If you've been anywhere near the internet over the past few hours, we imagine you've already seen the recently-announced Animal Crossing-themed Switch console. Isn't it just the loveliest thing you've ever seen?
Anyway, if you can't quite afford this latest model, or if you want to pretend you have one without having to pay for it, Nintendo seemingly has you covered. On its official Japanese site, Nintendo is offering a replica box without anything inside for 550 yen (approx. £4 / $5). As if we've suddenly been placed inside a weird, alternate, Ikea-based universe, you even have to assemble the thing yourself when it arrives; thankfully Nintendo provides instructions:
At first, you might find yourself wondering what on Earth has possessed Nintendo to do such a thing, but it does actually make quite a lot of sense. For collectors, owning pristine boxes to limited-edition consoles is a must - just check eBay to see how many empty boxes get sold every day - so why not cash in on that? Nintendo actually did the very same thing with Splatoon 2 in 2017.
Let's face it, we'll all buy pretty much anything with a Nintendo logo on it - and Nintendo knows it.
We should note that this box-only option has only been announced for Japan so far. Nintendo says that the replica box will not have any warranty info or barcodes on it, nor will it contain any of the leaflets found inside the real thing. Japanese fans will also be able to buy the console's Joy-Con and Dock separately, which makes considerably more sense.
Enlarge/ You can practically hear the opening film's orc screaming, "You should seriously reconsider spending $30, you human sacks of filth!"
Blizzard Entertainment
The more I look at this week's launch of WarCraft III: Reforged, the more I shake my head. I've grown up playing Blizzard games for a majority of my life, and while I can think of Blizzard game launches with technical issues or critical shoulder-shrugs, I can't recall a retail launch for a product that, quite simply, wasn't finished. WC3:R changes that.
What's more, the uneven and problematic changes to this "reforged" 2002 game come with a bold, new step for Blizzard: the official sunsetting of a classic game's client. The original code base, which has remained roughly 1.3GB in size after an expansion pack launch and years of patches, has been pushed aside. Anyone who already owned an official WC3 license is prompted by Blizzard's default game launcher to download the new 26+ GB version to play online, whether or not they pay an additional $30 for its GBs of "reforged" content.
Worse, between a new Terms of Service requirement and a number of features removed from the previous version, it looks like the game's online ecosystem—the very thing that kept the game afloat for decades and earned a glowing retrospective from us only days ago—may be gone for good. Pardon my English, but, what in the freaking world is going on, Blizzard?
Beautiful new visuals—but not applied evenly
A comparison gallery of new and old graphics. Here's WarCraft III in "reforged" mode.
The same scene in "classic" mode.
A cut scene in "reforged" mode.
A cut scene in "classic" mode.
A cut scene in "reforged" mode.
A cut scene in "classic" mode.
A surface-level review of WC3:R may make you wonder what all the grousing is about, especially if you just want to play the game's single-player campaign. It's easy to grab screens of the game's original 2002 characters, then place them directly next to their updated, higher-polygon versions, and give the "Blizzard Classic" dev team an unadulterated high-five. As a zoomed-out real-time strategy (RTS) game, 2002's WC3 could get away with some decidedly rough 3D designs, particularly for Blizzard's first foray into fully rendered 3D characters. But in 2020, we're well past the original game's resolution maximum of 1280x1024, and that means Blizzard had serious work to do for one of WC3:R's selling points: scaling up to arbitrary monitor resolutions and looking good when doing so.
Alas, the updated EXE launched with a forehead-smack of a failure on that sales pitch: broken ultra-wide monitor support. In the immediate aftermath of the WC3:R patch going live, forum posters cobbled together a makeshift solution to get ultra-wide resolutions working, albeit with unoptimized results. On launch day, Blizzard customer service reps posted statements of disbelief about this ultra-wide issue in the technical support forum, which implies that the company intended to roll the feature out (and may very well fix it).
