PS5 hit ‘Returnal’ is coming to PC early 2023

You won’t need to pick up a PlayStation 5 to understand the fuss over Returnal. Housemarque has announced that a PC version of the sci-fi roguelite will be available in early 2023. There aren’t many details of what’s new at this stage, but it’s safe to presume there will be plenty of visual splendor like in the PS5 release.

Apart from its graphics, Returnal is best known for its merciless third-person action. You’re not only going to face seemingly impossible odds, you’re practically expected to die frequently (as you do in many roguelites). It’s integral to the story — you play Selene, a woman stranded on an alien planet trying to find answers every time she comes back to life. While the difficulty is at times frustrating, the mechanics are solid enough that you might enjoy repeating an extra-challenging segment.

We’d expect some technical features to carry over from the PS5 edition, such as 4K ray-traced graphics and 3D audio. It’s not clear if features like the DualSense-oriented haptic feedback will make the cut. However, there’s little doubt that Returnal will shine on a sufficiently powerful PC.

‘Street Fighter 6’ lands June 2nd, 2023

You’ll have to wait a while longer to give Street Fighter 6 a spin. Capcom revealed at The Game Awards that its modernized brawler will be available June 2nd, 2023 for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC (via Steam). Pre-orders are available now.

The new title includes favorite series characters like Ryu and Chun-Li as well as relative newcomers like Luke, a DLC addition from Street Fighter 5 who’s a “key player” in the expanding storyline. SF6 will add new modes like World Tour and Battle Hub, and promises to be more accessible to newcomers with a “modern” control mode. You can expect new mechanics like the Drive Gauge, and real-time commentary from experts in the fighting game scene to help explain what’s happening in matches.

It’s too soon to say if SF6 will please hardcore fighting game fans. However, it’s clear that Capcom is eager to court players who’ve felt intimidated by the sometimes steep learning curve of fighting games. In theory, you’ll enjoy yourself enough to stick around for the long term.

Watch The Game Awards here at 7:30PM ET

Get ready for two and a half hours of game trailers, announcements, gameplay and maybe even a few award acceptance speeches. The ninth edition of The Game Awards is upon us. We’ll be covering all the big news from tonight’s event, which you can also watch live below starting at 7:30PM ET.

Vying for the top prize of Game of the Year are God of War Ragarnok, Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, Stray, A Plague Tale: Requiem and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. God of War Ragarnok has the most nominations with 10, while Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West have seven each. Among the other notable nominees are Marvel Snap, Immortality, Scorn, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Splatoon 3, Tunic, Cult of the Lamb, Sifu, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, MultiVersus, Vampire Survivors, Diablo Immortal and Overwatch 2.

There’s a new category this year called Best Adaptation, which recognizes TV shows, movies, podcasts, comic books and books that are based on games. Arcane: League of Legends, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, The Cuphead Show!, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Uncharted are the inaugural competitors.

While most of the awards are about honoring the past year in games, the ceremony looks toward the future with fresh reveals. You can expect news on dozens of games and expansions, including Among Us, Baldur’s Gate 3, Destiny 2: Lightfall, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Tekken 8 and lots more we don’t yet know about.

In addition to usual suspects YouTube and Twitch, the event will stream on dozens of other platforms. As a reminder, if you watch via Steam TV and you’re eligible to win, you might get lucky and score a free Steam Deck. Valve is giving one away for every minute that the show runs. Otherwise, you can catch the livestream in glorious 4K right here:

An AI-focused film festival is coming to New York in February

One of the companies behind text-to-image AI system Stable Diffusion is hosting a film festival exclusively for shorts that were made with AI. Organizers of Runway ML’s AI Film Festival are accepting films with a runtime of between one and 10 minutes that either include AI-generated content or were pieced together with AI-powered editing techniques.

According to Fast Company, Runway said creators won’t be penalized if they use AI tools from other companies. Along with text-to-image generation, creatives can use techniques such as background removal, frame interpolation and motion tracking to help make their films.

“I think we’re heading to a future where a lot of the content and the entertainment and the media that you see online will be generated,” Runway cofounder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said. While many observers are concerned that content generated by AI might displace human creatives, advocates such as Valenzuela suggest that such tools can level the playing field for budding moviemakers. “What I’m really excited about is how AI is really opening the doors for nontechnical people and creatives at large,” he said.

The AI Film Festival is scheduled to take place in February online and in New York. The submission window is open until January 15th. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t give creatives much time to create a piece and submit it, but they may be able to put together a movie much faster with the help of AI.

