London's Design Museum presents an exclusive look at pieces from the Wes Anderson archives, offering insight into some of our favorite films.

Astronomers have seen the most energetic cosmic explosions yet, a new class of eruptions termed "extreme nuclear transients" (ENTs). These rare events occur when stars at least three times more massive than our Sun are shredded by supermassive black holes. While such cataclysmic events have been known for years, recent flares detected in galactic centres revealed a brightness nearly ten times greater than typical tidal disruption events. The discovery offers new insight into black hole behaviour and energy release in the universe's most extreme environments.Extreme Flares Detected by Gaia and ZTF Reveal Most Energetic Black Hole Events YetAs per a June 4 Science Advances report, lead researcher Jason Hinkle of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy noticed two mysterious flares from galactic cores in 2016 and 2018, recorded by the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft. The scientists recognised them as ENTs because a third one, observed in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility, has similar characteristics. These outbursts gave out more energy than supernovae did, and they lasted much longer than short bursts typically seen during tidal disruption events.Tidal disruption events such as Gaia18cdj are associated with flares that are explosive and long-duration. These explosions are greater than 100 times as intense as supernovas and have been occurring for millions to billions of years. They make ENTs an uncommon, energetic, and long-lived event that cosmic explorers might use.The ENTs' brightness lets astronomers focus on distant galactic centres, as well as the feeding habits of black holes in the universe's early days. "These flares are shining a light on the growth of supermassive black holes in the universe," mentioned co-author Benjamin Shappee, a Hubble fellow at IfA. Their visibility on large scales provides a statistical tool for cosmological studies in the future.Such findings are expanding what astrophysicists know about ENTs-but researchers stress that they're not done wrapping their heads around these mysterious objects just yet. The results might also advance new models of how black holes and stars work together and how energy moves across galaxies. Given upcoming missions with better instruments, the discovery of more ENTs will help astronomers learn even more about these violent events in the cosmos. For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube. Gadgets 360 Staff The resident bot. If you email me, a human will respond. More

On November 4, 2003, a doctor gave Jon Gluck some of the worst news imaginable: He had cancer — one that later tests would reveal as multiple myeloma, a severe blood and bone marrow cancer. Jon was told he might have as little as 18 months to live. He was 38, a thriving magazine editor in New York with a 7-month-old daughter whose third birthday, he suddenly realized, he might never see.“The moment after I was told I had cancer, I just said ‘no, no, no,’” Jon told me in an interview just last week. “This cannot be true.”Living in remissionThe fact that Jon is still here, talking to me in 2025, tells you that things didn’t go the way the medical data would have predicted on that November morning. He has lived with his cancer, through waves of remission and recurrence, for more than 20 years, an experience he chronicles with grace and wit in his new book An Exercise in Uncertainty. That 7-month-old daughter is now in college.RelatedWhy do so many young people suddenly have cancer?You could say Jon has beaten the odds, and he’s well aware that chance played some role in his survival. (“Did you know that ‘Glück’ is German for ‘luck’?” he writes in the book, noting his good fortune that a random spill on the ice is what sent him to the doctor in the first place, enabling them to catch his cancer early.) Cancer is still a terrible health threat, one that is responsible for 1 in 6 deaths around the world, killing nearly 10 million people a year globally and over 600,000 people a year in the US. But Jon’s story and his survival demonstrate something that is too often missed: We’ve turned the tide in the war against cancer. The age-adjusted death rate in the US for cancer has declined by about a third since 1991, meaning people of a given age have about a third lower risk of dying from cancer than people of the same age more than three decades ago. That adds up to over 4 million fewer cancer deaths over that time period. Thanks to breakthroughs in treatments like autologous stem-cell harvesting and CAR-T therapy — breakthroughs Jon himself benefited from, often just in time — cancer isn’t the death sentence it once was.Our World in DataGetting better all the timeThere’s no doubt that just as the rise of smoking in the 20th century led to a major increase in cancer deaths, the equally sharp decline of tobacco use eventually led to a delayed decrease. Smoking is one of the most potent carcinogens in the world, and at the peak in the early 1960s, around 12 cigarettes were being sold per adult per day in the US. Take away the cigarettes and — after a delay of a couple of decades — lung cancer deaths drop in turn along with other non-cancer smoking-related