Wasim Alnahlawi - stock.adobe.co News Saudi Arabia struggling to reach global leadership in deeptech Petrostate monarchy trying to build surrogate industry made of foreign startups because own ecosystem is too immature By Mark Ballard Published: 16 Apr 2025 11:15 Saudi Arabia is investing in foreign deeptech startups to get them to come to its country and help it build an industry, because its own sci-tech ecosystem is too immature to meet its ambition of becoming a global leader in state-of-the-art fields of technology.  The yawning gap to the goal it set for deeptech to help it transform from monolithic petrostate to diverse hi-tech economy was apparent in a 2019 study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) that found of 8,600 deeptech firms worldwide, the Middle East had just three in the UAE and two in Iran. The US, the leader, had 4,198 firms. The UK, almost joint-third with Germany and behind China, had 435. By 2022, Saudi Arabia (KSA) had 43, its ministry of communications and information technology (MCIT) said upon launching its roadmap to achieving global leadership in January. That was six years after it embarked on its Vision 2030 strategy to build tech industries to drive its transformation.  But it has made some notable investments in foreign firms that will help it establish a surrogate deeptech industry while it pursues the long, hard work it has begun in building a substrate of scientists and investors from which an indigenous deeptech industry can grow.  This, along with reform of burdensome regulations, might remove obstacles it has found deter not only its own aspiring entrepreneurs, but foreign startups as well.  It promotes some success in spinning deeptech startups out of King Abdullah University of Sciences & Technology (Kaust) in Riyadh, where it has concentrated efforts to build advanced research facilities to attract foreign scientists, and given them startup funding to turn their breakthroughs into ventures that might one day make money. Investing in education It has meanwhile been investing in STEM education in schools, channeling two million students into university in the hope that its young population demographic will give it an edge over other countries. Last year, it counted 20,000 deeptech researchers in its universities, though it does not say how many of those are foreign. Their numbers increased 75% in five years, according to its roadmap report. It declared a goal to increase them another 700% in the next five years. Those researchers it does have rank among the best in the world.  To support them, it pledged a tenfold increase in public spending on research, development and innovation. It’s cutting red tape to make it easier to start and run a business, and creating special economic zones with laxer rules.  Its problems, however, are systemic. The scientists that deeptech firms need are leaving the country in a brain drain that by last count amounted to 81%. Though startup funding has boomed in Saudi Arabia, little of it has gone to deeptech because its “infant” sector is so underdeveloped, the roadmap report says. Most of it came from public budgets, via Wa’ed Ventures, the investment arm of state oil firm Aramco, and Kaust. A growing network of startup investors, incubators and accelerators are not equipped to handle deeptech. Deeptech startups are defined by their great need for scientists, guidance and lots of capital to see them through lengthy, R&D-laden startup periods.  Given that, it might take KSA a decade to build an industry, Alizée Blanchin, research director of influential deeptech dealmaker Hello Tomorrow – whose team co-authored the roadmap report with Kaust and MCIT – told Computer Weekly. “If you look at the number of startups that are spinouts from universities or research centres, that is very nascent still,” she said. Hence, the Saudi monarchy has made getting help from foreign startups a key element of its strategy. However, its sci-tech business ecosystem is still so immature that foreign startups do not want to come. Therefore, KSA settled on buying foreign deeptech startups into the country by investing in them instead, and using them to build its ecosystem.  