“The game industry is out of step with contemporary media in terms of LGBTQ representation, and it is failing its LGBTQ customers.”

This sentiment has felt true for years, and now the statistics in GLAAD’s first annual gaming report prove it. The media watchdog and LGBTQ advocacy group today published GLAAD Gaming: The State of LGBTQ Inclusion in Video Games, offering a comprehensive breakdown of the industry from the perspective of queer players and developers.

According to GLAAD, 17 percent of the total gaming audience identifies as LGBTQ, or about one in every five players. This figure falls in line with statistics for Generation Z. Still, just 2 percent of all games on the market contain LGBTQ content, a saturation level that falls miserably short of those in film, TV and other forms of entertainment media. GLAAD found that 28.5 percent of films from the top 10 distributors in 2022 contained an LGBTQ character, and LGBTQ characters appeared as series regulars at a rate of 10.6 percent on primetime scripted broadcast shows in 2022 and 2023.

For the gaming stats, GLAAD ran the numbers: In November 2023, the Xbox store had 146 games with LGBTQ content, while PlayStation offered a list of 90 titles with LGBTQ themes, and Nintendo’s Switch eShop had 50 games tagged LGBT. Steam had 2,302 English-language games under its LGBTQ+ tag, but that figure dropped to 1,506 when filtering out “adult only sexual content” titles. Together, these games composed less than 2 percent of the Xbox, Playstation and Switch digital libraries, and they made up just 1.7 percent of Steam’s offerings (without the adult-only content). For context, it’s estimated that about 1 percent of all games released in the 2010s included LGBTQ themes.

“Despite the significant progress we’ve seen, gaming remains woefully behind other forms of entertainment media when it comes to representation,” GLAAD Associate Director of Gaming Blair Durkee said.

GLAAD’s report identified the following reasons behind the lack of LGBTQ representation in video games:

“Some reasons for exclusion are passive. Often, game companies have not considered that they should represent LGBTQ people, nor do they see us as a major part of the core gaming audience. Some reasons for exclusion are active. Companies worry about pushing away a core audience that they assume are resistant or hostile to LGBTQ content. This imagined core audience, however, is a myth, and it is one of the reasons it was paramount for GLAAD to create this gaming report. LGBTQ gamers are a significant part of the existing active gamer market and, by and large, non-LGBTQ gamers are not nearly as resistant to this content as many assume.”

More than 60 percent of non-LGBTQ respondents said they weren’t bothered by LGBTQ protagonists and NPCs in their games, and 70 percent said they were fine with titles that presented the option to customize a bisexual, gay or lesbian character. Resistance toward these themes is waning with each new generation of players, GLAAD found.

One of the report’s key takeaways is the idea that developers seem to be building games for an outdated stereotype, rather than the reality of the market. Straight, white, cisgender men definitely play video games, but the actual gaming audience is much more diverse and it’s only become more variable.

“The lack of LGBTQ representation in video games is often explained by the assumption that the stereotypical core video game consumer is a white, heterosexual, cisgender man between the ages 18 and 34,” GLAAD said. “However, our data shows that 17 percent of active gamers are LGBTQ, a 70 percent increase from the 10 percent counted in Neilsen’s 2020 report.”

This figure is even higher for younger players, the next generation of gamers. Roughly 25 percent of players under the age of 35 identify as LGBTQ, a higher concentration than reported in the human population as a whole. This trend drives home another conclusion of GLAAD’s gaming report — the idea that LGBTQ players are drawn to games in particular because they offer an immersive outlet for expression, experimentation and escape.

“The interactive nature of games, the opportunity to build community in gaming, and the long history of LGBTQ game industry professionals makes this medium a uniquely powerful tool for LGBTQ people to safely discover, connect, and express themselves,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said. “Particularly for LGBTQ gamers, gaming can not only be an escape and source of entertainment, but also an important outlet of self-expression.”

In the GLAAD survey, 72 percent of LGBTQ players said that seeing characters of their gender identity or sexual orientation portrayed well made them feel better about themselves, and this number was even higher among younger players. Overall, 36 percent of LGBTQ players reported that video games helped them discover their sexual orientation or gender identity, and this percentage rose to 41 percent among LGBTQ players of color. Notably, GLAAD found that gamers of color are less resistant to titles with queer content than white players.

