Sony has permanently shut down the online services for LittleBigPlanet games on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita after "extended downtime." As such, online multiplayer and community levels are no longer available for LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, LittleBigPlanet 3 (on PS3) and LittleBigPlanet PS Vita. You can still play story modes and local co-op, however.
"We have no doubt that this news will come as a disappointment to a lot of you," the LittleBigPlanet team wrote in a statement. "Ultimately, this is the best way to protect the LittleBigPlanet community and to help ensure that our online environment remains safe."
— Sackboy: A Big Adventure | LittleBigPlanet (@LittleBigPlanet) September 13, 2021
Sony temporarily shut down LittleBigPlanet's online services in May, following reports of DDOS attacks and hackers posting offensive messages. The PS3 games were on the same servers, so if an issue affected one game, it impacted all of them.
There is a silver lining to this development, though. The developers have updated the PS4 version of LittleBigPlanet 3 and that game's servers are back online. Players once again have access to more than 10 million community levels, including all of the ones users created on the three PS3 games, as Eurogamernoted.
The unbelievably charming platformers have been a staple of PlayStation since MediaMolecule released the original LittleBigPlanet in 2008. It's a shame to see the community levels disappear from the Vita game and those who've been clinging onto the PS3 versions lose access to online services. Still, it's good to see all of the community levels live on elsewhere and that they haven't just vanished forever.
The latest entry in the franchise, spinoff game Sackboy: A Big Adventure, hit PS4 and PS5 last November.
Steve Wozniak has started a company called Privateer Space. The Apple co-founder announced the private space firm on late Sunday. Unfortunately, other than to promise his company would be “unlike the others,” Woz didn’t provide many details on the venture.
A teaser Privateer released on YouTube mentions the startup was co-founded by former Apple engineer Alex Fielding. Wozniak and Fielding have collaborated frequently over the years. Back in 2002, they co-founded a company called Wheels of Zeus (WoZ), which worked on GPS smart tags. Wozniak later sat on the board of directors of Ripcord Networks, the robotics startup Fielding founded after Wheel of Zeus shut down in 2006.
On its website, Privateer says it will have more to share at the upcoming AMOS tech conference in Maui, Hawaii that’s scheduled to start on September 14th. What's clear is Woz and company are about to enter a highly competitive market that is dominated by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. That's not an easy space to succeed in.
Washington, DC Attorney General Karl Racine has filed an amended antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. He accused Amazon of strong-arming wholesalers that provide it with products into anti-competitive agreements and making them subsidize lower prices. Engadget has contacted Amazon for comment.
"We knew Amazon was anti-competitive, but through our investigation, we’re realizing just how far it goes," Racine wrote on Twitter.
The AG contends that Amazon requires a guarantee from wholesalers that it will make a minimum profit when it resells their products. Those deals enable Amazon to undercut competitors' pricing and force wholesalers to pay the difference for lost profit margins, according to court documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Racine claims that prompts wholesalers to charge more for goods elsewhere to offset those payments, making it more difficult for other e-commerce platforms to compete against Amazon's prices. PopSockets CEO David Barnett previously testified that Amazon demanded payment from the company to make up for lost profits after it reduced prices.
In the initial version of the suit, which was filed in May, Racine claimed Amazon blocks third-party sellers from offering their wares at lower prices on other platforms. Amazon is facing antitrust scrutiny elsewhere, including from the House of Representatives, the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission. Several state attorneys general are also said to be looking into whether the company has broken antitrust laws.
If you missed last week's sale on AirPods Pro, you have another opportunity to grab them at close to a record-low price. Apple's advanced wireless earbuds are down to $180 again on Amazon thanks to an automatically applied coupon that knocks $17.01 off the buds' $197 sale price. While we do expect to learn more about new regular AirPods during Apple's event tomorrow, it's unclear if we'll see a brand new version of the Pros.