deaths.But as Saloni Dattani wrote in a great piece earlier this year, even before the decline of smoking, death rates from non-lung cancers in the stomach and colon had begun to fall. Just as notably, death rates for childhood cancers — which for obvious reasons are not connected to smoking and tend to be caused by genetic mutations — have fallen significantly as well, declining sixfold since 1950. In the 1960s, for example, only around 10 percent of children diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia survived more than five years. Today it’s more than 90 percent. And the five-year survival rate for all cancers has risen from 49 percent in the mid-1970s to 69 percent in 2019. We’ve made strikes against the toughest of cancers, like Jon’s multiple myeloma. Around when Jon was diagnosed, the five-year survival rate was just 34 percent. Today it’s as high as 62 percent, and more and more people like Jon are living for decades. “There has been a revolution in cancer survival,” Jon told me. “Some illnesses now have far more successful therapies than others, but the gains are real.”Three cancer revolutions The dramatic bend in the curve of cancer deaths didn’t happen by accident — it’s the compound interest of three revolutions.While anti-smoking policy has been the single biggest lifesaver, other interventions have helped reduce people’s cancer risk. One of the biggest successes is the HPV vaccine. A study last year found that death rates of cervical cancer — which can be caused by HPV infections — in US women ages 20–39 had dropped 62 percent from 2012 to 2021, thanks largely to the spread of the vaccine. Other cancers have been linked to infections, and there is strong research indicating that vaccination can have positive effects on reducing cancer incidence. The next revolution is better and earlier screening. It’s generally true that the earlier cancer is caught, the better the chances of survival, as Jon’s own story shows. According to one study, incidences of late-stage colorectal cancer in Americans over 50 declined by a third between 2000 and 2010 in large part because rates of colonoscopies almost tripled in that same time period. And newer screening methods, often employing AI or using blood-based tests, could make preliminary screening simpler, less invasive and therefore more readily available. If 20th-century screening was about finding physical evidence of something wrong — the lump in the breast — 21st-century screening aims to find cancer before symptoms even arise.Most exciting of all are frontier developments in treating cancer, much of which can be tracked through Jon’s own experience. From drugs like lenalidomide and bortezomib in the 2000s, which helped double median myeloma survival, to the spread of monoclonal antibodies, real breakthroughs in treatments have meaningfully extended people’s lives — not just by months, but years.Perhaps the most promising development is CAR-T therapy, a form of immunotherapy. Rather than attempting to kill the cancer directly, immunotherapies turn a patient’s own T-cells into guided missiles. In a recent study of 97 patients with multiple myeloma, many of whom were facing hospice care, a third of those who received CAR-T therapy had no detectable cancer five years later. It was the kind of result that doctors rarely see. “CAR-T is mind-blowing — very science-fiction futuristic,” Jon told me. He underwent his own course of treatment with it in mid-2023 and writes that the experience, which put his cancer into a remission he’s still in, left him feeling “physically and metaphysically new.”A welcome uncertaintyWhile there are still more battles to be won in the war on cancer, and there are certain areas — like the rising rates of gastrointestinal cancers among younger people — where the story isn’t getting better, the future of cancer treatment is improving. For cancer patients like Jon, that can mean a new challenge — enduring the essential uncertainty that comes with living under a disease that’s controllable but which could always come back. But it sure beats the alternative.“I’ve come to trust so completely in my doctors and in these new developments,” he said. “I try to remain cautiously optimistic that my future will be much like the last 20 years.” And that’s more than he or anyone else could have hoped for nearly 22 years ago. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!See More: Health

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Manus has kick-started an AI agent boom in China Last year, China saw a boom in foundation models, the do-everything large language models that underpin the AI revolution. This year, the focus has shifted to AI agents—systems that are less about responding to users’ queries and more about autonomously accomplishing things for them.There are now a host of Chinese startups building these general-purpose digital tools, which can answer emails, browse the internet to plan vacations, and even design an interactive website. Many of these have emerged in just the last two months, following in the footsteps of Manus—a general AI agent that sparked weeks of social media frenzy for invite codes after its limited-release launch in early March.As the race to define what a useful AI agent looks like unfolds, a mix of ambitious startups and entrenched tech giants are now