Month: August 2022

Categories
Sports

Shahin casts doubt on long-term viability of street races

Shahin casts doubt on long-term viability of street races

The 2020 Adelaide 500

The Bend owner Sam Shahin has declared permanent facilities critical to the future of Australian motorsport amid the return of the Adelaide 500.

The Bend Motorsport Park is, for now, Australia’s newest permanent race track, and had briefly been the only South Australian venue on the Supercars calendar.

That changes this year with the return of the Valo Adelaide 500 in December, after the high-profile street circuit event had been unceremoniously axed by the previous state government.

Of course, its sudden dumping and almost as sudden comeback demonstrates that such events exist at the whims of governments.

On the other hand, while those at permanent circuits often enjoy government support also, they are at least underpinned by long-term infrastructure.

Even some of that is under threat, however, with Wakefield Park on life support following a recent New South Wales court decision, and Melbourne’s Sandown teetering on the edge of closure to make way for a residential development.

Queensland will soon enjoy another race track, however, with Townsville’s DriveIt NQ nearing completion.

“I think the broader motorsport public has to be entirely satisfied that permanent facilities like The Bend are making a contribution to promoting and growing the motorsport base in Australia, and I firmly believe that,” Shahin told Speedcafe.com.

“I absolutely believe that permanent facilities are absolutely critical to the sustainability of motorsport in Australia.

“At some point, government support across the country will wane for big motorsport events and the addiction on government support has to remain in the forefront of everybody in motorsport.

“We have to build models that are sustainable in the long-term, and this is the premise that The Bend operates on.

“I’ve built a business and a facility that has to stand on its own two feet and has to participate at the highest level of any discipline of motorsport.

“But, it’s like any relationship, whether it’s a business or a personal one; the best relationships work when each party wants the relationship to be more successful than the other [does].

“That’s the magic of sustainable, long-term relationships.”

The Bend Motorsport Park

Despite that commentary, Shahin is supportive of the move to bring back the Adelaide 500, citing its economic contribution to the state of South Australia and the exposure it attracts for the capital.

He furthermore believes it can coexist with his event, as it had done in the years after The Bend opened in 2018.

“Personally, I thought it was a mistake to let the Adelaide 500 go,” said the Executive Director of the Peregrine Corporation, the state’s largest private employer and owner also of South Australia’s Mallala Motor Sport Park.

“It was a terrific event that, like most large events, just shines the torch at the city of Adelaide and the state of South Australia for a week, and I think there aren’t many events that bring that contribution to a state economy.

“Despite declining patronage, it still was one of the best attended events in the country so, personally, I’m very pleased that the event is back, and I think it can very happily live side by side with The Bend Supercars event.

“The precedent is there, not just in South Australia, but across in other states as well.

“Remember, South Australia hosted Supercars at The Bend, as well as the Adelaide 500 in 2018 and 2019 – pre-COVID – and very successfully.

“Street circuits bring on a different market to permanent circuits.

“There is slight overlap at the corporate end of the market, but I think that they can happily coexist.

“There are multiple events across most other states that I think South Australia can happily provide for two events on the calendar.

The Adelaide 500 is scheduled for December 1-4, while Shahin is confident that The Bend will again feature on the Repco Supercars Championship calendar in 2023.

Categories
Australia

Country Fire Service boss Mark Jones raises concerns about plan to send volunteer firefighters out to medical emergencies

Cadell CFS volunteer

South Australia’s volunteer firefighters are already attending a growing number of medical emergencies and are not trained to deal with the trauma, according to the head of the Country Fire Service (CFS).

CFS chief officer Mark Jones has raised concerns about a state government probe into whether firefighters should attend more medical call-outs as the SA Ambulance Service (SAAS) remains under increasing pressure.