Blanchin said with that strategy, it might even achieve its ambition. It’s also making up for its immaturity with its speed and decisiveness. “Contrary to other ecosystems, they make things happen,” she said. “They put the resource in, and they put things together, and find the means and the partners very quickly. In Europe, we take three years to think about something and then a year-and-a-half to put it together.” Read more about Saudi Arabia’s tech ambitions and challenges The strategy will be exemplified later this year, when Saudi state oil firm Aramco will crank up the world’s largest industrial quantum computer, with intimate help from Pasqal, the pioneering French startup supplying it. Aramco investment arm Wa’ed Ventures tied the deal with two investments in Pasqal. The latter involved Wa’ed joining a consortium investment of €108m when Pasqal was just three years old. Pasqal now has a regional headquarters at Kaust.  “We got involved in Saudi thanks to Aramco,” Pasqal CEO Georges-Olivier Reymond told Computer Weekly. “[In] 2022, they had the idea to be a customer and investor. It was a fantastic opportunity for a company like Pasqal. This was the first time ever a private company was buying a quantum computer. It was a big deal.” Pasqal also got a commitment from Aramco to build and demonstrate the first use cases for quantum’s application in industry, the crucial ingredient quantum computing lacks as its startups strive to commercialise their costly R&D and turn a profit.  Other foreign deals KSA cited in a recent report intended to form the basis of a roadmap to global leadership in quantum similarly involve it securing help developing systems that use quantum computers, not the scientific expertise to build them.  Asked what chance KSA had of achieving its ambition, Jean-François Bobier, vice-president of deeptech at BCG, said: “Their corporations have a strong willingness to experiment and invest in new technology. There are not many companies willing to deploy or be early adopters. On that point, it’s attractive.” MCIT, Kaust and Aramco were not prepared to comment. In The Current Issue: What is the impact of US tariffs on datacentre equipment costs? VMware backup: Key decision points if you migrate away from VMware Download Current Issue UK digital identity turns to drama (or farce?) over industry fears and security doubts – Computer Weekly Editors Blog The DEI backlash is over – we are talking a full scale revolt – WITsend View All Blogs

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A hot potato: The idea of Apple analyzing data from users' devices to train its AI models isn't going to be welcomed by most people. Nevertheless, the company is taking this action as it looks to improve its Apple Intelligence services. However, Cupertino says its unique approach to this process will protect user privacy. Apple writes that its "differential privacy" approach works by first generating synthetic data to mimic the format and important properties of user data, such as emails. "When creating synthetic data, our goal is to produce synthetic sentences or emails that are similar enough in topic or style to the real thing to help improve our models for summarization, but without Apple collecting emails from the device," the company said in a post. The synthetic data is converted into what Apple calls an embedding, a numerical representation that contains key attributes such as language, topic, and length. Apple then randomly polls devices of users who have agreed to share information with the company. It sends the embeddings of its synthetic data to a small section of users who have opted-in to Device Analytics. Participating devices then select a sample of recent user emails and compute their embeddings. Each device decides which of the synthetic embeddings is closest to these samples. This determines how accurate Apple's models are, improving them if needed. Apple emphasizes that it does not collect emails or texts from users, and only sees commonly used prompts. Moreover, data from a device is not associated with an IP address or any ID that could be linked to an Apple Account. According to the post, differential privacy allows Apple to train its AI models to create better text outputs in features like email summaries, while protecting privacy. // Related Stories Apple is using differential privacy to improve its Genmoji models and will eventually use it for Image Playground, Image Wand, Memories Creation, Writing Tools, and Visual Intelligence. Apple will roll out the AI training system in an upcoming beta version of iOS and iPadOS 18.5 and macOS 15.5. The iPhone maker has long prided itself on being a bastion of user privacy. While this differential privacy approach is certainly better than AI companies simply scraping people's data, it could result in Apple Intelligence not being as effective as rival AI platforms.

