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Can Paolo Banchero Recapture LeBron James Comparison?
At Paolo Banchero's best, he shows flashes that are similar to LeBron James, but can he do it consistently?
Letting You Be A Complete Psychopath Reveals The Scale Of Fable's Ambition
Playground Games talks about the scope and limits of its fantasy RPG simulation
Spinning ‘right round (like a record): Maple City Music opening downtown storefront
The new shop 12 Kingman St. is set for a grand opening this Saturday, Sept. 5. The event from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. will feature local musicians all day with hundreds of records in bins and baskets, as well as a benefit raffle.
Aransas Pass chamber names September Business of Month
The Aransas Pass Chamber of Commerce has selected a local business that has been deemed the best of the month.
Nets’ Brown Jr. Receives Praise From Fellow Louisville Alum
Donovan Mitchell draws comparisons to James Harden while hailing the rookie’s elite basketball IQ, signaling a new era of playmaking and defensive versatility for the Brooklyn backcourt.
Has Jürgen Klopp found the solution to Germany’s striker problem?
Younes Ebnoutalib already has 4 goals and an assist in just 2 games this season. Is he Germany’s next star striker?
Smithtown High School East Science Director Wins National Chemistry Award
Maria Zeitlin was named the 2027 recipient of the James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching.
Something Is Brewing With StarCraft
The official website is suddenly inundated with glitched-out visuals, possibly serving as a teaser for a reveal at BlizzCon.
How Sports Science Impacts Iowa State Football Coaches' Preparation
One of the biggest coaching adaptations Jimmy Rogers has made since arriving in Ames is utilizing more sports-science resources to aid practice plans.
UK PS5 and Xbox sales tripled following GTA 6’s Netflix reveal
PS5 sales were up 33% on GTA 6’s reveal week…
Meet the Wisconsin football commit with nearly 1,000 rushing yards through two games
After rushing for nearly 3,500 yards last season, this future Wisconsin Badger is on pace to shatter those numbers this season.
Microsoft to impose time limits on Xbox cloud gaming subscribers as costs continue to climb
Xbox Game Pass subscribers will have cloud gaming capped starting in November.
GOP lawmaker says he expects McConnell will return to Capitol Hill later this month after lengthy absence
House Oversight Chair James Comer of Kentucky said Thursday that Sen. Mitch McConnell’s staff have told him they are hoping the senator – who has had an extended absence from Washington due to health issues – will return when the Senate comes back into session on September 14.
New DLSS 5 Swapper tool can mod DLSS 5 into games that don't support DLSS at all
The modding community has released a new version of DLSS Swapper made specifically for DLSS 5, simplifying and automating DLSS 5 modding in games.
Lego's Near 1:1 PlayStation Set Launches On October 1
The detailed Lego replica of the first PlayStation console also features two miniature dioramas of classic PlayStation games.
Compete Across Entrepreneurial Endeavors in the GTA Online Business Rivalries Event
Put your criminal enterprises to work all throughout September during the GTA Online Business Rivalries Event, steering the invisible hand of the free market in your favor with profitable bonuses for Executives, Bikers, Gunrunners, and Nightclub Owners.
Grand Theft Auto 6 Is Getting a Pair of Limited Edition PS5 Controllers
Rockstar Games and PlayStation have revealed a pair of GTA 6-themed PS5 controllers.
GTA 6 is getting two custom PS5 DualSense controllers
Both GTA 6 PS5 controllers will be available via PlayStation Direct…
Ghost of Yotei: Complete Edition's Most Wanted roguelike mode brings back Tsushima's Jin Sakai
Sucker Punch just gave fans of Ghost of Tsushima a good reason to buy Ghost of Yotei's upcoming Complete Edition.
Guild Wars 3's devs think they've found an answer to one of MMOs' biggest problems, but can ArenaNet pull it off?
I saw a hands-off demo for Guild Wars 3 at Gamescom, where studio head Colin Johanson and combat lead Kevin Stocker talked me through the new momentum feature.
Guild Wars 3 is the First MMO for Fans with ‘Real-Life Schedules’
The genre hasn't changed in 20 years. ArenaNet wants to fix that
Halloween Cleverly Carves Its Own Path Through Horror Multiplayer
Michael Myers comes alive in IllFonic's latest asymmetrical haunting grounds.
“Shohei Ohtani Is Absolutely Cooked” – MLB Fans Sound The Alarm After Dodgers Superstar Gets Struck Out 4 Times In Loss To Cardinals
Fans expressed concern over LA Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani after he struck out four times in the team’s 8-6 loss to the Cardinals at home on Wednesday. The Japanese two-way phenom has gone 12 games without a home run or an RBI.
A ‘Social Network’ follow-up and a ‘Hunger Games’ prequel headline fall movies
Audiences can also catch “Practical Magic 2,” “Sense and Sensibility” and a transformed Tom Cruise on the big screen.
PlayStation State of Play: Where to watch today’s presentations
A State of Play and State of Play Japan double-bill is taking place today…
College football watchability tiers: Ranking every Week 1 game
There are 43 college football games matching two teams from the Bowl Subdivision. We ranked all of them and placed them into four distinct tiers.
Palm Beach Lakes quarterback Jordan Johnson thriving after transfer
Palm Beach Lakes quarterback Jordan Johnson has thrown 10 TDs in two games after transferring from Palm Beach Gardens to follow family legacy.
Schools around Kansas City had to cancel or delay outdoor sports due to dangerous heat all week
High temperatures are pushing Kansas City area schools to delay football games and cancel sports practices in order to keep kids safe on the field. But "it’s an easy decision" to make, one local athletic director said.
Argentine league to pause games to honour Messi
The Argentine football league will pay tribute to Lionel Messi's international career by pausing all their domestic matches in the 10th minute this weekend.
Colorado QB depth chart: Can Julian Lewis, Zach Wilson's brother end post-Shedeur struggles?
The Buffaloes are looking to bounce back in 2026 with some intriguing names in their quarteback room.
