Just ahead of Black Friday, some solid gaming deals are popping up. A 12-month subscription to PlayStation Plus is currently $40 on Amazon. It typically costs $60 and it's a digital code, so you won't have to wait for delivery. If you’re already a PS Plus member, it’s still worth checking out this deal, since you can stack additional subscriptions.

You'll need a PS Plus membership to play most multiplayer games on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. There are exceptions for some free-to-play games, including Fortnite. In addition, members often get discounts on digital purchases through the PlayStation Store, as well as cloud storage and backups for game save files.

One of the major value adds of PS Plus is that players receive a mystery bag of a few games each month across PS4 and PS5. There are three extra PS VR games this month to mark the headset’s fifth anniversary. You’ll retain access to claimed PS Plus games as long as you maintain your subscription.

PS5 owners can take advantage of the PS Plus Collection too. It’s a selection of first-party and third-party PS4 games, some of which have been patched for better performance on PS5. The lineup includes God of War, Monster Hunter: World, Final Fantasy XV, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Ratchet & Clank, Days Gone, Battlefield 1, Batman: Arkham Knight, The Last Guardian, The Last of Us Remastered, Persona 5 and Resident Evil 7. The same rule applies: if your PS Plus subscription lapses, you won’t be able to play games you claimed through the collection.

Of course, given that this is the biggest shopping season of the year, there are discounts on games as well, and many of the better deals are for physical editions. You can find savings on PlayStation console exclusives like Deathloop ($30, usually $60), the director's cut of Ghost of Tsushima on PS5 (down from $70 to $40), Demon's Souls (also reduced by $30 to $40) and, in one of the bigger discounts, Returnal, which has dropped from $70 to $30.

There are good deals on multi-platform titles too, such as Eidos-Montreal's surprisingly wonderful Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, which is half off at $30 on all platforms. Hitman 3 and Resident Evil: Village are both less than half price at the minute at $20. Hades, which is widely regarded as one of the best games of 2020, is also $20 on all platforms.

Far Cry 6 is a third off at $40, and you can save on FIFA 22 as well. The latest edition of EA's famed soccer series is $40 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S (it's a digital code for the latter consoles), and $28 on PS4 and Xbox One.

The PS5 digital edition and Xbox Series X don't have disc drives, so deals on physical games won't mean much to owners of those consoles. However, it's worth checking out the PlayStation and Xbox digital stores for Black Friday deals there too.

Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by visiting our deals homepage and following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter.

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As ever, Amazon is discounting many of its products for the Black Friday shopping period. Like many other companies, Amazon is getting out of the gate a little early with deals on Kindles. The standard Kindle is down from $90 to $50, which is the lowest price we've seen for the e-reader. Back in the summer, it dropped to $55 for Amazon Prime Day.

This is the ad-supported version of the tenth-generation Kindle, which has a 167 ppi glare-free display with a built-in front light. It comes with 8GB of storage, which is enough to store thousands of books. You can also pair it with Bluetooth headphones or speakers to listen to audiobooks.

Elsewhere, two Kindles for kids are on sale. Kindle Kids is down to $60 (usually $110) and Kindle Paperwhite Kids, which usually costs $160, has dropped to $115, only a couple of months after Amazon announced it. Both come with a year of access to Amazon Kids+, a kid-friendly cover and a two-year worry-free guarantee — Amazon will replace the device if it breaks during that period.

Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by visiting our deals homepage and following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Phil Spencer is reportedly reassessing Xbox's relationship with Activision Blizzard following new bombshell reports about the company and CEO Bobby Kotick. Spencer, who runs Microsoft's Xbox division, reportedly told employees in an email that he's “evaluating all aspects of our relationship with Activision Blizzard and making ongoing proactive adjustments,” in the wake of an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.

In the memo, which was obtained by Bloomberg, Spencer said he and other leaders at Xbox are “disturbed and deeply troubled by the horrific events and actions” that reportedly took place at Activision Blizzard. "This type of behavior has no place in our industry,” Spencer wrote.

Kotick is said to have known about instances of sexual misconduct at the company for years without reporting them to the board. He has also been accused of mistreating women on numerous occasions.

