With the coming months packed with many games, management fans can look forward to Two Point Museum, the latest from Two Point Studios. The objective is to manage a museum, and doing that requires exhibits. Fortunately, you can hire various Experts to embark on expeditions and retrieve them, as outlined in the latest trailer.Its easier said than done, though. The Expert must be trained and equipped with items like the First Aid Kit, which can prevent one potential injury. You can also increase XP with the XP-dition Journal, reduce expeditions costs with the Haggling Handbook, and more.Some expeditions may also present scenarios that require your input. What will you do when a giant snake emerges? How will you manage your team when hunger strikes? Depending on your decisions, there may be significant consequences. Succeed, and your cargo chopper will have another exhibit to add to the museum.Two Point Museum launches on March 4th, 2025, for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Those who pre-order can obtain Sonic the Hedgehog items and staff outfits for their museum.

Researchers made replicas of Neolithic clay trays and baked their own focaccia bread. Scientific ReportsFocaccia, with its flaky crust and rich olive oil flavor, is a beloved staplebut just how far back does the delicious breads history stretch?While experts know it was made in ancient Rome, new research suggests that its origins may be even older: According to a recent study in the journal Scientific Reports, Neolithic communities were making their own focaccia-like bread between 7000 and 5000 B.C.E.Studying past dietary behaviors can provide valuable information about the social and cultural aspects of ancient populations, first author Sergio Taranto, an archaeologist atUAB Barcelona, tellsZME Sciences Rupendra Brahambhatt. This is particularly useful for studying prehistoric communities about which we have limited knowledge due to the lack of written records.To learn more about early baking practices and eating habits, researchers studied clay oval-shaped vessels known as husking trays. The trays had been found at sites across the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, including Mezraa Teleilat, Akaray Tepe and Tell Sabi Abyad. After analyzing the fossilized residues stuck to the artifacts, the team found that the bread was made by mixing wheat or barley with water. Various archaeological fragments analyzed during the research Scientific ReportsBased on how the trays have degraded, the researchers think the loaves were baked for around two hourslonger than the 20 to 30 minutes recommended today, writes Artnets Tim Brinkhofin a domed oven at an initial scorching temperature of 788 degrees Fahrenheit. They also discovered traces of animal fat and plant-based seasonings.The variation in organic materials found across the fragments suggests that Neolithic communities experimented with multiple recipes, says Taranto, per Archaeology News Dario Radley.The husking trays are made of coarse clay. They have low walls and a long oval base with a series of grooves on the inside. Previously, researchers have created replicas of such trays to learn more about how they were used, and they think the grooves made it easier to remove the bread from the trays so that it wouldnt stick to the pan.[The new study] confirms that the impressions inside these trays were meant to facilitate taking the bread/focaccia out of the vessel once cookedessentially an ancient non-stick technology, akin to our modern pans, Taranto tells ZME Science.Some of the larger trays from the study could produce loaves weighing nearly seven poundssuggesting that bakers may have made bread for many people to enjoy together.Our study offers a vivid picture of communities using the cereals they cultivated to prepare breads and focaccias enriched with various ingredients and consumed in groups, says Taranto in a statement. The use of the husking trays we identified leads us to consider that this late Neolithic culinary tradition developed over approximately six centuries and was practiced in a wide area of the Near East.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Ancient Rome, Archaeology, Baking, Cooking, Food, Food History, History, Middle East , New Research

By all measures, 2024 was the biggest year for artificial intelligence yet at least when it comes to the commercialization.Read More

The software development world is experiencing its biggest transformation since the advent of open-source coding. Artificial intelligence assistants, once viewed with skepticism by professional developers, have become indispensable tools in the $736.96 billion global software development market. One of the products leading this seismic shift is AnRead More

DFC: Nintendo Switch 2 will be "the clear winner" of next-gen consolesMarket research firm suggests "there isn't room for more than two major consoles" in 2025 News by Sophie McEvoy Staff Writer Published on Dec. 23, 2024 2025 is set to be a bumper year of growth for the games industry due to the long-awaited launches of Switch 2 and Grand Theft Auto 6.This is according to DFC Intelligence, which released its annual market report and forecast last week (via VGC).The firm predicted that Nintendo would be "the clear winner" in comparison to Sony and Microsoft and that only one of those firms would be able to compete with the console."There isn't room for more than two major consoles," the report said. "Sony or Microsoft will struggle mightily in a distant third place largely depending on which of those companies can gain early momentum."It suggested that Sony has the upper hand due to a "loyal base and strong Sony IP". In contrast, Microsoft will become "the world's largest software publisher" following its acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October 2023.Elsewhere, DFC Intelligence predicted that the number of players worldwide will increase past four billion by 2027."Over the past three decades, the video game industry has grown more than 20 times, and after two years of slumping hardware and software sales, it's poised to resume growing at a healthy rate through the end of the decade," said DFC Intelligence founder and CEO David Cole."While 2025 will mark the beginning of that upward trajectory, some huge questions remain, including who will lose the next-gen console war and who will win the game software distribution battle."And with the large publishers focused on live services around evergreen franchises, opportunities for smaller studios will be plentiful."

