gaming

Union game performers strike over AI voice and motion-capture training

AI, gaming, generative ai, SAG-AFTRA, Tech, unions, video game strike, video game voice acting, Voice acting / Rejus Almole / July 26, 2024

Speaking into the large language model —

Use of motion-capture actors’ performances for AI training is a sticking point.

Kevin Purdy – Jul 26, 2024 7: 44 pm UTC

Enlarge / One day, using pixellated fonts and images to represent that something is a video game will not be a trope. Today is not that day.

SAG-AFTRA has called for a strike of all its members working in video games, with the union demanding that its next contract not allow “companies to abuse AI to the detriment of our members.”

The strike mirrors similar actions taken by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) last year, which, while also broader in scope than just AI, were similarly focused on concerns about AI-generated work product and the use of member work to train AI.

“Frankly, it’s stunning that these video game studios haven’t learned anything from the lessons of last year—that our members can and will stand up and demand fair and equitable treatment with respect to A.I., and the public supports us in that,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, said in a statement.

During the strike, the more than 160,000 members of the union will not provide talent to games produced by Disney, Electronic Arts, Blizzard Activision, Take-Two, WB Games, and others. Not every game is affected. Some productions may have interim agreements with union workers, and others, like continually updated games that launched before the current negotiations starting September 2023, may be exempt.

The publishers and other companies issued statements to the media through a communications firm representing them. “We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations,” a statement offered to The New York Times and other outlets read. The statement said the two sides had found common ground on 24 out of 25 proposals and that the game companies’ offer was responsive and “extends meaningful AI protections.”

The Washington Post says the biggest remaining issue involves on-camera performers, including motion capture performers. Crabtree-Ireland told the Post that while AI training protections were extended to voice performers, motion and stunt work was left out. “[A]ll of those performers deserve to have their right to have informed consent and fair compensation for the use of their image, their likeness or voice, their performance. It’s that simple,” Crabtree-Ireland said in June.

It will be difficult to know the impact of a game performer strike for some time, if ever, owing to the non-linear and secretive nature of game production. A game’s conception, development, casting, acting, announcement, and further development (and development pivots) happen on whatever timeline they happen upon.

SAG-AFTRA has a tool for searching game titles to see if they are struck for union work, but it is finicky, recognizing only specific production titles, code names, and ID numbers. Searches for Grande Theft Auto VI and 6 returned a “Game Over!” (i.e., struck), but Kotaku confirmed the game is technically unaffected, even though its parent publisher, Take-Two, is generally struck.

Video game performers in SAG-AFTRA last went on strike in 2016, that time regarding long-term royalties. The strike lasted 340 days, still the longest in that union’s history, and was settled with pay raises for actors while residuals and terms on vocal stress remained unaddressed. The impact of that strike was generally either hidden or largely blunted, as affected titles hired non-union replacements. Voice work, as noted by the original English voice for Bayonetta, remains a largely unprotected field.

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Lego’s newest retro art piece is a 1,215-piece Super Mario World homage

gaming, lego, Mario, Nintendo, super mario world / Kris Guyer / July 25, 2024

let’s-a-go —

$130 set is available for preorder now, ships on October 1.

Andrew Cunningham – Jul 25, 2024 7: 59 pm UTC

The Lego Mario & Yoshi set is an homage to 1990’s Super Mario World.

The Lego Group
From the front, it looks like a fairly straightforward re-creation of the game’s 16-bit sprites.

The Lego Group
Behind the facade are complex mechanics that move Yoshi’s feet and arms and bob his body up and down, to make him look like he’s walking. A separate dial opens his mouth and extends his tongue.

The Lego Group

Nintendo and Lego are at it again—they’ve announced another collaboration today as a follow-up to the interactive Mario sets, the replica Nintendo Entertainment System, the unfolding question mark block with the Mario 64 worlds inside, and other sets besides.

The latest addition is an homage to 1990’s Super Mario World, Mario’s debut outing on the then-new 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System. At first, the 1,215-piece set just looks like a caped Mario sitting on top of Yoshi. But a look at the back reveals more complex mechanics, including a hand crank that makes Yoshi’s feet and arms move and a dial that opens his mouth and extends his tongue.

Most of the Mario sets have included some kind of interactive moving part, even if it’s as simple as the movable mouth on the Lego Piranha Plant. Yoshi’s mechanical crank most strongly resembles the NES set, though, which included a CRT-style TV set with a crank that made the contents of the screen scroll so that Mario could “walk.”

The Mario & Yoshi set is available to preorder from Lego’s online store for $129.99. It begins shipping on October 1.

Lego has also branched out into other video game-themed sets. In 2022, the company began selling a replica Atari 2600, complete with faux-wood paneling. More recently, Lego has collaborated with Epic Games on several Fortnite-themed sets, including the Battle Bus.

