Square Enix is ramping up its mobile game efforts by opening a studio devoted to phone titles. The publisher has launched a Square Enix London Mobile location that will focus on free-to-play games. It's relying on both Square Enix's own brands as well as other big-name licenses.
The first projects reflect that strategy. The already-announced Tomb Raider Reloaded is a top-down puzzle solver coming to Android and iOS in 2022. A new, as-yet untitled game based on Avatar: The Last Airbender is also in the works from Canada-based Navigator games.
This won't be thrilling if you were hoping for more console and PC games, but it's expected given the shifting gaming landscape. While console and PC titles are still important, the mobile market is huge. Titles like Honor of Kingsdominate China, and Square Enix itself has been interested enough to port 'full-size' games like Final Fantasy VIII Remastered to phones. The London Mobile studio lets Square Enix tap into that burgeoning market without drawing resources away from its other development teams.
Razer has refreshed its lineup of microphones aimed at streamers with new versions of two Seiren models. The Seiren V2 Pro and Seiren V2 X are both plug and play mics with a high pass filter to mitigate unwanted low frequencies and an analog gain limiter to tackle voice distortion.
The mics each have a gain dial and mute button as well as a headphone jack, while the V2 Pro also has a volume dial. They’re both said to be fully customizable for mixing and sound profiles, and there’s integration with audio mixing software via Razer Synapse.
The V2 Pro is a dynamic microphone with 20 Hz frequency response to pick up a full range of audio, according to Razer. The company says it’s an improvement on its Elite offering and it delivers “rich and powerful vocals” with “superior clarity and noise dampening.”
Meanwhile, the V2 X is a new version of the Seiren X, which emerged in 2017. It's a 25mm condenser mic with a supercaridoid pickup pattern, which Razer suggests bolsters the device’s voice isolation capabilities. The company is promising “crisp and natural vocals” with the V2 X as well.
Razer recently introduced a webcam and capture card for streaming newbies and an entry-level headset for console gamers. However, the latest mics are aimed at professional and casual streamers who might want to improve the sound quality of their streams. The V2 Pro costs $150, while the V2 X is $100. Both are available now, as is the Seiren Mini, which Razer debuted a year ago.
On Wednesday, Samsung held its last Unpacked presentation of the year. The company headlined the event with the announcement of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 Bespoke Edition, a version of its clamshell foldable you can customize in a variety of colors. Specifically, you can choose between two frame tones (black or silver) and five front and back panel hues (blue, yellow, pink, white or black), for a total of 49 possible combinations. Each Bespoke Edition Galaxy Z Flip 3 also comes with matching wallpaper and cover screen.
If you ever want to update the look of your phone, Samsung will offer an Upgrade Care service where you can send it in for a palette swap. That should come in handy if you ever feel like you went overboard on your first design attempt and made something completely garish. Outside of the additional customization options, the Bespoke Edition Galaxy Z Flip 3 is identical to the model Samsung released in August. So expect the company’s best foldable yet.
Samsung
The Galaxy Z Flip 3 Bespoke Edition is available to order today from Samsung’s website in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Korea and UK. It starts at $1,100 and comes with 12 months of Samsung Care+ protection. As each device is made to order, delivery times will vary.
Alongside the Bespoke Edition Galaxy Z Flip 3, Samsung announced a software update for the Galaxy Watch 4. Available to download today, it comes with four new watch faces, including one called Info Brick that you can customize to display the fitness and health stats you want to see most. If you’re a fan of the existing Animals watch face, it’s now possible to add up to four complications to the interface.
Samsung
As part of the My Photo+ watch face, you can now choose to use a GIF instead of a still image. In the same vein, Samsung has redone the animations that are part of the step challenge to make them more playful. There’s now a cute bear there to encourage you to walk your 10,000 steps.
The update also adds a new knock-knock gesture you can assign to launch your favorite app or feature. For instance, you can bind the gesture to create a new reminder or open a list of workouts. Lastly, you can tweak the sensitivity of the fall detection feature to trigger even if you fall after standing still. With the update, Watch 4 owners can also get a free 60-day subscription to Strava.
Samsung
Rounding out the event, Samsung announced two Maison Kitsuné special edition Galaxy Buds 2 and Galaxy Watch 4 models. Set to cost $250 and $400 when they go on sale later today, the devices come in a new “Moonrock Biege” color and feature the usual design flourishes that the fashion house is known for.
