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You can strike one game off of the busy fall 2024 calender. Ubisoft has delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows until February 14. It was originally supposed to hit PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Mac and iPad on November 15. You can probably guess the main reason why Ubisoft is pushing the latest entry in the saga back by a few months. While all of the features are largely set, the company needs more time to iterate on them and to polish the game as a whole. "We understand this decision will come as disappointing news, especially to those who've been waiting patiently for an Assassin's Creed game inspired by Feudal Japan, but we sincerely believe this is in the best interest of the game, and ultimately your experience as a player," Assassin's Creed executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté wrote in a statement on X. Assassin's Creed Shadows will now release February 14, 2025. pic.twitter.com/J2ah7kkytW Assassin's Creed (@assassinscreed) September 25, 2024 In a financial statement [PDF], Ubisoft said it made the call to delay Assassin's Creed Shadows partly because of what it learned from the release of Star Wars Outlaws. One of the main criticisms levied against that game is that it had too many punishing stealth sequences, especially in the early goings. Ubisoft has rolled out some changes to make those parts of the game less onerous. Ubisoft confirmed that despite positive reviews, the initial sales of Star Wars Outlaws "proved softer than expected." It's hoping to polish Outlaws and improve the player experience to help the game find a larger audience during the holiday period. To help with that, the title will hit Steam on November 21. To that end, Ubisoft is hoping that the extra time it's taking with Assassins Creed Shadows will allow "the biggest entry in the franchise to fully deliver on its ambition, notably by fulfilling the promise of our dual protagonist adventure, with Naoe and Yasuke bringing two very different gameplay styles." Meanwhile, Ubisoft says it's shaking up some of its business practices with Assassins Creed Shadows. It says this game will mark the return of the company bringing its games to Steam at launch, rather than making them exclusive to Ubisoft Connect on PC for several months. It's also planning to ditch the Season Pass model. There will be no early access period, but those who preorder Assassins Creed Shadows will get the first expansion for free.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/assassins-creed-shadows-is-delayed-until-february-14-184514006.html?src=rss
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Google filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission on Wednesday. In it, Google accused Microsoft of making it prohibitively expensive for cloud customers to move their work from Azure to other providers, like Google Cloud. Google claims Microsofts cloud licensing terms restrict European customers from switching to competing cloud platforms despite no technical barriers to doing so. In a blog post explaining its complaint, Google wrote that Microsofts practices have significantly harmed European companies and governments, costing European businesses 1 billion ($1.1 billion) annually, wasting taxpayer money and stifling competition. Amazons AWS leads Europes cloud market. Microsofts Azure is second, followed by Google in third. Oracle, Salesforce and IBM rounded out the top six in Q2 2024. On Wednesday, a European Commission spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that the EU governing body received Googles complaint. We will assess it according to our standard procedures, EC spokesperson Lea Zuber wrote. Googles complaint referred to a settlement this summer between Microsoft and CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe), the trade body for Europes cloud industry. The latter filed a complaint against Microsoft in late 2022, accusing the company of anti-competitive practices with Azure (strikingly similar to Googles complaints from today). The full details of the settlement, which led to CISPE withdrawing its complaint, werent made public. CISPE wrote in July that Microsoft would make changes to address its concerns. Those included releasing an enhanced version of the Azure Stack HCI, which would bring features that Microsoft's customers enjoy to European cloud providers. In a statement to Engadget, Microsoft was optimistic that the EC would dismiss Googles complaint. Microsoft settled amicably similar concerns raised by European cloud providers, even after Google hoped they would keep litigating, a Microsoft spokesperson wrote, referring to a Bloomberg report that Google offered a $500 million alternative deal to keep the antitrust complaint alive. Having failed to persuade European companies, we expect Google similarly will fail to persuade the European Commission, Microsofts spokesperson wrote. Google says Windows Server is at the heart of its complaint. Describing it as a must-have workhorse in many IT environments, the company says Microsoft changed its practices after cloud computing became a more lucrative business. But as Azure faced more competition, Microsoft introduced new rules that severely limited customer choice, Google wrote. Google said the licensing terms Microsoft adopted in 2019 imposed extreme financial penalties on companies who wanted to use Windows Server software with Azure competitors like AWS and Google Cloud. Microsofts own statements indicate that customers who want to move their workloads to these competitors would need to pay up to five times more, Google wrote, citing an archived 2023 webpage comparing Azure pricing to that of AWS. Google said Microsoft also limited security patches and created other barriers to choice in cloud providers. Google also linked to research from Professor Frédéric Jenny, a French economist and chair of the OECD Competition Committee. The study claims that European companies and government organizations pay unfair, additional costs to customers who license software to run on cloud infrastructure from independent service providers. Professor Jenny claimed those choosing non-Microsoft cloud providers sucked an additional 1,010,394,489 out of the European economy in 2022. Google Clouds Head of Platform Amit Zavery wrote on Wednesday that Microsofts practices lock customers into Azure, hurt cybersecurity and limit innovation. Zavery also spoke with CNBC, advocating for a more open market for cloud providers. Today the restrictions [do] not allow choice for customers, he said. Zavery wants Microsofts restrictions to be removed and allow customers to have and choose whatever cloud provider they think is best for them commercially and technically.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-files-eu-antitrust-complaint-against-microsoft-183050473.html?src=rss
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Meta just announced an intriguing tool that uses AI to automatically dub Reels into other languages, complete with lip-sync. This feature was revealed at the annual Meta Connect livestream event and was introduced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg showed this off during the keynote, and everything seemed to work flawlessly. The technology not only translates the content, according to Meta, but will also simulate the speakers voice in another language and sync their lips to match. Its worth noting, however, that this didnt appear to be a live demo, but was still pretty impressive. As for a rollout, the company says the feature will arrive first to some creators videos in English and Spanish in the US and Latin America. Meta didnt give a timetable here. It just said the US and Latin America will be getting it first, which indicates that itll be tied to English and Spanish at launch. The company did mention that more languages are coming soon. That wasnt the only AI tool spotlighted during Meta Connect. The companys AI platform will now allow voice chats, with a selection of celebrity voices to choose from. Meta AI is also getting new image capabilities, as it will be able to change and edit photos based on instructions from text chats within Instagram. Messenger and WhatsApp. Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-will-use-ai-to-create-lip-synced-translations-of-creators-reels-175949373.html?src=rss
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