Atari and developer Digital Eclipse have announced details of the next paid expansion for Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, a remarkable collection that’s both a compilation of many of the publisher’s games and a documentary about its half-century history. This second DLC is called The First Console War and it highlights the rivalry with Mattel’s Intellivision, Atari’s first real competitor in the console market.

The bundle includes 19 more games and eight video segments that delve into the rivalry, as well as what eventually led to Mattel making games for Atari systems. Atari and Digital Eclipse say the DLC includes more The First Console War DLC features additional interviews, vintage ads and never-before-seen historical artifacts that help tell the story of the battle between Atari and Mattel. As it happens, it was a war Atari ended up decisively winning, as it bought the Intellivision brand earlier this year.

The DLC includes prototypes and other games that never saw the light of day until now. The full list is as follows:

• Air Raiders — 2600 M Network

• Antbear — 2600 M Network (unreleased, based on Stern IP)

• Armor Ambush — 2600 M Network

• Astroblast — 2600 M Network

• Frogs & Flies — 2600 M Network

• International Soccer — 2600 M Network

• Dark Cavern — 2600 M Network

• Star Strike — 2600 M Network

• Super Challenge Baseball — 2600 M Network

• Super Challenge Football — 2600 M Network

• Swordfight — 2600 M Network (rare, unreleased)

• Sea Battle — 2600 M Network (rare, unreleased)

• Tower of Mystery (unreleased prototype, recently rescued)

• Video Pinball — 2600

• Basketball — 2600

• Hardball — Atari 8-bit (XE)

• Final Legacy (prototype) — 5200

• Xari Arena — Atari 8—bit

• Desert Falcon — 7800

The Last Console War follows a previous DLC called The Wider World of Atari that arrived in September and added another 19 games to the collection. Factoring in the two expansions, Atari 50 will have around 130 games in total.

Those who already have Atari 50 on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4 and PS5 will be able to snap up The Last Console War on November 8. If you have the game on Atari VCS, you’ll get the DLC as a free update early next year.

If you’re interested in picking up a bundle of the base game and both expansions, you can do just that with Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Expanded Edition. That’ll be available on November 8 as well. The physical edition for Switch and PS5 costs $40. A steelbook for the Switch includes Atari 2600 art cards and other goodies and will run you $50.

As the AI video wars continue to wage with new, realistic video generating models being released on a near weekly basis, early leader Runway isn’t ceding any ground in terms of capabilities.

Rather, the New York City-based startup — funded to the tune of $100M+ by Google and Nvidia, among others — is actually deploying even new features that help set it apart. Today, for instance, it launched a powerful new set of advanced AI camera controls for its Gen-3 Alpha Turbo video generation model.

Now, when users generate a new video from text prompts, uploaded images, or their own video, the user can also control how the AI generated effects and scenes play out much more granularly than with a random “roll of the dice.”

Instead, as Runway shows in a thread of example videos uploaded to its X account, the user can actually zoom in and out of their scene and subjects, preserving even the AI generated character forms and setting behind them, realistically putting them and their viewers into a fully realized, seemingly 3D world — like they are on a real movie set or on location.

As Runway CEO Crisóbal Valenzuela wrote on X, “Who said 3D?”

This is a big leap forward in capabilities. Even though other AI video generators and Runway itself previously offered camera controls, they were relatively blunt and the way in which they generated a resulting new video was often seemingly random and limited — trying to pan up or down or around a subject could sometimes deform it or turn it 2D or result in strange deformations and glitches.

What you can do with Runway’s new Gen-3 Alpha Turbo Advanced Camera Controls

The Advanced Camera Controls include options for setting both the direction and intensity of movements, providing users with nuanced capabilities to shape their visual projects. Among the highlights, creators can use horizontal movements to arc smoothly around subjects or explore locations from different vantage points, enhancing the sense of immersion and perspective.

For those looking to experiment with motion dynamics, the toolset allows for the combination of various camera moves with speed ramps.

This feature is particularly useful for generating visually engaging loops or transitions, offering greater creative potential. Users can also perform dramatic zoom-ins, navigating deeper into scenes with cinematic flair, or execute quick zoom-outs to introduce new context, shifting the narrative focus and providing audiences with a fresh perspective.

