent among LGBTQ players of color. More than 40 percent of queer players said video games helped them cope with a lack of acceptance in the real world. These issues are more prominent than ever amid an avalanche of anti-LGBTQ legislation: Already in the first few weeks of 2024, more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed or passed in the US, a majority of which target transgender youth.

While GLAAD found that 66 percent of all LGBTQ gamers said they use gaming to express themselves in ways they don’t feel comfortable doing in the real world, this statistic rose to 75 percent for players living in states with proposed or active anti-LGBTQ bills.

The real key is that more gamers identify as LGBTQ than ever before, and resistance toward these themes is waning with each new generation of players. I’m part of the LGBTQ community, and I can say that overall, the GLAAD report rings true. It feels like the industry is saturated with games that weren’t made for me, and there’s an immense joy that comes with discovering a new title that speaks to my own life or lets me play in a world that doesn’t involve traditionally straight-male power fantasies. Queer people have fantasies, too, and the GLAAD report highlights how forgotten these stories have been in games. It’s not a matter of LGBTQ people asking for all games to be gay — we just want proportional access to fantasy and escape. Personally, I’d love to see more LGBTQ people in positions of authority in video games, a recommendation that GLAAD makes in its report as well.

And really quickly because I can already hear the keyboards melting: Woke ideas will not destroy the gaming industry, but stagnation will, and as the GLAAD report points out, we’re much closer to that reality than anything else.

Bonus content

• FromSoftware's parent company has acquired Acquire, the team behind Octopath Traveller.

• The FTC accused Microsoft of lying about its intentions with Activision Blizzard after enacting a huge round of layoffs at the end of January, and the FTC is continuing to investigate potential antitrust issues around the acquisition. Microsoft responded by saying its plans changed, so there.

• Microsoft’s gaming layoffs included 86 jobs at Skylanders developer Toys for Bob, effectively shutting down the studio.

Now playing

Children of the Sun is a dark and trippy puzzle game that makes shooting a mechanic of elegance. Players find an angle, set up the shot and then control the path of a single bullet as it takes out every enemy on-screen. This is my kind of shooter. Children of the Sun is available on Steam as a demo only for now, and it comes from solo developer René Rother, published by Devolver Digital.