Bot the difference: Astro Bot features dozens of cameos from well-known PlayStation characters
It’s just a few hours before reviews of one of the year’s biggest PlayStation 5 releases arrive, and its director is talking about food.
Buffets, to be precise.
You might get a lot for your money, but how do you feel afterwards?
“Bloated, you’ve eaten too much and you just want to go and sleep,” says Nicolas Doucet, head of Sony-owned studio Team Asobi.
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Gamers are fond of food metaphors. Developers don’t just make games, they “cook”. If you’re spoilt for choice with high quality new releases, you’re “eatin’ good”.
But Nicolas is referring to the sense that blockbuster publishers have tended to have an all-you-can-eat approach when it comes to making games.
For a while now, the industry’s biggest players have been focused on producing open-world titles offering dozens of hours of gameplay, or on attempts to muscle into the lucrative online market.
Both genres have produced some huge hits, but Nicolas wonders if there is an appetite for something more like “that two-course meal that is going to be just the right amount”.
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Astro Bot could be just the recipe Sony has been looking for.
The online shooter is the latest high-profile bid to corner the so-called “live service” market dominated by the likes of Fortnite and Apex Legends that’s failed to attract a large audience.
But in a quiet year for first-party PlayStation releases, Astro Bot has received some of the highest review scores of 2024 and some critics say it’s one of Sony’s best in ages.
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At its heart it’s an old-school 3D platformer that’s crammed full of references to PlayStation’s 30-year history.
The game’s main objective is to rescue 300 Astro Bots hidden around various themed levels, with about half of those decked out in cosplay to resemble characters from the console’s past.
But as much as it’s a nostalgic reminder of Sony’s great successes, could it also be a lesson for the company’s future?
Team Asobi
Catstro Bot: Astro Bot picks up powers throughout the game that allow it to change size, shape and, in one case, species
If you’re one of the world’s 60 million PlayStation 5 owners, you’re almost certainly familiar with Astro Bot.
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The cute mascot character appeared in 2020’s Astro’s Playroom, a short, three-hour adventure pre-installed on every machine.
It was designed to act as a tech demo for the hardware and its advanced controller, but people loved it.
“And it did highlight perhaps the fact that people are craving for these kind of games,” says Nicolas.
Releasing a 3D platformer in 2024 is, on paper, a daunting prospect. Nicolas admits the genre – a staple of the PlayStation 2 era – isn’t very common these days.
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And, he says: “The ones that do exist are very, very high quality from people who’ve been making them for years and years.”
It’s also a genre Sony has moved away from recently, and its biggest releases have been more adult, cinematic titles such as God of War and The Last of Us.
Nicolas thinks this is a sign of audiences, and the developers making games for them, maturing.
But he admits that left a gap which Team Asobi – a relatively young studio – was eager to fill.
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“I think there needs to be more games that are there just to relax, have a little bit of fun, that are not dramatic, that are not necessarily heavily story driven, where you can just mess around with a game and it’s fun,” says Nicolas.
“But, of course, it needs to be executed well.”
Astro Bot’s been widely praised for its polish, attention to detail and the way it plays, drawing comparisons with Mario – for many, the undisputed king of 3D platformers.
Nicolas considers descriptions of Astro Bot as “old school” a compliment and that going “back to basics” helped with the game’s development.
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As concerns grow over spiralling budgets, Astro Bot was made in three-and-a-half years by a team of about 65 people – a relatively short time and small staff by modern standards.
Nicolas says the game’s bite-sized nature – it’s divided across 50 short, playable stages – helped to simplify development and made it easier to “swap things around”.
“Whereas when you’re tied to something that is one storyline, one timeline that is set, it’s very difficult,” he says.
“You have less flexibility.”
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Team Asobi
The PS5’s DualSense controller is a key part of the Astro Bot experience, throbbing and humming as players jet into a new level
Sony will now be hoping that Astro Bot’s glowing reception translates into big sales, but comparisons with Concord’s swift fall have already begun.
It’s also shone a light on characters Sony could revive, and prompted some people to question whether the company will shift its recent focus on the live-service market.
Under previous PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, the company announced plans to launch 12 online-focused games. It’s since scaled that back to six.
As for single-player titles, some of Sony’s biggest in-house studios haven’t yet revealed PS5 projects.
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Hermen Hulst, one of two new CEOs in charge of Sony’s gaming division, told the BBC in a statement it was “very important we offer a wide variety of titles to our community” and that “Astro Bot fills an important part of our portfolio”.