More than 40 percent of LGBTQ players said video games helped them cope with a lack of acceptance in the real world. At the same time, 51 percent of LGBTQ players said they wanted video games to do more in terms of inclusion, and 74 percent wished for more opportunities to explore and express their true selves in games.

“Games are a medium in which players can be anything, but the game industry has continued to rely on very narrow representational options,” GLAAD said.

Transgender content faced the most resistance among all respondents. Concerning LGBTQ players, 63 percent said they were more likely to buy a game that supports a bisexual, gay or lesbian protagonist, while 46 percent said the same about a transgender main character. However, 94 percent of LGBTQ respondents said they were just as likely or more likely to purchase a game that includes the option to embody a transgender protagonist. Among non-LGBTQ gamers, 80 percent responded the same way.

The importance of representation in video games has only grown amid an avalanche of anti-LGBTQ violence and legislation in the United States. In the first weeks of 2024, more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed or passed in the US, a majority of which target transgender youths. This is already a dramatic spike from 2022 and 2021, both record-setting years in terms of anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Queer players are more likely than their counterparts to use gaming as an escape, according to GLAAD, and this is even more true for people living in states that have proposed or passed anti-LGBTQ legislation. While 66 percent of all LGBTQ gamers said they use gaming to express themselves in ways they don’t feel comfortable doing in the real world, this statistic rose to 75 percent for players living in states with proposed or active anti-LGBTQ bills.

“For these LGBTQ gamers, gaming is necessary to cope with real-world discrimination and targeting,” GLAAD said in its report. “Game developers need to understand the role gaming plays for LGBTQ gamers in the United States and especially LGBTQ gamers in states where they are disproportionately targeted and attacked.”

Researchers offered the following recommendations for increasing LGBTQ representation in games:

• The percentage of games with LGBTQ representation should be proportional to the share of gamers who are LGBTQ.

• Game developers should strive for representation that promotes inclusivity and acceptance.

• The game industry should take responsibility for making their communities more inclusive.

• The game industry should consult LGBTQ media content experts.

• LGBTQ game industry workers should be hired in positions of authority.

Amid all of the percentages, GLAAD identified a clear pattern in its first gaming report: Representation matters a lot to most LGBTQ players, and the majority of the remaining audience isn't too bothered by queer content. Sometimes, it's even preferred.

“We are nearly invisible in game representations, despite being a significant percentage of gamers,” Ellis, GLAAD’s president, said.

The report’s survey data was collected in collaboration with Nielsen Games and includes responses from 1,452 active PC and console players in the US, with a boost sample of LGBTQ gamers to ensure accuracy for the community-specific questions. The survey was distributed between June and August 2023.

Nothing announced that it will reveal its latest Phone 2a on March 5th, but there's a not-great surprise for American fans of the product. Rather than being released officially like the Phone 2, the device will come to the US as part of a "developer program." That sounds a lot like the way it released the original Phone 1, which was sold for $299 stateside under a similar-sounding "Beta Membership" program.

The company didn't reveal any images of the device or pricing, but the company may use a simplified Phone 2 esthetic. That unique design was a standout feature thanks to the transparent Gorilla Glass back, 11 LED "Glyph" strips, a metal frame and curved edges. 

The Phone 2a is rumored to be a budget version of the Phone 2, which cost $600. In a teaser video, the company questioned how it could make it "cheaper" and also mentioned that it has made better supplier connections so it can pass the savings onto consumers. Earlier rumors peg the European price around €400 ($430), with the savings chalked up in part to a cheaper MediaTek Dimensity 7200 processor. 

The same rumors suggests it'll have a simplified interface with fewer LED strips, plus dual cameras centered at the top like eyes on a head (backed up somewhat by Nothing's "See the world through fresh eyes," as The Verge points out). Sketches shown in Nothing's release video appear to back up that claim. We may learn more soon, as Nothing is holding a press conference in Barcelona for Mobile World Conference (MWC) on February 27th. 