Premier Peter Malinauskas on Thursday launched a taskforce to look into the concept, after a 47-year-old father-of-two died in Plympton while waiting 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

Mr Jones is not on the panel, however, Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) chief Michael Morgan and South Australia Ambulance Service (SAAS) boss Robert Elliott will be part of the taskforce, along with Health Minister Chris Picton and union representatives.

“I lead a government that is open to ideas about what we can do to relieve pressure [in] any way we can,” Mr Malinauskas said.

“One such measure that is being proposed is drawing on the resources of the MFS to potentially respond in ways that are safe — all options are on the table.”

He said the taskforce had been established “in haste”, but other measures the government wanted to introduce — such as employing more paramedics — would take time.

Mr Malinauskas said on Friday morning that the idea was “worthy of investigation” and would be looked at “thoughtfully and safely”.

“You don’t want to fix one problem and create another, particularly with respect to the work the MFS already do,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

CFS attend 1,000 medical emergencies

Mr Jones said his firefighters were already doing that, attending about 1,000 medical incidents in the past year and 14 this week.

“They attend these with no specialist medical training and no additional mental health support,” he said.

“Additionally, these incidents often happen in small communities, where the volunteers are turning up to an incident where they know the casualty.”

A man wearing a Country Fire Service uniform addresses the media in front of a CFS and Government of South Australia banner.
CFS chief officer Mark Jones has raised concerns.(ABCNews)

He said the volunteers responding to medical situations were doing it “outside the scope of their standard duties, in their own time, without pay and without the same support as paramedics.”

“Our volunteers are routinely called upon to attend traumatic events beyond the scope of their firefighting duties and these jobs fall outside of most people’s expectations when they join the service,” he said.

“I have seen the number of SAAS-assist jobs that our volunteers are expected to attend grow significantly.

“This is something that has occurred without any formal agreement or additional support for our volunteers doing an already tough job.”

Mr Jones said volunteers were trained in first aid but there was a “large difference” between providing CPR and addressing the underlying clinical health issues of a patient.

Mr Malinauskas acknowledged that the CFS “have always played an extraordinarily broad role in their communities”.

“The way the CFS responds to call-outs in regional areas very much depends on the other services that are already in place in those other areas,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide on Friday morning.

“And to be clear our CFS officers attend a lot more than fires.

“In some places where we don’t have a SES, the CFS is responding to car accidents, to fires, and other emergencies on a frequent basis.

“So they already do this work and their caseload continues to grow, and that’s why we’ve got to keep an eye on the volunteer base.”

In a statement, an SAAS spokeswoman said the service already worked closely with fire services and police to support South Australians during a medical emergency.

“We are excited about the opportunity to work further with the SA Metropolitan Fire Service on a co-response model for the community here in [South Australia]and hope to grow the program over time,” she said.

“Any initiative that supports early CPR and early defibrillation is potentially life-saving.”

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Categories
US

Liz Cheney embraces her role in the Jan. 6 inquiry in a closing campaign ad.

Liz Cheney embraces her role in the Jan. 6 inquiry in a closing campaign ad.

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming is highlighting her role as the top Republican on the Jan. 6 committee in a closing ad for her all but doomed re-election campaign, as polls show her badly trailing her Trump-backed opponent, Harriet Hageman, just five days before the primary.

But the nearly two-and-a-half-minute ad released online Thursday appeared aimed as much at a national audience as at the Republican primary voters in Wyoming who will decide the fate of Ms. Cheney, the state’s lone member of the House.

“The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious,” Ms. Cheney said as the ad opens. “It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.”

Ms. Cheney, who has been vilified by former President Donald J. Trump and many of his supporters, defended the work of the special House committee that is investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol and efforts by Mr. Trump to overturn the 2020 election results .

Ms. Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, has acknowledged her political peril. A poll released on Thursday by the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center showed Ms. Cheney trailing Ms. Hageman by nearly 30 points.

She is the last of the 10 House Republicans who voted for Mr. Trump’s impeachment to stand before voters in a primary this year. Three have lost: Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Tom Rice of South Carolina and Peter Meijer of Michigan. Two others survived their primaries, and four declined to seek another term.

