This year, Smithsonian magazine published more than 900 science stories. Most of those appeared in ourSmart News Science section, but we also published more than 100features, in addition to reprinting stellar pieces from other sites and sharing theoccasional book excerpt. Our stories included a feature on the discovery ofthe worlds oldest scrap of skin, an interview with a computer scientist and meteorologist onusing artificial intelligence to predict extreme weather, a photo gallery ofstunning images captured by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory over its 25-year history, several pieces on viral animals includingFlaco the owl andMoo Deng the hippo, a feature onscientists examining the rocks from the asteroid Bennu, and a news article examining a51,200-year-old cave painting that may be the earliest known instance of visual storytelling. Though these pieces were important and captivatingand many could have made our list of the top ten moments of the yearfor various reasons, other stories won out.Though we considered metrics like page views and readers time spent reading each article, we mostly picked our top ten the old-fashioned way. As the sites two science editors, we both met several times over the latter part of the year and discussed at length what to include. We were looking not only at events or discoveries that represented the biggest scientific milestones, but also at those moments or finds that inspired the most awe. And we wanted stories that represented a diversity of fieldsastronomy, climatology, geology, meteorology, biology and archaeology all made it into our final list.In the end, we picked ten stories that covered the scope of topics we published on throughout the year, often catered to subjects our readers like to spend time with. Leaving some significant events and amazing discoveries out is always difficult, but we think we ended up with a diverse collection of memorable stories that highlight what an important year 2024 was for science.A total solar eclipse wowed North American viewers People gather at Green-Wood Cemetery in New York City to witness a partial solar eclipse. Michael Nigro / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty ImagesOn April 8,tens of millions of North Americans donned funky glasses and looked skyward at a total solar eclipse.Such a rare and spectacular celestial event occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the Earthand our beloved satellite casts a shadow over a patch beneath it, creating darkness during the day. Over the course ofan hour and 40 minutes, this years path of totalitythe area marked by total darknessstretched from Mazatln, Mexico, to Newfoundland, Canada.An estimated 32 million people resided in the path, andanother 12 million people were expected to travel to the area, defining the moment asone of the biggest mass-transit events to ever occur in the United States. Throughout world history,ancient civilizations that witnessed solar eclipses thought them to be anything from a message from the gods to a signal to end a battle. This year, amateur astronomers, knowing what to expect, pointed high-end cameras at the moon and sun to capturestunning images, whilecitizen scientists noted unusual animal behavior around them.Unless North American residents travel beyond the lower 48, they will not have another opportunity to view a total solar eclipseuntil 2044, making this years occurrence even more special. In all,a couple hundred million people had the ability to see at least a partial eclipse. In Washington, D.C., while viewing a partial eclipse, National Air and Space Museum curator Teasel Muir-Harmony noted the importance of the occasion. This, she told the Associated Press, may be the most viewed astronomical event in history. Joe SpringScientists unveiled the first-ever complete map of an adult fruit flys brain Researchers mapped all 139,255 neurons in the brain of an adult fruit fly, which are linked by more than 50 million synapses. Tyler Sloan for FlyWire, Princeton University, (Dorkenwald, S. et al. Nature 634, 124138 (2024))The brain of a fruit fly is no larger than a poppy seed, but to chart the intricacies of its cells took a historic collaboration, leveraging hundreds of volunteers, an artificial intelligence model and thousands of painstakingly imaged brain slices. In October, that effort came to fruition when researchers unveiled a nine-paper package published in Nature that described the first-ever full map of an adult fruit flys brain.The stunning diagram contains roughly 140,000 neuronsincluding 8,453 different types of neuronsand more than 54.5 million connections among them, known as synapses. The findings represent the most complex map of a complete brain to date.By following the connections throughout the insects brain, scientists are even beginning to parse which parts of the organ have certain functions. They created a computerized version of the model brain and simulated exposing it to various stimuli. It reacted just as a fly wouldwhen presented with a sugary scent, the model activated the brain region for sticking out its proboscis.But that wasnt the only leap forward in brain mapping this yearin May, scientists released a data set charting the neurons, synapses and connections in a tiny piece of a human brain. The study, published in Science, details the complexity packed into a little slice of an anterior temporal lobe, thought to be involved in memory. The team mapped 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses, demonstrating the dense connections among them.Though it might not seem like it, the human brain has a lot in common with that of a fruit fly. Some 75 percent of the genes that cause genetic diseases in humans are also found in fruit flies, so understanding their neural underpinnings could shed light on our own. Fruit flies sing, get drunk and can be kept awake with caffeine, suggesting even more similarities between their brains and ours. As Sebastian Seung, a co-senior author of the research, told the Guardians Ian Sample, if we can truly understand how any brain functions, its bound to tell us something about all brains. Carlyn Kranking2024 marked the hottest year on record Boys bathe at a public water facility along a street on a hot June day during a heat wave in Jalandhar, India. Shammi Mehra / AFP via Getty ImagesOnce again, were ending a year that is set to be the hottest on record. According to leading weather and climate organizations,2024 is on track to eclipse 2023 for the warmest temperatures since records have been kept. Just about any time readers looked onlineApril, June,Augustheadlines noted the hottest given month of its kind in history. In fact, from June 2023 to September 202416 consecutive monthsthe global average temperature exceeded previous records for each month, according to the World Meteorological Organization. In all, 2024 is expected to be the first yearEarth is more than 1.5 Celsius hotter than the pre-industrial period. That one-year record does not mean the world has breached the Paris Agreement goal to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 Celsius, as such a markhas to be sustained over a longer period. But the past decade has been the warmest on record, and experts say this years highsignals a dangerous milestone.Global warming continues to accelerate,caused primarily by the burning of oil, gas and coal, which release heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased bymore than 50 percent since 1750, and they are set for a new record again this year. As they increase,glaciers recede, the ocean grows hotter, sea level rises, andthe most extreme weather disasters are made worse.The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought, and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future,Celeste Saulo, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in a statement. We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate. J.S.Dams were torn down on the Klamath River, clearing a path for salmon The Klamath River flows through Wards Canyonupstream from where the Copco No. 1 dam once stood. Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesSalmon returned to Oregons Klamath Basin for the first time in 112 years in October, aided by a historic dam demolition project. Four dams were torn downthe largest undertaking of its kind in U.S. historyto restore the Klamath River in California and Oregon to its historic flow.The $500 million effort removed aging dams that had been constructed in the 20th century, some having stood for more than 100 years. After the smallest dam, Copco No. 2, was taken down in fall 2023, the remaining three were deconstructed this year, beginning in January. The gates of each dam, in turn, were opened slowly, giving passage to the water that had built up behind them. Then, crews removed the remaining aging infrastructure.Decades of advocacy by local Native American tribes and environmentalists helped lead to the projects approval in November 2022. These pleas were centered on restoring the health of the river and once again providing salmon with an unobstructed migration path upstream to their birth waters, where they return to spawn as adults.Since the dams have been taken out, experts reported fewer algal blooms and that the water temperature was 14 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, conditions that help prevent some bacterial infections in salmon. Toz Soto, fisheries program manager with the Karuk tribe, said at a press conference that the fish coming up the river were really healthy. Others echoed that sentiment: Karuk tribe member Ron Reed told the Los Angeles Times Ian James that the salmon have been so much more beautiful this year. C.K.Two hurricanes destroyed parts of the Southeast Community members look through debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Marshall, North Carolina. Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty ImagesThe 2024 Atlantic hurricane season started off this summer with the stormsBeryl,Debby andFrancine, but the season really walloped the U.S. in the fall, when two powerful back-to-back hurricanes devastated the Southeast.Hurricane Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 storm on September 26, then moved north over the Southeast U.S. andcaused wreckage across the region, especially in western North Carolina. The storm spurred landslides,destroyed wildlife habitat, knocked out power to millions of people and flooded towns. More than 200 people across six states died due to the storm, making it thedeadliest hurricane since Katrina. Not long after that,on October 9 and 10,Hurricane Milton whirled across Florida, spawning tornadoes and leaving rubble andat least 24 people dead in its wake.Both hurricanes hadcharacteristics consistent with climate changes impact on storms. With warmer temperatures, storms are intensifying more rapidly.Helene grew disturbingly fast and Hurricane Milton even more so, morphing from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricanewith winds of 180 miles per hour in a day. Scientists also found the rain from Hurricane Helenewas 10 percent heavier as a result of climate change. In addition to those impacts, and the fact that hurricanes are increasingly moving slower, warming ocean waters due to climate changewill give future hurricanes a greater range. J.S.An ambitious space mission launched to search for signs of life on a moon An artists drawing of the Europa Clipper spacecraft NASA / JPL-CaltechAs skies cleared over Florida after Hurricane Milton passed over the state, a rocket carrying NASAs Europa Clipperblasted off on October 14. The interplanetary spacecraft successfully started its mission toward Europa, the fourth-largest moon ofJupiter, the eldest and most enormous planet in our solar system. While many of the planets biggest moons are geologically active, NASA targeted Europa because it has a subsurface ocean thatmay harbor life.Scientists sent NASAs largest spacecraft ever launched to another planet not to detect life itself, but to see if the moon has conditions that can support life. The Clipper is equipped with spectrometers, a dust analyzer, a thermal camera, instruments for measuring a magnetic field and gravity, and a radar. The crafts tools will help it find hot spots of activity, search for organic compounds and understand details about the ocean. Any discoveries that result from the trip could help scientists target a future effort to the surface that would search for signs of life.The missions goals are just to assess the habitability,Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio toldSmithsonian magazine. Its the first step in that sort of long-term discovery of: Are we aloneJ.S.Archaeologists find that mammoth was on the menu for Ice Age Americans In an illustration, the Anzick-1 infant is shown with his mother eating mammoth meat as other Clovis individuals butcher a mammoth. Artist Eric Carlson created the scene in collaboration with archaeologists Ben Potter (UAF) and Jim Chatters (McMaster University)The diets of the Clovis people, who crossed the Bering Strait from Asia into Ice Age North America, have been an enduring mystery. Though archaeologists have uncovered indirect signs of the cultures habitsstone points for hunting and animal bonesdrawing conclusions from that assemblage relied on a lot of assumptions. But in a study published this December in Science Advances, archaeologists looked for an answer using direct evidence: the 13,000-year-old remains of the only known Clovis individual, an 18-month-old boy known as Anzick-1.Scientists examined the infants bones, conducting tests known as stable isotope analysis. In this method, they studied atoms of an element with varying weights, which can act as a record of what an organism ate and drank. Being a baby, Anzick-1 primarily drank his mothers milk, but one-third of his diet was composed of solid foodsand chief among them was woolly mammoth.The team also reconstructed what was on his mothers menu, based on the remnants of her milk in his bones. Mammoths made up 40 percent of what she ate, supplemented by elk, bison and, in rarer cases, small mammals such as rodents.If the Clovis people were hunting mammoths, it would align with evidence that they migrated, perhaps driven by the mammals seasonal movements. But at the end of the Ice Age, mammoth populations had dwindled and fragmented. The authors add that its possible the natural environmental changes