Hasta La Gadget!

Disney and Marvel are holding what’s shaping up to be a newsworthy gaming event today at the D23 Expo. The first Disney and Marvel Games Showcase (to give its official name) starts at 4PM ET and you’ll be able to watch it below.

Expect updates on Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century projects. There’s something new in store for Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (a timely expansion focused on Rogue One, perhaps?), along with info on Disney Dreamlight Valley, which arrived this week, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Perhaps most enticingly, we’ll get a peek at the Marvel action-adventure game that Amy Hennig’s studio, Skydance New Media, is working on. 

On top of those, rumors suggest the showcase will include a peek at an Iron Man game from EA. Maybe we’ll finally learn a bit more about the Indiana Jones game Bethesda announced early last year or even get a look at Spider-Man 2 gameplay. In any case, we won’t have to wait long to find out.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns has a new release date, and it’s sooner than you may have expected. It was revealed during the Disney and Marvel Games Showcase that the tactical RPG from Firaxis will hit PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on December 2nd. The Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions will arrive at a later date.

The game was initially slated for October, but publisher 2K announced last month that it was pushing back the release date until sometime later in its fiscal year, which ends in March. Thankfully, you won’t have to wait that long to play it. In the meantime, the first Marvel’s Midnight Suns prequel short will hit Marvel’s YouTube channel on October 31st. 

BlueCruise, Ford’s intelligent adaptive cruise control system, already offers drivers a number of assistive features such as lane centering, street sign recognition and hands-free highway driving along more than 130,000 miles of US roadways. On Thursday, Ford announced that it will begin releasing the program’s version 1.2 update later this Fall beginning with the 2023 Mach-E and will include new assists like hands-free lane changing, in-lane repositioning, and predictive speed assist. The same additions are also coming to Lincoln owners with the release of ActiveGlide 1.2 (Lincoln’s reskinned version of BlueCruise). 

Ford

Hands-free lane changing is what it sounds like, just tap the turn signal and the vehicle will slide over one when it’s safe to do so. It’ll also preemptively suggest changes if it sees you coming up on a slower vehicle. Predictive speed assist is built to spot sharp turns ahead and safely guide the vehicle through them, while in-lane repositioning will cause the vehicle to hug either line so as to provide some additional padding between your bumper and the semi in the next lane.

The new features will first appear with the 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E Select and 2023 Lincoln Navigator Standard. Owners will also need to have the Ford Co-Pilot360 system installed and subscribe to a $600 three-year service plan, which keeps the hands-free driving maps up to date. They’ll also have to have either the FordPass or Lincoln Way companion app installed on their phone. 2023 Mach-E and Navigator owners will receive the first three months of service free as an introductory demo.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a draft order that would require satellites to reenter Earth’s atmosphere just five years after their missions end, rather than the current 25-year deadline, in what is an effort to reduce space junk.

Read more…