Qualcomm’s big entrance into the laptop market last year got a lot of attention and now, leaks about its next-gen Snapdragon laptop chips are slowly starting to emerge. Known Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital claims that boost clock speeds will start at 4.4 GHz and estimates performance gains between 18 and 22%. Since official information doesn’t exist yet and leaks are few, we don’t know a lot about the next Snapdragon chip right now — including what it’ll be called. At the moment, some people are calling it the Snapdragon X Elite 2 and others are going with Snapdragon X2 Elite. The leaked information we do have includes a core count of 18 and a launch date of around October 2025 — but it’s all just rumors for now. Recommended Videos The prospect of a 4.4 GHz boost clock speed is very interesting, however, since it suggests that the base clock speed could be higher too. Because higher clock speeds always equal more heat, Qualcomm likely had to find a way to improve thermals to make this happen. Dealing with heat in a laptop is pretty difficult since there’s limited space for fans, but Qualcomm may have found a better way to keep things cool or they may have figured out how to make components even smaller — because the smaller something is, the less heat it generates. Current Snapdragon chips use 4 nm tech but we’re not sure yet if next-gen will use 3 nm or even 2 nm (though the latter isn’t expected until 2026). Related The performance gains mentioned in the leak are probably considering additional factors other than the clock speeds, however, since the clock speeds themselves are not 18 to 22% faster than the last generation. There are many different areas Qualcomm could have adjusted and improved on to make these performance gains, so it’s hard to guess without any additional information. The success of Qualcomm’s new chips doesn’t rest solely on power, however. While its team-up with Microsoft brought plenty of media attention, the software problems Windows-on-Arm brought with it were also substantial. At the moment, Snapdragon X Elite laptops are known for being frequently returned, but that’s almost entirely due to compatibility and software issues with Windows, rather than problems with the hardware. Either way, Qualcomm has high aspirations for its laptop chips, so it will be interesting to see how they approach things this time around. Editors’ Recommendations

MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. When OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy excitedly took to X back in February to post about his new hobby, he probably had no idea he was about to coin a phrase that encapsulated an entire movement steadily gaining momentum across the world. “There’s a new kind of coding I call ‘vibe coding’, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists," he said. “I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding—I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.”  If this all sounds very different from poring over lines of code, that’s because Karpathy was talking about a particular style of coding with AI assistance. His words struck a chord among software developers and enthusiastic amateurs alike. In the months since, his post has sparked think pieces and impassioned debates across the internet. But what exactly is vibe coding? Who does it benefit, and what’s its likely future? So, what is it? To truly understand vibe coding, it’s important to note that while the term may be new, the coding technology behind it isn’t. For the past few years, general-purpose chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google DeepMind’s Gemini have been getting better at writing code to build software, including games, websites, and apps. But it’s the recent advent of specially created AI coding assistants, including Cursor’s Chat (previously known as Composer) and GitHub Copilot, that really ushered in vibe coding. These assistants can make real-time predictions about what you’re trying to do and offer intuitive suggestions to make it easier than ever to create software, even if you’ve never written code before. “Over the past three or four years, these AI autocomplete tools have become better and better—they started off completing single lines of code and can now rewrite an entire file for you, or create new components,” says Barron Webster, a software designer at the interface company Sandbar. “The remit of what you can take your hands off the wheel and let the machine do is continually growing over time.”   … and what doesn’t count as vibe coding? But not all AI-assisted coding is vibe coding. To truly vibe-code, you have to be prepared to let the AI fully take control and refrain from checking and directly tweaking the code it generates as you go along—surrendering to the vibes. In Karpathy’s longer post he explained that when he’s vibe coding, he breezily accepts all suggestions that Cursor’s tool gives him and puts his trust in its ability to fix its own mistakes. “When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it,” he wrote. “Sometimes the LLMs can’t fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away.” Essentially, vibe coding is interacting with a code base through prompts, so that the engineer’s role is simply to converse with the tool and examine its outcome, explains Sergey Tselovalnikov, a software engineer at the design platform Canva who regularly uses AI assistive tools. “Andrej is a bit of an influencer, and he defined that term very intentionally,” he says. “He just posted a joke of sorts, but because he highlighted what was going on in the industry more or less correctly, it just took off.” Is vibe coding right for my project? The people most likely to benefit from vibe coding fall into two camps, says Tobin South, an AI security researcher at the MIT Media Lab. One is people like Karpathy, who already have a good grasp of coding and know how to fix any errors if anything goes seriously wrong if they’re using it to build anything important; the other is absolute amateurs with little to no coding experience. “I’d define vibe coding as having a vision that you can’t execute, but AI can,” he says. The major appeal of vibe coding lies in how easy and accessible it is. The AI assistive tools make it much quicker to produce code and to whip up small projects like a prototype website, game, or web app than it would be for a human. But while this hands-off approach may make sense when it comes to creating these kinds of low-stakes, simple digital products, it’s far riskier in bigger, more complex systems where the stakes are much higher. Because AI coding tools are powered by LLMs, the code they generate is just as likely to contain errors as the answers LLM-powered chatbots spit out. That’s a big problem if what you’re trying to code requires access to large databases of information, security measures to protect that data, large numbers of users, or data inputted from users, says Tselovalnikov. “Vibe coding can make a lot of errors and problems, but in the environment of a tiny game or a small app that doesn’t store any data, it’s a lot less relevant,” he says. “I’d personally be a lot more careful with larger projects, because if you don’t know if there are any security vulnerabilities and you didn’t test the code yourself, that’s very dangerous.” This is particularly applicable to non-coders. Leo, a user on X and a champion of vibe coding, found this out the hard way when he posted about having built a SaaS application (software that runs over the internet, instead of being downloaded to a user’s device) solely using Cursor last month. The post immediately caught the attention of mischievous web users, who instantly started poking holes in his service’s security. “Guys, I’m under attack,” he posted two days later. “I’m not technical, so this is taking me longer than usual to figure out. For now, I will stop sharing what I do publicly on X. There are just some weird ppl out there.” Ultimately, while vibe coding can help make a vague idea for a website or a game into a reality, it can’t make it reliable or secure. But there are already plenty of existing tools to do this, helping you with everything from creating databases to adding authentication measures. So while you can’t vibe-code real, valuable, secure, robust apps into existence, it can be a useful place to start so long as you’re careful, says South.  He believes that AI-assisted coding assistants are going to keep becoming more capable and that web hosting companies will keep integrating AI into their tools to make them easier to use, meaning the barriers to creating software will keep falling. “It takes the cost of producing software and dramatically reduces it to an exponential degree,” he says. “The world will have to adapt to this new reality. It isn’t going anywhere.”

Caroline Chirichella with her husband and two children. Courtesy of Caroline Chirichella 2025-04-16T10:35:01Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? I married the man I love, but he's 23 years my senior. I wonder if I was selfish to have a family with someone so much older. I worry a lot about the future and what he could miss out on because he might not be here. When our children get married, he might not be here.When our children become parents, he might not be here.We may not get to travel the world together in our golden years.That's the sad reality that I don't like to talk about when it comes to being married to someone 23 years my senior.My husband is 59, he will be 60 in August. I'm 36. We have a 6-year-old daughter and an 18-month-old son.I try to block out the painful "might nots" that I don't want to think about, but as I witness my husband getting older, it's getting harder and harder to not think about.I was meant to be with my husband Caroline Chirichella and her husband at their wedding. Courtesy of Caroline Chirichella I'm Italian American and my husband is Italian. We met in the same small town we live in now, Guardia Sanframondi. It was like a love story come true.Even with all of our flaws and and passionate fights, I feel my husband and I were meant for each other.We had a whirlwind romance. After a year, we moved in together, got engaged six months later, married a month after that, and got pregnant within a year of marrying.Sometimes I wish