put stress on the mammothsand hunting pressure from humans eventually drove them to extinction. But other researchers are less ready to jump to those continent-wide conclusions based only on evidence from one individual and his mother. The only way to verify this finding, researchers say, is to get more dataso archaeologists will need to discover more human remains from the Clovis culture. C.K.Iceland erupted again and again Lava flows from the Sundhnukur volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula near Grindavik, Iceland. John Moore / Getty ImagesThe rumblings that alarmed officials near the town of Grindavik, Iceland,began last October. After earthquakes suggested a possible volcanic eruption, the town was evacuated.In December, lava poured out of the earth. But the eruptions really got going this year. Molten rock spewed out in January,February,March,May,August and Novemberseven eruptions in just one years time.Grindaviks residents grew used to evacuations in a country that is no stranger to volcanoes. Iceland experiencesat least one eruption every five years or so. There, the mid-ocean ridge rises above the ocean andmolten rock from the deep rises as the North American and Eurasian plates move away from each other. Beneath southeast Iceland, a column of molten rockknown as a hot spotspurs even more eruptions. But on the Reykjanes Peninsula, where Grindavik sits, the earth was quiet for quite a while. Before the recent period of eruptions there began in March 2021,the last volcanic activity had occurred around 1200 C.E.Now, while Grindaviks residents worry, scientists flock to the blazing rock to learn more. One thing they are finding is that the lavas from different eruptionshave chemical similarities, suggesting they are somehow connected deep belowa surprising find. And geologists will likely have plenty of opportunities to discover more, as they think this latest burst of molten rocksignals the onset of centuries of eruptions for the area. In the meantime, the lava continues to move,recently threatening to steamroll Icelands iconic Blue Lagoon. J.S.Bird flu infected cows and dairy workers Cows without bird flu are milked at the Cornell Teaching Dairy Barn at Cornell University. Michael M. Santiago / Getty ImagesSince it was first spotted in 1996, the H5N1 strain of avian flu has been spreading in domestic and wild birds. But in 2020, the strain experienced a mutation that makes it more infective in waterfowl. From there, it hit new milestonesthe strain left its typical range of Europe, Asia and Africa to reach the Americas and the Antarctic, wreaking havoc on birds. In 2022, scientists detected the strain in mammals. And in 2024, it made headlines once again as the virus cropped up in dairy cows in the United States.First, the strain infected a young goat in Minnesota, marking the first U.S. livestock to be infected. Then, dairy cows in Texas and Kansas were reported sick, experiencing symptoms and producing discolored milk. At the time of this writing, more than 800 dairy herds have been affected across 16 states. Researchers detected bird flu in grocery store milk, but federal health officials spread the word that pasteurization kills the virusso the only milk that could potentially be dangerous was raw milk.Texas health department announced a dairy worker in the state had contracted H5N1 in March, marking only the second person infected with the strain in U.S. history. Scientists have expressed concerns about potential under-reporting of human cases and worried that the nation as a whole is underprepared to deal with the virus if it spreads quickly. Now, the countrys reported total of human cases has approached 60.In recent weeks, the pathogen has made headlines again, as epidemiologists and policymakers share concerns about what disease preparedness might look like under the upcoming Trump administration. In December, the Department of Agriculture announced it would test all raw milk for avian flu. But because the virus does not appear to be spreading between people, the Biden administration reportedly has no plans to authorize a vaccine for humans. For now, though, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains that the risk to the general public remains low. C.K.Colorful auroras dazzled viewers across the planet Northern lights are seen in Sugarloaf Key, just 15 miles from Key West, Florida. Jen Golbeck / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty ImagesEthereal greens and reds lit the skies across the Earth on May 10 and 11, during the most dramatic geomagnetic storm in more than 20 years. Some people spotted the shimmering colors with the naked eye, while others caught the glow with their cameras. But all experienced something highly unusual: The northern lights were even seen as far south as Floridasomething that surprised some seasoned aurora chasers.The source of this extreme space weather event can be traced to the sun, which is currently near the climax of its 11-year cycle of fluctuating activity. This period of high magnetic turbulence, known as the solar maximum, results in our nearest star launching elevated amounts of radiation as solar flares, as well as spewing more magnetic fields and plasma as coronal mass ejections. When these charged particles hit Earths atmosphere, our planets own magnetic field drags them to the poles, where they energize molecules of gas. In turn, the gases emit a colorful glow as they release the excess energy. Oxygen and nitrogen at various altitudes create different hues, and they blend together into the dazzling sights we know as auroras.Even during these periods of high solar activity, a storm like Mays is rare. Not only does the sun have to hurl a huge amount of material out into space, but that material also has to hit the Eartha small target on the grand scale of the solar system. Still, far-reaching auroras happened again in October, putting on a show for skywatchers in every U.S. state, except for Hawaii, as Forbes Jamie Carter reported.As the sun shifts closer to its solar maximum, astronomers expect widespread auroras to happen again. Aurora chasers are looking toward 2025 with hopeful anticipation: Historically, the highest solar activity has come on the tail end of the maximum, so we might be in for even more stunning displays of lights in the coming years. C.K.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Archaeology, Astronomy, Avian Flu, Birds, Brain, Climate Change, Disease, Disease and Illnesses, Earth Science, Fish, Hurricanes, Iceland, Insects, Jupiter, Mammals, NASA, Natural Disasters, Outer Space, solar eclipse, Volcanoes

