Новости за 26.02.2021

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Two new reports from Bloomberg and Wired have shed light on some of Google’s failures in building its Stadia cloud gaming service. The reports come just a few weeks after Google announced it would be shutting down its in-house Stadia game development studios.

Volunteers with the Living Hope Wheelchair Association distributed water and supplies to people after Texas’ deep freeze. | Image: Living Hope Wheelchair Association

Disaster response plans often fail to include people with disabilities, and the deadly deep freeze that swept across Texas and much of the mainland US last week was no exception.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

If you’re moving from LastPass (or another password manager you’re dissatisfied with), you may be tempted to simply go with the password manager that comes with your browser or operating system. It’s certainly an easy solution, and a reasonable one, depending on your point of view. Until recently, third-party password managers were known to be more secure, but Apple and Google have been working to make their built-in password managers more secure... Читать дальше...

Henrik Fisker has abandoned his electric vehicle startup’s effort to create a solid-state battery, the Fisker Inc. founder told The Verge in a recent interview.

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This week, NASA released a grim four-minute timelapse of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, a mesmerizing display of last year’s record-breaking string of tropical commotion.

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Best Buy has restocked both of Microsoft’s next-gen consoles the Xbox Series X and Series S. Like some other gaming gadgets released late last year, these consoles are extremely difficult to buy, but if you move quickly, you have another chance to buy one right now.

Netflix is constantly looking for its next big franchise hit — a new Stranger Things or The Witcher. And the trailer for Shadow and Bone teases that the upcoming fantasy series could be next.

During today’s Pokémon Presents presentation, the company unveiled new gameplay footage for New Pokémon Snap, the long-awaited sequel to the N64 classic. The new footage showed off the lush and colorful settings that you will explore across the Lental region.

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast The Vergecast, our chat show to discuss this week in tech news featuring our reporters and editors.

At a special live-streamed event today, The Pokémon Company revealed something fans having been waiting a long time for: an open-world Pokémon adventure. The next major entry in the franchise will be called Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and it looks to be a huge evolution of the long-running RPG formula. The developers describe it as a “pre-make,” which offers “a new challenge and a new frontier for the Pokémon world.”

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl will be remade for Nintendo Switch. The Pokémon Company announced the news today during a special Pokémon Presents broadcast. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will launch in late 2021.

Image: Square Enix

Yesterday, Square Enix announced that it plans to release an enhanced version of Final Fantasy VII Remake for PS5, and there is a free next-gen upgrade available if you own the game digitally or physically. You can purchase a physical copy of the game right now for $30 at Amazon. Note that if you plan to take advantage of this deal, you will need to own a PS5 with a disc drive to claim your free PS5 copy.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to adopt a program that provides emergency discounts of up to $50 per month toward broadband internet service for low-income households. The Emergency Broadband Benefit Program also provides up to $75 per month for households on Native American land and a one-time discount of up to $100 on a tablet or computer for those who qualify.

Citizen

Citizen, the app that turns everyone into a crime reporter, now wants to track helicopters. The company announced today that it’s introducing helicopter tracking to the app, which will explain to users why there are flying vehicles overhead.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Get some peace and quiet with the best noise-canceling headphones for a variety of uses

Its built-in stylus is useful and enjoyable, but the Stylo 6 is too slow to recommend

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony has confirmed that Japan Studio, its internal video game developer based in Tokyo, will essentially wind down and refocus around a single team. In a statement to IGN, Japan Studio said as of April 1st it would be “re-centered to Team Asobi, the creative team behind Astro’s Playroom, allowing the team to focus on a single vision and build on the popularity of Astro’s Playroom.” In other words, get ready for more Astro games.

Image: Square Enix

Square Enix just announced Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, a PS5-enhanced version of FF7 Remake that includes graphical improvements like “improved textures, lighting, and background environments.” But some users on ResetEra noticed one other potentially huge graphical upgrade: Cloud’s famously skinny arms may have gotten a bit beefier.

Image: Activision

The latest Call of Duty game collection may now be too big to fit the base 500GB PlayStation 4 hard drive (via IGN). According to the official Call of Duty blog, if you want to have the latest Call of Duty: Warzone update and the full Black Ops: Cold War and Modern Warfare package on your PS4, you’ll have to uninstall content you don’t use.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Telegram is updating its messaging app with options for auto-deleting messages, expiring invite links, and new unlimited groups, the company shared in a blog post. Much like Signal, Telegram received a burst of new users in the confusion over WhatsApp’s privacy policy and now the company is adopting features that were already part of its competitors’ apps, features which offer more security and privacy.

Full-size image here. | Image: 343 Industries

We got our first look at Halo Infinite, the next game in Microsoft’s huge franchise, back in July, and the results were... underwhelming. The graphics and visuals weren’t quite as impressive as you might expect from a next-generation game (the demo was running on a PC “that is representative of the experience that players will have on Xbox Series X”), and one vacant-looking enemy even became the infamous Craig meme. The game was delayed to... Читать дальше...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple is once again releasing an update to prevent a charging problem from killing MacBooks — this time it’s to fix a problem where 2019 and later MacBook Pros, and 2020 and later MacBook Airs were being damaged when connected to third-party USB-C hubs and docks (via MacRumors).

Image: Square Enix

Final Fantasy VII Remake’s soundtrack will be available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, and other music subscription services tomorrow, February 26th, Square Enix announced on Thursday. It will have an eye-popping (ear-popping?) 156 tracks, according to a press release.

Image: Square Enix

Square Enix announced two mobile games set in the Final Fantasy VII universe today. One is a battle royale game aiming for a 2021 release, and the other is Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, a compilation of all the games and stories set in the Final Fantasy VII universe (Final Fantasy VII, Advent Children, Before Crisis, Crisis Core, and Dirge of Cerberus). The latter is slated to launch sometime in 2022 on Android and iOS.