Brandon Riegg has spent the better part of a decade trying to make live TV happen at Netflix. He joined the company in 2016, after stints at NBC, ABC, and VH1, where hed worked on shows like Dancing with the Stars, The Voice, and Americas Got Talent. All those shows were the kind of unscripted reality fare hed been hired to bring to Netflix, but they also incorporated things like live voting to make the whole thing feel more urgent and interactive. I just felt like, if were really trying to be the preeminent entertainment service in the world, Riegg tells me, we should have all the tools at our disposal.So Riegg and Bela Bajaria, another longtime TV executive who joined Netflix around the same time and is now its chief content officer, began making the case around Netflix for why it should invest in the tech required to make live content work. Over and over, they got the same question: What do you want to do with it? And for years, Riegg says, they didnt have a great answer. Id go, Well, I dont have something specific right now, but I want to be able to jump on things that require live capability if those things come up.For years, that shrug of an answer didnt work. But somewhere around two years ago, the energy shifted. We were continuing to talk about how we wanted to have something for everyone, he says, and theres a requirement of live for some programs. For us to do those things, for us to buy those things, we need to have that functionality.Netflix has spent the last two years slowly learning how to do live programming and live streaming. It started with a Chris Rock comedy special last March, which was a technical success and a cultural hit. A few weeks later, it did a live Love Is Blind reunion show, which was such a spectacular disaster that the reunion wound up being filmed and released later. Then there was a live feed of baby gorillas at the Cleveland Zoo, a strange golf event that teamed Formula 1 drivers up with PGA pros, the SAG Awards, a tennis exhibition, a roast of Tom Brady, and John Mulaneys slightly unhinged late night show Everybodys in LA.All that was, in some ways, just practice. Because the real tests of Netflixs live prowess came this fall. First, the Jake Paul / Mike Tyson fight in November, which the company says was watched by more than 65 million Netflix subscribers around the world and had lots of technical difficulties and delays of its own. And next up, two NFL games on Christmas, complete with a Beyonc halftime show. The NFL is the biggest and most valuable entertainment property in the US, and football is the most-watched thing on television by a mile. Netflix is many things, but it is also now a live TV network. And you dont get to screw up football.The Paul / Tyson fight was a big one for Netflix though this photo is a lot clearer than the stream was. Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty ImagesWhen Netflix struggled to keep up with the Paul / Tyson fight, a lot of viewers were surprised. Netflix has been streaming stuff forever shouldnt it be good at this? When I put that question to Elizabeth Stone, Netflixs CTO, she says that streaming live is very different from just streaming. Maybe more different than Netflix itself originally thought.When were streaming video on demand, Stone says, we get the benefit of planning ahead. That content is in its final format; the video, images, audio are in nicely packaged files, and theyve already gone through all the production steps, the encoding steps, theyre ready to be placed on servers around the world through our content delivery network and through internet service providers. This is not trivial work, obviously, but its work Netflix has been doing for two decades. It has seen every problem, come up with every workaround. So when a member clicks play, Stone says, were really ready for them to click play.When youre filming and streaming live, you still have to do all that stuff and more, but you have to do it in real time. The camera feed goes to the production truck, goes to signal ingestion, goes into the cloud to get encoded. We then have to send that through our CDN, through internet service providers, to land on your TV or your phone. And we have seconds to do that. Streaming live, even to one person, is hard. Its doable, of course TV networks, streaming services, and tech companies do it every day but it takes work.Then theres the whole 65 million people thing. Stone laughs when I bring it up. Netflix builds and tests and plans as much as it can, she says, both with real events and by pummeling its infrastructure with fake traffic. But there is no lab in which you can simulate what happens to our systems when 65 million people are watching at the same time. Even on Netflixs all-time busiest days, its not getting that kind of traffic all at once.Stone breaks Netflixs system into two parts. Its a generalization, she says, but its close enough. When you log into Netflix and youre scrolling through the homepage, and youre watching trailers and youre deciding what to watch, thats supported by AWS servers. Netflix is a huge client of Amazons web services, which are the backbone of most of the internet at this point. Its a huge traffic burden just to have tens of millions of people flipping through the app at the same time, but AWS scales pretty well and Stone says that part of Netflix held up even during the fight.Once you press play, though, the system shifts to Netflixs own Open Connect system, which is generally considered the best in the streaming business. Netflix invested heavily in its own infrastructure when it first started doing streaming, but, again: 65 million