TechNews

And why might you want to chat with multiple assistants? For one, Alexa was better at conveying the weather in the Sonos demonstration. To the question about needing a jacket in Nashville, Google replied, “No, tonight is not predicted to be cold in Nashville. Expect a temperature of 78 degrees.” Alexa, meanwhile, was rightly worried about rain: “You can expect some sudden thunderstorms with a high of 90 degrees,” it said.

They’re not audiophile earbuds by any means, but I’ve been a fan of Sony’s “extra bass” WF-XB700 earbuds since they were released. A big part of that is their unconventional shape, which twists into my ear canal deeper than most other earbuds for a sturdy fit that also manages to remain comfortable. But today, Sony is introducing the replacements for those earbuds, and while there are notable improvements like app support (with EQ), longer battery life, and easier controls, the overall design of the new $100 WF-C500 earbuds is definitely playing it safer. They also cost less out of the gate than the XF-XB700s did.

Sony says it decided to go for a more compact style this time, but it has maintained the IPX4 water and sweat resistance of the WF-XB700s. Battery life has increased to 10 hours of continuous playback (up from 9) and 20 hours counting case recharges (from 18). Somewhat surprisingly, the new earbuds ditch Sony’s “extra bass” sound tuning. But since the CF500s work with Sony’s mobile app, you should be able to pump up the bass using the adjustable EQ for a similar result. The company is really trying to position these as ideal for people buying their first set of true wireless earbuds.

Image: Sony

I’m happy Sony did preserve one thing about the XB700s, though. Well, two, actually. The earbuds still have an excellent, grippy matte finish. And the top half of the charging case is still semi-translucent, so you can easily tell when the individual earbuds and case are all done charging.

The new buds also have Sony’s DSEE (digital sound enhancement engine) for upscaling audio, but that’s always come off as a little gimmicky to me — especially when we’re talking about $99.99 earbuds. What’s more useful is that they support both Fast Pair on Android and Swift Pair for quick setup on Windows. The WF-C500 earbuds are available for preorder today, and there’s a spread of exclusive colors depending on where you buy them. Sony will sell them in black, Amazon has black and white, Best Buy gets them in black and green, and Target is selling black and orange.

Image: Sony

Sony is also introducing a new mid-range set of noise-canceling headphones. Priced at $249.99, the WH-XB910N headphones have that extra bass oomph and up to 30 hours of continuous battery life. They also carry over support for multipoint (two simultaneous Bluetooth connections), a feature that came to Sony headphones starting with the flagship WH-1000XM4s. Like those pricier headphones, these have tap and swipe controls. The enormous Sony logo is a little much for me, but that comes down to personal taste.

It’s the same story as the WF-C500s with exclusive colors at different stores: Sony keeps it simple with black, Amazon offers black and blue, Best Buy has black and green, and Target is selling them in black and orange.

Night School Studio, the independent game developer known for narrative-driven titles like “Oxenfree,” announced today it has been acquired by Netflix. This makes it the first games studio the streaming giant has purchased.

In Netflix’s announcement, Mike Verdu, vice president of game development, wrote Night School’s “commitment to artistic excellence and proven track record make them invaluable partners as we build out the creative capabilities and library of Netflix games together.” He added that Netflix plans to add “exclusive games designed for every kind of gamer and any level of play” that will be included with its membership, and have no ads or in-app purchases.

Night School Studio was founded in 2014 by Sean Krankel, a former senior game designer at Disney Interactive, and Adam Hines, who was a lead writer at Telltale Games. (Telltale Games was a Netflix partner, working on interactive shows like “Minecraft: Storymode” adventure before shutting down).

In a statement on Night School’s site, Krankel wrote “Netflix gives film, TV and now game makers an unprecedented canvas to create and deliver excellent entertainment to millions of people. Our explorations in narrative gameplay and Netflix’s track record of supporting diverse storytellers was such a natural pairing.”

For fans of Oxenfree and other Night School titles, Krankel reassured them that it will keep working on Oxenfree II and “cooking up new game worlds.”

“The Netflix team has shown the utmost care for protecting our studio culture and creative vision,” he wrote.

News of the acquisition comes less than a day after Netflix launched three new casual mobile games in Poland, Italy and Spain, a month after it released two games that were tie-ins to the “Stranger Things” series.

In Netflix’s second-quarter shareholder letter, the company said it is in the early stages of exploring its gaming model, and views gaming as another content category, like its original films, animation and reality TV shows.

Before working on mobile games, Netflix first ventured into interactive storytelling four years ago, when it launched “choose-your-own-adventure”-style children’s shows. The next year, it took the format to content for adult viewers with Black Mirror’s “Bandersnatch” episode. Since then, it’s added other interactive children’s shows like “Minecraft: Story Mode,” and “Emily’s Wonder Lab.”

Last week, Nintendo revealed N64 and Sega Mega Drive titles would be coming to the Switch Online service, as part of a new “expansion pack” tier. It’s essentially opened the door once again for all sorts of retro systems to be added in the future.

One that’s probably the most requested is Nintendo’s GameCube (it’s now 20 years old). Although the cube didn’t have much luck during its lifetime, nowadays it’s got a bit of a cult following. Being one of the most requested systems, one fan has now gone to the extent of a series of mock-ups – imagining what its library of games might look like if it got a NSO announcement.

The following tweet by YouTuber Reecee_yt illustrates what a boot-up screen might look like. Then there’s a look at possible launch titles including Metroid Prime, Zelda and F-Zero GX. And “future release” games such as Doshin the Giant and the original Animal Crossing (you know, the one with the NES games in it). And last, of all, we have a screenshot of Paper Mario.

As exciting as it looks, in reality – it doesn’t necessarily mean Nintendo has any plans to bring this particular library of games to its paid online service. A number of responses have also highlighted the storage requirements of GameCube games. One tweet, in particular, mentions how the 20 games listed could potentially fill up the internal storage.

@alexsoddlife “while this would be awesome, it would take up a *lot* of space. one untrimmed gamecube disc takes up about 1.35 gigabytes of disk space. if you add up all those games you listed, chances are you would have already filled up the switch’s internal storage.”

Still, it wasn’t enough to stop fans dreaming up new concepts – like a re-release of the famous WaveBird Wireless Controller. Here’s what one could look like packaged up, courtesy of the artist Baronduki:

Fans have also previously created “mock-ups” of Game Boy, Game Color and Game Boy Advance for Nintendo Switch Online.

Do you think we’ll ever see GameCube games show up on a service like NSO? Are you excited about the new collections being added in October? Leave a comment down below.