Titled “The Great Task,” the ad is being promoted on social media, but is not appearing on television, according to Jeremy Adler, a campaign spokesman for Ms. Cheney.

In the ad, Ms. Cheney described Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud as his legacy and said that the nation has an obligation to hold those responsible for fomenting violence.

“History has shown us over and over again how these types of poisonous lies destroy free nations,” Ms. Cheney said of those insisting that Mr. Trump won the election. “No one who understands our nation’s laws, no one with an honest, honorable, genuine commitment to our Constitution would say that. It is a cancer that threatens our great republic.”

Ms. Cheney did not mention Ms. Hageman by name in her ad, but drew a comparison between her opponents in Wyoming and election-denying candidates across the nation. Last week, Ms. Hageman repeated Mr. Trump’s false claim that the election was rigged.

Tim Murtaugh, an adviser for Ms. Hageman’s campaign, accused Ms. Cheney of abandoning Wyoming. “This video is basically an audition tape for CNN or MSNBC,” he said.

Ms. Cheney’s resignation of Mr. Trump — and her vote to impeach him last year — have already come at a political price. The Wyoming Republican Party censored her in February 2021, a month after Ms. Cheney’s impeachment vote. House Republicans later ousted Ms. Cheney as the party’s No. 3 leader in the chamber, replacing her with Representative Elise Stefanik, a Trump loyalist from New York.

As the ad closed, Ms. Cheney said that she would always seek to preserve peaceful transitions of power, “not violent confrontations, intimidation, and thuggery,” and added, “where we are led by people who love this country more than themselves. ”

Categories
Business

Aussie-built electric ute on the cards thanks to startup

Aussie-built electric ute on the cards thanks to startup

A sketch of Roev's electric ute.

supplied

A sketch of Roev’s electric ute.

High-volume Australian-built vehicles may soon be back on the menu thanks to a new startup aiming to introduce a new electric ute to the market.

Roev (pronounced ‘rove’) wants its finished product on the market by around 2026, having worked on the ute for the past three years.

A design sketch of the ute shows a sleek single-cab design with a cab-chassis tray over the back with a bulging bonnet, LED headlights and slim glasshouse. It will likely feature Roev’s in-house electricals, which it already uses to convert Ford Rangers and Toyota Hiluxes.

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At the moment, those use a single electric motor powering both 4×2 and 4×4 variants, with either a 70kWh or 100kWh (lithium-iron phosphate) battery pack available. The larger will offer up to 300km of range, something Roev believes will be suitable for many fleets. Four-wheel drive vehicles will retain their standard transfer case while the transmission will be a simple reduction gear.

READMORE:
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* Next-gen Triton to be the first major ute with a PHEV option
* Kia commits to two all-electric utes by 2027
* Ford’s fork in the road: EV, internal combustion are split

The electrical system will initially be 400 volts – the standard used in most EVs – and will support DC fast-charging capability. Roev will pull its batteries from overseas suppliers at first, before eventually using Australian-made batteries.

Roev wants to convert Hiluxes and Rangers while he readies his own ute.

supplied

Roev wants to convert Hiluxes and Rangers while he readies his own ute.

It will also support bi-directional charging, helped by Roev’s history in software.

“EV utes are a great start, but the biggest impact will come from running them efficiently with renewable energy and the ability to store and redistribute that energy from their batteries,” CEO Noah Wasmer, a former executive with software giant Atlassian told carsales.

“We see the future of vehicle depots as DC micro-grids, and by testing our V2G technology and EV management software, we can show that it can be done without impacting the driving performance or range requirements for electric vehicles.”

Roev's electric ute will be able to feed energy back into houses or the grid itself.

supplied

Roev’s electric ute will be able to feed energy back into houses or the grid itself.