Listing image by The Lego Group

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FTC attacks Microsoft’s post-merger Game Pass price increases

gaming / Mike M. / July 19, 2024

Toldja so —

Regulator says move is “exactly the sort of consumer harm” it warned about.

Kyle Orland – Jul 19, 2024 2: 14 pm UTC

xbox game pass ultimate — Enlarge / Access to first-party games on launch day remains a major selling point for the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier.

Microsoft

The FTC says the across-the-board price increases that Microsoft recently announced for its Xbox Game Pass subscription service tiers represent “exactly the sort of consumer harm from the merger the FTC has alleged” when it sought to block Microsoft’s merger with Activision. In a letter to the court posted as part of an ongoing appeal by the FTC in the case, the federal regulator alleges Microsoft’s moves are a clear example of “product degradation” brought about by “a firm exercising market power post-merger.”

The letter’s primary focus is on the soon-to-be-discontinued $10.99/month Console Game Pass tier. That’s being replaced with a $14.99/month Game Pass Standard tier (a 36 percent price increase) that no longer includes “day one” access to all of Microsoft’s first-party titles. To maintain that key benefit, “Console” subscribers will have to spend 81 percent more for the $19.99 Game Pass Ultimate tier, which also includes a number of additional benefits over the current $10.99/month option.

Is this “based on the acquisition”?

The FTC notes that these changes “coincide with adding Call of Duty to Game Pass’s most expensive tier.” Previously, Microsoft publicly promised that this Game Pass access to Activision’s ultra-popular shooter would come “with no price increase for the service based on the acquisition.”

It’s that “based on the acquisition” clause that’s likely to give Microsoft some wiggle room in arguing for its planned pricing changes. Inflation is also a sufficient explanation for a large portion of the price increase in nominal terms—the $14.99 Microsoft charged for a month of Game Pass Ultimate when it launched in 2019 is the equivalent of $18.39 today, according to the BLS CPI calculator. When Microsoft raised the Game Pass Ultimate monthly price from $14.99 to $16.99 just last year—just before the Activision merger was finalized—the company said in a statement it had “adjusted the prices to reflect the competitive conditions in each market.”

Microsoft might have a harder time finessing the alleged “degradation” inherent in going from the discontinued Game Pass Console tier to the new, more expensive Game Pass Standard tier. True, the replacement does include the online multiplayer benefits of Game Pass Core, which could previously be purchased separately. But the removal of the long-promised day one access to first party games will heavily reduce the value most subscribers get from the new option.

It’s now been over a year since the FTC first announced it intended to appeal the ruling that effectively stopped its attempted injunction against the merger deal. While Microsoft and Activision have moved forward with their merger since then, courts have reversed similar mergers on appeal even after a merger deal has fully closed.

Elsewhere in its letter, the FTC makes note of previous arguments that Microsoft’s recent round of nearly 2,000 Xbox-focused layoffs is a sign of “reduced investments in output and product quality” post-merger.

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Switch 2 is around the corner, but Nintendo announces a new Switch accessory anyway

gaming, Joy-Cons, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Switch, switch 2, Tech / Rejus Almole / July 18, 2024

better late than never? —

Oddly timed accessory is released as the Switch’s life cycle is winding down.

Andrew Cunningham – Jul 18, 2024 4: 45 pm UTC

Nintendo’s Joy-Con Charging Stand (Two-Way) seems useful, but it’s coming out at a strange time in the console’s lifecycle.

Nintendo
The stand can charge the Switch Online NES controllers, something that Nintendo’s charging grip can’t do because the handles get in the way.

Nintendo
The charging stand can be removed from the stand part to maximize flexibility.

Nintendo

Nintendo’s Switch launched in March 2017, and all available information indicates that the company is on track to announce a successor early next year. It’s that timing that makes the launch of Nintendo’s latest Switch accessory so odd: The company has announced a first-party charging cradle for Joy-Con controllers, which up until now have been charged by slotting them into the console itself, via Nintendo’s sold-separately Joy-Con charging grip, or with third-party charging accessories.

The Nintendo of Europe account on X, formerly Twitter, announced that the charging accessory—formally called the “Joy-Con Charging Stand (Two-Way)”—will be released on October 17. It will work with both Joy-Cons and the Switch Online wireless NES controllers, and the charging cradle can be separated from its stand (where it looks a lot like the Joy-Con charging grip but without the grip part).

Power is provided via a USB-C port on top of the stand, which can either be connected to one of the Switch dock’s USB ports or to a separate USB-C charger. Other Switch controllers, including the Pro Controller and the SNES and N64 replica controllers, are charged via USB-C directly.

The Verge reports that the accessory has only been announced for Europe and Japan so far, though it will presumably also come to North America at some point. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, either.

Switch 2 is around the corner

Why would Nintendo release a new first-party charging accessory for your old console just months before it’s slated to announce its next-generation console? Rumors about the design of the Switch 2 could hold some hints.

