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It’s almost that time of year again. Summer Game Fest starts on June 6. The annual kickoff stream begins at 5PM ET on that date. Yeah, we know. The time isn’t ideal for folks with regular jobs, but we’ll be in Los Angeles to cover the event in person, so you can just hit up the site for updates.

The best way to watch this is likely via the YouTube stream. After all, the event is being hosted at the YouTube Theater. There will also be a Twitch stream for the YouTube-averse.

The organizers, including host Geoff Keighley, are promising “spectacular new video game announcements, surprises and reveals.” I like all three of those things. We don’t know that much about what games will be discussed during the two-hour event, but we aren’t going in totally blind.

The stream will feature a new look at Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, which is a nifty-looking Soulslike action RPG. The open-world MMORPG Chrono Odyssey (no relation to Chrono Trigger) is also making an appearance.

There’s also the Kojima of it all. This event is taking place just a couple of weeks before we get our hands on the long-anticipated Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. The legendary game creator will be on-hand to discuss the title during a dedicated event on June 8, but maybe he’ll pop up at the kickoff to give viewers a peek at whatever else he’s been working on.

However, the kickoff stream is just the beginning. The weekend is host to the Day of the Devs showcase, the Devolver Direct, Wholesome Direct and really so much more.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/how-to-watch-summer-game-fests-kickoff-stream-193047735.html?src=rss 

The hugely popular first-person shooter game Valorant is getting some long-awaited upgrades as the game approaches its 5-year anniversary. In the latest dev update, the Valorant team announced the long-anticipated replay feature. They’ll function about the same as replays in other online shooters like Counter-Strike 2, allowing players to revisit their previous matches and watch them from the perspective of any player in the game or from a free-roaming camera. Replays will initially launch on PC with patch 11.06 in September and will come to consoles later in the year.

After initially developing and updating the game in Unreal Engine 4 for more than ten years, the dev team announced a port to Unreal Engine 5 with patch 11.02 around the end of July. The Valorant devs say this will bring higher frame rates and faster future patch downloads without changing the current gameplay feel. In their video update, the team teased that moving to Unreal 5 will enable a whole host of possibilities in the future.

Competitive players will take particular note of new anti-smurfing initiatives. Smurfing is the practice of higher-ranked players using lower-ranked accounts to gain a competitive advantage by playing against players far below their skill level. In an attempt to further curb this behavior, Valorant will be asking suspicious accounts to complete multi-factor authentication and is exploring requiring it on all competitive accounts. These guardrails will launch later this year with more details to come. Additionally, users who wish to report other players for smurfing can now select a specific “Rank/Matchmaking Abuse” category to help the better identify those accounts.

The update also showcased some gameplay balancing measures involving character abilities, teased a new competitive map and highlighted the team’s vision for the future of Valorant in esports.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/valorant-is-finally-adding-replays-and-upgrading-to-unreal-engine-5-173931808.html?src=rss 

Wholesome Direct, an annual showcase of cute and cozy games, is coming back on Saturday, June 7 at 12PM ET. This is a live event that can be streamed via the official YouTube page or Twitch account. The organizers promise to show off “a vibrant lineup of artistic, uplifting, and emotionally resonant games from developers of all sizes from around the world.”

The YouTube stream link is already available, so feel free to bookmark this page and come back on June 7 just in time for the show. Last year’s stream was a whole lot of fun. One of the cool things about Wholesome Direct is that the organizers typically make several games available for download immediately after the event, though we don’t know which ones will get that sort of VIP treatment this year.

We only know a few of the games that will be covered during the event. There’s an adorable puzzle game called Is This Seat Taken? that tasks players with positioning cute little characters on a bus, in a waiting room or at a restaurant. This one’s actually being released by the event’s publishing arm, Wholesome Games Presents. Another title is called MakeRoom and reminds me of the indie hit Unpacking, but with a focus on designing the perfect room and sharing that creation with friends.

The mobile game Usagi Shima is coming to Steam and is getting a prime spot at Wholesome Direct. This title has players transforming a barren island to make it hospitable to lovable bunnies. Minami Lane is already out for Switch, but is also coming to Steam and will be featured during the livestream. It’s a town management sim that focuses on one street at a time. It’s also extremely easy on the eyes.