Electric vehicles from Stellantis brands, including Dodge and Chrysler, will start using the NACS connector in select models next year. The automaker will also offer an adaptor for existing vehicles, so drivers can use NACS or Combined Charging System (CCS) ports.

Tesla open-sourced its EV charging connector back in 2022. Back then, it rebranded it as the North American Charging Standard (NACS), pitching it as better than rival chargers with “no moving parts, is half the size, and twice as powerful”.

The pitch worked, and automakers — Volkswagen, GM, Volvo, Polestar, Mercedes, Honda, BMW, Lucid — gradually sided with NACS. Stellantis says it’s still committed, with other car manufacturers, to building a network of more than 30,000 fast charging points on highways and in urban areas in North America by 2030. These stations will support NACS and CCS.

— Mat Smith

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Intuitive Machines will attempt first commercial moon landing

It could make history with its Nova-C lander.

Houston-based space company Intuitive Machines is gearing up for an actual moonshot. It’ll try to land a spacecraft named Odysseus on the lunar surface — ideally without it breaking. The mission follows Astrobotic’s unsuccessful attempt in January; that company’s lander, Peregrine, never made it to the moon. Odysseus is the first of three Nova-C landers Intuitive Machines plans to send to the Moon this year, all of which will have commercial payloads and NASA instruments on board. Its mission, if it nails a soft landing, will be a short but potentially valuable one for informing future excursions. Orbiting probes have found evidence of water ice at the lunar south pole, which could be used for astronaut subsistence and even fuel.

Continue reading.

You no longer have to visit an Apple Store if you forget your Vision Pro passcode

A new update, available Monday, lets you reset the headset at home.

Engadget

There are always early issues. If you were one of the Vision Pro owners that lost their passcodes in the first week of ownership, you had to visit an Apple Store (or ship the device to AppleCare) to reset it and be able to use your $3,500 device again. Fortunately, visionOS 1.0.3 will let you do the password reset at home.

But seriously, if you forgot your password in the first week — you’ve got problems.

Continue reading.

Phil Spencer will address Xbox multiplatform rumors on February 15

Will Microsoft go cross-platform?

The internet has been buzzing the last couple of weeks with rumors that Microsoft will begin publishing Xbox first-party games on competing consoles. The company promised it would soon share more details about its “vision for the future of Xbox,” and that looks to be coming on February 15. Phil Spencer will appear on the Official Xbox Podcast to share “updates on the Xbox business.” It’s an unusual move, with Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, and Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, joining Spencer on the podcast.

There have been all kinds of rumors flooding the web, from Hi-Fi Rush coming to the Nintendo Switch to Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle showing up on the PS5. All may become clear later this week.

Continue reading.

Lyft is expanding its Women+ Connect program to a bunch of new cities. This initiative originally launched in a limited number of locations back in September, but now it's getting a much larger rollout.

Women+ Connect does exactly what the name implies. It connects women and nonbinary riders to similarly identifying drivers, and vice versa. This is an opt-in feature that aims to bolster safety during rides, in addition to enticing women and nonbinary people to become drivers for the platform. Lyft says that nearly half of riders are women, but they only make up 23 percent of drivers.

Here’s how it works: You turn on the feature and it’ll connect you to an appropriate driver based on the gender you entered when signing up. For drivers, it uses the gender associated with the license on file. If there’s no women or nonbinary drivers looking for fares, you’ll still get matched with a male driver, so you won’t be standing around outside in the cold.

The program started in just a few cities, including Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco. It’s apparently been a huge success for Lyft, with the company noting that 2.4 million riders have turned on Women+ Connect since the September launch and more than half of eligible drivers have begun using the service. It also says that this feature has the highest satisfaction rate of any driver tool the company has ever launched.

Women+ Connect releases today in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas, Dallas, Washington D.C. and other places. Check the app to see if the feature is available where you live.

This is the latest tool employed by ridesharing platforms to increase safety and reduce instances of sexual assault and other violent encounters. Uber recently made it easier for riders and drivers to contact 911 and live safety agents. The platform has also begun allowing both riders and drivers to record audio during trips.