Accessory makers and others with firsthand knowledge of the Switch 2 have suggested that the new console will come with redesigned Joy-Cons with additional buttons and a magnetic attachment mechanism. This would likely make it impossible to attach current-generation Joy-Cons, which physically interlock with the Switch and its various accessories.

But reporting also suggests that the Switch 2 will retain backward compatibility with digital and physical Switch games, which could justify retaining some kind of backward compatibility with existing controllers. This new Joy-Con charging cradle could provide current Switch owners a way to continue charging Joy-Cons and NES controllers even if they can no longer be attached to and charged by the console itself.

But that’s just speculation at this point. It could just as easily be the case that Nintendo has to keep the Switch going for one more holiday season, and it’s eager to sell every accessory it can alongside the shrinking but still significant number of consoles it will sell between now and the time the Switch 2 is released. Nintendo recently announced new games in the Legend of Zelda and Mario & Luigi series, which will give past and future Switch buyers a reason to keep their Joy-Cons charged in the first place.

Nintendo has taken pains to make old controllers compatible with new consoles before. Most Nintendo Wii consoles came with built-in GameCube controller ports, which enabled backward compatibility with GameCube games and also allowed GameCube controllers to be used with compatible Wii games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Wii remotes also continued to function with the Wii U.

One thing we don’t know about the Switch 2’s backward compatibility is whether it will provide any kind of graphical enhancements for Switch games. Several titles released in recent years, including newer Pokémon titles, have suffered from performance issues. Nintendo had reportedly planned to release a more powerful “Switch Pro” at some point in 2021 or 2022, but the update was apparently scrapped in favor of the more modestly updated OLED Switch.

Listing image by Nintendo

Switch 2 is around the corner, but Nintendo announces a new Switch accessory anyway Read More »

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition gave me new respect for gaming speedrunners

gaming, Nintendo, speedrunning / Paul Patrick / July 17, 2024

Get ready to repeat this ~25-second slice of <em>Mario</em> over and over… and over… and over.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/nwc3-800×450.png”></img><figcaption>
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If you’ve ever seen a record-breaking video game speedrun or watched a Games Done Quick marathon, you may have entertained fantasies that you, too, could put up some decent times on your favorite old games. Sure, it would probably take a bit of practice, but what these speedrunners are doing doesn’t look that difficult, does it? How hard can it be to press a few buttons with good timing for a few minutes?

After spending a few weeks with Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, I no longer think that way. The game’s bite-size chunks of classic Nintendo games highlight the level of precision needed for even a few minutes of speedrunning perfection, not to mention the tedium of practicing the same in-game motions dozens of times to build up the needed muscle memory. In the process, I gained a newfound respect for the skill displayed by the best speedrunners and found a fresh way to experience some classic NES games that I felt I knew backward and forward.

Gotta go fast

While Nintendo World Championships draws its name from a series of competitions dating back to 1990, it draws its inspiration much more directly from the more recent rise of the online speedrunning community. Thus, the game’s main single-player mode is named “Speedrun,” tasking players with putting up the fastest times in 150 mini-challenges spread across 13 different Nintendo-developed NES titles.

Really? Get the Morph Ball? That's all you want me to do here? — Enlarge / Really? Get the Morph Ball? That’s all you want me to do here?

Nintendo

The earliest of these many unlockable challenges seem almost insultingly easy on their face—collecting the first Super Mushroom in Super Mario Bros. or collecting the sword in The Legend of Zelda, for instance. When you first dive in, you may be more than a little bemused to find yourself showered with in-game rewards for spending just a few seconds completing such basic tasks.

But then you look at how much time that challenge took you—which is thrown up in huge numbers on the screen—alongside an even bigger letter grade. The “A” you got for collecting that Mushroom might seem pretty good, at first, but you know you could do better if you didn’t miss the item box with your first few jumps. So you quickly restart the challenge (and breathe deep through a helpful three-second countdown) and trim off half a second on your second attempt, earning an “A+” for your efforts.

If you are a certain type of player, you might say, “Alright, that’s good enough,” rather than repeating this cycle yet again (if so, I’d argue this game is not for you). But if you’re a different type of gamer, the mere knowledge that you could achieve an S rank with some combination of strategy and execution will propel you through entire minutes of repeated attempts, looking to optimize the perfect few seconds of button presses.

The fact that Nintendo doesn’t reveal the specific timing cutoffs for the different letter grades is equal parts frustrating and subtly encouraging, here. There were plenty of challenges where I felt I played as optimally as I could only to be greeted with a mere “A++” rank next to my new best time. The S rank’s mere existence often inspired me to redouble my efforts and look for new ways to trim even more time off my personal best.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition gave me new respect for gaming speedrunners Read More »

Full dev build of Space Marine 2 leaks, and players are already leveling up

gaming, space marine 2, Warhammer, Warhammer 40 / Rejus Almole / July 16, 2024

Weaknesses in the Imperium of Man —

Developers canceled a beta test—but may have gotten one anyway.

