Year: 2024

Movie theater owners can take a cue from Riley, the protagonist of Inside Out 2, and quell their anxiety. The Pixar film massively outperformed expectations at the box office and scored the biggest opening of the year so far with $155 million domestically and $140 million overseas, outpacing earlier 2024 blockbusters like Dune: Part 2. Industry prognosticators, still reeling from the historically bad Memorial Day Weekend box office, expected the animated movie to make just $80 million its opening weekend.

The movie’s success is great news for Pixar and Hollywood. Pixar has been suffering a creative and commercial slump the past few years. And just one year after the Barbenheimer phenomenon, the 2024 box office has been off to a grim start, with high hopes dashed (see: The Fall Guy, Furiosa) and too much pressure placed on individual titles, like the recent Bad Boys sequel, to save the entire season. Had Inside Out 2 failed—a determination increasingly made as quickly as opening weekend comes and goes—Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter recently admitted to TIME that the studio wou…

2024 is shaping up to be the year that Windows laptops with Arm processors mount a serious challenge to the dominance of the Intel and AMD x86 duopoly. We’ve been hearing about Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X for sometime, and now the first devices are being unveiled, with more to follow at what’s shaping up to be a very interesting Computex in a few weeks time.

WalkingCat over at Twitter (via Videocardz) revealed some pictures of a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 packing a Snapdragon X processor. But, to what extent will such devices disrupt the laptop market? 

Though there’s not much to glean from the handful of pictures, the Yoga Slim in question looks to be a premium ultra-thin option. I would expect the first wave of Snapdragon X models to be similarly premium options, and not some budget alternative to x86 options from Intel or AMD. It’s not like MacBooks are regarded as cheap options.

And Qualcomm has not just Intel and AMD, but also Apple in its sights. NotebookCheck posted a series of Qualcomm-provided benchmark data from a recent event in London that shows the Snapdragon X Elite competing well against Apple M3, Intel Meteor Lake and AMD Hawk Point CPUs.…

FromSoftware big shot and Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki has delivered some more cryptic Shadow of the Erdtree details in a recent interview shared to the Chinese social network Zhihu. The big takeaways for my money are that this thing is going to be big, and that Elden lore freak favorite St. Trina will make an appearance.

The interview was conducted by Gōuhuǒ yíngdì (篝火营地, literal translation “campfire camp”), a videogames-focused account on Zhihu. User swordandflower on Twitter made a handy English translation of the interview, which I’ve compared against machine translation for this story.

Miyazaki was asked about both the expected playtime of Shadow of the Erdtree and why FromSoft opted for a single expansion instead of a series like Dark Souls 2 and 3 had⁠—Miyazaki reiterated that Shadow of the Erdtree would be the “first and last” DLC for Elden Ring, but said it’s because they wanted to make a whopper.

“Elden Ring focuses on world exploration and a sense of adventure,” Miyazaki said. “In order to provide the players such an experience, it’s necessary to build a vast and expan…

Metaphor: ReFantazio is shaping up to be dangerous for me, as someone who has never played an Atlus RPG—mostly because the developer’s veer away from psychic dream-delving high schoolers and into high fantasy is exactly my kind of bag.

And now there’s a demo! Announced earlier today and re-announced during the Tokyo Game Show, the Metaphor: ReFantazio prologue demo lets you play (you guessed it) the prologue—and it’s downright meaty.

The Steam page promises the “first four” dungeons, seven out of the game’s 40 Archetypes—which function as classes the characters can equip—and “six followers, including party members who will support the protagonist’s journey”.

I’m still downloading this 24-gig heft of a demo as I write this, but players are already reporting they’ve got about four to five hours with it, which is downright generous—alas, they’re also reporting some performance problems which I’ve got on good authority aren’t isolated.

“I have a 7950x3d and an rtx 4090 and my GPU utilisation is all over the place,” writes one player on the game’s subreddit. “When dashing it dips down to 70%, and when standing s…

Old School Runescape is a 10-year-old MMO that’s based on a 16-year-old MMO, and in light of that you might expect that it’s a quiet, staid online realm where people enjoy their gaming buds and gameplay routines and nothing new ever happens. It’s actually developed a reputation for just the opposite: Players keep finding new or unique things to do that wouldn’t be possible (or reasonable) in a regular MMO.