2024 was the year of Microsoft's grand pivot | OpinionExpectations this year would suffer a drought of high-quality releases were very much defied but it's the reinvention of Xbox that will be 2024's lasting legacyImage credit: Microsoft Opinion by Rob Fahey Contributing Editor Published on Dec. 20, 2024 At the outset of 2024, the most often expressed concern about this year in the games business was that it was going to have a very sparse and underwhelming release calendar, at least compared to the spectacular heights of 2023. This was to some extent a ripple effect from the pandemic years: a backlog of delayed software made its way onto the market during 2023, meaning that with many major studios set to be in the early stages of new projects, 2024's line-up did not look very inspiring.With the benefit of hindsight, that fear didn't entirely come to pass; or at least, whatever slump in the release schedule for 2024 we did experience was spread out rather unevenly around different parts of the industry.Fears of a fallow 2024 overall, then, did not come to pass at least not for everyoneFrom a consumer's perspective, it's actually been a pretty solid year for games in the end. It may ultimately come to be seen as the calm before 2025's GTA 6 storm, but this year has held up remarkably well thanks to a combination of hit titles nobody really saw coming Helldivers 2 and Astro Bot are especially notable here, having rescued Sony from what would otherwise have been a pretty shockingly empty year in the middle of its console cycle and, especially in the back half of the year, some games that really defied expectations.In terms of expectations being defied, quite a few games turned up that had largely been written off as development hell nightmares, and have ended up being actually pretty great. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the prime example; on a personal level I find its gameplay a little too much of a departure from previous games in the series for my tastes, but taken on its own merits it's a very enjoyable game and far better than many people had dared to hope for after so many years.Silent Hill 2 is a remake I don't think many people had expected to be quite so good, despite its developer's pedigree in the horror genre. The really unexpected surprise of the year, though, is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle a title that honestly feels like it has no right being quite as fantastically good fun as it actually is. Fears of a fallow year overall, then, did not come to pass at least not for everyone. For some publishers, the danger of 2024 being a lost year was very well-founded, with quite a few companies failing to find a hit title from one end of the year to the other.Poor old Ubisoft is the unwilling flag carrier for that unhappy bunch; it had probably hoped that the relatively quiet release slates of some other major publishers would give Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Shadows a chance to shine, but the former title sank (arguably a victim of Disney's mishandling of the Star Wars brand as much as any issue with Ubisoft itself) and the latter has been delayed to 2025. Ubisoft isn't the only publisher that was struggling to find hits in 2024, but its ongoing struggle to reinvent and reinvigorate its business is likely to be a story that drags out well into next year.It wasn't just certain publishers having a rough 2024, though; the year's successes were spread rather unevenly around game genres as well. I wrote last week about the torrid year live service games had, with high-profile failures ranging from Sony's Concord disaster to the announcements that the likes of Suicide Squad and XDefiant would be shutting down. Helldivers 2 and Marvel Rivals were the only real bright spots in that market, though it's worth noting that established games like Fortnite have continued trucking on very nicely even as the live service model gets clobbered everywhere else (and even the bruised and battered Overwatch 2 seems to have had a bit of a comeback year).On the other hand, it was a great year for single-player action games, thanks to the likes of Black Myth Wukong, Stellar Blade, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and many others. Incidentally, it's also no accident that two of the high points mentioned here Marvel Rivals and Black Myth Wukong are from Chinese developers; after many false starts and a huge amount of investment, this was the year in which China really started flexing its muscle as one of the major global centres for game development.For all that, however, I suspect that when we come to look back at 2024 through some future lens, the most important story is going to be what happened to Microsoft this year.[Buying Activision Blizzard] was always part of a huge business transformation in the making, and the existing identity of Xbox as a platform was always on the chopping blockThis has been an incredibly pivotal year for Microsoft's strategy as a game publisher and platform holder, as it embarks on one of the boldest, and arguably trickiest, transitions that any company in this industry has ever attempted. It's a transition that seemed inevitable to many observers of its struggle to purchase Activision Blizzard there were plenty of voices warning that completing that acquisition would effectively mean the end of Xbox as we knew it but it seems nonetheless to have blindsided many of the most ardent Xbox fans (most of whom were vocal supporters of the deal in question, at that).Spending so much money on buying one of the industry's largest publishers was never going to be about just propping up a console business that was consistently losing out to both Sony and Nintendo in the global market. This was always a huge business transformation in the making, and the existing identity of Xbox as a platform was always on the chopping block.Microsoft has become one of the world's largest and most influential publishers (propped up massively in that role this year by Black Ops 6 being a high point in the series' recent history, and Indiana Jones being so well-received), but in the process it has become something very different from a traditional platform holder. Xbox hardware will now necessarily play second fiddle to the broader idea of Xbox as a platform service and Microsoft as a third-party games publisher. The business that will emerge will undoubtedly be more robust and successful; whether it will still be recognisably anything like Xbox was in the past remains to be seen.One thing to watch carefully in the coming months is consumer response to the 'This Is An Xbox' campaign, which is a bold attempt to explain and outline this complex strategy to the wide consumer audience. Not to be a downer on the campaign (it's a very well-executed piece of marketing), but to make an anecdotal judgement from the confused reactions I've heard personally, I'm not sure it's landing quite like Microsoft had hoped.Consequently, 2025 may well be a year of experimentation for the company as it tries to explain what exactly Xbox means now to a broad audience who are not quite so cued-in to boardroom buzzwords as the people to whom these ideas were pitched internally.As ever, we end the year with some broad strokes outlining how the next year will probably shape up. We know that it will be defined to a great extent by the impact of GTA 6 and Nintendo's new console launch; we can expect stories like Microsoft's repositioning and re-explaining of Xbox, Ubisoft's attempts to rebuild its publishing success, and the ongoing implosion of the live service dream all to continue to develop through the year.We can at least hope, though, that the enormous wave of stories of layoffs and studio closures that made headlines for the past two years will not follow us into 2025; fingers crossed for a year of green shoots and optimism instead.