While fiddling with the new build's options menus to test arbitrary resolutions, meanwhile, I noticed this curious addition:
If you would like to remap any buttons in WarCraft III: Reforged, you are instructed to open and modify a .txt file. The instructions mention that this can be found in a "Beta" folder, even though this is not a beta client.
The .txt file in question points users to an "instructions" file that doesn't appear to have been installed on my system.
As the above captions clarify, the key-remapping interface has not been "reforged" in the slightest.
Anyway, back to the updated graphics. The problem with WC3:R's visuals comes less from individually updated assets; it's all but impossible to compare individual 3D models between the old and new versions and state that the older ones are superior. Rather, the issue boils down to how all of these new assets come together on the battlefield.
This gallery is dedicated to scenes that show off the flatness of the updated graphics mode.
There's just something about the way terrain slots together that feels bland and flat, in spite of individually rendered blades of grass and the like.
I wish someone from the Diablo team had pitched in to help with the underground dungeon scenes; their lighting is particularly flat.
Watery walking paths are a lot more difficult to discern this time around, and this reality makes returning to base after hunting for NPCs and treasure that much trickier.
The new presentation comes with a flatness that wasn't present in the original lower-poly game. Color saturation sees the terrain's soup of green and blue blur together, without any recognizable boost to unit or terrain clarity offered by details such as individual blades of grass. The lower-poly version at least made its roads, cobblestone paths, and other game-world clutter more discrete for the sake of instantly recognizable paths and obstacles. This arguably came because of pre-baked lighting systems, which, for example, added wild light bounces to spell effects so that any nearby enemies and buildings would glimmer in their wake. WC3:R's new physically based lighting model sounds good on paper—that's what modern games do to look realistic, right?—but as a part of the original game's bright-and-bulky aesthetic, this lighting model honestly falls flat (pun intended).
The old idiom "missing the forest for the trees" keeps coming to mind—as if the Blizzard Classic team split its artists up into separate camps and assigned them various units in isolation. The results, which include impressive mouth-animation systems and entirely new foliage-rendering systems, look like a talented team's fruits of labor lost in a soup of badly guided production. Contrast differences between units, buildings, and terrain are too mild when seen from a bird's-eye view (meaning, the majority of your time in an RTS game). Foliage looks pretty in close-up cinema scenes, but its shapes and patterns don't stand out as well as they did in the game's original, chunkier version.
The original version of WarCraft III put shadows on all NPCs, and bolder shadows on your controlled party.
This image from WarCraft III: Reforged, on the other hand, removes shadows from NPCs entirely. And your party's shadows are much milder.
The original WarCraft III. All NPCs have shadows.
Again, WarCraft III: Reforged removes shadows from NPCs entirely. And your party's shadows are much milder.
Fog of war in the original WarCraft III.
And the same area in WarCraft III: Reforged. This comparison is harder to show in still images, as it doesn't show the weird animations attached in the 2020 version. But you can at least see the splotchiness and blue tint in the updated build's "classic" fog of war.
You can toggle the game's "original" graphics in this new version if you want, but the newer version of the old visuals currently includes glitched shadow and spell effects. I confirmed this by installing an older build onto a wholly offline PC (more on that later), which let me compare the two builds. In the game's early missions, I found that the "fog of war" effect has some issues on WC3:R's "classic" mode, both in how it awkwardly bubbles up in square-shaped blobs upon leaving and re-entering zones and in the fog's new unsightly blue-green tint. Even with all "classic" graphic settings cranked to "high," shadows no longer appear on any enemies, and if they're attached to player units, they've become a (cough) shadow of their former selves.
Whether these old-version graphical issues will be remedied is unclear, but at least as of press time, what worked for over a decade has since been downgraded by this overhaul of the game's EXE.