Spencer has joined Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan in expressing deep concern about the situation. In an internal memo, which also leaked earlier this week, Ryan wrote that he was "disheartened and frankly stunned to read” The Journal's report. He also criticized Activision's response to the allegations. Earlier this week, the company told Engadget that the report presented a “misleading view of Activision Blizzard and our CEO.”

More than 900 Activision Blizzard employees and contractors have now signed a petition demanding Kotick's removal. A shareholder group has also urged the board to remove Kotick and for the board's two longest-serving directors to retire by the end of the year. In addition, Polygon and Eurogamer both called for Kotick's resignation. Strongly worded statements from leaders at Microsoft and Sony, two of Activision Blizzard's most important business partners, will further crank up the pressure.

Engadget has contacted Activision Blizzard for comment.

More than 800 Activision Blizzard employees and contractors have signed a petition calling for CEO Bobby Kotick to be removed as CEO. Workers walked out in protest earlier this week, following a report published by The Wall Street Journal, which alleged that Kotick knew about sexual misconduct claims at the company and neglected to inform the board of directors. The report also notes that Kotick has been accused of mistreating women on numerous occasions.

"We, the undersigned, no longer have confidence in the leadership of Bobby Kotick as the CEO of Activision Blizzard," the petition reads. "The information that has come to light about his behaviors and practices in the running of our companies runs counter to the culture and integrity we require of our leadership—and directly conflicts with the initiatives started by our peers."

The signees asked for Kotick to step down and for shareholders to choose a new CEO without his influence. The petition notes that Kotick "owns a substantial portion of the voting rights of the shareholders." When employee advocacy group A Better ABK shared the petition on Twitter, it said more than 500 workers had signed it. Hundreds more added their names within a couple of hours. 

Among the claims in the report are one that Kotick was the person who wrote an email sent to employees by executive vice president of corporate affairs Frances Townsend after California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard in July. "A recently filed lawsuit presented a distorted and untrue picture of our company, including factually incorrect, old and out of context stories — some from more than a decade ago," the memo read. Hundreds of Blizzard employees slammed the message and demanded "immediate corrections" from company leaders.

The report also shed some light on the departure of Jen Oneal, who was named as a co-lead of Blizzard in August but announced three months later that she was leaving her position. In a September email to the company's legal team, Oneal (who is Asian-American and gay) is said to have written that she had been "tokenized, marginalized, and discriminated against" and that she was paid less than Blizzard co-lead Mike Ybarra. IGN later reported that Ybarra and Oneal asked management for equal compensation, but Oneal said they were only offered equivalent offers after she tendered her resignation.

Following The Journal's report, the Activision Blizzard board publicly gave its backing to Kotick. However, the backlash is intensifying. Before the petition, Polygon and Eurogamer called for him to resign in editorials. A group of activist shareholders, who hold around 0.6 percent of stock and have long criticized Kotick, demanded that he step down.

On top of that, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan told his employees that he was “disheartened and frankly stunned to read” The Journal's report. “We outreached to Activision immediately after the article was published to express our deep concern and to ask how they plan to address the claims made in the article,” Ryan wrote in the email, which was leaked. “We do not believe their statements of response properly address the situation.”

This week's report and ensuing pressure on Kotick follows a torrid few months for leaders at Activision Blizzard. After DFEH filed its lawsuit, it emerged that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the company. Activision Blizzard is also facing a class action lawsuit from shareholders, who claim it violated securities laws. In addition, workers and the Communication Workers of America filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the company. 

When asked for comment, Activision Blizzard directed Engadget to the statement the board of directors made on Tuesday. "The goals we have set for ourselves are both critical and ambitious," it said. "The Board remains confident in Bobby Kotick's leadership, commitment and ability to achieve these goals.”

Chatting with Alexa could soon feel even more natural as Amazon starts rolling out the voice assistant's Conversation Mode. The feature, which the company revealed at its fall 2020 hardware event, allows a group of people to have back-and-forth communication with Alexa without having to say the wake word multiple times.

Conversation Mode is debuting on the third-gen Echo Show 10, and Amazon is rolling it out over the next few weeks. It's an opt-in feature, and you can switch it on by saying "Alexa, join this conversation." Anyone in the room will be able to speak with the voice assistant, as long as they're looking at the screen and the smart display's camera can see them.

Saying "leave this conversation," or turning off the mic or camera will end Conversation Mode. Alexa will also switch it off if there's no interaction for a certain length of time.