we'd had more time for ourselves as a couple before having kids, but the reality is that because my husband is already so much older, I didn't want him to become a dad at an even older age.I sometimes get scared when I think about the futureI don't know what the future will look like — if we'll get a chance to grow old together or enjoy being grandparents. As I type this, I have to wipe away tears because the thought is too painful.Sometimes, I wonder if I have been selfish to do this. To have a family with someone so much older. I sometimes feel guilty as though my choice wasn't fair to our kids. That said, they're the best thing that ever happened to us and that will never change.I try to remind myself that nothing is guaranteed. People only have the time they have, whether they're young or old. Nothing is promised. However, that doesn't make it any easier.The risk of it all sometimes puts me under added pressure because I worry that sooner rather than later, I may become a single parent and have to face the financial concerns that come with that.I'm lucky that we own our house and the cost of living is low where we live in Italy. However, I work hard now to help ensure that money will never be a concern for me or my kids.Sometimes, my husband tells me I should cut back on work and not take on so many clients, but I want to know that anything my kids want and need, they will have. I wonder if my kids will be mad when they're old enough to understandMy kids don't see their dad as old. They're still young enough to just see him as their dad: the man who makes them yummy lunches, takes them to school and the park, and helps them with their homework.When they get older, though, so will he, and his age will become more evident.Will it bother them? Will they be mad about having an old dad?I don't know.All I know is what's right in front of me. We all enjoy the time we have together, as a family and as a couple — right now, in the present. Recommended video

Recessions are always officially declared after they have already started. In the US, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is the official arbiter of what constitutes a recession, taking into consideration different economic indicators, including growth. The organization defines a recession as a “significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy,” usually lasting more than a few months, but not always. The Great Recession technically began in December 2007 following the global financial crash, but the NBER didn’t recognize it as such until the following December. The Covid-19 recession lasted less than three months, starting in February 2020, but it wasn’t declared until June. So is it possible that the US is already experiencing a recession brought on by President Donald Trump’s tariffs — but we just don’t know it yet?RelatedWhat Trump’s tariff pause can’t solveEconomists say it’s possible, and they’re looking for signs that go beyond sustained negative economic growth, which can only be seen in hindsight.That’s important for Americans making everyday financial decisions, as well as businesses planning for a potentially rocky quarter ahead with the implementation of Trump’s tariffs.“Whether two or three months from now, we’re looking back and saying, ‘Was the US in a recession or not?’ will be a really important question,” said Michael Madowitz, principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive economic think tank. “But also, it’s completely reasonable to be like, ‘I don’t need to wait for those answers to understand if my local economy is getting worse.’”Here are three indicators economists are watching.1) Consumer confidence is decliningIf the US is experiencing a recession, it would be different from recessions of the recent past. This time, Madowitz said, it would be a direct result of Trump’s tariffs driving down consumer demand. Usually, external factors first affect businesses and then trickle down to consumers. (Though the Covid-19 recession was also exceptional in this respect.)“Usually, we think of things as going from the corporate side down and hitting the consumer,” Madowitz said. “In this case, it’s almost the opposite. It’s 100 percent from the consumer side, because we are hammering the consumer side.”As consumers anticipate higher prices due to tariffs, a monthly survey by the University of Michigan showed consumer sentiment dropped 11 percent in April to 50.8 — lower than it was during the Great Recession or during the Covid-19 pandemic. “You’re seeing retail sales start to really weaken, and that’ll get worse as the tariffs kick in,” Harry Holzer, a labor economist at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said. From there, Holzer said he expects cascading effects: Businesses could respond to lower consumer demand and higher costs with payroll layoffs. That could drive up unemployment and leave Americans with even less money to spend. 