The movement to memorialize all 72 victims of the Grenfell Fire tragedy in London has named a group of five architects and designers who will compete for the chance to deliver a memorial near the site of the deadly 2017 blaze.Together with the Royal Institute of Architects (RIBA), the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission announced the following five teams to the shortlist along with its intentions to name an overall winner later this summer:Curl La Tourelle + Head ArchitectureFreehausGeorge King Architects x Grow to KnowNew SouthOffice SianSpeaking on behalf of the families, representatives from the Memorial Commission said: "Having a shortlist of teams brings us another step closer to turning the Grenfell communitys memorial vision into a physical reality. Through this process, we intend to identify and appoint a specialist and worthy design team. One that has proven experience of working on sensitive and community-focused projects, and who can leave no doubt in our minds about the...

In a new report about the current state of the gaming industry by the GDC (Game Developers Conference), it appears that live service titles are still a big thing for companies. One of the key takeaways from the report, aside from many others, is that one-third of all AAA developers are currently working on live-service game.While the live-service market has proven volatile at the best of times, with only a few games managing to maintain a large enough audience to ensure profitability, and most live-service titles either getting shut down shortly after release (as was the case with Concord), or just being cancelled outright (like The Last of Us Online).One in every three AAA developers surveyed (33%) noted that they are working on a live-service title, says the report. Across the entire survey base, 16% are currently working on a live-service game, and while 13% noted they are interested in developing live service games, 41% expressed that they were not interested at all.The report also notes that opinions on live-service games are quite different depending on which developer you talk to. Some developers appreciate the financial and community-building affects of a successful live-service game, while others are concerned about things like creative stagnation, microtransactions, and predatory practices.One of the biggest concerns surrounding live-service gaming was market oversaturation, with many developers noting how hard it is to build a sustainable player base, says the report.The survey also gave us a few other bits of interesting data, including the fact that development of PC games has gone up since the last survey. Compared to 66% of developers confirming that they were working on PC games, this time around, the number of PC game developers has climbed up to 80%.The report notes that this was likely thanks to handheld gaming PCs becoming popular, and especially the success of the Steam Deck. A similar jump was also noticed in the popularity of browser-based games.While the more popular live-service games have seen quite a bit of financial success, and have a wide range of genres from MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 to titles like Destiny 2, and even competitive shooters like Counter-Strike 2, Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals, it is worth noting that several have also been shut down due to a lack of players.One of the more notable examples in recent times has been competitive shooter Concord, which saw a launch so bad that Sony decided to shut the games servers down and refund all players just two weeks after its release. The effects of Concords failure have been seemingly far-reaching, with developer Firewalk being shut down in its wake, and rumours that other in-development live-service games are also being cancelled. An example of this is the rumoured cancellation of a live-service project at Bend Studios.More recently, the long-rumoured Horizon-based MMORPG that was being developed by Guild Wars 2 studio NCSoft may have also been cancelled, with development being shut down and the developers being moved to other teams in the company. However, more recent rumours indicate that this might not have been the case.

NetherRealms Mortal Kombat 1 may not get a new Kombat Pack or story expansion based on rumors, but its current content plan is going smoothly. After Conan the Barbarian arrives on January 28th for all players, the final DLC character in Kombat Pack 2 will be the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day.Though we have seen his in-game appearance, a release date is still pending. In the meantime, director Ed Boon has also shared a short gameplay clip of its Fatality, which sees it behind the wheel of a destroyed semi-truck, running over its opponent. Fans will note this homage to the classic chase scene from the film, the difference being that Arnold Schwarneggars T-800 isnt around to help.Stay tuned for more updates and further gameplay of the T-1000 before its launch. Mortal Kombat 1 has sold over five million copies since launching for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Even if there are no new characters, its seemingly due to receive a new Pink Floyd-inspired ninja.(5 of 7) With Conan getting into players hands, we are excited to keep trucking forward with future DLC ! pic.twitter.com/eC3Aqj5KDc Ed Boon (@noobde) January 21, 2025