Raccoon Logic: We're doing the last hurrah of the games industry we grew up withRevenge of the Savage Planet creative director Alex Hutchinson shares his views on finishable games, subscriptions and a hectic 2025 Feature by Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B Published on Dec. 20, 2024 Across the road from The Game Awards, in a car park featuring a couple of trailers and some plastic flamingos, sits the Racoon Logic team.The developer behind the upcoming Revenge of the Savage Planet is demoing the title and conducting interviews with journalists as opposed to doing a big Game Awards trailer. It's a very old school approach to PR."Just being part of the big show, you can get lost in the noise a little bit," reasons creative director Alex Hutchinson."Doing this for us is more fun, and a bit easier. And I like to think we're doing the last hurrah of the games industry I grew up with, which is you get an Edge cover, you fly journalists in to talk to you in actual person it feels like the end. We're doing a physical version of this game with Maximum Games. That's the industry I love. That's how I want to do it. I don't necessarily want to make a games-as-a-service title that costs $200 million, gets unplugged after a week and never gets played."As the industry ages, you would hope that there is an audience of slightly older games that would appreciate the classic approach."That's our bet," he adds. "We will find out next year if there are enough of us. People in their 40s even if you have kids, you have more disposable income than you did in your 20s, but you have less time. So you might still want to play games, but I feel repressed by games that want me to play every week. I don't want to. I want to spend time with the kids or to finish that house project." Revenge of the Savage Planet arrives in May during a busy year for new gamesHutchinson tells us that 2024, in contrast to what has been going on across the industry, has been a good one for the team at Racoon Logic."We were wise in that we didn't grow a lot. We stayed about 30 people. We have money in the bank, we haven't had to make any redundancies, we're pretty stable we have had to be serious in not growing the scope of the game, and not responding to requests from everybody. We're just polishing now and looking forward to its release, and hopefully there is a market for it."Revenge of the Savage Planet, which arrives in May next year, is the follow-up to 2020's Journey to the Savage Planet, although because of various ownership situations, the team isn't entirely sure how successful that first game was."We never saw numbers," Hutchinson admits. "It was 505 Games and then we sold to Google, so we never saw numbers. But we have the player base, and last we saw around five to six million people had played it. Which is great but that doesn't mean they paid for it, because it was on Game Pass, it was on Epic Store, it was on everything. So we don't know how many people bought it vs how many people played it."But it seems like enough people played it, and it's back on Game Pass right now which is great for us. If we're not going to make royalties from it, which we're not as we gave that up to 505 to receive the rights back to the IP, then that's all we want, more people to see and hopefully like it, and then want to buy this one.""I don't necessarily want to make a games-as-a-service title that costs $200 million, gets unplugged after a week and never gets played"Hutchinson has mixed feelings towards Game Pass and subscription services in general."It's tricky and it's unclear," he says. "Game Pass works if you're building an audience, and that's the hardest bit. But then if we're doing that stuff, we want to make sure we have a $10 extra stuff pack and all that, to try and make sure we get some money. Because the amount [subscription companies] are paying has dropped precipitously over the last three years, which means it is not the deal that it was. And I very much worry about a future where everyone is on subscription services and expect content for free. I don't think it's served the music industry well at all, for smaller artists especially."But the worst scenario is that you're not making any money and you're not being paid. I've spent 20 years trying to make games that people will have an opinion on, whether that's Army of Two or Spore or Assassin's Creed 3 or this one someone is going to say they hate it, and that's okay as long as someone else loved it. But if people don't even know the game you're talking about that's the bad one." We played Revenge of the Savage Planet in LA and it's shaping up nicelyRevenge of the Savage Planet arrives during a highly congested 2025 release slate, with an array of games due to arrive throughout the spring and summer, presumably to get ahead of the expected launch of Grand Theft Auto 6 at the end of the year."We're feeling pretty good," Hutchinson says. "We're tonally very different and distinct. I think the audience that likes us are not served by much a lot of the time. There is more coming out, with things like South of Midnight from Microsoft. So there is stuff. But the beauty of the game we're making is that people can buy both. Whereas if it's Concord or something, people buy one, and if they've got Overwatch, why would they buy Concord?"With ours even if they don't buy us early on, they might do later. In AAA, you get this enormous week one, two and three, and then it depreciates significantly. If there's DLC you get a bump, and you get a bump with a sequel, but it's really all or nothing. But with our games, and other smaller finishable games, there is this steady, linear growth where people bookmark it and get to it eventually. I wouldn't say we are optimistic that we'll be huge off the bat. But the sort of game we're making seems to age quite well. We had lots of people contact us when the last one went back on Game Pass, and that game's four years old. So we're cautiously optimistic that we can make it up over time."And it's $40. It's not a $70 game.""I very much worry about a future where everyone is on subscription services and expect content for free"Racoon Logic is self-publishing the game for the first time, and Hutchinson says that the firm has reasonable expectations. The studio's overall goal is to keep making slightly unusual fare. There's no desire to create a mega hit."The industry is always in flux," he continues. "It is always doing things and finding a way to survive. The joy for us is we're definitely going to do a third one. We're in a good spot for that. But we want to keep going and be a studio that does weird flavoured things. A big company always wants you to go on and be a 100-million seller or whatever. We just want to be successful and make games that people come up to us and mention at shows."So the game has only done $100 million? Well, it only cost $5 million and there's only 30 of us. That's a good day."I enjoyed my time with Revenge of the Savage Planet. A mix of action, puzzles, platforming and fun traversal across colourful and ridiculous open areas. And it's funny, too, with plenty of satirical references to the games industry. The villain is called Gunter Harrison, which is presumably a play on former Google games executive Phil Harrison [Hutchinson's previous company was shut down by Google in 2021]."Any similarity to anybody living or dead is purely incidental," he laughs. "Look subtlety's overrated. We took the British approach to humour."In fact, the game's overall tone reminded me of the sort of games UK developer Rare likes to make."There's a bit of Rare," Hutchinson says enthusiastically. "I'll tell you this because it didn't happen. We can have outfits in the game, and we said we can make a Conker outfit [from Rare's 2001 comedy platformer Conker's Bad Fur Day], which would be exclusive to the Xbox version. We didn't want anything for it. The guy said it got way further than he thought it would, but eventually the answer was 'no'. It's a real shame."He concludes: "But generally, there's not enough comedy in games. It's a huge market segment, and I hate saying those words, in movies and books and TV and comics. But it is a fucking empty aisle in video games."

