Technology

Following a teaser from the Xbox Game Pass team yesterday, Microsoft has announced that Doom Eternal is heading to the company’s gaming subscription service. The 2020 sequel to the fantastic 2016 reboot will arrive on Xbox Game Pass for consoles on October 1st and will launch on Game Pass for PC later this year. It’s the first game to arrive on Xbox Game Pass from ZeniMax Media, which Microsoft announced it was acquiring earlier this week. ZeniMax is the parent company for several high-profile gaming studios, including Bethesda and id Software, Doom’s developer. Now that Microsoft owns all these gaming IPs, it makes sense that games not already on the service will eventually make their way to both platforms. Xbox head Phil Spencer confirmed that particular detail, noting in a blog post tha...

Let’s be honest: trying to preorder a PS5 has been anything but easy. That said, if you want to try to secure Sony’s next-gen console ahead of its November 12th launch, you’ll have another shot at nabbing one at GameStop tomorrow. Both models of the PS5 will be in stock on GameStop’s website, though the retailer has yet to mention what time it will open preorders online. If you’d rather try your luck in person, you can always go to a GameStop near you. And if you decide to brave the line at a physical store, you can either pay for your PS5 in full or drop a $50 down payment to make sure you get one. (Although it’s unclear how many or which units each store will have.) Whatever you choose, remember that it’s still really difficult to get your hands on a PS5 right now, no matter who you are....

The upcoming OnePlus 8T will support 65W fast charging via the company’s new Warp Charge 65 standard, OnePlus confirmed today. The company is advertising that you’ll be able to get “a day’s power in 15 minutes” using the new technology, and it specifically says a 15-minute charge will restore 58 percent of the battery’s power, with a full charge of the phone’s 4,500mAh battery taking just 39 minutes. Faster charging speeds tend to mean more heat generation, but OnePlus says the 8T features a “new heat dissipation system” to keep it cool while it charges. The phone apparently has 12 temperature sensors to keep an eye on how hot the handset gets. However, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau confirmed the phone won’t support wireless charging in an interview with PCMag. 65W fast charging is more than twice ...

Spotify wants to turn more of its original podcasts into TV shows and movies. The company announced a partnership today with Chernin Entertainment, the production company behind Ford v Ferrari, Hidden Figures, and New Girl, to develop TV and movie pitches based on Spotify-exclusive and original podcasts. The “first look” partnership means Chernin will get first dibs on developing pitches around Spotify IP. Spotify says its library now consists of more than 250 original shows from which Chernin can work off initially. “Spotify has one of the largest libraries of unattached IP that exists in the world today and that library is being added to daily,” Chernin said in a prepared statement. “This treasure trove of content plus the acceleration of new voices and stories provides an enormous oppor...

Tribeca Film Festival is expanding its games recognition in 2021. The festival is opening submissions that recognize video games as official selections, particularly those that “demonstrate artistic excellence in storytelling” as part of the first Tribeca Games Award. To help guide this process, Tribeca has formed an advisory board that includes Hideo Kojima, Sam Lake, Geoff Keighley, Kiki Wolfkill, Bing Gordon, Nia DaCosta, and Jon Favreau. The festival has previously highlighted games such as God of War, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Firewatch, and What Remains of Edith Finch. “In the 10 years since we first welcomed a game to Tribeca’s official program, we’ve seen an exciting convergence of games, film, and immersive experiences,” said festival co-founder and CEO Jane Rosenthal in a prepar...

The Google Pixel 5 is rumored to launch in a new green color (green-ish? green-like?) in addition to black, but you don’t have to wait until later this month to see what that will look like. That very configuration of Google’s upcoming flagship phone seems to be laid bare in a leaked marketing shot, spotted by WinFuture (via 9to5Google). The phone is face-down on its screen, leaving its rear fingerprint sensor and all-plastic back visible, and both details line up with the rumors so far. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given how much Google tech tends to leak, this image also serves up yet another look at Google’s Nest Audio smart speaker and its new Chromecast running the refreshed Google TV interface. Both products were recently spotted at retail stores in the US, so not only does this leak see...