Yankees Have ‘Most Underrated Reliever in the American League’
The New York Yankees are a franchise filled with big names.The legends of yesteryear need no introductions, and neither do many of this season’s superstars. Think guys like Aaron Judge, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried and even Ben Rice. At this point, everyone knows them.That’s not the case for one of the most important pitchers the […] The post Yankees Have ‘Most Underrated Reliever in the American League’ appeared first on HEAVY.
Report: Cardinals sign CB D'Shawn Jamison to practice squad
Jamison has appeared in 19 games across two seasons in the NFL with the Carolina Panthers and Pittsburgh Steelers.
Livestock, rides, games and music mark opening night at 2026 Great Allentown Fair (PHOTOS)
The Great Allentown Fair opened with a performance by The Four Tops and the Allentown Symphony Orchestra.
Beijing investigates researchers after Student Geng allegations
NSFC names more than 40 researchers at 31 institutions in its biggest disclosure to date, following blogger’s allegations in April.
Imagination Library sees enrollment boost after Parton's death
In the week since country music artist Dolly Parton's death, her namesake children's literacy program has seen an influx of support in her memory.
Sony and Microsoft say they’re not obligated to pass U.S. tariff refunds to consumers, echoing Nintendo
Back in July, Sony executives told investors that the company expected to receive $508 million in refunds from the U.S. government, after tariffs that the PlayStation-maker paid were ruled mostly in 2025 were found to be illegal. “Most” of the refund would by recouped by Sony’s gaming division, its chief financial officer said. This week, Sony’s lawyers are arguing that the company is not legally obligated to pass those proceeds on to consumers who paid for recently price-hiked PlayStation consoles. That’s in the face of a lawsuit from gamers calling on them to do exactly that. “Paying fair market price for voluntarily purchased consumer goods is not a legally cognizable injury in fact,” the lawyers wrote in a legal motion filed on Monday, as they asked a judge in California’s Northern District to dismiss a potential class action lawsuit over the tariff refunds. Microsoft made a similar argument two weeks ahead of Sony’s lawyers, in a similar lawsuit brought by a gamer in federal court in Washington State. As Microsoft’s legal team put it on August 21, in their request for a dismissal of that lawsuit: “There is nothing unjust about Plaintiff purchasing an Xbox at an advertised price and getting exactly what he paid for—regardless of whatever theory he devised months later about Microsoft’s cost structure.” Both legal fights are set to go on for some time. How things got to this point U.S. tariffs impacting a wide range of imported goods, including game consoles, had kicked off in early 2025. In May 2025, Microsoft raised the price of its Xbox consoles, citing “market conditions and the rising cost of development.” They raised them again that September. In August of that year, Sony raised the price of PlayStation 5 consoles, citing “a challenging economic environment.” Sony later told investors that its tariff fees for the fall quarter were nearly $200 million. in February of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the 2025 tariffs illegal, prompting impacted companies to begin to request refunds. In turn, consumers began suing the likes of Sony and Microsoft to get what they said was their share. The gamers in the Microsoft and Sony lawsuits argue that the 2025 price hikes of PlayStation and Xbox consoles, which added $50 or more to their sticker price, were due to illegal tariffs and should now be returned to consumers. The Sony suit started in May, when a group of gamers sued in federal court in California, saying Sony Interactive Entertainment (PlayStation) would be unjustly enriching itself if it did not pass tariff refunds to its PS5 buyers. “Sony is poised to be paid twice for the same unlawful tariff burden: once by its customers (through elevated prices) and once by the U.S. government (through tariff refunds),” the gamers’ lawyers wrote at the time. They called for Sony to partially reimburse anyone who bought a PlayStation in the U.S. since August 1, 2025. The Microsoft suit, filed by gamer Trevor Hastings against the Xbox giant in July, made similar claims. The console makers push back In late July, Nintendo’s lawyers, facing a similar suit accusing them of double-dipping on tariffs and refunds, replied with arguments that previewed Microsoft’s and Sony’s: “Nintendo or one of its retailers set a price for each product, and consumers decided whether that price was worth paying,” they wrote. Sony has buttressed that Nintendo-style argument this week by saying that the gamers have failed to prove that tariffs were the reason for its August 2025 PS5 price hike. They call thatclaim “speculative and illogical.” Other factors, including “inflation, currency fluctuations, component costs, logistics, competitive dynamics, or demand,” could have played a role. (No, the Sony lawyers do not break down the costs and factors that officially triggered the price increases). Microsoft has also argued that there’s no proof in these lawsuits that tariffs drove all or some of the price increase, as it seeks to dismiss the tariff refund suit it’s facing: “Plaintiff provides no specific allegations that would establish any pricing differential attributable to tariffs or suggest any possibility that Microsoft applied then or could recreate now any dollar-for-dollar calculation of tariff-related pricing—any more than it could any other market factor that affects pricing.” To further skewer the gamer side’s argument in its case, Sony’s lawyers have pointed to what might be a surprising defense: yet another PlayStation 5 price hike from this past spring, after the tariffs were ruled illegal. “If the original price increase were attributable to tariffs, SIE [Sony Interactive Entertainment, aka PlayStation] would have had no reason to raise prices again after the Supreme Court invalidated the IEEPA tariffs.” … “If tariffs were the cause of the price increases, one would expect SIE to lower prices once the tariffs were eliminated—not raise them again. Instead, the timeline confirms that the pricing of PlayStation consoles includes a diverse and dynamic set of input costs.” Judges have not yet ruled on the arguments made by Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. Last week, Panic, the company behind the small, yellow Playdate handheld said it would be passing its tariff refunds on to consumers. It is the only gaming hardware maker to have made such a pledge. Game File is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my reporting, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Item 2: A reporter’s second Second Life Wagner James Au, who from 2003-2006 was paid by San Francisco-based tech company Linden Lab to be a full-time journalist embedded in their virtual world Second Life, is returning to the company. This time, he’ll be an editorial advisor and business development specialist, he tells Game File. The new role will involve trying to share the stories of people inhabiting Second Life’s ongoing online world with reporters and by extension the public. Au plans to continue to also chronicle some of that through his long-running blog New World Notes. I’ve known Au since the mid-2000s and featured him