Kevin Purdy – Jul 16, 2024 6: 07 pm UTC

How badly do you want to play the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 ahead of its September 9 launch? Enough to torrent a 75GB package from a Russian site? Enough to not only unpack and play it, but connect to a server and start building up your character?

Me neither, but that hasn’t stopped seemingly hundreds of people from doing just that. Publisher Focus Entertainment had announced the third-person action game having “gone gold” (released for manufacturing) on July 9. The leaked build might date to February 23, 2024, as suggested by site Insider Gaming, which had previously suggested a June 20 date.

Footage from the leaked builds, which has been mostly taken offline by Focus through copyright claims, suggested that it was a mostly complete version of the game, with some placeholder assets in menus. Said footage also suggests that the game’s pirates are playing online, and their characters are retaining their levels and items. For now, at least.

Gameplay overview trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

In some ways, this shouldn’t really matter. When the game’s servers go officially live, developer Saber Interactive and Focus should be able to flag those accounts that have logged unauthorized time. Getting online to play will likely require authentication from the Steam, Xbox, or PlayStation platform one chooses. And there’s a chance that a closer look at the game, or even just news about its leak, might entice more people into buying and playing the game proper.

In other ways, though, it stinks. Spoilers from the game’s campaign and multiplayer offerings will filter out, and firms that should be focusing entirely on release and quality control will have to deal with the security and fairness aspects of such a leak. A planned open beta of the game had already been canceled in favor of the developer’s focus on launch readiness.

Game leaks of this scale aren’t as common as select images or isolated information, but it does happen. Grand Theft Auto VI had nearly an hour of gameplay footage leak in 2022. Discs of Starfield being posted for sale in August 2023, weeks ahead of its September release, resulted in felony charges for a Tennessee man. Videos spoiling much of The Last of Us Part 2 leaked online in 2020, thanks to someone “not affiliated” with its developer and publisher.

And the biggest and most unexpected hack and leak came from a small German town, where Axel Gembe stole and leaked early source code for Half-Life 2. He later tried to apologize to Valve founder Gabe Newell and leverage his break-in to land a job at Valve, which was, to say the least, unsuccessful.

Ars has contacted Focus Entertainment for comment and will update this post with new information.

Full dev build of Space Marine 2 leaks, and players are already leveling up Read More »

PC emulator comes to iOS, but Apple’s restrictions hamper performance

Apple, gaming / Rejus Almole / July 15, 2024

It works, technically —

UTM SE’s lack of JIT compilation means “SE stands for Slow Edition.”

Kyle Orland – Jul 15, 2024 3: 54 pm UTC

<em>Space Cadet Pinball</em> has never been so portable… or so tiny!” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/utmse.png”></img><figcaption>
<p><a data-height=

One month after PC emulator UTM was rejected from the iOS App Store, the developers have announced that a new “UTM SE” version is now available for free on the App Store. But the app’s performance is severely hampered by Apple’s restrictions on so-called “just-in-time” (JIT) compilation, limiting the app’s suitability for effectively emulating many PC games.

Built on the generic command-line emulation layer QEMU, the open-source UTM boasts support for “30+ processors,” from x86 and PowerPC to RISC-V and ARM64. The App Store listing promises you can “run classic software and old-school games” through both a VGA graphics mode and text-based terminal.

Don’t expect a seamless, RetroArch-style path to playing Space Cadet Pinball on your iPhone, though. The UTM developers link to pre-configured settings downloads for versions of Windows going back to XP, alongside guides for getting those OSes up and running on iOS. But users will need to bring their own legitimate Windows installation ISO and go through the cumbersome process of installing the OS as well as a version of SPICE tools to help coordinate access through iOS (downloading pre-built, UTM-compatible Linux builds seems more straightforward).

Slow by design

Even after that, don’t expect high-level performance from this new emulator. That’s because UTM SE must abide by App Store restrictions prohibiting apps that “install executable code.” As such, the App Store version is a “JIT-less” build that uses a Tiny-Code Threaded Interpreter (TCTI) to interpret each original line of code being run rather than fully recompiling it at runtime for smoother performance.

A video shows how the lack of JIT recompilation slows down GameCube emulation on DolphiniOS.

The lack of that JIT recompilation means the “SE [in UTM SE] stands for Slow Edition,” as moderator CZ pithily put it in the UTM Discord. “This is us telling you gaming on UTM SE is not happening.” At least one user who tested running Linux via UTM SE confirmed it is “dog slow” and “a gloopy experience.” Those who want full performance out of UTM can still install the regular, non-SE version of the app via sideloading or an alt store.

