Black & Decker has launched a new health division with a lineup of personal emergency response (PERS) wearables aimed at seniors. Called goVia, it includes devices that can be worn on the wrist or around the neck that can detect falls or allow seniors to call for aid via a monthly subscription powered by Medical Guardian. 

Black & Decker

The first device, called the goVia Mini ($125 on Amazon), has a battery life of five days and can be carried in bags or worn on belts or around the neck with an included lanyard. It comes with cellular coverage from Verizon's 4G LTE network along with location tracking via GPS, WiFi and triangulation. If the wearer encounters an emergency, they can press the call button and speak with an operator directly through the device. A responder can then come directly to their location. 

Black & Decker

The goVia Move ($75) works in a similar way, but offers portable wearable help buttons that can be worn on the wrist. In case of emergency, you can press on either the button on the Move device itself or the portable button, though the latter has to be within 300 feet of the main unit. That will again connect you to an operator directly through the device, who can then send help to your location determined by a GPS. 

The $45 goVia Home Classic device connects to a landline rather than a cellular service and includes a neck pendant or wristband (with a 600 foot range) that can be used to call for help at the press of a button. Black & Decker Health also offers the $50 goVia Home Wireless version that uses AT&T's cellular services rather than a landline. Both offer a fall detection option (for an additional monthly cost) that can automatically detect motion changes caused by a fall and impact and automatically connect to emergency operators without the need for a landline.

While the devices themselves are relatively inexpensive, they all require monthly monitoring subscriptions provided by Medical Guardian that aren't cheap. The goVia Mini's service plan costs $39.95 per month, the goMove service is $44.95 a month, Home Classic is $29.95 monthly and Home Wireless is $34.95 per month, or $44.95 per month with fall detection. 

During a roundtable discussion about Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media joining Microsoft, Xbox chief Phil Spencer touched on what the $7.5 billion deal would mean for game exclusivity. "If you're an Xbox customer, the thing I want you to know is this about delivering great exclusive games for you that ship on platforms where Game Pass exists," he said. "The creative capability we will be able to bring to market for Xbox customers is gonna be the best it's ever been for Xbox."

Not all Bethesda games will be exclusive to PC, Xbox and/or xCloud. Some will be multiplatform. Others, such as Deathloopand GhostWire: Tokyo, will initially be PS5 console exclusives. "There [are] contractual obligations that we're gonna see through, as we always do in every one of these instances," Spencer said. "We have games that exist on other platforms and we're gonna go support those games on the platforms they're on."

He noted that Xbox will continue to invest in existing "communities of players" and added that there might be cases down the line where there are contractual obligations with other platforms. "Even in the future, there might be things that have either contractual things or legacy on different platforms that we'll go do," he said. Spencer previously said that Xbox will decide whether to release future Bethesda games on non-Xbox or PC platforms on a "case-by-case basis."

It also emerged during the stream that more than 20 Bethesda games will be available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers as of Friday. A dozen more titles from the publisher will join the service, including Fallout 4.