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In what essentially amounts to free money, Amazon’s selling $100 Xbox gift cards for just $90, a savings of ten percent. This deal only applies to digital codes, not physical gift cards. Additionally, only the $100 card gets the discount, so other denominations are the same price as always. The final caveat? You can only buy two at a time, but that’s nearly enough for four AAA games or a lengthy subscription to Game Pass.

The codes can be used to purchase full games, DLC, various subscriptions, in-game currency and more. You can even use them to buy controllers and other must-have Xbox accessories, so long as the products are available directly from Microsoft. Gift cards don’t go on sale often, for obvious reasons, so the deal will likely sell out before too long.

This is a suspiciously-timed deal, as the hotly-anticipated sci-fi RPGStarfield releases next week, on September 6th. In other words, a whole lot of people are going to use their brand-new gift cards to get the brand-new Bethesda adventure. There’s also a new Forza game on the horizon, in addition to Alan Wake 2 and a bevy of cross-platform titles. You’ll have no shortage of games to spend your digital cash on.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/get-a-100-xbox-gift-card-for-90-at-amazon-184600576.html?src=rss 

Volition, the studio behind the Saints Row series, has closed with immediate effect. The developer said in a statement that the shutdown was a result of restructuring at parent company Embracer Group.

“This past June, Embracer Group announced a restructuring program to strengthen Embracer and maintain its position as a leader in the video game industry,” the studio said. “As part of that program, they evaluated strategic and operational goals and made the difficult decision to close Volition effective immediately.” Volition’s workers will be offered assistance to “help smooth the transition.” The studio signed off by thanking its fans.

Volition dates back to 1993 and a company called Parallax Software Corporation. That team split a few years later, leading to the formation of Volition. THQ bought the studio in 2000. Future Embracer subsidiary Koch Media (later Plaion) snapped it up for its Deep Silver division after THQ filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

Along with the Saints Row series for which it’s best known, Volition was also behind the Descent games and the Red Faction franchise. Its final game was a 2022 Saints Row reboot. The game wasn’t especially well received, though PS Plus subscribers can claim it at no extra cost in September.

Embracer said in June that layoffs and studio closures were on the way as part of the restructuring plan. The company, which spent several years snapping up a wealth of gaming studios and the rights to many notable franchises, noted that a long-in-the-works $2 billion investment opportunity vanished at the 11th hour. Axios recently reported that the Saudi government-funded Savvy Games Group was the partner that Embracer had a verbal agreement with before the deal fell apart.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/saints-row-studio-volition-abruptly-closes-due-to-restructuring-at-embracer-group-184731175.html?src=rss 

PlayStation Portal, Sony’s $200 handheld for PS5 game streaming, is available to pre-order today before its November 15th launch. The company announced the availability details today in an update to its announcement post from last week. The upcoming device requires a PS5 and a persistent WiFi connection.

Sony markets the device as “the handheld gateway to your PS5 games.” Its eight-inch LCD screen offers 1080p visuals at 60 frames per second, and it includes haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Engadget’s Kris Holt aptly described the device’s appearance as “a bit like a tablet wedged between two halves of a DualSense controller.”

However, PlayStation Portal doesn’t support cloud streaming through PlayStation Plus Premium or similar services. Nor does it have any local apps. The device merely acts as a WiFi remote streaming controller for the PS5 you already own. However, at least it supports long-distance remote play as long as your console is up and running at home.

You can pre-order the PlayStation Portal Remote Player exclusively from Sony.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sonys-200-playstation-portal-handheld-arrives-on-november-15th-190222052.html?src=rss 

In what can only bode poorly for our species’ survival during the inevitable robot uprisings, an AI system has once again outperformed the people who trained it. This time, researchers at the University of Zurich in partnership with Intel, pitted their “Swift” AI piloting system against a trio of world champion drone racers — none of whom could best its top time.

Swift is the culmination of years of AI and machine learning research by the University of Zurich. In 2021, the team set an earlier iteration of the flight control algorithm that used a series of external cameras to validate its position in space in real-time, against amateur human pilots, all of whom were easily overmatched in every lap of every race during the test. That result was a milestone in its own right as, previously, self-guided drones relied on simplified physics models to continually calculate their optimum trajectory, which severely lowered their top speed. 

This week’s result is another milestone, not just because the AI bested people whose job is to fly drones fast, but because it did so without the cumbersome external camera arrays= of its predecessor. The Swift system “reacts in real time to the data collected by an onboard camera, like the one used by human racers,” an UZH Zurich release reads. It uses an integrated inertial measurement unit to track acceleration and speed while an onboard neural network localizes its position in space using data from the front-facing cameras. All of that data is fed into a central control unit — itself a deep neural network — which crunches through the numbers and devises a shortest/fastest path around the track. 

“Physical sports are more challenging for AI because they are less predictable than board or video games. We don’t have a perfect knowledge of the drone and environment models, so the AI needs to learn them by interacting with the physical world,” Davide Scaramuzza, head of the Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich, said in a statement.

Rather than let a quadcopter smash its way around the track for the month that its controller AI would need to slowly learned the various weaves and bobs of the circuit, the research team instead simulated that learning session virtually. It took all of an hour. And then the drone went to work against 2019 Drone Racing League champion Alex Vanover, 2019 MultiGP Drone Racing champion Thomas Bitmatta, and three-time Swiss champion, Marvin Schaepper. 

Swift notched the fastest lap overall, beating the humans by a half second, though the meatsack pilots proved more adaptable to changing conditions during the course of a race. “Drones have a limited battery capacity; they need most of their energy just to stay airborne. Thus, by flying faster we increase their utility,” Scaramuzza said. As such, the research team hopes to continue developing the algorithm for eventual use in Search and Rescue operations, as well as forest monitoring, space exploration, and in film production.    

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/an-ai-pilot-has-beaten-three-champion-drone-racers-at-their-own-game-190537914.html?src=rss 

In an unprecedented decision, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee announced on Thursday that he will allow not only a press pool, cameras and laptops to be present in the courtroom during the election interference trial of former President Donald Trump, but that the entire proceedings will be livestreamed on YouTube as well. That stream will be operated by the court.

Trump and 18 co-defendants are slated their trial on October 23rd. Tsplhey’re facing multiple racketeering charges surrounding their efforts in the state of Georgia to subvert and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, what Fulton County DA Fanni Harris describes as “a criminal enterprise” to unconstitutionally keep the disgraced politician in power. Trump has pled not guilty to all charges. 

While recording court proceedings can be an uncommon occurrence in some jurisdictions, the state of Georgia takes a far more lax approach in allowing the practice. 

“Georgia courts traditionally have allowed the media and the public in so that everyone can scrutinize how our process actually works,” Atlanta-based attorney Josh Schiffer, told Atlanta First News. “Unlike a lot of states with very strict rules, courts in Georgia are going to basically leave it up to the judges.”

For example, when Trump was arraigned in New York on alleged financial crimes, only still photography was allowed. For his Miami charges, photography wasn’t allowed at all. This means that the public will not be privy to the in-court proceedings of Trump’s federal election interference case, only the Georgia state prosecution.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/trumps-georgia-election-interference-trial-will-be-livestreamed-on-youtube-193146662.html?src=rss