These are Apple's most powerful earbuds and we gave them a score of 87 when they first came out. Yes, it's been nearly two years since then, but the AirPods Pro remain the best wireless earbuds for those with iPhones. That's due in part to how easily they pair and switch between Apple devices thanks to the H1 chip inside the buds, a piece of tech that also enables hands-free Siri access. Connecting the AirPods Pro to your iPhone for the first time is a quick and seamless process, and after that, you can go from listening to music on your Mac to taking a call on your iPhone with little hassle.
The AirPods Pro also have a better fitting design than standard AirPods, although that could change if Apple announces an updated model of its standard buds tomorrow. The Pros support ANC and Transparency Mode, which lets you hop in and out of conversations easily, and they support spatial audio along with Apple Music's new Dolby Atmos format. And if you want a pair of AirPods with wireless charging, the Pros are a good option because, unlike regular AirPods, their case has wireless charging support by default.
If you're more concerned about getting the latest earbuds Apple has to offer, it's worth it to wait until after tomorrow's event to see what the company has in store. However, if you're more concerned about your budget, this sale on the AirPods Pro is one of the best we've seen in recent months.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
The next Marvel Cinematic Universe show will premiere on Disney+ in November and, appropriately enough, Hawkeyehas a festive setting. Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye) just wants to spend Christmas with his family, but his enemies have other plans.
The series marks the return of Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye. This time around, he has a new partner: Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), the self-professed "world's greatest archer." Hawkeye is said to center on the relationship between the two toxophilites, with Clint training Kate to take over as Hawkeye, as the character does in the comics. There are hints of that passing of the torch in the trailer. It shows the pair meeting for the first time and forming a bond as they work together to battle some goons.
There are a few nods to other parts of the MCU here, including the existence of a Broadway musical about Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) and a tip of the cap toward the "masked vigilante" Hawkeye battled in Avengers: Endgame. Something we don't see in the trailer is an appearance by Florence Pugh, who made her MCU bow as assassin Yelena Belova in Black Widowthis summer. She was cast in Hawkeye last December.
In any case, you won't have to wait too long to see what happens when Yelena, Clint and Kate encounter each other. The eight-episode first season of Hawkeye will debut on November 24th on Disney+.
Deathloop is the coolest escape room I’ve ever experienced. That may not sound like much, considering plenty of escape rooms are cheesy monuments to corporate team-building exercises and gentrification, but I mean it as a compliment. Deathloop uses the fundamentals of old-school locked-room mysteries to deliver a rich and stylish universe driven by intrigue, action and strategy. The main difference between Deathloop and an actual escape room is, well, all the death.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a fair amount of dying in Deathloop. Dying is a core mechanic of the game, and it’s the first thing players actually do in the campaign, called Break the Loop. The opening scene has Colt, the main character, on his back with a murderous woman called Julianna sitting on top of him, pressing a massive blade to his chest. After some banter, she plunges the knife into Colt’s heart, and he sputters and dies.
Bethesda
And then the game begins. Colt awakens on a cold, empty beach littered with bottles, and he makes his way to a compound built into the side of the sea wall. As he walks, glowing words appear around the environment, as if a loved one is leaving words of encouragement and warning for him. Colt is confused — he doesn’t even know his own name at this point, let alone how he got here or who’s trying to talk to him.
The identity of the message-writer is just one of a dozen or so core mysteries in Deathloop, and these are the driving force of the campaign. Colt’s job is to explore Blackreef, the island where he’s been trapped in an infinite respawn cycle, and learn as much about its leaders and technology as possible, in order to burn it all down. Blackreef is a retrofuturistic bubble populated by residents who split their time between partying and violently defending their consequence-free way of life, and Colt can either sneak or shoot his way through their ranks.
In action, Deathloop feels a lot like Dishonored(of course), with a chaser of We Happy Few and Quadrilateral Cowboy. It’s mechanically mature and narratively dense, but best of all, it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Bethesda
Deathloop is one of the few first-person action games that I can successfully play in stealth mode, silently taking down enemies, hacking turrets and sniping from the rooftops in order to stay alive. Usually with games like this — I’m thinking Deus Ex and Far Cry — I intend to play stealthily, but it doesn’t work out. I get too close to an enemy, or miss my headshot, or forget about that security camera, and I end up just throwing a grenade and emptying my magazine, recklessly running into danger.