testing how these tools might actually work in practice—and for whom. Read the full story. —Caiwei Chen Inside the race to find GPS alternatives Later this month, an inconspicuous 150-kilogram satellite is set to launch into space aboard the SpaceX Transporter 14 mission. Once in orbit, it will test super-accurate next-generation satnav technology designed to make up for the shortcomings of the US Global Positioning System (GPS). Despite the system’s indispensable nature, the GPS signal is easily suppressed or disrupted by everything from space weather to 5G cell towers to phone-size jammers worth a few tens of dollars. The problem has been whispered about among experts for years, but it has really come to the fore in the last three years, since Russia invaded Ukraine.Now, startup Xona Space Systems wants to create a space-based system that would do what GPS does but better. Read the full story. —Tereza Pultarova Why doctors should look for ways to prescribe hope —Jessica Hamzelou This week, I’ve been thinking about the powerful connection between mind and body. Some new research suggests that people with heart conditions have better outcomes when they are more hopeful and optimistic. Hopelessness, on the other hand, is associated with a significantly higher risk of death. The findings build upon decades of fascinating research into the phenomenon of the placebo effect. Our beliefs and expectations about a medicine (or a sham treatment) can change the way it works. The placebo effect’s “evil twin,” the nocebo effect, is just as powerful—negative thinking has been linked to real symptoms. Researchers are still trying to understand the connection between body and mind, and how our thoughts can influence our physiology. In the meantime, many are developing ways to harness it in hospital settings. Is it possible for a doctor to prescribe hope? Read the full story. This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Elon Musk threatened to cut off NASA’s use of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraftHis war of words with Donald Trump is dramatically escalating. (WP $)+ If Musk actually carried through with his threat, NASA would seriously struggle. (NYT $)+ Silicon Valley is starting to pick sides. (Wired $)+ It appears as though Musk has more to lose from their bruising breakup. (NY Mag $) 2 Apple and Alibaba’s AI rollout in China has been delayedIt’s the latest victim of Trump’s trade war. (FT $)+ The deal is supposed to support iPhones’ AI offerings in the country. (Reuters) 3 X’s new policy blocks the use of its posts to ‘fine-tune or train’ AI modelsUnless companies strike a deal with them, that is. (TechCrunch)+ The platform could end up striking agreements like Reddit and Google. (The Verge) 4 RJK Jr’s new hire is hunting for proof that vaccines cause autismVaccine skeptic David Geier is seeking access to a database he was previously barred from. (WSJ $)+ How measuring vaccine hesitancy could help health professionals tackle it. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Anthropic has launched a new service for the militaryClaude Gov is designed specifically for US defense and intelligence agencies. (The Verge)+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review) 6 There’s no guarantee your billion-dollar startup won’t failIn fact, one in five of them will. (Bloomberg $)+ Beware the rise of the AI coding startup. (Reuters) 7 Walmart’s drone deliveries are taking offIt’s expanding to 100 new US stories in the next year. (Wired $) 8 AI might be able to tell us how old the Dead Sea Scrolls really are Models suggest they’re even older than we previously thought. (The Economist $)+ How AI is helping historians better understand our past. (MIT Technology Review) 9 All-in-one super apps are a hit in the Gulf They’re following in China’s footsteps. (Rest of World) 10 Nintendo’s Switch 2 has revived the midnight launch eventFans queued for hours outside stores to get their hands on the new console. (Insider $)+ How the company managed to dodge Trump’s tariffs. (The Guardian) Quote of the day “Elon finally found a way to make Twitter fun again.” —Dan Pfeiffer, a host of the political podcast Pod Save America, jokes about Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s ongoing feud in a post on X. One more thing This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources We’re in the middle of a potentially transformative moment. Metals discovered barely a century ago now underpin the technologies we’re relying on for cleaner energy, and not having enough of them could slow progress.  Take neodymium, one of the rare earth metals. It’s used in cryogenic coolers to reach ultra-low temperatures needed for devices like superconductors and in high-powered magnets that power everything from smartphones to wind turbines. And very soon, demand for it could outstrip supply. What happens then? And what does it reveal about issues across wider supply chains? Read our story to find out. —Casey Crownhart We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + Sightings of Bigfoot just happen to correlate with black bear populations? I smell a conspiracy!+ Watch as these symbols magically transform into a pretty impressive Black Sabbath mural.+ Underwater rugby is taking off in the UK.+ Fed up of beige Gen Z trends, TikTok is bringing the 80s back.

