Following recent tests, Amazon is finally ready to launch its Project Kuiper space internet project in a bid to rival Elon Musk's Starlink, the company announced. The first batch of 27 satellites on the KA-01 (Kuiper Atlas 1) mission are set to launch into low earth orbit (LEO) aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on April 9th next week from Cape Canaveral if conditions allow. Amazon hopes to start offering the high-speed internet service "later this year," it said.
Amazon's network will eventually comprise 3,200 satellites launched from partners including ULA, Arianespace, Blue Origin and even SpaceX. Much like that company's Starlink, Project Kuiper's service will cover the entire planet when completed. It will work with a dish as small as seven inches that will deliver speeds up to 100Mbps, smaller than Starlink's Mini, or up to 1Gbps with larger dishes. The company said the cost of terminals will be under $400.
The satellites will cruise at 17,000 mph at 392 miles above earth, circling the planet in about 90 minutes. They'll use a dialectic mirror film coating that's supposed to scatter light and make them less visible to ground-based astronomers, Amazon said. SpaceX's constellation currently uses over 7,000 satellites, so the Project Kuiper and Starlink fleet will use over 10,000 LEO satellites once Amazon's network is complete.
Amazon
Amazon launched two test satellites in October 2023 and proclaimed its early tests a success, with the pair sending and retrieving data at speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second. Later in December, it bolstered the network with a network of high-speed laser cross-links that promise further speed boosts. The company claims its mesh network can move data about 30 percent faster than terrestrial fiber optic cables.
Project Kuipers first launch will be the heaviest payload yet for the Atlas V, which will fly in its most powerful configuration. The rocket will include five solid rocket boosters in addition to the main booster, and a payload fairing 77 feet high and 16.4 feet wide.
Despite past successful tests, the mission isn't without risk. "Weve done extensive testing on the ground to prepare for this first mission, but there are some things you can only learn in flight, and this will be the first time weve flown our final satellite design and the first time weve deployed so many satellites at once," Project Kuiper vice president Rajeev Badyal wrote. "No matter how the mission unfolds, this is just the start of our journey, and we have all the pieces in place to learn and adapt as we prepare to launch again and again over the coming years."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/amazon-will-start-launching-its-project-kuiper-starlink-rival-next-week-123011012.html?src=rss
After years of lagging behind rivals when it comes to video capture (and then suddenly buying cinema camera manufacturer RED), Nikon is pushing new boundaries in that area. Its latest salvo is the $1,699 24-megapixel full-frame Z5 II, perhaps the cheapest mirrorless camera so far to support internal RAW video. It also offers improved autofocus with new AI powers, cleaner images and enhanced image stabilization.
The Z5 II is a wholesale remake of the original Z5 and that starts with video. While still limited to 4K 30 fps and cropped 4K 60 fps, it can now capture those formats internally using the company's 12-bit N-RAW format with N-log, along with 10-bit H.265 and 8-bit H.264. Interestingly, it will record in N-RAW to SDXC UHS-II cards, since the camera lacks high-speed CFexpress slots. That likely means you'll need to buy very fast (and expensive) cards and that the N-RAW video will be highly compressed. Still, it's a feature available on no other camera in this price range.
Nikon
Nikon is also promising much-improved autofocus bolstered by a new image-processing engine and tech borrowed from its high-end Z9 and Z8 models. The Z5 II can now lock onto subjects more quickly, particularly human eyes, faces and bodies, and works in lower light down to -10 EV, compared to -3 EV before. Meanwhile, the AI system can detect up to nine subject types ranging from animals (including a Bird Detection mode) to bicycles. When working in Auto-Area AF, these subjects can be detected, focused on, and tracked automatically.
Native ISOs have been boosted to 100-64000 (50-204,800 in expanded modes), up from a maximum 51,200 before. That should improve noise levels across the ISO ranges, the company said. However, resolution is still limited to 24 megapixels.
Nikon
In-body stabilization has been boosted to 7.5 stops with supported lenses, way up from five stops on the Z5. That's paired with electronic stabilization designed to keep handheld video steady.