The mosaic depicts Alexander the Great fighting in the Battle of Issus. Marco Cantile / LightRocket via Getty ImagesA famous Roman mosaic depicting Alexander the Great is revealing new insights into antiquity. As part of an ongoing restoration, researchers have learned that the artworks stones came from quarries across Europe and North Africa.The 2,000-year-old mosaic comes from the ruins ofPompeii, the ancient Roman city that was buried in volcanic ash in 79 C.E. after Mount Vesuvius eruption. Archaeologists found the artwork in the floor of an extravagant mansion in Pompeii known as theHouse of the Faun in 1831. About a decade later, it was moved to theNational Archaeological Museum of Naples, where its been housed ever since.Per themuseum, the fragile mosaic has been undergoing a long, complex conservation process since 2020. The first phase focused on examining it using noninvasive methods, including videomicroscopy,infrared thermography and portable X-ray fluorescence. According to a study published this week in the journal PLOS One, researchers identified ten colors oftesserae in the mosaicincluding shades of red, yellow, green, blue, pink, white, black, gray and brownas well as a variety of micro-textures that were masterfully combined to enhance artistic effects. The mosaic was found in a mansion encased in ash in Pompeii. National Archaeological Museum of NaplesThe mosaic depicts a battle: Surrounded by a mess of fighting cavalry, Alexander wields a long spear. Opposite him is another leader often identified as the Persian kingDarius III. The mosaic probably depicts the Battle of Issus in 333 B.C.E., in which Alexander faced off against the Persian leader and emerged victorious. From Persia, Alexander continued conquering eastward. By the end of his life in 323 B.C.E., the Macedonian king had secured an empire thatstretched from the Mediterranean to modern-day Pakistan.The Alexander Mosaic is one of the most impressive artworks of antiquity by any standard and the most important mosaic of the Roman age, write the researchers in the study. The image of Alexander depicted in the central scene of the mosaic is perhaps the most iconic and well-known representation of his face in ancient art. The researchers used multispectral imaging to examine the mosaic. Balassone G, Cappelletti P, De Bonis A, De Simone A, Di Martire D, et al.Mosaics were a flourishing art form in the Roman Empire, where artisans pioneered the incorporation of tesserae (cubes of stone, ceramic and glass). Today, they are among the best-preserved pieces of Roman art.The researchers found that the mosaics creators paid particular attention to Alexanders face, according toLive Sciences Laura Geggel. His visage is made up of several different hues of pink tesserae, each with their own luminescence effects, per the study. This variation is probably related to the stones unique chemical compositions.On the mosaics surface, experts discovered natural wax and gypsum, which were probably left over from previous conservation efforts. The researchers sorted the mosaics tesserae material into four key groups: vitreous (glass-like), calcium carbonate-based, silicate-based and a combination of the latter two. Based on similarities between the tesserae and mining areas around the Mediterranean region, they say the rocks could have come from Italy, Greece, the Iberian Peninsula and Tunisia. Researchers are currently analyzing and restoring the mosaic. National Archaeological Museum of NaplesSome of the white tesserae resembleMarmor Lunensisa marble extracted from quarries in theApuan Alps in Italy, which Romans mined between the first century B.C.E. and the third century C.E. The pale pink stones may be Breccia Nuvolata marble, found all around the Mediterranean, while the darker pinks may be Marmo Rosa, which comes from Portugal.The restoration process is still ongoing. As the study authors write, The combination of these new data, along with information obtained from a new instrumental investigation campaign planned for the mosaic surface in the final phases of the restoration operations, will further enrich our knowledge of this superlative work of ancient art.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Ancient Civilizations, Ancient Rome, Art, Art History, Arts, Italy, New Research, Pompeii, Roman Empire, Warfare

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Justin Carter, Contributing EditorJanuary 22, 20252 Min ReadImage via PlayStation/Insomniac Games.At a GlanceHaving felt 'incredibly fortunate' to lead Insomniac since its inception, Price is stepping down to let other devs lead it.Ted Price, longtime CEO of PlayStation studio Insomniac Games, is retiring from the games industry in March.In a statement, Price explained he "felt it was simply time to step aside and let others pave the way for [the] team.""Last week, I felt comfortable announcing to the Insomniac team that after having been incredibly fortunate to enjoy such a fulfilling career in games, Ill be departing," he added.Price founded Insomniac in 1994, when it was originally called Xstreme Software for its first year. After releasing its debut game, 1996's Disruptor, Insomniac went on to create several key franchises for the PlayStation brand, including Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, and Marvel's Spider-Man. Sony fully acquired the studio for $229 million in 2019.His exit is the latest high-profile departure for PlayStation. Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan retired after his own 30-year tenure in March 2024, and fellow executive Shuhei Yoshida officially left the company in January 2025.The future of Insomniac GamesAfter Price leaves in March, Insomniac will be run by a trio of co-heads: CFO Jen Huang, brand/leadership head Ryan Schneider, and creative head Chad Dezern. All three have been with Insomniac for at least a decade or more. Price wrote that they were "intimately familiar with how we do things...and have earned people's trust.""For many years, Chad, Jen and Ryan have been instrumental in making Insomniac what we are today," Price continued. "Theyve consistently demonstrated the kind of collaboration and transparency thats part of our DNA. And just as important, their skillsets are truly complementary.