Australian director Sean Byrne is one of horror’s premiere mixologists. His debut, 2009’s The Loved Ones, meshed teen romance with gruesome Hostel-style extremism. 2015’s The Devil’s Candy put a heavy metal spin on the haunted-house romp. His new film, Dangerous Animals, in theaters now, raises a question no one was asking about a classic B-movie subgenre: When is a killer shark movie not a killer shark movie?  Answer: When the killer shark is just a weapon in a human killer’s hands.  Despite arriving just in time for the 50th anniversary of Jaws, Dangerous Animals has less in common with it (or with The Shallows or 47 Meters Down) and is more in line with Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Saw (or one of Australia’s modern horror successes, Wolf Creek). Hassie Harrison (Yellowstone) stars as Zephyr, an American surfer floating around the Australian coast looking for the perfect waves — and maybe the right romance. She does not find it in Tucker (Jai Courtney of Terminator Genisys), who abducts her off the beach before dawn and locks her up with another tourist, Heather (Ella Newton), on his shark expedition boat. Tucker is a mega-creep who gets off on shark attacks. Zephyr and Heather are his latest chum. At 90 minutes, Dangerous Animals is lean and mean fun. Zephyr is no damsel in distress, and quickly plots an escape from what looks like an impossible situation. Tucker has driven them out to the middle of the ocean where he can gets wasted on cheap liquor, dance to disco tunes, and prepare to ritualistically dunk his prey into shark-infested waters. He’s an absolute psychopath, and Byrne lets Courtney completely off the possible-Hollywood-leading-man leash. The actor is frothing at the mouth and twitching in his eyes throughout the deranged picture, with a level of egolessness that manifested slightly when he played [checks notes] Captain Boomerang in Suicide Squad. This is better. Harrison summons her own power in the face of Courtney’s towering physique in Zephyr’s multiple escape attempts. Byrne takes full advantage of the claustrophobic setting of the boat — and the vast emptiness of the sea surrounding it. It’s a geographically coherent but unsettling maze for a cat shark-and-mouse game that rarely succumbs to contrivances to ratchet up the tension. Getting off a boat surrounded by sharks just seems really tough! And for as blockheaded as Tucker seems, he’s devoted much of his life to building the ultimate floating prison. While Dangerous Animals never goes full Deep Blue Sea with far-fetched shark kills, Byrne, by way of Tucker’s fetish, still sets up some nightmarish attacks. Tucker doesn’t just like to watch sharks tear his victims to shreds, he also videotapes them on a 1990s-era camera for future VHS viewing. So the deaths are slow and savage, with Courtney’s wide-eyed gaze committing as much violence as the razor-sharp shark teeth. There’s blood in the water, and all over this killer’s hands. In the days of so-called “elevated horror,” Dangerous Animals delivers earnest thrills with a simple-yet-innovative slasher premise. In my mind, the freshest horror movies find a kernel of specificity in a timeless premise. Byrne’s movie isn’t far off from the Halloween formula — big guy hunts down indomitable woman with scary weapon of choice — but whisking us to Australia, sending us to sea, and the what-if of a sightseeing tour guide with a hard-on for shark attacks is the focused lens a filmmaker needs to deliver something new. Sick, but new.

These PlayStation 1 games are super rare.

