A Prince of Persia game from the studio behind Dead Cells was supposed to hit early access on PC on May 14. Thats no longer the case. Evil Empire says The Rogue Prince of Persias debut is delayed until later this month, and its because of a little game called Hades II.
Soon after a technical test wrapped up, Supergiant Games released Hades II into early access on Monday. It skyrocketed up the Steam charts and quickly reached a peak of 102,000 concurrent players. Evil Empire suggested that everyone and their mom is playing Hades II, including its own team, so its getting out of that games way. The new early access date for The Rogue Prince of Persia will be revealed on Monday.
While we have every confidence in The Rogue Prince of Persia, its not every day that a game in the same genre as you, which is one of the most anticipated upcoming games of 2024, will release into early access a week before you plan to do the same, Evil Empire wrote on X. We are not prideful enough to ignore the implications of that, and we truly believe that this short delay is the best decision for us and our early access journey.
So we've got a little bit of news about The Rogue Prince of Persia, it's all in the big yellow boxhttps://t.co/S3FiyGFfrY pic.twitter.com/9PXlw4J2MZ Evil Empire (@Studio_Evil) May 10, 2024
As it happens, the delay will also give Evil Empire some extra time to polish up The Rogue Prince of Persia. While the whole point of releasing a game in early access is to get feedback from players on a project thats far from the finished article, developers still want their games to be in as good a shape as possible when the public goes hands on with them for the first time.
Evil Empire says it can add even more cool things and try to squish some bugs before the games debut. The team also has a bit more time to test and refine the hefty day one patch.
Getting out of Hades IIs way is a smart idea given the two games are both roguelikes. Its nice to see Evil Empire being transparent about the reasons for the delay too. But there are a bunch of other indies that were released this week that reviewed well and have been overshadowed at least to some degree by that blockbuster sequel.
Another Crabs Treasure (a cute spin on From Software's Soulslike format), PS1-style survival horror Crow Country, sci-fi title 1000xResist and adorable-looking adventure Little Kitty, Big City all debuted to strong reviews this week. So too did Animal Well, a Metroidvania about which the word masterpiece has been invoked by some reviewers (though thats actually the number one best-selling game on Steam at the time of writing, just above Hades II).
The train doesnt stop there as some other buzzed-about indies are arriving over the next couple of weeks, including Lorelei and The Laser Eyes (were very excited about that one) and Paper Trail. Theres another one coming next week that Ive been playing and is worth checking out, though I cant talk about it just yet.
Although there might not be too many AAA games from the likes of Sony, Microsoft and EA dropping at the minute, theres a lot of fascinating stuff going on in the indie scene. So maybe go check some of those games out if you haven't already.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-rogue-prince-of-persia-is-delayed-because-hades-ii-is-a-juggernaut-144229150.html?src=rss
The time for experimenting with AI for one-off tasks is over. It's time to use AI across the customer journey--and that means cross-functional collaboration to ensure impactful results. Dive deeper now. Read the full article at MarketingProfs
As rumors foretold, Apple has revamped the iPad Pro with an M4 chip, tandem OLED screen and a thinner case. There's also a new Magic Keyboard that should deliver a more MacBook-like typing experience! In this week's episode, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss how Apple is shining a new light on tablets (which also includes the new iPad Air models) and reworking its vision of mobile computing. Does anyone really need the iPad Pro today? And could it be more compelling if iPadOS improves its multitasking capabilities? Also, we discuss the launch of Google's new mid-range phone, the Pixel 8a.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
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New iPad Pro with OLED and M4 processor, iPad Air and Apple Pencil announced at Let Loose event 1:04
Google announces Pixel 8a with 120Hz OLED screen and AI capability 20:50
What the heck happed with Helldivers 2? 28:31
Microsoft shuts down Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin 34:10
Hades 2 early access is out now 42:01
Around Engadget: Steve Dent reviews Fujifilm X100 VI 45:39
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Pop culture picks 52:08
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Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra HardawarProducer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O'BrienThis article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-rabbit-r1-ai-review-113031272.html?src=rss
Apple has apologized for its Crush! ad, which sparked a furious backlash among artists, musicians, and other creators. AdAge reports Apple said the video missed the mark, and it has scrapped plans to run the commercial on TV. The video shows a series of musical instruments and other tools for human expression, including a guitar, drums, trumpet, amplifiers, record player, TV and much more being crushed to All I Ever Need Is You by Sonny and Cher. The crusher pulls up to reveal an iPad. Tonally, you could see how it could be misconstrued.