The latest Old School Runescape shenanigans occurred in the wake of an update that, according to GamesRadar, made some small behind-the-scenes changes to the game. Regular maintenance stuff, really—except that after it was live, players discovered that sending “Rainbow” text in the game would crash the client. And not just their own client: Everyone who read the text would suffer the same fate.

You can probably guess what happened next. Jagex at first attributed the problem to “a crash during the Zebak fight” that impacted just one player but it quickly became clear that the situation was much, much worse than that. A few hours later the whole game was taken down so they could fix it.

Old School Runescape players, to their credit, took the downtime reas…

We’re exactly a month out from Diablo 4’s full release, so it’s time to change everything up. With season 1 of the game right around the corner, Blizzard is set to host a Diablo Developer Update Livestream today, July 6, giving some of the game’s devs a chance to chatter about upcoming updates, answer questions, and—crucially—reveal the date when Diablo 4’s first season will finally drop. I hope they announce an even bigger Butcher.

When is Diablo 4’s season 1 livestream?

The show kicks off at 11 am PDT. You’ll be able to catch the livestream over on Diablo’s official YouTube and Twitch channels, but you might want to skip the first 15 minutes. Diablo global community development director Adam Fletcher says that time will be dedicated to updates about Diablo Immortal, the underloved, mobile-first entry in the series that probably isn’t why most people are going to be tuning in. Worry not, though: Diablo 4 will take up the entire remainder of the show, which Fletcher estimates will go on for over an hour.

Here’s when that time translates to around the world:

• 11 am Pacific, July 6

Ever since talking to prolific Neverwinter Nights module builder Luke Scull, I’ve been on a Neverwinter Nights kick, working through some of the huge backlog of high-quality user-made campaigns for Bioware’s 2002 RPG. While playing Swordflight, a standout hardcore, ambitious mod, I logged in one day to notice new UI elements, graphics options, and quality-of-life changes, stuff that just wasn’t there before. Surely Beamdog isn’t still updating its 2018 Enhanced Edition re-release, right?

As reported by Gaming on Linux, that’s exactly what’s happened. Beamdog’s patch summary characterizes the update as “a year-long love effort” by community developers clippy, Daz, Jasperre, Llareth, niv, Soren, tinygiant, and virusman, packaged by the company into an official update for the game. The full patch notes are honestly too extensive to repost in full here, and can be found on Beamdog’s official website.

The first things I noticed were changes to how damage numbers are displayed to make them easier to parse, as well as area of effect indicators for where your spells will land—particularly helpful on max difficulty where friendly fire is turned on. The AoE indicator is …

Over the last few years, governments around the world have been scrambling to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing. The reasons are many. Protecting supply chains, reducing reliance on Taiwan’s TSMC, economic protectionism and national security are all valid reasons to boost domestic chip production. The EU is the latest body to take pass legislation. It’s passed its own Chips Act, which allocates €43 billion ($48 billion) to support EU based semiconductor manufacturing.

The bill seeks to foster the development of a European industrial base by creating favorable conditions for investment, education, and research and development to support a healthy chip manufacturing industry over the long-term.

“With the Chips Act, Europe will be a frontrunner in the world semiconductors race. We can already see it in action: new production plants, new investments, new research projects. And in the long run, this will also contribute to the renaissance of our industry and the reduction of our foreign dependencies,” Héctor Gómez Hernández, Spanish minister for industry, trade, and tourism, said of the development.

Intel has already taken steps to…

Financial analysts are expecting Intel to post a monster $3 billion loss when the company announces its numbers for the first quarter of this year later this week.

If that turns out to be about right, it will be the biggest loss in the chipmaker’s history. Overall, Intel’s sales are expected to be down by around 20% for the whole year compared to 2022. Ouch.

However, industry observers think this is rock bottom for Intel. From here, the only way is up. Marketwatch quotes multiple analysts predicting that the first quarter of this year will mark the low point for Intel, with the company returning to growth thereafter.

That chimes with broader analysis for the PC as a whole, with various research outfits predicting recovery in the second half of this year for the PC as a whole and for individual component classes.