He praised Team Asobi for creating “something special that is light-hearted and delightful” with “incredibly fun gameplay”.
Astro Bot is also “a great opportunity for families to game together”, he said.
Nicolas opts not to comment on the Concord situation or bigger, strategic moves, but he does agree with his boss that Astro Bot has given PS5 a game that can “bridge generations”.
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Many reviewers have remarked on how cameos from the past have reminded them of growing up with Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter or the cast of Ape Escape – characters that set them on the path to becoming gamers.
Nicolas says he often gets messages from parents who’ve played Astro’s Playroom with their children talking about their experiences, and he hopes that the new game will create more shared moments.
“I’m really happy that, besides the game itself, there’s a greater good, if you like, that we’re able to tell stories like that,” he says.
“And I really hope that we can brighten some people’s homes thanks to that experience.”
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Additional reporting by Tom Gerken.
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Dutch scientists have unveiled the country’s first laboratory to research how autonomous miniature drones can mimic insects to accomplish tasks ranging from finding gas leaks in factories to search-and-rescue missions.
Called the Swarming Lab, researchers at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) say they aim to put a “self-flying” swarm of 100 tiny drones in the air, able to perform around the clock tasks.
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This includes the drones landing by themselves on recharging pods and taking off again to continue flying — without humans ever having to get involved.
“We are working not only to get these robots to be aware of one another, but also work together to complete complex tasks,” said Guido de Croon, a director at TU Delft’s Swarming Lab.
Tasks include the tiny drones — with the same weight as a golf ball or an egg — “sniffing out” a gas leak in a factory.
A swarm of autonomous drones, fitted with sensors to detect the gas, will be able to fly autonomously around the factory until one drone detects traces of the gas.
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It will then follow the “scent” of the gas while “calling” the other drones to help in the search using on-board sensors.
“In the same way, drone swarms can also be used to detect forest fires or continuously help in search and rescue operations over large areas,” De Croon said.
The scientists use studies on bee and ant swarms or how flocks of birds behave to try to program their drone swarms to do the same.
“Drone swarm technology is the idea that when we look at nature and you see many of these animals, like ants, that individually are perhaps not so smart but together they do … things that they could definitely not do by themselves,” De Croon said. “We want to instill the same capabilities also in robots,” De Croon said.
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Doing this, the scientists look at how birds or insects swarm “using very simple behaviors.”
For instance, birds “look at their closest neighbors in the flock and they do things like ‘oh, I don’t want to be too close’ because they don’t want to collide,” De Croon said. But “I also don’t want to be the only one to be away from the flock.”
They align with each other. And by following such simple rules you get these beautiful patterns that are very useful for the birds, also against predators,” he told AFP.
“So at that level, we draw inspiration and we try to make such simple rules also for robots but then for the applications we want to tackle.”
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But the scientists admit there are some challenges.
“Swarms are complex systems,” De Croon said at a demonstration of the technology at the Swarming Lab, situated inside TU Delft’s Science Centre.”A single robot can do simple things within a swarm.” “It is actually quite difficult to predict, however, with these simple rules how a whole swarm will behave,” De Croon said.
The small size of the robots also hampers the amount of technology like sensors and on-board computing capacity the tiny drones can carry.
Currently, the drones at the Swarming Lab still rely on an externally mounted camera to relay information to the buzzing beasts on their positions within the swarm.
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But the researchers have already developed the technology for robots to sense each other without external help. And they would n’t be the first: Scientists from Zhejiang University in China in 2022 successfully flew 10 autonomous drones through a thick bamboo forest.
Currently, the Swarming Lab, working with a start-up company of former TU Delft students called Emergent, has some 40 small drones involved in its research.
“The aim is eventually to put a swarm of around 100 drones in the air in the next five years,” said Lennart Bult, co-founder at Emergent.
Ultimately “it would be really great if we actually get a bit closer to the astonishing intelligence of tiny creatures like honeybees,” said De Croon.
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The mummy of an ancient Egyptian woman with her mouth wide open in what looks like an anguished shriek may have died “screaming from agony,” researchers say.
The unnamed woman mummy, discovered in a 1935 archeological expedition in Deir el-Bahari near Luxor, was kept in The Cairo Egyptian Museum and referred to as “Screaming Woman Mummy of the store of Kasr al Ainy.”
The face of the “Screaming Woman” mummy, discovered in 1935 near Luxor, is seen at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt, January 18, 2023 in this handout photograph released on August 2, 2024.
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Sahar Saleem
In an article in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, scientists said they used CT scans and other testing to examine whether the mummy had any pathological abnormalities and assess potential causes of death.
