Spotify is shuttering more of its Russian operations in response to that country’s invasion of Ukraine. In a statement to Variety, the company said it would “fully suspend” service in Russia for an indefinite period. While the music streamer initially believed it was important to keep some service running to provide “trusted, independent” information, it was concerned that recent laws restricting free speech and accurate news reporting would put the safety of staff and listeners “at risk.”
The company already halted access to its paid Premium service earlier in March, and removed content from state-backed Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik. This latest move will cut off free service.
The further withdrawal likely won’t hurt Spotify’s finances to a significant degree, but it might limit the company’s influence in Russia. While the country only represents 1 percent of Spotify’s total revenue, Deloitte estimated the service was the second-largest streaming music service with 36 percent share in 2021. That’s no small feat when Spotify only reached Russia in July 2020, and Sensor Tower noted that there had already been nearly 15 million installs across Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Rivals have already taken action to varying degrees. Apple halted all product sales in Russia in early March, while Deezer stopped service around the same time. Spotify was an outlier in that regard, and was facing mounting pressure to cut off all access and show its support for Ukraine.
You might not have to wait much longer to see Sony’s response to Microsoft’s Game Pass. Bloombergsources claim Sony is introducing its rumored “Spartacus” service, which combines PlayStation Now game access and PlayStation Plus online features, as soon as next week. The service will launch with a “splashy” collection of recent hit games, the tipsters said, but you might not see blockbuster games arrive on the service the same day as they’re available for purchase. Don’t expect to play the upcoming God of War Ragnarok right away.
There were no new leaks for pricing. Bloomberg previously mentioned three tiers that would include a $10 per month Essential offering identical to PlayStation Plus, a $13 Extra level with access to a Game Pass-style catalog of “hundreds” of downloadable games and a $16 Premium Tier that adds PlayStation Now’s game streaming and pre-release game trials.
Spartacus might not be vital to Sony’s bottom line. PlayStation console sales still comfortably outperform the Xbox, with Ampere Analysis estimating that PS5 numbers were 1.6 times higher than for the Xbox Series X/S in 2021. However, Game Pass has quickly become a major selling point for the Xbox — a monthly fee provides access to a growing selection of games, including blockbusters like Halo Infinite. The PlayStation equivalent could make Game Pass seem less appealing and keep some players from switching platforms.
Halo’s TV adaptation doesn’t waste any time differentiating itself from the popular game franchise. We open in a rebel village bar, where patrons are discussing the evil UNSC (United Nations Space Command) and boogey-man like Spartans. It could easily be a scene from Firefly, the short-lived series about plucky folks fighting for freedom against an authoritarian central government. In short order, a group of Covenant aliens attack, leading to a bloody massacre where limbs are blown off, skulls take serious damage and an entire room of children is murdered. It’s not too long before Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber), our hero clad in glorious green armor, appears and wipes out the alien threat with a unit of super-human Spartan soldiers with brutal yet elegant efficiency.
Spoilers ahead for Halo on Paramount+.
The core Halo games were always rated M for Mature by the ESRB, but they never felt as gory as the Paramount+ show’s opening. When you’re playing as Master Chief, you feel like a one-man army going on a fun intergalactic adventure. The TV series instead begins by focusing on people usually ignored by the games. Only one survivor is left from that rebel village, a teenaged girl named Kwan Ah. But instead of being cared for by the Spartans and their UNSC and United Earth Government overseers, she’s treated as a prisoner. While the Halo games have typically treated the UEG as a sort of benevolent authoritarian regime, the show frames the military government as controlling and villainous.
That may end up turning off the franchise’s most diehard fans, but it’s a more honest representation of what the UNSC represents. Master Chief quickly learns that he can’t trust his leaders either. After touching an alien artifact, he begins to have flashbacks to a former, pre-soldier life. While the show isn’t quick to jump into his origins, Halo fans know the history of the Spartan soldiers is rife with controversy. Master Chief, and other members of his cohort, were actually kidnapped as children, genetically modified and trained to be battle-hardened super soldiers. While the games rarely wrestled with the horrors and complexity of that program, the lore-heavy Halo novels filled in the gaps.
Paramount+
What’s most interesting about the Halo series is that it’s confronting that backstory head-on. When we first meet Master Chief, he’s the ultimate soldier we’re familiar with. But when the UNSC orders him to kill Kwan Ah, he hesitates and does something we’ve never seen in the games: He takes off his helmet. Instead of killing the defenseless teen, Master Chief goes rogue. The super soldier starts to think for himself.
