Microsoft is moving into the next phase of its plan to bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to as many devices as possible, and it's one of the most important steps yet. Starting this holiday season, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will have access to cloud gaming on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles.

The company, which made the announcement during its Gamescom showcase, said you'll be able to fire up more than 100 games without having to download them first. At some point in the future, Xbox One owners can play some Series X/S games through the cloud, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator. You'll know a title is cloud gaming-compatible if you see a cloud icon next to it in the Game Pass library. Microsoft is targeting 1080p gameplay at 60 frames per second.

Xbox Cloud Gaming is already available on phones, tablets and PC. Microsoft is also working on Xbox game streaming sticks as well as a smart TV cloud gaming app. This summer, the company started transitioning cloud gaming onto beefier Xbox Series X hardware after launching the service on Xbox One S-based blade servers.

Alphabet's fully autonomous driving unit Waymo is ready to offer rides to select passengers in San Francisco, the company announced on Tuesday. Starting later today, residents can sign up to become "Trusted Testers." With an invite to the program, you can use the Waymo One app to take rides in the fleet of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles Waymo will have stationed in the city. 

Waymo describes the Trusted Tester program as a "research-focused" effort designed to help it collect feedback on its ride experience, with an emphasis on gathering information related to accessibility.   

"We kicked off this program last week with a select few and are now expanding the program to all interested San Franciscans," the company said. "We’ll begin with an initial group and welcome more riders in the weeks to come." Much like it did in Arizona, Waymo won't let the cars drive without supervision right off the back. The company will have employees in the cars to ensure its fifth-generation Waymo Driver technology doesn't get lost on San Francisco's tricky one-way streets and hills. The company also told Bloomberg passengers will ride for free.  

The expansion comes after Waymo recently announced CEO John Krafcik was leaving the company to pursue other projects. Some saw Krafcik as being too slow to push the company toward commercialization. 

Walmart has announced a delivery service for local businesses, which should be up and running by the end of the year. It plans to use drones and self-driving cars as part of the Walmart GoLocal infrastructure. Earlier this year, Walmart invested in Cruise after previously running a delivery pilot with GM's autonomous vehicle startup.

Local retailers might be able to keep using their current commerce platform and hook it into GoLocal. It's a white-label service, so deliveries won't be made by Walmart-branded vehicles. Associates, members of the Spark Driver program and other delivery companies will handle orders, according to CNBC. 

Walmart says it will be able to offer delivery within two hours in certain markets. There's a two-day delivery option as well. The company claims shipping will be priced competitively and that it can handle everything from groceries to kiddie pools and oversize items.

GoLocal is a key part of Walmart's strategy and it should help the company to diversify revenue streams. There might be some advantages for small businesses as well. It could slightly level the playing field with the likes of Amazon, which is largely moving its delivery network in-house and promising same-day or next-day delivery in many cases.

The sticky tentacles of capitalism have slithered into a fresh space: TikTok. Shopify and TikTok are rolling out TikTok Shopping, a new tab that business users can add to their profiles, syncing their product catalogues and linking out to their online stores for payment. 

The new tab will be available to Shopify sellers with a TikTok For Business account, and the program is live now as a pilot in the United States and United Kingdom. The beta will open up to some users in Canada over the coming weeks, with additional regions planned in the following months.

In addition to the new tab, Shopify and TikTok are launching product links in the app as well, allowing Shopify merchants to tag items in normal TikTok posts. The tag will send the user directly to the merchant's online store.

For everyday TikTok users, this means you can expect to see more links and opportunities to throw your hard-earned money at social media stars on the app. Truly, this was only a matter of time.

The Witch Queen, Destiny’s 2 long-awaited fourth expansion, will launch on February 22nd, 2022, Bungie announced on Tuesday. The expansion will pit players against Savathûn. First mentioned in 2015’s The Taken King, the titular Witch Queen is a foe Destiny players have been waiting years to face. She’s the sister of Oryx, the Hive god players defeated in the aforementioned Taken King expansion, and a character Bungie has meticulously teased in strikes, in-game lore items and more.

