In 2019, Mercedes teamed up with Volvo automaker Geely to transform Smart into an EV-only brand with new vehicles to arrive in 2022. We're starting to see the fruits of this collaboration with the unveiling of Smart's "Concept #1" at the IAA Mobility 2021 motor show in Munich.
Smart
If you're familiar with Smart's tiny mobility vehicles, the first thing that stands out with the concept is its relatively large size. Designed by Mercedes, the four-seater has roughly the same dimensions (and kind of a similar look, to be honest) as Mini's largest vehicle, the Countryman. It also features smooth aerodynamic styling, a huge glass roof and a gold-tinted, tech-adorned interior that looks like it was designed by Chanel (it wasn't).
Some other notable features include a rear scissor door that would allow for easy entry and makes for a cool look when all four doors are open. As they're highly impractical, don't expect to see them on a production version, though. It has a large, Telsa Model 3-like 12.8-inch touchscreen, 21-inch wheels and LED lightbars at the front and back.
Smart
As for the EV aspect, it's built on Geely's Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) designed to be used across Geely's nine automotive brands, including Volvo, Polestar, Smart and Lotus. It should also support fast-charging tech and over-the-air updates.
And yes, Smart and its Daimler/Geely parents are planning to turn this concept into a production vehicle. The aim is to make multiple versions, including a long-range model, while offering the "highest level of dynamic handling" for enthusiasts. It will be made in China and go on sale there next year, but Smart has plans to bring it to Europe, as well.
We checked out a couple of ambitious Samsung products this week, plus a few other gadgets. Cherlynn Low tested the Galaxy Z Fold 3 smartphone, which is the third generation of Samsung’s foldable hybrid, and the Galaxy Watch 4, which is one of the first devices to run on the new Wear OS platform. James Trew popped off keys and customized the Keychron Q1 keyboard, while Daniel Cooper was pleased with his time with HP’s light yet capable Pavilion Aero 13 laptop.
Although Cherlynn Low likes a lot of the improvements made to the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and calls it an impressive piece of tech, she still isn’t sure it can replace a regular smartphone for most people. The third generation of the folding device has a stronger, redesigned screen, a streamlined hinge and a robust aluminum build, and Samsung says it’s 80 percent more durable than previous models. According to Cherlynn, it easily withstood being thrown in a purse full of sharp and heavy objects, and the IPX8 water-resistance kept it safe from water droplets.
The Fold 3’s external 6.2-inch, 2,268 x 832 display refreshes at 120Hz and uses a Dynamic AMOLED panel, which made for fast scrolling and vibrant images. The phone also has S Pen support, although the stylus costs extra and there isn’t a slot for it on the device. There’s also more software support to improve the full-screen experience, like Multi Window and Flex Mode panels, plus five onboard cameras, which generally produced bright and colorful shots. Despite these wins, she felt that the device was over-reaching and attempting to do too much to achieve mainstream adoption.
Cherlynn Low is candid about how the Galaxy Watch 4 makes her feel, calling it and the rest of Samsung’s smartwatches the best Android wearable options around. The combination of capable hardware with intuitive software features and comprehensive health tracking continue to provide a satisfying experience. The Galaxy Watch 4 adds some interesting marquee features with body composition scans and snore detection, but Cherlynn says she’ll need more time to determine how useful these features are as they are, for now, somewhat unreliable.
The Galaxy Watch 4 includes a sharp 1.4-inch screen with a 450 x 450 resolution, a touch sensitive rotating bezel, and an updated 5nm processor with more storage. It also supports gesture controls that allow you to respond to calls or messages, but Cherlynn says they don’t work very well yet. She was also disappointed with the watch’s battery life, which barely made it through a day. She was more impressed with how accurately and quickly it registered her walking, and she liked that the watch tracks 95 different workouts. She also was pleased that the Wear OS platform strongly echoed the intuitive UI strengths of Tizen, save for the new ability to download apps directly from the Play Store. Despite some hiccups, she’d still recommend the Galaxy Watch 4 or Watch 4 Classic to Android users.
Keychron is known for making economical keyboards and James Trew says its newest offering, the Q1, is affordable, easy to customize and full-featured. The Q1 has hot-swappable switches and an Aviator style USB-C, which should appeal to both avid tinkerers and those who are interested in getting deeper into the geeky details of mechanical keyboards. It comes with a keycap puller and a switch remover, plus keycaps for Windows and MacOS layouts, but it lacks Bluetooth so you’ll have to live with it as a wired peripheral.