The update also includes options for slow trucking movements, which let the camera glide steadily across scenes. This provides a controlled and intentional viewing experience, ideal for emphasizing detail or building suspense. Runway’s integration of these diverse options aims to transform the way users think about digital camera work, allowing for seamless transitions and enhanced scene composition.

These capabilities are now available for creators using the Gen-3 Alpha Turbo model. To explore the full range of Advanced Camera Control features, users can visit Runway’s platform at runwayml.com.

While we haven’t yet tried the new Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo model, the videos showing its capabilities indicate a much higher level of precision in control and should help AI filmmakers — including those from major legacy Hollywood studios such as Lionsgate, with whom Runway recently partnered — to realize major motion picture quality scenes more quickly, affordably, and seamlessly than ever before.

Asked by VentureBeat over Direct Message on X if Runway had developed a 3D AI scene generation model — something currently being pursued by other rivals from China and the U.S. such as Midjourney — Valenzuela responded: “world models :-).”

Runway first mentioned it was building AI models designed to simulate the physical world back in December 2023, nearly a year ago, when co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) Anastasis Germanidis posted on the Runway website about the concept, stating:

“A world model is an AI system that builds an internal representation of an environment, and uses it to simulate future events within that environment. Research in world models has so far been focused on very limited and controlled settings, either in toy simulated worlds (like those of video games) or narrow contexts (such as developing world models for driving). The aim of general world models will be to represent and simulate a wide range of situations and interactions, like those encountered in the real world.“

As evidenced in the new camera controls unveiled today, Runway is well along on its journey to build such models and deploy them to users.

Well, the early Black Friday deals took less than a day to begin. Amazon, Best Buy, Lowe’s, and a number of other major retailers have officially begun running their holiday promotions in anticipation of the annual shopping event, though few of them are offering discounts as steep as Bose. For a limited time, you can grab the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy for an all-time low of $329 ($100 off) or the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds for $229 ($100 off) via the same retailers (Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy).

Unsurprisingly, the QC Ultra Headphones and QC Ultra Earbuds are incredibly similar, form factor notwithstanding. Both offer exceptional comfort and best-in-class noise cancellation, allowing you to eliminate the cacophony of daily life with ease and rendering either a terrific pick for travel. They also support Bose’s “immersive audio” mode — the company’s take on spatial audio — and AptX Adaptive Bluetooth, the latter of which allows for improved audio fidelity on Android devices. Plus, thanks to a recent software update that rolled out over the summer, they both support multipoint, so you can pair them with two devices simultaneously.

Microsoft has made Copilot the name and style of its AI assistant and other AI services for more than a year, but it seems the company might have a rebranding project underway with a transparent origin. In references shared on X from the appprivacy.adml file, it looks like AI-powered features in Windows 11 will be collected under the umbrella name “Windows Intelligence.” While positioning AI centrally in the operating system is certainly not a surprise, the name is either a deliberate attempt to leverage Apple’s “Apple Intelligence” branding or the biggest coincidence since Mark Zuckerberg started a company with the same name as Harvard’s digital yearbook.

Of course, you can’t copyright the term Intelligence, but the possible decision to join Apple‘s branding choice suggests Microsoft sees it as a way to align the idea of an AI-fueled operating system in the minds of customers. Microsoft has used Windows Intelligence as a term before, but it is usually used for cybersecurity upgrades. Also, to be fair, it’s not just a name. Microsoft wants AI, regardless of the name, to be built into everything it offers, including the basics of Windows like Notepad and the whole Microsoft 365 suite. In fact, Windows Intelligence could likely supersede Copilot, turning the AI assistant into a product of Windows Intelligence rather than an independent tool.

The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now. 
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.

Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well.  I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for. 
Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website

Destiny: Rising is the long-rumored leap into mobile for the Destiny franchise, and the launch of the closed alpha test today has spawned some concerns from the community. That being said, most of these concerns are likely going to be ironed out over time. This is an alpha, after all, and the true launch of the game is probably a long way off. This will give the developers time to do any work they need to get the game in tip-top shape.