You can't spell BlizzCon without "con," apparently
These included pledges to touch up the game's cinematic narrative sequences and modify its original user interface (UI). You can't type the word "Reforged" into a search engine this week without stumbling upon this fan-made comparison of the results:
Having played a few hours of WC3:R's campaign, it looks like the 2018 demo video and the final version align somewhat. Characters are posed in similar places as they speak between missions, and their bodies and mouths all have updated animations (and richly detailed ones, at that). The catch is, Blizzard has chosen to pull its in-game camera back from showcasing any of these changes. Blizzard's official answer during BlizzCon 2019 was to better resemble the original game. But I can't help but wonder if this was due to too many required models and environments needed to fill out the rest of these real-time cut scenes' backgrounds, since they dramatically moved the camera and exposed the game world's horizon.
Whatever the reason, it's a crying shame that the narrative sequences' updates have been so stymied. WC3, after all, saw the studio ramp up its storytelling ambition with full voice acting built into the game world in ways that set the tone for what World of WarCraft would deliver only a few years later. With that in mind, it's arguably better that Blizzard walked back its original plan to re-record and even rewrite the original game's dialogue in order to retcon WoW plot elements; of all the things I'd hoped for in a refreshed WC3, newly bolted plot elements weren't high on my list.
A tidier UI, on the other hand, would have been quite welcome, and I'm still puzzled as to why that system, which was demonstrated in 2018, wasn't included as an option. In particular, I would have loved for the game's inventory system, a first in a WarCraft game, to have been shifted to a more mouse-accessible position on the UI's far-right edge, and for various icons to shrink and shuffle around as might befit a default 1080p presentation.
A public pledge to remake the game's pre-rendered CGI sequences also fell through. It's a shame, but one that's arguably forgivable, since most of the game's narrative portions are built into the engine. That being said, the developer went to the trouble of remaking one of the original pre-rendered sequences, and... well... it's a spoiler if you've never played the campaign, but I've embedded it below. Watch it, if you dare.
Undead ending sequence from WarCraft III: Reforged.
Somehow, this looks cheaper and cheesier than the original in-game cinematic sequence, perhaps owing to the surprisingly low-budget look of this "new" pre-rendered video. Blizzard's reputation for high-end pre-rendered sequences takes a serious shot with this one.
No, these are not patch notes
The rest of the game's changes, downgrades, and issues are perhaps easiest to parse as a few bulleted lists.
Enlarge/ That locked icon means you can't access later-game missions without beating everything in order. This includes everything from the Frozen Throne expansion pack, as well. It's a relatively tough pill to swallow for a 17-year-old game.
Campaign weirdness
Previously, the separate "Reign of Chaos" and "Frozen Throne" campaigns could be launched as solo players saw fit. Now, the entire Frozen Throne campaign is locked until you beat the entirety of Reign of Chaos. I was hoping we'd at least have campaign-launching parity compared to the last version, if not a full unlock of every lengthy chapter as a nice "Reforged" tweak.
Every element of the Reign of Chaos campaign is newly saddled with the Frozen Throne expansion pack's balance and unit changes, with no option to revert.
Whatever graphics setting you toggle, it comes with its own save file. Meaning, you can't freely switch from old visuals to new, or vice versa; you currently have to beat each campaign mission twice to fully compare the two versions (despite the graphics modes having apparent gameplay parity). Until someone builds a guide for manually editing the new game's save files, at least—though that may never happen, since campaign progress is now linked to unlockable portrait icons in multiplayer lobbies.
I can't measure this for certain, but I'm pretty convinced that AI pathfinding has been hobbled compared to the original game. Getting my units to move together takes even more babysitting than it used to.
Enlarge/ I had to blur the entirety of that chat interface, it was that offensive. And as of press time, it cannot be disabled within nearly every menu in the Reforged version.
Online and lobby weirdness
Speaking of lobbies: Every launch of the game boots players into a live public chat room, with no option to disable this. Upon my first boot of the game, I was greeted with walls of repeating text from a single user who referenced Nazism, Islamophobia, and an ASCII rendering of male genitalia. (Meaning, content that flew right past the game's included "profanity filter.") There is currently no way to report or mute individuals in this default chat feed, or any other.
