If you’re in the market for a new SSD, Amazon is holding a sale on Crucial drives. The company might not have the brand recognition that Samsung and SanDisk do, but rest assured, Crucial’s products are known for their reliability. The highlight of the sale is the company’s P5 Plus NVMe drive. If your PC features a Gen4 M.2 connection, the P5 Plus offers sequential read speeds of up to 6,600MB/s. It’s also worth noting the P5 Plus is fully compatible with the PlayStation 5; in fact, it’s one of Engadget’s top picks for the best storage you can get for Sony’s latest console. The 1TB model is 24 percent off, making it $65 at the moment.

If you don’t have an M.2 slot on your PC but still want to upgrade your storage, consider the MX500. After a 48 percent discount, the 1TB model is $52. The MX500 is Engadget’s pick for the best 2.5-inch SATA drive you can buy. It hits the perfect balance of price, performance and reliability. If you won’t take our word for it, consider that the MX500 holds a five-star Amazon rating on more than 90,000 reviews.

For those looking for a portable drive, you can get Crucial’s X6 1TB SSD for $60, or 45 percent off its usual $110 price. I haven’t tested the X6, but it has a solid spec sheet, offering transfer speeds of up to 800MB/s and USB 3.2 connectivity. Crucial claims the X6’s enclosure is also shock- and vibration-proof, so that should offer some peace of mind. For what it’s worth, the X6 carries a four-and-a-half star rating on more than 8,000 reviews.

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On Monday, it was Ubisoft's turn to take center stage at Summer Game Fest. After Microsoft's strong showing on Sunday, the publisher's showcase was a more sedate affair, with Ubisoft mostly providing updates on games that it had already been previously announced. 

However, the event did have its share of highlights. One surprise announcement saw Castlevania showrunner Adi Shankar take the stage in a seriously ridiculous getup to reveal Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, an animated series based, of all things, on Far Cry 3's Blood Dragon expansion from 2013. After years of development, Ubisoft also offered a first look at Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. But the star of the show was undoubtedly the first gameplay trailer Massive Entertainment shared for its upcoming Star Wars project, Outlaws. The 10-minute clip offered a comprehensive look at what Star Wars fan can expect from the open world title in 2024. If you missed any part of the presentation, our video summary will catch you up in less than 14 minutes.   

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

New York is about to become the first city in the United States to mandate a minimum wage for food delivery workers. Starting next month, delivery apps, including Uber Eats and GrubHub, will be required to pay their workers $17.96 per hour, plus tips, by July 12th. Then, by 2025, the city will mandate Uber, GrubHub and other players in the space pay delivery workers $19.96 per hour, with adjustments for inflation to follow thereafter.

The minimum wage in New York City is $15 per hour. By setting the hourly pay for delivery workers above that, the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) agency notes it’s accounting for the fact Uber, GrubHub and DoorDash classify their delivery workers as contractors, who tend to pay higher taxes and often need to pay work-related expenses out of their own pocket. According to an estimate from the DCWP, there are more than 60,000 food delivery workers in New York, earning an average of $7.09 per hour.

The final hourly rate the city announced on Monday is less than the $23.82 figure the agency had called for in 2022 (PDF link). In March, the DCWP revised its estimate to account for “multi-apping,” a practice wherein some workers will deliver for more than one app at the same time. App companies, including Uber and GrubHub, pushed back against the regulation, and now that it’s set to finally go into effect, they’re still not happy about it. "The city is lying to delivery workers – they want apps to fund the $30 per hour wage by eliminating jobs and reducing tipping while forcing the remaining workers to deliver orders faster," Uber spokesperson Josh Gold told Engadget.

“While we believe New York City had good intentions, we are disappointed in the DCWP’s final rule, which will have serious adverse consequences for delivery workers in New York City,” a GrubHub spokesperson said. “Unfortunately, New York City chose not to partner with the industry on a solution that would have benefited all aspects of the gig economy.”

How delivery apps pay their workers is up to them, so long as they meet the minimum set by the city. Companies that pay only for trip time must pay approximately 50 cents per minute, while firms that compensate workers for the entire time they’re logged in, including any downtime waiting for an order, must pay approximately 30 minutes per minute, not including tips. The law comes after New York began enforcing a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers in 2022.

When Ubisoft shared the first look at Star Wars Outlaws on Sunday during Microsoft's Xbox and Starfield Showcase, the publisher promised it would have an extended gameplay trailer to share during its Ubisoft Forward event on Monday. And boy did it deliver. The company shared 10 minutes of footage that offers a comprehensive look at the upcoming game. 

The clip opens on the planet of Toshara with protagonist Key Vess and her trusty companion Nix sneaking through a criminal syndicate facility. Key can call on the adorable Nix to help her traverse the environment, while she takes care of knocking out enemies. If she's caught sneaking by a guard, Key has a moment where she, like Han Solo before 1997, can shoot first. Once things get messy, combat revolves around a blaster pistol that features a handful of different ammunition types. For instance, there are enemies with energy shields. In the heat of battle, Nix can retrieve blaster rifles dropped by enemies for Key to use, though it appears they come with limited ammunition. Star Wars Outlaws won't limit you to walking everywhere on foot. You can traverse the game's world on a speeder bike, and even take to the skies and space with a starship, with seemingly no loading between different elements of the game.  

Star Wars Outlaws will be available next year on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Massive Entertainment, best known for its work The Division franchise, is leading development on the project, with what seems like Ubisoft's entire stable of first-party studios on support duties. The game runs on Massive's in-house Snowdrop engine and looks stunning as a result. 

