Konami today dropped a ton of news about the future of its iconic horror franchise. Aside from confirming that remake of Silent Hill 2, the studio revealed three new games. Townfall comes from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, a Glasgow studio known for strong narrative titles like Observation and Stories Untold. The short teaser for Townfall looks to be the most traditional Silent Hill game of the trio.

Ascension, due out in 2023, is the least game-like installment, but it will feature the influence of J.J. Abrams. It's an interactive streaming series with the tagline: Face Your Trauma Together. Ascension comes from Abrams' studio, Bad Robot, and Genvid, a company that produces interactive live shows.

Konami

And then there's Silent Hill f, coming from Ryūkishi07, a creator known for crafting acclaimed visual novels with psychological horror and supernatural mysteries at their core. The teaser for f is incredibly gruesome, featuring a young woman as she's consumed from the inside-out by the tentacles of a flesh-eating plant. A YouTube description for the teaser says the game is “set in 1960s Japan featuring a beautiful, yet horrifying world.” There's no word yet on a release date.

Oh, and of course, there’s a new Silent Hill movie, too. Happy Halloween, everyone.

– Mat Smith

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Microsoft wants to build an Xbox-branded mobile game store

The Activision Blizzard merger would play a key role.

A company filing with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has revealed plans to build a "next generation" Xbox store that's available on mobile devices, not just consoles and PCs. The shop would unsurprisingly lean heavily on content from the proposed Activision Blizzard merger. Call of Duty Mobile and King's more casual mobile games (think Candy Crush) represent more than half of Activision's revenue.

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The best portable Bluetooth speakers for 2022

There are good options in each price range.

Engadget

We’ve tested out some of the most popular Bluetooth speakers in different price ranges, focusing a bit more on audio quality and dynamic range, while considering factors like utility and price. Ultimately, there isn't one best Bluetooth speaker out there, but we've found plenty of good options for a range of uses and price points.

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James Webb telescope captures Pillars of Creation in unprecedented detail

Featuring lots of young stars.

NASA

Researchers have captured their most detailed image yet of the Pillars of Creation, a star-forming nursery in the Eagle Nebula roughly 6,500 light-years away. The near-infrared picture shows even more detail than Hubble's 2014 snapshot, with an abundance of stars (particularly newborns) – there isn't even a galaxy in sight. The new stars are the bright red points of light and are estimated to be 'just' a few hundred thousand years old.

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Meta's AI translator can interpret unwritten languages

It currently translates between English and Hokkien.

Nearly half of the world’s roughly 7,000 known languages lack a written component. These unwritten languages pose a unique problem for machine learning translation systems, but one that Meta is trying to tackle with its Universal Speech Translator (UST) program. As part of this project, Meta researchers looked at Hokkien, an unwritten language spoken throughout Asia’s diaspora and one of Taiwan’s official languages.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained: “We leveraged Mandarin as an intermediate language to build pseudo-labels, where we first translated English (or Hokkien) speech to Mandarin text, and we then translated to Hokkien (or English) and added it to training data.” Currently, the system allows for someone who speaks Hokkien to converse with someone who speaks English, stiltedly.

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Google's iOS 16 lock screen widgets are now available

Gmail, Maps and other apps are now in closer reach.

Google’s new iOS 16 widgets give you at-a-glance info and shortcuts for some of the company's core apps. Gmail shows your new message counts, and Maps provides links to your favorite trips (like your commute home). The widgets run the gamut of Google apps, though with diminishing usefulness: Google News shows the latest headlines, while Drive takes you to suggested and starred cloud files. YouTube and YouTube Music also have home screen widgets, so you can jump to your video subscriptions or search for a song on YouTube Music.

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Konami's Silent Hill 2 remake for PC and PlayStation 5 isn't the only reimagining of the classic 2001 game on the horizon: The company just announced that the story is also being adapted into a new major motion picture. Return to Silent Hill will apparently serve as a direct sequel to the original 2006 adaptation, and will be helmed by the very same director, Christophe Gans.