In The Witch Queen, players will travel to Savathûn’s Throne World to face the Lucent Hive. Bungie is introducing a new crafting mechanic that will allow players to create their own custom weapons, complete with unique mods, shaders and stat combinations. The expansion will also add a new Glaive weapon type that allows players to complete melee combos, fire energy projectiles and deploy a shield.

Bungie had originally planned to release The Witch Queen in 2021 but delayed the expansion to early 2022 at the start of the year. By the time the studio announced the decision, it had said it was already considering pushing back the expansion for the sake of “the health of the team.” In combination with other plans the studio had for 2021, the coronavirus pandemic made that decision easier.

Riot Games is changing its plans for the 2021 League of Legends World Championship (aka Worlds). The event was supposed to take place in China for the second straight year, but it's moving to Europe amid travel complications brought on by the rapid spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant.

"We've reached the point where it's extremely difficult to guarantee that qualifying teams and their best players would be able to attend Worlds this year," John Needham, Riot's global head of esports, said in a video. "After considering all possible options, we concluded that moving Worlds to Europe provided the best opportunity for the most teams and their best players to compete."

Worlds 2021 was supposed to take place in five cities across China, culminating in Shenzhen in November, after initially being announced for the US in 2018. Riot hasn't revealed exactly where in Europe it will bring one of the biggest events in esports this year, though Needham noted that accessibility for the highest number of teams and their key players will be the most critical factor. Riot will reveal more details about Worlds 2021 in the coming days and weeks.

Earlier this month, Riot moved the final matches of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) — the esport's North American league — from a New Jersey arena to its LCS Arena in Los Angeles. It said the rise in Delta variant cases meant that it "cannot in good conscience conduct a massive fan event at this time."

Other esports are still pressing forward with in-person events in North America. The 2021 Call of Duty League season just wrapped up, with its championship weekend being held at a packed Galen Center in Los Angeles. The Overwatch League playoffs and grand finals are set to take place in Dallas and the same LA arena respectively next month, marking the esport's return to in-person events in the US.

Just ahead of Gamescom's official opening, Microsoft is hosting its latest showcase on Tuesday. You can expect around 90 minutes of news and updates during the event, which starts at 1PM ET.

Microsoft is promising more info about Xbox Game Pass and some of the biggest upcoming Xbox titles, including details about some previously announced games from internal studios and third-party developers. Much of the focus will be on the company's holiday slate, so there's a good chance Xbox will finally reveal the release date for Halo Infinite (even if the game will lack a couple of core game modes at the outset). The event will also include another look at gameplay from Techland's Dying Light 2 Stay Human.

You can watch the Gamescom 2021 Xbox Stream on official Xbox channels on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, or simply watch it via the below embed. Microsoft is broadcasting the event on other platforms elsewhere, including Bilibili in China and VK in Russia. There'll be American Sign Language, German Sign Language and English audio description versions of the stream too. The company is subtitling the event in 30 languages, but not all of those will be available during the live broadcast.

It's worth noting that Xbox will stream the event in 1080p at 60 frames per second. A 4K version will be available on its YouTube channel afterward.

August impressed us with its 4th-generation WiFi smart lock, which has a subtle design, an easy installation process and a decent price compared to its competition. However, it's normal price of $230 isn't exactly cheap — but now you can get the smart lock for the best price we've seen by going to Wellbots. The online retailer has the 4th-generation WiFi smart lock for $179 when you use the coupon code ENGADGET20 at checkout.