Where others have become obsessed with speed and trends, Sergio Membrillas has built a career on slowing down and staying true to his craft. Over 13 years as a professional illustrator, he's evolved a distinct style – bold, graphic, and quietly playful – that feels both timeless and entirely his own. But this evolution, as he's quick to point out, wasn't something he forced. "I believe evolution is essential for every artist," Sergio reflects. "Change is not something I resist; it's something I enjoy and welcome as part of the creative journey." His work, initially influenced by a love of Mid-Century graphic design, has gradually absorbed references as diverse as Etruscan art, Mesopotamian motifs, and early 20th-century traditional tattoos. It's a portfolio built on curiosity, not conformity. Despite his stylistic clarity, Sergio's process remains refreshingly analogue at its core. He still begins each project with pencil and paper, leaning into the tactility of drawing by hand. "I've always valued having a physical relationship with art," he says. "There's something essential about feeling the wood of the pencil, manually erasing mistakes, rather than simply double-tapping a screen." His philosophy of working slowly, attentively, and with purpose shows in the balanced compositions and confident use of negative space that has become his signature. Sergio credits his background in graphic design for this instinctive sense of structure. "There has always been a strong graphic sensibility within me," he says, noting that the discipline of design continues to inform his illustration practice, particularly in editorial and poster work where clarity and storytelling must co-exist. Yet, like many creative careers, his path into illustration wasn't plotted from the start. Initially, Sergio imagined illustration would complement his design projects, not become the main event. "At first, I thought I would incorporate my illustrations into my graphic design projects – but in the end, it turned out to be the other way around." A commission for EasyJet's in-flight magazine marked a pivotal moment that reframed illustration from a hobby to a profession. "It made me realize that being an illustrator is a real profession, just like any other." Fast-forward to today, and Sergio's client list reads like a who's who of publishing and design, from The New Yorker to Pentagram. While the calibre of collaborators has changed, what matters most remains the same: trust. "When a client trusts your work and approaches projects with an open mind, collaboration flourishes," he says. It's in these open, trusting relationships that Sergio finds the space to experiment and further develop his ideas. Unsurprisingly, editorial work holds a special place for him. "Editorial projects offer wider creative margins, allowing for greater flexibility and innovation," he explains. Compared to the tighter confines of advertising, editorial illustration offers the opportunity to tell nuanced stories, and Sergio is clear that he views every assignment, regardless of format, as a collaborative effort. If one thing is clear, though, it's that he's not that he's afraid to say no when needed. Maintaining a strong personal voice is non-negotiable. "I always strive to stay true to myself and ensure that every project I undertake reflects a clear personal signature," he says. For Sergio, authenticity isn't just a matter of artistic pride; it's what differentiates an illustrator in a saturated, increasingly automated industry. Valencia is home for Sergio, a city he credits with much of his creative energy. "Oh, Valencia! It's a beautiful city that inspires me and brings me joy," he says, describing it as a European cousin to Los Angeles with its sun-soaked streets and vibrant cultural scene. The blend of tradition and modernity fuels his practice, offering constant inspiration without the sensory overload that often accompanies larger creative hubs. Given the pressure many creatives feel to keep pace with shifting trends, Sergio's approach feels almost radical. "I'm not particularly interested in trends," he says. "What truly matters to me is the feeling of having done something meaningful and fulfilling by the end of the day." Instead of chasing what's fashionable, he draws inspiration from a surprisingly eclectic bookshelf, mixing everything from Wim Crouwel's graphic design classics to studies on Scandinavian tattoos and Alec Soth's photography. It's a reminder that fresh ideas rarely come from looking where everyone else is looking. In the era of AI and content overload, the role of the illustrator is changing, but Sergio remains optimistic. While machine learning might churn out images at record speed, it can't replicate the nuance and emotional intelligence that underpin great illustration. "Illustrators can tell stories, evoke emotions, and create meaningful connections that machines simply cannot replicate," he says. "Our role is shifting, but the value of authentic, thoughtful illustration remains indispensable." That insistence on authenticity carries through to the advice he offers younger illustrators navigating a commercial landscape. "Create work that makes you happy when you go to sleep at night," Sergio advises. "It's important to find projects that align with your values and passions so your artistic voice remains authentic." It's an ethos that has carried him through more than a decade of creative highs and industry shifts. Perhaps it's the real secret behind the clarity of his practice, which he has built not on chasing trends or algorithms but on careful craft, deliberate evolution, and the simple, enduring joy of a well-made pencil and a blank piece of paper.

