An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The pace is picking up for the Apple Vison Pro apps ahead of the spatial computing device's Friday launch as developers ready their apps for the new platform. While just last week, only 150-plus apps had been specifically designed for the Vision Pro so far, according to a third-party analysis of the App Store, Apple announced today that more than 600 new apps and games are being readied for the Vison Pro ahead of its debut. These join the more than 1 million already compatible apps across iOS and iPadOS, the company says. [...]

The company says more than 600 apps and games have been designed to take advantage of the Vision Pro's capabilities and its 3D user interface that's navigated using your eyes, hands and voice. Several streaming apps have already announced their support, including Disney+, ESPN, MLB, PGA Tour, Max, Discovery+, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, Peacock, Pluto TV, Tubi, Fubo, Crunchyroll, Red Bull TV, IMAX, TikTok and MUBI. The PGA Tour Vision app offers a golf game with real-time shot tracking across models of real golf courses, while the NBA app will allow streaming up to five broadcasts live or on-demand at once, Apple notes. Red Bull TV will include 3D maps of races. Soccer fans will also be able to stream MLS Season Pass via Apple's own Apple TV app. That app will offer access to Apple's Originals, more than 200 3D movies and Apple Immersive Video.

Embracer Group has canceled a Deus Ex game at its Eidos studio that's been in development since 2022. The company also announced that it's letting go of 97 game developers and support staff. "The global economic context, the challenges of our industry and the comprehensive restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio," wrote Eidos Montreal. Eidos doesn't mention the canceled game. The Verge reports: Embracer snapped up both Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics from Square Enix in May 2022, putting the studios behind Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Thief under one umbrella. That November, Schreier tweeted that a new Deus Ex was now "very very early" in development, and it appears that's the game now canceled.

It's been eight years since Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ended on a largely unsatisfying cliffhanger, and it doesn't sound like we're going to get a resolution anytime soon. Sources told Schreier in 2017 that an earlier Mankind Divided sequel had been canceled, too. What's more, Embracer decided to erase the mobile game Deus Ex Go from existence, ripping it away from people who'd already paid, though I hear it may still be playable if you have it downloaded.

Halo — the TV series — launches its second season on February 8th. But today a trailer premiered during halftime of the pre-Super Bowl football playoff.

Gizmodo reports: Even though the Covenant are the other side of Halo's ongoing conflict, the first season of Paramount+'s TV series largely represented them through a human proxy named Makee. With the upcoming second season, the coalition of alien races is set to become a more prominent threat, and that means they'll be getting more proper screentime.
IGN had written that Season 1 "isn't a perfect adaptation of the games, but it ultimately succeeds in expanding the series' mythology and taking a more character-driven approach to Master Chief's adventures." This week Paramount+ also released a 28-minute compilation of "Epic Battle Scenes from Season 1, a season which reportedly cost $200 million to film.

And now the entertainment site Collider reports on what comes next: While on the set for Halo Season 2, Collider's Steve Weintraub and some other reporters got the chance to sit down with stars Schreiber and Kate Kennedy to discuss how the show will further flesh out the Covenant in the upcoming episodes. Part of that involves expanding their arsenal with new vehicles like the corvette, a class of ships used in the Halo canon by the Covenant for reconnaissance, stealth, and much more. Kennedy placed it among her favorite Season 2 set designs, saying... "It's huge, and what the set guys did for it, and the art department, is really, really impressive. They turned it around so quickly, and it's, like, awe-inspiring, it's huge."

Aside from making the Covenant more formidable, Season 2 will also focus on making them more understandable. Part of that involves diving into the thought process of key players within the alien faction, including two that Schreiber could tease. "Yeah, we definitely go into the Covenant mind-state, mentality," he said... In future seasons, Schreiber believes Halo will only continue to develop the Covenant, their motives, and the relationships and allegiances within the coalition as the story of intergalactic war unfolds.

Nintendo plans to launch a new 8-inch LCD-equipped Switch game console this year, well-regarded analyst firm Omdia said Friday [unpaywalled-link]. Bloomberg: The new device from the Kyoto-based games maker will be responsible for a doubling in shipments of so-called amusement displays in 2024, Hayase said in Tokyo on Friday. His research focuses on small and medium displays and he bases annual forecasts on checks with companies in the supply chain. Nintendo's seven-year-old Switch has sold over 132 million units and is approaching the end of its life cycle. The company has been tight-lipped about any potential successor, but expectations have narrowed to this year's holiday period for the release of the next generation.