[...] Im confident that under the combined leadership of Chad, Jen and Ryan, Insomniac will continue to deliver the industry-defining games that players have come to expect from uswhile making a positive and lasting impact on peoples lives for decades to come."Speaking to the studio's future, Price said Insomniac is "fully focusedon building games for our fans" after a challenging 2024, when the studio laid off workers and suffered the leak of staff information and details on future projects after being hacked. Despite that, he said the company "is in one of the strongest positions weve experienced in years, with each game in development looking beautiful and playing fantastic.""I want to thank every Insomniac for having a positive and lasting impact on my life," concluded Price. "Working side by side with Insomniacs for so many years has been a gift that Ill cherish for the rest of my days.[...] Thank you to Insomniacs, to our players and to videogames for 30 wonderful years."Read more about:[Company] PlayStationTop StoriesAbout the AuthorJustin CarterContributing Editor, GameDeveloper.comA Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don't ask him about how much gum he's had, because the answer will be more than he's willing to admit.See more from Justin CarterDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

If the Galaxy S24 series heralded the triumphant arrival of Galaxy AI, then the S25 and S25 Plus may be a bit of a comedown: they promise more AI thats smarter and sometimes slightly faster. Youd better like it because thats pretty much all youre gonna get.Samsung changed as little as it could on the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus, announced today alongside the larger and redesigned Galaxy S25 Ultra. Theres the obligatory jump to a new chipset in this case, Qualcomms custom-tuned Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, included in phones worldwide this time around and a welcome decision to offer 12GB of RAM as standard on every S25 phone, pulling the base model in line with the others.Samsung hasnt changed the look of the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus.The displays are the same as last year: 6.2 inches on the S25 and 6.7 inches on the S25 Plus, peaking at 2,600 nits of brightness and 120Hz refresh rate. The cameras are identical, too. Theres a 50-megapixel main camera, an ultrawide, and a 3x telephoto, with a familiar 12-megapixel selfie shooter on the front.If you were to upgrade from last years Galaxy S24 Plus to this years model, the only spec that would change is the chipset. Well, that and the fact that the new phones are Qi2 Ready they dont have the magnets that Qi2 certification requires, but theyll charge at up to 15W on a Qi2 charger when paired with Samsungs official Qi2 Ready magnet cases.Samsung hasnt changed the camera hardware at all from the S24 and S24 Plus, though the thick black bezel is new.Both S25 phones are thinner than their predecessors.Perhaps Im being a little unfair. Samsung hasnt increased its prices at least the S25 starts at $799.99 and the Plus model at $999.99, with preorders open now ahead of a full launch on February 7th. Its also maintaining its promise of seven generations of Android updates and seven years of security support. Both phones are lighter than their predecessors and almost half a millimeter thinner. That should ease the disappointment of anyone whos been hoping for the launch of the rumored S25 Slim, which is now tipped not to launch in the US at all. But its still hard to avoid the inevitable conclusion: this year is a software update, not a hardware one.The new Galaxy phones are awash with AI-branded features which Samsung says remain free to use this year, though its plans are unclear beyond that. Plenty of them have been here since last year, like Googles Circle to Search or generative photo editing tools that let you draw elements into photographs or remove distracting people and objects. Those now generate better results in less time, helped by improvements in AI models and the move to the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which handles more AI processing on-device, including previously cloud-based tasks like Generative Edit.Audio Eraser is a built-in tool for video editing that lets you remove or reduce video noise across specific categories think voices, music, wind, crowds to focus on whichever sounds you care about. It works well, but its only new to Samsung: Google Pixel phones have been able to do the same thing through Audio Magic Eraser since the Pixel 8.AI Select replaces Smart Select in the Edge Panel menu.Other AI abilities are just as familiar, but we didnt always call them AI. Take AI Select, accessed from Samsungs Edge Panel, which gives suggested actions like cropping and sharing screenshots, creating GIFs from videos, or adding events to your calendar. It replaces Smart Select, which did most of that, too, but with a different design.The S25 phones also offer a daily summary called Now Brief that lets you know whats on your calendar for the day or how your commute looks, bringing us back full circle to 2012s Google Now. Meanwhile, the Now Bar is Samsungs answer to Apples Dynamic Island: a lockscreen element that can show sports scores and Google Maps navigation instructions or tell you what song is playing. It sounds useful, but is it AI? Apple didnt think so.Gemini is now the default AI assistant on the phones. RIP Bixby.Some of the new