Unfortunately, the interesting elements of Halo are somewhat outweighed by the show’s simplistic writing, stiff acting and sometimes dodgy special effects. If it came out in 2015, when we first expected it to arrive on Showtime, it would be more impressive. But now we’re practically living through a golden age of sci-fi TV.The Mandalorian(and to a lesser extent, The Book of Boba Fett), is giving us several episodes of big-budget Star Wars action annually!Foundation on Apple TV+ isn’t the Asimov story as we know it, but it looks incredible. The Expanse skillfully brought an epic book series to life. And even Ridley Scott is dabbling in science fiction again withRaised by Wolves.
It also doesn’t help that, at its core, Halo feels like a retread of The Mandalorian’s riff on Lone Wolf and the Cub in space. Kwan Ah isn’t a child, but she’s a defenseless innocent who’s being protected by a tough-guy space loner who’s forced to go against his superiors. Whatever made Halo seem unique several years ago just doesn’t exist anymore.
Still, it’s astounding that the show exists at all. The live-action adaptation was first announced in 2013 as a collaboration between 343 Industries and Amblin Entertainment, with Steven Spielberg himself joining as a producer. Kiki Wolfkill, 343’s head of Halo transmedia, tells Engadget that the key element to getting the series off the ground was “patience.” The studio wasn’t rushing to get the series on TV, instead 343 wanted to take its time to get the adaptation right.
Halo finally started to rev up in 2018 with Kyle Killen joining as a writer/showrunner, who was later joined by Steven Kane in 2019. The original director, Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), was eventually replaced by Otto Bathurst (Black Mirror, Peaky Blinders), which pushed production even further. And once they finally started shooting in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced another delay. Instead of being a premium cable highlight, it became a flagship series for Paramount+ last year.
Despite the fits and starts, Wolfkill says the pandemic delay ultimately helped the creative team regroup and discover some unsustainable aspects of production. At one point, she said, there were five directors shooting episodes at the same time. Taking a break also allowed the VFX teams to catch up on a backload of work. Now that Paramount+ has already ordered a second season, Wolfkill says the team is also better prepared to deal with bringing the world of Halo to life. For example, they know that the live-action Master Chief can’t unholster his gun from his back like he does in the game – that has to be VFX work instead.
While the Halo series exists on a separate “Silver” timeline from the games, Wolfkill says we may see some crossover between the mediums eventually. But when I asked if we’ll ever see an unmasked Master Chief in the games, Wolfkill was quick to say “pretty categorically no.” As she says, “that’s a different experience and that Chief is owned by all of us, so we’d never want to impede on that.”
Roberta and Ken Williams are back. After 25 years out of the video game industry, the legendary founders of Sierra On-Line are working on a new project with an old twist – they’re rebuilding the classic text-based game Colossal Cave Adventure as a 3D experience with a VR component.
Maybe that’s an old project with a new twist, but regardless, Colossal Cave 3D Adventure is a complete reimagining of the original title and it’s due to come out this fall for PC and Quest 2 VR headsets. Not only will this new interpretation add graphics to the text adventure, but it’ll be in first-person 3D, with details filled in by the minds that brought us King’s Quest and Phantasmagoria.
In traditional Williams fashion, Ken is in charge of the code as chief engineer, while Roberta is creative director, building the narrative and working across all aspects of the project. There are 16 people on their team at Cygnus Entertainment and they’ve all worked together remotely through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve had our stressful moments,” Roberta said. “There have been moments that Ken and I have said, what are we doing? Why did we do this? And other moments are just really exhilarating and exciting. I’ve learned a lot, Ken has learned a lot. We have a really good team and I’m just so excited to have met them – not in person – but they’re very experienced in 3D graphics and programming.”
Cygnus Entertainment
That last bit is especially important, considering 3D development is a new arena for Roberta and Ken, who are best known for ’80s and ’90s narrative adventures and full-motion video titles. It’s been a quarter of a century since they last stepped into the world of game development, and they’re jumping straight into VR and Unity, a 3D development platform.
By her own admission, Roberta hasn’t even played games for the past 25 years. She and Ken have kept tabs on the industry, but mostly, they’ve been checked out.
“It was like, if we thought about it too much, we could be drawn back in,” Roberta said.
Instead of staring at computer screens and dreaming of digital worlds, Roberta and Ken spent 15 years traveling the planet on a 60-foot boat. They would land wherever they wanted and spend a few months, half a year, in one spot before hopping back on the trawler and sailing to a new location. Ken wrote four books about their travels during this time, plus another one about Sierra On-Line; Roberta wrote a historical novel about the Great Famine in Ireland.