The Z5 II's viewfinder still offers a decent 3.69-million dots of resolution, but brightness has been boosted to 3,000 nits with 13 levels of brightness control. And it now comes with a 1.7-million-dot vari-angle display that's a big improvement from the previous model's tilt-only screen. The body now has a deeper grip to improve handling and comes with a one-touch Picture Control button for previewing and switching between color profiles in real time, matching a recent trend started by Fujifilm's X100 VI.
Other features including dual SD UHS-II card slots, 3.5mm headphone and mic jacks, camera to cloud connectivity via Nikon's Imaging Cloud and a new weather-proof build "on par with the Z6 III," according to Nikon.
The Z5 II looks to be an impressive hybrid full-frame camera for the money and rivals Sony and Canon don't really have anything in the same price range that can match it. However, it also comes at a price $300 higher than the Z5 was at launch. Still, it could tempt filmmakers and others away from similarly priced crop sensor cameras from the likes of Fujifilm and Sony. The Z5 II is now on pre-order for $1,699 (body only) or $1,999 with a 24-50mm f/4-6.3 kit lens.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/nikons-z5-ii-is-the-cheapest-full-frame-camera-yet-with-internal-raw-video-113041486.html?src=rss
Healthcare provider Akido Labs is bringing AI-powered medical care directly to New York City's busy ride-share drivers, addressing a critical gap in access for gig workers who often skip seeing a doctor to avoid losing income. The Los Angeles-based company will deploy its ScopeAI technology, which suggests diagnoses and treatments based on patients' symptoms and medical histories, with human doctors reviewing and making final decisions. The Wall Street Journal reports that Akido trained its model with historical data gathered from actual patient visits.Partnering with the Independent Drivers Guild and Workers Benefit Fund, Akido plans to position employees equipped with ScopeAI in strategic locations throughout New York. Appointments facilitated by the technology typically last 30-45 minutes, with certified medical assistants gathering patient information prompted by the AI system. The initiative aims to deliver "whole person care" addressing physical, behavioral and social health factors for drivers whose demanding schedules often exceeding 10 hours a day make traditional healthcare access challenging.
The Switch 2 is bigger, more powerful and more expensive than the original Switch, but the tech specs for the new console reveal at least one key way it's worse: The Switch 2's battery life is shorter.
Nintendo says that battery life on the Switch 2 varies depending on the game you play, but that it estimates the console should last approximately "2 6.5 hours." That's notably shorter than the battery life you'll get out of a current Switch or Switch OLED, based on the company's support page. Nintendo estimates that a Switch OLED "with a serial number that starts with 'XT'" should last around "4.5 to 9 hours." Non-OLED Switch consoles "with a serial number that starts with 'XK'" are expected to last the same amount of time. Even the original Switch, which has "a serial number that starts with 'XA'," gets a minimum of 2.5 hours of battery life. Apparently, the extra power of the Switch 2 comes with a price.
Nintendo's tech specs confirm a few other notable details. The Switch 2 supports Wi-Fi 6, which should mean you'll get faster internet speeds when the console isn't docked and connected over ethernet. Based on Nintendo's guarantee that the console "supports 120 fps when 1920x1080/2560x1440 resolutions are selected," it seems like the Switch 2 won't support HDMI 2.1.
As far as controllers are concerned, Amiibo support remains, but if you have special place in your heart for the Wii-esque motion controls you could use on the original Switch, it looks like you're out of luck on the Switch 2. Neither the left or right Joy-Con 2 controllers have an IR sensor, one of the ways Nintendo tracked motion on the Wii and Switch. That doesn't mean you can't use motion controls on the Switch 2, just that Nintendo isn't using IR to make them work. (At least in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, it seems like "mouse control" fills the role motion controls used to on older games.)
Do any of these changes dramatically alter the calculus on whether the Switch 2 is worth buying? Maybe not, but it is interesting to see some of the compromises and decisions Nintendo made to offer what is effectively "the Switch, but better."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-switch-2s-battery-life-is-shorter-than-the-current-switch-211753028.html?src=rss
In 2002, Microsoft launched Xbox Live with built-in voice chat as one of the main selling points of the then new service. Now, nearly 25 years later, Nintendo is finally giving its fans an easy way to talk to their friends online over a friendly match of Mario Kart World.