They found that the woman, who was around 48 years old at the time she died, had lost some teeth and lived with mild arthritis of the spine. Her body was embalmed about 3,500 years ago with high quality ingredients.
Ancient Egyptians mummified bodies because they believed preserving them after death secured a worthy existence in the afterlife. Usually, internal organs would be removed during the mummification process, but that did not take place with the “Screaming Woman.”
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“In ancient Egypt, the embalmers took care of the dead body so it would look beautiful for the afterlife. That’s why they were keen to close the mouth of the dead by tying the jaw to the head to prevent the normal postmortem jaw drop,” lead researcher in the study, Cairo University radiology professor Sahar Saleem, told the Reuters news agency.
But this had not happened in the case of the “Screaming Woman.”
“This opened the way to other explanations of the widely opened mouth — that the woman died screaming from agony or pain and that the muscles of the face contracted to preserve this appearance at the time of death due to cadaveric spasm,” Saleem told Reuters, adding that, due to all of the unknowns around her history, the cause of her expression can’t be established with certainty.
Saleem told Reuters that cadaveric spasm is a poorly understood condition, where contracted muscles become rigid immediately after death.
Data streaming specialist Confluent on Tuesday unveiled its latest platform update, including new security capabilities and support for the Table API that makes the Apache Flink platform accessible to Java and Python developers.
The release, which includes generally available features as well as some in preview, closely follows Confluent’s acquisition of WarpStream, another streaming data vendor that Confluent bought Sept. 9.
Based in Mountain View, Calif., Confluent develops a streaming data platform built on Apache Kafka, an open source technology developed by Confluent co-founders Jay Kreps, Neha Narkhede and Jun Rao when they were working at LinkedIn. Kafka, which was first released in 2011, enables users to ingest and process data as it is produced in real time.
Using Kafka as a foundation, Confluent offers Confluent Cloud as a managed service and Confluent Platform for on-premises users.
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Apache Flink, meanwhile, was launched in 2014 and is a processing framework for data streaming similar to Confluent’s proprietary platforms. Flink provides a compute layer that enables users to filter, combine and enrich data as it’s produced and processed to foster real-time analysis.
Confluent unveiled support for Flink in March to provide users the option of using it as a managed service rather than Confluent Cloud.
New capabilities
Just as adding support for Flink provided Confluent users with more choice as they build their streaming data infrastructure, adding support for the Table API — which is now in open preview — similarly adds more choice to the Confluent platform while also opening it to a new set of potential users.
When Confluent first provided customers with Flink as an option, it did so with a SQL API that enabled developers to build data streams using SQL code. However, not all developers know SQL. And even among those who do know SQL, the programming language may not be their preferred coding format.
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The Table API, like the SQL API, is a tool that enables Flink users to develop pipelines by writing code. But rather than SQL, the Table API enables developers to use Java and Python.
Choice is important as developers create environments for data management and analytics. It not only enables enterprises to avoid vendor lock-in but also lets them use the tools that best fit their needs for a given task or that users know best and prefer. Therefore, Confluent’s addition of support for the Table API is a logical step for the vendor following its initial support for Flink, according to David Menninger, an analyst at ISG’s Ventana Research.
It will be significant to developers that would prefer to write code rather than SQL statements. In some cases, developers may not be very well versed in SQL. In some cases, it may just be a preference. David MenningerAnalyst, ISG’s Ventana Research
“It will be significant to developers that would prefer to write code rather than SQL statements,” he said. “In some cases, developers may not be very well versed in SQL. In some cases, it may just be a preference.”
Beyond support for the Table API, Confluent’s addition of new security features is important, according to Menninger.
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Specifically, Confluent’s platform now offers private networking support for Flink so users of private networks rather than public clouds can take advantage of Flink’s capabilities. In addition, the platform now includes client-side field level encryption, which enables customers to encrypt fields within data streams to ensure security and regulatory compliance.
Data volume is growing at an exponential rate. So is the complexity of data. To ensure security so sensitive information remains private, many organizations have hybrid data storage environments, with their less-regulated data stored in public clouds such as AWS and Azure and their more regulated data, such as that with personally identifiable information, kept on premises or in private clouds.
By enabling customers to use Flink in private networks, Confluent is supporting potential customers that may not have been able to use its platform in the past due to security concerns to now use its streaming data capabilities.
Specific features of Confluent’s private networking support for Flink, which is generally available on AWS for Confluent Enterprise users, include:
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Safeguards for in-transit data, including a private network to provide secure connections between private clouds and Flink.
