Category: Technology

FromSoftware’s Elden Ring seemed set to win Game of the Year, until the recent release of the small indie game about a cat called Stray.

Elden Ring took the world by storm bringing in old and new Soulsborne players, and yet the game’s biggest competition for the game of the year is stray, a small game featuring a cat. Both games have been immensely popular for different reasons since their release. However, it is fascinating that these two games are the most popular this year.

Elden Ring is an RPG giant focused on boss fights and exploration; it is the Soulsborne game many fans have been dying for. Meanwhile, stray is a short game about a cat in an underground world made by a small indie game company. And straywith the cute cat exploring a cyberpunk city, has captured the hearts of many players in a way that Elden Ring was unable to. Both are good games, but good in different ways, which explains their popularity.

Related: Stray’s Cyberpunk City Compared To The Real Walled City Of Kowloon

Many players have a love for games developed by small indie companies, and stray is one such game. There is a love and artistry in these smaller games that are often absent in AAA games developed by larger companies. Elden Ring is a masterpiece that has rewritten what it means for open-world games. strayhowever, is a reminder to large companies that a small game about a cat may be enough to take the game of the year.

Stray’s Heartfelt Story And Adorable Protagonist

Elden Ring and stray both have gorgeous visuals and engaging gameplay, but for a reason so many players love stray is because of the heartfelt story. Elden Ring has a story with lots of spoilers, but in the usual Soulsborne fashion, the story is often difficult to understand and may require players to search for items. stray‘s story, however, is linear; it has a beginning and end that plays can follow. While there are dark moments in Stray, there is an underlying message of hope that many payers have latched onto.

Another reason for stray‘s incredible popularity is the feline protagonist. Players control a cute cat and indulge in various feline activities in the game, such as meowing and scratching various objects. Despite the occasional moments of chaos that the cat brings, the creature is a driving force of good, eager to help his robot allies escape the underground city.

Despite stray‘s current popularity, it does seem unlikely that it will stay popular since the game is shorter than Elden Ring. And the moment there are believable leaks for an Elden Ring DLC, stray will likely be pushed to the side. But stray may win the game of the year, and players who support smaller game companies may be hoping this will happen.

Next: Every Cute Cat Thing You Can Do In Stray

SaveMinecraft Trends Following Controversial New Update

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While it’s not the most powerful console out there, the smaller and more affordable Xbox Series S has been a big hit for Xbox. But reportedly, some devs have felt the strain of getting bigger, more advanced games to work on the console and in response, Microsoft is freeing up some memory to help improve the tiny console’s performance.

As spotted by TheVerge, Microsoft is hoping to make the Xbox Series S a bit more powerful by freeing up some memory and letting developers access that extra memory if needed. In a video explaining this new developer-focused update, Microsoft says that it is unlocking “hundreds of additional megabytes of memory” and that this will, in theory, give studies more control over how to use the console’s limited memory. Microsoft says this “can improve graphics performance in memory-constrained conditions.”

To be clear, this isn’t like Microsoft quadrupling the power of the Series S. Nor is this Microsoft flipping some secret switch to let the console start running games at 8K and 240hz or anything wild like that. Instead, the amount of memory dedicated to non-gaming functions in the $US300 ($416) Series S is being tweaked.

While the more powerful Xbox Series X console has 16GB of RAM the cheaper Xbox Series S has only 10GB. But before this update, devs only had access to 8GB of that memory as Microsoft reserved around 2GB for the console’s OS. Now devs will have a few hundred extra megabytes of memory, which could help some games run a bit better moving forward.

The Xbox Series S has always been positioned by Microsoft as a cheaper, less-powerful, but still capable next-gen console option. And it’s proven to be a very popular piece of hardware since releasing alongside the beefier Xbox Series X in 2020. Hell, I already had an Xbox Series X and I ended up buying one. It’s become the main way we play games in our living room, perfect for Fall Guys and Fortnite. But for more intense games it can struggle, requiring cutting down on framerate or resolution. This has reportedly led to some issues and frustration from devs trying to get certain games running on the lesser machine.

A recent example of a game performing differently on Series S is the Evil Dead game, which launched without a 60fps performance mode on the cheaper machine. Resident Evil Village also limits the game to only 45fps at 1440p and 30fps if you turn ray tracing on.

