Month: July 2023
Final Fantasy 14’s next expansion Dawntrail is out next year, and it’s coming to Xbox, too
Producer/director Naoki Yoshida confirmed that the fifth expansion is set to launch in Q3 2024.
Final Fantasy 14‘s next expansion will be Dawntrail, and it’s coming next year.
Revealed at this weekend’s Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival in Las Vegas, producer and director Naoki Yoshida confirmed that the fifth expansion is set to launch in summer 2024 (or Q3 2024, if you’re in the Southern hemisphere and your summer is usually in January) and bring “an abundance of fresh content”, including a boosted level cap from 90 to 100, new jobs, new areas, tribes, and dungeons.
You can see the action for yourself in the all-new teaser below:
Players can also expect to see “new core battle content” such as FATEs, Hunts, Treasure Hunts, and sidequests, as well as the stunning New World, Tural, with its capital Tuliyollal, the mountainous Urqopacha and the forest of Yak T’el.
But there’s more, too. Dawntrial also introduces the “game’s first graphical update for both character and world visuals”, including “improvement to screen-wide aesthetic appeal, higher resolution textures and shadows, and improved material qualities”.
But the best news was saved until last.
In a surprise appearance, Xbox boss Phil Spencer joined Yoshida onstage to confirm that the fan-favorite MMO is finally coming to Xbox Series X/S in Spring/Q2 2024, just in time to get the new expansion. Xbox players can expect an open beta before then, although there’s no concrete date for that just yet.
“What I really appreciate about you and your team is that you put the player in the centre of everything you do,” Spencer said to Yoshida during the presentation.
Did you hear the news that a 69-year-old Final Fantasy 14 streamer just received an in-game visit from the series’ creator?
Pokochii Bigmum was tackling the final fight in Pandaemonium Anabaseios, the latest and last raid in the current expansion, Endwalker. The 69-year-old was attempting the Savage difficulty of the raid, an extremely tough challenge that requires extreme precision and team coordination to complete.
A few hours into the stream, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi stopped by to offer words of encouragement, much to the elation of Pokochii and those watching their stream. And in case you’re wondering that it may be a case of mistaken identity (or catfishing), Sakaguchi took to Twitter to confirm it was indeed him who popped by.
★ Jackasses of the Week: TechRadar (Foldable Phones Edition)
Other basketball players could play as well as Michael Jordan, they just don’t care to do so.
Actual headline on ZDNet this week: “Apple Needs a Foldable iPhone Soon or iPhones Won’t Be Worth Buying”. Philip Berne writes:
Since I bought my iPhone 14 Pro, much cooler phones have come
along, and all of them are foldable phones. If Apple doesn’t make
a foldable iPhone soon, there won’t be any excitement left, and
Apple’s phones will be hard to recommend against the new
innovations.
The promise of a foldable device — pocketable folded, tablet-sized unfolded — is obvious. I’ve often held up the super-thin foldable tablets on Westworld as a vision for the future. But the key adjective there is “super-thin”. Double-thick foldables strike me as a niche, and today’s foldables are double-expensive, not just double-thick. Samsung’s new Fold 5, the phone that prompted Berne’s clickbait column, starts at $1,800, and offers no dust resistance, only water.
A decade ago Apple was late to the big-ass phone game. We called them “phablets” then; we call them “phones” now. Those big Android phones were selling well. In a 2013 presentation for planning the company’s 2014 strategy (which became public during discovery in the Apple v. Samsung lawsuit), Apple itself described the situation thus: “Consumers want what we don’t have.” (The first larger-screen iPhone, the iPhone 6 Plus, was announced in September 2014.)
I would wager heavily there were no “Consumers want what we don’t have” slides at Apple this year regarding foldables.
Here’s a report from Counterpoint, who seem quite bullish about foldables in the coming years:
In 2022, the foldables category occupied 1.1% of global smartphone
shipments, but it scored a vital presence in the ultra-premium
segment, taking about 7% of shipments of smartphones priced above
$800. According to Counterpoint Research’s Global Foldable
Smartphone Market Forecast, Q3 2022, the global foldable
smartphone market is expected to reach 22.7 million units in 2023.
1 percent of total phones and 7 percent of $800+ phones are not big numbers, and I find that 7 percent figure very hard to believe. Here’s a recent report from another firm, Canalys, which lists the top 15 $500+ best-selling phones in the world for Q1 2023. The only foldable on the list, in 10th place, is Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip4. Not a single book-style foldable on the list, and the Z Flip4 was only a hair ahead of the iPhone SE.
Foldables — book-style, flip-style, or both — may well become a thing, but they are not yet a thing, because the technology isn’t there yet to make them compelling. (Including simply making them dust resistant.)