The Q1 features the expected RGB key lighting, but has a south-facing integration for a more subtle effect. Inside are a noise-reducing foam deck and screw-in stabilizers for steadier keys. James particularly liked the option to etch a customized metal badge where the Insert key goes. He reported that swapping out keys was easy, and that using the companion Via app was a convenient way to customize the Q1. However, he points out that, at 3.5 pounds, the Q1 isn’t designed for portability and that its height cannot be adjusted.
Daniel Cooper found plenty of reasons to recommend HP’s new Pavilion Aero. The lightest laptop yet from the company weighs in at a mere 2.2 pounds and still manages to fit in a 13.3-inch, 16:10 display with 1,920 x 1,200 resolution. Rounding out the specs list on our review unit was AMD’s Ryzen 5800U with Radeon Integrated Graphics, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Daniel said the build quality is solid, save for the malleable display hinge; the keyboard is well-engineered and satisfying; and the trackpad has tolerable accuracy. He also approved of the battery, which lasted for 9 hours and 43 minutes during testing.
He was less thrilled that the keyboard wasn’t backlit by default, but you can pay $20 extra to get that. And while he was pleased by the performance of the WideVision 720p webcam, he said the downward-firing B&O speakers pumped out audio you could put up with but not fully enjoy. The preinstalled software was another annoyance — getting pop-ups for plugins is never appreciated. Being a relatively affordable laptop, Aero isn’t set up for intensive gaming but Daniel was able to play Fortnite pretty smoothly with medium graphics power. Overall, he says the Aero is clearly punching above its weight and could almost be recommended as an alternative to the Dell XPS 13 for those with tighter budgets.
Razer’s new 14-inch Blade laptop hits all the right notes for Devindra Hardawar: It’s plenty powerful thanks to an NVIDIA RTX 30-series GPU and AMD’s latest processor, and at just under four pounds, it’s still light enough to carry comfortably. Featuring a minimalistic design and a sleek black aluminum case, Devindra’s review unit came equipped with an RGB LED keyboard, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a quad-HD 165Hz display. He reports that the laptop easily handled demanding games even in maxed-out settings and that the ray tracing performance was solid.
Devindra also liked the responsiveness of the keyboard, but said the layout felt a bit cramped for longer gaming sessions. During battery testing, the Blade 14 made it 10 hours and 50 minutes (running productivity tasks, not games). But during heavy gaming sessions, Devindra reports that the CPU reached up to 94 degrees Celsius, which is unusually high. Another downside? The RAM isn’t upgradeable like it is in the larger Blade 15 and 17 laptops. He says if those compromises aren’t deal breakers, then this is worth recommending given its $1,800 starting price.
The Nintendo Switch Online subscription service may give you access to games newer than NES and SNES titles in the near future. According to the latest Nate the Hate podcast, Nintendo might be adding Game Boy and Game Boy Color games to Switch Online in the coming weeks. As the hosts discuss in the show, some people found back in 2019 that the the service has four emulators, and of two of those are still unused. They believe that those emulators are for Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles — and both Nintendo Life and Eurogamer corroborated the report with sources of their own.
Nintendo's Switch Online service turns three years old in a few weeks. It launched on September 18th, 2018, offering members access to retro games for two of the company's oldest consoles. Since then, the company has been regularly adding more and more SNES and NES games to its selection, including beloved classics like the Super Mario Bros.series, The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II and Donkey Kong. Adding Game Boy titles to the mix means Nintendo won't be running out of games to add in the foreseeable future.
Nintendo Life's source isn't optimistic about the possibility of the company rolling out Game Boy Advance titles for the service in the near future. According to Eurogamer, though, "other retro platforms are also on the cards." As you'd expect, Nintendo refuses to comment about the rumor. It told The Verge: "We have nothing to announce on this topic."
China's second largest e-commerce platform JD.com will stop selling up to 86 games following a crackdown on gaming that limits children to three hours per week, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) has reported. Popular titles being removed from its platform include FIFA 21, The Last of Us 2 and Super Mario Maker 2.
Earlier this week, China's National Press and Publication Administration (NPAA) regulator issued an edict limiting gaming for kids under 18 to three hours of gaming per week. They're only allowed to play now for an hour every Friday, Saturday, Sunday and on statutory holidays, marking some of the governments strictest measures since a blockade on new approvals back in 2018.