Samsung
The watch comes with two straps. One in the aforementioned Moonrock Beige color and the other in a tone called “Stardust Gray.” The leather case the earbuds come is made from that same color. If you buy one of the wearables, you’ll get access to a playlist curated by the Kitsuné Musique music label. Both devices will be available in limited quantities in select markets across the world.
After months of rumors, Apple has revealed not one but two new processors, along with a pair of new Macbook Pro laptops. The original M1 processor paired four high-performance and four low-power cores with a 7- or 8-core GPU, and with that set up it delivered impressive results. The M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro bested a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an 8-core Intel i9 CPU and dedicated GPU when we tested it last year, and did so while staying impressively cool and quiet.
The new M1 Pro and M1 Max bump the core count to eight high-performance and two low-power cores, and add 16, 24, or 32 GPU cores. With twice the high-performance CPUs, and up to four times the GPU cores as the original M1, these chips should be incredibly fast, but expect it to come at the cost of more heat and noise.
Despite a shortage of compatible games, the original M1 proved to be a remarkably adept processor for gaming, and these new chips should be even better, outpacing most Intel CPUs and maybe even besting a mobile NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU's performance. The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBooks also come with a 120Hz display with HDR, and improved speakers. Add that all together, and suddenly the new MacBook Pro looks like a pretty capable gaming machine, compatibility issues aside. If only Apple still supported Bootcamp.
For all the details on these new chips, check out the video above.
Assassin's Creed Discovery Tours can offer valuable educational insights into historical periods, and that may be particularly true for the latest instalment. Ubisoft has released a Discovery Tour: Viking Age update for Assassin's Creed Valhalla that gives you the chance to explore Viking-era England and Norway without the usual conflicts. There's a new format, however. Rather than go on guided tours and visit exhibits, you assume the roles of four Anglo-Saxon and Viking characters (such as Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great and a Viking merchant) as they undertake eight quests that illustrate their daily lives.
You can also study period artifacts from museums in the UK, France and Denmark. And yes, there are rewards to unlock in the main Valhalla game for Eivor and his longship.
The Discovery Tour update is free for Valhalla players on all platforms, and you can buy the $20 stand-alone version for PCs through either Ubisoft's store or the Epic Games Store. Console and streaming players will have to wait until 2022 for a stand-alone release. However you get a copy, it could be a worthwhile experience if you've wanted to dispel the myths surrounding Vikings and their conquests.
Facebook, ever on the search for ways to monetize its apps, recently introduced Catalogs and a basic cart to WhatsApp so users could shop directly from their chats. Now, the company is refining that process with the addition of Collections, essentially categorized lists that make it easier for WhatsApp users to find products.
With the new feature, businesses can now "organize items in their catalogs by category so customers no longer have to scroll through long lists of items to find what they’re looking for," WhatsApp said. From a user perspective, you'll now see categories for "men’s clothes, women’s clothes, shirts, pants" and more rather than just a list of products. As before, you can access a company's catalog through a sent link or shopping button in their header.
WhatsApp noted that the app has become more popular for shopping in Brazil and India since COVID-19 started. Facebook and WhatsApp have a mixed record in developing countries, however — Brazil, for example, suspended WhatsApp's fledgling mobile payment system late last year.
The new feature is now live in time for the holiday season. Businesses interested in using it can learn how to do it using the video supplied by WhatsApp, above.
Never in my life did I think it would be important for me to know when someone else had pooped, but then I became a mom and here we are. The amount of stuff that mom’s need to keep track of is, in a word, immense. Since I brought my twins home from the hospital, I’ve used an app to note every bottle, diaper change, nap, medication, bath time and more. That’s worked well so far, but now that my kids are older, I’ve had a harder time immediately logging their events. That’s partially because our routines were interrupted with a recent move and partially because they really want to play with my phone every time they see it. Regardless, I’m trying to get us all back into an established pattern of meals and nap times so I’ve been wanting to re-establish my habit of logging all their details.