Upcoming (serious) Web performance boostBy: Adam Scott5 June 2025Progress ReportSometimes, just adding a compiler flag can yield significant performance boosts. And that just happened.For about two years now, all major browsers have supported WASM (WebAssembly) SIMD. SIMD stands for “Single instruction, multiple data” and is a technology that permits CPUs to do some parallel computation, often speeding up the whole program. And that’s exactly why we tried it out recently.We got positive results.The need for performance on the WebThe Web platform is often overlooked as a viable target, because of its less-than-ideal environment and its perceived poor performance. And the perception is somewhat right: the Web environment has a lot of security-related quirks to take into account—the user needs to interact with a game frame before the browser allows it to play any sound1. Also, due to bandwidth and compatibility reasons, you rarely see high-fidelity games being played on a browser. Performance is better achieved when running software natively on the operating system.But don’t underestimate the potential of the Web platform. As I explained in broad terms at the talk I gave at the last GodotCon Boston 2025, the Web has caught up a lot since the days of Flash games. Not only are there more people playing Web games every year, but standards and browsers improve every year in functionality and in performance.And that’s why we are interested in using WASM SIMD.WASM SIMD BenchmarksOur resident benchmark expert Hugo Locurcio (better known as Calinou) ran the numbers for us on a stress test I made. We wanted to compare standard builds to builds with WASM SIMD enabled.Note: You may try to replicate his results, but be aware that he has a beast of a machine. Here are his PC’s specifications:CPU: Intel Core i9-13900KGPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090RAM: 64 GB (2×32 GB DDR5-5800 CL30)SSD: Solidigm P44 Pro 2 TBOS: Linux (Fedora 42)I built a Jolt physics stress test from a scene initially made by passivestar. By spawning more and more barrels into the contraption, we can easily test the performance difference between the WASM SIMD build and the other.Without WASM SIMDWith WASM SIMDImprovement (approx.)Test linksLinkLink-Firefox 138(“+100 barrels” 3 times)2×Firefox 138(“+100 barrels” 6 times)10.17×*Chromium 134(“+100 barrels” 3 times)1.37×Chromium 134(“+100 barrels” 6 times)14.17×**Please note that once the physics engine enters a “spiral of death”, it is common for the framerate to drop to single digits, SIMD or not. These tests don’t prove 10× to 15× CPU computing speed improvements, but rather that games will be more resilient to framerate drops on the same machine in the same circumstances. The 1.5× to 2× numbers are more representative here of the performance gains by WASM SIMD.What it means for your gamesStarting with 4.5 dev 5, you can expect your Web games to run a little bit more smoothly, without having to do anything. Especially when things get chaotic (for your CPU). It isn’t a silver bullet for poorly optimized games, but it will help nonetheless. Also, note that it cannot do anything for GPU rendering bottlenecks.Be aware that the stress tests are meant by nature to only test the worst case scenarios, so you may not see such large improvements in normal circumstances. But it’s nice to see such stark improvements when the worst happens.AvailabilityFrom here on out, the 4.5 release official templates will only support WebAssembly SIMD-compatible browsers in order to keep the template sizes small. We generally aim to maintain compatibility with the oldest devices we can. But in this case, the performance gains are too large to ignore and the chances of users having browsers that are that far out of date is too small relative to the potential benefits.If you need to use non-SIMD templates, don’t fret. You can always build the Godot Editor and the engine templates without WebAssembly SIMD support by using the wasm_simd=no build option.What’s next?As I wrote in my last blog post, we’re currently working very hard to make C#/.NET exports a reality. We do have a promising prototype, we just need to make sure that it’s production-ready.I also mentioned in that article that I wanted to concentrate on improving our asset loading game. Preloading an entire game before even starting it hinders the ability to use Godot for commercial Web games. Once something is implemented to improve that issue, count on me to share the news with you.It’s either that, or we return to the old days of spam-webpages using the “Congratulations, you won!” sound effect when you least expect it. ↩