“Which didn’t sell as well as his book,” Roberta said, laughing. “But anyway, after that we were looking for something to do and I noticed that Ken was doing a lot of YouTube tutorials on some sort of 3D engine, some sort of 3D programming language.”
She didn’t think much of it at first. Ken outlined a game idea he was toying with, where players would learn programming as they went, building simple experiences within his digital ecosystem. Kind of like Roblox, but with more emphasis on learning real-world programming skills.
“He was telling me this and he had some ideas on how to do it and make it fun,” Roberta said. “And I said, well, will it be fun?”
Ken assured her it would be, but she wasn’t convinced. That night when she was in bed, mulling over her husband’s dull-sounding idea, Colossal Cave Adventure popped into her head.
“I remember laying there and thinking, why did it do that?” she said. “You know, it’s like, is this a sign?” In the morning, Roberta brought her late-night revelation to Ken.
“I hadn’t really wanted to get back in the industry, but I just suddenly felt this urge, almost kind of like when I sat down and did Mystery House,” Roberta said. “And I don’t know why, and I mentioned it to him and I saw his eyes kind of light up.”
Cygnus Entertainment
Mystery House was Sierra On-Line’s debut game and when it landed in 1980, it was the first-ever graphic adventure. Roberta mapped out Mystery House in a quiet frenzy after playing the original Colossal Cave Adventure, a text-only game, in the late 1970s – as an avid reader, she was inspired by its interactivity and narrative heft, and her imagination got to work. She acquired a giant piece of paper from a local stationery store and started drawing rooms, connecting them and finding creative ways to get from one area to another. This ended up being the flowchart for Mystery House, and Ken, an avid programmer, brought it to digital life.
“Colossal Cave is the game that started Sierra On-Line,” Roberta said. “It started my career.”
Colossal Cave Adventure creators Don Woods and Will Crowther never copyrighted their work, which means anyone can do what they want with the IP, including the Williamses. Still, they got on the phone with Woods himself to ask permission, and the original developer had one request: Never try to copyright it. Keep the Colossal Cave franchise open, unowned and free for anyone to play with.
Roberta and Ken agreed, and they got to work. In June 2021, they revealed there was a new, secret game in development at their studio, Cygnus Entertainment. Colossal Cave 3D Adventure is due to come out this fall, primed to capture the imaginations of a new generation of players.
Marco Arment’s Overcast has long served as an alternative to Apple Podcasts with features you don’t often see elsewhere, but there’s little doubt Apple has stepped up its game in recent years — and Arment has redesigned his app to match. The newly released (and still free) Overcast 2022.2 for iOS centers around a major interface rework that better reflects how you listen to podcast episodes. You’ll now have quick access to new and recently played podcasts from the home screen, and you can pin must-listen shows. You can also filter your podcast list to look at actively updated shows, all shows or even inactive productions.
The revamp also includes a few much-needed management tools. You can finally mark a podcast as played — yes, Apple and others have provided this for a while. You can also create playlists that only show starred, downloaded and in-progress episodes. If you’re fond of personalization, you can customize the look and order of playlists as well as the color of playback controls.
These additions won’t necessarily persuade you to ditch Apple Podcasts if you’re already heavily invested. Some of them are more catch-up features than unique selling points. However, they might make Overcast more compelling if you’re either frustrated with Apple’s app or didn’t want to give up a few must-have features just to use Overcast-specific perks like voice boosting and dead air reduction.
A slew of gadgets went on sale this week and many remain discounted as we head into the weekend. A number of Apple devices are on sale right now, including the AirPods Pro for $175, the iPad mini for $459 and the new iPad Air with the M1 chipset for $570. Elsewhere, Amazon’s Fire HD 8 table is half off, while Sony’s excellent WH-1000XM4 headphones remain discounted to $278. Finally, today is Tolkien Reading Day, and both Amazon and Kobo are celebrating by discounting many of Tolkien’s works in e-book format, including the entire The Lord of the Rings series. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
AirPods Pro
Billy Steele / Engadget
Apple’s AirPods Pro are on sale for $175, which is 30 percent off its usual price. We gave the buds a score of 87 for their solid sound quality, strong ANC and hands-free Siri capabilities.
The latest iPad Air is $29 off right now, bringing the 64GB model down to $570 and the 256GB version down to $720. The new M1-powered iPad earned a score of 90 from us for its super-fast performance, long battery life and improved front camera.
Apple’s latest iPad mini is on sale for $459, which is $40 off its normal price. We gave the small tablet a score of 89 for its lovely display, refined design and excellent battery life.