On January 29, Amazon started inserting ads into the viewing experience of Prime Video subscribers. The company announced the change last year, telling customers that it will start showing "limited advertisements" with its service's movies and shows so that it could invest "in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time." Those who don't want to see ads will have to pay an extra fee of $3 a month. What it didn't say, however, is that it's also removing subscribers' access to Dolby features if they choose to stay on the ad-supported tier. The change was first spotted by German tech publication 4kfilme and was confirmed by Forbes. 

Forbes tested it out by streaming an episode of Jack Ryan, which was encoded with Dolby Vision high dynamic range video and Dolby Atmos sound on a TV that supports the technologies. The publication found that the boxes overlaid on top of the video confirming that Dolby Vision and Atmos are enabled were missing when they used an ad-supported account. Those boxes showed up as usual when played with an ad-free account. 

That means customers will have to resort to paying the additional $3 a month on top of their subscription fee if they want to keep playing videos with Dolby Vision and Atmos enabled and if they don't want their shows and movies interrupted by commercials. To note, Forbes also found that ad-free accounts still have access to HDR10+, which is a technology comparable to Dolby Vision. 

Subscribers have been unhappy with the change, as expected, enough for a proposed class action lawsuit to be filed against the company in California federal court. The complaint accuses Amazon of violating consumer protection laws and calls its change of terms "deceptive" and "unfair." It argues that those who've already paid for a year-long Prime subscription are expecting to enjoy an uninterrupted viewing experience as Amazon had promised. But since they're also affected by this recent development, Amazon is "depriving them of the reasonable expectations to which they are entitled." The class action is seeking at least $5 million in damages and is asking the court for an injunction "prohibiting [Amazon's] deceptive conduct."

It could be a challenge hailing a ride from certain airports on Valentine's Day this year. Thousands of rideshare and delivery drivers for Uber, Lyft and DoorDash are planning to hold a demonstration on February 14 to demand fair pay and better security measures, according to Reuters. The strike was announced last week by Justice for App Workers, a coalition representing more than 100,000 rideshare and delivery drivers across the US. 

Based on the group's page for the rally, workers participating in the demonstration won't be taking rides to and from any airport in Austin, Chicago, Hartford, Miami, Newark, Orlando, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Rhode Island and Tampa. The coalition is asking drivers to join the event and "demand changes from Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and all the app companies profiting off of [their] hard work." Meanwhile, Rideshare Drivers United, an independent union for Uber and Lyft drivers in Los Angeles, also revealed that its members are turning off their apps on February 14 to protest "the significant decrease in pay [they've] all felt this winter."

While the strikes could see the participation of tens of thousands of workers, Uber believes it won't have an impact on its business since only a small portion of its drivers typically take part in demonstrations. The company told The Hill and CBS News that a similar protest last year didn't affect its operations and that its driver earnings remain "strong." In the fourth quarter of 2023, "drivers in the US were making about $33 per utilized hour," the spokesperson said. 

The groups announced the strikes just a few days after Lyft promised guaranteed weekly earnings for its drivers in the country, ensuring that they'll make at least 70 percent of what their riders had paid. DoorDash didn't respond to the publications' requests for comment, but it currently pays its drivers $29.93 for every active hour in states with minimum wage requirements for app-based delivery workers. It recently introduced new fees for customers in New York City and Seattle as a response to their new minimum wage regulations.  

Meta is testing a new feature that will allow Threads users to see what kinds of conversations are trending on the platform. The app has begun testing “today’s top topics” in the United States, Mark Zuckerberg shared in a post on Threads.

The feature will surface “timely topics that others are discussing” and will appear in search and interspersed between posts in the app’s For You feed, according to Meta. Specific trends will be “determined by our AI systems based on what people are engaging with right now on Threads,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said.

Interestingly, Threads will surface trends related to politics and elections. The company said last week that it would no longer suggest political content in its recommendations unless users choose to opt-in. But Meta has confirmed that restriction won’t apply to its trending feature. “Political content can be a topic,” a Meta spokesperson told Engadget. “We will only remove political topics if they violate our Community Guidelines or other applicable integrity policies.”