Part of the problem, as we’ve noted before, is that people bought PCs and other digital devices in really silly numbers during the pandemic. Quarterly PC shipments jumped from 60 to 70 million units before the pandemic to around 80 to 90 million every quarter for the better part of two years.

So, there’s bound to be a bit of a lull following…

The relatively new Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu has been making some big decisions in reviewing the company’s development process “from scratch“. The reasoning behind such moves is now becoming clearer thanks to Square Enix’s financial results, with the company warning investors earlier this month they could expect to see heavy losses, alongside which it announced the cancellation of various projects with a sunk development cost of around $140 million, and layoffs across Europe and the US.

Square Enix says it expects operating income of ¥40 billion in this financial year, against an expectation of ¥57 billion. Its sales and dividend outlook were also down. Since the announcement of these results and the ongoing restructuring, Square Enix’s shares have suffered badly, with Bloomberg reporting that the fall of 16% is “their biggest decline in 13 years” (and bear in mind, the Japanese stock market has a daily limit on how far a stock can fall).

Kiryu told shareholders and analysts that the company had failed to meet its expectations because of low sales of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Foamstars. Notably thes…

Since late April, Valve has been beta testing a refresh of the Steam client that’s now available to everyone. As the announcement warns, “The most impactful changes in this update aren’t immediately visible; much of the work went into changing how we share code across the Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck.” Some things are visible, however, including “updated dialogs, menus, fonts, and colors”, as well as changes to notifications, the screenshot manager, and especially the in-game overlay.

The overlay that pops up when you press shift+tab while in-game has a new UI, with a toolbar that lets you check a game’s achievements, guides, and forum as well as bring up your friends list for chat and a web browser, all in separate windows that can be pinned to your screen so they remain visible when you close the overlay. You can change their locations and opacity, meaning you can keep that walkthrough open in the corner while you play or just watch Critical Role while grinding without needing to have a second screen.

I’m expecting to get more use out of notes, a new addition to the overlay that lets you jot things down and save them to the cloud. I can se…

Last week Nintendo managed to block the Steam release of the Gamecube and Wii emulator Dolphin. Initial reports had it that this was a DMCA takedown, but it soon emerged that—as Dolphin is not yet available for download on Steam—Valve had contacted Nintendo in advance, and been rewarded with a warning shot across the bows.

Valve spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle subsequently confirmed to The Verge that this legal letter came about because Valve had contacted Nintendo. “Given Nintendo’s history of taking action against some emulators, we brought this to their attention proactively after the Dolphin team announced it was coming soon to Steam”.

The legal notice in question, reviewed by PC Gamer, is addressed to Valve’s legal department and dated May 26, 2023. 

“Because the Dolphin emulator violates Nintendo’s intellectual property rights, including but not limited to its rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)’s Anti-Circumvention and AntiTrafficking provisions, 17 U.S.C. § 1201, we provide this notice to you of your obligation to remove the offering of the Dolphin emulator from the Steam…

The White House today rolled out a plan outlining a road to universal high-speed internet access in the United States by 2030. The plan will draw on some $42 billion in funding from the $1 trillion 2021 infrastructure laws that Biden championed.

“It’s the biggest investment in high-speed internet ever. Because for today’s economy to work for everyone, internet access is just as important as electricity, or water, or other basic services,” said President Joe Biden at the White House on Monday.

The plan will be based on a Federal Communications Commission map, recently released, that highlights major gaps in access. Presumably it will also be based on the new broadband standard in the US of 100Mbps downstream, 20Mbps up.

News agency Reuters reports that the plan will most funding will hit larger states like Texas and California, as well as those with large underserved rural populations, like Virginia, Alabama, and Louisiana. It also includes money for US territories, like the Virgin Islands. Rural populations in these areas are forced to rely on slow, unreliable satellite internet connections. (I’d know—I live in one and would be forced to use it, but for t…

The endless parade of incongruous Magic crossovers continued today with news that Marvel, the purveyor of movies, television shows, comics, videogames, and other popular media that you simply cannot get away from, is coming to Magic: The Gathering.

Comic book superheroes may not seem like a natural fit for a fantasy-based card game, but it’s really more about mass marketing than narrative cohesion: Hasbro, parent company of Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast, said its collaboration with Marvel will see the creation of “collectible products and tentpole sets” of cards for Magic: The Gathering. It’s done similar crossovers with Fortnite, Stranger Things, Street Fighter, Warhammer 40K, The Lord of the Rings, and other multimedia giants.

