Technology

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game was an incredible adaptation of the iconic comic series, with an unforgettable chiptune soundtrack by Anamanaguchi. Unfortunately, it was also lost to time. After launching on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2013, it was delisted about a year later. Now, after years of fan outcry, Ubisoft is bringing the pixelated beat ‘em up back to modern platforms. A “complete edition” — which will include all of the DLC — is coming to the PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and Google Stadia. Ubisoft says it’ll be available “holiday 2020.” Huge thank you to the fans who never shut up about the Scott Pilgrim game, not once, ever, even for one second to let me sleep. This game belongs to you. Now please get out of my house — Bryan Lee O’Malley (@bryanleeomalley) September 10, 2...

When Ubisoft first announced the game formerly known as Gods & Monsters back at E3 2019, comparisons to Nintendo’s highly acclaimed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild were quick to follow. Ubisoft’s formal gameplay reveal of the newly renamed Immortals Fenyx Rising — set for release on December 3rd — does nothing to dispel those comparisons. In fact, after a two-hour gameplay demo of Immortals Fenyx Rising, it was hard to shake the feeling that I had just spent an afternoon playing a Greek-themed version of Nintendo’s instant classic with the serial numbers filed off. There are so many aspects of Immortals Fenyx Rising that feel like they were ripped right out of Breath of the Wild that it’s almost easier to list things that don’t feel like direct clones. Fenyx is a warrior who wa...

Episodic gaming has always felt like an idea that was ahead of its time. For many players, it’s a compelling concept: story-driven games broken up into digestible chunks that you can play over the course of weeks or months. But the realities of game development and release schedules proved problematic. Telltale Games, the studio behind episodic hits like The Walking Dead and Batman, infamously collapsed as it struggled with the demands of releasing new episodes every month. Meanwhile, last year’s Life is Strange 2 was excellent but difficult to keep up with as chapters launched at an erratic pace, releasing every few months. But with the advent of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, episodic games may have finally found their moment. I came to this realization while playing Tell Me ...

Nintendo is offering a closer look at the new Game & Watch hardware coming on November 13th that will come preloaded with the original Super Mario Bros. game. In case you missed out on the announcement last week, it’s a $49.99 device that’s being released in limited quantities for Mario’s 35th anniversary celebration — and it’s likely going to be very difficult to get your hands on one. In addition to the original Mario title, it comes loaded with Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (released as Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan) and a Mario-themed version of Ball, a new twist on a classic Game & Watch game that first released decades ago. The display appears to be backlit, which would be great.Image: Nintendo This video clip mostly shows the ins and outs of the modernized Game & Wat...

Annapurna Interactive is celebrating five years of stellar game releases with a box set. Donut County, Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition, Outer Wilds, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Wattam, What Remains of Edith Finch, Telling Lies, and Gorogoa will be available as a physical collection for the PlayStation 4 with iam8bit, the company announced today. Interested buyers have two options: an Ultimate PS4 Collection for $179.99 or a Deluxe PS4 Limited Edition for $199.99 that includes a custom-designed folio package and exclusive statements from the game’s creators and Annapurna Interactive’s founder. The Ultimate Collection will be available for a limited time, while the Deluxe is part of a set of 2,000. “Since we launched almost five years ago, Annapurna Interactive’s goal has always been to create uni...

There’s never been a better time to buy a new game console or PC. While consoles have typically been held back by weaker CPUs, spinning hard drives, and average GPU performance, the next-generation PS5 and Xbox Series S / X are promising some big leaps in performance that will put them beyond even average gaming PCs. Nvidia, meanwhile, is claiming it will deliver the “biggest breakthrough in PC gaming since 1999” with its new RTX 3000 series of graphics cards. The stage is set for a next generation of games that can take advantage of powerful CPUs, GPUs, and SSD storage across consoles and PCs. We’re now starting to get a good idea of what this next generation will cost and when it will arrive. Microsoft is launching its Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles on November 10th, priced at ...