According to the publication, Roev isn’t currently interested in producing hundreds of thousands of vehicles just yet. Instead, it wants to build “micro-factories” that operate profitably on as few as 10,000 vehicles annually.

“If you told me we had such amazing success that we need to build millions of vehicles I’ll tell you that we’re not architected right to build millions of vehicles,” said Wasmer.

Roev isn’t ready to talk pricing or availability just yet, aside from that 2026 goal. There’s also a good chance the specifications will change by the time Roev is ready for production.

Categories
Technology

Prototype GeForce GTX 2080 graphics card spotted, the only known GTX with ray tracing support

Prototype GeForce GTX 2080 graphics card spotted, the only known GTX with ray tracing support

GTX 2080, a proof RTX branding was the last minute change?

Reddit ascendance22 posted photos of the unreleased GeForce GTX 2080 graphics card, and no, that’s not a typo.

GeForce GTX 2080, Source: ascendance22

At NVIDIA GeForce 20 series launch in August 2018 NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made a joke of announcing a GTX 1180 graphics. That was contrary to the rumors of a new GeForce RTX branding making a debut. Such a GTX model was obviously never launched, but it seems that the original plans might have been to use GTX branding after all.

Redditor found an engineering sample of GTX 2080 graphics card, or so it seems. The card features the same reference cooler design, but the absent RTX branding was replaced with GTX. There is also no 2080 logo on the card’s front and backplate.

GeForce GTX 2080 prototype, Source: eBay

It looks like this card was purchased from eBay for around 360 USD. This prototype above looks identical to the card posted on Reddit. Interestingly the seller has been using these cards for… cryptomining. The sticker on the back confirms it’s a PG180 board, the same board the retail RTX 2080 graphics card uses.

GeForce GTX 2080 prototype, Source: eBay

Such NVIDIA prototypes are very rare, especially for the gaming series and NVIDIA reference design (Founders Edition). The card supposedly offers identical performance to the retail unit so for gamers it’s just a GPU, for enthusiast that’s a collector’s item for sure. And yes, it supports raytracing and DLSS, the only GTX card to do so.

GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition, Source: NVIDIA

Source: Reddit



Categories
Entertainment

Marilyn Manson steps out in rare outing with wife Lindsay Usich

Marilyn Manson steps out in rare outing with wife Lindsay Usich

Marilyn Manson has been spotted during a rare outing in Hollywood with his much younger wife.

The 53-year-old heavy metal singer, whose real name is Brian Warner, stepped out with his long-term partner Lindsay Usich, 37, for dinner in the Californian city.

It’s understood the pair began dating in 2012, before tying the knot in 2020.

Manson, who is reportedly two years sober, cut a vastly different figure for the couple’s date night, where he was photographed sans his signature gothic make-up.

He wore an all-black casual outfit, while Usich wore an emerald green dress with a black jacket.

Manson has rarely been spotted publicly amid multiple sexual abuse allegations leveled against him over the past year, all of which he has denied.

It comes after Manson’s damning texts to Johnny Depp were exposed in documents seen by Daily Beast, which contained pages of evidence excluded from Depp’s trial against ex-wife Amber Heard.

In a 2016 text, Manson allegedly wrote of his wife, “I got an amber 2.0” and also “Lindsay just puled an amber on me… please delete.”

Depp responds, “I been reading A LOT of material on that and sociopathic behavior… it is f***ing real my brother!! My ex-c**t is goddamn TEXTBOOK!!!” according to the document.

Then Manson, in an apparent reference to an incident where the police were called to Depp and Heard’s shared Los Angeles apartment in 2016, wrote, “I got a serious police amber type scenarios with L’s family.

“I’m f***ing stressed. I don’t know if you are back but I need asylum somewhere because I think the cops might be headed my way,” the filing states.

Manson’s former partner, US actress Evan Rachel Wood, has led claims against the goth rocker, including that he forced her to have sex with him while filming one of his music videos.