The addition of trends has been a long-requested update for many Threads users hoping to make the service more usable as a source for real-time information and updates. The feature was previously spotted in an employee version of the app, but it was unclear if Meta would roll it out more broadly considering Mosseri’s desire to avoid “encouraging” conversations about “politics and hard news."

Though AI will determine much of what is surfaced, it sounds like the Meta does plan to do some curation of what appears as a “top topic.” A team of “content specialists” will “ensure that topics do not violate our Community Guidelines or other applicable integrity guidelines, and that topics are not duplicative, nonsensical, or misleading” a Meta spokesperson said.

For now, “today’s top topics” is only a “small test” but Zuckerberg said the feature would arrive in more countries and languages “once we get it tuned up.”

Apple has launched a Vision Pro update that solves one of its most confounding issues at launch. Starting in visionOS 1.0.3, available Monday, headset owners who forgot their passcodes can reset their device and start over with a fresh install. Previously, owners who lost their passcodes had to visit an Apple Store — or ship the device to AppleCare customer support — to use their $3,500 device again.

Today’s new software is the first visionOS update to arrive since the mixed reality headset has been available to customers. The first two came before its public launch when only reviewers and developers had it. MacRumors first reported on today’s software update.

Apple’s official release notes read, “This update provides important bug fixes and adds an option to reset your device if you’ve forgotten your passcode.” It isn’t clear why Apple launched expensive hardware with a feature that required a visit to a physical store if it only took a couple of weeks to provide a much easier workaround that more closely aligns with the rest of its products. 

Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar views Apple’s $3,500 headset as a blend of fascination and frustration — better for developers or wealthy Apple fans than the general public. “That’s pretty much the Vision Pro experience in a nutshell,” Engadget’s Senior Editor wrote. “Wonder and frustration. A peek into the future that’s limited by the hardware that exists today — even if that hardware is among the best we’ve ever seen.”

The internet has been buzzing the last couple of weeks with rumors that Microsoft will begin publishing Xbox first-party games on competing consoles. The company promised it would soon share more details about its “vision for the future of Xbox” and that looks to be coming on February 15. Phil Spencer will appear on the Official Xbox Podcast to share “updates on the Xbox business.”

The episode drops at 3PM ET and it’ll also feature Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, and Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios. Those are three big names, so this could be a real barnburner of a podcast episode.

We don’t know what the team has in store, but there have been all kinds of rumors flooding the web, from Hi-Fi Rush coming to the Nintendo Switch to Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle showing up on the PS5. It’s somewhat unusual for one of the big three to outsource first-party titles to competing platforms, but it’s not unheard of. Sony puts many of its biggest games on Steam and there are already some former Xbox exclusives on the Switch, like Ori and the Blind Forest and its sequel.

Many fans, however, have used these rumors to fuel wild speculations that Xbox is about to exit the console business entirely. This isn’t likely, even if the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles have underperformed when compared to the Switch and PS5. The company held an internal townhall last week and Spencer reportedly told employees that it has no plans to stop making consoles and that Xbox systems would continue to be a large part of its overall strategy, according to games reporter Shannon Liao.

Also, Game Pass is still a huge selling point for Xbox consoles, with a May 2023 survey indicating that 32 percent of gamers subscribe to the service. There were over 33 million subscribers back in 2022, and that number’s likely to have grown since then.

Microsoft isn’t exactly struggling, even when you factor in the games division. As a matter of fact, the company’s gaming revenue was up an impressive 49 percent for Q2 2024, due primarily to the Activision acquisition deal. A recent earnings report indicated company revenue of $62 billion (up 18 percent from last year) and profits of $21.9 billion.

Even with those numbers, however, Microsoft’s gaming division is still laying people off left and right. The company just slashed 1,900 jobs from its Xbox, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax (aka Bethesda) teams. If it's looking for the constant growth that modern capitalism requires, dropping some of its more popular titles onto other consoles isn’t exactly the worst idea in the world. In any event, we’ll find out Thursday afternoon.