in a 2007 article for the Columbia Journalism Review about reporters like him opening up virtual news outlets within Second Life. As I wrote at the time: On April 22, 2003, writing as Hamlet Linden for the New World Notes blog on Second Life’s Web site, Au introduced himself. “For the next few months, Linden Lab has invited me to set aside my journalist cap, and instead, don the digital beanie of their in-house virtual correspondent.” He wasn’t paid to keep it positive. He wrote about builders and eccentrics, but then in August of that year, he reported on a tax revolt against Linden Lab (a complaint about the fees it charges users who build stuff) led by a resident whose avatar was a big cat. Second Life has always been less of a video game and more of a virtual world where people can live, hang out, make art, sell virtual items and flirt. Back in 2007, Au described touring it as “sort of like underwater lucid dreaming.” For the past two decades, Au has maintained New World Notes as an independent publication. But he said he’s been drawn back to Second Life and Linden Lab as a place to directly work. The virtual world has around 650,000 monthly active users, he said, “which is actually about what it was during the hype wave.” Au says he’s still finding rich stories in Second Life, the kind that keep him interested 20 years into the beat: “Over the last few months for instance, I wrote about an SL creator in Venezuela whose apartment was destroyed by the earthquakes, so the global SL community rallied to get him back on his feet,” he told me. “Then there’s the woman from a Middle Eastern country who explored her lesbian sexuality in SL, then earned enough from her virtual jewelry to escape her abusive family situation and country.” Au wants to beckon more reporters to give Second Life another look. He argues that it is often ahead of internet trends, noting, for example, an early backlash in the community against AI-made art. Now the platform is drawing curiosity from more of the user-generated content community who’ve grown up with the likes of Roblox, according to Au. “Second Life was too early during its hype wave in 2005-2010, but it now feels right for a new wave of interest,” he told me.
N.Y. leads 23-state lawsuit over new Title X family planning funding conditions
Attorney General Letitia James is leading the challenge to new conditions tied to Title X.
CNBC Sport: Josh Harris on signing LeBron James, rebuilding the Commanders and rising sports values
CNBC's Michael Ozanian sits down with Josh Harris, managing partner of Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment.
Resident Evil 2 Director Says Capcom Is Making Current Resident Evil Games Too Damn Scary
Mood, MOOD!
Florida Democrats call for attorney general’s impeachment over Hope Florida
Democrats have little power in Tallahassee.
Fort Bragg Veteran celebrates expansion of high-end experiential entertainment brand
Photo provided by EscapologyAfter 15 years as an Army officer at Fort Bragg, Fayetteville resident Dan Cooke transitioned to business ownership to bring high-end experiential entertainment to North Carolina, applying strict military operational systems to scale his footprint across the state.Cooke got his start in the Army’s Boots to Business program.“Boots to Business was instrumental in preparing me to start a company. The program taught me how to develop a business plan, conduct market and financial analysis and critically evaluate whether a business concept was actually viable,” shared Cooke. “What made the program particularly valuable was that the instructors and mentors had real-world business experience…At the end of the course, I had to present and defend that plan. From there, they directed me to SCORE, where mentors helped me further refine the plan. I eventually presented it to a bank, which was impressed with the level of preparation, and I secured the financing necessary to build the business.”As Cooke neared the end of his military career, he began to wonder what would come next. Through his faith and some valuable mentors, he found the right avenue for his entrepreneurial interests.“While working on my instrument pilot rating, my flight instructor happened to tell me about escape rooms and the economics behind building them. He thought they could make for an interesting business. I took the analytical skills I had developed in the military, along with what I learned through Boots to Business, and began comparing the escape-room model against other opportunities I was considering,” explained Cooke. Cooke opened his first Escapology location in Fayetteville in 2019.“My approach was to start small and prove the model. Fayetteville made sense because I was already there, understood the market and could minimize my initial risk. It also became clear very quickly that I needed a partner that could provide the creative design, branding and industry knowledge that I did not have. After researching a number of options, Escapology became that partner,” added Cooke.Following the success of his initial venue in Fayetteville and a venue in Charlotte that opened in 2023, Cooke recently expanded into Raleigh with his third Escapology venue at Crabtree Valley Mall.His North Carolina footprint now includes:Fayetteville: A 5-room venue launched right after his Army transition in 2019.Charlotte: A 10-room venue opened in 2023, doubling his original operational footprint.Raleigh (Crabtree Valley Mall): A 6-room venue opened in May 2026, with plans to expand to 10 full rooms.Beyond his venues, Cooke expanded his local footprint by launching Jade Solutions in Aberdeen, N.C., an OEM manufacturing business that now builds prop and technical solutions for Escapology venues systemwide.Cooke shared that his long-term goal is to continue expanding Escapology in a healthy and sustainable way while enjoying the journey. “I actually did not start an entertainment business because I personally loved escape rooms. I started a business because I love the game of business itself. Growing up, I loved military simulation games and business tycoon games. I eventually had the opportunity to experience the first of those in the real world — I went to war, led troops and played my part in the military. Today, I would much rather apply that same drive to the real-world game of building businesses.I don't play business computer games anymore. I get to wake up and do it for real every day,” shared Cooke.
Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Fixes the Sequel’s Biggest Flaw, but Combat Still Fights the Player for Control
We went hands-on with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen at gamescom 2026, checking out the new features and content in the upcoming DLC.
Arc Raiders Publisher Reportedly Wants The Rights To Make A New StarCraftGame
Despite being almost 30 years old, Starcraft remains in the top 10 most played games in South Korean internet cafes
AZ Digest. ASU men's basketball names new sports performance coach
The latest news and updates happening around Arizona.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe gets a surprise Switch 2 update, bringing eight-player split-screen to the evergreen racing game
Nintendo sneakily updates a bunch of games. Mario Kart 8 gets a free Switch 2 update with 8-player split-screen, while Smash Bros Ultimate improves its online.
How to watch Anaheim Ducks games on TV and Prime Video in 2026-27
The Ducks will make 65 of their games free to watch on over-the-air networks.