PlayStation 5 system update blocks Cronus Zen controller adapter. The $100+ device promises controller compatibility but also enables gameplay "amplification." Sony crackdown follows concerns over GamePacks providing unfair advantages in Call of Duty and other online multiplayer titles. Cronus admits no timeframe for a fix. Workaround requires avoiding update or using Remote Play.

Microsoft is laying off 1,900 workers -- or around 8% of Microsoft Gaming's 22,000 employees. The majority of layoffs are at Activision Blizzard, though cuts will impact Xbox and ZeniMax employees, too. The memo from Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer: It's been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we've set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we're all aligned on the best opportunities for growth.

As part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team. The Gaming Leadership Team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible. The people who are directly impacted by these reductions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox teams, and they should be proud of everything they've accomplished here. We are grateful for all of the creativity, passion and dedication they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws. Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that is consistent with our values.

Looking ahead, we'll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I'm as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together.

The Pokemon Company said Thursday it has not granted any permission to "another company," referring to viral new game Palworld-developer Pocketpair, to use Pokemon intellectual property or assets and "intends to investigate and take appropriate measures" against the fast-growing survival game operator. From a report: The statement is Pokemon Company's first acknowledgement of Palworld's fast-growing survival title, which has sold over 8 million copies in less than six days, exceeding the performance of even the most popular AAA titles. But as TechCrunch previously reported, Palworld is also attracting a growing number of fans of Japan's legendary firm over perceived plagiarism and uncanny resemblance. However, its fusion of monster collecting, automation, and survival/crafting mechanics has struck a chord with players nonetheless.

Netflix said that user engagement with games on the service tripled in 2023. Engadget: "[Despite] games still being small, and certainly not yet material relative to our film and series business, we're pleased with this progress," the company said in its earnings report on Tuesday. As an example, the company pointed to the addition of the Grand Theft Auto trilogy to the service last year, although it isn't clear how much the trilogy, which only arrived on Netflix on December 14, helped drive engagement in the final two weeks of the year. Netflix said that Grand Theft Auto has become its "most successful launch to date" in terms of installs and engagement. It didn't say how many people had downloaded the trilogy since it was released on the platform, however. Some customers had signed up for Netflix just to play the Grand Theft Auto games, the company said.

Beijing has quietly pulled the proposed curbs on the video game industry from the official website, weeks after the draft guidelines wiped tens of billions of dollars off the market value of local titans. From a report: The link to the draft rules was no longer accessible as of this morning, Haitong Securities reported earlier on Tuesday. Shares of Tencent and NetEase jumped on the news. "This could possibly indicate that there will be further changes in the new measures," wrote Haitong analysts in the note. The move follows Beijing also removing a key official -- the head of the publication bureau of Communist Party's Propaganda Department -- over the handling of the release of the draft rules, which caught investors and gaming giants by surprise.

Steam's newest hit survival game, Palworld, has been accused of plagiarising designs from Pokemon, as social media users negatively highlight its creator's historical association with generative AI tools. VideoGamesChronicle: Palworld by Japanese studio Pocketpair released into early access on PC and Xbox on Friday, and immediately became a breakout success, with its creator claiming 2 million sales in 24 hours. The huge launch exposure inevitably reignited discourse that has followed Palworld since its announcement, around its character designs' apparent similarities to Pokemon. Although the gameplay of Palworld is closer to survival games like Ark and Rust than Game Freak's series, many social media users have noted the obvious influences its character designs have taken from the Nintendo series.

Following Palworld's release on Friday, some X users collated perceived similarities between Palworld's 'Pals' and Pokemon. "It's not even subtle about its rip offs, how much else has it stolen?" wrote one user. Another added: "I want to like Palworld, but I don't know if I can support running existing Pokemon through a fusor and passing them off as 'new' IP." The situation is further muddled in the eyes of some by Pocketpair's historical relationship with generative AI tools. Artist Zaytri noted on X that one of its previous titles was 'AI: Art Imposter,' a game which literally utilises an AI image generator as its core mechanic. The user also highlighted multiple historical X posts by Pocketpair's CEO Takuro Mizobe, in which he appeared to praise the potential of AI image generators for content creation.

Kevin Purdy reports via Ars Technica: Sometimes, a great song can come from great pain. The Game Boy Advance (GBA), its software having crashed nearly two hours ago, will, for example, play a tune based on the game inside it. And if you listen closely enough -- using specialty hardware and code -- you can tell exactly what game it was singing about. And then theoretically play that same game. This was discovered recently by TheZZAZZGlitch, whose job is to "sadistically glitch and hack the crap out of Pokemon games. It's "hardly a ready-to-use solution," the modder notes, as it requires a lot of tuning specific to different source formats. So while there are certainly easier ways to get GBA data from a cartridge, none make you feel quite so much like an audio datamancer.

