Hasta La Gadget!

There is a way to put a stop to your Switch Online (or Online + Expansion Pack) subscription whenever you want.

Forget carbon fiber and lightweight plastics. One ingenious creator in Yemen made a functional drone that can double as a bonfire in a pinch.

It’s arriving several months later than expected, but Arkane’s next big game is (relatively) close at hand. The studio has confirmed that Redfall will be available on May 2nd for Xbox Series X/S and Windows PCs, with launch day access through Game Pass. As before, the vampire-slaying shooter is an expansion of the formulas behind Dishonored and Prey — it’s a stealth-friendly game built with multiplayer and unpredictability in mind.

Like other Arkane titles, Redfall hinges on player choice. You can directly fight the vampires taking over the game’s namesake town, but you’ll also be rewarded if you take the stealthy approach or make clever uses of your gear. The open world concept isn’t strictly new (Prey had it), but the choice of characters and online play are. You can choose a hero that reflects your play style, and up to four people can take down the villains in co-op mode. Certain tactics only work when you’re playing as a team.

The free-ranging gameplay adds some variety, but you can also expect weapons with randomized stats and customization. Some mechanics will be familiar. You’ll find activities beyond the main story missions (such as rescuing survivors), skill trees and other systems that encourage doing more than the essentials.

It’s too soon to say if Redfall will maintain Arkane’s reputation. However, it’s evident the developer is happy to build on its better-known gameplay mechanics rather than take some chances like it did with Deathloop. If you tried Prey and wished your friends could join in, though, you might be happy.

Between its ongoing supply chain constraints, brutal rounds of layoffs and a plummeting stock price, the past year has been a glass case of emotion for Tesla and its embattled CEO, Elon Musk. Still, the company managed to produce nearly 440,000 vehicles and delivered over 405,000 of them — year over year increases of 47 and 40 percent, respectively — Tesla announced on Wednesday during the Q4 2022 earnings call. Those are both records for Tesla, as was the full-year deliveries of 1.31 million. Profits for the year totaled $12.6 billion.

“Despite the fact that 2022 was an incredibly challenging year due to forced shutdowns, very high interest rates, and many delivery challenges,” Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, said during the call. “It’s worth noting that all these records were in the face of massive difficulties. a credit to the team for achieving that.”

The final quarter of 2022 was especially volatile for the electric automaker following the finalization of Musk’s Twitter acquisition in late October. While the billionaire sought to split his attention between his EV company, his spaceship company and his new social media platform, Tesla shareholders revolted, furious that the automaker had lost some $620 billion in market capitalization that year. Musks antics at Twitter combined with his sale of Tesla stock to fund the acquisition sent the EV company’s ticker tumbling, resulting in drastic price cuts — by as much as $20,500 in some cases. This, in turn, saw customers in China, angry that they had just purchased their vehicles at a higher price, raid Tesla showrooms to demand answers and restitution.  

“The most common question we’ve been getting on investors is about demand,” Musk said. “I want to put that concern to rest. Thus far in January, we’ve seen the strongest orders here today then ever in our history, we currently are seeing orders at Almost twice the rate of production.”

“It’s hard to say whether that will continue at twice the rate of production,” he continued. “Orders are high and we’ve actually raised the Model Y price up a little bit in response to that. We think demand will be good despite, probably, a contraction in the automotive market as a whole.”

Those price cuts will continue into the new year. “In the near term we are accelerating our cost reduction roadmap and driving towards higher production rates,” the company announced Wednesday. “In any scenario, we are prepared for short-term uncertainty, while being focused on the long-term potential of autonomy, electrification and energy solutions.”

Musk also discussed recent developments regarding the company’s “Full Self-Driving” beta ADAS during the call. “As of now we’ve deployed FSD beta to… roughly 400,000 customers in North America,” he said. “Our published data shows that improvement in safety statistics is very clear. So, we would not have released FSD beta if these safety statistics were not excellent.”

Despite the turbulence, Tesla continues to expand its regional production capacities. In January, the company announced its $3.6 billion investment in two new factories, one of which will produce the long-awaited, repeatedly-delayed Semi electric 18-wheeler. The company aims to produce 1.8 million vehicles in total this coming year.

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