Hopefully, a few extra bits and bobs of memory can help devs working on Xbox ports not feel as hamstrung by the weaker Xbox Series S.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla dataminers recently discovered files of an Iron Man skin that shoots a Unibeam from the chest. The skin is currently not available in Ubisoft’s digital store, but fans are hoping that it gets released sometime in the future.

The armor was found by an Assassin’s Creed dataminer named Pedder, who previously mined DLC information from the game files that later proved to be accurate. The YouTube videos show a red-and-yellow armor set that shoots a laser beam from the chest and a similar looking white variant. The Unibeam can be activated with the “Battlecry” ability in Valhalla. The pack also includes a mechanical raven, a mount, and two swords.

This isn’t the first time that Marvel-related Assassin’s Creed cosmetics have surfaced. Previously, Andy showed off a video of a Thanos skin called “Master of Elements.” This unreleased skin includes colorful gem-studded gloves that activate a different ability every few seconds. Some fans are a little disappointed Ubisoft hasn’t actually released any of these skins — or even confirmed their existence. Kotaku reached out to Ubisoft about whether or not these skins will be released, but was not able to obtain a comment at the time of publication.

A Marvel collab wouldn’t even be the most unusual crossover to appear in the Assassin’s Creed series. back when Origins was still getting updates, players could stumble upon a final-fantasy Easter egg in ancient Egypt. Iron Man’s robot mount may be a little out there for medieval England, but I’d say that the Chocobo mount was far more jarring to ride into the desert sands. Assassin’s Creed‘s Fortnite-ification continues.

Despite Ubisoft’s troubles with delays and cancellations, Valhalla has enjoyed a relatively robust release schedule. This spring, the publisher launched the major dawn of ragnarok expansion, which added a ton of Norse mythology quests to the already-massive open world RPG. Ubisoft has released a Valhalla expansion every year since the game’s initial release, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. So I’m not too bothered if the developers spend a little more time tweaking the skins that absolutely no one was even expecting from a viking game.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch received its second wave of Booster Course Pass DLC today, which adds eight new courses and finally fixes an old one. Let’s just say Coconut Mall’s Shy Guys aren’t so shy anymore, and if you get too close you will get merc’d.

The first set of new courses arrived back in March, one of the most anticipated among them being Coconut Mall, a breezy classic from mario kart wii remastered for the modern game. But there was just one problem: the Miis that ram players near the end of the course were replaced with Shy Guys. Adding insult to injury was the fact that the Shy Guys no longer drove. Their cars remained stationary. Mario Kart fans were disturbed.

Well, in an extremely rare turn of events, Nintendo listened to fans and restored Coconut Mall’s death alley to some of its former glory. The Miis are still Shy Guys, but they now ratchet slightly forward and start spinning around in a spiral of vehicular carnage.

Meanwhile, there’s been an update to Coconut Mall… pic.twitter.com/WXiQhOCLSL

—Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 4, 2022

Today’s DLC also adds New York Minute (Tour), Mario Circuit 3 (SNES), Kalimari Desert (N64), Waluigi Pinball (DS), Sydney Sprint (Tour), Snow Land (GBA), Mushroom Gorge (Wii), and Sky -High Sundae, an entirely new level exclusive to MK8. Waluigi Pinball is a cult-favorite deep-cut. Mushroom Gorge returns with its infamous Gap Cut intact. Sky-High Sundae is a visual feast. But Coconut Mall’s Shy Guys are still stealing the show.

NINTENDO IS LISTENING! THE CARS ON COCONUT MALL MOVE AGAIN! #MK8D #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/JzJRHcMWiI

— Matt | 6amerBr0 🏁 30 YEARS OF MARIO KART!!  (@6amerBr0) August 4, 2022

Today’s update isn’t just a content drop, though. Nintendo is also still tweaking the underlying game. With the arrival of March’s DLC, it patched Item Boxes to make them regenerate faster after players pick them up. Today it did so again. The developers also increased the number of time trial ghosts players can download from 16 to 32 and adjusted how far vehicles get thrown based on their weight.

It’s far and away the most Nintendo has ever updated a game five years into its lifecycle, let alone one that was originally released on the Wii U back in 2014. While some analysts claim mario kart 9 is already in the works, there are still another 24 courses coming to MK8 through the end of 2023. No doubt by that point the Shy Guys will be tearing up more than just Coconut Mall and the Item Boxes will regenerate faster than Nintendo’s lawyers can send a DMCA notice.