Amazon

There are visual indicators to show when Conversation Mode is active. You'll see a blue border around the screen and a light blue bar at the bottom when Echo Show 10 is sending your requests to the cloud. No videos or images are uploaded, and you'll be able to review and delete voice recordings through the Alexa app.

Amazon says that Conversation Mode's AI uses visual and acoustic cues to determine when someone is saying something to Echo Show 10. Alexa then formulates a response based on the context. The company is planning to improve the mode over time and add features such as the ability to interrupt a list of options by saying something like “That one!”

The feature builds on features Amazon added to make Alexa sound more like a real person, including taking breaths, changing the tone of voice and stressing certain words. In Conversation Mode, Alexa will pause when it's interrupted.

Google Assistant has had a similar feature, Continued Conversation, since 2018. Apple has reportedly been working on a way to allow people to have back-and-forth conversations with Siri for several years.

Earlier this year, Snapchat announced Map Layers, features for the Snap Map built around local content. The first two Layers, Memories and Explore, are now available to everyone.

Memories will display old snaps that you captured in certain places, with the idea that it'll help you relive your favorite moments. Users will only be able to see their own memories in this Layer, which sort of builds on the My Places feature Snapchat added this summer. As for Explore, that's a reimagined version of the heat map. You'll be able to check out places though photos and videos that other users have shared publicly. You can access the Map Layers through a menu at the top right of the Snap Map.

Snap is also opening up Layers to third parties. A Ticketmaster layer showing nearby concerts (and providing a way to buy tickets) is coming soon, as is one from The Infatuation that highlights the best restaurants on the map. More Layers are in the pipeline too.

Apple announced a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip a month ago, and some solid deals are already starting to pop up. A model with a 10‑core CPU and 16‑core GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD is on sale on Amazon for $2,399, which is $100 off the regular price.

Granted, that's not a massive discount, but it's bigger than a previous drop of $50. Given how new the device is, it's a decent offer, so if you've been waiting for a price drop, this might be enough to sway you.

We reviewed the 16-inch MBP last month and gave it a score of 92. The performance is nothing to sniff at, with the M1 Pro proving more adept at creative tasks like video editing and 3D rendering than last year's M1 chip. As for battery life, the laptop ran for over 16 and a half hours in our testing.

Apple made sure there were plenty of ports on the latest model, after going several years with minimal connectivity on MacBook Pros. There are three Thunderbolt 4 ports, a MagSafe power port, HDMI connectivity, a 3.5mm headphone jack and an SD card reader, but unfortunately no USB-A port. To accommodate all of those, the laptop is a little bulker than its predecessors. That said, the trade off is likely worth it for most people, given that you might not feel the need to carry around a connector hub to connect all your peripherals anymore.

The MBP has a Liquid Retina XDR display with Mini-LED backlighting that's capable of outputting 1,600 nits of brightness and support for a 120Hz refresh rate. Apple has at last upgraded the webcam to one with a resolution of 1080p too, which is a significant step up from the 720p version.

Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by visiting our deals homepage and following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The long and messy development of the controversial Six Days in Fallujah is set to last for at least another year. Publisher Victura has confirmed the first-person shooter will be delayed until the last quarter of 2022. Previously, it targeted a 2021 launch window.

Victura and Highwire Games, which counts former Destiny and Halo developers among its team, announced in February that they are reviving the game. Six Days in Fallujahfirst emerged in 2009, but following a backlash, publisher Konami backed out and developer Atomic Games wasn't able to secure funding to finish the game. The studio shut down in 2011 and the project, then a third-person shooter, was shelved.

The game features true stories shared by dozens of marines, soldiers and Iraqi civilians who were involved in Second Battle of Fallujah in Iraq in November 2004. Missions take place from the perspective of a person who was there, and they'll provide narration about what happened, from their point of view.

As was the case the first time around, critics rallied against Six Days in Fallujah. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent Muslim advocacy group in the US, urged Sony, Microsoft and Valve to block it from their gaming platforms.

Victura CEO Peter Tamte, formerly of Atomic and Destiny studio Bungie, was widely denounced for suggesting the game would not make a political statement regarding why American soldiers were in Fallujah. The publisher later clarified that "we understand the events recreated in Six Days in Fallujah are inseparable from politics."