Considering some of the solutions Nintendo has offered in the past, GameChat is surprisingly elegant. A tap of the Switch 2's new C button, conveniently located below the Home button on the right Joy-Con, brings up a dedicated interface that allows you to quickly start screensharing, mute and unmute your mic and, if you decide to buy the optional Switch 2 Camera, enable video.
What's more, the Switch 2 has a built-in mic. We'll need to test the handheld to see how well the microphone performs in a noisy environment; Nintendo touted its noise-reduction features in today's introduction. But if nothing else, kudos to Nintendo for realizing it couldn't release a new console in 2025 without voice chat built-in and making that feature standard on all models.
However, if the demo Nintendo showed off today is any indication of the final product, the company has some work to do. Voice chat looks like it works well enough, with users allowed to invite up to 11 other people to join their conversation. That said, screen sharing and video chat look very rough.
When everyone in the video started streaming their gameplay, it looked like the games were running at less than 30 frames per second, making it difficult to see how it would be possible to use the feature to guide a friend through a tricky section, like Nintendo suggested in the demo. Video chat was equally janky, with the footage from the Switch 2 Camera looking like something captured by a webcam from the mid-aughts. Moreover, if you want to see your friend's screen, there's an additional tradeoff.
Nintendo showed off three different interface options, with two of them devoting a fair amount of screen space to tiles for your friends. I imagine this won't be a problem if you're playing on a TV, but even on the Switch 2's large 7.9-inch screen, the interface looks like it could get cramped fast.
To Nintendo's credit, the company has thought a lot about parental controls, with features that allow parents and guardians to decide who their kids can chat with online and if they can join a session with video. But the thing is none of GameChats capabilities are new. They've existed in apps like Discord for years, which begs the question why some of them look so rough this close to launch.
Nintendo has time between now and June 5 to polish GameChat, but in 2025, making a technically competent chat app shouldn't be so hard. Of course, I imagine most of the Switch 2's audience won't care if some of GameChat's features are half-baked. For the rest of us, the company plans to offer the feature for free until the end of March 2026. One would hope that's enough time for the company to catch up on two decades worth of progress in online gaming.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/gamechat-is-decades-late-and-looks-pretty-janky-202309823.html?src=rss
Sonos has given two of its audio products price cuts. The Era 100 smart speaker and Ray soundbar now retail for $199. The change offers new customers a $50 savings for the Era 100 and $80 on the Ray. Both speakers would frequently show up on sale, but Sonos has confirmed that this is a permanent pricing change for the products.
These items have been available for a few years, so the price drop might signal that a refresh is in store for both. When it debuted in 2023, the Era 100 was an upgrade on the Sonos One, bringing overhauled touch controls and even better audio quality to the same cylindrical form factor. At $200, it's now selling for what the Sonos One cost, making it a solid choice for a home speaker. The Ray came out in 2022, offering a solid home theater performance without the most high-end audio or accompanying high-end price tag.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/sonos-cut-retail-prices-for-its-era-100-speaker-and-ray-soundbar-201049055.html?src=rss
It seems fitting that Nintendo didnt reveal the Switch 2s $450 price during its Direct stream this morning it would have just bummed everyone out. After spending an hour hearing about how the Switch 2 practically fixes almost every problem we had with the original console, and seeing teasers for exciting games like Mario Kart World, why spoil the good vibes with the harsh reality of market economics? Instead, Nintendo revealed the consoles price in the lowliest of media communications: A simple press release.
My first reaction was shock. $450 for a mostly portable console? Thats the same retail price as the PlayStation 5, a system thats also currently on sale for $400 together with Astro-Bot. Sure, the Switch 2 is vastly superior to the original Switch, but it likely doesnt have PS5-level hardware. The price jump is also surprising since the original Switch launched at $300 in 2017. Can you imagine we thought the $350 Switch OLED was too high-priced?