people. I would argue that any company would have faced challenges at this type of scale, Stone says. We have these tight-knit connection points between our servers, Open Connect appliances, and what Ill call the last mile that ISPs give to devices. All of that was overloaded during the fight.Everybodys in LA was one of Netflixs more recent stabs at live programming. Photo by Gilbert Flores / Variety via Getty ImagesAmong the things you cant know until an event starts is whos going to watch, where theyre going to be, and what else might be happening. The internet is a finite thing, with only so much available bandwidth in the cables that connect things; if an event is unexpectedly popular in LA, its going to struggle in LA even if its fine elsewhere. Think of it as the difference between a truck delivering 100 bottles of water vs. having to run a live water hose to 100 people at once, Fastly CEO Anil Dash wrote recently. One problem is about moving some bits from one place to another, the other problem is keeping a live stream running at high volume at a massive scale. When theres not enough water being supplied to all those hoses, everyone gets a little less.Stone agrees the hoses are the challenge. All of the streamers out there, she says, we all face it: how much bandwidth is there? And are we going to need bandwidth at the same moment that many other streamers need bandwidth? Its not like Netflix can dig trenches or run more cables along your phone lines certainly not by Christmas, anyway so all it can do is try to optimize the system as best it can.Since the Paul / Tyson fight, Stone says Netflix has been trying to both increase its capacity and control the flow of bandwidth more effectively. Weve augmented our Open Connect servers, and several of the ISPs have augmented the capacity theyre bringing to the table, she says. Theyre particularly focused on places that were overloaded during the fight, though she doesnt specify which places those are. Internally, the team is also working on optimizing the algorithms that decide how to prioritize traffic and bandwidth.There probably wont be as many people watching football on Christmas as there were for the fight. Its possible no Netflix live event will be that big ever again there arent many one-off cultural moments that command an audience like that. But Stone says shes glad to have seen the system so wildly overtaxed and stressed because now the team knows what happens. It would have taken us a lot longer to get those learnings if we were just slightly turning the dial from some of the earlier live events, she says. By throwing the lever all the way to the end, she thinks Netflix can now be ready for just about anything.Though, to be clear, even Stone wont go so far as to promise the football games will go perfectly. All shell say is she loves a challenge.Netflix is pulling out all the stops for its NFL games, from Beyonc to blimps. Photo by Aaron M. Sprecher / Getty ImagesEven if the Christmas games go well, the Netflix team doesnt get much of a break. On January 6th, it will stream the first episode in a new weekly series: WWE Raw, the flagship wrestling show. Netflix bought the shows rights for $5 billion and is responsible for streaming it for the next decade. In 2027 and 2031, Netflix will also stream the FIFA Womens World Cup. Both have big, built-in interest, and both drive big buzz around the world. Theyre also recurring programs, which will keep subscribers subscribed. That stuff matters to Netflix.Its also just simple math. All the most popular things on TV now are live events: sports, awards shows, that sort of thing. Those are the shows that command the highest viewership and the highest ad rates, and Netflix is now rapidly trying to build its own ad business. Thats why Amazon paid for NFL rights, why Peacock went all-in on the Olympics, and why even the price of the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade is going up. In an increasingly splintered entertainment landscape (which is, of course, partly Netflixs fault), must-see live TV is more valuable than ever.Riegg, who oversees all these content choices, is adamant that for Netflix, live and sports are not the same thing. He seems to be animated by the idea of bringing people together, of creating communal moments where everyone is watching and talking about the same thing at the same time. Netflix, of course, is maybe the company most responsible for ending that monoculture by making huge libraries of content available to everyone, everywhere, all the time. But Riegg thinks the platform should bring some of that classic live TV energy back. Remember the Felix Baumgartner Red Bull space jump? he asks me. I remember everybody in the office was watching that something where theres still the specter that anything can happen. Were all experiencing this at the same time.Netflix is interested in buying more of these events, Riegg says, but he also wants to create them. Which brings Riegg to his current big question: What is our version of Dancing with the Stars? Or what is our version of Americas Got Talent?The Voice, and everyone around the world could opine and weigh in about who should win? Thats a different level of community viewing.I mention to Riegg that I was a longtime, immensely dedicated American Idol fan, and his eyes go wide. Well never see another Idol, he says, in terms of the gap between Idol and the second-place show. But we can certainly try to say, whats the next iteration of that? Its pretty clear he and the team have some ideas, though Riegg wont tell me what they are. Well just all have to find out together, live.