Apple is rumored to have more AI tricks planned for its next WWDC, while this new iPad Pro has a chip that boasts a lot of AI power, all with the looming threat of AI to creatives.
But and imagine Im using my indoor voice, here its just an ad. However, Apple is such a huge company that it wields a huge amount of influence. And everyone is watching.
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Jack Dorsey claims Bluesky is repeating all the mistakes he made at Twitter
Bluesky was the Twitter spinoff.
In a rambling interview, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey claimed Bluesky was literally repeating all the mistakes he made while running Twitter. Dorseys complaints seem to boil down to two issues. First, he never intended Bluesky to be an independent company, with its own board and stock and other vestiges of a corporate entity. Instead, his plan was for Twitter as it was called to be the first client to take advantage of the open-source protocol Bluesky created.
Dorsey also didnt like Blueskys form of content moderation, and how it has occasionally banned users for things like using racial slurs in their usernames. A lot of this isnt particularly surprising. If youve followed Dorseys public comments over the last couple years, hes repeatedly said Twitters original sin was being a company beholden to advertisers.
Continue reading.
An insulin pump software bug has injured over 200 people
The FDA has issued the highest level of recall for the app.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Class I recall for the t:connect mobile app on iOS, which people with diabetes use to monitor and control an insulin pump. The FDA received 224 injury reports as of April 15. Insulin pumps, like the t:slim X2, automatically deliver insulin under the users skin at set intervals and whenever needed. The bug excessively drained power from the pump, meaning it could shut down without warning and before the user expected it to, leading to the under-delivery of insulin.
Continue reading.
Netflix and Roblox team up for a digital theme park
Mommmm, I want more corporate synergy!
Netflix
This simply sounds horrible.
Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-apple-apologizes-for-its-ipad-pro-ad-that-crushed-human-creativity-111523044.html?src=rss
In a couple of months, you'll be able to get Microsoft's mobile games from its own store. Xbox President Sarah Bond has revealed at the Bloomberg Technology Summit that the company is launching a web-based store where you can download its mobile games and get add-ons or in-app purchases at a discount. Bond said the company has decided to launch a browser-based store instead of an app to make it "accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what" so that you don't get "locked to a single ecosystem."
Microsoft will only host its own games to start with, which means it will feature a lot of titles from Activision Blizzard. If you'll recall, it snapped up the gaming developer and publisher in a $70 billion deal that closed last year. You'll most likely find Candy Crush Saga, which has apparently generated $20 billion in revenue since it launched in 2012, and Call of Duty's mobile games in the first batch of titles available for download. Bond said that Minecraft may also be one of the first games you can get.
An Xbox spokesperson told Bloomberg that this is "just the first step in [the company's] journey to building a trusted app store with its roots in gaming." Microsoft plans to open the app store to third-party publishers in the future, though it didn't share a timeline for that goal.
The company first announced its intention to launch a gaming store for Android and iOS devices last year shortly before rules under the EU's Digital Markets Act became applicable. To comply with DMA rules, Apple and Google have to allow third-party app stores to be accessible on their platforms and to offer alternative billing systems for purchases. They're also compelled to allow app sideloading, which will be a massive change for Apple, a company known for its "walled garden" approach to business.
Operators of third-party app stores will get to avoid some of the fees Google and Apple charge, but they'd still have to pay the companies for bypassing their mobile platforms' official stores. Both tech giants have already outlined how they're changing things up to comply with the DMA regulations. The companies' rivals found the changes they're making insufficient, however, prompting the European Commission to start investigating their compliance plans. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-web-based-mobile-game-store-opens-in-july-090044359.html?src=rss
Hail storms are unpredictable, often striking hyperlocally with unexpected force. When they descend on a field of leafy greens, the perforations caused by hailstones can render a harvest unsellable.When a large-scale spinach producer in the Netherlands recently saw a potential harvest damaged by a spring storm, the country's main supermarket chain came to the rescue. Instead of rejecting the spinach because of its visual imperfections standard practice in the grocery industry Albert Heijn purchased and packaged the crop. The retailer added a label for shoppers, explaining that some of the spinach leaves had suffered hail damage, making them slightly less attractive but equally delicious.Writing off crops for not meeting rigid aesthetic standards is a major cause of food waste. Supermarkets have conditioned consumers to expect perfection in fruits and vegetables. By implementing a simple act like Albert Heijn's stickers, they can now help reshape those norms, saving massive amounts of (im)perfectly good produce.
