The next Mortal Kombat game might not be what you expect. NetherRealm and WB Games have unveiledMortal Kombat 1, a "reborn" take on the series that promises new fighting mechanics and game modes. While most details are under wraps, you'll see many well-known characters as well as "Kameo Fighters" to help you mid-battle. And yes, the gore remains intact — as the teaser trailer below indicates, you can expect plenty of fatalities.

Mortal Kombat 1 arrives September 19th for PC (via Epic and Steam), PS5, Switch and Xbox Series X/S. Pre-order customers get access to a beta in August. A $110 digital Premium Edition will offer early access to the game (September 14th), a Johnny Cage skin made to resemble actor Jean-Claude Van Damme and early access to playable characters and Kameo Fighters when they arrive post-launch. If you're truly devoted, a $250 physical Kollector's Edition will include a 16.5-inch Liu Kang sculpture as well as a matching in-game skin, art prints and a special case.

The reboot is in line with the ending of Mortal Kombat 11 and its Aftermath add-on. However, it's also clearly positioned as an opportunity to rethink the gameplay and story. It's just a question of how much has changed. Not that this reinvention comes as much of a shock given what rivals are doing — Capcom is also shaking up its formula with the World Tour mode in Street Fighter 6.

Skynet. Ultron. HAL-9000. These are but a few artificial intelligence systems that have gone rogue in films. Whether The Creator can produce a fictional AI that would make a mark on popular culture remains to be seen, but it is another movie that pits humanity against artificial intelligence. Its official website says the movie is about Joshua, an ex-special forces agent recruited to hunt down the Creator. That's the architect behind the advanced AI that was developed to protect humanity only to detonate a nuclear warhead in Los Angeles. 

The Creator apparently also developed a weapon with the power to end all war and all of humanity, and Joshua and his team were tasked to destroy it. They then discovered that the world-ending weapon is an AI in the form of a young child. Of course, Joshua couldn't kill it and ended up taking it places and letting it do kid things like playing with other children. Is it evil or not? We don't know at this point. The trailer released by 20th Century Studios, New Regency and Entertainment One only shows the AI as a playful, inquisitive child. 

The film was directed and conceptualized by Gareth Edwards, the same director behind Rogue One. John David Washington (Tenet) plays Joshua, the protagonist grieving the disappearance of his wife played by Gemma Chan. Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson and Allison Janney also play roles in the movie, which will arrive in theaters on September 29th.

We’re starting to get a clearer picture of how Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has changed the platform. According to new data from Pew Research, a “majority” of US Twitter users have “taken a break” from the platform over the last year, and many of the site’s “most active” users are tweeting less often than they used to.

“Six-in-ten Americans who have used Twitter in the past 12 months say they have taken a break from the platform for a period of several weeks or more during that span,” Pew writes in a report based on a survey of 10,701 Twitter users. In a separate report, Pew also studied the “actual behavior” of 1,002 of Twitter’s “most active” users and found “a noticeable posting decline in the months after” Musk’s acquisition. “These users’ average number of tweets per month declined by around 25% following the acquisition,” Pew noted.

Together, these stats suggest that engagement on Twitter has declined since Musk’s takeover, at least among formerly active users. That’s particularly notable because, as Pew notes, the vast majority of Twitter users are lurkers, not posters. Twenty percent of Twitter users send 98 percent of all tweets.

At the same time, it seems many of Twitter’s most active users haven’t given up on the platform entirely. According to Pew, only 25 percent of “highly active” users said they are “not very or not at all likely to be on Twitter a year from now.”

Pew didn’t poll Twitter users on the reasons for their pullback from Twitter, or if Musk’s actions were directly responsible for the shift. It also doesn’t take into account how many new users may have joined Twitter in the last year. But the new numbers offer new insight into the growing ranks of Twitter quitters who may be spending more time on alternative platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky since Musk’s takeover,

Unsurprisingly, Pew also found that Musk himself has become even more of a main character on Twitter over the last year. “On average, adult Twitter users in the U.S. mentioned Musk in a tweet just once between Jan. 1 and April 13, 2022, before he announced his intention to acquire the platform,” the report says. “Since then, however, references to Musk have become much more common on the site. These users tweeted about him an average of three times between April 14 and Oct. 26, 2022 – while Musk was in the process of acquiring the platform – and an average of six times in the months after the sale was finalized.”

The reports come as Musk has named a new CEO in former NBCU executive Linda Yaccarino. Yaccarino, who is slated to start in the coming weeks, is expected to draw on her ad industry experience to try to win back advertisers, many of whom have fled following controversial policy changes by Musk. Whether she'll be able to win back the much sought-after “highly active tweeters,” though, is unclear. With Musk remaining as CTO and executive chairman, he’s likely to continue to be Twitter’s most influential — and controversial — user for the foreseeable future.

Nicolas Cage will soon appear in Dead by Daylight. The actor will bring his delightful eccentricity and Billy Mays-style beard to the multiplayer survival game, developer Behavior Interactive announced on Twitter. “There is nothing more powerful than imagination,” Cage says in the appropriately campy teaser. “It can shape the fabric of reality, transforming everything you may think you know.”