Three years have passed since Amazon last updated its flagship e-reader, and while this years Kindle lineup seemed focused on Amazons first color offering, the Paperwhite still got some welcome improvements. With a higher-contrast screen and snappier performance, the 12th-generation Kindle Paperwhite remains the best e-reader on the market.I tested the $199.99 Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, which is $40 more than the $159.99 basic Paperwhite. The screen and internals are the same, but the Signature Edition includes an ambient light sensor for automatic brightness adjustments, 32GB of storage rather than 16GB, no lockscreen ads, wireless charging, and a metallic finish on the back. The metallic jade version I was sent looked great (metallic black and raspberry are also options) but felt slightly less grippy than the plastic of the base Paperwhite.8Verge ScoreAmazon Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (2024)$199.99The GoodThe best-looking screen on any e-readerSlightly larger screen without a noticeably larger deviceFaster page turns, loading, and a more responsive UIA splash of color (without a color screen)The BadUpgrades arent as significant as the last PaperwhiteLacks stylus support and page turn buttonsSignature Edition wireless charging is frustrating without magnetsSignature Edition back panel feels less grippy$200 at Amazon$200 at Best BuyHow we rate and review productsThe new Paperwhite features a 300ppi screen with a small bump in size from 6.8 to seven inches not really enough to be noticeable, but enough to let you squeeze a few extra lines of text on a page. Thanks to smaller bezels, the new Paperwhite is just a few millimeters larger than the previous version while managing to be slightly thinner; in use, it feels nearly identical. This years model also brings the display flush with the bezels, although its another subtle improvement.The new Paperwhite (right) has noticeably improved screen contrast over the previous version (left).What is noticeable is the increased contrast. Thanks to the use of an oxide thin-film transistor on the screen, the new Paperwhite has the highest contrast ratio of any e-reader Ive ever tested. The benefits arent immediately obvious when youre reading plain text, but the deeper blacks make the screen look closer to an actual printed page. It gives illustrations, pictures, and book covers more pop and presence, and makes comics and manga panels look sharper. The new screen occasionally made some of the fine text in Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchettos Ultimate Spider-Man: Married with Children appear bolder and easier to read without zooming in.Its not a feature thats as flashy as a color E Ink screen, but its easily the new models best upgrade, and its going to make it hard to return to my Kobo Libra 2.The Paperwhite released in 2021 (left) compared to the new 2024 version (right).Amazon has also improved the new Paperwhites lighting, giving the screen a more neutral tone at its default settings. The last generation Paperwhites screen skews a little cooler, but with both Paperwhite models warmth sliders turned up, the differences are indistinguishable.This is also the first Paperwhite to use a dual-core processor (the Oasis, rest in peace, had a dual-core processor back in 2017). The 1GHz Mediatek CPU would be painfully slow for a device with an LCD screen, but it makes a big difference on an e-reader. Amazons claims of 25 percent faster page turns werent noticeable when I was reading text the refresh rate of the E Ink screen is the limiting factor there but I was genuinely surprised at how much faster it opened half-gigabyte, image-heavy PDF files I sideloaded. On the 11th-generation Paperwhite theres a pause that makes me wonder if the device is going to choke on the files, but the new Paperwhite opens them instantaneously and flips through the pages nearly as fast as it does with plain text.The user interface also feels faster. Its still not as fast or responsive as a smartphone or tablet, and zooming in and out of comics and photos can still feel sluggish, but scrolling through book lists, navigating Amazons book store, and popping in and out of various menus is satisfyingly speedy. Or at least as speedy as it can be with the limitations of E Ink.RelatedAmazon claims the new Paperwhite can be used for up to 12 weeks between charges, but thats when limiting your reading to just 30 minutes a day at half screen brightness and wireless features turned off. After an hour reading, jumping back and forth between books and PDFs, and browsing other titles on Amazons online store with screen brightness set to 75 percent, the new Paperwhite lost five percent of its charge. With that daily routine Id expect to squeeze about three weeks out of the Paperwhites battery, and potentially even longer if I wasnt so indecisive about what I was reading.If youre a Kindle user whos upgraded in the past few years, the new Paperwhites functionality will feel familiar. If youre switching from competitors like Kobo, you may find