features represent more meaningful progress. The phones AI assistant which is now based on Google Gemini by default, with Samsungs own Bixby relegated to access through its app can control your phone with natural language requests. Ask it to make text bigger or find photos from your last holiday, and it should oblige. Gemini can now also work across multiple apps in a single interaction, though this upgrade isnt exclusive to Samsung. It might look up a good restaurant and share it with your friend or pull up sports fixtures and add them to your calendar.The problem for me is that most of these features are hard to test in-depth when youre at a launch event using a phone that isnt yours, has few apps installed and no accounts signed in, and might have only been set up for the first time that morning. Well have a better sense of how effective Samsungs new AI features are when we can actually use the S25 and S25 Plus for an extended run in our review.The problem for Samsung is that, until then, its not clear what here should tempt anyone into upgrading. Many of these AI and software features are baked into One UI 7 itself and should roll out soon to owners of the S24 and older models. If the hardwares hardly changing, and the softwares coming to your phone anyway, whats the incentive to upgrade?Yesterday, my colleague Allison Johnson wrote that Samsung needs to give us a reason to care about new phones every year. On the strength of the S25 and S25 Plus, I think its fair to say that it hasnt.Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge

The Galaxy S25 Ultra, announced today, sheds more of its Note roots this year with rounded corners and flat edges that align it more with the rest of the S series. It comes with Qualcomms latest chipset, an upgraded ultrawide camera, and not much else, hardware-wise. With no price increase over last years model starting at $1,299 its a light refresh of Samsungs biggest phone, with a major emphasis on One UI 7.0s AI upgrades.Something about the shift from curved edges to flat sides makes the S25 Ultra look hefty in photos, like if the Cybertruck were a phone. But its actually slightly smaller and lighter than last years device, even with a bigger 6.9-inch screen thanks to slimmer bezels. Its equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor tuned for Galaxy devices thats true for all S25-series phones sold in all regions, which hasnt been the case recently. And it still comes with one more strong spec: seven years of OS updates and security patches. Samsung rounded out the pointy, uncomfortable corners on the S24 Ultra and flattened the edges. Photo: Allison Johnson / The VergeThere are some interesting things not on the Ultra this year, though. Bixby is no longer the default virtual assistant. Its still present and you can summon it through its own app. But Google Gemini will answer when you long-press the wake button on the side of the phone.The included S Pen, another holdover from the Note era, gets a bit of a downgrade. It no longer supports Bluetooth, so the air gesture controls that previous versions offered are gone. The S25 Ultras included S Pen is just a basic stylus, no magic wand tricks up its sleeve. Bummer.Camera hardware is largely unchanged from the previous model, except for a new 50-megapixel ultrawide, replacing a 12-megapixel module. Samsung claims that an upgrade to the S25s algorithmic image processing has improved detail in zoomed images. On the video side, Samsung now offers a Galaxy Log profile along with a custom LUT.Gemini is the new default assistant. Photo: Allison Johnson / The VergeThe most interesting changes are software-side in One UI 7.0. My colleague Dominic Preston has a good rundown of the new stuff as it also appears on the S25 and S25 Plus models. Unsurprisingly, it all has to do with AI, and much of it we were already familiar with thanks to the One UI 7.0 beta. But a couple of things made me sit up and pay attention.The first is the ability to use AI across apps to take action, like taking a picture of a flyer and having Gemini add the dates to your calendar and send your spouse an email about it. Maybe this doesnt sound like much, but some of us have to remember which day is crazy hair day at preschool, when conferences are, and the deadline for signing up for this seasons soccer class. A little help would be nice. This will first work across Google Workspace and Samsung native apps, with the addition of WhatsApp and Spotify. The other thing Im interested to see in action is suggested routines. In theory, the S25 phones will be able to notice if there are certain settings you tend to use at the same time every day or under certain conditions like turning Bluetooth on every time you get in the car and turning it off when you get out. When it sees a pattern, it should be able to suggest a routine to take care of those actions for you automatically. Youll be able to customize the routine parameters to your liking, but you wont have to go through the tedious work of setting it up from scratch. That could be cool!1/7 Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge1/7 Photo by Chris Welch / The VergeThe thing is, this stuff isnt exclusive to the S25 Ultra or even the S25 series. Samsung smartphone product manager Blake Gaiser told me Samsung will bring its new AI features to older devices where possible. The company certainly seems committed to delivering those updates to older phones but dont forget that they probably wont always be free.Well find out soon enough whether this is the AI update that will finally deliver on the promise of AI on our smartphones; the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its S25 siblings ship on February 7th.