Talli sells a $99 physical gadget for this purpose: a single-touch tracking device that lets busy, sleep-deprived parents push a button to log activities like bottle feeds and bedtimes. The Talli Baby one-touch tracker includes seven pre-assigned buttons and a miscellaneous eighth, and it pairs with an app to provide you the best of both worlds. A single-function device to track kids’ care may not sound like a big deal, but if you’ve ever tried to operate a touchscreen with diaper cream all over your hands, you may be able to see the utility here.
Hardware
Amber Bouman/Engadget
The Talli is a white and faux-woodgrain box with rounded edges, roughly the size of a small but stuffed wallet. It has two rows of four activity buttons with icons to indicate which action the button is assigned to: bottle feeding, solid food, wet diaper, dirty diaper, sleeping, nursing, pumping or “miscellaneous,” which can be customized within the app. Events that happen at the same time — say, a wet and dirty diaper — require simultaneous button presses. There’s also a small WiFi button on the lower right that’s used during setup, and the company says that WiFi is only used when the device is transmitting an event. The rear contains slots to wall-mount the Talli using the included hardware.
Setting up the Talli is fairly uncomplicated and follows the same steps as many other app-connected devices: download the app, create an account, add a device, connect to a WiFi network and you’re done. When I first set up the device, it kept flashing an error message, which the included start-up pamphlet instructed me was a WiFi connection issue likely due to an incorrect network name or password.
Only I hadn’t gotten to that step yet, I was only trying to sync the device. I contacted Talli support and tried again and was able to connect and set up the device without any further issue. It’s worked normally since then so I’m not certain what the issue was, but it did make me realize that adding a hardware device to my tracking process meant there would be another potential point of failure. Since Talli pairs with an app that can be used independently to track what you’re doing with your kids, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if the hardware wasn’t working. However, it would detract from the main advantage of the system: the convenience of pressing a button on the tracker and continuing with your day.
Amber Bouman/Engadget
Taking out my smartphone, opening an app and typing in an entry isn’t exactly heavy lifting, but doing that while two toddlers wind themselves between my legs, grab at my phone, whine, harass the cat, throw everything out of the kitchen drawers and try to climb over child gates is another story. Being able to press a button and be done was an unexpected relief: My kid’s data was logged, so I knew when they were last changed and I could always flesh out the entries with more detail in the app later (though I’ll admit that rarely happened). It was extremely easy to use the Talli instead of my previous app, and it was oddly satisfying, too — not unlike crossing something off a to-do list.
Because Talli runs on four AA batteries, it has a portable design allowing it to be moved anywhere or handed off to any caretakers or babysitters. It can also be mounted on a wall, which has advantages and disadvantages depending on how you’ll use it. I kept my Talli untethered because my changing table area doesn’t have the best WiFi coverage, so I kept it on a nearby shelf where I could touch the buttons on my way in and out of the room.
Talli
Frankly, I would have preferred to mount the thing; when grabbing for the device, I would often accidentally hit a button and register an incorrect event, which I would then have to remember to delete later. But I also often had to move the Talli out of sight, because my son is particularly enamored with pushing buttons and things that light up, so the Talli was like forbidden candy to him. It was hard to find the perfect location where the device was connected to my WiFi network, easily accessible to me and didn’t draw his attention.
Each Talli device gets assigned to one child, that is to say you’ll need one Talli per child. But you can assign multiple devices to the same child if you end up getting more than one for different areas of your home. And Talli works with Alexa, so you can have the assistant log events for you if you say “Alexa tell Talli Baby that Sam had a dirty diaper.” You can also request that Alexa read you the most recent activity reports. I don’t currently have an Alexa-enabled device, so I wasn’t able to test this out yet. The company says Google Home compatibility is coming soon, too.
Software
Much like the device itself, the Talli app is simply designed and straightforward to use. The home screen contains the same icons as the device; when a button is active — it turns green for a pumping session or a nap time, for example. Near each button is a date and time stamp for the last logged event and tapping on the icon brings up an entry page to edit and add details. I sometimes had to tap commands a few times — say, to pause or start a sleep timer — but this otherwise worked fine.
Engadget
The rest of the app is organized into a Daily List, which is exactly what it sounds like: a list of your child’s daily events. There’s also a Details view which provides an hour-by-hour graph of events and can be toggled to show any of your child’s metrics over a time period. My favorites were the Averages view, which shows totals for each event, and the More tab, which has selections for account sharing, reminders and children’s profiles. I’m trying to switch the twins over to all solid foods and being able to track what they’ve eaten, how much and when has helped me establish routines and menus. And because it was easy to press a button on the way in or out of the room, Talli made it possible for me to log how often my son woke in the middle of the night and how long before he went back to sleep.
