The Morning After: ‘Alan Wake 2’ is coming in 2023

The 2021 Game Awards kicked off last night, mixing the year’s winners (It Takes Two, Deathloop, Kena and several more) with fresh game trailers and bona fide compelling new releases incoming, including (I’m finally playing through the original at the moment, so this piqued my attention.)

We also got a release date for Final Fantasy VII Remake on PC, new Star Wars, Dune and Star Trek games and several (ten, actually) Lady Gaga hits coming to Beat Saber. There may be something for every gamer.

— Mat Smith

The Game Awards 2021

It may look like a Galaxy Fold.

Oppo has teased its first foldable smartphone nearly three years after it unveiled a prototype device. The Find N looks like a device along the lines of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold lineup, created after “four years of intense R&D and six generations of prototypes.” Expect to hear more next week at Oppo’s Inno Day on December 15th — which is good because the company hasn’t shared many concrete specs just yet.

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He played a key role in the history of game consoles.

Masayuki Uemura, the lead creator of the Famicom and Super Famicom (aka NES and SNES), died on December 6th at the age of 78. Uemura, initially employed by Sharp, first became involved with Nintendo after the company’s Gunpei Yokoi asked about using Sharp solar cells to produce light gun games. Uemura joined Nintendo in 1971, and the company released gun games that included a home-friendly game called Duck Hunt (yes, the predecessor of the NES title). By November 1981, Uemura was tasked to build a machine that lets you play arcade games on your TV. The result was 1983’s Famicom, known to the rest of the world as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

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Alexa Internet has been around for 25 years.

Before Amazon’s Alexa became known as the company’s voice assistant, it was the name of its web-ranking site. It was established in 1996 and became famous some time ago for analyzing web traffic and listing the world’s most popular websites.

While Amazon didn’t explicitly say why it’s shutting down the service, Alexa Internet’s traffic has reportedly been on the decline over the past decade. At least the name will live on in Amazon’s smart speakers, displays and the rest.

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Binge-watching, retro style.

Paramount+ is adding 18 live channels (just like TV). The initial batch includes one focused entirely on Star Trek, which will stream episodes from new shows like Discovery and Picard and classics such as Enterprise and The Next Generation. (I’m not sure Enterprise is a classic, but you know what I mean.) There are also franchise-specific channels for Survivor, The Challenge and, oh boy, PAW Patrol. 

Good luck, parents.

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