Simple configuration that enables users without extensive networking expertise to set up private connections between their private data storage environments and Flink.
Flexible data stream processing of Kafka clusters within the secure environment so that private cloud users can benefit from the same speed and efficiency as other Confluent users.
“It may not be very sexy, but new security features including private networking and client-side field-level encryption will be welcomed additions,” Menninger said. “Enterprises have a heightened focus on governance, compliance and security. The lack of these capabilities may, in fact, have prevented certain organizations from using Flink previously.”
Confluent’s impetus for including support for the Table API and the new security features — along with an extension for the Visual Studio Code development platform — came from a combination of customer interactions and observation of market trends, according to Jean-Sébastien Brunner, Confluent’s director of product management.
Confluent maintains a feedback loop with its users and takes information gathered from that feedback into account when deciding what to add in any given platform update, he said.
In addition, the vendor pays close attention to industry trends to make sure its tools are consistent with those being offered by competing platforms such as Cloudera, Aiven and streaming data tools from tech giants such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft.
Finally, with its roots in the open source community, a focal point for Confluent is making sure that technologies such as Kafka and Flink are accessible and easy to use.
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“We look at several signals,” he said.
While Confluent’s platform update aims to meet customer needs and respond to industry trends, the vendor’s acquisition of WarpStream was designed to expand Confluent’s reach within an enterprise’s data stack by adding new applications for its platform, according to Kreps, Confluent’s CEO.
Confluent, which was founded in 2014, provides certain capabilities and is a good fit for certain companies. WarpStream provides different capabilities such as a bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) architecture that enables users to deploy the streaming data platform in their own clouds rather than a vendor’s.
In a sense, BYOC is similar to Confluent’s private networking support for Flink. However, as a native architecture, it is a foundation rather than an add-on.
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“Our goal is to make data streaming the central nervous system of every company,” Kreps said. “To do that we need to make it something that is a great fit for a vast array of use cases and companies. The big thing they did that got our attention was their next-generation approach to BYOC architectures.”
Once integrated, WarpStream’s BYOC capabilities should help Confluent accomplish its aim of providing customers with more deployment options, according to Menninger.
He noted that some vendors offer a managed cloud service or a self-managed option that can be run in the cloud. Other vendors that are more mature offer both. Both options have benefits and drawbacks. For example, managed cloud versions reduce management burdens but can be expensive. Self-managed versions can be less expensive but require more labor.
WarpStream provides a third choice.
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“WarpStream offers an option in between,” Menninger said. “Enterprises can offload some of the management and administrative responsibilities, but not all of them.”
Plans
As Confluent plots future platform updates, continuing to add security and networking capabilities to ensure regulatory compliance is a continued focus, according to Brunner. So is enabling customers to connect to external sources to better foster real-time analysis and insights.
“We remain focused on helping our customers get insights faster by making data accessible once it’s generated,” Brunner said.
Menninger, meanwhile, suggested that Confluent could further meet the needs of customers by enabling them to more easily combine streaming data with data at rest.
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While streaming data is an imperative for real-time decision-making, streaming data can have broader applications when used together with data at rest. For example, as enterprises increasingly develop generative AI tools, streaming data could be used to keep models current.
However, despite potential real-world applications for streaming data and data at rest being used together, the two are too often kept separate, according to Menninger. Therefore, anything vendors such as Confluent can do to bring streaming data together with data at rest would be beneficial.
“The worlds of streaming data and data at rest are coming closer together, but they are still largely separate worlds that can be integrated or co-exist,” Menninger said. “I’d like to see Confluent and others create a more unified platform across both streaming data and data at rest.”
Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management.
Greenland has melted before, and as the climate warms, it will melt again — this time leading to what scientists warn could be 20 to 25 feet of sea-level rise.
During one of the warm periods within the last 1.1 million years, the center, not just the edges, of Greenland’s massive ice sheet melted away, new research has found, giving way to a dry and barren “tundra landscape” that was home to various insects and plant life. The findings were shared in a new paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
When the ice sheet initially melted, there were lower levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere than there are today. Now with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, scientists say Greenland’s ice sheet is more susceptible to melting than previously thought.
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“Greenland has been around for 2.7 million years with its ice,” said Paul Bierman, a scientist at the University of Vermont who co-led the new study. “Now there’s some evidence that this ice sheet is fragile.”
The researchers have been studying materials from beneath the hood of the Greenland ice sheet, the largest in the Northern hemisphere, since 2014. They examined sediment from the bottom of an ice core — dubbed GISP2 — extracted from two miles below the surface at the center of the ice sheet nearly 30 years ago.