Deathloop invites the kind of stealth that I can sustain. The environments are endlessly climbable, offering plenty of vantage points for Colt to survey and mark his enemies, tracking their movements and revealing the kinds of weapons they’re carrying. If something in Deathloop looks scalable, it likely is, opening up the game world in all directions. Additionally, if I accidentally alert the enemies in one location, I don’t feel like I have to abandon my plans and roll in guns blazing. Generally speaking, I can find some cover, pick off the folks that follow me, and return to the rest of the mission in stealth mode. My favorite weapons in these moments are the Tribunal and the PT-6 Spiker, both of which are silent and deliver instant-kill headshots.
I’d like to blame the success of Deathloop’s stealth mechanics on my own skills or the masterful sense of level design coming out of Arkane Studios, but it might just be the game’s hit-or-miss AI. There are times it feels too easy to sneak up on enemies, and moments when they fail to react appropriately to Colt’s presence, standing still for seconds too long, piling up in hallways or ignoring nearby scuffles. It’s not every encounter, and there are still plenty of moments when I’m bested by the NPCs, but it’s enough that I’d classify the enemy AI in Deathloop as OK, rather than good.
Along his way, Colt picks up a variety of weapons and ultra-high-tech artifacts that grant him special abilities and perks. There are Trinkets, which are small glowing items that enhance whatever gun they’re attached to, and Slabs, which give Colt — and his enemies — superhuman powers like invisibility, telekinesis and short-distance teleportation. Once collected, the Slabs are swappable in Colt's loadout, and they tend to be tons of fun.
Blackreef is controlled by eight Visionaries of the AEON Program, one of whom is Julianna, and the only way to escape the island is for Colt to kill them all in a single day, breaking the loop. However, it’s not as simple as speedrunning through Blackreef in order to take them all out. Colt has deep ties to the AEON Program and the Visionaries all keep their own schedules, meaning a successful assassination run will require hours of information-gathering and strategizing. And, it turns out, dying.
Once he gets going, Colt is able to die twice during any playthrough with few consequences; he’s simply transported to a previous location and allowed to keep going, health restored. On the third death, however, he’s sent back to that bottle-lined beach, resources depleted.
He also loses his gear after a full day of activity, regardless of progress. Deathloop is divided into four times — morning, noon, afternoon and night — and after each complete sequence, Colt is beached. Certain missions can only be completed at specific times of day, so players have to plan their attacks accordingly, either shifting time forward or simply delaying until the next loop.
Bethesda
Eventually, Colt gains the ability to carry some slabs, trinkets and weapons with him between loops, though he has to infuse the items he wants to keep with a resource called Residiuum. Colt can harvest Residiuum from the shiny, glitched-out objects in Blackreef, or by killing visionaries and absorbing their energy. Residiuum can then be applied to specific items in Colt's kit, holding them for good.
With all of these trinkets, slabs, weapons, Residiuum, visionaries and loops, there’s a lot to keep tabs on in Deathlooop. The amount of stuff in the game is overwhelming at times, and it’s complicated by an intense plot filled with overlapping, time-bending mysteries. Small scraps of paper and brief audio recordings often contain crucial bits of information, rewarding players who obsessively explore every bookshelf, desk and dead-end with reams of notes and leads. The game does a good job of organizing all of these details in the resource-management screen, but overall, Deathloop demands full and complete attention, lest you completely lose the plot.
For those who pay attention, the story and environment of Blackreef unravels beautifully, with important secrets hidden in plain view, and new parts of the world opening and closing depending on the time of day. From this perspective, the density of things to collect, use and learn in Deathloop makes perfect sense. This game is built on the idea of replaying the same four maps again and again — Colt needs something new to do every time.
Bethesda
Julianna is a charming constant in Deathloop, generally talking shit and fleshing out the background of Blackreef. She’s also the star of the game’s second mode, Protect the Loop. Here, players are able to invade the games of friends or strangers, playing as Julianna and hunting down Colt as he tries to complete a mission. She has her own loadout, trinkets and slabs, including a masquerade ability that lets her trade appearances with allied NPCs — meaning, everyone except Colt.