Democrats will commit today to a wide-ranging new progressive agenda that simultaneously tackles pandemic recovery, climate change, and systemic injustice. They’re calling the agenda THRIVE, which stands for “Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy.” Signers range from party leaders like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who will introduce the resolution in Congress later today. Activists are also well-represented, with over 150 advocacy groups — including unions, environmental groups like Sunrise Movement, Indigenous Environmental Network, and the Movement for Black Lives — throwing their weight behind the agenda. “We have an opportunity to not just recover from these interlocking crises, but to thrive.” The new agenda isn’t ...

Huawei has announced the second version of its HarmonyOS operating system and detailed plans to bring it to a wider range of devices, including smartphones. Consumer business CEO Richard Yu made the announcement today at Huawei’s developer conference in Shenzhen, China. Huawei will make a beta version of the HarmonyOS 2.0 SDK available to developers today, though it’ll initially only support smartwatches, car head units, and TVs. A smartphone version of the SDK will follow in December 2020, and Yu hinted that phones running HarmonyOS might appear next year. Huawei is also kicking off its OpenHarmony project, which allows developers to build upon an open-source version of the OS — similar to what AOSP is to Android. As of today the project only supports devices with 128MB of RAM or below, b...

Nintendo is releasing a new Fortnite-themed special edition Switch next month, via NintendoLife. The bundle includes yellow and blue Joy-Cons — the latter with the Battle Bus etched around the home button — and a dock that features various well-known Fortnite skins. The Switch tablet itself also has characters on the back. Fortnite is preinstalled on the Switch, and the package includes 2,000 V-bucks plus some exclusive cosmetic items. It appears only to have been announced for launch in PAL regions, however — NintendoLife reports an October 30th release date for Europe and 6th November for Australia and New Zealand. There’s no word yet on a release for the US or other regions. This could be a popular holiday item, though — particularly for Fortnite obsessives who can’t play the iOS versio...

Walmart has started making its first deliveries by drone, launching a small pilot program this week in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The retailer will be delivering “select grocery and household essential items” using automated drones operated by Israeli startup Flytrex. Each of the drones can fly at speeds of 32 mph, travel distances of 6.2 miles in a round trip, and carry up to 6.6 pounds (that’s roughly “6-8 hamburgers,” according to converted units offered on Flytrex’s own website). A demo video of the drone shows how it lowers packages to the ground from 80 feet in the air rather than having to land itself. Flytrex received approval from the FAA to test food deliveries in North Carolina last year, with caveats that its drones only fly predetermined routes in the daytime over unpopulat...

One reason I enjoy writing a column about the intersection between big technology platforms and democracy is that on most days, it feels like one of the most important things in the world. But on this strangest of days in San Francisco, where wildfires up and down the west coast blotted out the sun and gave the town the eerie feel of permanent midnight, it was hard to pay the usual attention to my beat. My colleague Vjeran Pavic flew a drone over Sutro Tower this morning and captured the surreal imagery. The word “apocalypse” gets thrown around with truly unfortunate frequency these days, but on Wednesday nothing else really fit. Distracting as the orange sky outside my window has been, I had one fascinating thing to occupy my attention: a conversation I had on Tuesday with Adam Mosseri, t...

It was a long game of price-war chicken, but it’s finally come to a close. Microsoft flinched first, and now we know how much the next generation of console gaming will cost. The Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X will officially launch November 10th starting at $299, the company announced this week, after spending 15 months revealing details about its next-generation Xbox in dribs and drabs. Many questions remain, like whether the $299 Xbox Series S will truly feel next-gen, since it’ll only have a third the raw GPU performance of the $499 Xbox Series X and less than half that of the PlayStation 5. (They’re all based on the same AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture.) But the biggest question is a little more immediate: What will PlayStation do? It’s about time to find out. Remember when PS4 was ...