Concerns or no, the alpha seems to be off to a strong start. Players “appear” to be having fun with the game and Netease’s interpretation of the Destiny universe clearly had a lot of passion put into it. This was expressed by the dev team itself in their dev insight video back during the game’s announcement. Visually, it looks pretty good for being in an alpha state and for the most part, gameplay is pretty smooth. It’s also fun. Granted, I checked it out on a ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition so graphics are maxed and I haven’t had many issues with the frame rate.

The downside there is that you do have to make a choice between having the higher resolution graphics or the higher frame rate. You can’t have both. That isn’t really the largest concern though. What seems to be the biggest talking point is how much Netease is going to lean into the microtransactions.

The Destiny: Rising alpha test reveals the game’s gacha mechanics

Gacha games are a popular genre in the mobile space, as is evidenced by behemoth titles like Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail. Destiny: Rising, too, is a gacha game that will have you completing pulls for new characters. And like other gacha games, all of those characters will be rated with a particular number of stars. This immediately brings forth concerns that the game features heavy pay-to-win mechanics and for now, it’s a bit tough to dispute that.

Without the game being available in a full launch state, there’s no clarity on how much real-world money will need to be spent to make these character pulls. Destiny: Rising could go the way of games like Genshin. Genshin gives players ample opportunities to receive the necessary in-game digital currency needed to pull new characters. Getting them is still not guaranteed, but you do have plenty of sources for this currency. So you can easily get by without spending much or any money.

The fear for some, is that Destiny: Rising won’t follow this path. And instead will be more along the lines of Diablo Immortal (another game developed initially by Netease), which had several issues with heavy-handed microtransactions throughout its first six months to a year. The other possible area where these microtransactions could come into play is with the game’s new weapon tier – mythic. Netease hasn’t said how you can acquire these and at this point, they don’t seem to be available in the alpha test.

But there’s a sneaking suspicion that these will be something you have to do the pull events for or just purchase outright.

The voice acting and dialogue fall a little short of what players know from Destiny 2

Another issue that we’ve seen discussed is the voice acting and dialogue. It’s very clear after some of our testing that this is a far cry from the quality of voice acting and dialogue you get in Destiny 2. Bungie has nothing to do with the dialogue writing and it didn’t hire the voice actors. This becomes apparent pretty early on as you meet and talk to more of the game’s NPC characters. That being said, I am hesitant to say that it’s “bad.” Some of it is fine, just not great. Other exchanges definitely need some work.

For example, your first meeting with the Gunsmith starts off fine enough, but then you reach a point where the voice acting switches from what seems to be an English voice actor to voice acting with a British accent. This is right in the middle of the dialogue which is what makes it so strange. What’s more, is that the subtitles for the dialogue have an “[AI]” label next to them. Seemingly indicating that the dialogue and voice acting were generated with AI. Which is a whole other can of worms.

Other dialogue and voice acting seem to be well done. So it’s kind of a mixed bag at the moment. Hopefully, these are things that improve throughout the game’s pre-launch development.

Solid gameplay will likely keep players coming back

I can’t say for certain if this will really catch on with the diehard Destiny crowd. It seems unlikely to capture the excitement of the majority of that community. Especially given that the main Destiny game, Destiny 2, is a better game and is sort of in a lull right now. However, some will no doubt find it a fun casual game to play from time to time. That being said, the gameplay is solid. As a Destiny 2 fan who has played since the alpha of that game, a Destiny mobile game was an intriguing prospect. I also enjoy gacha games, so this was a win-win for me personally.

Is it something I plan to dump hundreds of hours into? Perhaps, maybe over a long period of time. Certainly not on the scale of my Destiny 2 playtime. But, Netease has a promising title on its hands. Gunplay feels good, perhaps better than most shooters on mobile, and it’s really the only looter shooter on mobile. So it has essentially zero competition in this space.

There’s a lot of content that isn’t going to be available in the alpha test. So it’s unclear how much longevity and replay value will be offered. Early testing has proven the game to be fun though, and I think it’s at least worth checking out for both Destiny veterans and newcomers alike.