You may remember that the developers of GameCube/Wii emulator DolphiniOS cited the lack of JIT recompilation as the reason their app can’t run at a functional frame rate through the iOS App Store. However, similar restrictions haven’t stopped emulators like Delta from running classic gaming consoles up through the Nintendo DS at a playable frame rate, suggesting that UTM SE might be sufficient for older MS-DOS or Windows 95-era titles.

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“Superhuman” Go AIs still have trouble defending against these simple exploits

AI, gaming / Rejus Almole / July 12, 2024

Man vs. machine —

Plugging up “worst-case” algorithmic holes is proving more difficult than expected.

Kyle Orland – Jul 12, 2024 8: 20 pm UTC

Enlarge / Man vs. machine in a sea of stones.

Getty Images

In the ancient Chinese game of Go, state-of-the-art artificial intelligence has generally been able to defeat the best human players since at least 2016. But in the last few years, researchers have discovered flaws in these top-level AI Go algorithms that give humans a fighting chance. By using unorthodox “cyclic” strategies—ones that even a beginning human player could detect and defeat—a crafty human can often exploit gaps in a top-level AI’s strategy and fool the algorithm into a loss.

Researchers at MIT and FAR AI wanted to see if they could improve this “worst case” performance in otherwise “superhuman” AI Go algorithms, testing a trio of methods to harden the top-level KataGo algorithm‘s defenses against adversarial attacks. The results show that creating truly robust, unexploitable AIs may be difficult, even in areas as tightly controlled as board games.

Three failed strategies

In the pre-print paper “Can Go AIs be adversarially robust?”, the researchers aim to create a Go AI that is truly “robust” against any and all attacks. That means an algorithm that can’t be fooled into “game-losing blunders that a human would not commit” but also one that would require any competing AI algorithm to spend significant computing resources to defeat it. Ideally, a robust algorithm should also be able to overcome potential exploits by using additional computing resources when confronted with unfamiliar situations.

Enlarge / An example of the original cyclic attack in action.

The researchers tried three methods to generate such a robust Go algorithm. In the first, they simply fine-tuned the KataGo model using more examples of the unorthodox cyclic strategies that previously defeated it, hoping that KataGo could learn to detect and defeat these patterns after seeing more of them.

This strategy initially seemed promising, letting KataGo win 100 percent of games against a cyclic “attacker.” But after the attacker itself was fine-tuned (a process that used much less computing power than KataGo’s fine-tuning), that win rate fell back down to 9 percent against a slight variation on the original attack.

For its second defense attempt, the researchers iterated a multi-round “arms race” where new adversarial models discover novel exploits and new defensive models seek to plug up those newly discovered holes. After 10 rounds of such iterative training, the final defending algorithm still only won 19 percent of games against a final attacking algorithm that had discovered previously unseen variation on the exploit. This was true even as the updated algorithm maintained an edge against earlier attackers that it had been trained against in the past.

Go AI if they know the right algorithm-exploiting strategy.” height=”427″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/GettyImages-109417607-640×427.jpg” width=”640″>

Enlarge / Even a child can beat a world-class Go AI if they know the right algorithm-exploiting strategy.

Getty Images

In their final attempt, researchers tried a completely new type of training using vision transformers, in an attempt to avoid what might be “bad inductive biases” found in the convolutional neural networks that initially trained KataGo. This method also failed, winning only 22 percent of the time against a variation on the cyclic attack that “can be replicated by a human expert,” the researchers wrote.

Will anything work?

In all three defense attempts, the KataGo-beating adversaries didn’t represent some new, previously unseen height in general Go-playing ability. Instead, these attacking algorithms were laser-focused on discovering exploitable weaknesses in an otherwise performant AI algorithm, even if those simple attack strategies would lose to most human players.

Those exploitable holes highlight the importance of evaluating “worst-case” performance in AI systems, even when the “average-case” performance can seem downright superhuman. On average, KataGo can dominate even high-level human players using traditional strategies. But in the worst case, otherwise “weak” adversaries can find holes in the system that make it fall apart.

It’s easy to extend this kind of thinking to other types of generative AI systems. LLMs that can succeed at some complex creative and reference tasks might still utterly fail when confronted with trivial math problems (or even get “poisoned” by malicious prompts). Visual AI models that can describe and analyze complex photos may nonetheless fail horribly when presented with basic geometric shapes.

Enlarge / If you can solve these kinds of puzzles, you may have better visual reasoning than state-of-the-art AIs.

Improving these kinds of “worst case” scenarios is key to avoiding embarrassing mistakes when rolling an AI system out to the public. But this new research shows that determined “adversaries” can often discover new holes in an AI algorithm’s performance much more quickly and easily than that algorithm can evolve to fix those problems.

And if that’s true in Go—a monstrously complex game that nonetheless has tightly defined rules—it might be even more true in less controlled environments. “The key takeaway for AI is that these vulnerabilities will be difficult to eliminate,” FAR CEO Adam Gleave told Nature. “If we can’t solve the issue in a simple domain like Go, then in the near-term there seems little prospect of patching similar issues like jailbreaks in ChatGPT.”