The project seems to still be in the development phase. There's no teaser trailer, just a handful storyboard images and pieces of conceptual artwork. Gans spent most of the announcement talking about the plot of the game itself. "We decided to go back to the best of these stories," he said during Konami's Silent Hill Transmission live stream. "The film tells the story of a young guy coming back to Silent Hill, where he has known a great love — and what he's going to find is a pure nightmare." 

Victor Hadida, who also worked on the 2006 film, is also returning to produce, and says that while the project is planning to give the franchise a modern twist, staying true to the spirit of the original game is a key focus. Gans seems to agree, calling the original Silent Hill games "great artistic achievements."

Hearing Christophe Gans talk about the project is genuinely interesting, as the director ponders the unique challenge of translating the immersive narrative that only a video game can deliver into a shorter 90-to-100-minute experience. We won't see how well he manages it for quite some time, however. Return to Silent Hill does not yet have a release date. 

Silent Hill fans, hold onto your butts. Konami today dropped a ton of news about the future of its iconic horror franchise, and aside from confirming a long-rumored remake of Silent Hill 2, the studio revealed three new games in the same universe: Silent Hill Townfall, Ascension and f. They all sound like incredibly different experiences.

Townfall comes from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, a Glasgow studio known for strong narrative skills and horror world-building in titles like Observation and Stories Untold. The short teaser for Townfall features an old-school pocket television clipping through tense conversations and disturbing scenes, and it looks to be the most traditional Silent Hill game of the trio.

Ascension is the least game-like installment here, but it comes with a big name attached: JJ Abrams. It's an interactive streaming series where "the entire community shapes the canon of Silent Hill," and its tagline is "Face Your Trauma Together." Ascension comes from Abrams' studio, Bad Robot, and Genvid, a company that produces interactive live shows. It's described as "a new form of entertainment that blends community, live storytelling and interactivity." Ascension is due out in 2023.

And then there's Silent Hill f, a game that sounds like an exciting departure for the series. It's coming from Ryūkishi07, a creator known for crafting acclaimed visual novels with psychological horror and supernatural mysteries at their core. The teaser for f is gorgeous and gruesome, featuring a young woman as she's consumed from the inside-out by the tentacles of a flesh-eating plant. A YouTube description for the teaser says the game is "set in 1960s Japan featuring a beautiful, yet horrifying world." The video only gets bloodier as it goes, so dip out early if it's making you squirm — or lean in and get a good look, you lovely freak. There's no word yet on a release date or platforms for f.

And that isn't where Konami's renewed interest in Silent Hill ends — alongside Bloober Team's remake of Silent Hill 2, a new movie called Return to Silent Hill is in the works from Christophe Gans, the director of the 2006 film adaptation.

Netflix is making it easier to boot moochers out of your account while still letting them hang onto their viewing preferences. So, when you get fed up of an ex continuing to use your account, you can send them on their way with their recommendations, viewing history, saved titles in My List, game saves, subtitle appearance and other settings intact when they start their own account. That's assuming you ended things on good terms, anyway — you might still want to kick them out without warning.

The feature is rolling out to all users starting today after Netflix initially tested it in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru. Profile transfers will be enabled automatically in all countries except South Korea and the US. You'll need to activate it from your settings in those two nations.

You'll get an email when the profile transfer tool is available on your account. After that, you'll be able to access the Transfer Profile option from the drop-down menu that appears when you hover over your profile icon on the homepage. From there, it's a case of following the directions to set up a new account. It's not clear whether you'll be able to transfer your profile to an existing account. Engadget has asked Netflix for clarification.

Netflix

Netflix says this is a long-awaited feature and the company is framing it as a helpful option for those going through some changes in their life, such as a relationship ending or someone moving away from their parents' account to start a new one with profiles for all their own family members. However, Netflix is also looking to crack down on password sharing.

In August, it started charging users in five Latin American countries more if they share their accounts on an ongoing basis with people who live outside of the primary residence. That came after a trial run in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, which suggests that account sharing fees may be coming to more territories after the broader rollout of profile transfers. We may soon start hearing about people getting kicked out of Netflix accounts because their friends or parents don't want to pay extra.

Netflix is taking account sharing more seriously, particularly in light of the fact that its total number of subscribers dropped for the first time this year. It lost around 1.2 million in the first six months of 2022.