Should you load a custom map, its chat interface combines with the aforementioned default open-chat channel, and you cannot mute or stop the general slew of messages that interrupts your attempts to coordinate play with friends or strangers.
The original WC3 chat interface, which would only load when players began searching for automatic matchmaking or manual custom-map sessions, is long gone. Your ability to join a variety of IRC-styled chat channels, grouped by interests, has been removed, and so has the ability to type IRC-style commands (/help, /set-email, etc.).
If the game fails to connect to Blizzard's servers for any reason, you're still allowed to boot into the single-player campaign... but your progress is not saved, despite the game clearly writing your single-player progress to local, editable text files.
My attempts to scan and refresh the public "custom games" list of multiplayer sessions regularly fail without an error message. I simply see an empty list, as if nobody else is online. This requires a full reboot of the game client to correct.
Missing-feature weirdness
Custom campaigns can no longer be loaded—thus wiping out access to a ton of player-made content over the past 17+ years.
The custom map browser (different from custom campaigns) no longer includes players from outside regions.
Players can no longer expect prior beloved custom maps to load by default, whether because of asset conflicts or other unexplained reasons.
Clan support has been removed.
Competitive, ranked-matchmaking ladders have been removed.
Player profiles have been removed (with the exception of custom player icons, which have to be earned by winning matches in the new random-connection matchmaking system).
Native LAN support has been removed.
And as we've already reported, WC3's custom-map mode—its wildest-west zone of community-generated larks, and a hard one to explain to newcomers—has been stymied with a new, aggressive ToS. But that's not the only problem. This slew of content is the reason people still talk about WC3 to this day, yet WC3:R neither tutorializes the content for curious newcomers, nor uses the refreshed build as an opportunity to reinvite the Internet's weirdest, most passionate community of creators to cozy up with the Blizz once again. Call me crazy, but maybe—just maybe—the goodwill generated by a community-first WC3:R attitude would outweigh the slim chance that another DotA slips out of Blizzard's profit-generating hands. (Remember, 99.9% of WC3's community-generated content is confusing and opaque stuff.)
Is there any hope?
I'd like to express optimism that quirks will be fixed and features will be brought back online. But I'm not used to typing such lengthy "this is missing, weird, or broken" lists about a Blizzard game launch—and my list is missing complaints that I've yet to personally verify, including a possibly inaccurate German translation and a bug that makes campaign missions instantly fail.
The new build's visuals, both in classic and reforged states, could very well be brought back to working shape. While I doubt the newer visuals will receive significant changes to their polygons or animations, I wouldn't be surprised to see a color- and lighting-balance patch arrive to address issues with color saturation and apparent flatness. And the older graphics' bugs read like issues you'd find in an alpha testing build of a game—an embarrassment to launch in a retail state, obviously, but still addressable.
As far as the rest of the changes we'd like to see, or a return of the 1.3GB-sized executable of old... well, that's a massive boat of speculation, and it's uneasily sailing west to the lands of Kalimdor. We held this report an extra day in hopes that Blizzard would answer or address my questions about the aforementioned bugs and missing features, but as of press time, the Blizzard reps who connected us to the game's launch have yet to respond.
Until then, there's one glimmer of hope for anyone clinging to the game's original community of maps, campaigns, and modes: sneaky ways to get the original files running. I have managed to get a non-Reforged build of the game working and connecting online with at least one method that didn't require hacks or skipping authentication. I'm leaving the details out, though, just in case that omission preserves the original working version for a little while longer.
For now, the game's previous versions have been wiped from Blizzard's Battle.net interface, and all online-connected owners of the original game are currently being redirected to WC3:R's failings and problems. That's in addition to the people who paid $30 expecting more in their new version of WarCraft III, not less. We don't know what Blizzard's next steps are at this point, but we sure hope it addresses at least one of these rightfully angry pools of customers, and soon.