The new rule has a few gaping holes, notably that officials won't be able to monitor unlicensed games not officially in the system. It's difficult to see how officials would monitor offline gameplay, as well.
However, it's still a big shift in JD.com's strategy, as SCMP has noted. The company announced that it would ban any game that violates China's constitution or national security laws. That also includes games that might promote vulgarity, pornography, gambling and violence. (It's hard to see how some of those games like FIFA 21 and Super Mario Maker 2 violate those rules.)
Previously, JD.com allowed sales of certain games that straddled or crossed those lines, banning them only when they stirred up controversy. Other firms have sold banned games using code titles, changing the name of Resident Evil 2: Remake to First Day on the Job at the Police Station: Remake, for example.
The new strategy may be due in to stepped up government enforcement, with Guangdong regional officials arresting 54 parallel importers in April and confiscating $11.9 million worth of smuggled consoles, according to the report.
Horizon Forbidden West, probably the biggest PlayStation exclusive announced since the PS5 launch, is set to arrive in February. With the release date coming soon, developer Guerilla Games is opening pre-orders and detailing the many different editions of the game that will be available on February 18th, 2022.
Perhaps the most important thing most buyers will need to know is that the standard "launch" editions of Horizon Forbidden West, whether you're buying a physical or digital copy, will only work on a single console. (You can clearly see this stated in an FAQ Sony published today.) Even though the game is being released for both PS4 and PS5, you'll have to choose which console you want and stick with that; there's no ability to upgrade for a fee later. As with most AAA games these days, the PS4 versions costs $60 and the PS5 $70. There are also special edition steelbook version for both consoles that also include a mini art book and digital copy of the soundtrack for $10 more.
If you're really not sure which console to buy for, there's a digital deluxe edition that might be the way to go. For $80 (the same as the PS5 steelbook version), you'll get the game on both PS4 and PS5. It also comes with a number of digital goodies including the art book, soundtrack, a digital comic and some in-game outfits and items. One unlock we haven't heard of before is for the game's photo mode; you'll unlock special face paint and a unique pose for Aloy.
As with other popular AAA titles, there are a couple of lavish and expensive editions for hardcore fans (like the author of this post). The highlight of the $200 Collector's Edition is a seemingly massive statue of the game's Tremortusk enemy alongside a much smaller statue of Aloy. It also includes the same physical art book and steelbook display case that comes with the special editions, plus all the digital gear included with the deluxe edition.
Sony
The $260 "Regalla" edition (so named for an enemy faction in the new game) steps things up with an even more detailed statue that includes special armor and enemy warriors riding the Tremortusk. It also includes two artwork cards, a replica of Aloy's Focus, a canvas map and two replicas of "Strike" pieces from the game. Strike is apparently a type of board game that the characters in Horizon Forbidden West play; we'll have to learn more about them later.
Both of these massive editions come with the game for both PS4 and PS5 — but, they do not include the game on disc. Instead, you'll receive a download card. It makes some degree of sense, given that Sony now sells a PS5 with no disc drive, but it's definitely a bummer for people who don't want to have to wait for what will surely be a massive game download.
Confused yet? Let's make it simple: If you want both PS4 and PS5 versions, you'll need to spend $80 on the digital deluxe edition, which is not a bad idea considering you get the two game versions plus a bunch of digital goodies for only 10 bucks more than the standard PS5 edition. The other option is buying the pricey Collector's or Regalla editions. But if you're set on buying a disc, you'll have to stick with whatever console you pick when you buy it, as there are no plans to offer an upgrade path to the PS5.
You can see and pre-order all the various editions here.
There's another gaming-focused event to look forward to this month. A week after Sony's PlayStation showcase, THQ Nordic is running a 10th anniversary celebration with a look at what's ahead for the publisher.
THQ Nordic is promising six new game announcements for its first digital showcase. Among those are revivals of some "legendary franchises," including some that have been dormant for decades. Hmm... The publisher's also planning to show off sequels to "beloved games" — perhaps there'll be a peek at the next Darksiders title.
Two games that will definitely be part of the showcase are RPGs ELEX II and Expeditions: Rome. If you join the stream before the event officially starts, you'll catch an update from HandyGames during the pre-show.
There will be a familiar face handling hosting duties: Geoff Keighley of The Game Awards, Summer Game Fest and Gamescom's Opening Night Live. The event starts at 3PM ET on September 17th. You can watch it on YouTube, Twitch and Steam.