George Jijiashvili, Senior Principal Analyst, GamesDecember 20, 20244 Min ReadImage via Apple.We recently published our latest consumer VR market research, showing that headset sales fell by 10% in 2024 to 6.9 million units, down from 7.7 million in 2023. The market is expected to decline further in 2025, in line with Omdias earlier projections. The outlook reflects a challenging period for the consumer VR industry ahead of a forecasted rebound in 2026. In this blog I lay out key drivers behind the downturn in 2024, as well as the factors driving the assumed growth in 2026 and beyond.VR headset sales see two consecutive years of decline, following the pandemic-induced upswingThe consumer VR market continues to face significant challenges, with several indicators highlighting a lack of momentum and adoption. The highly anticipated Apple Vision Pro debut has failed to deliver the resurgence the industry hoped for, with limited developer enthusiasm and fading momentum ten months post-launch. Meanwhile, Metas recent entry-level Quest 3S has yet to spark a notable sales boost, as evidenced by my analysis of Black Friday headset sales across eight countries, which shows a 16% decline. PC VR adoption also remains stagnant, with Valves latest Hardware Survey revealing that only 1.5% of Steam users are engaging with VR hardware. Adding to this, Omdias supply chain insights confirm earlier reports of Sony halting PlayStation VR2 production due to unsold inventory, prompting the company to resort to heavy discounting to clear stock.The challenges are further exacerbated in other markets and segments. VR headset sales in China have collapsed due to weak consumer demand, and the future of Pico remains uncertain following layoffs and restructuring by its parent company, ByteDance. The TikTok owner, which acquired Pico in 2021, appears to be losing interest in the segment. On the content side, developers are increasingly questioning the return on investment for VR games, with a recent Game Developer Collective survey revealing that half of respondents perceive the VR market as either stagnant or in decline.The number of VR headsets in active use fell by 8% in 2024 to 21.9 million. This was primarily due to a low share of Quest 2 owners upgrading, over 20 million of which have been sold since 2020. Meanwhile, $904 million was spent on VR content in 2024; for context, games console content spend will generate $37.4 billion in 2024, highlighting the nascent nature of the consumer VR market. The current state of the VR market is characterized by waning consumer interest post-pandemic, a sluggish inflow of compelling new content, and growing skepticism among developers about the viability of VR as a profitable platform.Growth is predicted to resume by 2026, but mass adoption of VR headsets in their current form remains unlikelyThe expected return to growth in the VR market is heavily reliant on the anticipated launch of a more affordable Apple Vision Pro model in 2026, which is projected to drive the market expansion through 2029. Meta is also expected to remain a key player in the space, though its headset sales are likely to remain flat. Metas recent move to open its Horizon OS to third-party manufacturers underscores its continued commitment to VR, but the company faces an uphill battle. Meanwhile, Googles announcement of the Android XR platform last week represents a much-needed competition in this space, but its history of launching and shortly shuttering new projects tempers expectations. Developer and manufacturer approach to these initiatives will be cautious, therefore, only incremental progress is anticipated in the short-term.The form factor of current VR and passthrough mixed reality headsets remains a barrier to mass adoption. Consumer and manufacturer interest is shifting toward lightweight glasses, promising all-day, anywhere access to multimodal AI as exemplified by Meta Ray-Ban glasses, which is seeing early signs of success. Companies in this space hope that this approach will help normalize face-based spatial computing, which could ultimately spur mass-market VR adoption. However, the progress towards achieving this will be slow, and isnt expected to happen within this decade. In the near term, VR is likely to remain a niche market, constrained by its existing limitations and the growing industry focus on AR as the future of immersive technology.Read more about:BlogsFeatured BlogsAbout the AuthorGeorge JijiashviliSenior Principal Analyst, Games, OmdiaGeorge is a regular contributor to Game Developer and a principal analyst at Omdia, leading research into games and AR/VR markets. Based in London, he produces insights into the games sector through regular reports, market sizing and forecasting. His specialisms include the video games market, cloud gaming, and wearable technology. He previously worked at CCS Insight.See more from George JijiashviliDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

Chris Kerr, News EditorDecember 20, 20242 Min ReadLogo via HotheadCanadian game studio Hothead Games has closed its doors.Hothead president and CEO, Ian Wilkinson, broke the news on Linkedin and said the company "had a good run" but has now filed for bankruptcy. It's unclear how many people the studio employed at the time of its closure.The Vancouver-based studio was established in 2006 by former Radical Entertainment staffers Steve Bocska, James Ceraldi and Joel DeYoung. Initially, Hothead focused on developing and publishing digital console and PC titles, but eventually pivoted to focus on creating free-to-play mobile games (with mixed results)."We threw all kinds of small, inexpensive games at the wall to see what stuck. Surprise surprise, surprise nothing stuck," wrote Wilkinson, looking back on that period."So, we went back to our roots and created sports games under the Big Win brand and shooting games under the Rivals at War (RAW) brand and eventually the Kill Shot brand.These series of games were very successfulwe finally discovered lightning in a bottle.Those were the most successful years for Hothead."Over the past year, Hothead had been working on a playable prototype for a triple-A project. Wilkinson said the studio hoped to secure contracts with different publishers so it could develop mobile, PC, and console versions of the game, but explained that process took longer than expected."Unfortunately, it took far longer than we expected to secure contracts for these versions of the game," he said. "They were both ready to close two weeks ago and then the mobile publisher pulled out due to a change in strategy. Two weeks later the console publisher also pulled out.At that point our only remaining option was bankruptcy."Looking back on Hothead's legacy, Wilkinson said it wasn't the games that made the studio-but rather its people. "Hothead was chock full of incredibly, smart, talented, loyal, hardworking but mostly just really nice people.People that had your back at work and outside of work.Many of us made lifelong friends at Hothead," he continued."We grew up together, we laughed, we cried, we celebrated, we grieved, we found partners, we started families. I had the privilege of working with so many wonderful people at Hothead over the years."Hopefully, this wont be the last time you hear from us. We still believe we are destined to work together again and continue to do great things.But even if that doesnt happen, I am a better person for working at Hothead and I consider myself blessed to have spent 16 years shoulder to shoulder with my fellow Hotheads."About the AuthorChris KerrNews Editor, GameDeveloper.comGame Developer news editor Chris Kerr is an award-winning journalist and reporter with over a decade of experience in the game industry. His byline has appeared in notable print and digital publications including Edge, Stuff, Wireframe, International Business Times, andPocketGamer.biz. Throughout his career, Chris has covered major industry events including GDC, PAX Australia, Gamescom, Paris Games Week, and Develop Brighton. He has featured on the judging panel at The Develop Star Awards on multiple occasions and appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live to discuss breaking news.See more from Chris KerrDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