Just in case there was any doubt about how Jack Dorsey really feels about Bluesky, the former Twitter CEO has offered new details on why he left the board and deleted his account on the service he helped kickstart. In a characteristically bizarre interview with Mike Solana of Founders Fund, Dorsey had plenty of criticism for Bluesky.
In the interview, Dorsey claimed that Bluesky was literally repeating all the mistakes he made while running Twitter. The entire conversation is long and a bit rambly, but Dorseys complaints seem to boil down to two issues:
He never intended Bluesky to be an independent company with its own board and stock and other vestiges of a corporate entity (Bluesky spun out of Twitter as a public benefit corporation in 2022.) Instead, his plan was for Twitter to be the first client to take advantage of the open source protocol. Bluesky created.
The fact that Blueksy has some form of content moderation and has occasionally banned users for things like using racial slurs in their usernames.
People started seeing Bluesky as something to run to, away from Twitter, Dorsey said. It's the thing that's not Twitter, and therefore it's great. And Bluesky saw this exodus of people from Twitter show up, and it was a very, very common crowd. But little by little, they started asking Jay and the team for moderation tools, and to kick people off. And unfortunately they followed through with it. That was the second moment I thought, uh, nope. This is literally repeating all the mistakes we made as a company.
Dorsey also confirmed that he is financially backing Nostr, another decentralized Twitter-like service popular among some crypto enthusiasts and run by an anonymous founder. I know it's early, and Nostr is weird and hard to use, but if you truly believe in censorship resistance and free speech, you have to use the technologies that actually enable that, and defend your rights, Dorsey said.
A lot of this isnt particularly surprising. If youve followed Dorseys public comments over the last couple years, hes repeatedly said that Twitters original sin was being a company that would be beholden to advertisers and other corporate interests. Its why he backed Elon Musks takeover of the company. (Not coincidentally, Dorsey still has about $1 billion of his personal wealth invested in the company now known as X.) Hes also been very clear that he made many of Twitters most consequential moderation decisions reluctantly.
Unsurprisingly, Dorseys comments werent well-received on Bluesky. In a lengthy thread, Blueskys protocol engineer Paul Frazee said that Twitter was supposed to to be the AT Protocols first client but that Elon killed that straight dead after he took over the company. That entire company was frozen by the prolonged acquisition, and the agreement quickly ended when Elon took over, Frazee said. It was never going to happen. Also: unmoderated spaces are a ridiculous idea. We created a shared network for competing moderated spaces to exist. Even if somebody wanted to make an unmoderated ATProto app, I guess they could? Good luck with the app stores and regulators and users, I guess.
While Dorsey was careful not to criticize Musk directly, he was slightly less enthusiastic than when he said that Musk would be the one to extend the light of consciousness by taking over Twitter. Dorsey noted that, while he used to fight government requests to take down accounts, Musk takes the other path and generally complies. Elon will fight in the way he fights, and I appreciate that, but he could certainly be compromised, Dorsey said.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/jack-dorsey-claims-bluesky-is-repeating-all-the-mistakes-he-made-at-twitter-234326121.html?src=rss
Apple has reportedly apologized for its tone-deaf Crush! ad that sparked a furious backlash with artists, musicians and other creators. AdAge reports that Apple said the video missed the mark and has scrapped plans to run the cutesy-turned-cringey commercial on TV.
Its clear that Apple intended for the ad to serve as a metaphor for all the myriad creative tools one has when they throw down $1,000 or more for a new iPad Pro. Run during Tuesdays event, the video shows a series of musical instruments and other tools for human expression, including a guitar, drums, trumpet, amplifiers, record player, TV and much more. All I Ever Need Is You by Sonny & Cher soundtracks the clip.
Soon, its revealed that the objects are all sitting on an industrial crusher, which descends upon the scattered creative instruments, exploding in plumes of satisfyingly colorful smoke. But when the crusher pulls back up, we see that everything was transformed into a shiny new iPad Pro.