After crashing a GBA and recording it over four hours, the modder saw some telltale waveforms in a sound file at about the 1-hour, 50-minute mark. Later in the sound-out, you can hear the actual instrument sounds and audio samples the game contains, played in sequence. Otherwise, it's 8-bit data at 13,100 Hz, and at times, it sounds absolutely deranged. "2 days of bugfixing later," the modder had a Python script ready that could read the audio from a clean recording of the GBA's crash dump. Did it work? Not without more troubleshooting. One issue with audio-casting ROM data is that there are large sections of 0-byte data in the ROM, which are hard to parse as mute sounds. After running another script that realigned sections based on their location in the original ROM, the modder's ROM was 99.76 percent accurate but "still didn't boot tho." TheZZAZZGlitch later disclaimed that, yes, this is technically using known ROM data to surface unknown data, or "cheating," but there are assumptions and guesses one could make if you were truly doing this blind.

The next fix was to refine the sound recording. By recording three times and merging them with a "majority vote" algorithm, their accuracy notched up to 99.979 percent. That output ROM booted -- but with glitched text and a title screen crash. After seven different recordings are meshed and filtered for blank spaces, they achieve 100 percent parity. You can watch the video describing this feat here. Used source code is also available under the file name "gbacrashsound_dumper.zip."

"What happens when a loser who needs to win faces a winner who refuses to lose?"

That was the tagline for the iconic 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, chronicling a middle-school teacher's attempts to take the Donkey Kong record from reigning world champion Billy Mitchell. "Billy Mitchell always has a plan," says Billy Mitchell in the movie (who is also shown answering his phone, "World Record Headquarters. Can I help you?") By 1985, 30-year-old Mitchell was already listed in the "Guinness Book of World Records" for having the world's highest scores for Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong, Jr., Centipede, and Burger Time.

But then, NME reports... In 2018, a number of Mitchell's Donkey Kong high-scores were called into question by a fellow gamer, who supplied a string of evidence on the Twin Galaxies forums suggesting Mitchell had used an emulator to break the records, rather than the official, unmodified hardware that's typically required to keep things fair. [Twin Galaxies is Guiness World Records' official source for videogame scores.] Following "an independent investigation," Mitchell's hi-scores were removed from video game database Twin Galaxies as well as the Guinness Book Of Records, though the latter reversed the decision in 2020. Forensic analysts also accused him of cheating in 2022 but Mitchell has fought the accusations ever since.
This week, 58-year-old Billy Mitchell posted an announcement on X. "Twin Galaxies has reinstated all of my world records from my videogame career... I am relieved and satisfied to reach this resolution after an almost six-year ordeal and look forward to pursuing my unfinished business elsewhere. Never Surrender, Billy Mitchell."

X then wrote below the announcement, "Readers added context they thought people might want to know... Twin Galaxies has only reinstated Michell's scores on an archived leaderboard, where rules were different prior to TG being acquired in 2014. His score remains removed from the current leaderboard where he continues to be ineligible by today's rules."

The statement from Twin Galaxies says they'd originally believed they'd seen "a demonstrated impossibility of original, unmodified Donkey Kong arcade hardware" in a recording of one of Billy's games. As punishment they'd then invalidated every record he'd ever set in his life.

But now an engineer (qualified as an expert in federal courts) says aging components in the game board could've produced the same visual artifacts seen in the videotape of the disputed game. Consistent with Twin Galaxies' dedication to the meticulous documentation and preservation of video game score history, Twin Galaxies shall heretofore reinstate all of Mr. Mitchell's scores as part of the official historical database on Twin Galaxies' website. Additionally, upon closing of the matter, Twin Galaxies shall permanently archive and remove from online display the dispute thread... as well as all related statements and articles.
NME adds: Twin Galaxies' lawyer David Tashroudian told Ars Technica that the company had all its "ducks in a row" for a legal battle with Mitchell but "there were going to be an inordinate amount of costs involved, and both parties were facing a lot of uncertainty at trial, and they wanted to get the matter settled on their own terms."
And the New York Times points out that while Billy scored 1,062,800 in that long-ago game, "The vigorous long-running and sometimes bitter dispute was over marks that have long since been surpassed. The current record, as reported by Twin Galaxies, belongs to Robbie Lakeman. It's 1,272,800."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool for sharing the news.