Despite criticism from Apple, EU lawmakers on Thursday voted overwhelmingly in favor for new rules to establish a common charger for all mobile device makers across Europe (via Reuters).
Members of the European Parliament voted by 582-40 for a resolution urging the European Commission, which drafts EU laws, to ensure that EU consumers are no longer obliged to buy new chargers with each new device.
The resolution said voluntary agreements in the industry had significantly reduced the number of charger types, but had not resulted in one common standard.
The Commission should adopt new rules by July, the lawmakers' resolution said, calling for "an urgent need for EU regulatory action to reduce electronic waste, empower consumers to make sustainable choices, and allow them to fully participate in an efficient and well-functioning internal market."
The proposed charging ports for portable devices include Micro-USB, USB-C, and the Lightning connector. Thursday's resolution didn't specify what the mobile charging standard should be, but non-Apple mobile devices and increasingly laptops and tablets are charged by USB-C, so the EU is highly unlikely to choose Apple's Lightning connector.
Apple last week pushed back against proposals for binding measures to make smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices use a standardized charging port such as USB-C.
In a statement, Apple said that the industry was already moving to USB-C and that regulation to force conformity would stifle innovation, harming European consumers. Apple also claimed that such a move would "create an unprecedented volume of electronic waste and greatly inconvenience users."
The European Commission, which acts as the executive for the EU, has been pushing for a common charger for more than a decade. However, the latest resolution makes legislation more likely, with the EU executive having included the common charger standard as one of the set of actions it plans for this year.
The tech giant reported Thursday that operating profit plunged 34% to 7.2 trillion Korean won ($6 billion) in the quarter that ended in December compared to a year ago, in line with its forecast issued earlier this month.
Sales rose 1% to almost 60 trillion Korean won ($50.5 billion), beating expectations of a 4.4% decline.
Samsung's shares closed down 3.2% in Seoul on Thursday.
The firm attributed its latest profit drop to poor demand for display panels and "the continued fall in memory chip prices," a problem that has dogged its earnings for at least a year.
Prices of memory chips around the world have declined over the past year due to a glut in the market, though analysts are projecting a rebound in 2020 as the globalsupply stabilizes.
Samsung said Thursday it still expects some weak sales for a while, particularly in memory chips, display panels and consumer electronics due to lower seasonal demand over the first quarter.
Overall, however, this year could bring some relief. Samsung says it's anticipating a general pickup across its business in 2020, attributing the expected improvements to "increasing demand from data center companies" for memory chips, as well as greater adoption of 5G smartphones.
The conglomerate also posted an upswing for its mobile unit in the last quarter, "thanks to solid sales of flagship Galaxy smartphones" as well as changes to make its wider device lineup more profitable, it said.
Samsung used to sell too many smartphone models, leaving customers confused, according to analysts at Counterpoint Research. They said last fall that the company simplified its lineup in 2019, fixing that problem.
Last year, Samsung also "drastically increased its portfolio and slashed operating margin" to fend off competition from Huawei, which has made no secret of its desire to overtake Samsung as the world's biggest seller of smartphones, noted Mo Jia, a research analyst at Canalys.
"But the battle never came," he wrote in a Thursday report, pointing out that Huawei was placed on a US trade blacklist last May that stifled its overseas business.
Ultimately, Samsung managed to retain — and slightly extend — its lead in the global smartphone market in 2019, taking 21.8% share of all shipments followed by Huawei and Apple at 17.6% and 14.5% respectively, according to Canalys.
The global rollout of 5G has already provided a boost. Since hitting the market last year, Samsung's 5G smartphones have proven to be so popular that they've trumped the company's own sales targets. The company said earlier this month that it accounts for more than half the global market.
It’s not every day we get to talk about a good old-fashioned utility app update. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re a dying breed, but the Apple App Store platform dynamics of recent years have made their row much harder to hoe.