There’s no Bat-signal roaming the ceiling of the cavernous Park Row, no golden lasso or tiara under a glass case, no Green Lantern cocktail heavy on the creme de menthe. For a DC Comics-endorsed restaurant, it’s light on the cringe theme-restaurant tropes.
But there’s some spectacle — and a lot of love for DC — hidden beneath all the fine trappings.
Opening earlier this month in the center of London, Park Row is pitched as a dining experience that takes you to Gotham without the need to wear a costume. In fact, the restaurant’s FAQ notes “Dress more Bruce than Batman,” and there’s actually a ban on people cosplaying inside the venue.
I’ve visited both tech-laced and themed restaurants for work and pleasure, and Park Row feels a little different, in that it seems entirely made for grown-ups. The idea is simple enough: DC universe meets fine dining, with an immersive high-tech experience inside the Monarch Theater (named after where Batman’s parents were shot) as the showstopper event. Bookable in advance, its £200 ($275) tasting menu is a barrage of 11 themed courses that guide patrons through the heroes and villains of DC.
Mat Smith, Engadget
Adding some high-tech bells and whistles to restaurants isn’t anything new. There are several restaurants and pop-ups that have played with projection mapping meant to showcase and amplify the food on the plates, dining rooms with carefully set-dressed courses and lurid surroundings.
The Monarch Theater is all of it put together in a single room. When it’s not showtime, it looks like, well, a conference room. A long, white room with a long, white table in the middle. Aside from the projectors, dotted around the ceiling, it doesn’t look like a room built for immersive superhero dining.
I can’t tell you every beat of the multi-course experience because I didn’t actually get to test it when I visited. Seating 20 customers, there are two services each day. Post-launch, the team has since expanded the Monarch Theater part for four sittings per day.
The team wants to keep some of the courses’ mystique, but I can touch on some of the showpiece parts. The glossy, plain table betrays what’s been packed inside. Park Row doesn’t use projectors for embellishing the dishes or the food. I’m told by a spokesperson that this would distract from the food itself. Instead, the projectors send diners barreling into insane asylum padded cells that vertiginously rotate, making light fittings all pile together in a corner. I’m quickly shown the same room coated in neon graffiti; then wrapped in ivy vines and a final vista high in the clouds.
Any DC Comics dilettante can assume which characters these projections point to. But it goes on from there. The unassuming conference table (ironically, Cisco was apparently involved with connecting everything together) hides more secrets. Two rails run across the center of the table, making it easier to transform the table when it comes to the Poison Ivy course, which centers around a platter of plants, which seem to be a mix of living and artificial. Within this, serving staff dress the logs and plants with drinks, mysterious edibles and things that I’d call nibbles, but I probably shouldn’t. Some of them are borderline hidden, which seems to be by design.
Below these rails, a heating element runs the length of the table. Customers are given a playing card during an earlier course, and are told to lay this on the table. As the experience progresses, the card reacts to the heat of the table, revealing a secret message to each diner.
There are other tricks that aren’t entirely revealed to me, including a floating plate trick that I’ll have to book my own reservation to see.
Mat Smith, Engadget
Outside of the Monarch Theater, Park Row is split up into several different zones, all serving the same food menu — modern European — in a different facet of a fictional Gotham dining scene. From the entrance, modeled after Wayne Manor, you descend a glowing staircase inspired by a Batcave, through a vapor-emitting door frame into Pennyfeathers, a whiskey bar named after Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s long-serving butler. Beyond that, the Iceberg Lounge has a frozen penguin statue towering the bar, while to the left, the Rogue’s Gallery is curated by Catwoman, decorated with reproductions of some of the world’s most famous stolen art pieces, each one marked by a rogue from DC’s back catalog of villains.
One of these artworks, bizarrely, doubles as a drinks decanter. Now get ready for a deep cut — it’s the same painting used in the 1989 Batman movie. DC fans can probably easily discern which villain has marked each painting, but it’s the nods like this that elevate the whole thing for fans that are able to recall everything. Ordering the fish and chips will result in a blue-tinged piece of battered fish — hinting at when the Joker poisoned Gotham Harbour. The most egregious nod might be the dessert menu. One dish is called Kiss from A Rose. A little on the nose, but only because everything else is so subtle.