yourself running into some frustrating limitations. Sideloading documents like PDFs or ePUB files is harder than it needs to be, since Kindle devices no longer connect to computers as external drives. You need to use Amazons online services or desktop apps to get e-books and other documents onto the Paperwhite, and both options are clunky.Text customization is also limited in the Kindle OS compared to Kobo devices, which offer finer adjustments for font size, line spacing, and margins. Although I find the Paperwhites formatting options too simplified, I can see the appeal for those wanting a device thats very easy to use. I like that you can save your adjustments as custom themes its a feature I wish Kobo would add but I cant understand why Amazon limits each device to just five custom themes.Borrowing library books is also easier on a Kobo. The new Paperwhite still requires you to use the Libby app or website on a separate device to browse and borrow titles. Kobos e-readers have Overdrive built-in, and while they do obfuscate the borrowing process, you dont need to pull out your phone to do so.The Kobo Clara BW (left) introduced earlier this year has a smaller recessed screen that doesnt look as good as the new Paperwhite (right).But Kobo seems to be focusing on color e-readers and larger E Ink note-taking devices these days, and its black-and-white e-reader options are now limited. The $129.99 Kobo Clara BW uses the same E Ink Carta 1300 screen as the new Paperwhite, but its only six inches, and its contrast doesnt look as good. Its all-plastic body and sunken screen also feel cheaper than the new Paperwhites. And while the $269.99 Kobo Sage has page turn buttons and stylus support, its more of a hybrid e-reader and note-taking device; I find that the eight-inch screen makes it too big to be a take-anywhere e-reader.The Kindle Colorsoft (left) next to the new Paperwhite (right).Although its not a significant upgrade, the new Kindle Paperwhite remains the best e-reader you can buy, with a beautiful black-and-white screen that feels closer to printed paper than any e-reader Ive tested and a UI thats faster and more responsive than the previous version. If youre on the hunt for your first e-reader, the new Paperwhite should be at the top of your list.Although the basic Amazon Kindle is cheaper at $109.99, the better screen, adjustable warmth lighting, and waterproofing extra insurance if you read in the bath or at the beach make the new Paperwhite worth the extra money.The new Paperwhite Signature Edition is available with a back panel featuring a metallic jade or raspberry finish that looks great but feels slightly less grippy.Is the Signature Edition worth an extra $40? Wireless charging isnt necessary given the Paperwhites battery life, and it can be frustrating to align properly. But the ambient light sensor can save you the swipe and tap needed to adjust screen brightness manually if you take your Kindle everywhere (warmth settings dont automatically adjust) and extra storage is always welcome on a device with no memory card slot. When you factor in the $20 Amazon charges to remove lockscreen ads from the basic Paperwhite, the Signature Edition is the way to go.Unless you read a lot of large PDF files and are frustrated by laggy performance, the new Paperwhite isnt a necessary upgrade over the 2021 model. But its a different story if youve got an even older Paperwhite model or other aging Kindle. When you add up the past six years of improvements including USB-C, color-temp-adjustable lighting, a larger screen with better contrast, and better performance its probably time to consider an upgrade.Photography byAndrewLiszewski/ The Verge

In a pair of Truth Social posts on Sunday, Donald Trump announced a set of picks for his administrations tech policy team that will report to David Sacks, Trumps AI and crypto czar. The picks include Michael Kratsios, who will lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) if confirmed by the Senate. Kratsios, who served in Trumps first term as the White House chief technology officer, also briefly held an acting undersecretary role at the Department of Defense near the end of the term. He later became a managing director at Scale AI and has been helping lead Trumps tech policy transition team. The President-elect also picked his former deputy CTO, Dr. Lynne Parker, as Executive Director of the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. Directing the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets (AKA the Crypto Council) will be former college football player and unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Bo Hines. Advising Trump on AI policy as part of the OSTP will be Sriram Krishnan, who has extensive Silicon Valley experience, with roles at Andreessen Horowitz, X, Meta, and Snap.Sacks is close with Elon Musk, who Trump has charged with gutting the US government as part of the not-yet-established Department of Government Efficiency and who recently helped send Congress into chaos by posting relentlessly to stop a US spending bill.