Wood named Manson as her alleged abuser for the first time in February 2021. They began dating in 2006, when she was 18 and he was 37.

The couple dated for four years, with Wood bringing to light allegations of sexual and emotional abuse years later, though it was only recently that she named Manson as her alleged abuser.

“He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years,” Wood wrote on Instagram in February last year.

“I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander or blackmail.

“I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives.

“I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”

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Categories
Australia

Scam or No Scam? A game for all ages

Scam or No Scam? A game for all ages

I have invented a new game. It’s called “Scam or No Scam”. The rules are simple, there are no winners and no losers (unless you count the scammers). It’s a game which turns annoyance into amusement.

At the moment, there are two regular players, plus an interchangeable cast of faceless extras, but I see potential for this to be much bigger, perhaps as an educational tool, or even a television game show.

The game consists of Player 1 sending a screenshot of an email or text message to Player 2 and asking them to declare whether it’s a “scam” or “no scam”.

Scam or No Scam?

Scam or No Scam?Credit:istock

Of course, they are always scams, and must only ever be screenshots, because we don’t want to pass on any nasty viruses. The game allows players to share their frustrations about scammers, be creative with responses, and have a laugh.

Take for example last night’s offering. I received the following WhatsApp message: “Hi, I’m Seonhee. Nice to meet you. Australia is a beautiful country and I want to find my soul mate here. I am 29 and single (don’t talk to me about sex or I will get angry). Add my WhatsApp … we can know each other better.”

I sent it to my friend and asked, “Scam or no scam?” The reply: “Not scam. I think Seonhee is the one for you. Walk away from that husband of yours and enjoy your new soulmate.”

Don’t worry husband. I’m not running off with Seonhee. Sounds like there might be some anger issues there. Smells catfishy.

It’s been seven years since my last public rant about scammers. In that time, the scams have grown, and so has my irritation. Despite being cautious about sharing my details, I get contacted by a scammer in some form (email, phone call, text), at least once a week.

While I’m occasionally impressed with their creativity, I’m more often offended at the lack of attention to detail displayed by these scammers, like the pretty young woman who sent a photo of “herself” with a message offering companionship but forgot that her WhatsApp profile picture appears at the top of the screen, showing a middle-aged man.

Categories
US

Former police officer gets 7-plus years in prison in Jan. 6 case

Former police officer gets 7-plus years in prison in Jan. 6 case

Robertson gets credit for the 13 months he has already spent in custody. Robertson has been jailed since Cooper ruled last year that he violated the terms of his pretrial release by possessing firearms.

The judge said he was troubled by Robertson’s conduct since his arrest — not only his stockpiling of guns but also his words advocating for violence. After Jan. 6, Robertson told a friend that he was prepared to fight and die in a civil war and he clung to baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump, the judge noted.

Sentencing guidelines calculated by Cooper recommended a prison term ranging from seven years and three months to nine years.

“It’s a long time because it reflects the seriousness of the offenses that you were convicted of,” the judge said.

In April, a jury convicted Robertson of attacking the Capitol to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. Jurors found Robertson guilty of all six counts in his indictment, including charges that he interfered with police officers at the Capitol and that he entered a restricted area with a dangerous weapon, a large wooden stick.

Robertson’s lawyers said the Army veteran was using the stick to help him walk because he has a limp from getting shot in the right thigh while working as a private contractor for the Defense Department in Afghanistan in 2011.

The judge said he agreed with jurors that Robertson went to the Capitol to interfere with the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. Robertson was an “active and willing participant,” not “some bystander” who got swept up in the crowd, Cooper said.

Robertson traveled to Washington on that morning with another off-duty Rocky Mount police officer, Jacob Fracker, and a third man, a neighbor who wasn’t charged in the case.

Fracker was scheduled to be tried alongside Robertson before he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in March and agreed to cooperate with federal authorities. Cooper is scheduled to sentence Fracker next Tuesday.