Berne continues:
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is my favorite phone, and tops our best
phones list, because it does everything and more. It’s practically
a laptop computer stuffed into a phone. Apple isn’t about
stuffing. Apple is about refinement.
Doing more than everything is quite an accomplishment. I’m 110 percent surprised I haven’t heard more about this.
Apple, I’ve got good news. The iPhone is refined enough. It is
refined well beyond what other manufacturers even care to
accomplish. Other phone makers could build a phone that pays just
as much attention to detail, they just don’t care to do so. It
isn’t worth the effort or cost.
Other basketball players could play as well as Michael Jordan, they just don’t care to do so. It isn’t worth the cost or effort.
Barnes & Noble is reinventing itself, but not its e-readers
The Nook Glowlight 4e struggles to stand out, but at least it’s got buttons to turn the page. | Photo by Sheena Vasani / The Verge
The company is looking to give its stores an indie bookstore vibe, but its e-readers have more of an Amazon Kindle in the early 2010s vibe. My first e-reader wasn’t a Kindle, it was a Nook. It had a 6-inch 167 ppi E-Ink display and a tiny, terrible, but exciting LED display underneath. There was a headphone jack, wi-fi, and a music player built right in. Coming out a year before the iPad, it felt electric. It felt like Star Trek. It felt like the perfect bridge device between my smartphone and my computer. But soon Amazon turned its considerable might, and ability to subsidize its ebook business with all its other more lucrative businesses, against Barnes & Noble, and as it raced Amazon to the cheapest e-reader Barnes & Noble lost whatever identity its e-reader division was developing.
Now, years after Amazon won and Barnes & Noble lost, the company is privately held and it has a new CEO, James Daunt. Daunt was brought on in 2019 to help save the company that had been devastated by high rents on its stores, a precipitous decline in sales, and the aforementioned retail giant. Daunt’s vision for the indie bookstore killer approaches the ironic. The once giant of publishing is handing control of its stores to its managers, attempting to instill in each of its stores the independent spirit it used to quash. Wall Street Journal has a profile of the company out this week that’s a fascinating look at how Barnes & Noble is learning to compete with Amazon without cannibalizing itself in the process.
The Nook business doesn’t come up in the profile, and thats probably for the best. When you’re trying to rebrand your company as indie and cool you can’t show up with the Nook. While most e-readers are slim, with small bezels and sleek exteriors, the E-Ink part of the Nook line up looks like it stumbled out of 2012. Looking at it I feel the urge to ask the Glowlight 4 who the president is.
Image by Barnes & Noble
The Nook Glowlight 4 looks familiar…
And I don’t think it’s supposed to be this way. When Daunt launched the $149 Nook Glowlight 4 in 2021 he said that the company was looking to “reinvigorate Nook in the coming months and years.” Since than the company released four ebook-reading devices. There’s the 10-inch Android tablet made by Lenovo, that…looks like every other $130 tablet. But at least it’s got the Google Play Store on the home screen so you can choose which e-reader app you use.
Then there are the E-Ink readers. The flagship is the Nook Glowlight 4 which is a little more expensive than the Kindle and a little cheaper than the Kobo, and few features lighter than both. But it does have page turning buttons! The $99 Nook Glowlight 4e has page-turning buttons too, but sacrifices even more than the Glowlight 4 to keep its price low. Namely the quality kind of sucks. We had lots of issues with responsiveness which is probably the most frustrating sin an e-reader can commit. If I press a button to turn the page…I need the page to turn.
In September Barnes & Noble is going to try and turn things around with the $199 GlowLight 4 Plus. It’s waterproof. It’s got a headphone jack and Bluetooth. There is 32GB of onboard storage and a front-lit E-Ink display with 300ppi resolution and color temperature control. It’s not that first generation Nook from way back in 2009, but it feels more exciting than what Amazon is offering at the same price.
The problem is, like the other Nook e-readers its kind of dorky, and if you’re already in the Kindle ecosystem—which a lot of people are—there’s not a super compelling reason to switch over beyond a desire to cut the Amazon cord or because you love buttons.
Image by Barnes & Noble
You can’t see it, but this thing has a headphone jack.
The Nook lineup includes a couple of other features that should theoretically be compelling, but always come up just short. For example, you can access library books on the Nook, but keeping with the early 2010 theme of this lineup, you will need a USB cable and Adobe software. Meanwhile Overdrive can send books to your Kindle directly, and while it can be difficult to set up, Kobo has Overdrive built in.
It’s unclear how Daunt’s current “reinvigoration” of the Nook brand is going for the company financially, but from the outside I don’t see how it can be doing anything but breaking even. Anti-Amazon customers and Nook diehards who never switched can’t be that much of a market, and it also has to compete with Kobo to woo people opposed to Amazon—which analysts estimate owns between 68 and 83-percent of the ebook marketshare in the U.S.