The smart home in 2024 was a year for regrouping. After the initial excitement surrounding the new interoperability standard Matter which is trying to make the smart home simpler and easier to use by allowing connected devices to work with any platform momentum has stalled. As companies adjust to the reality that Matter is going to take time to, well, matter, 2024 became a year of consolidation, with more focus on software (especially around generative AI) than hardware. However, one category bucked this trend: smart door locks.Smart locks have seen more innovation in 2024 than almost any other category in the smart homeThe past 12 months have been a stellar period for smart front door hardware, and 2025 looks set to be even better. Smart locks have seen more innovation in 2024 than almost any other category in the smart home. Lockly launched the first facial recognition lock, Philips introduced the first palm print lock, and ADT partnered with Google Nest and Yale to create a system that unlocks your door and disarms your security system using facial recognition.In a year marked by few innovations in smart home hardware, there was a surge of new smart locks from all the major players. Kwikset launched its first Matter smart lock, Yale entered the retrofit lock market, Level followed through on its promise to upgrade its locks to support Matter, and TP-Link added a door lock with a built-in camera. RelatedAqara also launched three new locks, while Eufy and U-tec expanded their lineups with Matter support. Schlage was the only major player that was relatively quiet, but my guess is well hear something from them at CES. Additionally, weve seen prices start to come down in the space with connected locks from trusted brands like The Home Depot starting as low as $99.All of this made the smart lock one of the most active categories in the smart home in 2024. A key reason for this is that while many aspects of setting up a smart home can be confusing, smart door locks are straightforward. Theyre relatively simple to install, come in various price points, and are easy to use. You also dont need a smart home platform or smart home hub to use one, although they can offer additional benefits. If you want to control access to your home from your phone, from anywhere in the world, a smart lock is the answer. And in 2025, smart locks are poised to become even better.Aliro is a new protocol that will allow smartphones, smart watches, and other wearables to become keys for your locks. Image: CSAYour phone is your keyNext year will see the launch of Aliro. This new cross-platform protocol is being developed by Apple, Google, Samsung, and major lock manufacturers to provide a standard way to use smartphones, smartwatches, and any compatible personal device as digital keys for your door.Aliro builds on the success of Apples Home Key, a very handy feature that lets you unlock your door by tapping your Apple Watch or iPhone to it. Home Key uses NFC tech to enable the transaction and works similarly to Apple Pay. Like Apple Pay, however, Home Key is limited to Apple devices and a select few smart locks. With Aliro, the technology will expand to more locks as well as phones and devices from Samsung, Google, and others.Aliro will bring a simpler, more accurate hands-free unlocking experience to smart locks with ultra widebandMore excitingly, Aliro will bring a simpler, more accurate hands-free unlocking experience to smart locks with ultra wideband (UWB). An emerging technology for precise positioning, UWB will allow a lock to unlock automatically as you approach the door, no tapping required. Both the lock and the phone or watch will need to have a UWB chip, and Apple has already announced it will support auto-unlocking on iPhones and Apple Watches, as has Samsung for its Galaxy phones and watches.However, as the Aliro spec isnt set to launch until 2025, there are no smart locks compatible with UWB unlocking yet. I expect to see a wave of new smart locks announced with Aliro support shortly after the spec arrives. U-tec has alreadyannounced a lock with UWB,Kwikset has hintedit will support the standard, and as Allegion, the company that owns Schlage, is helping develop Aliro, its likely well see support there, too.Kwiksets latest lock is its first to support Matter-over-Thread, allowing for cross-platform interoperability and extended battery life. Image: KwiksetPower and interoperability will improveTwo long-standing issues with smart locks have been short battery life and interoperability with different smart home platforms. By the end of 2025, I predict that most smart locks will be compatible with any smart home platform and offer at least a year of battery life. This is a significant improvement over the current three to six months, which can be frustrating, and limited support for Apple Home.By the end of 2025, most smart locks will be compatible with any smart home platform and offer at least a year of battery lifeThe solution to these issues lies in Matter-over-Thread, the smart home standard and its connectivity protocol designed for battery-powered IoT devices like smart locks. Matter will enable your smart lock to work with any smart home platform you choose, while Thread will help it consume less power than Wi-Fi-based locks. Ive tested several Thread smart locks, including the Aqara U300 and the Yale Assure SL, and the battery life has been impressive.While Matter has had a slow start in smart locks (in part due to some problems with platform support), were starting to see more Matter-over-Thread locks arrive. Within the next year, Id expect it to become the norm, especially as locks adopt Aliro, which will likely require more power. Smart locks can and will support both Matter and Aliro. If youre considering adding smart features to your front door, 2025 is shaping up to be an excellent year to do so.

Happy holidays! Tis the season for trimming trees, hanging lights, baking cookies... and spending two weeks at home trying to figure out why you cant get the lights to automatically come on at night, and which of those stupid bulbs is causing all the rest to not work. Truly the most wonderful time of the year.Every year on The Vergecast, we like to get into the holiday spirit by getting deep into the weeds on one of the most important specs, protocols, or systems that we all encounter every day. This year, for our annual Holiday Spec-tacular, were taking on everyones favorite kinda-sorta functional smart home protocol: Matter.Matter is supposed to be the thing that makes the smart home work, that allows everything from your lights to your fridge to your vacuum cleaner to seamlessly connect. In reality, it is, well, not that. But it might be on its way! We begin the show with Nilay, David, and The Verges Jennifer Pattison Tuohy talking about the state of Matter, and where the smart home has made strides and made mistakes this year. We also talk about Thread. A lot. More than we expected.After that, the trio competes in a game to see who understands the complicated, overlapping jargon of the Matter universe best. (Its a tight race, but the right person wins in the end.) And finally, Paulus Schoutsen, the creator of Home Assistant and president of the Open Home Foundation, joins the show to talk about what its like to work with Matter and whether were ever going to get the smart home of our dreams.This is our last episode of the year well be back with a live episode at CES, and if youre going to be in Vegas we hope youll come join us! In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday, and may all your smart lights always be the right color. If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:See you in 2025!