There are a few molecular gastronomy tricks, too, like edible balloons and freeze-dried popcorn that billow smoke out your mouth as you crunch. It's these touches that add to the ambiance and fun of the place, and defuses the impression that Park Row may take itself a little too seriously for something based on comic book source material.
Even the restrooms are a playful tribute to the Joker and his minions, all neon signs and bright lights, while paintings around the restaurants give oblique nods to Gotham and its residents. The menus, too, have little symbols that represent DC villains. These touches are there if you look for them, but they’re not obvious — which is good for those of us that don’t want to see anything more superhero-related ever again. I think the point is you could bring a date who has zero interest in the DC universe and capes, and they’d think it’s a glossy, central London restaurant. Fortunately, the food should be good enough to stand on its own, with an executive chef from a Michelin-starred restaurant. The restaurateur behind it all is known for his work with Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck.
The food has the credentials — and prices — to ensure even if you couldn’t care less about DC, at least you’ll have a good meal and a ridiculous cocktail or two.
There are secrets buried in the first video from Eyes Out. It’s just two minutes long and filled with overlapping shots of drums, mics, guitars and snakelike cables packed into a lonely desert hideaway, all while an unsettling, ambient score gathers layers of sound. Over time, the scenes are flooded with red and the film is overcome by a horrendous groaning scream. Thin white text flashes across the screen, telling a disjointed story about burying bones and walking with the bloom of a burgeoning universe.
Among this vibrating chaos, there are hints about the kind of studio Eyes Out will be and even what the team’s first game might look like. Or, more aptly, what it might sound like.
Eyes Out is the new video game studio founded by Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck and veteran AAA director Cory Davis, and the team is already hard at work on its first title, a mysterious horror game with an emphasis on experimental audio.
“We want to create mind-bending experiences that cause you to question reality,” Davis said. “That's what we're really excited about. We’re all fans of horror, but specifically this kind of — it's a new and emerging space that doesn't just sit within the extremely violent and dark and terrifying, but also reaches into the vibrant and even surprises you with moments of bliss or self-reflection. Horror really has a lot of room to grow.”
Finck added on to that thought, saying, “We're playing in this field that provides an emotional and psychological response, which really, I feel, is heightened as a singular experience. And we're really fortunate to be attracting developers who are so genuinely passionate about these types of conversations.”
Davis has built a successful career as a video game designer, directing and crafting high-profile titles including Spec Ops: The Line and Here They Lie, but he’s also a composer. In fact, the first word of his Twitter bio reads, “musician.” Meanwhile, Finck’s Twitter bio has just two tags, both of which speak for themselves: @eyesoutofficial and @nineinchnails.
Note which one comes first.
Eyes Out
Finck got involved in the video game industry about six years ago, after striking up a friendship with Devolver Digital co-founder Mike Wilson at Burning Man. Finck ended up handling the soundtrack for Noct, a top-down horror game published by Devolver in 2015, and his interest in development was piqued. He dove further into the video game industry, attending conventions and connecting with creators.
“I was just really inspired by people and their enthusiasm, the forward tech of it all, and the collision of art and music, design, agency, narrative, and also the experience of really becoming immersed in all of this,” Finck said. “It really feels like the most focused and the most highly attuned experience to imbibe this sort of storytelling. And that continues to turn me on. And this led me, fortunately enough for me, to meet Cory as he and his team were completing Here They Lie.”
Eventually, Finck found himself at Sony Santa Monica, playing an early version of Davis’ VR horror title, Here They Lie. He was floored by it. Finck and Davis got to talking, and they haven’t stopped since.
“We immediately were talking about sound and music and the weight of that and the experience,” Finck said. “And we kept on in the coming days and weeks and months. And then eventually were working together on music for projects that Cory was heralding. We have a simpatico workflow and creatively sync in a lot of ways.”
Davis remembered feeling a spark at that first meeting, too.
“We started to go down the rabbit hole of distortion pedals and different synthesizers and stuff like that,” he said. “But that led us to this other type of discussion where I really felt this connection in terms of an understanding of the power of games as a medium and the impact and the possibility of what the medium holds for the future.”
Davis and Finck were both interested in building a single-player experience around music and tone, rather than starting with a narrative or visual style and applying sound later on in the process.
