GoKawiil
Tech News
Google has released Playground through Google Labs, letting users type plain-language prompts to generate playable in-browser games, with options to refine designs or upload reference images, videos, or models. The tool builds on Google's practice of testing experimental AI products via Labs before wider release, and follows a similar game-generation feature Meta introduced in September called Horizon Create.
Axios reports that executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately preparing for scenarios involving a major AI-linked disaster, such as a cyberattack disrupting financial services, internet access, power or water. Many industry insiders reportedly expect such an event within six to twelve months, prompting companies to run preparedness exercises and lobby lawmakers ahead of potential regulation. OpenAI confirmed it runs preparedness exercises but said scenarios are not treated as inevitable; Anthropic declined to comment.
Wizards of the Coast has revealed 'Darkhold Destiny,' another Magic: The Gathering set built around Marvel characters and lore. The announcement continues the game's ongoing series of licensed crossovers that blend Marvel properties into Magic's card mechanics and storylines.
GameStop is selling a used PlayStation 5 Pro for $1,399.99, roughly $500 above Sony's $899.99 list price, as a global shortage of the console continues. Sony has blamed AI-driven silicon demand for production constraints expected to persist into 2027, and other resellers are reportedly charging similarly inflated prices.
The open-source AnyPS5 project, which aims to run PS5 games natively on Windows and Linux PCs, has reached 100% coverage of the 1,166 AMD RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 shader instructions it tracks. The project works not by emulating the PS5 but by converting existing PS5 executables into native x86-64 Windows or Linux programs, replacing Sony's system libraries with native equivalents. The developers note that 'implemented' here only means the shader decoder recognizes each instruction, not that translation, rendering, or system libraries like networking are functional.
The latest Triple-i Initiative showcase unveiled release details and updates for several indie titles, including the detective spinoff Among Us Story: On Guard, set for February 17, and a new Strange Scaffold project called Gods With Badges. The event also showed off Lazare's Sacrifice, a narrative deckbuilder with input from Gwent designer Damien Monnier, plus new footage of The Talos Principle 3 and a hands-on demo of the long-awaited immersive sim Militsioner.
A shortage of computer RAM, informally dubbed 'RAMageddon,' is being driven in part by AI data centers consuming large quantities of memory chips. The shortage is pushing up prices for consumers and businesses that rely on RAM for computers and other devices.
A new tool called REA (Reverse Engineer Anything) was shown inspecting a running browser game via a local debugging connection, extracting its index.js source and settings. It found the game starts at speed 6, accelerates by 0.001 per update, and caps at a max speed of 13, then rebuilt that rule in a small teaching version with an adjustable speed slider.
The Onion has launched its first video game, a satirical title centered on the act of voting. Players can navigate obstacles like poll watchers by double-jumping to cast a ballot, or choose an alternate path of staying home instead of voting.
A hobbyist blogger describes rediscovering a childhood attempt to copy a German point-and-click adventure game, 'Findus bei den Mucklas,' from library CDs, and finding disc images of the series preserved on archive.org. The post walks through extracting data from CloneCD-format .ccd/.cue/.img files, which combine a data track with multiple audio tracks, using the ccd2iso tool to get the game files running again.
A new version of the PS5SX2 emulator, v2.00, lets PlayStation 2 games run on PS5 hardware with frame generation and 8x resolution scaling, enabling smoother visuals and frame rates up to 120 FPS. Running it requires jailbreaking the PS5, a process the report describes as relatively straightforward but one that falls outside Sony's supported software environment.
Bevy, the open-source Rust game engine, has released version 0.20 on crates.io, built with contributions from 227 developers across 817 pull requests. The update improves Solari, Bevy's realtime pathtracing renderer, adding speed and accuracy gains plus macOS support via Metal, alongside syntax changes to its BSN scene system and new widgets for the Bevy Feathers UI toolkit. A migration guide is available for developers updating existing apps from version 0.19.