FTC fails to stop Microsoft’s mega-merger with Activision Blizzard

Microsoft's USD 69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the maker of Call of Duty, cleared a significant hurdle on Friday when a U.S. appeals court denied the FTC's request to halt the deal. The FTC argued that the deal would harm consumers and competition in the video game industry, but a district court judge and an appeals court both rejected that claim. Microsoft offered 10-year licenses to rivals like Sony Group to address the FTC's concerns.

The deal—the largest in video game history—still needs approval in Britain, where the competition regulator is reviewing a new proposal from Microsoft. The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority extended its deadline for a final ruling to August 29. But it hopes to reach a decision as soon as possible. The merger agreement expires on July 18, after which either company can choose to walk away unless they negotiate an extension.

Source

Google launches NotebookLM, an AI-first notetaking software

Image: Google

Google has launched NotebookLM, an "AI-first notebook" that uses a language model to help you understand and create content. NotebookLM works with your existing notes and sources and uses AI to generate summaries, questions, answers, and more. You can ask NotebookLM to help you with various tasks, such as writing a script, summarizing your documents, preparing a pitch deck, and more.

Click to read more ...

'Stray Gods' delays launch to avoid 'Baldur’s Gate 3' clash

Image: Summerfall Studios

Stray Gods, a musical role-playing game by David Gaider's Summerfall Studios, is delayed by a week to avoid Baldur's Gate 3. The game will launch on August 10 instead of August 3. The studio wants to give Baldur's Gate 3 some space, as it is a highly anticipated game.

Interestingly, Baldur's Gate 3 also changed its release date in June to dodge Starfield, Bethesda's sci-fi RPG. Both games are huge and would compete for the same audience. Starfield itself was delayed twice, from 2022 to 2023. So, if you're upset about Stray Gods, you can blame Todd Howard. This is a rare case of studios openly admitting that they are avoiding bigger games. It happened before with Path of Exile and Everspace 2 against Cyberpunk 2077.

Source

Apple introduces bilingual Siri, full-page screenshots and more in iOS 17 beta

Image: Apple

Apple has launched the first public beta versions of iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, bringing new features that enhance the user experience. Some features include bilingual Siri, full-page screenshots, and better SMS sorting for dual-SIM users.

Bilingual support for Sir allows users to ask questions in a mix of English and one of the selected Indic languages. For example, users can speak to Siri in both English and Hindi or English and Telugu, Punjabi, Kannada, or Marathi. This feature is helpful for India-based users who often use more than one language in their daily conversations. Apple is catching up with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, which introduced multilingual support in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Click to read more ...