The base 202112.9-inch iPad Pro with 128GB of storage is $150 off right now thanks to an automatically applied coupon. That brings it down to $950, its best price yet, and you can also snag the 512GB model at its lowest price of $1,250, too. We gave the M1-powered iPad Pro a score of 87 for its gorgeous display, Center Stage cameras and powerful performance.
Amazon’s Fire HD 8 is half off right now, bringing it down to $45. We gave the cheap tablet a score of 81 for its slimmer design, decent performance, USB-C charging and hands-free Alexa capabilities.
All of Amazon’s Fire Kids Pro tablets are down to record low prices. All of these slabs come with a suite of parental controls, a two-year warranty, a protective case and one year of Amazon Kids+. Both the Fire 7 Kids Pro and the Fire HD 8 Kids Pro are half off and down to $50 and $70, respectively, while the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro is 30 percent less than usual and down to $140.
Our current favorite pair of ANC headphones, Sony’s WH-1000XM4, are down to $278 right now. That’s $72 off their usual price and close to an all-time low. They earned a score of 94 from us for their powerful ANC, immersive sound quality and multi-device connectivity.
The Bose QC45 headphones are on sale for $279, which is their all-time-low price that we saw last Black Friday. We gave the cans a score of 86 for their excellent sound quality, strong ANC and comfortable fit.
A number of Tile trackers are up to 20 percent off at Amazon. You can pick up the 2022 Tile Mate Essentials pack for $68, a two-pack of Tile Stickers for $45 or a single Tile Mate for only $20. These tiny gadgets attach to your belongings so you can keep track of them using Tile’s companion mobile app.
A two-pack of the Google Nest WiFi system is on sale for $189 across the web. That’s only $10 more than the pack was during the holiday shopping season last year, so this is a solid sale. We gave the mesh WiFi system a score of 84 for its minimalist design, simple installation process and built-in Google Assistant smart speaker.
The T7 Touch portable SSD in 1TB is on sale for $130 right now. This palm-sized drive works with most devices thanks to the duo of cables it comes with, and it supports 1,050 MB/s read speeds, 1,000 MB/s write speeds, AES 256-bit encryption and Dynamic Thermal Guard.
The Fire TV Cube is back down to a record low of $70, or 42 percent off its normal price. We gave it a score of 84 when it came out for its 4K streaming with Dolby Vision and HDR+, speedy performance and hands-free Alexa controls.
March 25th is Tolkein Reading Day, and you can find many of the famed fantasy author’s works on sale at Amazon and Kobo. Both retailers have the entire The Lord of the Rings series in e-book format for $3 per title, plus other works including The Silmarillion have also been discounted to $3.
Sony’s 55-inch Bravia XR OLED set is $600 off right now, bringing it down to $2,200. In addition to deep blacks and the improved contrast that comes with OLED TVs, this set also supports XR Motion Clarity, HDMI 2.1, Acoustic Surface Audio+ and Alexa voice commands.
A few Eero WiFi bundles are on sale right now, including the Eero Pro three-pack, which is down to $314 for Prime members (or $337 for everyone else). The Eero 6 Pro tri-band system is 20 percent off and down to $479, and you can pick up an Eero beacon for only $79.
ThermoWorks has knocked 30 percent off its blue and yellow ThermoPop instant-read thermometers, bringing them down to $24.50 each, and all proceeds go to Ukraine refugee assistance efforts. Simultaneously, the company’s warehouse sale slashes up to 60 percent off a bunch of products, including the classic Thermapen, the Dot thermometer and the Smoke X4 long-range BBQ thermometer.
NordVPN’s latest deal knocks 72 percent off a two-year plan, bringing it down to $79, and it includes anti-malware protection, too. In addition to a solid VPN, you’ll get the company’s Threat Protection feature that works independently from the VPN to block trackers, malware and intrusive ads.
It’s a good week for guitarists who love a classic echo effect. Just a few days ago, Line 6 released the DL4 MkII, a long-awaited update to its DL4 delay and looper pedal, one of the more widely-used effects pedals of the last 20 years. And now Boss, one of the most prolific and well-known manufacturers of guitar effects pedal out there, has just announced the RE-202 and RE-2 Space Echo pedals, both of which are inspired by Roland’s iconic, tape-based RE-201 Space Echo unit that was originally released way back in 1974.
For the uninitiated, the RE-201 Space Echo used three analog tape heads to record and repeat an instrument’s signal. The analog nature of the device meant that it had a number of sonic characteristics that made it unique and highly coveted. That’s still the case — original RE-201 units regularly sell for several thousand dollars.