Cage will play himself in the role of a Survivor, according toEurogamer. “After countless awards and over one hundred movies shot across the globe, Nicolas Cage had seen it all and done it all — or so he thought,” a brief announcement reads. “While on set filming the role of a lifetime, his performance summoned The Entity, a malevolent being of incomprehensible power. The actor soon found himself cast in otherworldly Fog, forced to Survive a host of terrifying Killers deadlier than even the most scathing film critic.”

It’s the latest quirky / campy addition to the popular horror game, following a K-Pop star, Freddy Kreuger, Leatherface, Evil Dead’s Ash Williams and a pro-surveillance tech executive. (It even has a dating-sim add-on for some reason.) The game’s developers, who describe Cage’s appearance as “the performance of a lifetime,” say we’ll hear more about the Oscar winner’s contribution on July 5th.

Get ready to deal with things that go clank in the night on the big screen. A Five Nights at Freddy's movie is on the way later this year, and Universal Pictures has revealed the first teaser for the long-gestating adaptation. The clip doesn't seem to hold too many surprises for those who are familiar with the jump scare-laden FNaF games, but it captures the aesthetic well enough.

It focuses on a character played by Josh Hutcherson as he starts a new gig as a night-time security guard at a family entertainment center. However, the animatronics at Freddy Fazbear's pose a terrifying threat to anyone still in the building after the doors close. The animatronics look spot on, which isn't exactly a shock given that Jim Henson's Creature Shop brought them to life.

Five Nights at Freddy's will arrive in theaters and on Peacock on October 27th. If you can't wait that long and simply need to watch a movie in which possessed animatronics go on a killing spree, check out Willy's Wonderland. It has both a similar concept and Nicolas Cage, and it's enjoyable enough.

At long last, you can respond to posts on Instagram with GIFs. Company head Adam Mosseri announced the feature addition in his recent Instagram Channels chat with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “This is a bit of ‘finally feature,’ but we’re launching GIFs in comments today,” Mosseri told his boss.

The feature, as you would expect, allows you to comment on a post, or something someone else said, with a GIF from Giphy. That’s the same Giphy the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority ordered Meta to sell last year. Mosseri said Instagram is also testing lyrics in Reels. The feature appears to build on the auto-caption sticker Meta introduced back in 2021. Judging from the screenshot Mosseri shared, a timeline at the bottom of the interface will make for user to sync the captions properly. So there you have it, you can finally comment on a post with a GIF. Maybe this means Instagram will finally get around to making a dedicated iPad app at some point.

Blizzard has revealed the Overwatch 2 roadmap for the rest of 2023, including details on when the first story missions are coming to the game. They'll be available in season six, which should start in mid-August.

Story missions are part of the long-awaited co-op side of the game. When Blizzard released Overwatch 2 last October, the player vs. environment (PvE) aspects of the game that it first showed off at BlizzCon in 2019 were not available. That's because the team needed more time to work on the PvE modes. 

The studio didn't want to keep fans waiting much longer for an overhaul of the traditional, competitive (or PvP) side of Overwatch 2 after what was effectively a two-year content drought. So, Blizzard split development of the two halves so it could get the sequel out faster. There have been PvE experiences in Overwatch 2, but so far they've been constrained to limited-time events.

It's worth noting that this won't be the full PvE vision that Blizzard laid out almost four years ago. "Development on the PvE experience really hasn't made the progress that we would have hoped," Overwatch 2 executive producer Jared Neuss said. The team had created "a bunch of amazing content," including "ridiculous" gameplay augmentations for heroes. "Unfortunately, the effort required to pull all of that together into a Blizzard-quality experience that we can ship to you is huge," Neuss said. "With everything we've learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level you deserve, it's clear that we can't deliver on that original vision for PvE."

Hero missions have been cut in order to not pull too many resources away from the live game, which is the priority for Blizzard. As such, talent trees, an RPG-style feature of hero missions that would have enabled players to customize hero abilities, have been scrapped. 

That's not to say there aren't intriguing PvE features coming. A single-player version of a PvE experience with a leaderboard is in the works. A ton of co-op features are planned and Blizzard will continue to add content on a frequent basis, including more story missions.

Before the story missions debut in a few months, there's a whole new season in between. Season five will arrive in June with what appears to be a fantasy theme. Fans can expect a new limited-time event called Questwatch, a new cinematic, the Summer Games event and updates for the Workshop mode, in which players can create custom games. The On Fire system, which lets everyone in a match see when certain players are performing especially well, will return in season five too.

Story missions aren't the only big change on the docket for season six. The developers say this season will mark the biggest update since launch. Blizzard will add another support hero, a firing range and an overhauled player progression system. The Anniversary event will return as well. Perhaps most intriguingly, there will be a new map type for the PvP modes called Flashpoint, which will debut with two new maps.

There will be a bigger focus on building out the story of Overwatch 2 as well. For one thing, seasons will be named and, with the help of in-game cinematics, season six will "push the narrative arc of Overwatch forward for the first time since the original game release."