Soon Spaces, Twitter’s own audio chat room feature, might not look the way it does now. Ace TechCrunch first reported and Twitter itself later confirmed to the site, the social media is working on a new, completely revamped version of Spaces with new features.

Unfortunately, Twitter hasn’t given any official information about the future look of Spaces, but an intelligence firm called Watchful managed to make a few early screenshots of the new design. However, we must note here that Twitter has stressed to TechCrunch that these images are from a very early stage of the new look and are “inaccurate and outdated.” Nevertheless, we might still be able to get some idea of ​​what the new Spaces might look like.

From Watchful’s images, we can see that the audio rooms will probably be arranged by topic, like Music and Sports. Additionally, we can see that they are represented by colorful cards and artwork made for the programs. Furthermore, it looks like Spaces might also receive a new feature called “Your daily digest,” which will likely show you new episodes of the programs you follow. Also, as it does now, the tab will probably show you who’s listening as well.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before the days of the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, there was an app called Winamp. People over the age of 30ish will remember Winamp as the premiere music player for people using Napster, Limewire, and Kazaa to illegally download Aerosmith MP3s to their Gateway desktop computers. (For anyone younger than that: it was like Spotify, but you needed to collect every single song you wanted to listen to manually and add it to the app yourself.)

Like a lot of influential Windows 95-era PC apps, it was eventually outpaced by newer software and business models and forgotten, but it’s technically never actually been dead. Winamp’s original incarnation petered out in late 2013, shut down by AOL after years of mismanagement. A company called Radionomy bought the remains of Winamp from AOL in January 2014 and leaked an update to the app in 2016; a revised version of this build was officially released in 2018, and a major version 6.0 update was planned for 2019.

This plan obviously didn’t pan out. But last week, for the first time in four years, Radionomy released a new version of Winamp. The release notes for Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 1999 say that the update represents four years of work across two separate development teams, delayed in between by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most of the work done in this build focuses on behind-the-scenes work that modernizes the codebase, which means it still looks and acts like a turn-of-the-millennium Windows app. The entire project has been migrated from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2019, a wide range of audio codecs have been updated to more modern versions, and support for Windows 11 and https streams have both been improved.

The final release will be version 5.9, with some features targeted for release in version 5.9.1 “and beyond” (version 6.0 goes unmentioned). It requires Windows 7 SP1 or newer, dropping support for Windows XP.

That said, in our limited testing the “new” Winamp is still in many ways an ancient app, one not made for the age of high-resolution, high-density displays. This may cause usability problems, depending on what you’re trying to run it on. But hey, for all you people out there still trying to keep hope alive, it’s nice to see something on Winamp.com that isn’t a weird NFT project and a promise of updates yet to come.

Listing image by Winamp

your forces, Grand Touring Carsand other racing sims might be more realistic and graphically intense, but there’s only room in my heart for one racing game: Mario Kartand soon there’s only going to be room in my garage for one car: Jakks Pacific’s new electric ride-on Mario Kart go-kart.

Now, before you get your hopes up too high, this go-kart doesn’t come with all of the features and functions the karts featured in the various Mario Kart games do. Drive it into the water and it won’t transform into a submarine: it will probably just short out. Drive it off a cliff and a glider won’t deploy: you’ll just plummet to a death that friends and family will talk about for years. And no, there are no shells or oil slicks that you can use to take out other vehicles on the road, although you’re welcome to bring and toss out your own banana peels.

Image: Jakks Pacific

It’s first and foremost a kid’s toy designed to look like Mario’s standard kart option, with three forward-driving speeds and a top speed of around 13 km/h, although mushrooms could very well make it feel like you’re driving faster that that. The all plastic wheels won’t provide much grip for quick accelerations off the line, but they should be great for drifting around corners.

Image: Jakks Pacific

The Mario Kart 24V Ride-on Racer also includes a bunch of sound effects taken from the games, and while it’s officially listed for drivers “ages 3 years and up,” the seat is adjustable so that it “grows with the driver.” We’re hoping that means it can keep growing for a driver in their early ’30s who needs a reliable daily commuter but doesn’t have the budget for a full-size electric car.