Last year’s stream discussed over 30 titles. That leaves plenty of room for cozy surprises. Also, the showcase falls right in the middle of Summer Game Fest, which hosts a group of loosely-affiliated events that begin on June 6.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/how-to-watch-the-wholesome-direct-showcase-on-june-7-at-12pm-et-181249575.html?src=rss 

A lot of people (not least Engadget’s own Sam Rutherford) have been asking Microsoft to make an Xbox-branded handheld for a long time. And it looked for a while like we might be getting exactly that in the not-so distant future. But Microsoft’s priorities have reportedly shifted to improving the widely criticised performance of Windows 11 on existing third-party PC gaming handhelds.

In an exclusive report, Windows Central claims that a dedicated Xbox handheld system, which could have launched in 2027 alongside the successor to the Xbox Series X, isn’t the company’s main area of focus right now, even if it remains keen on the idea. An internally developed handheld, for which Windows Central’s Jez Corden says he has seen a number of different codenames, is not currently being worked on, and he adds that no layoffs have taken place as a result of the strategic shift.

While a native Xbox device might be some way off, the report makes clear that Microsoft is still very much active in the handheld market. A third-party console that it has been working on with ASUS, codenamed “Project Kennan”, is still targeting a 2025 launch. It’s likely this device, which could be equipped with AMD’s Z2 Extreme chip, will ship with an improved Windows 11 experience better suited to a controller interface.

The software’s awkward integration in early iterations of PC handhelds like the Lenovo Legion Go and ASUS ROG Ally has been a big problem, and it’s partly why people are so excited about the SteamOS experience no longer being exclusive to the Steam Deck. The Lenovo Legion Go S started shipping with SteamOS running out of the box this week, the first handheld not made by Valve to do so.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/we-might-not-be-getting-that-handheld-xbox-for-some-time-153844220.html?src=rss 

Chaos ensued on German roads this week after Google Maps wrongly informed drivers that highways throughout the country were closed during a busy holiday. Many of the apparently closed roads were located near large German cities and metropolitan areas, including Berlin, Düsseldorf and Dortmund.

As reported by a locally based journalist for The Guardian, drivers opening Google’s navigation app would see a swarm of red dots used to indicate no-go areas, which resulted in people looking for alternative routes that caused traffic pile-ups nationwide. The Guardian also reported that police and local authorities were contacted by people confused (and presumably pretty annoyed) about the supposed standstill.

To compound the issue, the Google Maps error coincided with the beginning of Germany’s Ascension Day public holiday on May 29, which meant the roads were even busier than usual.

The problem reportedly only lasted for a few hours and by Thursday afternoon only genuine road closures were being displayed. It’s not clear whether Google Maps had just malfunctioned, or if something more nefarious was to blame. “The information in Google Maps comes from a variety of sources. Information such as locations, street names, boundaries, traffic data, and road networks comes from a combination of third-party providers, public sources, and user input,” a spokesperson for Google told German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost, adding that it is internally reviewing the problem. “In general, these sources provide a strong foundation for comprehensive and up-to-date maps.”

Technical issues with Google Maps are not uncommon. Back in March, users were reporting that their Timeline — which keeps track of all the places you’ve visited before for future reference — had been wiped, with Google later confirming that some people had indeed had their data deleted, and in some cases, would not be able to recover it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-maps-falsely-told-drivers-in-germany-that-roads-across-the-country-were-closed-134026943.html?src=rss 

This week we’re fielding your burning tech questions, as well as diving into a bunch of AI web browser news. Opera has started testing its fully agentic AI browser, the Browser Company is dumping the Arc browser in favor of something AI related and Mozilla is getting in a bit of hot water with experimental AI preview summaries. Try as we might, we just can’t escape AI.

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Topics

Listener Mailbag: How to set up an Xbox account for your kids, will screens be obsolete, and more – 1:34

Web browsers go AI ‘agentic’: The Browser Company leaves Arc behind. Opera and Firefox debut new features – 25:37

xAI is paying Telegram $300m this year to use Grok – 54:04

Apple’s self repair program extends to iPads – 56:30

Apple might switch its OS numbering next year, iOS26 could be on the way – 58:57

Working on – 1:02:41

Pop culture picks – 1:09:26

Credits 

Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Ben Ellman
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/engadget-podcast-who-needs-an-ai-web-browser-124547429.html?src=rss