Unfortunately, its not 2017. NVIDIA now has mid-range GPUs selling for upwards of $600, the cost of almost every product has gone up, and massive companies like Nintendo are bracing for the potential impact of the Trump administrations long-threatened tariffs.
A $450 Switch 2 is expensive, Im not denying that. But in the current economic landscape, I would hesitate to call it too expensive.
Nintendo
Consider this: The Switch 2 is just $50 more than the cheapest Steam Deck, a portable PC gaming handheld with significantly slower hardware, a smaller and lower quality (7-inch, 1280 by 800, 60Hz) screen, and a much bulkier frame. The Switch 2, meanwhile, is just as thin as the original model, it has a 7.9-inch 1080p screen that can run up to 120fps with HDR, and its powerful enough to play games at up to 4K/60fps while docked. Based on the games weve seen so far, the Switch 2 seems surprisingly powerful for its size.
The Switch 2 also improves on its controls with the Joy-Con 2, which now magnetically attach to the consoles, feature larger analog sticks and can also work as mice across a variety of services. You wont be removing the Steam Decks controls without the use of a small saw. And Ive yet to see a handheld PC maker deliver removable controls that are as comfortable and easy to use as the original Switch (that means you, Lenovo). Nintendos original Joy-Con were far from perfect, but they did the job, and Id wager the company has learned enough to make the Joy-Con 2f even better.
Nintendo
And while you can technically dock other PC gaming handhelds, they wont see the performance upgrade Nintendo is claiming with the Switch 2. The company says its new console can reach up to 4K/60fps for some titles, thanks to an additional fan in the dock. We dont know exactly whats powering the Switch 2 yet, so Nintendo could be drastically overselling its capabilities. But given how seamless docking worked on the first Switch (where it also delivered a bit of a performance upgrade, sans an additional fan), its also something I think Nintendo has optimized more than PC companies, who are only just now dipping their toes into portable gaming.
Maybe Im just trying to justify my own purchases (I just realized Ill probably need a second Switch 2 for my kid), but I just cant get too angry about a $450 Switch 2. If we see many more $80 games like Mario Kart World, though, we should absolutely riot in the streets.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/is-the-450-nintendo-switch-2-too-expensive-195750206.html?src=rss
The Nintendo Switch 2 had its big debut on Wednesday, and the new console looks to be a sizable, if mostly straightforward, upgrade over its mega-popular predecessor. Tucked between the new Donkey Kong and (pricier) Mario Kart games, mouse mode and overhauled party chat features, though, was another significant update: The device supports faster microSD Express cards. This may not be the sexiest feature, but it should bring quicker load times and generally improved storage performance to the upcoming handheld. The company briefly showed new 256GB cards from Samsung and SanDisk during its presentation, complete with Mario logos printed on.
However, the news came with a major caveat: The console is only compatible with microSD Express. The cards most people use today which are based on the older UHS-I bus interface will only work for loading videos and screenshots from an original Switch, not playing games, according to Nintendos support site. Nintendo says this restriction is necessary to preserve the Switch 2s performance upgrades, and its worth noting that the console itself comes with a much more generous 256GB of space by default. But if you ever need to expand the devices storage, this change will likely make doing so cost extra, while drastically shrinking the options you have to choose from.
Unlike traditional UHS-I cards, a microSD Express card like the SanDisk model on the right comes with a second row of pins on the back.
Jeff Dunn for Engadget
What are microSD Express cards?
SD Express is a relatively recent but seldom-used standard that lets SD cards take advantage of the NVMe protocol and PCIe interface, which is the underlying tech used by SSDs. A microSD Express card has a second row of pins on its back and can utilize a single lanes worth of PCIe bandwidth. As a result, it can produce dramatically faster read and write speeds than its UHS-I counterparts. Whereas the latter advertise sequential transfer rates up to 104 megabytes per second (MB/s), microSD Express cards have a theoretical maximum of 985 MB/s.