If you do suddenly find yourself having to pay for your own Netflix account, though, you'll soon have the option to transfer your profile to a cheaper, ad-supported plan. That tier will be available starting on November 3rd. It costs $7 per month, but it won't include access to the full Netflix library or offline viewing.

TikTok is once again updating its livestreaming features, and this time the biggest improvements affect the people who can't watch. For starters, the upgrade now lets TikTok Live users host adult-only broadcasts. If a stream is likely to include lots of colorful language or tackle traumatic subjects, you can make sure the audience is mature enough to handle it. The option will be available in the "coming weeks." And no, it's not an officially sanctioned alternative to OnlyFans — TikTok's policies still forbid sexually explicit content.

The social video service is also raising the minimum age for hosts from 16 to 18 starting November 23rd. TikTok pitches this as a logical extension of its restrictions on teen content, but it also comes after incidents of abuse. Older viewers have sexually exploited teen hosts, for example, while teens have made threats against schools. In theory, the higher minimum age will reduce the number of school-age kids using Live to get into the kinds of trouble that wouldn't be possible using pre-recorded clips. Accordingly, a feature arriving in the weeks ahead will remind creators to block keywords they've filtered out in the past.

There is one upgrade that brings more people into the fold. A recently expanded Multi-Guest feature now lets a host invite up to five other participants using either a grid or panel layout. This can be helpful for pro creators who want to air full-fledged shows, of course, but it could also be helpful for any streamer who wants to bring more friends into a conversation.

TikTok is facing government pressure to implement audience controls like this. American and British officials are worried the social network might harm children, whether through promoting unhealthy behavior or jeopardizing privacy. Age restrictions won't necessarily prevent abuses of live broadcasts, but they could indicate that TikTok is addressing key concerns.

Almost a decade to the day since it released the last Silent Hill game (as long as you don't include P.T.), Konami is finally ready to reveal what's next for the franchise. The company will divulge the "latest updates" for the series during a stream that starts at 5PM ET on October 19th.

The publisher announced the showcase in a tweet that includes a link to a placeholder Silent Hill website. Presumably, you'll be able to watch the stream there.

It seems there's at least one new game in the pipeline. Composer Akira Yamaoka and Masahiro Ito, the art director on the first three games, shared news of the upcoming stream, as Video Game Chronicle notes. Both have previously hinted that they're working on a new Silent Hill title. Yamaoka also handled the score for Bloober Team's The Medium — according to reports, that studio is working on a remake of Silent Hill 2 after teaming up with Konami last year. 

Other Silent Hill projects said to be in the works include an episodic, narrative-driven series and a playable teaser in the vein of P.T. for a new mainline game. P.T. was an interactive teaser for Silent Hills, a planned full game from Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro. However, Konami canceled Silent Hills in 2015 and Kojima left the publisher in contentious fashion. The Silent Hill series has been dormant ever since, other than crossovers such as Pyramid Head showing up in Dead by Daylight.

Meanwhile, a third Silent Hill movie may be on the horizon. Christophe Gans, who directed and co-wrote the first film in 2006, said this year that he'd completed a script for another movie. Gans also hinted this month that Konami was working on several Silent Hill games. It seems likely that we'll find out more about those very soon. Here's hoping Konami brings back P.T. as well.

Last week, Kanye West (aka Ye) was locked out of his Twitter and Instagram accounts following a weekend of antisemitic posts. Now, the saga has taken a sharp turn with news that the hip-hop mogul is acquiring the controversial "free speech" social media app Parler. The deal appears to be happening quickly, with the company behind Parler (Parlement technologies) saying that the parties expect to close the transaction in the fourth quarter of 2022. The acquisition price was not revealed.

The proposed acquisition will assure Parler a future role in creating an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome," said Parlement Technologies CEO Geroge Farmer. "In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves," Kanye added.

Shortly after his return to Twitter, West posted an antisemitic message, which was eventually pulled by Twitter. "The account in question has been locked due to a violation of Twitter’s policies," a spokesperson said at the time. The rapper also shared a screenshot on Instagram with another antisemitic message, and was similarly restricted by that site. 