A new survey of thousands of game development professionals finds a near-majority saying generative AI tools are already in use at their workplace. But a significant minority of developers say their company has no interest in generative AI tools or has outright banned their use. From a report: The Game Developers Conference's 2024 State of the Industry report, released Thursday, aggregates the thoughts of over 3,000 industry professionals as of last October. While the annual survey (conducted in conjunction with research partner Omdia) has been running for 12 years, this is the first time respondents were asked directly about their use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, GitHub Copilot, and Adobe Generative Fill.

Forty-nine percent of the survey's developer respondents said that generative AI tools are currently being used in their workplace. That near-majority includes 31 percent (of all respondents) that say they use those tools themselves and 18 percent that say their colleagues do. The survey also found that different studio departments showed different levels of willingness to embrace AI tools. Forty-four percent of employees in business and finance said they were using AI tools, for instance, compared to just 16 percent in visual arts and 13 percent in "narrative/writing."

Since launching in 2007, Harmonix's Rock Band has released over 2,800 DLC songs to keep its rhythm game fresh. Now, Harmonix has announced the last of the series' releases will arrive on January 25, "marking the end of a nearly 16-year era in music gaming history," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Previously purchased DLC songs will still be playable in Rock Band 4, Harmonix's Daniel Sussman writes in an announcement post. Rock Band 4 live services, including online play, will also continue as normal, after online game modes for earlier Rock Band games were finally shut down in late 2022. "Taking a longer look back, I see the Rock Band DLC catalog as a huge achievement in persistence and commitment," Sussman writes. "Over the years we've cleared, authored and released nearly 3,000 songs as DLC and well over 3,000 if you include all the game soundtracks. That's wild." [...]

While official support for Rock Band DLC is finally ending, the community behind Clone Hero just recently hit an official Version 1.0 release for their PC-based rhythm game that's compatible with many guitars, drums, keyboards, gamepads, and adapters used in Rock Band and other console rhythm games (microphones excluded). While that game doesn't come with anything like Rock Band's list of officially licensed song content, it's not hard to find a bevy of downloadable, fan-made custom Clone Hero tracks with a little bit of searching.

Since shortly after its acquisition by Epic in 2021, Harmonix has been working on "Fortnite Festival," the incredibly Rock Band-esque mini-game embedded in Epic's Fortnite "metaverse." Sussman writes that a "rotating selection" of free-to-play songs will continue to cycle through that game mode, and that support for Rock Band 4 instruments will be coming to Fortnite in the future as well (peripheral-maker PDP looks like it will be getting in on the Fortnite guitar act as well). As for the last few weeks of Rock Band DLC offerings, Sussman writes that Harmonix is planning "some tear jerkers that sum up our feelings about this moment."

An 1979 Atari 8-bit system re-released in a tiny form factor? Yep.

Retro Games Ltd. is releasing a "half-sized" version of its very first home computer, the Atari 400, "emulating the whole 8-bit Atari range, including the 400/800, XL and XE series, and the 5200 home console. ("In 1979 Atari brought the computer age home," remembers a video announcement, saying the new device represents "The iconic computer now reimagined.")

More info from ExtremeTech: For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Atari 400 and 800 were launched in 1979 as the company's first attempt at a home computer that just happened to double as an incredible game system. That's because, in addition to a faster variant of the excellent 8-bit MOS 6502 CPU found in the Apple II and Commodore PET, they also included Atari's dedicated ANTIC, GTIA, and POKEY coprocessors for graphics and sound, making the Atari 400 and 800 the first true gaming PCs...

If it's as good as the other Retro Games systems, the [new] 400Mini will count as another feather in the cap for Atari Interactive's resurgence following its excellent Atari50 compilation, reissued Atari 2600+ console, and acquisitions of key properties including Digital Eclipse, MobyGames, and AtariAge.
The 2024 version — launching in the U.K. March 28th — will boast high-definition HDMI output at 720p 50 or 60Hz, along with five USB ports. More details from Retro Games Ltd. Also included is THECXSTICK — a superb recreation of the classic Atari CX-40 joystick, with an additional seven seamlessly integrated function buttons. Play one of the included 25 classic Atari games, selected from a simple to use carousel, including all-time greats such as Berzerk, Missile Command, Lee, Millipede, Miner 2049er, M.U.L.E. and Star Raiders II, or play the games you own from USB stick. Plus save and resume your game at any time, or rewind by up to 30 seconds to help you finish those punishingly difficult classics!
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader elfstones for sharing the article.

Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launches next week, but players are likely to encounter an amusing bug as they make their way through the game. Engadget: One of the game's NPCs is voiced by a text-to-speech program, complete with the slightly robotic tones we've come to associate with these services. It's not quite Siri or Alexa, but it's close and certainly doesn't fit the game's Persian-inspired setting. The NPC-in-question is a tree spirit named Kalux and seems to be voiced by a TTS program that's available online for free and typically used by streamers.

This isn't an "AI is coming for your jobs" type thing, but rather a mistake on Ubisoft's part, as each and every other NPC is attached to a voice actor. IGN notes that Kalux doesn't have a voice actor in the credits. Additionally, Kalux only has a few lines, so it likely won't be a tough fix to assign an actor to deliver that dialogue. Ubisoft has readied a day-one patch, but it won't handle the Kalux issue. Look for another patch in late January or early February that replaces the bot with a human.

Dustin Bailey reports via GamesRadar: Valve has suddenly taken action against multiple fan games, stunning a fandom that had grown used to the company's freewheeling stance on unofficial community projects. One of those projects was Team Fortress: Source 2, an effort to bring the beloved multiplayer game back to life in a more modern engine using the S&box project. The project had already run into development difficulties and had essentially been on hiatus since September 2023, but now Valve has issued a DMCA takedown against it, effectively serving as the "nail in the coffin" for the project, as the devs explain on X. [...]

The other project is Portal 64, a demake of the 2009 puzzle game that ports it to run on an actual N64. Developer James Lambert had been working on the project for years, but it gained substantial notoriety this past December with the release of First Slice, a playable demo featuring the first 13 test chambers. It doesn't appear that Valve issued a formal DMCA against Portal 64, but the end result is the same. In a Patreon post (which was eventually made public on X), Lambert said he had "been in communication with Valve about the future of the project. There is some news and it isn't good. Because the project depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries, they have asked me to take the project down."

I'm not fully clear on what "proprietary libraries" means here, but it seems likely that Portal 64 was developed using some variation of Nintendo's official development tools for N64, which were never officially released to the public. Open-source alternatives to those tools do exist, but might not have been in use here. [...] Given Valve's historic acceptance of fan games, the moves have been pretty shocking to the community.

Netflix has said it plans to be in gaming for years to come. Now the company is trying to figure out how to make money from it, a potential shift in strategy for the streamer. From a report: Executives at the streaming giant have had discussions in recent months about how to generate revenue from its games, according to people familiar with the discussions. Netflix games are currently free for all subscribers, part of a strategy to keep users coming back to the streaming service when their favorite shows are between seasons as well as to attract new fans.

Some of the ideas that have been discussed include in-app purchases, charging for more sophisticated games it is developing or giving subscribers to its newer ad-supported tier access to games with ads in them, the people said. Such moves would mark a pivot for Netflix, which has resisted putting ads or in-app purchases in its games. [...] Netflix encourages open debate internally on its strategy, which is a key pillar of its culture, and such discussions don't mean the company will decide to monetize games.

Programmer James Lambert has been working on a demake of Valve's Portal puzzle game for the Nintendo N64. After several years of development, Portal 64: The First Slice is now out of beta with two-thirds of the game's test chambers available to play. PC Gamer reports: In the announcement video Lambert goes through some of the new features in the latest build, including a seriously impressive visual rework on the portal gun itself. The video also showcases just how much of Portal's feel this manages to successfully capture, in particular the mind-bending effects of observing rooms and Chell through the portals themselves. I once called this the most impressive homebrew game I've ever seen and, while admittedly the N64 nostalgia helps, I'd stick by that.

While this is obviously the first slice (geddit) and there's more to come, it's an incredible achievement in its own right: The first 13 test chambers of the game all present-and-correct. Portal has 19 test chambers, and Portal: Still Alive (which unbelievably has never seen an official PC release) added a further 14, so Lambert's well on his way to completing a vanilla version of Portal 64. You can follow the Portal 64 project on YouTube and download the game here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Both of Microsoft's current Xbox consoles now have kitchen appliance counterparts. The Xbox Series S toaster recently debuted, following up the Xbox Series X refrigerator. It's available for purchase from Walmart for $39.99. In place of its ability to connect to a TV and play games, it can toast bread or bagels, imprinting the Xbox logo onto its side with its internal heat coils. The Series S toaster has a slot long enough to fit two slices of bread side by side, which I suppose can be considered multiplayer support if the bread is for two people. As with most toasters, this one has different toast browning levels, a removeable crumb tray, a bread ejection function, and automatic shutoff.