Thats far behind the NVMe SSDs used by the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but in theory, it makes Express cards faster than some older SATA-based SSDs when it comes to loading game levels, retrieving saves or copying games to the external storage. Its worth noting that many UHS-I microSD cards can exceed the 104 MB/s limit with proprietary card readers, but they still fall well short of microSD Express levels even with those. The same goes for speedier UHS-II cards, which are mostly used by professional types with select cameras and PCs and max out at 312 MB/s. (Theres also a UHS-III interface, but nobody uses it. Getting all of this?)
Prior to Wednesday, the only reliably available microSD Express card we could find was this model from SanDisk. We recently tested it for our microSD card buying guide, and the upgrade was pretty dramatic. In the synthetic benchmark CrystalDiskMark, the SanDisk card achieved sequential reads up to 899.12 MB/s and sequential writes up to 650.41 MB/s. For comparison, the absolute fastest UHS-I card weve tested (Lexars Professional Silver Plus) topped out at 209.25 MB/s for reads and 193.93 MB/s for writes so, three to four times slower.
In one of our real-world tests, the SanDisk Express card took an average of 20 seconds to move a 12GB foder containing various file types and subfolders to a PC and 52 seconds to write the folder back to the card. The Lexar card averaged 67 and 76 seconds, respectively. The gulf in random speeds which measure how quickly a card can read and write small bits of data scattered throughout a device and tend to be particularly important for gaming was similarly large, and in some benchmarks even greater.
SanDisk's microSD Express card is one of the (very) few options you can actually buy today.
Jeff Dunn for Engadget
Nintendo has not provided any official transfer speed ratings for the new console just yet, but all of this suggests that the Switch 2s storage should be much faster than before, even if its not on par with the speeds of a PS5 or Xbox Series X. Its also possible that, like those other consoles, the Switch 2 has hardware dedicated to decompressing files, which could make the real-world improvements over the original Switchs storage performance even greater. (Weve reached out to Nintendo and will update this post if we receive any further details.)
The original SD Express standard was released in 2018, but the tech has mostly gone nowhere in the years since. Theres been the SanDisk card noted above, a full-size SD card from ADATA and not much else. Previously, Samsung and Lexar announced microSD Express cards that wound up missing their original release windows though Samsungs card may just be the same one unveiled today, and Lexar did release a new Play Pro microSD Express card on Wednesday.
Host devices that support the standard, which are required to even see any improved speeds, have been highly uncommon over the same time frame. (If you put a microSD Express card in a device that doesnt support the underlying tech, such as the original Switch, itll be limited to standard UHS-I speeds.) And while compatible card readers can deliver the faster transfer rates on certain PCs, they arent cheap, so at that point most people have been better off buying a faster external SSD.
The SD Association pointed us to a LinkedIn page (!) with other compatible devices when reached for comment, but the pickings are still slim, and very few of those support microSD Express cards specifically. The Switch 2 is by far the highest-profile device to embrace the standard, so it could be the thing that finally takes these cards from cool idea to useful niche.
The Samsung and SanDisk microSD Express cards Nintendo quickly teased during its Switch 2 unveiling on Wednesday.
Nintendo
Questions of price and heat
That said, there are multiple reasons why SD Express has failed to take off before this week, and it remains to be seen whether the Switch 2 will truly fix them. First and foremost is price. Weve reached out to SanDisk and Samsung for confirmation, but for now wedont know how much the microSD Express cards that Nintendo has teased will cost. If the couple other Express models available today are any indication, though, theyre likely to be much more expensive than the conventional cards you may have bought for the previous Switch.
SanDisks Express card, for instance, costs $45 for a 128GB model and $60 for the 256GB version. The 256GB Lexar Play Pro is $10 cheaper, but its 512GB and 1TB versions cost a whopping $100 and $200, respectively. For reference, Samsungs Pro Plus another UHS-I card we recommend in our buying guide costs $17 for 128GB, $23 for 256GB, $38 for 512GB and $80 for 1TB as of this writing. Thats a huge difference.