“We are extremely proud to collaborate with Marvel to bring its iconic characters to fans around the world in new ways,” Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming president Cynthia Williams said. “These tentpole sets will build on the tradition of incorporating beloved fan-favorite characters and elements from world-class brands into Magic: The Gathering.”

Marvel, too, “can’t wait for fans to see how the Marvel Universe transl…

As the games industry becomes ever-larger, and players become more connected, the problem of toxic behaviour has moved from a background concern to a major issue for developers, publishers and, in extreme cases, the authorities. Now, in a move that will be welcomed by many, publisher Ubisoft has announced it’s signed an agreement with the UK police (thanks, BBC) that will see the worst cases of online harassment and threats fast-tracked to the force.

It’s the first such arrangement of its kind and based around Ubisoft’s Newcastle-based customer relationship centre, one of five that the publisher operates globally. These places engage with the positive side of gaming communities, handle customer issues like refunds, and also deal with the toxic stuff. 

The agreement is with Northumbria Police Force and will see specialist officers training Ubisoft staff about negative online behaviour, as well as Ubisoft having the fast track option for extreme cases where it’s believed there’s a potential for serious harm or even threats to life. The police will then take the matter over and decide how to proceed. 

“We want to be on the right side of history,” …

All the Wordle help you could possibly need is waiting for you on this very page. Improve every game with our handy tips and guides, read a clue written especially for the March 19 (638) game, or skip straight to the win with today’s Wordle answer—it’s entirely up to you.

The good thing about starting with a clean slate after a loss is there’s not much to lose, so I was perhaps a little braver today than I’d otherwise be. Thanks to a fantastic opener and an even better follow-up, I managed to solve today’s tricky Wordle in just three guesses.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Sunday, March 19

Today’s answer refers to a statement of belief, the principles that may guide someone’s actions and decisions. It’s also the name of a non-playable character in Devil May Cry 4, if you can remember that far back. You’ll need to find two vowels today. 

ViewViewViewView

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

No, there is no double letter in today’s puzzle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

Anyone can pick up and play Wordle, but if you want to do it well and make all of your guesse…

Pokémon Card Game—not to be confused with the Pokémon Trading Card Game—isn’t a real game. It’s malware disguised as a Pokémon NFT game that’s designed to fool unsuspecting Pocket Monster fans into clicking on a compromising link. This malicious Fakémon installs remote control software on infected computers, which hackers can then use to access private user data and make your PC susceptible to more malicious attacks.

According to cybersecurity analysts at ASEC, via bleepingcomputer, hackers went as far as creating a pretty convincing fake website for their fake game and even a fake marketplace where you can claim and mint Pokémon Card NFTs. The fake site offers no real Pokémon NFTs, however, just headaches. 

Clicking on the “Play on PC” button on the website (which we won’t link for obvious reasons) downloads an installer that, instead of installing a game, buries a tool called NetSupport Manager deep into your files. This essentially opens a back door into your PC.

To make matters worse, the malicious download has an official-looking Pokémon icon and file information, which would make it easy to…

Asus’ ROG Zephyrus CES 2024 teaser hid something exciting in plain sight, the hint that its new gaming laptops are going to ditch the old plastic chassis and switch to an all-new metal unibody design. And I am most definitely here for that change.

The teaser trailer released last week suffered by being dropped at the same time as another, more rabidly devoured teaser trailer—y’know, the one with guns, bikes, and bikinis—and honestly we skipped over it because all it seemed to say was that there were going to be new ROG laptops coming at CES 2024.

A blind hermit could have probably predicted the same with as much accuracy, however, we’ve now learned there’s more to it. We’ve heard from people classically ‘close to the matter’ that there is going to be a more tangible re-design to the outside of the new Asus ROG Zephyrus laptops as well as new hardware going inside them.

That same hermit would have also predicted a new Intel insides (ding, ding-dong, ding) for the new machines, but we’ve learned that as well as switching up the old LED-laden AniMe Matrix top panel—for something apparently sleek and different, which now just looks like a single s…