Month: September 2016

Enlarge / The 2- and 3-stage variants of New Glenn will be larger than any rocket in existence. (credit: Blue Origin)

Earlier this year, Blue Origin's founder Jeff Bezos promised to unveil details about his company's orbital rocket "later this summer," and on Monday morning he delivered. In an e-mail, Bezos released some preliminary details about the "New Glenn" rocket which will employ seven of the company's next generation BE-4 rocket engines, making for a powerful rocket indeed. The rocket is named for the first American to reach orbit, John Glenn.

According to Bezos, the two-stage variant of New Glenn will measure 23-feet in diameter and stand 270 feet tall, with a sea-level thrust of 3.85 million pounds. The engines will burn liquefied natural gas and liquefied oxygen. The three-stage variant of New Glenn will be 313 feet tall, with a single BE-3 engine powering its upper stage. "New Glenn is designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space," Bezos wrote. "The three-stage variant—with its high specific impulse hydrogen upper stage—is capable of flying demanding beyond-LEO missions."

Blue Origin, which is in the midst of building launch and production facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, plans to fly New Glenn for the first time by the end of this decade, Bezos said. The new rocket and its engines, like the smaller BE-3 and New Shepard Propulsion module upon which it is based, will be reusable. The first stage of the booster is being designed to fly a minimum of 25 missions. This does not seem an idle boast, either, as Blue Origin has already flown and landed a single New Shepard rocket four times.

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Worlds Adrift isn't your typical MMO. London-based studio Bossa—famed for games like Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread—is ditching common systems around character growth, exploration, and combat, and replacing them with fresh takes on player progress, interaction, and accomplishment in the online world. Most interesting of all, it hopes to create the MMO holy grail: a truly persistent world where every player on every server can change the world in ways every other player will see, right down to the placement of rocks. For a team with no prior experience in the genre, this is ambitious. After all, there's a reason so many games have stuck to the conventions that have been around since World of Warcraft.

This is what makes MMOs such a conservative genre: because the business model relies on attracting large numbers of players and retaining them over a long period, it's much easier if you can show potential players something recognisable—and because WoW was the first MMO experience for so many gamers, many MMOs have ended up looking very similar. Worlds Adrift does at least share some similarities with Bossa's previous work, though. Players interact with complex systems of physics, just like Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. A grappling hook and tether allows players to swing across gaps, abseil cliff faces, and clamber over walls. Performing Spider-Man-like sequences of seamless swings is difficult given that the system is entirely unassisted, but the lack of automation gives you more freedom.

Worlds Adrift takes place on islands floating in the sky, each procedurally generated with their own unique geometry, colours, and evidence of civilisations past in the form of dilapidated structures. There will be some player-designed islands too, courtesy of the free Island Creator tool currently available on Steam, while Bossa has promised to put its favourites into the final game. Players are simply tasked with exploring this fractured environment. Think of it as No Man's Sky, only with exploration on a more local, relatable scale. Travelling between these islands requires building airships, whose motion and strength is determined by your design. Place the engines unevenly, for instance, and power efficiency will suffer. Want to use light armour plating in order to maintain a high speed? Don't expect to last long in battle.

Enlarge (credit: Casey Johnston)

Microsoft is preparing to "end sales" of its Lumia smartphones by the end of the year, according to an anonymous internal source.

And in a decision that will surprise almost nobody, Microsoft is believed to be planning to replace its underperforming Lumia range with a new Surface Phone.

The anonymous tipster's predictions have seemingly been borne out recently, both by the fact that just four Lumia models are left on the market, with no more forthcoming, and by reports that many retailers have been offering discounts and removing the phones from in-store prominence. Microsoft has even removed the link to buy Lumias from its US website, and dialled back their presence in other regions.

Enlarge (credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

If you love the freedom of using a jailbroken iOS device or a rooted Android phone, but can't get enough of poaching Pikachus in Pokémon Go, bad news: the latest Pokemon Go update removes support for rooted and jailbroken devices.

Niantic has implemented the restriction in Pokémon Go version 0.37.0 for Android and 1.7.0 for iOS, both of which are slowly trickling out to devices over the next few days. The developer says the restriction is intended to cut down on "bots and scrapers," which automatically play Pokémon Go on behalf of users, often in exchange for a small fee. That said, such services don't actually require users to have a jailbroken or rooted phone in order to use them. The restriction is more likely to affect those using local GPS spoofing instead.

Naturally, users have already found a way around the restriction, at least on Android. In a post on Reddit, user TheJakeGaming says: "I was browsing over XDA and found this flashable zip, Magisk. If you didn't know, Pokémon Go uses a method called safety net to check for root which is the same thing Android Pay does. TopJohnWu has developed a program to get around that safety net enabling you to play Pokémon Go while rooted." Many players have successfully implemented Magisk, and guides have appeared online.

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A six-year-old boy from Brooklyn has reportedly become the latest victim of Samsung's disastrous exploding Galaxy Note 7 batteries.

The boy had been using the device at his family home when it "suddenly burst into flames," according to the New York Post. He was rushed to hospital with burns to his body.

Samsung issued a recall of 2.5 million of its latest flagship phone on September 2—which had only been released the previous month—after 35 reports that lithium batteries were exploding while they were being charged.

Enlarge / ReCore protagonist Joule, seen here feeling strongly about her newest shiny pick-up.

Read enough archival stories on an average games news site and you'll probably find a story of a game's tragic cancellation. Maybe the "game that never was" seemed promising because of a cool-sounding premise, a veteran development staff, or some delicious twist beyond the industry's usual predictable fare.

Those sad canceled-game stories usually end with hard truths, however, like bad management, major bugs, or an idea that didn't turn out as well as it sounded on paper.

In a different world, Microsoft's first "Xbox Anywhere" game, ReCore, might have only appeared as a leaked prototype or a behind-the-scenes story of a cancellation. It sure feels like that kind of game: as in, a "finished" product whose seams show all too clearly, and whose potential doesn't match the end result.