Whats more, the Play Pro is the only purchasable microSD Express card weve seen thus far that even supports capacities greater than 256GB. Nintendo says the console can support up to 2TB of external storage, but no Express card with that capacity appears to exist yet. The Switch 2 will be one of the first mainstream devices to truly push SD Express in earnest, so wed expect itll drive prices down and increase competition over time. But how quickly, and by how much, remains up in the air.
Nintendo
The other concern relates to thermal management. MicroSD Express cards can pump out significantly faster transfer speeds, but theyre still working with tiny little frames that dont leave much room to dissipate heat. When we tested SanDisks microSD Express model for our guide, we noticed that it slowed down under longer, more sustained loads not enough to fall behind than UHS-I cards, but still below its peak by a few hundred MB/s.
The SD Express spec does have mechanisms for keeping heat in check, and manufacturers like SanDisk advertise similar protections. Nintendo presumably has come up with ways to further avoid severe throttling with the Switch 2. (We already know that the new dock comes with a cooling fan built in, for instance.) But itll be something to keep an eye on once we can move large game files around the device.
In a developer Q&A posted to Nintendos website on Wednesday, Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto notes that the move to microSD Express will help the consoles performance hold up better in the long-term. With the new Mario Kart World, for instance, he says the faster transfer speeds will help make far-off destinations in the games open world visible faster. He also notes that Switch 2 games will have larger file sizes, but that he doubt[s] most people will need a microSD Express card immediately after buying the system thanks to the Switch 2s larger built-in capacity.
Hopefully thats the case. Itd be unfair to call this a PlayStation Vita situation, as that portable console relied solely on proprietary memory cards, and the Switch 2 will support options from several third-party manufacturers. But as it stands now, storage upgrades for the new console look like theyll be much pricier and more limited to start. And just how much of an advantage the new tech provides is something we wont know until the console arrives in June.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-nintendo-switch-2-promises-major-storage-upgrades-but-itll-cost-you-193758964.html?src=rss
Hear me out. I too rolled my eyes when A Minecraft Movie was announced. We're all tired of seeing Jack Black in video game movies he was fine in Super Mario Bros., but good god Borderlands was a disaster. And the Minecraft film's trailers did it no favors, another soulless movie produced on a virtual set about a game that's completely open-ended and plotless. But it turns out A Minecraft Movie is actually good.
Honestly, I'm as surprised as you are.
A Minecraft Movie isn't exactly groundbreaking, to be clear. It certainly never reaches the heights of The Lego Movie. But it's surprisingly funny for a children's movie, and it delivers a decent message about championing creativity in a world that wants to beat down free-thinking non-conformists. And if you were around for the inexplicable Napoleon Dynamite craze of the mid-2000's, you'll notice plenty of that film's quirky sensibility from director Jared Hess.
From the beginning, A Minecraft Movie seems well aware of the ridiculousness of its own existence. The story starts off with Jack Black's Steve (dressed just like the game's default skin) retelling his obsession with "the mines," and his inability to go digging while he was a kid. He later grows up, gets a boring office job and remembers his erstwhile calling to make holes in the earth. Once he makes his way into a cave, he stumbles into a portal that brings him to the blocky "Overworld" of the Minecraft universe. It's classic isekai stuff the genre of anime where the main character is transported to another (often digital) world.
And yes, I know all of this sounds incredibly contrived as I write this, but Black's zaniness really sells the absurdity of the film. It's as if he's saying out loud, "Yes, I know the idea of a Minecraft movie is beyond dumb, but at least you get to spend time with me in classic Jack Black mode!" Now if you're tired of his schtick, that may be a major knock against the film. But for me, it was a nice reminder of his Tenacious D days.
Warner Bros.
The film eventually focuses on two siblings, Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers), who are moving to a small Midwestern town after the death of their mother. Natalie is gearing up for a social media producer role at a local business, while Henry is forced to adapt to a new school. Coincidentally, a former gaming superstar lives in their town, Jason Mamoa's Garret "The Garbageman" Garrison, who befriends Henry as another outcast. Danielle Brooks' Dawn, a struggling local realtor/mobile zookeeper, ends up taking Natalie under her wing after seeing how much she's sacrificing for her brother.