With that kind of dominance Barnes & Noble either needs to fight over the scraps with Kobo (which is owned by Rakuten—the massive Japanese online retailer) or differentiate itself. Lackluster design and physical buttons aren’t gone be enough.
I’d love to see Amazon release an Android E-Ink tablet. These tablets are getting more popular in non-American markets where one two to companies don’t have a virtual monopoly on the e-reader space. You can buy one on Amazon or direct from the manufacturer pretty easily. I’m personally enamored with Onyx Boox and its line up of Android E-Ink tablets.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The Leaf 2 starts at $199, has page turning buttons, the Google Play Store, and a user experience that needs improvement.
The problem is the software experience isn’t always very good, and most Android applications aren’t built for E-Ink displays with their glacially slow refresh rates. This leads to a lot of friction that doesn’t exist when you use a traditional tablet or phone.
But Barnes & Noble has a lovely app experience. It could theoretically do away with a lot of that friction. Imagine an e-reader that supported the Barnes & Noble store out of the box but allowed you to also access your Kindle library, or easily check out a book from Libby, or scroll through your bookmarked articles in Pocket too.
Amazon will never build a Kindle with that flexibility—it ones you to stay right in the Amazon ecosystem. Kobo is similar. There’s a reason downloading a library books isn’t as seamless as buying a booking from the Kobo store. But Barnes & Noble is the bookseller that wants to show off its independent spirit. It wants its brick and mortar stores to express their individualism. So why not its e-readers too?
The Nook Glowlight 4e struggles to stand out, but at least it’s got buttons to turn the page. | Photo by Sheena Vasani / The Verge
The company is looking to give its stores an indie bookstore vibe, but its e-readers have more of an Amazon Kindle in the early 2010s vibe.
My first e-reader wasn’t a Kindle, it was a Nook. It had a 6-inch 167 ppi E-Ink display and a tiny, terrible, but exciting LED display underneath. There was a headphone jack, wi-fi, and a music player built right in. Coming out a year before the iPad, it felt electric. It felt like Star Trek. It felt like the perfect bridge device between my smartphone and my computer. But soon Amazon turned its considerable might, and ability to subsidize its ebook business with all its other more lucrative businesses, against Barnes & Noble, and as it raced Amazon to the cheapest e-reader Barnes & Noble lost whatever identity its e-reader division was developing.
Now, years after Amazon won and Barnes & Noble lost, the company is privately held and it has a new CEO, James Daunt. Daunt was brought on in 2019 to help save the company that had been devastated by high rents on its stores, a precipitous decline in sales, and the aforementioned retail giant. Daunt’s vision for the indie bookstore killer approaches the ironic. The once giant of publishing is handing control of its stores to its managers, attempting to instill in each of its stores the independent spirit it used to quash. Wall Street Journal has a profile of the company out this week that’s a fascinating look at how Barnes & Noble is learning to compete with Amazon without cannibalizing itself in the process.
The Nook business doesn’t come up in the profile, and thats probably for the best. When you’re trying to rebrand your company as indie and cool you can’t show up with the Nook. While most e-readers are slim, with small bezels and sleek exteriors, the E-Ink part of the Nook line up looks like it stumbled out of 2012. Looking at it I feel the urge to ask the Glowlight 4 who the president is.
Image by Barnes & Noble
The Nook Glowlight 4 looks familiar…
And I don’t think it’s supposed to be this way. When Daunt launched the $149 Nook Glowlight 4 in 2021 he said that the company was looking to “reinvigorate Nook in the coming months and years.” Since than the company released four ebook-reading devices. There’s the 10-inch Android tablet made by Lenovo, that…looks like every other $130 tablet. But at least it’s got the Google Play Store on the home screen so you can choose which e-reader app you use.
Then there are the E-Ink readers. The flagship is the Nook Glowlight 4 which is a little more expensive than the Kindle and a little cheaper than the Kobo, and few features lighter than both. But it does have page turning buttons! The $99 Nook Glowlight 4e has page-turning buttons too, but sacrifices even more than the Glowlight 4 to keep its price low. Namely the quality kind of sucks. We had lots of issues with responsiveness which is probably the most frustrating sin an e-reader can commit. If I press a button to turn the page…I need the page to turn.
In September Barnes & Noble is going to try and turn things around with the $199 GlowLight 4 Plus. It’s waterproof. It’s got a headphone jack and Bluetooth. There is 32GB of onboard storage and a front-lit E-Ink display with 300ppi resolution and color temperature control. It’s not that first generation Nook from way back in 2009, but it feels more exciting than what Amazon is offering at the same price.
The problem is, like the other Nook e-readers its kind of dorky, and if you’re already in the Kindle ecosystem—which a lot of people are—there’s not a super compelling reason to switch over beyond a desire to cut the Amazon cord or because you love buttons.