The new RE-202, on the other hand, retails for $399.99 and offers the exact same set of controls as the original. Given that it’s 2022, we’re dealing with digital modeling recreating all the quirks of the original, rather than analog tape. But Boss built in options to “age” the virtual tape, which means you can recreate the sounds of the RE-201 as it was out of the box, or give it the worn nature and quirks that come with an older unit. The RE-202 has essentially the same front controls as the original, as well, with the 12-position mode selector dial prominently featured.
The new RE-202 and RE-2 pedals, pictured with the original Roland RE-201 unit.
Boss
Naturally, there are a lot of modern conveniences here, too. The delay length you can dial in is twice as long as the original, and there’s a footswitch so you can tap out the delay tempo, something that’s pretty common these days on pedals like this. There’s also a fourth virtual tape head, compared to the three found in the original; this unlocks five additional sound options.
The RE-2 is a less expensive and and slightly less capable version of the RE-202. It’s a smaller, single-footswitch pedal that Boss says captures the same tones as the RE-202 in a more compact design. It’s not quite as full-featured and customizable as the RE-202, but it should provide the same sonic characteristics as the bigger and more expensive pedal. It’s also a good choice if you don’t want to take up quite so much space on your pedalboard.
The RE-2 costs $249.99, $150 less than the RE-202. Both of these pedals are definitely priced in boutique territory. But a faithful recreation of the RE-201 might be worth it for a lot of players, as the original Space Echo has been used on thousands of recordings by some of the most popular artists in history, from Pink Floyd and Radiohead, to Lee Scratch Perry, Underworld and Lauryn Hill. If you want to get the same sound without breaking the bank for a wonky, tape-based original unit, these new pedals are probably worth a look.
Wolverine wants to help Halo fans finish their fight in style. The boot company has teamed up with Microsoft to create rugged limited-edition footwear inspired by Master Chief.
Halo developer 343 Industries worked with Wolverine for over a year to design the boot, which is based on the company’s Hellcat footwear. Wolverine says when it revealed the Hellcat in August 2020, many people noted that the safety toe made the boot look like it was straight out of the Halo universe.
The snappily named Wolverine x Halo: The Master Chief boot has rubber lug outsoles for grip and an UltraSpring high rebound midsole, which Wolverine claims will provide wearers with a “lightweight, energized ride.” It’s made with full-grain leather and there’s a hook and loop cover for the laces.
Wolverine
The footwear comes in the green of Master Chief’s armor and has his Spartan number, 117, on the heel of the left boot. The boots also feature the United Nations Space Command and the logo of the Materials Group, which made Master Chief’s armor. For better or worse, the footwear certainly catches the eye.
A pair will cost $225 and you’ll be able to buy them at noon Eastern time on March 29th from Wolverine’s website. You’ll probably need to act fast (and get lucky) if you want to wear the boots while racking up frags in Halo Infinite or kicking back and watching the Halo TV show. Wolverine is only making 117 pairs of them.
These boots aren’t the only Xbox-related footwear to hit the streets in recent months. At the tail end of 2021, Adidas releasedseveral models of sneakers modeled after Xbox consoles to mark the brand’s 20th anniversary.
A new technology called Neural Radiance Field or NeRF involves training AI algorithms to enable the creation of 3D objects from two-dimensional photos. NeRF has the capability to fill in the blanks, so to speak, by interpolating what the 2D photos didn’t capture. It’s a neat trick that could lead to advances in various fields, such as video games and autonomous driving. Now, NVIDIA has developed a new NeRF technique — the fastest one to date, the company claims — that only needs seconds to train and to generate a 3D scene.
It only takes seconds to train the model, called Instant NeRF, using dozens of still photos and the camera angles they were taken from. After that, it’s capable of generating a 3D scene within just “tens of milliseconds.” Like other NeRF techniques, it requires images taken from multiple positions. And for photos with multiple subjects, pictures taken without too much motion is preferred, otherwise the result would be blurry.
Check out Instant NeRF in action below:
NVIDIA explains that early NeRF models don’t take too long to produce results either. It only takes them a few minutes to render a 3D scene, even if the subject in some of the images is obstructed by things, such as pillars and furniture. However, training them took hours. NVIDIA’s version only takes seconds to train, because it relies on a technique the company developed called multi-resolution hash grid encoding that’s optimized to run efficiently on its GPUs. It can even run on a single GPU, though it’s fastest on cards with tensor cores that provide a performance boost for artificial intelligence.
The company believes that Instant NeRF could be used to train robots and to help autonomous driving systems understand the sizes and shapes of real-world objects. NVIDIA also sees a future for the technique in entertainment and architecture, where it can be used a way to generate 3D models of real environments that creators can modify during the planning process.