2) The bond market is flashing a warning signBefore Trump pulled back on some of his tariffs last week, US Treasury yields were spiking. That was a red flag that investors were losing confidence in the strength of the American economy and the US dollar. “Usually when the markets are expecting a recession, long-term [Treasury] interest rates drop, but they shot way up last week because now it’s starting to affect confidence in the dollar,” Holzer said. Treasury yields have continued to be volatile in the days since and aren’t likely to recover entirely in the near term, even if Trump pulls back further on tariffs. That’s because the American economy now appears to be subject to the whims of a man who has what The Economist called an “utterly deluded” understanding of economics and history.As a result, investors are questioning whether it’s worth taking the risk of sinking more money into the US market. That uncertainty isn’t going away any time soon.3) Gas prices are coming down — and probably not for a good reasonWhile many Americans want gas prices to come down, the fact that they are heading to below $3 a gallon may not actually be a good sign. Rather, it could be an indicator that the “global economy is going south fast,” Madowitz said.The average gas price in the US is about $3.02 a gallon as of Monday, the lowest in years. The White House has argued that Trump is bringing much-needed economic relief to American families as a result. But it’s worth probing why gas prices are falling so fast. It’s not because of Trump’s energy policies; historically, these kinds of drops have been associated with lower economic activity, if not an outright recession. “This is not Covid, when oil prices were going down because people weren’t commuting,” Madowitz said. “This is oil prices going down because people are like, ‘This looks really bad for growth everywhere.’”See More:

One of my earliest memories is watching my mum and dad play the opening level of Super Mario Bros in cooperative mode on the Nintendo Entertainment System. This was the early 1990s, and they were joined at the hip on the sofa, laughing at the idea of two portly plumbers becoming gigantic after consuming copious amounts of magic mushrooms.‘An ordinary human being rather than the tragic myth he became’ … family photo of Thomas Hobbs with his father, Jonathan. Photograph: Thomas HobbsIn this moment I sensed their natural chemistry, while the intoxicating mix of 8-bit visuals and perky, synth-heavy music blew my toddler mind. Although it was irritating seeing them constantly fail to jump high enough to hit the top of the flagpole at the end of the level, I remember being transfixed by the TV screen, and I’m pretty sure this was the first time I connected properly with a video game.I was only four years old when my dad died. It happened suddenly, a heart attack when he was just 37, and I witnessed it on a bike ride ... It left my family for ever broken. But the formative image of dad at his most carefree and in love, clutching a rectangular controller hooked up to a grey slab of Japanese joy, remained. It was something I could utilise whenever my grief became too much. Most importantly, the memory allowed me to visualise my dad as an ordinary human being rather than the tragic myth he later became.Ours was a working-class household with limited space, so eventually the NES disappeared: no one could work out whether it was gathering dust in an old plastic bag in a relative’s loft, or if it had been accidentally thrown out. So I was shocked recently when my mum unexpectedly handed me the console after finding it during a spring clean. She asked me if I could try to fix it, so that we could keep it in the family.It had no leads, games, or controllers. It was also filthy with sticky clumps of dirt, particularly around the AV slots, and judging by the rust collecting at the cartridge slot, had serious water damage. After giving it a deep clean, hoovering all the damp dust out of the inside and buying a pricey device that converted the games into HD, I switched it on. Somehow, it still worked. Clearly, like most consumer devices produced in the 1980s, the NES had been built to withstand a nuclear winter should the cold war heat up.A retro ‘Nintendo Family Computer’, sold in Japan as a forerunner to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty ImagesThe last few weeks of rebuying games and getting lost in their fuzzy charms have been genuinely restorative for my mental health; a chance to reconnect with my roots. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to make a jump on the Fortress level of World 1 in Super Mario Bros 3, with spikes descending from the ceiling just as my squirrel suit was on the verge of flying to the other side. But by working out I simply had to be patient and duck inside a small space to avoid looming peril, rather than blindly rushing forward, I knew I was experiencing the same glorious lightbulb moment my dad would have enjoyed.I’ve been particularly obsessed with Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! Despite the clunky 2D crowd and square-ish dimensions, there’s a genuine dynamism to the boxer’s movement and a feeling that David can defeat Goliath simply by bobbing and weaving and flipping the momentum with a well-aimed jab to the chin. While later boxing games might have been dripping with life-like bodily fluids, I have yet to find one that