Nintendo seems to be especially busy lately. According to leaks, the company is preparing to reveal the Nintendo Switch 2 (provisional name). They also have games in development for some of their most legendary franchises. However, in the midst of all this, the brand has launched Nintendo Music as a music streaming service for their fans.

As you can imagine, Nintendo Music is not looking to compete against Spotify, YouTube Music, or the like. The service is looking to offer fans a hub from which to enjoy the soundtracks of their games. Nintendo franchises have some of the most legendary OSTs in the gaming industry, with multiple unforgettable pieces. Therefore, a platform that offers all or most of these songs in one place is great news.

Nintendo Music, the streaming service for fans of the company’s franchises

Despite not directly competing with Spotify, Nintendo Music appears to have drawn significant inspiration for its user interface. This can make it easier to use since Spotify is a platform used by millions of users worldwide. As usual, you can use the search function to find a particular song by name. However, Nintendo does offer preset playlists to get you up and running quickly.

There are four main categories for preset playlists: by game, by character, by mood, and by theme. There are multiple options that could match your current mood, like “Good Night,” (great for going to sleep) “Powering Up,” (for workouts), and “Break Time” (for when you want to take a break). On the other hand, in the themed playlists you’ll find “Victory,” “New Adventures,” and “Boss Battles,” among others.

There are also playlists of songs specially curated by Nintendo with the top hits from its best franchises. Of course, you can create custom playlists with the songs you want. The company also included a neat “Spoiler prevention” feature where you can add games to prevent the app from playing music with potential spoilers. If you want to listen to the same song in a loop, you can turn to the “Extend length” option with loops of up to 60 minutes.

Available for Switch Online subscribers

The Nintendo Music streaming service is available to Switch Online subscribers. If you get a family membership, all members will have access. So, current subscribers are getting a new benefit without having to pay more. Lastly, Nintendo says the song library will continue to grow over time.

Valve’s Steam Deck has proven to be an enormous success, but the custom Linux-based OS has always been a thorn in the side of certain developers. Some have alleged that it gives nefarious players easier ways to cheat, which is why popular battle royale games like Valorant, PUBG and Fortnite aren’t available for the console. We can add Apex Legends to that pile, as EA just announced its withdrawing both Steam Deck and Linux support.

“In our efforts to combat cheating in Apex, we’ve identified Linux OS as being a path for a variety of impactful exploits and cheats. As a result, we’ve decided to block Linux OS access to the game,” the company wrote in a blog post. “We believe the decision will meaningfully reduce instances of cheating in our game.”

Apex Legends does have access to Epic Games’ Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) software, which has been compatible with Linux for years. This must have not been a good enough safeguard against cheating. It didn’t allow Fortnite onto the Steam Deck, after all, and that game’s actually made by Epic. To that end, devs on Steam will now have to disclose kernel mode anti-cheat software.

It remains to be seen if Linux is simply harder to develop anti-cheating measures for or if doing so is just an added expense at a time when game developers have been tightening their purse strings. Phillip Koskinas, director of anti-cheat on Valorant, indicated to The Verge that bad actors could “make a Linux distribution that’s purpose-built for cheating and we’d be smoked.”

It’s not all bad news for Apex Legends fans who prefer to play on a portable console. It’ll run on the Steam Deck, so long as you install Windows. Valve hasn’t released its own dual-boot installer, so you’ll have to rely on fairly complicated third-party solutions to get the job done.

Liv, a pioneer in mixed reality capture, has partnered with Meta to become the official capture solution for Meta Quest wireless virtual reality headsets.

Founded by AJ “DrDoom” Shewki, Liv has inked a multi-year partnership with Meta to bring Liv’s mixed reality capture and virtual camera solutions to developers publishing on Meta Quest and also creators who wish to use those features in Meta Rift and Quest apps. Developers are adding the capability now for standalone headsets and it should be available for consumers to use in the coming weeks in VR games.

A big part of game marketing today combines trailers and video content made by the creator and player community inside games, and Liv wants to continue supporting developers in their mission to reach as many creators, players and fans as possible in XR. If you think about it, Liv is probably going to be the way that we’re going to record our first experiences in the metaverse.

