Microsoft will train its AI on a "catalogue" of games soon, Satya Nadella says, "and then start playing them" - Related to microsoft, them", games, golden, then

Behold, the essential oil diffusing 'fragrance mouse'

"The cat is the fragrance, Nic," Ollie once told me when I asked the RPS Slack channel for alternatives to my essential oil diffuser, which I can no longer use for fear of my cat getting vanilla scurvy or lavender botulism or whatever else. I contemplated those words last night when she pounced into bed with me, curled up, and serenaded me to slumber with a briney fart. I remembered them again this morning when I learned of the ASUS Fragrance Mouse (thanks, Percy Gamer.).

The mouse is ergonomic, wireless, and comes in plain or pink ("Iridescent White or Rose Clay"). Its innards house a refillable vial for scent oils. It functions "delicate underglow lighting," a sell that would be easier to make fun of if most gaming hardware wasn't illuminated by a choice of either energy drink piss green or antiseptic gel blue.

Would I use this if I hadn't a cat? Silly question. I would immediately source a cat. Ah, but what if she was theoretically immune to essential oils and also not sick of being used in dangerous hypotheticals as I assume all cats are by now?

A tendency toward anxious agoraphobia has made me someone who spends a lot time cultivating vibes. I would venture that I own more fairy lights, houseplants, IDM playlists and tiny lamps shaped like mushrooms than most people who don't also use Instagram. I owned both a scent diffuser and an apocalypse bunker's worth of Nag Champa before my cat's arrival meant I had to stop using them. I am, on paper, the exact genre of mark that should fall for this.

And yet, I cannot help but view it as an admission of defeat. As PC Gamer deftly note, the fragrance mouse is "the first development in mouse I've seen in some time that wasn't just 'more button". Its very existence feels like a thwarted admission that there are no new ideas left in the world (of mice) and thus ASUS have resorted to just shoving in things that already exist and, I must assume, are much more suited for the task when they don't also have to fight for space with mouse brains.

Why, if we're just doing that, I bet I could source several advanced ideas from the morass of Monday morning ennui that is the RPS Slack in less than five minutes.

"A mouse encased in a magic ball that somehow attaches itself firmly to any surface, including your own leg, so that you can wield it dexterously enough to play an FPS without needing a desk," says Edwin.

"A mouse with a mouse's tail; it's fairly unobtrusive most of the time but it sometimes displays excitement or affection, wrapping itself around your wrist or wagging like a dog's when you knock someone in Apex," points to Ollie.

"A vertical mouse for work that changes into a normal mouse when you want to play a precise FPS. A Transformer mouse," adds Brendy.

"A mouse with a pencil sharpener in it. Just for the irony", says James.

Me? Idk. A…toaster? Little tiny toaster? Makes you little tiny bits of toast that you can nibble on to make you feel more effective about burning your fingers on your stupid toaster mouse?

I do not hate the fragrance mouse. Benign bewilderment is an entertaining emotion. However, my desk only has room for one scent.

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Microsoft will train its AI on a "catalogue" of games soon, Satya Nadella says, "and then start playing them"

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has noted the organization plans to train its new gaming AI on a "catalogue of games" soon, so it can then "start playing them".

Speaking on the Dwarkesh Patel podcast, Nadella described seeing Microsoft's gaming AI Muse generate gameplay videos that reflected a user's input as a "massive, massive moment of 'wow'".

Microsoft lifted the lid on Muse last week, and described the technology as something that would help game ideation and preservation - though not everyone was convinced.

In short, Muse has so far been trained based on years of gameplay footage from Ninja Theory's arena shooter Bleeding Edge. After ingesting this gameplay archive, Muse can then generate new gameplay footage and estimate how it might change based on a specific prompt suggested by the user. For example, Muse could generate gameplay footage with an additional jump pad in the level, if commanded to do so.

As yet, this is not an AI able to start coding its own games, or dreaming up its own concepts. Rather, it's a tool that could eventually become a shortcut for providing generated gameplay footage to speed up the process of development.