better replicates the magic of a boxer tasting blood and moving in for the kill than this 1987 NES game.Double Dragon has also been a revelation. This co-op fighting game gives you a big open space to navigate and – despite the graphical limitations – makes you feel like Bruce Lee: surrounded by foes, but with enough battlefield intelligence to use the environment to your advantage and kick knife-wielding enemies into the dust. With race-against-the-clock tension, one early sequence where you fight a couple of heavies on a moving conveyor belt made me feel like I was in a John Woo action movie.In these games the lack of a save mode forces you to continuously invest in improving, so the next time you hit the dreaded “Game Over” screen you’re more confident of avoiding the same mistakes. This grift is strangely addictive, and it’s easy to picture my dad taking a quick break after putting baby me to sleep, his mind on the allure of the hard-won achievements at the core of this more patient era of Nintendo gaming.Genuine dynamism … Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! Photograph: NintendoKnowing he would have once had the same smile on his face while playing the NES has made him more tangible in my mind; it’s allowed me to see through his eyes. And, as my two-year-old son experiences his own dad going crazy over firing Flower Power-ups or defeating Dracula Duck during the final boss battle of the family melodrama that is DuckTales, I feel like I’m keeping my father’s energy alive.Retro gaming is very much on the rise in the UK and US, with many players rediscovering the delights of analogue-era consoles. Playing these old cartridges on the original machines provides a deeper appreciation of the evolution of gaming and it’s an escape from a world that feels far less carefree than the time in which these machines were thriving. Perhaps they also hope to re-ignite the memories of those who’ve passed, to remain connected to the loved ones who once invested their time into these devices.Rather than letting that old console become a house for spiders in your loft, dust it off, get playing. It might just help you to grieve, or relive a special memory that otherwise could easily have been lost. When I hear the opening chords of the Super Mario Bros theme song, I’m instantly back on that sofa with my mum and dad, smiling, assured that everything is going to be OK.

After screenshots leaked yesterday, fans took to social media to ask Xbox about the Oblivion Remaster – and the Xbox Support team has seemingly confirmed it'll launch very soon indeedTech10:10, 16 Apr 2025We can barely contain our excitement(Image: Bethesda/4J Studios/Superscape)The wait goes on for the "shadow drop" of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, even as screenshots emerged from developer Virtuous yesterday.As we wait for the first Elder Scrolls game since Skyrim back in 2011 (we're not including the excellent Elder Scrolls Online, as good as it is), we do now at least have confirmation of the developer since Bethesda is working on Starfield (and most likely The Elder Scrolls 6).‌Article continues belowThe remake (dubbed Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered) is seemingly being developed by Virtuos, which is also contributing to the Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater Delta Remake.The project might be the worst-kept secret in gaming, and while we're expecting it to arrive any day now, some fans couldn't wait any longer and slid into Microsoft's Xbox Support account DMs on X (formerly Twitter) – to surprising results.Content cannot be displayed without consent‌As shared by Synth Potato, one fan asked Xbox Support if Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered will be available on cloud gaming."The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is set to release on April 21, 2025," the support chat responded."It is confirmed to be a day-one launch title on Xbox Game Pass which strongly suggests that it will be available for cloud gaming through Xbox Cloud Gaming."‌Considering Microsoft hasn't confirmed anything just yet, it's a very straightforward response, and it gets better for fans of the 2006 original.Combat has reportedly been overhauled(Image: Bethesda/4J Studios/Superscape)In a follow-up, one user asked Xbox Support if the game will include the original DLC.‌"Yes, the remastered version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will be available on Xbox Game Pass starting April 21st"."This version will include all the DLCs from the original game, so you'll be able to enjoy the full experience with enhanced visuals and gameplay improvements."Not only is the inclusion of the DLC very welcome (if it's true), but the "gameplay improvements" are likely the reported combat revamp and improved HUD.Article continues belowStill, keep expectations in check. There's every chance these responses, even via a so-called "live agent" are reading from a script built by AI, reading gaming sites and regurgitating the April 21 release as fact.Thankfully, we've got less than a week until we know for sure.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.‌‌‌