Which is one reason I’m happy to say that if you’re a Mac or iPhone user (or, ideally, both), you should absolutely go check out the newly updated Fantastical apps. There are a few new features and parity across platforms — I personally am excited for a calendar app that integrates with several to-do apps.
The thing about this update that may grab some attention is that it is moving to a subscription model. Historically, this kind of move has sparked consternation, but I’m not feeling any of that. It’s $4.99 a month or — in my preferred way to talk about subscription pricing — $40 per year (a $20 discount). That subscription gets you access to the iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch apps. Non-Apple users should look elsewhere.
You are reading Processor, a newsletter about computers by Dieter Bohn. Dieter writes about consumer tech, software, and the most important news of the day from The Verge. This newsletter delivers about four times a week, at least a couple of which include longer essays. You can subscribe to Processor and learn more about it here. Processor is also a YouTube series with the same goal: providing smart and surprising analysis with a bit of humor. Subscribe to all of The Verge’s great videos here!
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I think the subscription model is totally fair, especially given Flexibits’ history of updates and quality. That’s partially because, as I alluded to up top, there really aren’t better options for this category of apps given the rules laid down by Apple in the App Store.
If you’ve watched the App Store market dynamics over the past years, none of this will come as a surprise, but let’s recap:
First, there was a rush to the bottom when it came to pricing. Many apps were priced at $0.99, which set a consumer expectation that iPhone apps are cheap.
Driven by that dynamic and by ranked lists on the App Store, the app market moved to a sort of hit-based system, where games and free apps dominated downloads.
(Many of those games switched over to very skeezy in-app purchase schemes once Apple later allowed microtransactions in free apps, but that’s a story for another time.)
Over the years, Apple refused to offer more flexible pricing options to developers. There never has been (and may never be) such a thing as “upgrade pricing” in the App Store, unlike on more open platforms like the Mac. Developers either had to offer major new versions for free, charge current users the same amount as new users, or try to jerry-rig an in-app purchase system.
(Apple also obstinately refused to let any app so much as gesture to the whisper of an idea that it might be possible to pay the developer in any way other than through Apple’s 30-percent-cut payment system, and is now facing anti-trust complaints on this point, but again, story for another time.)
Perhaps realizing that the rules it had put in place for the App Store were skewing the market dynamics for apps, Apple switched over to a new system that encouraged subscriptions by reducing its cut after a year.
There are pros and cons to the subscription model for both developers and users and they’re all heavily context-dependent. So I’m not making a judgement on that one way or the other — only pointing out that the realm of possible business models has been heavily constrained by the App Store’s rules.
Those limitations have sometimes forced developers into weird decisions and I obviously wish Apple would open up to more pricing models. I especially wish it weren’t engaging in such blatant rent-seeking when it comes to taking a cut of in-app fees.
Anyway, the point is that if you see an app switch to a subscription model, it’s not necessarily doing so because it’s the trendy thing to do — instead, there may not be any other real choice.
One thing strikes me about Fantastical’s switch to a subscription model is how elegantly it was handled. I can’t imagine figuring out how to fork its versions to support this, but Flexibits is doing it:
If you already own Fantastical 2, though, Flexibits has a pretty cool offer to help mitigate that feeling, in part. If there’s any feature in Fantastical 2 that is now a Fantastical Premium feature, you will still be able to use that feature in the updated app on the platform you own it on, even without a Premium subscription.
One quick note: A lot of my newsletters have had a little “▼” in the subject line. It’s there not to evoke The Verge logo (though that’s a nice side effect), but instead to indicate that the newsletter includes a longer essay. I’ll aim to keep doing it, but you’ll notice this one doesn’t have one because it’s relatively short. I bring it all up as a reminder and also a heads-up that as tech news picks up over the next few weeks there may be a few more ▼-less editions than usual.