Columbus Blue Jackets, NHL reveal next step in TV, streaming plans
Columbus Blue Jackets games will air on a new network with streaming on Prime Video for $19.99 monthly or $99.99 annually.
Dishonored's Creator Explains What So Many Games Are Missing
The co-creator of new studio Black Pony Immersive tells us about defying expectations in the most underserved genre
Airbnb names Pepijn Rijvers chief business officer
The former Tripadvisor and Booking.com leader succeeds Dave Stephenson as Airbnb furthers its hotel strategy.
NHL, Prime Video strike local streaming deal for 6 teams
The multiyear agreement makes Prime Video the exclusive local streamer for the Ducks, Hurricanes, Blue Jackets, Stars, Wild and Blues.
Nicolas Cage is the martini-drinking spy who inspired James Bond in cheeky “Fortitude” trailer
The action comedy also stars Matthew Goode, Ed Skrein, Ben Kingsley, and an unrecognizable Michael Sheen as Winston Churchill.
Cards and collectibles shop opens in Mount Vernon
MOUNT VERNON — A new place to buy and sell trading cards and play games with friends opened Tuesday in Mount Vernon.
September's first wave of Xbox Game Pass games revealed, and it brings RuneScape to console for the first time
A slow start to September for Xbox Game Pass, although it heralds the arrival of a RuneScape game on console for the first time ever. The first wave of gam
30 Years of ‘Joe B. and Locker’: Monumental Sports Network Celebrates Capitals Broadcast Duo’s Milestone Season, Announces 2026-27 Capitals Local Broadcast Schedule
MNMT to broadcast 70 regular season and four preseason games, with a special celebration event planned for Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin at upcoming Capitals game
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis’s gamescom Demo Shows a Classic Reimagined with a Scanner, a Grapple, and a Skill Tree
At gamescom 2026, the developers of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis demonstrated the Greece level with brand new features and tools.
Trump names pastor as tobacco health adviser at CDC
… Tobacco-related disease has taken an enormous toll on American Families…”
‘Wordle in 1’ is the NYT’s new puzzle just for subscribers
Fresh spins on familiar games.
Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis' Beautiful Visuals Can't Quite Hide Its Weird Changes
The reimagined world of Tomb Raider looks great, but that's where my praise has to end.
Apple TV Inks Deal With Yahoo Sports for Free MLB, MLS Alt-Casts
Under an Apple TV deal, Yahoo Sports will stream alt-casts of two MLB "Friday Night Baseball" games (but only the first two innings) and two MLS matches.
EA SPORTS FC™ 27 Brings Fans Closer to The World’s Game With New Partners, Leagues, and Stadiums
Powered by the support of global football partners, EA SPORTS FC™ 27 captures The World’s Game with unrivalled authenticity. Today, Electronic Arts announced an expanded roster of leagues, clubs, partners and stadiums coming to EA SPORTS FC 27, bringing players closer to the football they love through one of the most authentic representations of The World’s Game. Additions include new and renewed partnerships with a number of major European clubs, the highly anticipated return of Liga MX, and the continuation of EA SPORTS FC’s long-term relationship with the Bundesliga, the ROSHN Saudi League and the A-League. FC 27 AUTHENTICITY “With EA SPORTS FC 27, we’re building on years of bringing our community closer to football,” said James Salmon, Senior Director Partnership Marketing, EA SPORTS FC . “New and renewed partnerships bring more of the clubs, leagues, players and stadiums fans care about into FC 27, with the authenticity they expect from us. Together, they make The World’s Game
A look at one of this week's top high school football games
A look at this week's top high school football games in the Southland.
This week in Santa Cruz County business: Leadership shakeup at Driscoll’s; Watsonville’s new distillery takes inspiration from the sea
In her weekly look at local business, Jessica M. Pasko reports on high-level departures at Watsonville-based berry giant Driscoll's, a new distillery in South County and plenty of names, numbers and dates to know.
Capcom removes Denuvo from Dragon's Dogma 2 ahead of its new expansion
As well as a mountain of other changes, Dragon's Dogma 2 has had Denuvo DRM software removed ahead of the Dark Arisen expansion.
Dolly Parton And Tim Curry, Two Entertainment Icons Gone
On Tuesday, Aug. 25, the world received a one-two gut punch. First, the news hit that American musical icon and philanthropist Dolly Parton passed away at the age of 80.