Still, the researchers aren’t despairing. While none of their methods were able to “make [new] attacks impossible” in Go, their strategies were able to plug up unchanging “fixed” exploits that had been previously identified. That suggests “it may be possible to fully defend a Go AI by training against a large enough corpus of attacks,” they write, with proposals for future research that could make this happen.

Regardless, this new research shows that making AI systems more robust against worst-case scenarios might be at least as valuable as chasing new, more human/superhuman capabilities.

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$500 aluminum version of the Analogue Pocket looks like the Game Boy’s final form

analogue, analogue pocket, Emulation, fpga, Game Boy, gaming, Nintendo, Tech / Rejus Almole / July 12, 2024

so metal —

Other Pocket iterations have stuck to colorful (and cheaper) plastic.

Andrew Cunningham – Jul 12, 2024 4: 55 pm UTC

Enlarge / Analogue is launching another limited-edition version of its Pocket console, this time with an anodized aluminum body and buttons.

Analogue

Analogue has released multiple variations of the Analogue Pocket, its Game Boy-style handheld console that can play old cartridges and game ROMs using its FPGA chip. But until now, all of those designs have been riffs on the regular Pocket’s black (or white) plastic shell.

The company’s latest Pocket iteration might appeal more to people who prefer the solidity and durability of anodized aluminum to the cheap practicality of plastic. On July 15, the company will release a limited run of all-aluminum Analogue Pocket consoles in four different colors: white, gray, black, and a Game Boy Advance-esque indigo. The company says that “every single piece” of these consoles is “entirely CNC’d from aluminum,” including not just the frame but also all of the buttons.

The new material will cost you, though: Each aluminum Pocket sells for $500, over twice as much as the $220 price of a regular plastic Pocket.

The aluminum versions of the Pocket will run the exact same software as the standard plastic ones and will be compatible with all the same cartridges and accessories. Analogue’s site doesn’t compare the weight of the aluminum and plastic Pocket consoles, though intuitively we’d expect the metal one to be heavier. The aluminum consoles begin shipping on July 17.

Enlarge / An exploded version of the new Pocket; even the buttons are aluminum.

Analogue

When the Pocket first launched in late 2021, ongoing supply chain disruptions and high demand led to monthslong wait times for the initial models. Things have gotten slightly better since then—you can’t simply open Analogue’s store on any given day and just buy one, but the basic black and white plastic models restock with some regularity. Analogue has also released multiple special edition runs of the handheld, including one made of glow-in-the-dark plastic and a colorful series of models that recall Nintendo’s mid-’90s “Play It Loud!” hardware refresh for the original Game Boy.

As much as we liked the Pocket in our original review, the hardware has gotten much more capable thanks to a series of post-launch firmware updates. In the summer of 2022, Analogue added OpenFPGA support to the pocket, allowing its FPGA chip to emulate consoles like the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and others aside from the portable systems that the Pocket was designed to emulate. Updates toward the end of 2023 allowed those third-party emulation cores to use their own display filters, replicating the look of classic CRT TVs and other displays.

The updates have also fixed multiple bugs in the system. The latest update is version 2.2, released back in March, which primarily adds support for the Analogue Pocket Adapter Set that allows other kinds of vintage game cartridges to plug in to the Pocket’s cartridge slot.

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Arm tweaks AMD’s FSR to bring battery-saving GPU upscaling to phones and tablets

ARM, fsr, gaming, Tech, upscaling / Kris Guyer / July 11, 2024

situation: there are 14 competing standards —

Arm “Accuracy Super Resolution” is optimized for power use and integrated GPUs.

Andrew Cunningham – Jul 11, 2024 4: 22 pm UTC

Enlarge / An Arm sample image meant to show off its new “Accuracy Super Resolution” upscaling tech.

Arm

Some of the best Arm processors come from companies like Apple and Qualcomm, which license Arm’s processor instruction set but create their own custom or semi-custom CPU designs. But Arm continues to plug away on its own CPU and GPU architectures and related technologies, and the company has announced that it’s getting into the crowded field of graphics upscaling technology.

Arm’s Accuracy Super Resolution (ASR) is a temporal upscaler that is based on AMD’s open source FidelityFX Super Resolution 2, which Arm says allows developers to “benefit from the familiar API and configuration options.” (This AMD presentation from GDC 2023 gets into some of the differences between different kinds of upscalers.)

AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS on gaming PCs are mostly sold as a way to boost graphical fidelity—increasing frame rates beyond 60 fps or rendering “4K” images on graphics cards that are too slow to do those things natively, for example. But since Arm devices are still (mostly, for now) phones and tablets, Arm is leaning into the potential power savings that are possible with lower GPU use. A less-busy GPU also runs cooler, reducing the likelihood of thermal throttling; Arm mentions reduced throttling as a benefit of ASR, though it doesn’t say how much of ASR’s performance advantage over FSR is attributable to reduced throttling.