“The first and most important thing is that it’s going to run natively on a Quest,” Shewki said in an interview with GamesBeat. “This will work on a standalone device, on the Quest — meaning the Quest, Quest 2 and Quest 3 and all the upcoming Quest devices. It’s part of our partnership with Meta.”

Shewki added, “We spent seven years building technologies. Our mission has always been to empower people in VR and AR to play and share their favorite moments with their friends, family and fans. This will be the first time that we can do this directly on standalone devices like the Quest.”

The Liv capture will work with Gorilla Tag by Another Axiom; Penguin Paradise (and their new game Skelly), by Sava Studios; and Scary Baboon, by Flixzy.

“Another Axiom builds fully realized spaces that are meant to be shared together, like in our popular game Gorilla Tag,” said David Yee, COO at Another Axiom, in a statement. “We’re always looking at new ways to give our players and creators a great experience they can share with their family and friends. This partnership between Liv and Meta provides access to best-in-class capture and virtual camera technology, introducing new ways to capture and share in-headset experiences. We can’t wait to see what the community does with these new tools.”

One of the key initial goals of the work was to make it easier for developers and creators to capture authentic mixed reality content using a PC with an external camera in both immersive apps and mixed reality apps that use the Meta Quest Presence Platform features. That work has been going on for a while and now it has moved on to standalone devices.

“It’s going to be a massive boost to user generated content inside the top VR applications,” Shewki said.

These capture possibilities include hand tracking, passthrough (where video cameras show you what’s happening in the real world while you’re wearing a headset), scene understanding, anchoring and occlusion. The latter refers to keeping a VR app grounded on the floor and able to figure out when a real-world object blocks the view of a mixed reality object in the virtual space.

As part of this partnership, Meta is deprecating its own mixed reality capture (MRC) tooling and Liv will take over as the official solution.

With Liv, VR players can do things like take a virtual selfie, operate first-person and third-person cameras and perform real-time mixed reality capture with physical cameras.

How it works

MRC has shown its power as a tool to market XR apps and games, and Liv believes it will continue to be an important tool to drive game awareness through video content and hence drive sales. It’s particularly good for filming trailers. A developer can set up the SDK to work with a game in perhaps 30 minutes, Shewki said.

Liv spawns a camera in a game. Its impact on performance is variable depending on the complexity and optimization of the game. In the wired version, the minimum spec for the PC the headset is connected to is a machine with an Nvidia 1080 graphics processing unit (GPU) and Intel i7 CPU.

If a PC crashes during the game, that’s OK. The Liv App and your game are decoupled. If Liv crashes, the game will continue to run and only the Liv features will stop working for the user.

Background

Liv has served the VR game dev community since 2016 and will continue to do so now with the help and support of Meta, Shewki said. But for most of that time, the Liv technology for capturing videos only worked with wired VR headsets that connect to a PC. The tech started there because it was easier to have a recording application running alongside an actual game using the power of a PC. But now the VR wireless headsets have become more powerful, as has the Liv tech.

Now, the difference is that it will work with the most popular VR headsets, the Meta Quest standalone wireless headsets, which don’t need to be connected to a PC. The company has 24 people and they’ve been working on this part for about a year.

“We spent the last seven years building camera technologies for app developers in VR, and content creators and players in VR. Historically, we’ve primarily been on Steam. When we started seven years ago, open VR, or Steam VR, was the only platform available,” Shewki said. “We made a whole bunch of assumptions back then about how the technology ought to work and how it ought to integrate with games. So what we’re releasing is effectively taking those seven years worth of learnings that we have learned alongside developers as we’ve been building this and we’re releasing a new SDK.”

The company has a patent for its volumetric capture and replay system.

So far, roughly 50 to 100 developers have been downloading the SDK every month. Most of them are making games, and they’re developing for VR systems that are connected to the PC. Many of these are for educational users at schools and universities.

The Quest market, for wireless standalone headsets, is an order of magnitude bigger than the PCVR market, thanks to games like Gorilla Tag.