The 1-ounce sample of sediment was filled with clues of Greenland’s past. Tiny little black specks, when put under the microscope, revealed an insect eye, an Arctic poppy seed, parts of an Arctic willow, and tiny bits of soil fungus and spike moss — what Bierman referred to as a “frozen ecosystem underneath the ice.”
Willow bud scale, arctic poppy seed, fungal bodies, and rock spike moss megaspores found in the GISP2 soil sample viewed under a microscope.
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Halley Mastro
According to researchers, the fossils provide “direct confirmation” that 90% of the ice sheet was once gone.
“Finding these fossils in the center of the ice sheet is unambiguous evidence that Greenland’s ice has disappeared [in the past],” said Bierman. “And once you lose the center of the ice sheet, you’ve lost it all.”
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The findings supports what’s called the “fragile Greenland” hypothesis: that nature, outside of human influence, has caused the ice sheet to melt at least once since it formed, Bierman said.
At 656,000 square miles, the Greenland ice sheet currently covers around 80% of the island territory. To put that into perspective, it’s about three times the size of Texas.
Drill dome and camp for GISP2, in Summit Greenland.
Christine Massey
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NASA, which has mapped Greenland’s ice loss, says the sheet has “rapidly declined in the last several years,” prompting the global sea level to rise around 0.03 inches per year. Greenland’s melting ice mass is now the No. 1 driver of sea level rise, according to Bierman.
“In the early years of the climate warming, it was mountain glaciers that were doing most of the melting and adding water to the ocean,” he said. “Now it’s Greenland.”
While it could be a few thousand years before the entire Greenland mass melts, Bierman said, the consequences would be dire: hundreds of millions of people could lose their homes and businesses. Places we hold near and dear to our hearts would be lost.
“As I like to say when people ask me, why does it matter? I say think about your favorite beach. And then imagine your favorite beach with 25 feet of water on it,” Bierman said.
Mary Cunningham is a news associate at CBS News, based in New York. She has worked on both the broadcast side, with CBS News 24/7 streaming, and the digital side, writing stories for CBSNews.com. Her next assignment is working with the “60 Minutes” team.
During , some more details about Monument Valley 3 emerged. Developer Ustwo Games says the builds on its predecessors in several ways, especially in terms of the gameplay, art style and story.
Perhaps the biggest change in Monument Valley 3 is the introduction of sailing. You’ll be able to move the boat in almost any direction and, as such, “the game is no longer restricted to geometric spaces,” game director Jennifer Estaris said during a call with reporters. Along with unfolding cubes that shift new protagonist Noor onto different planes, Monument Valley 3 is in large part about “deconstructing what we know,” Estaris said.
Naturally, those changes allow for fresh puzzles and visuals as players navigate impossible-looking, MC Escher-style architectural spaces. Aligned with that, Ustwo has evolved the art style with softer and more abstract shapes (you are going to be navigating rivers after all). The result is something that looks very familiar, but like a hazy memory. Meanwhile, the soundtrack from an 18-piece orchestra might just stir up some emotions.
While the original game was about forgiveness and its sequel was a coming-of-age tale, Monument Valley 3 focuses on the themes of hope, togetherness and resilience. Noor is a lighthouse keeper’s apprentice who is tasked with searching for a new source of power before light fades away from the world forever. It’s the “most ambitious story” to date for a Monument Valley game, according to Ustwo marketing manager Jamie Wotton.
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All three Monument Valley games are standalone titles with their own stories. That means you’ll be able to glide right into Monument Valley 3 without playing the previous two entries. But there’s plenty of time to check those out first (or revisit them). You won’t have to pay extra for those mobile gaming classics if you have a Netflix subscription. There are no ads or in-app purchases in the company’s games.
Monument Valley is available to Netflix subscribers on iOS and Android starting today, and its sequel will arrive on the service on October 29. Monument Valley 3 will then debut as a Netflix mobile exclusive on December 10.
Netflix revealed some other mobile gaming news during Geeked Week. Its (which includes special weapons and ranked modes) will drop on September 24. Subscribers will soon be able to play and on their mobile devices at no extra cost — the Netflix version of the latter will offer cross-play between iOS and Android.
Meanwhile, Netflix at Squid Game: Unleashed before that multiplayer tie-in game arrives later this year. Last but not least, there was a first look at Blood Line: A Rebel Moon Game, based on Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon movies. The Netflix-exclusive co-op action game from developer Super Evil Megacorp will debut in 2025.
Sony
Team Asobi
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