Image by Barnes & Noble
You can’t see it, but this thing has a headphone jack.
The Nook lineup includes a couple of other features that should theoretically be compelling, but always come up just short. For example, you can access library books on the Nook, but keeping with the early 2010 theme of this lineup, you will need a USB cable and Adobe software. Meanwhile Overdrive can send books to your Kindle directly, and while it can be difficult to set up, Kobo has Overdrive built in.
It’s unclear how Daunt’s current “reinvigoration” of the Nook brand is going for the company financially, but from the outside I don’t see how it can be doing anything but breaking even. Anti-Amazon customers and Nook diehards who never switched can’t be that much of a market, and it also has to compete with Kobo to woo people opposed to Amazon—which analysts estimate owns between 68 and 83-percent of the ebook marketshare in the U.S.
With that kind of dominance Barnes & Noble either needs to fight over the scraps with Kobo (which is owned by Rakuten—the massive Japanese online retailer) or differentiate itself. Lackluster design and physical buttons aren’t gone be enough.
I’d love to see Amazon release an Android E-Ink tablet. These tablets are getting more popular in non-American markets where one two to companies don’t have a virtual monopoly on the e-reader space. You can buy one on Amazon or direct from the manufacturer pretty easily. I’m personally enamored with Onyx Boox and its line up of Android E-Ink tablets.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The Leaf 2 starts at $199, has page turning buttons, the Google Play Store, and a user experience that needs improvement.
The problem is the software experience isn’t always very good, and most Android applications aren’t built for E-Ink displays with their glacially slow refresh rates. This leads to a lot of friction that doesn’t exist when you use a traditional tablet or phone.
But Barnes & Noble has a lovely app experience. It could theoretically do away with a lot of that friction. Imagine an e-reader that supported the Barnes & Noble store out of the box but allowed you to also access your Kindle library, or easily check out a book from Libby, or scroll through your bookmarked articles in Pocket too.
Amazon will never build a Kindle with that flexibility—it ones you to stay right in the Amazon ecosystem. Kobo is similar. There’s a reason downloading a library books isn’t as seamless as buying a booking from the Kobo store. But Barnes & Noble is the bookseller that wants to show off its independent spirit. It wants its brick and mortar stores to express their individualism. So why not its e-readers too?
This classic RTS has been brought back to life “to apply and operate a blockchain node”
A player claims that the classic RTS’ current iteration runs “Locus Game Chain” in the background when you’re trying to play, “demanding 80-100% of your CPU”.
Classic Korean real-time strategy game, Kingdom Under Fire, has allegedly been “hijacked by a crypto-scam company”.
As spotted by Twitterer Tegiminis, Steam player Arsene Lupin – who’s on a crusader to “write a review for every game in [their] Steam library” – posted a review on the game’s Steam page, reporting that the “future is here, and it sucks” and claiming that whilst Kingdom Under Fire “was” a “RTS/RPG hybrid that launched in 2001”, its current iteration runs “Locus Game Chain” in the background when you’re trying to play, “demanding 80-100% of your CPU”.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the developer, Bloom Technology, was quick to respond and posted a wall of text explaining there had been “a misunderstanding” and that the developer has replaced the 22-year-old’s RTS’ P2P networking system – previously known as wargate.net – with its own, Locus Chain.
kingdom under fire, a korean rts on steam that originally released in 2001, has apparently been hijacked by a crypto scam company that says the blockchain acts as the master server lol pic.twitter.com/G1YNkeGyt1July 28, 2023
“This technology will be a stepping stone and an excellent example of how online game developers, who sometimes go out of business because of high server maintenance costs, can save up tons of money and focus on building the games,” the developer said. “Old online games can be revived at no significant costs, while modern online games can significantly reduce their service maintenance costs as well.
“As far as we know, Kingdom Under Fire is the first successful attempt to apply and operate a blockchain node as part of the game, so I understand that this is as misleading as it is unprecedented. Kingdom Under Fire was launched free through Early Access because of the need to test the environment in real-time. You can see the progress we have achieved so far and the track record in the Updates section on Steam to gauge how we actually make use of this new tech.”
Interestingly, the game currently sits on an aggregate Steam user score of “Very Positive” – albeit from just 150-odd reviews – although another unhappy player surmises their issue with the game a little more concisely than Arsene Lupin, simply saying this in their review: “Blockchain go home”.
Bloom Technology says: “Kingdom Under Fire: War of Heroes utilizes Locus Game Chain to provide online multiplayer capability without the need of an online game server. The game does not support cryptocurrencies or NFTs, and has complied with all Steam’s guidelines and regulations.”
There is seemingly no mention of blockchain in the game’s About section or its system requirements.