Protect the Loop is marked by long periods of silence and inactivity, followed by furious gunfire and death. Colt can take any route he wants through the various maps, and Julianna has to actively hunt him down or wait for him to appear near the objective. She may be able to disguise herself, but she only has one life, while Colt has to die three times to make it final. This results in a delicious cat-and-mouse game that’s different with each new player.
That said, Protect the Loop is also where I’ve encountered the most technical issues. I played on PS5, and one round crashed fully right after launching, while two more were completely unplayable from my end, repeatedly setting my Julianna back a few frames until Colt finally showed up and shot her. That’s in comparison with four glitch-free rounds. My recommendation here is to use an ethernet cable, rather than Wi-Fi, and make sure your friends do, too.
Deathloop is incredibly dense, but it’s also inherently forgiving. Relying on death as a mechanic in Break the Loop takes the sting out of failing a cycle or two, since retrying is built into the narrative. Colt uncovers helpful information in most of his runs, even when he ends up dead — like, dead dead — and it feels like there’s always something new to uncover in Blackreef, no matter how many times he returns to the same location. If it does ever get old, there’s always the option to Protect the Loop.
And then Break the Loop. And then Protect the Loop. And then Break the Loop.
Nintendo has officially lowered the suggested retail price of the base Switch model in Europe, Nintendo Life has reported, hopefully telegraphing a similar drop in the US. It's now available for £260 in the UK or €270 elsewhere in Europe, rather than the previous £280 (€330), at Nintendo's official store.
"Nintendo of Europe is changing the European trade price of the Nintendo Switch console to retailers," a spokesperson said in a statement to Eurogamer. "More than four and a half years after its first release, Nintendo Switch continues to have strong sales momentum in Europe. After carefully weighing up a variety of factors, including currency exchange rates in Europe and the upcoming launch of Nintendo Switch - OLED Model, we decided that now was the appropriate time to change the European trade price of Nintendo Switch."
A US price drop for the base unit has been rumored with the OLED Switch set to arrive on October 8th. The new model has a larger 7-inch, 720p OLED display with smaller bezels, a new kickstand, an ethernet port and speaker improvements, though no other upgraded parts. With everything else unchanged, the lower pricing makes the base model a relatively good deal.
"We made the price change before the launch of Nintendo Switch - OLED Model so that the price differences between each model in Nintendo's own retail channel, My Nintendo Store, would be what Nintendo judges to be appropriate for its own store," Nintendo said.
The Nintendo Switch base model is still showing at $300 in the US at Amazon and Nintendo's official store, so hopefully that will change in the near future. The Switch OLED will cost $350 in the US, £310 in the UK and €365 elsewhere in Europe. The price of the Switch Lite will remain the same, the company said.
The weekend before Apple’s big iPhone event, the company’s legal battle with Epic and app developers cast a shadow. It’s hard to describe either side as an out-and-out loser or winner; Apple must allow App Store developers to direct users to other payment systems, which would let them bypass the 30 percent cut of in-app payments that Apple takes. Judge Gonzales Rogers also ruled, however, that the App Store doesn't violate antitrust law. She ruled against Epic in Apple's counterclaim for breach of contract. Epic has to pay Apple $3.65 million.
The latest development: Epic has already filed an appeal against that ruling. The initial notice didn't explain exactly how the Fortnite developer was challenging the decision.
I’m sure Apple would love to put the legal tussle behind it — while the ruling will cut into its revenue from some developers, it shouldn’t hugely affect its bottom line — and it’s got more new phones and devices to reveal. Want to know what we’re expecting from the big event? Read everything we know so far, right here!
Having said that, this little nugget was too late for our What to Expect story on Apple’s incoming phones. It seems the iPhone 13 — will the company call it that? — comes with some 1TB options, regardless of the expansion of iCloud and storage outside of the device itself. Well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max will have up to 1TB of storage alongside 128GB, 256GB and 512GB options carried over from the iPhone 12 Pro family. That could prove a little more expensive. Perhaps more importantly, he also believed the base iPhone 13 and 13 mini would start at 128GB versus the (frankly inadequate) 64GB of their predecessors.