Nintendo adds three more NES games to Switch Online, bringing the total to 87 in the West
Ninja Gaiden 3, Ikari Warriors and RC Pro-Am 2 join the Nintendo Classics service…
August Monthly Review: ChatGPT In Epic
Death, taxes, another frontier lab healthcare launch inspiring truly insane LinkedIn takes. As much as I want to stay away, I repeatedly am the crewman unplugging his ears whenever we pass these sirens. So it’s not the first and probably not the last time we dial up the typewriter rather than tie ourselves to the mast. The full blow-by-blow timeline: Health API Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe The End of the Standalone PHR (Jan 8): ChatGPT Health arrives for consumers, at the time powered by b.well. I was bullish on the approach in that the best way for the PHR to finally solve distribution was to meet consumers were they already are (i.e. When Horizontal Meets Healthcare (Jan 9): OpenAI for Healthcare puts out the shingle for enterprises, with SharePoint ingestion standing in for the EHR integration the product actually needed. Another One: Anthropic’s Healthcare Debut (Jan 16): Claude's version, on HealthEx rails instead of b.well, with Agent Skills for FHIR development as the one true vertical-specific investment. ChatGPT for Clinicians: The Trap Sprung (Apr 24): OpenAI filled in the missing GTM middle with a free product for verified clinicians, effectively peeling the enterprise wrapper off ChatGPT for Healthcare and taking the PLG fight directly to OpenEvidence. OpenAI’s Second Attempt at Health (Jul 31): a relaunch of their patient specific app, now branded Health in ChatGPT, where the privacy partition came out, the connectors thinned, and b.well disappeared in favor of first-party FHIR work against a smaller network Beyond a Shingle So what was announced now? Today, we’re introducing a new electronic health record integration that brings authorized patient context from Epic into ChatGPT for Healthcare, along with the Healthcare Public Data plugin for direct, structured access to official healthcare datasets like PubMed, DailyMed, and CMS Coverage. Together, these capabilities bring ChatGPT closer to the systems and sources healthcare teams trust, while supporting the controls and compliance healthcare work requires. The core portfolio is unchanged from prior announcements we delineated and discussed (aside from the relaunch of patient-facing). Since trade publications still seem to be confusing them by using the wrong names: Enterprise sales motion: ChatGPT for Healthcare Protecting their core product / PLG: ChatGPT for Clinicians Consumer/patient-facing product: Health in ChatGPT So really, this is a feature release (specifically for ChatGPT for Healthcare when it comes to EHR integration). What’s cool about it, though, is that we are moving beyond just putting out a shingle. Everything in the January enterprise launch was horizontalizable: Horizontal tech companies thus generally start verticalization with their “putting out a shingle phase”. Telling the world you’re open for business as a horizontal tech company reliably attracts early inbound interest from buyers who are already trying to force-fit horizontal tools into domain-specific workflows and are eager for any signal that the vendor intends to support their use case more directly. Nothing was really vertical specific, which is exactly what you'd expect from the ultimate hypergrowth horizontal company dipping their toes into specific industries. But eventually you have to stop changing the sign on the door and start changing the product. Can you guess where the horizontal product was going to run out of road? This is the core dilemma writ large: verticalization requires differentiation, while scale economics of consumer and horizontal push toward unification. I’ve buried the lede so deep here it will be painful to some readers, but what should be shocking to no one is that my perspective is that EHR integration is the only path that meaningfully resolves this tension for ChatGPT for Healthcare. Integration with Microsoft Sharepoint is fine, but it is categorically insufficient for any product that hopes to influence clinical decision-making. SMART Money Well here we are, eight months later! Real vertical investment has begun, which surprised a few people. One friend in the industry messaged me: “Absolutely no way Epic gave ChatGPT API access.” Looking forensically at the announcements, the integration is notably read-only across appointment notes, laboratory results, medications, and specialist documentation. So while I’m not a betting man, I'd wager the house this is a SMART on FHIR launch: That sounds a lot like USCDI! The recommended path for the workflow they outline would be SMART on FHIR Their Health AI lead’s post is evocative of both standalone and EHR launch SMART, which another termed “ChartGPT” and “EHR Plugin” The implementation burden for SMART on FHIR is the lowest of the available integrative paths This is the team who literally did patient-facing SMART on FHIR with Epic last month Most importantly, if you’re a horizontal company, you generally still haven’t taken the full plunge and thus (overly) value reusability. SMART on FHIR is the logical compromise: healthcare-specific enough to matter, but standardized enough to reuse. Nobody Asked Judy Another friend asked “I thought they had to go to each health system, or did they go direct to Epic and now health systems opt in?” Given the trust paradigms in healthcare, this functionally cannot be Epic hoovering up all the data for OpenAI and shoving ChatGPT in their customers’ faces (or they would revolt). However, I do believe the aforementioned terrible coverage by TechCrunch and other outlets is probably responsible for that question, given the 325 million reference. When using FHIR as a business associate to an Epic customer, there is no EHR gatekeeping to speak of, as that isn’t how fhir.epic.com works: You register an app You pick your APIs You test against the sandbox APIs You list as “Ready for Production” Hospitals pick your app You test and go live with them Bluntly, nobody had to say yes or no in Verona (nor were they given the chance). Vendor Services (their next developer tier up that I doubt OpenAI is using quite yet in this initial release) certainly has contractual paperwork that some resent, but even there, the twin pressures of mounting antitrust and information blocking make outright gatekeeping increasingly fraught. My friend’s sentiment is, to me, representative of a broader industry neurosis, perhaps a sort of scar tissue of prior eras: people assume the gate is still there and never actually try the door. There are certainly other ways Epic (and any EHR) can put its thumb on the scale, but they are not so dumb as to stand in front of a federally mandated API and play bouncer at this exact moment in time. So I think they can and probably should go deeper, as this release is at best parity and at worst behind vertical-specific competition. OpenEvidence did a basic SMART launch with Sutter Health in February, allowing for more convenient evidence search by providers. They then add patient-context (the equivalent SMART on FHIR flow to what we see here) when Cedars-Sinai went enterprise-wide in May. UpToDate has four distinct applications across deeper workflows like patient engagement listed in Epic Showroom and announced a partnership with Epic to power Art at UGM Abridge and other ambient scribes have invested deeply into the deepest bidirectional clinical copilot workflow with integrations well beyond SMART on FHIR. In that light, the “Who is OpenAI primarily targeting here?” is clear. This release brings them into striking distance of OpenEvidence, but not the others quite yet. They are the only one of the three you can reach without building something truly Epic-specific. When will they go further? Competition is a great motivator to overcome the horizontal demons and start building things that can’t be reused: not across industries, not across EHRs, maybe