Since its announcement in January, anticipation has been building for the Nintendo Switch 2 – the followup to the gaming titan’s most successful home console, the 150m-selling Nintendo Switch. Major console launches are rarer than they used to be; this is the first since 2020, when Sony’s PlayStation 5 hit shelves. Whether you’re weighing up a purchase or just wondering what all the fuss is about, here’s everything you need to know.The basicsThe Switch 2 is out today, 5 June, priced at £395.99 (US$449.99/A$699/€469.99) or at £429.99 (US$499.99/A$766/€509,99) bundled with its flagship game, Mario Kart World. Like its predecessor, it’s a portable games machine with a built-in screen – you can use as a handheld mini-console when you’re out and about, or slide it into the dedicated dock device and plug it into your TV via an HDMI cable for a big-screen experience at home. A little bigger than the original Switch, with a crisp, clear 7.9in LCD touch screen, as opposed to the old 6.2in display, it comes with two Joy-Con controllers, which are chunkier than the previous versions. These now attach magnetically to each side of the screen with a pleasing clunk, replacing the fiddly sliding mechanism that most Switch owners disliked. They’ve also got bigger L and R buttons on the top, which sounds like a minor detail but is a huge deal for anyone trying to perfect their Mario Kart power-slides.The specBig tech advances … Nintendo Switch 2. Photograph: NintendoThe tech inside the Switch 2 is a lot more advanced than the previous console, featuring a custom nVidia processor, and a screen capable of displaying at 4K resolution (when plugged into a compatible TV) or 1920x1080 resolution in portable mode. It’s also got 5.1 surround sound, and supports high-dynamic range lighting (HDR) graphical effects at frame rates of up to 120hz. This brings the Switch 2 almost up to scratch with other modern consoles: most experts are placing its tech specs somewhere between the PS4 and PS5, or between Xbox One and Xbox Series X.In the boxThe Nintendo Switch 2 comes with the console itself, two Joy-Con controllers, a power adaptor and USB-C charging cable, a dock, a Joy-Con grip (which allows you to connect the two Joy-Cons together to create a traditional-looking games controller), and two Joy-Con wrist straps to stop them flying out of your hands.Out of the boxNintendo is going big on the social features of the console. Its GameShare function will allow you to play compatible games with other people who don’t own a copy – they just need their own Switch or a Switch 2, and can play along in the room with you or connect online. This is particularly important for families sharing one copy of a game. Meanwhile, GameChat is kind of like Zoom, but for games: you can invite a bunch of pals into a group video chat session where you can talk to each other while playing the same game, playing different games, or just hanging out. If you all buy the Nintendo Switch 2 Camera you’ll be able to see little video windows of each other on the screen, too. GameChat requires a paid subscription to Nintendo’s online gaming service, which costs £17.99 (US$19.99/€19.99/A$29.95)The gamesBig news … Mario Kart World game. Photograph: NintendoThe console is launching with around 25 games, though many of these are enhanced versions of older Switch titles. The big newcomers are Mario Kart World, an open-world take on the classic karting game; the introductory game Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour; the co-op survival challenge Survival Kids and anti-gravity racer, Fast Fusion. Some favourites making it across are Fortnite, Cyberpunk 2077 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom. Most games will retail for between £45–£70 and will be available to buy and download online, or as physical boxed copies. You can also still play almost all your old Switch games on the new console, and there’s a huge back catalogue of retro NES, Nintendo 64, SNES and GameCube classics from the 1980s, 90s and 00s available to play with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.The accessoriesAdd-ons … Nintendo Switch 2 Pro controller and camera. Photograph: NintendoThere are three things you may want to buy alongside the console. The Nintendo Switch 2 Pro controller is a traditional console joypad intended for serious play. Then you have the Nintendo Switch 2 camera, basically a webcam compatible with the GameChat service, but also with any games that might use camera features. You may also want a microSD Express card to provide additional storage for your games.Where can I buy one?If you haven’t pre-ordered, you may have to be patient and shop around. Some of the larger retailers including Amazon, Argos, Currys and John Lewis are saying they may have a few in stock today and it’s worth trying Nintendo’s online store. Be extremely wary of buying from private sellers on eBay or similar sites – there will be a lot of con artists out there. Remember when people found their PlayStation 5 deliveries were instead full of bags of rice?