Despite the black cloud hanging over the game, Victura and Highwire are forging ahead. They plan to almost double the size of the development team. “It became clear that recreating these true stories at a high quality was going to require more people, capital and time than we had,” Tamte said. “Doubling our team is just one of many things we’re doing to make sure Six Days in Fallujah brings new kinds of tactical and emotional depth to military shooters.”

TikTok has pledged to do more to combat the spread of hoaxes and dangerous challenges. Many TikTok challenges are harmless and fun. Others are riskier, such as this year's milk crate challenge, which led to a spate of injuries. But well-intentioned parents and other adults who want to warn others about dangerous challenges can inadvertently raise awareness of them — even if those challenges are fake.

The company commissioned a survey of more than 10,000 teens, parents and teachers in several countries, including the US and UK. It found that 31 percent of teens had taken part in some kind of online challenge.

Teens were asked about the risk level of a challenge they'd seen online recently, not necessarily on TikTok. Around 48 percent said the challenge was safe, 32 percent said it had a little risk and 14 percent described it as risky or dangerous. Respondents said three percent of challenges were "very dangerous," while 0.3 percent said they'd taken part in a challenge they categorized in that way.

The study found that 46 percent of teens want more information and help to understand the risks of challenges, while 31 percent said they "felt a negative impact" from hoaxes related to self harm and suicide. Recognizing and dealing with hoaxes isn't necessarily easy. Thirty-seven percent of the adult respondents say they find it difficult to discuss self-harm and suicide hoaxes without drawing attention to them.

TikTok says it already removes hoaxes and takes action to limit their spread, but it's planning to do more. It will take down "alarmist warning" videos about fake self-harm challenges. "The research showed how warnings about self-harm hoaxes — even if shared with the best of intentions — can impact the well-being of teens since they often treat the hoax as real," TikTok said. "We will continue to allow conversations to take place that seek to dispel panic and promote accurate information."

The Momo Challenge, for instance, was an infamous viral hoax that a lot of people fell for a couple of years ago. Its spread was exacerbated by those sounding the alarm about the "challenge," which many falsely claimed was urging kids to harm themselves.

Other safety improvements TikTok has made include expanding "technology that helps alert our safety teams to sudden increases in violating content linked to hashtags." Whenever a user searches for content linked to a hoax or dangerous challenge, they'll see a warning label.

The company worked with a clinical child psychiatrist and a behavioral scientist to improve the language of the label. Users who search for hoaxes and harmful challenges will be encouraged to visit TikTok's Safety Center to learn about how to recognize them. If the search is connected to a hoax linked to suicide or self harm, they'll see resources such as contact details for the National Suicide Prevention Helpline.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Crisis Text Line can be reached by texting HOME to 741741 (US), 686868 (Canada), or 85258 (UK). Wikipedia maintains a list of crisis lines for people outside of those countries.

Microsoft has built a new media playback app for Windows 11 to supplant both Windows Media Player, which hasn't really changed since 2009, and the Groove Music app. Windows Insiders can start testing the creatively named Media Player for Windows 11 now.

The app is designed for both music and video playback. If you've been clinging onto the Groove Music app to manage your library of tracks, even after Microsoft axed Groove Music services in 2017, you'll be able to update it to the new Media Player. Your library and playlists will automatically migrate over, as Gizmodo notes.

Microsoft

Microsoft says users will be able to quickly browse their library to find what they want to listen to, and create and manage playlists. During playback, you'll see album art and "rich artist imagery" in both full screen and mini-player modes. The app will add files from your PC's music and video folders too. Through the settings, users can tell Media Player where else to look for things to bring to the library.

There are accessibility-focused options in the app too. Microsoft says those include "improved keyboard shortcut and access key support for keyboard users and with other assistive technologies."

Media Player currently has a couple of issues, Microsoft notes, including ones that affect playback from some network locations, editing album metadata and library content with accented characters. You'll still be able to access the old version of Windows Media Player through Windows Tools.

Of course, the Media Player design reflects the clean aesthetic of Windows 11. The app looks nice and it's the cherry on top of a long, long-awaited overhaul of Windows Media Player. It's a bit of a shame that Microsoft chose such a boring name for the new app, but at least users shouldn't be confused about what it does.