Prosecutors have asked Cooper to spare Fracker from a prison term and sentence him to six months of probation along with a period of home detention or “community confinement.” They said Fracker’s “fulsome” cooperation and trial testimony was crucial in securing convictions against Robertson.

Robertson’s lawyer, Mark Rollins, sought a prison sentence below two years and three months. He questioned the fairness of the wide gap in sentences that prosecutors recommended for Robertson and Fracker given their similar conduct.

Robertson served his country and community with distinction, his lawyer told the judge.

“His life is already in shambles,” Rollins said.

Robertson and Fracker were among several current or former law enforcement officers who joined in the riot. Prosecutors say Robertson used his law enforcement and military training to block police officers who were trying to hold off the advancing mob.

Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Aloi said Robertson was prepared for violence when he went to the Capitol and did a “victory lap” inside the building, where he posed for a selfie with Fracker.

“The defendant is, by all accounts, proud of his conduct on Jan. 6,” she said.

Jurors saw some of Robertson’s posts on social media before and after the riot. In a Facebook post on Nov. 7, 2020, Robertson said “being disenfranchised by fraud is my hard line.”

“I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. (I’m) about to become part of one, and a very effective one,” he wrote.

In a letter addressed to the judge, Robertson said he took full responsibility for his actions on Jan. 6 and “any poor decisions I made.” He blamed the vitriolic content of his social media posts on a mix of stress, alcohol abuse and “submersion in deep ‘rabbit holes’ of election conspiracy theory.”

“I sat around at night drinking too much and reacting to articles and sites given to me by Facebook” algorithms, he wrote.

The town fired Robertson and Fracker after the riot. Rocky Mount is about 25 miles south of Roanoke, Va., and has about 5,000 residents.

Roughly 850 people have been charged with federal crimes for their conduct on Jan. 6. More than 350 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanor offenses, and more than 230 have been sentenced so far.

Robertson’s jury trial was the second for a Capitol riot case; Reffitt’s was the first. Jurors have unanimously convicted seven Capitol rioters of all charges in their respective indictments.

Categories
Business

Aldi Australia introduces smaller trolleys in stores

A photo posted to the Aldi Mums Facebook group shows the new trolleys in a bay alongside and is believed to be the first of a nationwide rollout (pictured: the small trolleys)

Shoppers thrilled after Aldi introduces a VERY in-demand new feature in stores: ‘We’ve been waiting for this moment for years’

  • Aldi Australia has introduced smaller sized trolleys in stores in a national rollout
  • A photo showing the size was shared online, sending customers into a spin
  • The new size will provide shoppers with ‘greater convenience’

By Carina Stathis For Daily Mail Australia

Published: | Updated:

Customers are praising Aldi after small trolleys were spotted in Australian stores.

A photo posted to the Aldi Mums Facebook group shows the new trolleys in a bay and is believed to be the first of a nationwide rollout.

Shoppers complained online saying the large trolleys, which are 1.1m high, are ‘enormous’ and were unsuitable for pregnant women, new mums carrying babies and the elderly.

In June the supermarket confirmed to Daily Mail Australia the smaller trolleys will provide shoppers with ‘greater convenience’.

A photo posted to the Aldi Mums Facebook group shows the new trolleys in a bay alongside and is believed to be the first of a nationwide rollout (pictured: the small trolleys)

A photo posted to the Aldi Mums Facebook group shows the new trolleys in a bay alongside and is believed to be the first of a nationwide rollout (pictured: the small trolleys)

‘We recognize that customers are looking for greater convenience when they visit our stores, as it’s almost impossible not to pick up the excellent value products on offer,’ an Aldi spokesperson said.

‘That’s why we’re introducing smaller trolleys across all our locations, so our customers can more efficiently pick up products while doing smaller grocery shops.’

The image of the small trolleys received more than 2,400 ‘likes’ and shoppers seemed obsessed with the new offer.