“We expect our monthly creator numbers to go up,” he said. “We are going to roll out with tons of games. Our goal has been to be on every device on every platform. “

And there are some games where this works now.

“As part of this announcement, we’re also excited to share that we’ve got tons of new games getting Liv support, including Gorilla Tag by Another Axiom, and Racket Club by Resolution Games,” Shewki said.

The rush to the Quest

With the mixed reality capture, Liv can film real people composited into the game world, which before now has been primarily used for high-end company production. And Liv also has a trailer production studio in Australia that uses its own tooling, and Liv makes trailers for some of the biggest game developers and platforms in the world.

And then there is the Liv App, which people use for mixed reality capture and a virtual camera. But the limitation has been it had to be wired to a PC. Now, it will be available on standalone devices without the need for a PC or high-powered GPU in your PC, and will be natively available in the game.

“You won’t need to download a Liv app and run the Liv app in parallel. You will spawn the camera. You will film with the camera, and you will save the content and soon also stream the concept natively from the device without ever leaving outside,” Shewki said. “So it is a solution built for people who are primarily in Quests and don’t have additional tooling on their PC.”

To clarify, he said that if you’re on a Quest and you’re primarily playing Quest games without a PC, you can finally create really high-quality and rich video content from your favorite applications using a combination of selfie cameras, third person cameras, drone cameras and first-person view cameras, with all the bells and whistles that you need to make great content, he said.

The rollout plan for the new SDK

The beta release of Liv’s new software development kit (V1.6 SDK) for Unity-based apps that support Presence Platform features is available now. The goal is to unlock the ability for developers who publish on Quest, but build on PC, to capture high-quality video content using real and virtual cameras.

Later this year will mark the arrival of the beta release of the V1.6 SDK for Unreal-based apps that support Presence Platform features. That’s for apps built in Unreal Engine 4.27 or after.

All Liv SDK features are included in V1.6 SDK including the regular virtual cameras (first person, selfie, third person, drone) and avatars.

Beyond 2024, Liv is looking at improving the tooling for creators on the Liv App. Liv’s backlog has grown big over the years, Shewki said.

The Liv SDK for Unity and Unreal are both MIT licensed. It is free for game developers. You can only use Liv with games running on PC using SteamVR and Oculus PCVR/Rift.

As for trailers, the company used Liv for the raw captures, and with a bunch of editing and post-production magic courtesy of Liv Productions.

Sava, the creator at Sava Studios, said in a statement, “I am proud to say we added LCK into Penguin Paradise and our new game Skelly because we want to give our community a way to make the best and high quality content in our game.”

“I am proud to say we added LCK into Penguin Paradise and our new game Skelly because we want to give our community a way to make the best and high quality content in our game!”

Asked if the capture tools will work natively on a wireless Quest headset without a PC, Shewki said this will happen.

“We are releasing our Quest SDK in a few weeks,” Shewki said.

Creators will be able to immediately use the new Presence Platform features immediately. Mixed Reality capture for passthrough applications has one complication in that it’s typically filmed at a real location versus in front of a green screen, and that means that the final composite happens in post-production since the dev needs to cut out the human subject.

The Liv capture features are being built into the Liv App on Steam, and so the company said it is committed to helping creators across platforms. The company will invest more into the Liv App on the PC on Steam. A large part of the work with Meta is focused around bolstering the PC app on Steam.

Shewki said he wants these cameras to feel like they belong in the game world.

“We specifically want to avoid people thinking of it as, ‘I have to go download an additional tool.’ I’m going to have a rich camera available to me that I can spawn at any time and record my favorite moments without ever leaving the headset. And that’s what this will unlock,” Shewki said. “We’re going to be rolling out with Gorilla Tag and some other big titles initially. Once we roll out, the SDK will be publicly accessible.”

In the app now, only one camera can be running at any given time. Rather than monetize game developers, Shewki said the company will monetize directly with Meta. The company will make sure its tech can work on all upcoming popular AR and VR devices when they launch, he said.

Streaming will be the next thing that Liv will work on. At that point, players will be able to upload and stream directly to Liv. But that’s not ready yet.