A dedicated Baldur's Gate 3 fan has searched through thousands of lines of dialogue to discover which characters agree, and disagree, the most with each other.As reported by The Gamer, Reddit user Tarrasque-Named-John datamined the beloved Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game to calculate which characters like Astarion, Karlach, Shadowheart, and the entire Baldur's Gate 3 party have the most aligning morals.The fan used the Approving and Disapproving mechanic of Baldur's Gate 3 to do so. When the player character makes certain decisions, messages such as "Gale Approves" or "Halsin Disapproves" pop up, and Tarrasque-Named-John looked to see which characters approved and disapproved the same decisions the most.Minsc and Karlach agreed the most, aligning on 97% of all decisions. They're followed by a few pairs at 96%: Wyll and Halsin, Minsc and Halsin, Jaheira and Halsin, and Karlach and Halsin.The opposite was revealed too, with Astarion and Wyll emerging as the most disagreeable pair with just 50% alignment. They're followed by Minthara and Halsin at 51%, and both Wyll and Minthara and Karlach and Astarion at 52%Tarrasque-Named-John also calculated who would become "best friends" by the end of Baldur's Gate 3, ignoring percentage and looking directly at the total number of times characters agreed with each other.Astarion's bestie would be Lae'zel, and Lae'zel's would be Astarion. Gale's would be Karlach, but Karlach's would be Wyll. Awkward. Wyll's bestie is therefore Karlach, as is Shadowheart's. Jaheria's is Wyll, Minsc's is Karlach, Minthara's is Astarion, and finally, Halsin's is Wyll.This data is true as of Patch 7, but developer Larian Studios may shake things up a touch with Patch 8, which is due sometime in 2025. Though it may not shake up the morals of each character too much, it is set to add 12 new subclasses to the game alongside loads more.Baldur's Gate 3 arrived in 2023 but, incredibly, is even more popular this year than last. This is due in large part to official mod support, which are even available on console and not just PC as standard.Players downloaded more than 50 million mods via the official mod support tool in less than two months, and this number doesn't include the thousands made unofficially. Mods released so far include one that adds real-time combat to the otherwise turn-based RPG and another that brought entire new maps to Faern, including the highly requested Avernus.In our 10/10 review of Baldur's Gate 3, IGN said: "With crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity, Baldur's Gate 3 is the new high-water mark for CRPGs."Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Sega has ruled out making any more Mini consoles, dashing hopes for a Saturn or Dreamcast revival.The company behind Sonic the Hedgehog has released a number of nostalgia-fuelled Mini consoles based on the Sega Genesis, but has so far stopped short of continuing the trend with Mini versions of 1994s Saturn or 1998s Dreamcast, the latter of which was Sega's final console.Sega fans have over the last few years hoped that the company would continue its Mini range, but in an interview with The Guardian, Segas America and Europe CEO Shuji Utsumi said it was looking to the future rather than the past for new products.Genesis Mini 2 GalleryIGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!IGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!To start:...try asking a question that can be answered with a "Yes" or "No".000/250Im not going for the Mini direction, he said. Its not me. I want to embrace modern gamers.Then: We are not a retro company. We really appreciate our legacy, we value it, but at the same time, we want to deliver something new otherwise well become history. Thats not what were aiming for.While Sega has said no to Mini consoles, it has big plans to revive its older intellectual property with modern takes. For example, big new games in the Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and Virtua fighter franchises are all in the works.These games are being developed as Sega continues with the hugely successful Sonic, Persona, and Yakuza series, with Creative Assembly working on new Total War games and Alien Isolation 2, and Sports Interactive continuing with the eternally popular Football Manager.Meanwhile, in an interview with the BBC, Utsumi suggested Sega is considering launching its own subscription service for video games, competing with the likes of EA Play, Xbox Game Pass, and PlayStation Plus, to name but a few."We're thinking something and discussing something we cannot disclose right now," he said.Photo By BRUCE BISPING/Star Tribune via Getty Images.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.