Daily Steals is offering Verge readers a big discount on a two-pack of Google Nest Mini smart speakers. By using the offer code VERGENEST at checkout, you’ll get two for $46.99. These cost about $35 each right now, so getting two for around $10 more is a very good deal.
Why would you need two, exactly? They can hang on your wall, so you won’t have to give up precious desk or table space. And compared to the previous generation Home Mini, this speaker sounds better and uses an ultrasonic sensor to detect when you’re near, which then turns on lights that guide you to the right button.
Tesla has bought itself more breathing room than it’s had in years, maybe ever. The company spent the last few years — especially 2017 onward, as it started spinning up production of the Model 3 — moving at breakneck speed with little margin for error. Tesla CEO Elon Musk even said in late 2018 that his company was single-digit weeks away from death at one point. Its workforce suffered through what Musk dubbed “production hell” as he pushed to make the Model 3 — the company’s most affordable electric car — at mass-market scale.
Most divisions are up. The Windows 7 transition helped Windows, Surface is making respectable but not outsized gains, and of course the real money driver is cloud services. The following note from Tom Warren made me laugh, it’s funny because it’s surely true:
Microsoft notes that Xbox content and services revenue also decreased by 11 percent, primarily due to a “third-party title” (likely Fortnite) performing better last year. Subscription growth has partially offset this decrease, but clearly the third-party game boosted Xbox content revenue last year.
AT&T really, really seems to think there’s going to be a virtuous cycle between HBO Max, 5G, and hardware upgrades. I am far from convinced that’s the case with any two of those three nodes, much less the entire flywheel. And even if it turns out to be true, it will mean that content services end up getting tied more tightly to other products.
As should be blindingly obvious to readers of this newsletter, I use a ton of web apps every day, and in many cases I use them instead of native apps because I prefer their interfaces and functionality. Password managers are not one of those times when I prefer a web app. They benefit so much from being integrated into the OS. This one’s a bummer.
SpaceX has permission to launch nearly 12,000 satellites and has expressed interest in launching 30,000 more. To fulfill its licensing obligations, SpaceX has to launch nearly 6,000 within the next five to six years. The company plans to launch up to 24 Starlink missions this year. ... Each Starlink launch consists of 60 satellites, so today’s mission will bring SpaceX’s constellation to about 240 satellites in orbit
The FCC has been trying to open up 3.5GHz airwaves since 2015, but it’s taken years to put structure around how it’ll happen. The trouble is, this spectrum is already being used by the US Navy, as well as a small number of companies. Particularly when it comes to the Navy, the FCC doesn’t want any of these new deployments getting in the way. ... So the commission spent the last several years setting up a scheme to make it all work. Any company that wants to use the 3.5GHz spectrum will have to work with an approved company
One commenter referred to Kim as the “Bob Ross of keyboard making,” and it’s an appropriate assessment. What makes the videos so appealing is Kim’s steady, soothing narration of the rather technical keyboard construction process. He walks through each step slowly and accentuates the precision involved in, say, soldering the key switches onto the printed circuit board. He also fields live questions from his Twitch chat about his work, the parts he finds, and why he enjoys doing what he does. All the while, light lounge music plays in the background.
Lincoln’s parent company, Ford, announced a $500 million investment in Rivian in April 2019, and said it would build an electric vehicle on the startup’s platform (basically the battery, electric motors, and all the other tech that makes an EV go). It was reported in the months following that the vehicle would be a Lincoln SUV, but Ford’s luxury marque had not confirmed any parts of those reports until today.
Nintendo had its strongest Switch quarter ever this holiday season, moving 10.81 million units to reach a total of 52.48 million sold as of the end of 2019. That means it’s now overtaken the SNES to become Nintendo’s third best-selling home console of all time behind the Wii and the NES.
Pokémon Sword and Shield were a huge hit over the holiday season, moving more than 16 million copies. That’s almost 4 million more than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate registered in its launch quarter a year ago, although Pokémon went on sale about three weeks earlier. Luigi’s Mansion 3 was another big success, selling over 5 million copies.