Houston-based space company Intuitive Machines is gearing up for an actual moonshot at the end of this month, when it’ll try to land a spacecraft named Odysseus on the lunar surface — ideally without it breaking in the process. The mission follows Astrobotic’s unsuccessful attempt in January; that company’s lander, Peregrine, never made it to the moon due to a propellant leak that cut its journey short. Peregrine’s failure means Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission could be the first ever commercial moon landing if it makes it there intact.

Intuitive Machines is hoping to make its landing attempt on February 22, targeting the Malapert A crater near the moon’s south pole for touchdown. This arrival date is dependent on Odysseus, one of the company’s Nova-C class landers, leaving Earth atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sometime between February 14 and February 16. The launch window opens at 12:57AM ET on Wednesday.

Odysseus is the first of three Nova-C landers Intuitive Machines plans to send to the moon this year, all of which will have commercial payloads on board and NASA instruments as contracted under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. At 14 feet tall (4.3 meters), the lander is roughly the size of a giraffe and can carry about 280 pounds (130kg) of cargo. Its mission, if it nails a soft landing, will be a short but potentially valuable one for informing future excursions to the region, including NASA’s upcoming crewed Artemis missions. Orbiting probes have found evidence of water ice at the lunar south pole, which could be used for astronaut subsistence and even fuel, making it an area of high interest for human exploration.

NASA

The solar-powered craft and any functional equipment it’s carrying are only expected to be in working condition for about a week before the onset of lunar night, a 14-day period of frigid darkness that the company says will leave the lander inoperable. But while everything’s up and running, the various instruments will gather data at the surface. NASA awarded Intuitive Machines a $77 million contract for the delivery of its payloads back in 2019, and there are six NASA instruments now hitching a ride on Odysseus.

One, the Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), will “function as a permanent location mark” from its position on the moon after landing to help incoming spacecraft determine their distance from the surface, according to NASA. The lander is also carrying the Navigation Doppler LIDAR for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing (NDL), a sensor that measures velocity and altitude to better guide the descent, and the Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (LN-1) to support communication and autonomous navigation in future missions.

NASA is also sending instruments to study surface plumes — everything that gets kicked up when the lander touches down — along with radio waves and the effects of space weather. That includes the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS), which will capture images of these dust plumes, and the Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES) instrument.

The rest of the payloads on board Odysseus are commercial. Columbia Sportswear worked with Intuitive Machines to incorporate the brand’s Apollo-inspired Omni-Heat Infinity thermal reflective material, which is being used for this mission to help protect the cryogenic propulsion tank, according to Intuitive Machines. Students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University developed a camera system dubbed the EagleCam that will attempt to separate from the lander before it touches down and snap a picture of the moment from a third-person point of view. EagleCam is also equipped with an experimental dust-removal system.

Intuitive Machines

There are even some Jeff Koons sculptures heading to the moon, which will have physical and NFT counterparts back on Earth. In Koons’ Moon Phase piece, 125 small stainless steel sculptures of the moon at different phases are encased in a clear cube made by 4Space, with the names of important historical figures from around the world listed below each sphere. The International Lunar Observatory Association, based in Hawaii, and Canadensys Aerospace are sending a 1.3-pound dual-camera system called ILO-X, with which they’ll attempt to capture wide and narrow field images of the Milky Way from the moon.

Odysseus is also carrying small discs called “Lunagrams” from Galactic Legacy Labs that contain messages from Earth, including text, images, audio and archives from major databases such as the Arch Mission Foundation and the English-language version of Wikipedia. Similar archival materials were sent to space with Peregrine last month. The information technology company Lonestar plans to demonstrate its Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) by storing data on the lander and transmitting documents ( including the US Declaration of Independence) between Earth and the moon. It’ll follow this up with a prototype mini data center on Intuitive Machines’ next launch.

Now, the pressure is on for the Odysseus Nova-C lander to actually get to the lunar surface safely. This year started off rocky for moon missions, with the failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine and a descent hiccup that caused JAXA’s SLIM spacecraft to faceplant into the lunar surface (though the latter was miraculously able to resume functions to some degree after a few days). Intuitive Machines will have other chances to get it right if it doesn’t this time — it has multiple missions already booked up — but only one private lander can be “first.”