However, the app frequently (albeit briefly) flashed a “Refreshing your data” screen when I navigated around the options. I had to wait an extra beat or two for the data to refresh when I did almost anything in the app: changed screens, edited data, deleted an event and the like. I’m hoping this is due to my satellite internet connection, because it was one of my biggest pain points with the Talli system. I will say I appreciated that there was no subscription component: Talli offers all its information and your data without any additional fees, whether you purchase the tracker or simply use the free app.
Wrap-up
The Talli device offers something that isn’t otherwise available: a hardware device dedicated to tracking everything you do with your child on a daily basis. It’s nicely designed, easy to use and has an app that charts and graphs the data for you. I liked using it a lot more than I expected to, given that tracking all my kids’ various activities through an app had become a bit of a chore. But using the Talli tracker wasn’t a chore — and having a physical device (even more, a single button) that I could tap and walk away from did indeed help me stay more consistent with tracking habits.
I only wish that I had found a better location for the device in my kids’ room — and I wish that the app didn’t lag so much — but otherwise I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Talli Tracker fit into my lifestyle. I can see it being particularly useful for those who have family or multiple caretakers tending to children or for people who prefer physical logging methods like calendars or notebooks. But it’s also a $99 gadget — and when a free app just requires more work but will ultimately do the job, it makes the Talli a bit of a luxury.
Another LEGO Star Wars game is heading to Apple Arcade, and it's the first social, action-adventure title in the franchise. The upcoming game, entitled LEGO Star Wars: Castaways, will have you building and customizing your own in-game LEGO minifigure character. Once you're done designing your own blocky hero, you'll head to a new planet where you can team up with friends to battle enemies and solve puzzles. Along the way, you can unlock collectibles to solve a mystery and save your merry band of LEGO minifigures.
When you're not out on adventures — of if you really just want to hang out in a virtual world with friends — you can stay in the game's Social Hub or race Microfighters. LEGO Star Wars: Castaways is an Apple Arcade exclusive, just like LEGO Star Wars Battles. The latter is a real-time strategy game that will let you collect upgradable characters, troops and vehicles and then pit you against other players in one-on-one showdowns. In Star Wars Battles, you'll also have to build and defend your own LEGO towers, as well as attack your opponent's.
LEGO Star Wars: Castaways will be playable across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, so long as you have an Arcade subscription. You can now sign up to be notified when the game becomes available for download from the Mac Store and the iOS App Store, but the game won't be available to play until November 19th.
Activision Blizzard has confirmed that more than 20 employees have "exited" the company as part of its efforts to change its internal culture following allegations of fostering a "frat boy" workplace. The video game company has published the letter Executive VP for Corporate Affairs Fran Townsend sent to employees revealing the move, in which she also said that more than 20 other individuals faced different types of disciplinary action. Back in July, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against the developer for allowing a work environment wherein female employees were allegedly subjected to constant sexual harassment.
The agency, which sued the company after a two-year investigation, detailed several of its findings in the lawsuit. It said female employees constantly have to fend off unwanted sexual comments, and that they have to endure being groped by male colleagues. They're also not paid as much as their male counterparts, are typically promoted more slowly and fired more quickly. At the time, Townsend told employees that the lawsuit "presented a distorted" picture of the company and that it included "factually incorrect, old and out of context stories." Hundreds of employees walked out in protest over the company's response.
Now, in her letter, Townsend said that there's a team dedicated to investigating harassment claims, "working tirelessly to ensure that, moving forward, [the company] is a place where people are not only heard, but empowered." The team received an increasing number of reports in recent months, including concerns from years ago, and it was the members' investigation that led to the exit of more than 20 employees. Townsend declined to name those individuals, but she told Financial Times that they include several game developers and a few supervisors. None of them came from senior management or from the board.
A Kotaku report from August named three senior designers who abruptly exited the company. Two of them — Diablo 4 lead designer Jesse McCree and World of Warcraft designer Jonathan LeCraft — were previously pictured inside the Cosby Suite. In its lawsuit, DEFH said the Cosby Suite is a room with a photo of Bill Cosby where male employees allegedly harassed women during company events.
