Technology - Google News

Diablo Immortal’s PC version exists to combat emulation - Polygon
Pixel Watch appears to have the same health sensors as Fitbit Charge 5 - 9to5Google
As Apple Threatens Pulling Games, Devs Explain Why Forced Updates Are A Preservation Nightmare - Kotaku

Diablo Immortal’s PC version exists to combat emulation - Polygon

Posted: 25 Apr 2022 08:41 AM PDT

Diablo Immortal is coming to PC, Blizzard announced early Monday morning. Alongside the announcement, the studio revealed a host of changes for the PC version, such as controller support, UI scaling, and cross-progression. But it also revealed why the PC edition of Diablo Immortal exists: to combat emulation.

In a blog post, Blizzard speaks a bit about going back and forth on wanting Diablo Immortal on PC at all. "On one hand, we felt that we wouldn't be doing the title justice by releasing a game originally designed for mobile on PC," Blizzard said, "on the other hand, we wanted to make sure the game reached as many players as possible—especially our most dedicated PC fans." But, Blizzard explained, "the deciding factor was that we knew many of you would attempt to play this game through an emulator, thus leading us towards building a better experience."

Not only should this lead to a more curated experience — with UI and controls specifically tailored for PC — but players won't need to circumvent the studio just to get their pre-Diablo 4 fix. It's a Blizzard that clearly learned from the fan-made "Classic" World of Warcraft servers of many years ago, which led it to create World of Warcraft: Classic internally.

Blizzard's candid answer about emulation is a far cry from the oft-memed "Do you guys not have phones?" from Immortal's 2018 reveal. And with the studio's extended apology at the start of its reveal stream for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight last week, we're trending toward a more open Blizzard than we've seen in some time.

Until players get their hands on Diablo Immortal (especially the new PC beta), it's impossible to say how Diablo's latest title will land with hardcore fans. But if 2018's Diablo Immortal BlizzCon announcement was the height of Blizzard hubris, Monday's announcement may give players faith that — at least in terms of game development — that Blizzard is listening again.

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Pixel Watch appears to have the same health sensors as Fitbit Charge 5 - 9to5Google

Posted: 25 Apr 2022 10:51 AM PDT

With the design fully leaked, questions about Google's Pixel Watch turn to the software and internal hardware specs. One clue about the health capabilities is how the Pixel Watch's rear sensors are very similar, if not identical, to ones found on the Fitbit Charge 5 and Luxe.

The health sensor on the Pixel Watch consists of four cutouts. The rectangle second from the left is white, has two squares at the bottom, and is ever so slightly narrower than the other three. This configuration matches the sensor used by Fitbit on its latest non-smartwatch fitness trackers.

The Charge 5 and Luxe feature an optical heart rate monitor, red and infrared sensors for oxygen saturation (SpO2) monitoring, and temperature sensor for overnight skin tracking. It allow for features like 24/7 heart rate tracking and variability, cardio fitness level (VO2 max), and more

Meanwhile, the separate semicircles surrounding the centered sensor could be the back crystal electrodes needed to read your electrical heart impulses for electrocardiogram (ECG). Other watches that offer ECG also require you to make contact with another point on the watch case to take a reading. That second sensor could be part of the sole top button or the bottle cap-shaped crown.

L-R: Pixel Watch, Fitbit Charge 5, Luxe

If Google is indeed reusing a Fitbit sensor for the Pixel Watch, that could result in cost-savings as the Fitbit Luxe is $129 and the Charge 5 $149. That'd make for a nice synergy from the 2021 acquisition, and could suggest that development on the Pixel Watch was very much still active last January when the deal closed.

Both trackers offer a good health-monitoring experience, while Fitbit gets to preserve and maintain the quality of data that goes into its app (and is shown on the watch) by using existing hardware. After all, we already know that the Fitbit dashboard UI found on the Fitbit Sense and Versa 3 will make its way to Wear OS 3.

The Pixel Watch hardware that leaked over the weekend looks near final, but it's possible that the Fitbit sensor was just used for that prototype. That said, component reuse between Google and Fitbit makes a lot of sense.

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As Apple Threatens Pulling Games, Devs Explain Why Forced Updates Are A Preservation Nightmare - Kotaku

Posted: 25 Apr 2022 10:05 AM PDT

Robert Kabwe is the developer behind Motivoto, a puzzle matching game that's free to play and contains no microtransactions. On April 22, he received a notice from Apple stating that Motivoto would be removed from the App Store in 30 days, because it had "not been updated in a significant amount of time." Kotaku reached out to Apple for a comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.Apple's email bore the subject line "App Store Improvement Notice," suggesting that the company sees this culling of games that haven't been updated in some time as a way to improve its digital marketplace. Kabwe, however, feels that the platform's pressure to push out constant updates is "an unfair barrier to indie devs." In a Twitter thread reacting to the notice, he stated that he was "trying [his] best to scrape a living from my indie games, trying to keep up with Apple, Google, Unity, Xcode, MacOS changes that happen so fast my head spins." He argued that the update requirement was "arbitrary," since Apple did not specify what type of changes it was looking for. Motivoto was last updated in March 2019.Other developers have also been hit with "App Store Improvement Notices" informing them that their games are about to be removed, and they're not happy about it. Experimental game creator Emilia Lazer-Walker pointed out that "games can exist as completed objects" and said that her free games are "completed artworks from years ago." Unfortunately, it seems that people who want to experience these games will now have to ask the original artist to do the equivalent of a painter adding a dab of paint every few years to a work of art that's already hanging in a gallery. Except the paint is code, and there's a risk that updating the game will break it so badly that it "won't run." Even if game developers fled the Apple ecosystem in response to these actions, Android is hardly any more welcoming to creators with limited time and budget. On April 6, Google announced that the Play Store would be delisting apps that haven't been updated within two years of the latest Android version release.
Mobile currently represents 52% of the entire gaming market, and is projected to see even more growth in the future. It really sucks that the overlords of the biggest games storefronts refuse to see the value of preserving games based on their artistic significance, rather than the principle of infinite growth.