not past the customer you built them for. That’s the price of actually verticalizing. The question is if and when OpenAI will be willing to pay it. Month in Review Here is the monthly review. As a reminder, this is a regular round-up of the month’s posts and other content to surface things you may have missed across regulation, litigation, interoperability, and beyond. AI assistance is used in these bullet summaries so I can focus on articles. Articles Published: None this month Video Content: The Information Exchange: Standards-based Thruple Edition (Aug 14): Back to school for us too, with Brad reporting in from the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem’s one year anniversary in DC. We get into the January CMS-0057 deadline, the fall rulemaking reading list, and why enrollment still keeps most apps off FHIR. The Information Exchange: Epic Dúnadan Edition (Aug 25): A UGM roundup with Ryan Brickner joining for the first time to check our takes against what the building actually thinks. Rangers, Ergo sitting on top of EHI, and a down-market lineup that needs some cuts. Regulatory: Stacked Deck, Bad Hand (Aug 05): ONC’s website refresh took the entire HIT Policy Committee record with it, so I rebuilt the archive and went looking for the regulatory capture story everyone assumes is buried in there. Stacking the deck and winning the hand turn out to be very different things. The Sixth Generation of Patient Access (Aug 19): A quick catalog of the five generations of patient access we’ve layered on since HIPAA, and the two candidates now competing to be the sixth. One is planned. The other is the market routing around the plan entirely. Court cases: Three Cases Walk Into a Docket (Aug 06): Two surprise settlements cleared the board in a single week, and then Judge Maddox dropped ninety-four pages on Vyne v. Henry Schein. The sleeper is a DMCA holding that makes direct-to-database a considerably riskier business model. Epic v. Health Gorilla: Into the MDL (Aug 10): Nine class actions are headed to Miami, and the Panel signaled it wants to bring the case that spawned them along too. That would leave Epic arguing the requests were obviously fraudulent in one courtroom and unknowable in the other. Amazon v. Perplexity: Agents Are Legalized! (Aug 11): The Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction against Comet, holding that the user is the one accessing the servers rather than the company that built the agent. A real win for agentic access, and a much narrower one than the headline suggests. Veeva v. Epic: Come At Me, Bro (Aug 26): Epic’s response brief wants the dismissal affirmed and, unusually, wants the opinion published as precedent. Buried in it is Epic’s own description of what its non-competes actually prohibit, which current and former employees should read closely. EHRs: The Contract Epic Would Never Sign Today (Aug 04): A 1999 SEC exhibit catches Epic licensing nearly its entire product line, Tapestry included, to the company that became TriZetto. The marketing services menu attached to it is the part that will make you blink. Forecast from Verona (Aug 07): The Epic Almanac makes one argument six different ways: the AI is only as good as the networks behind it. Emmie headlines, Art’s context stack is the most ambitious part, and Penny finally gets an autonomous coding date on the calendar. Works With Epic MyChart (Aug 17): Epic’s first new Showroom category since the death of Workshop certifies hardware instead of software, badge on the box and all. Made for iPhone, but for blood pressure cuffs, and rough news for anyone selling the RPM stack sitting in between. UGM Hot Takes 2026 (Aug 20): Everyone else covered the AI announcements, so I went after Savvy deleting the payment gateway, Rangers as Boost with the timer removed, and a down-market lineup with too many entries. Plus the Health Grid tidbits I cannot help myself on. MyChart Central Grows Up (Aug 24): Device data and Emmie turn Epic’s identity hub into a full consumer platform, which is both a logical answer to ChatGPT and a bit of a mistake. It also happens to be the best scraping target Epic has ever shipped. Industry Analysis: The Wrong Yardstick (Aug 12): Vertical software keeps getting judged against Superhuman and Notion, which is the wrong bar entirely. Your user is comparing your product to a whiteboard and forty phone calls before lunch. Primitives vs. Abstractions (Aug 27): Developers want building blocks, systems of record prefer to hand out business logic, and both sides have a real case. There’s no test from the outside that separates the engineering reason from the competitive one, which is why this keeps ending up in court. Cross-industry Comparisons: The Two Kinds of Platform Power (Aug 18): Attention power and record power are different problems that keep getting handed the same regulatory toolkit. Congress’s latest swing at Big Tech shows both what’s possible and where it falls apart. The Dogs of (Platform) War (Aug 21): A CourtListener alert turned up a property management fight with healthcare’s exact shape and none of the Cures Act. Shell prospects, ghost accounts, a notetaker bot that came back to haunt someone, and a lawyer arguing both sides of the same theory in two states. Fractals All the Way Down (Aug 31): Yardi dominates property management right up until you zoom into one segment, where AppFolio owns it outright and Yardi doesn’t appear at all. Where you draw the line around a B2B software market is about to decide an awful lot of cases. Other News: If Judy Had the Courage (Aug 13): A short eulogy for the era when software was allowed to look insane: WinAMP, bold colors, and everything the grey chatbot era has taken from us. External Media: Portland Monthly Health Tech Meetup: Erin O’Brien channeled my own feelings - maybe it’s just because it’s August and beautiful, but the monthly edition of the PDX Health community meetup was a ripper. Make sure to reach out if interested to join for the next one. STAT’s Coverage of Epic This Month: Brittany Trang of STAT did a fantastic job of breaking the FTC investigation that’s been lurking, as well as UGM related coverage, so I had to give her her wish of a meme. Fall Conferences: I’m pumped to be kicking off my fall conference season in NYC at Nabla Accelerate next month, which Chrissy provided the link to apply for. Here’s the rest of my schedule in case you want to meet up: Commonwell (Redwood Shores, CA): Oct 13-14 Open@Epic (Madison, WI): Oct 21-22 eHealthExchange (Austin, TX): Oct 27 Sequoia Project (Austin, TX): Oct 28-29 HLTH (Vegas): Nov 15-18 RSNA (Chicago): Nov 29-Dec 3 Posts I Liked: HTI-6 Should Unbundle API Certification: Josh Mandel makes the case that HTI-6 should split (g)(10) into separate authorization and data certifications, so a PACS or a genomics platform can certify only the role it actually performs. Imaging is the urgent example, but the structure solves a much bigger problem. On implementing ePrior Auth with Epic: Scott Rossignol’s field notes from a live ePrior Auth build on Epic, including the two app registrations nobody warns you about and the CPT mapping problem waiting at the end. CMS-0057 implementations are going to be such a beast. Healthcare point solutions are starting to look a lot like streaming services: Spencer Dorn runs the cable-to-streaming arc against health IT and lands squarely on the bundling half of the cycle. Bundling can be good! It can also be bad! Life is nuanced. Health API Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Chomp the Block returns, Lauren Groff with Marlon James at Heartwood
Looking for something to do this week in Gainesville/Alachua County? Check out Chomp The block, the Matheson Museum, live music in Gainesville and Alachua.
The Grand Theft Auto run button has changed after 25 years - GTA 6 no longer requires you to tap a face button to peg it
Rockstar has decided to finally fall in line with other games regarding how you control Grand Theft Auto 6. You'll no longer need to tap a face button to run.