“Using [ASR] rendered high-quality results at a stable, low temperature,” writes Arm Director for Ecosystem Strategy Peter Hodges. “Rendering at a native resolution inevitably led to undesirable thermal throttling, which in games can ruin the user experience and shorten engagement.”

Why not just use FSR2 without modification? Arm claims that the ASR upscaling tech has been tuned to reduce GPU usage and to run well on devices without a ton of memory bandwidth—think low-power mobile GPUs with integrated graphics rather than desktop-class graphics cards. ASR’s GPU use is as little as one-third of FSR2’s at the same target resolutions and scaling factors. Arm also claims that ASR delivers roughly 20 to 40 percent better frame rates than FSR2 on Arm devices, depending on the settings you’re using.

Arm also says that reduced GPU usage when using ASR can lead to lower heat and improved battery life.

Arm
Arm says that ASR runs faster and uses less power than FSR on the same mobile hardware.

Arm

Arm says it used “a commercial mobile device that features an Arm Immortalis-G720 GPU” for its performance testing and that it worked with MediaTek to corroborate its power consumption numbers “using a Dimensity 9300 handset.”

When the ASR spec is released, it will be up to OS makers and game developers to implement it. Apple will likely stick with its own MetalFX upscaling technology—also derived from AMD’s FSR, for what that’s worth. Microsoft is pushing “Automatic Super Resolution” on Arm devices while also attempting to develop a vendor-agnostic upscaling API in “DirectSR.” Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Game Super Resolution a little over a year ago.

Arm’s upscaler has the benefit of being hardware-agnostic and also open-source (Arm says it “want[s] to share [ASR] with the developer community under an MIT open-source license”) so that other upscalers can benefit from its improvements. Qualcomm’s upscaler is also a simpler spatial upscaler a la AMD’s first-generation FSR algorithm, so Arm’s upscaler could also end up producing superior image quality on the same GPUs.

We’re undeniably getting into that one xkcd comic about the proliferation of standards territory here, but it’s at least interesting to see different companies using graphics upscaling technology to solve problems other than “make games look nicer.”

Listing image by Arm

Arm tweaks AMD’s FSR to bring battery-saving GPU upscaling to phones and tablets Read More »

Microsoft asks many Game Pass subscribers to pay more for less

game pass ultimate, gaming, microsoft, Xbox Game Pass / Paul Patrick / July 10, 2024

Raking it in —

Launch day access to first-party titles now restricted to $19.99/month “Ultimate” tier.

Kyle Orland – Jul 10, 2024 4: 04 pm UTC

Artist's conception of Microsoft executives after today's Game Pass pricing announcements. — Enlarge / Artist’s conception of Microsoft executives after today’s Game Pass pricing announcements.

Getty Images

For years now, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass has set itself apart by offering subscribers launch-day access to new first-party titles in addition to a large legacy library of older games. That important “day one” perk is now set to go away for all but the highest tier of Game Pass’ console subscribers, even as Microsoft asks for more money for Game Pass across the board.

Let’s start with the price increases for existing Game Pass tiers, which are relatively straightforward:

“Game Pass Ultimate” is going from $16.99 to $19.99 per month.
“Game Pass for PC” is going from $9.99 to $11.99 per month.
“Game Pass Core” (previously known as Xbox Live Gold) is going from $59.99 to $74.99 for annual subscriptions (and remains at $9.99 for monthly subscriptions).

Things get a bit more complicated for the $10.99/month “Xbox Game Pass for Console” tier. Microsoft announced that it will no longer accept new subscriptions for that tier after today, though current subscribers will be able to keep it (for now) if they auto-renew their subscriptions.

In its place, Microsoft will “in the coming months” roll out a new $14.99 “Xbox Game Pass Standard” tier. That new option will combine the usual access to “hundreds of high-quality games on console” with the “online console multiplayer” features that previously required a separate Xbox Game Pass Core subscription (“Core” will still be available separately and include access to a smaller “25+ game” library).

Quick and dirty chart by me to display the new Xbox Game Pass structure (subject to correction).

I hope this helps. pic.twitter.com/Qj6CX7i4kG

— Klobrille (@klobrille) July 10, 2024

But while the current Xbox Game Pass Console option promises access to Xbox Game Studios games “the same day they launch,” those “Day One releases” are conspicuously absent as a perk for the replacement Xbox Game Pass Standard subscription.

“Some games available with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on day one will not be immediately available with Xbox Game Pass Standard and may be added to the library at a future date,” Microsoft writes in an FAQ explaining the changes.