According to the Twitter post above, future (we think) Twitter owner Elon Musk expressed concerns about West's tweet, saying "I think he took [them] to heart." Apparently, he did so by purchasing a rival service. 

Meanwhile, Parler was only recently reinstated to the Google Play after being banned in January 2021 following the US Capitol insurrection. A Google spokesperson said at the time that the removal was due to the app's lack of "moderation policies and enforcement that remove egregious content like posts that incite violence." Apple restored the app to the iOS store in May.

As the above comments suggest, Parler and West are lauding the acquisition as a boon for free speech. However, if Parler allows racist, sexist or antisemitic posts like the one that got Kanye removed from Twitter and Instagram, it would likely be quickly pulled again from the App Store and Google Play. 

Developing...

Meta will end support for Instant Articles by mid-April, the company confirmed to Engadget. It introduced the format to Facebook in 2015 to help news articles load quickly on mobile devices. However, the company is said to be restructuring and directing more resources into its core products — including video-focused features like Reels.

"Currently less than 3% of what people around the world see in Facebook’s Feed are posts with links to news articles," a Meta spokesperson told Engadget. "And as we said earlier this year, as a business it doesn’t make sense to over invest in areas that don't align with user preferences." The company pointed out that its users are spending more time watching videos, especially short-form ones, and that they want to see less news and political content on Facebook.

Axios, which first reported the news, noted that Meta has been reducing its investment in news content, such as by ending the payments it gives to US publishers for including their articles on the News tab. The company also said last week that it will shutter the Bulletin newsletter platform by early 2023.

The mid-April timeline for winding down Instant Articles support will give publishers six months to reassess their Facebook strategies. After that, when you tap a link to a news article on Facebook's mobile apps, you'll be taken to publishers' own websites.

Meta noted that since it debuted Instant Articles, the mobile web experience has broadly improved due to faster internet speeds and more powerful devices. As such, it suggested that these upgrades have rendered Instant Articles unnecessary for many people who access text-based stories. However, you may soon find that some articles take longer to appear on your screen, depending on the page load of publishers' websites.

Google effectively made a similar switch last year when it no longer made its AMP format worthwhile for news publishers. The company said it would stop prioritizing news articles that use the format in its search rankings.

One of the great things about Twitter is that you can reach out to any public user with a quick @ mention to their username. One of the worst things about Twitter is that it's all too easy to abuse that feature. But it turns out, the bird network may be working on a way to control those mentions. According to privacy researcher and engineer Jane Manchun Wong, the company is testing out the ability to block @ mentions entirely, or limit them to people who already follow you. (Literally, don't @ me, bro.)

Twitter privacy designer Dominic Camozzi initially confirmed the feature was in the works, but as The Verge reports, he later deleted that confirmation. Giving users more granular control of @ mentions falls right in line with Twitter's other recent privacy features, like limiting replies, and being able to unmention yourself from threads. While it might make Twitter seem less open, but mention controls will ultimately make the service a better experience for users who inevitably find themselves targeted by trolls.

Netflix's ad-supported tier finally has a release date, and it's now clear just what sacrifices you'll have to make to get a lower price. The new "Basic with Ads" plan will be available November 3rd at 12PM Eastern for $7 per month. It will initially be available to viewers in 12 countries, including the US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Spain.

There are compromises beyond the commercials, which will run for an average of four to five minutes per hour. You'll be limited to a "720p/HD" resolution, and licensing will prevent you from watching certain movies and TV shows. Netflix says it's "working on" lifting that content restriction. You also can't download content to watch offline, so you'll need to pay for a Standard or Premium plan if you need viewing material for your next flight.

The ads will initially be 15- to 30-second spots, and will play both before and during shows. There will be "broad" targeting for those ads based on criteria like your country and the genres of content you watch. Nielsen is also tracking the performance of these ads in the US through its digital rating system.

There are still plenty of incentives to use a more expensive plan, then. However, Netflix is hopeful this will make its service accessible to a wider audience than before. To some extent, it's necessary. Netflix has been losing subscribers in recent quarters, and Basic with Ads could help either attract newcomers or keep existing users from jumping ship.