Apple
A decade ago, this ad likely wouldnt have been a big deal. But Apples marketers completely whiffed on the context of the moment. The ad comes weeks before Apple will take the stage at WWDC to announce its generative AI features that its investors have been salivating for.
Generative AI, as you may have heard, needs something to train on and that means humans work. It learns from existing content to make algorithmically generated words, pictures, music, voices or who knows what else. It also has the capability to put those same creators most of whom dont have cushy jobs at Apple or other Big Five tech companies out of work as corporations and consumers eagerly adopt the robots destined to put creators on the unemployment line.
Context is everything, and Apple failed spectacularly there. Its ad serves as a pitch-perfect metaphor for generative AIs potential to crush human creation, turning us all into prompt artists who type words into text boxes to replace their years of training and experience. (Granted, generative AI has genuinely exciting applications, too, but much more needs to be made of the society-level chaos it can and will unleash.)
Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and its incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world, Tor Myhren, Apple VP of marketing communications, told AdAge. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and were sorry.
Hey, an apology means something. But well see what tone Apple adopts next month when it rolls out the tools that set the stage for the apology in the first place. Something tells me that train is out of the station and will be plowing forward full steam, no matter how much creativity the company has in its DNA.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-apologizes-for-its-tone-deaf-ad-that-crushed-human-creativity-to-make-an-ipad-211116524.html?src=rss
Google has an offer for iPad owners who are curious about the Pixel Tablet. The company has a trade-in promotion that covers at least the cost of the Pixel Tablet for iPad owners if not more, depending on which model you have. It works with Samsung tablets as well, but those trade-in values are lower. The Pixel Tablet costs $399 (without deals) for 128GB storage and no charging speaker dock.
The promo works with iPads as old as the sixth-generation model from six years ago. For that, Google will give you a surprising $399 matching the Pixel Tablets base cost. That iPad model only cost $329 in 2018, so Google is overpaying by a lot for that one.
However, Google balances that with much worse offers for modern, high-end iPads. For example, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro with M2 chip (2022) only nets $450. Until this week (when the company launched a new iPad Pro and iPad Air), Apple sold that model for $1,099, so we dont recommend that trade-in price. If youre done with a high-end iPad from the last few years, you can likely sell it on places like eBay, Craigslist or Swappa for significantly more.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
The Pixel Tablet stands out from its Android-running competitors by working with a charging speaker base that lets the device double as a smart display, making it much more versatile. Engadgets Cherlynn Low thought that part overshadowed its core functionality as a tablet. As a smart display, the Pixel Tablet mostly shines. It has a useful dashboard, an easy-to-read interface and impressive audio quality, she wrote in our full review.
The tablet has a 10.95-inch display with a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution (276 PPI) and runs on a Google Tensor G2 chip. It weighs slightly over a pound and is lighter than Android rivals like the Galaxy Tab S8 and OnePlus Pad. Its back has a nano-ceramic coating that gives it a premium, glass-like feeling that you may not expect from a $399 device.
Accessories are where the Pixel Tablet stands out the most. Googles Pixel Tablet Case, sold separately for $79, has a built-in kickstand that makes the slate more versatile. What I love about the kickstand-hanger-combo is that it allows you to place the Tablet pretty much anywhere, Low wrote in Engadgets review. So when I want to hang it off a kitchen cabinet to follow along with a recipe video or keep watching Love Is Blind for example, I can. And though the 2,560 x 1,600 LCD panel isnt as vibrant as the OLED on Samsungs Galaxy Tabs, it still produced crisp details and colorful images.
The star accessory is Googles $129 charging speaker dock, which you can use without removing the kickstand case. This product transforms the tablet into a smart display, potentially voiding the need for other smart home control hubs. The speaker has impressive sound for its size, making it easier to hear its responses if you arent right next to it.
Googles fine print notes that the trade-in value will be finalized after receiving the tablet, and it could be lower if it determines the condition doesnt match what you selected during the trade-in process. The refund will be processed on the credit card you used to buy the Pixel Tablet (or through Google Store credit if you return your purchase during that time).
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/get-up-to-450-off-a-google-pixel-tablet-when-you-trade-in-your-old-ipad-or-android-slab-192718892.html?src=rss