"Can you actually generate games that are both consistent and then have the ability to generate the diversity of what that game represents, and then are persistent to user mods?" Nadella mentioned. "That's what this is.

"What I'm excited about is bringing - we're going to have a catalogue of games soon that we will start using these models, or we're going to train these models to generate, and then start playing them."

Nadella did not elaborate on how customers would be able to play the generated footage Muse provides.

"When Phil Spencer first showed it to me, he had an Xbox controller and this model basically took the input and generated the output based on the input. And it was consistent with the game," Nadella continued.

"That to me is a massive, massive moment of 'wow'. It's kind of like the first time we saw ChatGPT complete sentences, or Dall-E draw, or Sora. This is one such moment."

Writing in response to Microsoft's announcement of Muse last week, gaming AI expert Michael Cook described the advancement as "impressive" but "not a practical process".

"It's impressive that it can do this using visual information because things like lighting, camera angles, user interface and so on are a lot for an AI model to handle. But ultimately, even with all of this data, all the time spent annotating datasets, and so on, it was still only just about able to generate footage predicting player behaviour.

"The research team behind this probably believe it will get more efficient over time, which might make it more affordable or tractable for small developers," Cook continued. "However, it still raises the question of how we get video footage of people playing our game in the first place."

Last month, Take-Two Interactive boss Strauss Zelnick weighed in with his opinion of AI, saying that "artificial intelligence is an oxymoron, there's no such thing".

The Game Developers Choice Awards organised have introduced this year's recipients for its Lifetime Achievement and Pioneer Award categories.

(she/her) is a culture writer at Polygon, covering internet culture, fandom, and video games. Her work has previously appeared at NPR, Wired, and The ......

Octodad und Hoa sind nur zwei von über 400 Spielen, die ihr gerade für sehr wenig Geld bekommt, das viel bewirken kann.

The world's most disgusting FPS Golden Light is free on Steam for the next hour only

Attention all eyeball eaters, flesh bicyclists, and shooter enjoyers who also enjoy staring into nightclub toilets! I’ve just noticed that survival horror FPS Golden Light is free to keep on Steam … for the next hour only. The offer in question runs out at 6pm UTC today, 24th February. I swear I have only just discovered this. I swear I’m not trying to give you palpitations for the sake of a traffic spike. But if I am giving you palpitations, that’s an appropriate start to your time with Golden Light, “a procedural dark comedy horror game with roguelike elements and an eerie atmosphere”.

Eerie? Do not sell yourself short, video game. Alan Wake is eerie. Golden Light is a game in which you can swallow a bat’s head just to see what happens. The last time I played I was murdered by a sink clog. The whole world is a deforming colon. Trailer! Quickly!

Golden Light is also a particularly revolting take on the archetypal quest to save a damsel. As the game begins, you’re having a nice picnic with a woman known only as She. Suddenly, She is abducted, dismembered and sprinkled across the levels of a hideous meat dimension. Your job is to fight the bosses defending your beloved’s body parts and, well, it all gets very Eraserhead. It makes Silent Hill 2 look like a book of Stephen Fry witticisms about his mother.

I’ve never reached the bottom of the labyrinth or found all the body parts, so can’t offer a conclusive verdict upon the precise overall disgustingness of Golden Light, but even the opening dungeon floors are ickier than most horror escapades. Layouts and weapons are procedural or randomised for maximum foulness. If you don’t know what something does, you can always eat it to experience the effects.

An acquired taste, Golden Light. Definitely the kind of thing you might prefer to sample for free, if you’re at all squeamish about fighting a soft cascade of deerheads or arming yourself with various designations of turd.

If it’s already past 6pm UTC when you read this and you’re all up in my comments thread, whinnying with rage about my less-than-punctuality, then calm down, calm down. Look, here’s a demo for developer Mr. Pink’s latest project Chambers, “a comedic RPG shooter set in the Weird Wild West”. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks slightly less repulsive. Slightly sunnier, at least.

The UK government has declined tightening consumer laws to enhanced protect UK gamers aggrieved at the sunsetting or.

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Electronics giant says all repairs come with.