August didn't fix what wasn't broken about its smart lock, but it did take the time to add features that make the 4th-generation feel like a substantial upgrade. It's half the size of the previous generation lock and it no longer requires a bridge thanks to its WiFi connectivity. Installation is pretty quick and easy, thanks in part to the helpful video instructions in the August mobile app, and we appreciate that the company forces you to turn on two-factor authentication during setup. It's an extra security measure that's especially important when you're talking about a device that lets people into your home. In addition to two-factor authentication, the lock also uses Bluetooth encryption, AES 128-bit and TLS encryption.

Once installed, the mobile app can act as your digital keys, remotely locking and unlocking your door at any time. This makes it easy to let a friend or family member into your home when necessary even if you're away. You also don't have to forsake your physical keys all together — you can still use them to unlock your door at any time, so even if you forget to replace the smart lock's dual CR123 batteries, you'll still be able to get into your home. Just make sure to check out August's support page to see if your deadbolt is compatible with the smart lock before you buy it.

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Spotify is expanding paid podcast subscriptions to all US creators as a means of monetizing more content. Since its launch with a dozen indie publishers in the Spring, the premium option has been activated on 100 podcasts, according to the Sweden-based streaming service. On September 15th, subscriber-only content will be made available to international listeners. While overseas creators will have to wait a tad bit longer to get their hands on the monetization tools.

The program itself is available through Anchor, the podcast creation platform Spotify acquired alongside podcast network Gimlet for just shy of $340 million in 2019. The company has billed the service as a win-win for its entire user base, giving publishers the chance to reap subscription fees with no commission (for the first two years) from avid listeners. Spotify will start taking a cut of 5 percent in 2023. Comparatively, Apple charges a $20 annual fee for its program and takes a 30 percent cut of subscriptions for the first year and 15 percent thereafter.

Based on learnings from its test period, Spotify is introducing 20 new pricing options for podcasts to offer creators more flexibility. It's also allowing publishers to download a list of contact addresses for their subscribers so they can better engage with them. That should help creators to further promote their content using email marketing and notifications.

Movies Anywhere, the streaming hub that pulls together films you purchase for a variety of digital stores, has added a feature many users have long been hoping for: lists. Not only will this help you better organize your library, the system will automatically generate personalized lists based on the movies you own. You should now see a My Lists tab next to My Movies.

Organizing a Movies Anywhere library presents a different challenge to grouping titles together on the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. While subscribers of those services have access to the same content based on the country they're in, every Movies Anywhere user has a unique selection of films in their locker.

Movies Anywhere is looking to avoid having the same movie in too many lists. As such, movies are typically funneled into categories to which they're most closely matched.

One key part of the My Lists feature is that it takes into account viewing behavior. During a demo last week, Movies Anywhere didn’t go into too much detail about how this works. However, if you watch a few minutes of any film, the algorithm, artificial intelligence and machine learning systems will consider what you're interested in watching when they organize your lists.

Movies Anywhere’s content team classifies the films and there are around 2,000 different potential categories as things stand. These are centered around things like genres, franchises, people (say, actors, directors or composers) and themes. So, if you have a lot of movies about robots or cyborgs in your library, they might be grouped together in a list. Same thing goes for a collection of Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Other lists might focus on movies focused on antiheroes or musicians. The system might generate a list of nostalgic flicks, or classify films into subgenres.

Lists that Movies Anywhere creates for you are marked as "automatic lists." You can also create and modify lists. You'll be able to add and remove films, reorganize lists and rename them. If you own all the Star Wars movies, for instance, you can place them in release order, sort them in the canonical timeline or even arrange them in the so-called Machete order. It’s up to you.

One thing you can't do right now is modify any lists on the Movies Anywhere smart TV app. You can only browse your lists there. But because your lists sync across devices, you can make changes on a phone, tablet or computer, and you'll see those reflected on your smart TV.

This is a useful update, especially for Movies Anywhere users who pick up a ton of movies during sales or those who redeem tons of digital codes from Blu-ray purchases. The service says that My Lists is "a direct response to specific requests" from users. It should bring some more order to users' libraries, which can get unwieldy as they grow in size.