A bipartisan group of senators is calling out the auto industry for its hypocritical, profit-driven opposition to national right-to-repair legislation, while also selling customer data to insurance companies and other third-party interests. In a letter sent to the CEOs of the top automakers, the trio of legislators Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) urge them to better protect customer privacy, while also dropping their opposition to state and national right-to-repair efforts. Right-to-repair laws support consumer choice and prevent automakers from using restrictive repair laws to their financial advantage, the senators write. It is clear that the motivation behind automotive companies avoidance of complying with right-to-repair laws is not due to a concern for consumer security or privacy, but instead a hypocritical, profit-driven reaction.Right-to-repair laws support consumer choice and prevent automakers from using restrictive repair laws to their financial advantage.For years, the right-to-repair movement has largely focused on consumer electronics, like phones and laptops. But lately, the idea that you should get to decide how and where to repair your own products has grown to include cars, especially as more vehicles on the road have essentially become giant computers on wheels. Along with that, automakers have taken to collecting vast amounts of data on their millions of customers, including driving habits, that they then turn around and sell to third-party data brokers. Earlier this year, The New York Times published an investigation into General Motors practice of providing microdetails about its customers driving habits, including acceleration, braking, and trip length, to insurance companies without their consent. Several states have passed right-to-repair laws in recent years, aiming to protect consumers from high prices and unscrupulous practices. In 2020, Massachusetts voters approved a ballot measure to give car owners and independent repair shops greater access to vehicle repair data. But automakers sued to block the law, and four years later, the law remains dormant. The auto industry claims to support right to repair.And some facts bear this out. For decades, small, independent auto body and repair shops flourished thanks to the idea that car maintenance is universal that anyone with a socket wrench and some grease can repair or modify their own vehicle. But as cars have become more connected, a lot of that work now relies on data and access to the digital information needed to diagnose and repair vehicles. And right-to-repair advocates, along with independent repair shops, are worried that major automakers are trying to kill their businesses by funneling all the work to their franchised dealerships, which typically cost more than the smaller garages. In the letter, Warren, Merkley, and Hawley demand that automakers drop their fierce opposition to these right-to-repair laws, calling it hypocritical and monopolistic. As the gatekeepers of vehicle parts, equipment, and data, automobile manufacturers have the power to place restrictions on the necessary tools and information for repairs, particularly as cars increasingly incorporate electronic components. This often leaves car owners with no other option than to have their vehicles serviced by official dealerships, entrenching auto manufacturers dominance and eliminating competition from independent repair shops.Automakers have raised cybersecurity concerns, including the specter of some bad actor remote hacking your car while driving it, as an excuse for fighting right-to-repair laws. But these concerns are based on speculative future risks rather than facts, the senators note. They cite a Federal Trade Commission study that found no empirical evidence backing up the auto industrys claims that independent shops would be more or less likely to compromise customer data than authorized ones. Its more likely that auto companies want to limit access to vehicle data for profit-driven reasons, the senators say. And that despite loudly proclaiming to care about cybersecurity, few companies actually comply with basic security standards when collecting, sharing, or selling consumer data. While carmakers have been fighting tooth and nail against right-to-repair laws that would require them to share vehicle data with consumers and independent repairers, they have simultaneously been sharing large amounts of sensitive consumer data with insurance companies and other third parties for profit often without clear consumer consent. In fact, some car companies use the threat of increased insurance costs to push consumers to opt into safe driving features, and then use those features to collect and sell the user data.The senators conclude by urging the auto CEOs to abandon their hypocritical opposition to right-to-repair laws, while also pressing them to answer a list of questions about their data-gathering practices. Were pushing these automakers to stop ripping Americans off, Warren said in a statement to The Verge. Americans deserve the right to repair their cars wherever they choose, and independent repair shops deserve a chance to compete with these giants.

Ubisoft has revealed a game-changing feature coming to the Feudal Japan-set Assassin's Creed Shadows: protagonist Naoe can Naruto run.Creative director Jonathon Dumont told Entertainment Weekly of the flamboyant means of traversal, in which someone leans over so their face is just a few feet from the ground, throws their arms straight back, and sprints at top speed."Naoes the fastest Assassin we ever made," Dumont said. "She runs super fast, she has a lot of gadgets to keep her stealth so that she doesn't have to fight often. We wanted to satisfy that for players that come in for that ninja-Assassin game."He then teased the Naruto run. "We do have a run on top of buildings that has a little bit of a wink-wink to it," Dumont said.The Naruto run, obviously, comes from beloved anime and manga series Naruto, which is set in a ficticious world full of ninja. The distinct style of sprinting is fairly iconic imagery from the series and has been honored and laughed at in equal measure over the years.Players can virtually Naruto run for themselves when Assassin's Creed Shadows arrives on February 14, a few months after its original November release date.A lot rests on the shoulders of Assassin's Creed Shadows as not only is it the long-awaited Feudal Japan-set entry and the first full Assassin's Creed since 2020, but a struggling Ubisoft needs it to perform well following recent flops.It's not enjoyed a particularly positive promotional period so far, however, with the development team having to apologize on separate occasions for inaccuracies in Assassin's Creed Shadows' depictions of Japan and using a historical recreation group's flag without permission.Yet another controversy came as collectible figure maker PureArts removed an Assassin's Creed Shadows statue from sale over its "insensitive" design.Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

While the debut Superman trailer clearly reveals a number of supporting characters, it also includes a hidden DC superhero that fans almost certainly missed.The Engineer, played by Mara Gabriela de Fara, can be seen walking across the top of the LuthorCorp building in a real blink-and-youll-miss-it moment. Its hard to make the character out, but zoom in a little and youll see the Engineer in fuzzy detail.The Engineer can be seen walking across the top of the archway. Image credit: Warner Bros.Writer-director James Gunn responded to one fan who spotted the Engineer in the trailer to confirm the find, writing on Threads: Haha you are correct!!The Engineer / Angela Spica is an electronics prodigy and member of superhero team The Authority, who will eventually get their own DCU movie. It will supposedly weave in several characters from DC's Wildstorm imprint, with Gunn himself working on an outline. The Engineer is arguably the most powerful member of the group as she can self-duplicate, is a technopath, has a genius-level intellect and radio-induced telepathy. Check out IGN's article, Who Are the Authority: The WildStorm DCU Characters Explained, for more.It will be interesting to see what The Engineer is capable of in Superman and how she interacts with the other characters. Whats she doing running about the top of the LuthorCorp building? And what relationship, if any, does she have with Lex Luthor himself?Superman hits theatres on July 11, 2025, and is the first film in the DCU's Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. IGN has an explainer on all the DC Heroes and Villains in the new trailer, comments from James Gunn on Krypto actually being a pretty terrible dog in the movie, thoughts on how Superman is about hope, and more.Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.