Month: July 2021

Enlarge / New Jersey hopes to be the home of scenes like this, where French workers are building the foundations for offshore wind turbines. (credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images)

By the end of the decade, New Jersey's beaches are set to have a view of something other than crashing waves. The state is pushing for aggressive development of offshore wind, having already approved a 1.1 GW wind farm. Yesterday, the state more than doubled its planned projects, reaching agreements that will let two additional 1 GW+ wind farms go into the waters off the southern portion of the state.

Perhaps as significant in the long run, both projects include an agreement that will see critical components of the wind farm assembled in a New Jersey port that the state is promoting as a hub for future offshore wind developments.

A multinational effort

The earlier agreement New Jersey put into place was for a project called Ocean Wind, a joint project between the state's major utility, PSE&G, and the Danish energy developer Ørsted, a major player in offshore wind. One of the projects approved yesterday is Ocean Wind II, which plans for another 1.1 GW of capacity supplied by using GE's Halide X turbines. These projects will be sited to the east of Cape May, the southernmost part of the state.

Just days after announcing the acquisition of Returnal developer Housemarque, Sony today revealed that Dutch studio Nixxes will be the next member of the growing PlayStation Studios family.

If the name Nixxes doesn't ring a bell for most gamers, that's because the studio hasn't developed any original projects in its over-20-year history. Instead, Nixxes has primarily specialized in creating a variety of PC and console ports for games from the likes of Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics (both now Square Enix subsidiaries).

That makes Nixxes an especially intriguing acquisition for Sony, which has been slowly dipping an increasing number of toes into the PC gaming space in recent years. After Horizon: Zero Dawn hit the PC last year, Sony said in its annual report that it "will explore expanding our 1st party titles to the PC platform in order to promote further growth in our profitability." Then, in May, Sony listed Uncharted 4 under the "more PC releases planned" section of an investor report, alongside the recent PC port of former PlayStation exclusive Days Gone.