Maybee church festival to offer food, music and family fun
The Divine Grace Parish Fall Festival in Maybee will feature meals, music, games and family activities from Sept. 18-20.
Newcastle 2.0 Underway After Transformative Transfer Window
Matthias Jaissle’s tactical revolution takes shape at St James’ Park as marquee signing Matias Fernández-Pardo headlines a ruthless squad overhaul built on youth, intensity, and strategic identity.
CBS Sports Extends English-Language Liga MX Coverage for 2026-27
If you’ve been following Liga MX in the States and wondering whether the English-language option on CBS would stick around, the answer is in. CBS Sports is continuing its coverage this season, committing to at least 40 regular-season matches plus additional playoff games from the 2026-27 schedule. Those games will air on CBS Sports Network […] The post CBS Sports Extends English-Language Liga MX Coverage for 2026-27 appeared first on HEAVY.
Unfinished business: Texas women’s basketball challenges itself early through nonconference schedule
Texas women’s basketball will test its revamped roster from the start after a disappointing exit in the Final Four last season against UCLA. Head coach Vic Schaefer will get a good look at his roster prior to the Longhorns’ daunting nonconference schedule. Texas has set up exhibition games against two of college’s best programs, UConn...
Former Florida governor hopeful hauled out of county meeting after protesting Isarael investments
James Fischback was forcibly removed from a Miami-Dade commissioners meeting after protesting the county's raised investment limit in Israel bonds.
All kinds of entertainment on the midway at the Champlain Valley Fair
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What Box Office Bomb Crushed Obsession on Streaming?
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Before we get into this week’s issue, let me ask you for some suggestions. At the risk of coining too many names for too many things (hence my dictionary of terms...), I need a name for straight-to-streaming films that are too expensive to justify a straight-to-streaming release, but not big enough to justify a theatrical release. Like some of the films I highlighted in last week’s tally of the biggest film flops of 2026 so far: Hulu’s Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, Pizza Movie or Never Change! They don’t feel like “made for TV movies” (think Hallmark and Lifetime movies, cheap Netflix romcoms, or Disney Channel Original movies, for example) but they don’t feel big enough for the big screen. They’re not “cinematic” enough, so to speak. As I wrote... “I still need a name for this middle zone of film that’s too expensive to go straight-to-streaming but too small to justify a theatrical release (with all the PR, distribution, marketing and whatnot costs that go along with it), the Goldilocks zone of streaming film death.” Friend of the newsletter Brandon Katz has suggested the “Bermuda Budget Triangle”, “The Platform Gap” and “The Distribution Deadzone”. I love that first one. I’d offer up the much wordier “The Streaming Budget Dead Zone” or “the Goldilocks Zone of streaming film death” but that last one isn’t accurate since, unlike Goldilocks’ porridge, these films are the opposite of “just right”. That’s the problem! Anyway, if you have any suggestions, let me know! On to today’s Streaming Ratings Report. As you can tell by today’s headline, things are going to be spicy! I’m looking at a box office bomb that did really, really well on streaming, somewhat challenging a few different narratives. And another Netflix series declined in its second season. All that, plus Wicked: For Good switching streamers, The Hawk continuing its strong run, _The Bear’_s finale season finally dropping off the charts, the WNBA posting a big viewership number, “shallow libraries”, a sitcom spinoff failing to launch, more big budget IP flopping on Paramount+, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of July 20th to July 26th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - The Latest Theatrical Success Story on Streaming In the latest edition of “Flops, Bombs and Misses of the First Half of 2026”, I made a crucial change: I started including theatrical films with the streaming misses. The streamers have collectively—including Netflix, but not to as big of an extent—stopped making a lot of straight-to-streaming films, and the ones they do make aren’t as expensive as in the heyday of the streaming bubble. After the following two films bombed in theaters, you’d guess that they’ll be included in my next collection of flops, bombs and misses six months from now: Masters of the Universe on Prime Video (only $64 million domestic box office) Mortal Kombat II on HBO Max ($79 million domestic) But you’d be wrong! Masters of the Universe, a reboot of the He-Man franchise, a toy from the 1980s, came to streaming on 22-July and did great! This long-gestating project—it’s been at every studio for years, and came close to getting a greenlight at Netflix—then finally came to theaters in June, and showed up on streaming less than two months later. (I don’t love this short theatrical window.) It surprisingly grabbed nearly 20 million hours on its debut: That means, wait for it, Masters of the Universe is currently the eighth biggest film on streaming through two weeks. My rough bar for “hit” is shows or films in the top 15%. Ergo…Masters of the Universe is a legit, streaming hit! (One quick caveat: if it falls out of the top ten next week, it will move to 13th overall, just on the edge of the top 15.) Of course, that’s the data for just 2026. Here’s how it stacks up to Prime Video’s theatrical films: That drop into its second week is typical for Amazon films, but also a worrying sign. I have a feeling interest in this film is front-loaded and we’ll see it drop off after this. As for Mortal Kombat II, in this case, the viewership numbers roughly match the theatrical outing, with only 4.1 million hours in its first week. Here’s how it stacks up to other HBO Max films: The best defense of this number is that, as a relatively violent rated-R film, Mortal Kombat II never had a good chance at breaking out. So now it’s time for a little big of “Entertainment Nuance Guy”: First, yeah, my headline is obviously facetious, since Masters of the Universe besting Obsession says more about horror as a genre than it does that film. Second, I read and listened to quite a few “nobody wanted this IP” takes about Masters of the Universe, and that’s not really true. At least enough people wanted it to power a 20 million+ hour debut! Third, both this film and Mortal Kombat II were considered “average” by viewers, but not great films, with a 6.4 and 6.3 respectively on IMDb. That’s just shy of the level needed to be a word-of-mouth hit. Fourth, in the olden days, strong word of mouth could transform a box office miss into a cable/DVD hit, like Austin Powers or The Shawshank Redemption. We haven’t seen a lot of examples of that on streaming, though. And there are far fewer ways to monetize the post-theatrical life of a film these days. Fifth, Prime Video has shown an ability to push