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

AT&T has supported RCS messaging on Android phones since 2021. But if you ask some of the carrier’s customers, the experience hasn’t always been great, with interoperability between different devices sometimes not working as expected. That’s about to change. Over the weekend, Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s senior vice president of Android, tweeted (via Android Police) that AT&T is migrating its RCS backend to Google’s own Jibe platform. Per Lockheimer, the change means AT&T customers will get the latest RCS features “instantly.” It should also resolve any lingering interoperability issues between AT&T phones and devices on different networks.

AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have been committed to RCS since forming the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative in 2019, but it was only after announcing the end of that partnership in 2021, and Google becoming more directly involved with pushing the platform, that RCS began finding a foothold in the US. In 2021, T-Mobile became the first carrier to commit to preloading Google Messages on its Android devices. A year later, Verizon did the same.

At I/O 2023, Google announced that there are more than 800 million people using RCS globally, with that number expected to increase to 1 billion by the end of the year. Still, the platform faces a major hurdle. Apple has shown no signs it’s interested in supporting RCS, even if Google keeps bringing up the subject. Until something changes, that means RCS features like end-to-end encryption don’t work when Android users text friends and family members who use iPhones.

Even if an 11th-hour leak may have ruined the surprise, Atlus had big news to share during Microsoft's Xbox and Starfield showcase on Saturday. The publisher is remaking 2006's Persona 3 for modern platforms. Persona 3 Reload will reimagine the PlayStation 2 classic with modern graphics built inside of Epic's Unreal Engine and integrate gameplay enhancements introduced with 2016's Persona 5. Judging from the trailer Atlus shared, it's unclear if the remake will incorporate elements from the original's 2008 expanded rerelease, Persona 3 FES, and 2010 PlayStation Portable port, Persona 3 Portable. The latter introduced an entirely new female protagonist that has since become a fan favorite.      

Alongside Persona 3 Reload, Atlus announced Persona 5 Tactica. As the name implies, it's a strategy RPG starring the cast of Persona 5. Persona 5 Tactica will arrive on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC on November 17th, with day one availability on Game Pass. 

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

In 2016, Japanese publisher Atlus formed Studio Zero, a development team made up of many of the people who have steered the Persona series since its breakout release in 2006. Now, nearly eight years after that announcement, the company has shared a first look at Metaphor: ReFantazio, the studio's first project. 

Many of the leading creatives who worked on Persona 5, including game director Katsura Hashino and composer Shoji Meguro, were involved in the creation of the game. Structurally, Metaphor: ReFantazio looks like it borrows more than a few elements from the Persona series. There's an overworld for players to explore, and the turn-based combat looks reminiscent of systems employed in past Shin Megami Tensei games, though everything takes place in a fantasy setting instead of a modern-day school. Persona fans will have to wait until next year to see what Hashino and company have been working on all these years. Metaphor: ReFantazio will be available on Xbox Series X/S and PC. 

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

Yakuza fans have a busy 2023 and 2024 ahead of them. In addition to Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Sega announced today it would release the next mainline entry in the series, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, in early 2024. The sequel picks up after the events of 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon. The trailer Sega shared on Saturday features protagonist Ichiban Kasuga, who finds himself naked on a Hawaiian beach with no recollection of how he got there. The usual hijinks ensue before Ichiban realizes what's going on and tries to shield himself. Sega previously announced it plans to release Like a Dragon:Infinite Wealth on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC via Steam.   

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

Ubisoft's long-awaited open world Star Wars game will arrive in 2024. The publisher announced Star Wars Outlaws on Sunday during Microsoft's Xbox and Starfield Direct showcase with a cinematic trailer that introduces fans to the game's Han Solo-like protagonist, Key Vess. Ubisoft is billing Outlaws as the first-ever open world Star Wars game — though it's worth noting many past games in the franchise, including the recently released Jedi: Survivor, feature open world elements. Ubisoft first teased Outlaws in 2021, noting at the time that Massive Entertainment, the studio behind The Division 2, was creating the game inside of its in-house Snowdrop engine. The publisher promised to share gameplay footage from Outlaws during its Ubisoft Forward showcase on June 12th. Ubisoft will release Star Wars: Outlaws on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC.   

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

More platform instability could be in Twitter’s near future. In 2018, Twitter signed a $1 billion contract with Google to host some of its services on the company’s Google Cloud servers. Platformer reports Twitter recently refused to pay the search giant ahead of the contract’s June 30th renewal date. Twitter is reportedly rushing to move as many services off of Google’s infrastructure before the contract expires, but the effort is “running behind schedule,” putting some tools, including Smyte, a platform the company acquired in 2018 to bolster its moderation capabilities, in danger of going offline.

If Twitter can’t migrate the system to its own servers before the end of the month, Platformer suggests a shutdown would greatly impact the company’s ability to combat spam and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Before Saturday, Smyte had been already showing signs of strain, following Elon Musk’s deep cuts to Twitter’s workforce. In December, Musk reportedly asked Twitter’s trust and safety team why the automated system hadn’t caught a Twitter Blue user who had been impersonating him to pump a crypto scam. The team told Musk the system had been unstable for a week, crashing “at least once a day.”

Platform instability has been a hallmark of Twitter 2.0. In February, many of the platform’s core features went down on more than one occasion. More recently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had trouble announcing his bid for the Republican presidential nomination after Twitter Spaces could not handle the influx of people who wanted to listen to the broadcast. If Twitter is in fact planning to stiff Google, it wouldn’t be the first time the company has ghosted on a contract. At the end of last year, California Property Trust, the owner of the building that houses Twitter headquarters, sued the company for failing to pay rent.