Month: June 2021

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After coming close to imposing a near-total ban on municipal broadband networks, Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature has reportedly dropped the proposed law in final negotiations over the state budget.

The final budget agreement "axed a proposal to limit local governments from offering broadband services," The Columbus Dispatch wrote. With a June 30 deadline looming, Ohio's House and Senate approved the budget and sent it to Gov. Mike DeWine for final approval on Monday night, the Dispatch wrote.

As we wrote earlier this month, the Ohio Senate approved a version of the budget containing an amendment that would have forced existing municipal broadband services to shut down and prevented the formation of new public networks. The proposed law was reportedly "inserted without prior public discussion," and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment. It was approved in a party-line vote as Democrats opposed the restrictions in municipal broadband.

Enlarge / YouTube TV

YouTube TV is adding 4K support and offline playback, but it's going to cost you. Google detailed YouTube TV's "4K Plus" subscription add-on, which costs an extra $20 on top of the standard $65-per-month plan, for a total of $85 per month. 4K Plus might sound like it will simply provide a resolution bump, but subscribing to the higher tier will also unlock a new offline playback feature and unlimited simultaneous streaming over home Wi-Fi. The latter feature is otherwise limited to three streams per account. The one no-extra-cost feature of today's announcement is 5.1 audio support, which is rolling out to all YouTube TV members.

YouTube TV is Google's US-only pay-per-month service meant to replace a cable TV subscription. For the base price of $65 a month, you get access to a bundle of major cable TV channels, like ESPN, CNN, MTV, Cartoon Network, Discovery, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, TBS, TNT, USA, NFL Network, and more. The major US TV networks—CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox—are all included. In addition to paying extra for 4K, you can also tack on other premium add-ons like cable TV movie channels such as HBO, Stars, Showtime, and Cinemax. Sports packages, including NFL Red Zone, are available as well. Just like cable, YouTube TV is quite expensive and keeps getting more expensive. Google just raised the price to $65 last year.

Even if you pay the extra $20, it sounds like 4K content will be hard to come by. Google says that "4K playback is available on select live and on-demand content from these networks: Discovery, ESPN, FOX Sports, FX, Nat Geo, NBC Sports, and Tastemade." The lack of 4K content isn't YouTube TV's fault, though. While Internet streaming services like Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube have all been on the 4K content train for some time, cable TV networks are still primarily producing content in 720p or 1080p. YouTube TV is essentially cable, and there's just not that much 4K content available.

Enlarge / The latest render of the upcoming Intellivision Amico console, with our own question marks placed in each controller's embedded touch screen. A dev portal leak has helped us answer some, but not all, of the questions that remain ahead of the product's current announced release date of October 10, 2021, for $249. (credit: Intellivision / Sam Machkovech)

Since its announcement as a crowdfunded game console in 2018, the Intellivision Amico has had a weird public image. There have been many YouTube pronouncements about its family-friendliness, yet there are few concrete details that have convinced us it will stand out in an increasingly crowded home-gaming market. And this year, public scrutiny about the $250 system (currently open for $100 preorder "down payments" or full-price preorders, which include two controllers and six pack-in games) has grown, particularly after Intellivision joined the 2021 virtual E3-showcase fray—and did so with a resounding thud.

Thus far, the Amico has used video presentations to show what the company hopes will set this handheld apart from the pack. Those videos mostly originate from Intellivision and a few hand-picked fan YouTube channels. Until we can go hands on with live hardware ourselves, these videos leave us with question marks about dev kits and other potentially inauthentic presentations. Leaks from an Intellivision developer portal this week will have to suffice for now, as it's a great opportunity to finally take a closer look at what the heck an Intellivision Amico actually is.

“Exactly what stock photos are meant for”

I began closely watching the Amico once I noticed that its E3 2021 presentation video included unclear footage of how the device actually works. These "live gameplay" videos hint at Amico's central gimmick: gameplay happens primarily on a TV screen, but the device can also integrate content on an LCD screen embedded in every controller (controllers resemble Nintendo's Wii U, albeit with smaller gamepads). However, the E3 video cuts and pans so much that we can't tell if the Amico controllers are legitimately interacting with the nearby TV set. Older Amico videos have shown apparent lag between controller input and TV display—when those videos haven't hidden the controller from view altogether, that is. This recent E3 presentation did nothing to reduce concern on that front.

Enlarge / Amazon leases its fleet of planes from a handful of cargo airlines, some of which have signed contracts that give the retailer the right to buy stock in the company. (credit: Jason Alden/Bloomberg)

Amazon is making some vendors and suppliers offers they can’t refuse. As part of large contracts with the retailer, companies have to offer Amazon the right to buy their stock at a potentially discounted price.

The e-commerce giant started including warrants—rights to buy stock in the future at a set price—in vendor contracts a decade ago. But in recent years, Amazon has been making the unusual request more frequently, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Amazon’s last quarterly report said the company held $2.8 billion in warrants, up fivefold in the last three years.

Amazon executives are reportedly careful not to include anything in writing that would suggest that the warrants are required for a vendor to earn the contract, but apparently the message didn’t need to be delivered in writing. Almost all the companies that were offered contracts that included terms for warrants accepted the deal. “Several former Amazon executives who worked on such deals said in interviews that they found them to be unfair and one-sided, saying the companies weren’t in a position to refuse and that most of the upside went to Amazon,” the WSJ wrote.

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  Returnaling, over and over, to remember the things we shot. [credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment / Housemarque ]

Sony has announced that it has acquired Finnish indie developer Housemarque just two months after the launch of Housemarque's Returnal as one of the highest-profile exclusives on the young PlayStation 5 console.

Housemarque has a long history with Sony consoles, dating back to 2007's Super Stardust HD on the then-new PlayStation 3 and running through PS4 launch standout Resogun. Housemarque is also the studio behind the 2017 PS4 twin-stick shooter Nex Machina, which Ars' Sam Machkovech gave an honorable mention in his Games of the Year list at the time. The last Housemarque game on a non-Sony console was 2008's little-remembered Golf: Tee it Up on the Xbox 360.

"It’s pretty hard to imagine a launch of a PlayStation platform without there being something from Housemarque," Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The games they create are just so different from everything else we’ve got, so I love the diversity of the experiences that we’re able to offer."