The judges, who include Valenzuela and Holly Herndon, will assess the films based on originality, narrative cohesion, the quality of composition and the AI techniques that were employed. The folks behind the top five films will receive cash awards, with the grand prize winner taking away $10,000.

Congress axes media revenue sharing bill after pushback from Google and Meta

A US government attempt to compensate publishers for web links has fallen apart, as Congress has cut the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) from the annual national defense spending bill. The measure would have made temporary exceptions to antitrust law letting media outlets negotiate revenue sharing deals, such as receiving a cut of ad money from links to news articles in search results and social media posts.

The removal comes after extensive resistance from tech firms. Just this week, Facebook owner Meta warned it would “consider removing news” from its platform rather than submit to government-required negotiations for revenue sharing deals. As with the social media giant’s objections to similar legislative efforts in Australia and Canada, the company argued that the JCPA would force companies to pay for content whether or not they wanted to see it. This would supposedly create a “cartel-like entity” that made one company subsidize others.

Two industry groups, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, also said they would launch extensive ad campaigns to oppose the JCPA. Both groups include major tech companies like Amazon, Google and Meta. Google has been a vocal opponent of link revenue shares in the past, and only reluctantly agreed to them in countries like France.

Advocacy groups have taken more varied stances. Public Knowledge and its allies were concerned tech companies could be forced to carry extreme content, and that the JCPA favored larger media producers over small publishers. Political critics across the spectrum, meanwhile, have worried that the Act could alternately strip away moderation tools or fuel biased reporting.

It’s not certain what will happen to the efforts behind the JCPA. Lead proponent Sen. Amy Klobuchar said politicians “must” find a way to improve compensation for news. However, it’s safe to say the media companies that supported the bill won’t be happy. The Los Angeles Times, Fox News owner News Corp. and others had argued that the would-be law was necessary to counter years of declining ad revenue in the shift toward online news coverage. For now, at least, they won’t have that potential help.

Google’s Year in Search 2022 was dominated by Wordle, Ukraine and a cricket World Cup

Wordle topped Google’s Year in Search for 2022, beating even the biggest events in the world over the past few months. Searches for the five-letter word game peaked shortly after it was acquired byThe New York Times in February, perhaps when people had to look for its new address or when those who haven’t heard of it before wanted to see what the fuss was about. The second most searched term for 2022 is “India vs. England,” which pertains to the countries’ faceoff at the Cricket World Cup. Ukraine takes the third spot in the overall trending searches list, as well as the top of this year’s trending News topics. Most people looking into the war in Ukraine searched for liveblogs to get the latest happenings and for information on casualties, refugees, donations and armed conflicts. 

“Queen Elizabeth” came in fourth for 2022, with the UK and former British colonies being responsible for most of the searches after the Queen passed away in September. The fifth most popular search term is another Cricket World Cup game, this time between India and Saudi Arabia, followed by even more cricket matches and the iPhone 14. COVID-19 is no longer at the forefront from people’s minds, based on this year’s list: Monkeypox and Roe v. Wade were the most searched health-related topics instead. Some of the other entries in the trending news list are pretty sobering, specifically “Texas school shooting” and Hurricane Ian. 

When it comes to the most searched people of the year, users seemed to be especially curious about celebrity happenings. Johnny Depp topped this year’s list, followed by Will Smith and Amber Heard. Vladimir Putin also made it to the top five. Anna Sorokin and Simon Leviev, whose names blew up on the internet after Inventing Anna and Tinder Swindler came out, were among the most searched people, as well. 

Thor: Love and Thunder topped the list of most searched movies, but Google said “how to become a fighter pilot” trended thanks to Top Gun: Maverick. The tech giant also released the top image searches using Lens and the top song searches done by humming a tune. (Domestic short-haired cats and philodendrons seemed to have tickled most people’s curiosity this year, for those wondering.) The Buckingham Palace was 2022’s top cultural landmark, based on Google Maps searches, while the Dark Matter interactive installation in Berlin was the top exhibit. This year, Google also launched a local hub that can show interesting search trends across the US — New York City, for instance, had “rainbow mantis shrimp” as its top trending animal. 

You can see Google’s full Year in Search for 2022 right here.

Apple Music 即唱功能，讓你隨時隨地正版唱 K

早前在疫情嚴重的期間，在家高歌唱 K 是不少人的解悶方式，有一陣子更讓「唱 K 神器」都缺貨了。雖然今天很多娛樂場所都重新開放，不過 Apple Music 還是終於補上了卡啦 OK 模式，以全新「即唱功能」，讓大家可以隨時隨地，以正版歌源來伴奏唱 K。…