‘Sooo much easier for when I’m wearing baby in the carrier!!!’ one mum wrote, another added: ‘Yes I just used one. I was surprised to see them. A great addition.’

‘Thank god, I’m sick of falling into the trolley trying to get my groceries out,’ a third joked.

A short woman said: ‘About time, for me 144cm of shortness the trolleys are sooooo big, almost climbing in every time. well done Aldi for the newer half cart smaller trolleys.’

It follows after Aldi shoppers were left pleasantly surprised by the retailer’s decision to rollout shopping baskets across all their Australian stores.

It follows after Aldi shoppers were left pleasantly surprised by the retailer's decision to rollout shopping baskets across all their Australian stores

It follows after Aldi shoppers were left pleasantly surprised by the retailer’s decision to rollout shopping baskets across all their Australian stores

Aldi Australia have revealed plans to include shopping baskets - as standard - in every store

Aldi Australia have revealed plans to include shopping baskets – as standard – in every store

The German-owned retailer posted to Facebook in April to reveal the decision which many customers believe has been ‘a long time coming’.

‘Goodbye octopus arms,’ they wrote in the post.

‘We’re rolling out baskets across all our stores, to help you with your weekly shop and dash in top-ups.’

The baskets, which were first trialed in select stores in July, will be available nation-wide in 2022 – according to a spokesperson for the German-owned store.

Customers said the announcement was ‘about time’.

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Categories
Technology

Sony Paying Devs To Stay Off Xbox Game Pass Says Microsoft – channelnews

Sony Paying Devs To Stay Off Xbox Game Pass Says Microsoft – channelnews

Microsoft has claimed that their major gaming rival Sony, has been paying developers for ‘blocking rights’, to keep games off their gaming subscription service Xbox Game Pass.

The accusation came to light in documents filed by Microsoft to Brazil’s competition watchdog, who were investigating the tech company’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard.

According to Microsoft, Sony has been going out of their way to prevent the growth of Games Pass by paying developers to stay away from the service, as they look to bolster their own subscription offering.

“Microsoft’s ability to continue expanding Game Pass has been hampered by Sony’s desire to inhibit such growth,” says the August 9th Microsoft filing, submitted to the Administrative Council for Economic Defence.

“Sony pays for ‘blocking rights’ to prevent developers from adding content to Game Pass and other competing subscription services.”

This would not be out of character for Sony, who tends to be the kid in the sandpit who’s not so keen on sharing their toys. When cross-platform gaming launched for Rocket League and MinecraftSony refused to buy in, whilst PC, Xbox and Nintendo players got to enjoy playing against each other on different platforms.

Sony only budged under immense pressure from Epic Games, who wanted to enable cross play for Fortnite, which was the biggest game on PlayStation at the time. As part of the agreement, Sony received compensation for cross-play, and is the only platform to do so. Recently released documents suggest that Sony

Microsoft is hopeful that the claim will prove that their purchase of Activision Blizzard would not hinder competition or create a gaming monopoly.

“The inclusion of Activision Blizzard content in Game Pass does not impair the ability of other players to compete in the digital game distribution market,” says the company. In fact, they believe that bringing major titles such as Call of Duty to Game Pass will increase competition by providing users with access to games at a lower cost.

Call of Duty is the big one in the acquisition, and it’s a title that Sony says is “a gaming category of its own,” and that competing with it as an exclusive Xbox offering would be difficult. Whether they would allow the franchise to become available on the recently revamped PlayStation Plus subscription service however, allowing prices to be competitive, is currently unknown.

Microsoft however has previously said that Call of Duty will still be available on PlayStation, whilst also pointing out the massive success of other shooter franchises such as Apex Legends, Battlefield and PUBG.

While the Microsoft Activision deal is being monitored worldwide by watchdogs in Europe and the US, most competition authorities keep correspondence private. Brazil’s CADE offers documentation to the public.