It’s the topic on everyone’s mind: Are Gen Z workers actually different? 

TechCrunch sought to find out at this year’s Disrupt 2024. We sat down with SignalFire’s Heather Doshay, Comprehensive.io’s Roger Lee, and Lauren Illovsky from Capital G to chat about how to hire and retain talent. One topic that came up was how younger workers are much different than their older counterparts. 

“It was the same with millennials, right?” Illosvky asked on stage. “We remember when boomers criticized millennials, and now millennials were criticizing Gen Z. I love Gen Z, too. I think there’s an appreciation for how much they push the boundaries and force you to think.” 

She said employers can either be grouchy about it or try to see the world from a different perspective and how it affects what Gen Z can bring to the table. Doshay noted that this generation has been in the workforce for at least five years, meaning they’ve faced a labor market affected by the pandemic; economic uncertainty; and mass layoffs in tech. 

“So there’s a lack of loyalty amongst Gen Z in the workforce that we’re seeing in early data,” Doshay said, citing that a report by her company found that Gen Zers stay in a job for an average of 1.1 years, compared to the older generations that spent decades at a company. “That challenges you to do better,” she said. “What can you do to retain these folks and keep them there longer?”

At the same time, she said, it’s still early. Gen Z’s behavior might evolve over time as the workforce changes with them. “I think it’s really important to have that perspective in your workforce and have a really diverse set of people,” she said. “If your consumer base reflects Gen Z, you want to make sure that you have that DNA in your workforce.” 

Lee said that Gen Zers value transparency a lot more than other generations. Today, young people talk openly about their salaries and will post TikToks of themselves being fired. Lee said that companies should find ways to be more transparent with their employees, which can make them stand out from the companies that aren’t. 

Of course, we had to ask about that now-viral video of Keith Rabois talking about not hiring someone over 30 years old. Without naming names, we spoke about the concept of ageism and how it actually hurts companies. Illovsky said that companies need to have a workforce that is diverse in age, which results in a diverse skill set. Doshay said that older generations tend to be more engaged in the workforce, and reminded the audience that it’s illegal to discriminate based on age. In fact, not hiring anyone over 30 probably meant most of the audience wouldn’t hire themselves, she said. 

“Also, since when was 30 the cutoff?” Lee added jokingly. “I’m a little insulted by that.” 

After warning customers to stop using it, Humane is now formally recalling around 10,500 units of its charging case for the beleaguered AI Pin. The affected cases were sold from last November through May of this year. According to the CPSC recall page, the lithium polymer battery in the Charge Case Accessory can potentially overheat and present a fire hazard. Humane admitted similar findings in a June email to customers.

That worst-case scenario, thankfully, hasn’t happened yet; the recall notes “one report of a charge case overheating and melting during charging,” but there haven’t been any injuries or damage to property. The AI Pin, its magnetic Battery Booster, and Humane’s charging pad are “not affected,” the company said in its earlier email.

Still, the situation is yet another blemish for Humane’s first product, which got off to a terrible start after a wave of damning reviews, slow sales, and plentiful returns. That 10,500 number is another indication of the AI Pin’s slow-going sales. The company recently lowered the device’s price in an attempt to reverse its fortunes. (The cheaper model no longer includes the charge case.) Humane has also continued releasing software improvements for the wearable gadget. “CosmOS 1.2 is our biggest software update since launch,” the company posted on X this month.

Customers have the option of requesting either a full refund or getting a replacement charge case. If opting for the refund, those who bought it standalone will receive $149, and anyone who got a charge case as part of the AI Pin “complete package” will get $129. Humane’s revised, safer charge case will be available in three to six months, according to the CPSC.

The bigger question is what might happen to the company itself within that timeframe. Will Humane manage to find a buyer? Can it find success putting CosmOS on other products?

More than 500 Amazon employees have reportedly signed a petition demanding that AWS CEO Matt Garman reverses his decision to mandate a five-day office week as part of the cloud computing giant’s return-to-office efforts.

The letter, seen by Reuters, details Garman’s unsupported claims that most workers are on board with the company’s RTO policy.