Looking ahead to season seven and beyond, Blizzard is promising reworks for Sombra (yes, another one) and Roadhog. Also in the pipeline are another collaboration following the One-Punch Man crossover, a fresh tank hero, a control map, a winter event, a lore database and, most excitingly for me, the return of competitive Mystery Heroes.

Apple wants to go beyond streaming live music to helping you find it in real life. The company has added concert discovery features to both Apple Maps and Apple Music. In Maps, you'll find over 40 curated "Guides" that spotlight hot concert venues in 14 major cities around the world, such as a techno club in Brooklyn and symphony halls in Vienna. This could help you decide where to go when you're new in town, or highlight an unfamiliar scene. You can also browse upcoming shows at those venues through a Shazam discovery module that taps info from Bandsintown.

Apple Music, meanwhile, also includes the Shazam module to let you browse a musician's upcoming shows. If a favorite artist is playing soon, this could help you land tickets. There's also a Set Lists section where you can listen to tracks played at certain tours (such as Sam Smith's and Kane Brown's) while learning about the productions.

Both experiences are available today. The additions aren't completely surprising. Apple has long emphasized human curation in Music, such as many of its custom playlists and DJ mixes. The integrations expand on that strategy to cover in-person gigs. Maps has also had curated Guides for food, shopping and travel. A coordinated push for Maps and Music is relatively unique, though — the company is clearly betting that it can raise interest in both services by using concerts as a hook.

Startup Telly is now taking US reservations for free 55-inch 4K TVs that continuously display ads on part of a secondary screen. So long as you're willing to accept those ads (or tune them out) and share data, you won't have to pay for the TV.

As Telly explains, the smaller display also shows news, sports scores and other useful data. You won't have to interrupt a show just to stay in the know. The set has its own camera, microphone array, sensors and voice assistant, enabling video calls and motion-captured fitness apps. According to the image, this secondary screen would be a long, slender display that would live underneath the TV. The reservations cover the first 500,000 TVs, which are expected to ship in the summer. I’m not sold on the idea – I’m getting stressful flashbacks of struggling to turn off those screens in the back of New York taxis, addled by jetlag.

– Mat Smith

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Amazon is making a 'Lord of the Rings' MMO game

The creators of 'New World' are behind the project.

Amazon

Amazon has struck a deal with Embracer Group to release a massively multiplayer online (MMO) title based on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. Development is in the "early stages" at New World studio Amazon Games Orange County, which will ship the game for PCs and consoles at an unspecified date.

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Google will pay Texas $8 million to settle claims of 'deceptive' Pixel 4 ads

The payout comes after a deal with the federal government.

Google is still taking a financial hit over allegations it misled customers with Pixel 4 ads. The company has agreed to pay Texas $8 million to settle claims it paid radio hosts for "deceptive" testimonials about the Pixel 4 even though the DJs couldn't use the phone beforehand. The ads continued even though Google was aware it was breaking the law.

Attorney General Ken Paxton said the state settlement was important as Google has "significant influence," and no large company should expect "special treatment." The tech giant already reached a $9 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and six other states.

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The EU approves Microsoft's $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard takeover

The deal still faces an uphill battle in the US and the UK.

As expected, the European Union has rubberstamped Microsoft’s bid to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. The European Commission (the EU's executive arm) said Microsoft will have to ensure full compliance with the commitments it has made to offer its games on other platforms, particularly cloud gaming services. Activision does not yet offer its titles on cloud gaming services. If Microsoft offered Activision games exclusively on its own cloud service, that could have impaired competition, the EU warned.

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Elon Musk loses appeal to tweet whatever he wants about Tesla

The SEC still wants a lawyer to approve some company-related posts.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

A federal appeals court in Manhattan has rebuffed Elon Musk's claim that the 2018 consent decree with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an unfair "prior restraint" on his speech through Tesla tweets. The CEO has fought with the SEC in the years since settling back in 2018, and more recently has been calling for courts to undo the settlement. Musk claims the Commission pressured him to strike a deal and overstepped its authority. The pact violated free speech rights, Musk's side claimed. A judge denied a request to cancel the deal last April, prompting the appeal.

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Avatar: The Way of Water will be available to stream on both Disney+ and Max (the new name for HBO Max) on June 7th. It's a bit unusual to see a major, recent movie land on two platforms at the same time, but there was a deal in place between 20th Century Studios, which Disney has owned since 2019, and HBO for streaming rights to certain theatrical releases.

The sequel to 2009's Avatar hit theaters in December and it went on to become the third highest-grossing movie of all time (as long as you don't factor inflation in). Director James Cameron made intriguing use of high frame rates in The Way of Water, with action-filled scenes typically playing at 48 frames per second to make them look smoother. More tranquil scenes appeared to run at 24 fps. The frames were doubled in those parts of the movie to make it seem as though they played at the frame rate we're used to seeing in theaters.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that there will be an option to stream the film at higher frame rates at home anytime soon. Still, those who've been waiting for Avatar: The Way of Water to pop up on Disney+ or Max only have a few weeks longer to wait.