Game developer King will bring Candy Crush Saga to Windows 10. It will join classic Windows games such as Solitaire, Minesweeper, FreeCell and Hearts. These games have been part of Windows installs for many years, and after a brief departure in Windows 8, are returning in the latest version.
Although players have been able to play the addicting puzzle game for years on mobile devices and through Facebook, this is the first time it will be pre-installed on devices. In December, Candy Crush Saga was released for Windows Phone, allowing them to join in the addiction with their iOS and Android counterparts.
Microsoft doesn’t plan to stop just at Candy Crush Saga – the Games section of Windows will also include other King titles in the future. “Candy Crush Saga will be automatically installed for customers that upgrade to or download Windows 10 during the launch! Over time, other popular and awesome King game titles will be available for Windows 10,” Microsoft said on their company’s blog.
Some reporters have criticized Microsoft’s inclusion of the game in their software. “For anyone who doesn’t want to play Candy Crush Saga, this is bloatware plain and simple. Third-party bloatware. To have it included in clean installs of Windows 10 because of, what, a revenue-sharing deal? Disgusting. OEMs already stick enough garbage on computers without Microsoft aiding them at the operating system level,” said Hayden Dingman, games reporter at PCWorld.
According to King Entertainment’s earnings presentation, the company is seeing 158 million daily active users on average, with around 550 million average monthly active users. The majority of them access the game through mobile devices.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.