Inevitably, thanks to a glowing MacGuffin, those four characters also stumble into the same portal that sent Steve to the Overworld. They quickly run into Steve, break their glowing MacGuffin and then head off to find a way to fix it and return home. If any of this sounds boring, don't worry, it's not really important. What works best in A Minecraft Movie is the humor and personality Hess stuffs in between the trappings of a big budget Hollywood game adaptation.
Warner Bros.
The majority of the film hinges on Jack Black's persona, but I also enjoyed seeing Jason Mamoa play an egotistical manchild who's in love with video games. He's decked out in an absurd wig and hot pink jacket, and Mamoa hams it up just as well as he did Fast X. He's a jerk at times, but he's also kind to Henry and clearly doesn't care what anyone thinks of his personal style. The rest of the cast mostly plays it straight against the force of Black and Mamoa's personalities, but they each get a few moments to shine.
Whenever the core story starts to fall flat, A Minecraft Movie veers into more interesting territory, like a hapless Minecraft villager who stumbles into the real world. For those who don't play the game, villagers are simple NPC who can't speak, and often find themselves in danger. I got a kick out of seeing him navigate traffic and have a meet-cute with Jennifer Coolidge's Vice Principal Marlene, a relationship that gets weirder than you'd think. (Again, it's like something straight out of Napoleon Dynamite.)
Warner Bros.
Im no Minecraft devotee, but I wish the films interpretation of the games blocky graphics were a bit more pixelated. While the characters and animals we see resemble their game counterparts, their over-designed look clashes with the beautiful simplicity of Minecrafts aesthetics. Im sure its tough to unite the low-poly look with live action, while also delivering polished CG that audiences expect, but the path A Minecraft Movie took just feels over-cooked. That being said, the films game world seems more alive than the empty virtual sets in Quantumania. There are tons of characters milling about, and the environments all feel distinctly Minecraft.
The kids in my press screening didnt seem to mind the shift in visual language. They loved seeing the games creatures in any form a family of pandas got a theater-wide awww. And they also loved seeing in-game Minecraft tricks represented on the big screen, like using a water block to cushion a fall.
My daughter Sophias verdict? I liked it, but I dont think Id want to see it again, she said. But I know shes lying. Well likely end up seeing this thing hundreds of times at home, and even more so once her brother jumps aboard the Minecraft bandwagon. I wont mind, though. As far as kids movies go, its a world I wouldnt mind revisiting.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a-minecraft-movie-review-its-good-actually-190035499.html?src=rss
Following its big Switch 2 presentation, Nintendo revealed in an interview with the team behind the console that one of the (arguably better) names the company was considering before it landed on Switch 2 was "Super Nintendo Switch."
"There were a lot of ideas for the name, and we really struggled to find the right one," Kouichi Kawamato, the producer on the Switch 2, says. "We even considered ideas like 'Super Nintendo Switch.'" The issue with the name was that even though drawing a parallel to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was fun, it was also potentially confusing. The SNES was the successor to the NES, but it couldn't play NES games. "Since Switch 2 can play Switch games, it didn't feel right to use the same naming convention as Super NES."
Adding a number to the end of the original console's name (the general strategy Nintendo's competitor Sony has taken with the PlayStation) just made things a lot simpler and easier to understand. Nintendo's caution isn't totally unfounded. The Wii U was more powerful than the Wii and featured a unique controller in the Wii U GamePad. Because it's name was so similar to Nintendo's older console, it was backwards compatible with the Wii and it supported pre-existing accessories like Wii Remotes, though, it was viewed as an add-on rather than a new device worth upgrading to.
There were other problems that helped do the Wii U in, like a steep decline in support from third-party game developers and a failure on Nintendo's part to explain what made the console distinct, but the name certainly didn't help. The Switch 2 is much better set up for success than the Wii U, but "sticking to what works" seems like the defining idea of the new console, so the name is following suit.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-switch-2-was-almost-called-the-super-nintendo-switch-184243089.html?src=rss