He added that the current second-gen AirPods will stick around and sell alongside a new third-generation model, to be revealed at Apple's September 14th event, probably with a price drop.
Mat Smith (yes, me) loves the iPhone 12 mini. While the battery life was frustrating, that there’s a tiny smartphone, powerful enough for gaming and other processor-intensive tasks, is a very good thing. We hope — and rumors suggest that — Apple will continue the iPhone mini family.
The Perseverance rover's first rock samples from Mars are already providing insights. NASA researchers' early analysis of the samples indicates water was present in Jezero Crater for a "long time" — think tens of thousands or millions of years. That, in turn, suggests Mars' water was stable enough to make it relatively welcoming to microscopic life. The mission team also detected crucial salts that might have formed when water flowed through the sampled rock. The salt might have not only trapped pockets of Mars' old water, but could have preserved signs of life.
Regulators are worried stablecoins hurt stability more than they help.
Stablecoins are ostensibly safer than regular cryptocurrency thanks to their ties to less volatile assets, but US regulators apparently aren't convinced. Bloomberg sources hear the Treasury Department and other federal agencies are close to a possible crackdown on stablecoins through a review from the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Officials are reportedly concerned the digital money is largely unregulated and could ultimately destabilize the financial system, not protect it.
Some of that concern centers around Tether, which tries to stabilize its funds by holding large amounts of corporate debt. That could be vulnerable to "chaotic investor runs" if cryptocurrency values tank, according to Bloomberg.
Wrexham AFC is a non-league club in the fifth tier of the English soccer pyramid (the much-more-famous Premier League is at the top), which means it’s an unlikely candidate to feature in a FIFA game. Fortunately for Wrexham, it’s not just any club, but a (technically Welsh) team co-owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney — which is why it’ll now feature in FIFA 22.
Wrexham, based on Wales but playing in England's National football league, will appear in Kick Off mode in the "Rest of World" category. That section includes a grab-bag of clubs which are notable for other reasons but aren't members of a major FIFA-signed league. EA inked a multi-year deal with the club that includes "commitments to the Wrexham community and its fans," the company said
The news leaked out a bit early when Wrexham appeared in a list of all teams in FIFA 22, as Eurogamer reported. Other National clubs might be peeved by the decision, but Wrexham does bring a certain notoriety with Reynolds as owner. "'Rest of World' is an important geographic area known for its random assortment of cultures, climates and football clubs. If you're planning on visiting 'Rest of World,' please consider visiting Wrexham," he said in a typically sassy video.
The US Defense Department's ambitions beyond Earth just grew a little clearer. SpaceNews has learned the department recently put out a call for privately-made nuclear propulsion systems that could power small- and mid-sized spacecraft. The DoD wants to launch missions venturing beyond Earth orbit, and existing electric and solar spacecraft are neither suitable for that job nor suitable to smaller vehicles, the department's Defense Innovation Unit said.
The nuclear propulsion system will ideally offer "high delta-V" (above 33ft/s) while scaling down to less than 2,000kg in dry mass (4,409lbs on Earth). On top of providing electricity for the payload, the technology will hopefully keep the spacecraft warm when in shadow and minimize radiation both on the ground and to other components. Responses are expected by September 23rd, with contracts handed out as quickly as 60 to 90 days afterward.
Officials acknowledged they were making the request as a matter of expediency. NASA and other agencies are already developing or backing nuclear spacecraft, but those won't be ready for a long while. The DoD is hoping for a prototype within three to five years — this technology would serve as a stopgap that puts nuclear propulsion into service relatively quickly for near-term projects.
While the request didn't provide clues as to what spacecraft were in the works, the focus on smaller spacecraft suggests it could involve probes, satellites or other vehicles with modest goals. You won't see this power human trips to Mars. All the same, it's clear the DoD is frustrated by the limitations of existing spacecraft engines and wants a fast track to more powerful designs.