Zoom has canceled a webinar due to be held at San Francisco State University (SFSU) this Wednesday featuring Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who took part in two plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970. YouTube and Facebook also intervened to stop the talk, according to reports. The webinar was cancelled after pressure from Israeli and Jewish lobby groups including the Lawfare Project. They noted that the US government has designated the PFLP a terrorist organization, and claimed that by hosting Khaled on its service, Zoom was exposing itself to criminal liability for providing “material support or resources” to a terrorist group. “the international pin-up of armed struggle” A 2001 profile of Khaled from The Guardian described her as “the intern...

UK retailer John Lewis has accidentally posted images of Google’s Pixel 4A 5G a little early, giving us a detailed look at the new mid-range phone’s design. The images, fist spotted by 9to5Google, are accidentally on display on the retailer’s Pixel 4A 4G LTE listing, where they show a 5G logo in the phone’s status bar and a rear camera layout that doesn’t match the Pixel 4A’s. The images confirm several of the Pixel 4A 5G specs that leaked yesterday, including a second rear camera and the headphone jack that carries over from the Pixel 4A. The Pixel 4A 5G is one of the two phones Google pre-announced for this fall, the other one being the Pixel 5. Recent leaks for the two devices claim the Pixel 4A 5G’s specs will position it somewhere between the Pixel 5 and the Pixel 4A in Google’s 2020 ...

Several of Apple’s biggest critics — including Epic Games, Spotify, Basecamp, Match Group, Tile, Blix, and Deezer — have banded together to create the Coalition for App Fairness, a new group aiming to “create a level playing field for app businesses and give people freedom of choice on their devices.” While most of the founding members have individually fought or are fighting with Apple over its App Store policies, the Coalition for App Fairness marks a more coordinated effort for developers to formally protest Apple’s rules. The goal is to also provide a central organization for developers to join, especially those who may not have the clout or the resources to take on Apple alone. The Coalition says that it welcomes “companies of any size, in any industry who are committed to protecting ...

Mac and iOS calendar app Fantastical has updated its software with 12 new customizable widgets. They look like the perfect use-case for iOS 14’s widget support, giving users access to their calendar, events, and weather forecasts straight from the home screen. These aren’t the sort of widgets you’d use to flex on TikTok, of course: these are practical and straightforward designs for people whose live in their schedules. The widgets look as well-designed as you’d expect from Fantastical, and we particularly like the option to jump into meetings directly. No more searching your inbox for that elusive Zoom invitation. [embedded content] Fantastical’s widgets are all hypothetically free to use, but some features (like quick-joining meetings and multiple calendar sets) will not work unless you’...

HBO Max is getting a new TV series called Peacemaker, a spinoff of the upcoming Suicide Squad sequel directed by James Gunn. The show will focus on the origins of its titular character, Peacemaker, played by John Cena. The streaming service has ordered eight episodes with production slated to begin in early 2021. Not much is known about the plot, but Warner Bros. says the show is set in the same world as The Suicide Squad, which is set to debut in theaters on August 6th, 2021. Gunn will also serve as a writer and director for multiple episodes of the show, including the pilot. Peacemaker is the latest DC Comics property to receive a TV show on HBO Max. In July, Warner Media announced a spinoff show focusing on the Gotham City Police Department; the series will share the same universe as Ma...

Microsoft’s first 1TB expandable storage drive for the Xbox Series X / S will be priced at $219.99. Best Buy has started taking preorders for the accessory, revealing a final price that had leaked recently. These expandable storage cards slot into the rear of both the Xbox Series X / S to match the internal SSD speed and provide 1TB of extra storage. Microsoft’s expandable storage solution is proprietary, and only Seagate has been announced as a manufacturer so far. Microsoft tells me more suppliers and additional sizes will be available in the future, but the $219.99 price will still surprise many potential next-gen Xbox owners. The Xbox Series X ships with 1TB of SSD storage, and the Xbox Series S just 512GB of storage. Microsoft’s pricing means the $299 Xbox Series S jumps to nearly $52...