To be able to handle more complaints, Activision Blizzard hired three full-time employees to join the investigation team. It's also adding 19 more full-time roles to its overall Ethics & Compliance Team, two of which will be dedicated to overseeing investigations for the EMEA and APAC regions. Townsend admitted that the team can't always share the details of an investigation, but she also promised more transparency "We know there’s a desire to know about the outcome when misconduct is reported. Sometimes, there are privacy reasons we can’t share. But where we can, we will be sharing more information with you. We will also be providing you regular aggregate data about investigative outcomes," she wrote in her letter.
Google’s Pixel 6 family is officially priced and will launch on October 28th, available to pre-order today. While not cheap, both the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, costing $599 and $899 respectively, land at tempting price points.
These phones are going toe-to-toe with the iPhone and Galaxy S series. Again. But will Google finally be able to get its phones in people’s hands? The company glimpsed success with its very competitively priced Pixel 3a, briefly edging out OnePlus in phone sales for a hot second. Then the Pixel 4 and Pixel 5 failed to repeat the success at tougher prices. Notably, the $600 Pixel 6 is $100 cheaper than last year's Pixel 5, but it looks to be a far better phone.
Each phone has a thick camera bar stretching across the back. The Pixel 6 has a dual-camera system, with wide and ultrawide lenses, while the Pixel 6 Pro adds a telephoto option. On both devices, the primary camera is a 50-megapixel sensor with a quad-bayer filter, which puts four pixels behind each standard color block — you’re not going to get 50-megapixel photos here, but something more in the realm of 12.5 megapixels. The Pixel 6 Pro’s telephoto camera is a 48-megapixel sensor with 4x optical zoom. There are no invisible front-facing cameras — or notches — but a pin-hole camera on both Pixels. There is also an under-screen thumbprint sensor for the first time in a Pixel phone. You can find the rest of the specs right here.
Reviews Editor Cherlynn Low spent time with both Pixels. We’ll dive deeper into her impressions below.
Spoiler alert: The best thing about the new Pixel phones is the reasonable pricing. But there are a lot of new things to tackle with the Pixel 6 series. This series has the company’s first “pro” phone, some Android 12-exclusive tricks and significant voice recognition enhancements — if you’re in the US.
The two phones differ slightly in design, which marks a departure from previous years. Instead of the matte soft-touch texture of older Pixels, both Pixel 6 phones have glass-covered sides, creating a premium feel. According to Cherlynn Low, they’re a little blockier and feel more like a Samsung device — which may not be a bad thing.
Both phones are also much larger than the Pixel 5, and though their screen sizes differ, they have almost the same footprint. But the main feature improvement in the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro is their cameras, and this is what Cherlynn (and I) are most excited about. For now, she could only gather some impressions while under the supervision of Google reps, but expect her own review to put all the cameras through their paces. As Cherlynn will admit herself, she loves a selfie camera opp.
Google has an answer to the Apple One bundle, and it includes a new phone. The Pixel Pass is a subscription service that includes a Pixel 6 or 6 Pro phone (with an upgrade in two years), an extended warranty, 200GB of Google One storage, Google Play Pass, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium. The Pass starts at $45 per month for the regular Pixel 6, while it’s $55 for the Pixel 6 Pro.
A YouTube data leak has spoiled some of the surprises, however.
Sony has teased the launch of a new Alpha camera on October 21st at 10 AM ET, and judging by the YouTube metadata, it appears to be the long-awaited full-frame A7 IV mirrorless model. A list of now-stripped tags, if accurate, would make the A7 IV a formidable hybrid full-frame camera, on par with Canon's R6 (but hopefully without the overheating issues). Expect a 33-megapixel sensor and 4K 60p video with 10-bit All-I XAVC recording. And that’s probably just the start.
Facebook’s new Portal Go adds portability to the company’s video-chat-focused smart display. Like with previous Portals, it has an AI-powered camera that keeps you in frame during video calls, except this time you can carry it around the house. The Go has other improvements, too, such as a more personalized home screen and a new Household Mode that makes it more family-friendly. However, it lacks a lot of features that other smart displays have, and Facebook’s poor reputation precedes it.