Players who want guaranteed access to all those “Day One” releases will now have to subscribe to the $19.99/month Game Pass Ultimate. That’s an 81 percent increase from the $10.99/month that console players currently pay for similar “Day One” access on the disappearing Game Pass Console tier.

To be fair, that extra subscription money does come with some added benefits. Upgrading from Game Pass Console/Standard to Game Pass Ultimate lets you use Microsoft’s cloud gaming service, access downloadable PC games and the EA Play library, and get additional “free perks every month.” But it’s the launch day access to Microsoft’s system-selling first-party titles that really sets the Ultimate tier apart now, and which will likely necessitate a costly upgrade for many Xbox Game Pass subscribers.

Why 1994’s Lair of Squid was the weirdest pack-in game of all time

1994, Andry Gryc, Doom, gaming, Hearts and Bones, hewlett packard, HP 100LX, HP 95LX, HP palmtops, HP-200LX, Lair of Squid, palmtop PC, retrotech / Rejus Almole / July 9, 2024

digital archaeology —

The HP 200LX included a mysterious maze game called Lair of Squid. We tracked down the author.

Benj Edwards – Jul 9, 2024 3: 05 pm UTC

Artist's impression of a squid jumping forth from a HP 200LX. — Enlarge / Artist’s impression of a squid jumping forth from an HP 200LX.

Aurich Lawson / HP

In 1994, Hewlett-Packard released a miracle machine: the HP 200LX pocket-size PC. In the depths of the device, among the MS-DOS productivity apps built into its fixed memory, there lurked a first-person maze game called Lair of Squid. Intrigued by the game, we tracked down its author, Andy Gryc, and probed into the title’s mysterious undersea origins.

“If you ask my family, they’ll confirm that I’ve been obsessed with squid for a long time,” Gryc told Ars Technica. “It’s admittedly very goofy—and that’s my fault—although I was inspired by Doom, which had come out relatively recently.”

In Lair of Squid, you’re trapped in an underwater labyrinth, seeking a way out while avoiding squid roaming the corridors. A collision with any cephalopod results in death. To progress through each stage and ascend to the surface, you locate the exit and provide a hidden, scrambled code word. The password is initially displayed as asterisks, with letters revealed as you encounter them within the maze.

Lair of Squid running on the author’s HP 200LX, shortly after the moment of discovery.” height=”480″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/squid_photo_1-640×480.jpg” width=”640″>

Enlarge / A photo of Lair of Squid running on the author’s HP 200LX, shortly after the moment of discovery.

Benj Edwards

Buckle up for a tale of rogue coding, cephalopod obsession, and the most unexpected Easter egg in palmtop history. This is no fish story—it’s the saga of Lair of Squid.

A computer in the palm of your hand

Introduced in 1994, the HP 200LX palmtop PC put desktop functionality in a pocket-size package. With a small QWERTY keyboard, MS-DOS compatibility, and a suite of productivity apps, the clamshell 200LX offered a vision of one potential future of mobile computing. It featured a 7.91 MHz 80186 CPU, a monochrome 640×200 CGA display, and 1–4 megabytes of RAM.

The cover of the HP 200LX User's Guide (1994). — Enlarge / The cover of the HP 200LX User’s Guide (1994).

Hewlett Packard

I’ve collected vintage computers since 1993, and people frequently offer to send me old devices they’d rather not throw away. Recently, a former HP engineer sent me his small but nice collection of ’90s HP handheld palmtop computers, including a 95LX (1991), 100LX (1993), and 200LX.

HP designed its portable LX series to run many MS-DOS programs that feature text mode or CGA graphics, and each includes built-in versions of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, a word processor, terminal program, calculator, and more.

I owned a 95LX as a kid (a hand-me-down from my dad’s friend), which came with a simplistic overhead maze game called TigerFox. So imagine my surprise in 2024, when trawling through the productivity and personal organization apps on that 200LX, to find a richly detailed first-person maze game based around cephalopods, of all things.

(I was less surprised to find an excellent built-in Minesweeper clone, Hearts and Bones, which is definitely a more natural fit for the power and form of the 200LX itself.)

Lair of Squid isn’t a true Doom clone since it’s not a first-person shooter (in some ways, it’s more like a first-person Pac-Man without pellets), but its mere existence—on a black-and-white device best suited for storing phone numbers and text notes—deserves note as one of the weirdest and most interesting pack-in games to ever exist.

Just after discovering Lair of Squid on my device earlier this year, I tweeted about it, and I extracted the file for the game (called “maze.exe”) from the internal ROM drive and sent it to DOS gaming historian Anatoly Shashkin, who put the game on The Internet Archive so anyone can play it in their browser.

After that, I realized that I wanted to figure out who wrote this quirky game, and thanks to a post on RGB Classic Games, I found a name: Andy Gryc. With some luck in cold-emailing, I found him.

Why 1994’s Lair of Squid was the weirdest pack-in game of all time Read More »