Nintendo’s Switch hardware sales are up about 15 percent year-on-year, which the company attributes partly to the launch of the cheaper Switch Lite while also noting the December launch in China — though that’s unlikely to be a major factor yet. The 3DS, meanwhile, is now officially a non-factor with just 260,000 consoles sold even in a holiday quarter.
After teasing a 5.1 surround sound solution with the introduction of wireless speakers in 2018 and a soundbar in 2019, Roku is finally doing the thing. If you already own a Roku Soundbar you’ll be able to add additional speakers and a subwoofer for a 5.1 surround sound experience. More importantly, it will actually be super easy to set up and cost half as much as a similar system from Sonos.
Once you’ve experienced a 5.1 surround sound setup, it’s tough to go back to your TV’s built-in speakers, or even just a soundbar. But right now, 5.1 systems are split into three categories. The first is the cheap box systems like what you can get from Vizio. Soundbar, sub, and satellite speakers are all included in the box. Set them all up, tinker a little, and you have decent 5.1 surround. Or you can spend a lot of money ($1,000 or more) and build out your own system with a wide range of speakers, amplifiers, and an AV receiver. Home theater enthusiasts love this setup because it’s infinitely customizable and will sound great, but it’s also time-consuming to set up and really, really pricey.
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Finally, there’s...Sonos. Sonos has cornered the market on easy to set up 5.1 systems that you can build up at your own speed and that will sound as good as the big fancy custom setups. But Sonos is not cheap. It’s nearly $1,600 for a Sonos soundbar, sub, and two satellite speakers. Sure you can spread out that cost into more agreeable chunks—a $600 sub here, a $200 satellite speaker there, but it’s still costly.
Roku is hoping to do the same thing...only at a price more people would be willing to pay. First, you’ll need the soundbar. That’s required, and $180. You can get the sub at the same time which brings the cost up to $300 total. Or you can buy it separately for $180. Then it’s time to buy the speakers. They come as a pair for just $200. That means a total setup is $500 to $560, depending on whether you buy the sub with the soundbar or not.
Roku’s setup is more than $1,000 less than Sonos’s. There are caveats, of course. You’re relying on the Roku ad factory to effectively subsidize the cost of your system. Roku’s wireless audio system won’t let you stream music directly from the internet as the Sonos system will, or optimize audio for the room you’re in. There’s also no built-in Alexa or Google Assistant as you’ll get with the Sonos One speakers.
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As for how much you’ll compromise on audio quality...I’m not sure yet. To get a good understanding of how one system compares to the other, you need to listen to them side by side. I didn’t get that opportunity when I checked out the Roku system back at CES. A Roku representative played a demo reel of films for me, which sounded nice and seemed to give some clear distinction between the left and right rear channel—though the three separate channels the soundbar handle didn’t have quite as much distinction. Then the rep played a clip of Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” which seemed to sound as rich and bass-heavy as when I listen to it while wearing a great pair of headphones.
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A Roku rep continued to walk me through the setup process for speakers. As with all things Roku, it was incredibly simple: You turn on the speaker, navigate to the setup menu in the soundbar’s built-in Roku, and choose the speaker you want set up. You still have to deal with the garish and outdated UI that Roku is known for, but overall I get the appeal—even if I would like to spend more time with the system before I go calling it a Sonos killer. Roku appears to have crafted a very affordable and very clean-operating 5.1 surround sound system that can be built at your leisure and set up with little fuss.
A software update allowing the various speakers to work together as a surround-sound system will come to Roku boxes in an update in February. In February you’ll also be able purchase much cheaper versions of all four speakers from Walmart under the Onn brand. The Onn-branded Roku soundbar will retail fro $130, the sub for $130, and a pair of wireless speakers will cost $150. That means a total system will cost just $410...provided you’re OK with buying your speakers at Walmart and don’t mind the Onn branding.
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