“From the first conversation with Robin, I could feel that he's this other type of creator that wants to be driven by his passion and his soul, rather than maybe what's trendy or what's even necessarily gratifying,” Davis said. “I just felt this kind of depth of possibility of what we could do together. I had other prototypes going on at the time at my old studio, but every time I got back together with Robin, our conversations would go deeper. And they'd go beyond the music and they'd go to places where I'd been hoping to go my whole journey as a game developer.”
Eyes Out is the result of this creative magnetism between Davis and Finck. They’ve attracted other developers, too, and have hired 15 collaborators from the industries of visual art, film and games to work on their first project.
“That's really what I've been looking for since way back in the Spec Ops: The Line days, was to build a team that has a diverse enough approach to both things like the difficulties in game development, as well as their acceptance and embrace of people that are from different parts of the world, from different backgrounds, that are of any kind of personality, and especially people that have been downtrodden and haven't had opportunities in the past,” Davis said. “We see those opportunities allowing us to have so much more depth in the types of stories that we're able to tell.”
There’s no name or release window for the studio’s first game, but Davis and Finck are dropping hints about how it’ll play and what they want players to feel. It’s not a VR game, it’s designed with complete immersion in mind, and it features creatures that behave strangely in response to generative audio cues. The team is playing around with rhythm mechanics and figuring out how to build creeping tension through sound.
“The type of horror that we're building has a lot to do with the horrors of the universe and the horrors that you kind of go to sleep with at night, the ones that are just around the corner and outside of our purview, but exist,” Davis said. “And the technology for building those types of soundscapes, the localized audio and reverb and the realism behind that, coming from VR before, I had a lot of opportunity to work with that stuff.”
The debut game from Eyes Out will be a focused, single-player horror experience built around sound — and silence.
“I'm really excited about the nuance and the subtlety of coming from silence, like a really impactful silence, and beginning to emerge from that silence towards an impactful embellishment of some sort, however great or greater,” Finck said. “And that play between the diegetic soundscape of the world within the tangible, physical space inside the game, and where it blurs with the score, the music of the game, can be really challenging and inspiring.”
Eyes Out's first project is poised to be otherworldly, introspective and experimental, just like the studio itself.
No Man's Sky just celebrated its fifth anniversary, and to underscore just how far the game has come since its rocky debut, Hello Games has released the 17th major update for the space exploration and survival sim. The headline attraction of the Frontiers update is the addition of alien settlements, which you can take charge of and rule however you like.
You'll be able to name towns, expand them, defend them against Sentinels, welcome visitors, resolve disputes between residents and even commission festivals. As with the rest of the game, interiors will be procedurally generated. You'll be able to see the population's overall happiness level, earn income from the town and gain insight into the intentions and thoughts of residents, all of which add Sims-esque layers to the game.
Hello Games
Base building has been revamped with a grid-based menu system and automatic contextual placement of features like windows and arches. There are more than 250 new base parts, including timber, stone, alloy and decorative pieces. You can even place parts inside of each other.
You now have 15 save slots instead of five, and you can save more discoveries on locally. Hello Games says it has upgraded some visual effects too (the previous big patch brought in more substantial visual improvements). For one thing, you'll start to see pretty, multi-colored nebulas in space. Players can choose "monstrous companions" as pets as well.
Hello Games
A new Twitch campaign is on the way, through which you can earn in-game rewards by watching others play No Man's Sky. Meanwhile, the next expedition season will commence soon. The Frontiers update is now live on all platforms.
Facebook wants in on the predictive games trend. The social media giant has launched a Fantasy Games feature in the US and Canada with "free, simple" sports and pop culture prediction titles. The fantasy sports offerings let you predict winners for matches, top players and other stats. MLB Home Run Picks asks you to predict the team with the most home runs in a given day, for instance, while La Liga Winning Streak challenges you to predict daily wins in the Spanish soccer league for as long as possible.
You can also guess the victors in reality TV shows like Survivor and The Bachelorette. There are promises of other pop culture games, although Facebook didn't cite examples.
Fantasy Games are currently available through Facebook's Android and iOS apps. You'll find them both through the bookmarks menu as well as through notifications in the News Feed.
Facebook clearly isn't interested in direct competition with for-money fantasy game services like DraftKings and FanDuel, at least not right now. However, there are still plenty of incentives for the social network to launch Fantasy Games. The feature could keep you coming back, boosting ad revenue as well as your overall engagement with Facebook. It also opens the door to paid fantasy games in the future. Still, this might hit the spot if you've been tempted by fantasy sports but don't want to spend real money.