their own titles well, likely because they control the Amazon Fire TV ecosystem. Add it all up, and here’s my nuanced take on Masters of the Universe: it was a box office bomb, but, shockingly, a streaming hit. Unfortunately, while being a theatrical hit saves your film financially, being a streaming hit does not. Both Masters of the Universe and Mortal Kombat II had big budgets and needed to make more money in theaters to justify them. So…Straight-to-Streaming or Theaters? We’ve hit a really fun point in the streaming calendar, since the films that came out in theaters in April, May, and June are now arriving on streaming. So the “Do theatrical releases help streaming performances?” question is gonna get a fresh round of updates nearly every week. No single week will answer the question, but we may get some insights. For example, so far in 2026, it looks like theatrical films are lasting longer on the weekly Nielsen film charts. Here’s a list of films that have made the charts in their fourth or fifth week of release, separated by “for kids” and “general entertainment”: It certainly seems like theatrical films are lasting just a pinch longer on the charts, with Project Hail Mary being the current five-week champion. One Battle After Another did well for HBO Max too, and even The Sheep Detectives made it four weeks. The only exception to this trend? Obsession, which only lasted two weeks on the charts. You might tempted to overreact to this news. Don’t. Obsession is a huge horror hit, but horror just doesn’t do as well on streaming. By the way, here’s the Google Trends for various theatrical and stremaing films: Plus, when it comes to Netflix in four months, Obsession may have another big boost. Quick Notes on Film Note that when I write, “the streamers have pulled back on straight-to-streaming films” that doesn’t mean “abandoned” because Netflix is gonna Netflix. On 24-July, they released 72 Hours, a Kevin Hart comedy. Along with Eddie Murphy, Mark Wahlberg, John Cena and Adam Sandler, Kevin Hart is a streaming film star now. Did this latest one work? Not really. It only garnered two weeks of 13.2 and 12.2 million hours on its debut, well below the 20-million-hour hit threshold. It also was poorly received critically—a 44 on Metacritic—and by customers—a 5.4 on IMDb on 21K IMDb reviews. We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… The latest Netflix true crime doc to pop on the charts… How The Bear finished its run… Netflix’s latest Western to return to streaming… What Paramount+ animated film flopped… And what sitcom also missed… All the flops, bombs and misses… And a whole lot more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! I’m behind by a week, so we’ve got two issues coming your way this week, including one in a couple of days or so, then we’ll be all caught up**.** Next issue, inspired by The Super Mario Galaxy Movie coming to Peacock, I’m going to take a look at the workhouse of streaming TV: kids films. Plus The Devil Wears Prada 2 continues theatrical films’ big run on streaming. All that, plus another surprise hit on Hulu, Lioness on CBS, and a whole lot more. Long term, LeBron James is filming his own “Last Dance”-style docu-series, surprising no one. But as I’ve been writing about a lot this summer, this genre is really overrated, so whoever ends up buying it (reportedly ESPN) really shouldn’t pay too much for it.
WATCH: Massie names 14 Epstein associates to 'shame' DOJ
Speaking from the House floor Monday, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., pointed to how much time had passed since President Donald Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Apple Maps renames Lake Ontario to Lake America, joining Google
Apple is following Google Maps, after President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to change the name of a Great Lake.
Ridley Scott’s rep addresses rumor the director blames Paul Mescal for the underwhelming box office performance of ‘Gladiator II’
A rep for Ridley Scott is shutting down reports that the director said Paul Mescal ‘wasn’t masculine enough’ in ‘Gladiator II.’
Florida Politics: Hope Florida, Nixon-Moody debate?
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is set to host a forum with several huge names in the Florida Republican Party, such as Attorney General James Uthmeier and GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Byron Donalds. Meanwhile, Angie Nixon is throwing her hat into the ring, challenging U.S. Senator Ashley Moody to a public debate ahead of the general election. POLITICO Reporter and Florida Playbook author Kimberly Leonard joined FOX 35's Garrett Wymer live over Zoom to discuss what's new in Florida politics.
NVIDIA DLSS 5 Launches in NBA 2K27 September 3rd, DLSS Comes to STAR WARS Zero Company, Onimusha: Way of the Sword & The Blood of Dawnwalker
Each week, new games and apps integrating NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, and advanced ray-traced effects are released or announced, delivering the definitive PC experience for GeForce RTX players. In the last few days, STAR WARS Zero Company and Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 have launched with DLSS....
Rockstar Games unveils its official GTA Online RP server, mere months before GTA 6
GTA 6's online is still an unknown, but Rockstar Games is putting a closed beta out for its GTA Online RP server called nopixel 5, and it's coming soon.
Trump names pastor as tobacco health adviser at CDC
President Trump on Tuesday announced the selection of Pastor Darrell Scott, a longtime supporter of his, to be the tobacco health adviser for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). T…
Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences museum is closing
The Academy will continue scientific research and public education, but its museum will go the way of the dinosaur.
6 Big September Games We've Already Played if You Want to Know What We Think of Them So Far
September is here, which means the Fall is here, which means some of the biggest games of the year drop this month. We've already played some of the biggest ones, so check out our previews of Marvel's Wolverine, Control Resonant, and more on this page.
PlayStation argues "reasonable consumers" already know they don't actually own their digital games
PlayStation lawyers have argued that "reasonable" players aren't being deceived by Sony's small print, which says digital game purchases don't grant ownership.
Rockstar Games Reveals Its Official GTA Online Roleplaying Server, nopixel V
Rockstar Games has revealed its official GTA Online roleplaying server, nopixel V, ahead of GTA 6's launch.
New Sony Policy Could Lead To Legal Action Against Vocal PS5 Disc Critics
Sony announces aggressive new measures amid an ongoing PS5 protest that has plagued games like Marvel's Wolverine
Trump names pastor to advise administration on tobacco health
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Pastor Darrell Scott will serve his administration as an adviser for tobacco health issues on a committee that advises the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
DLSS 5 Officially Goes Live September 3 With NBA 2K27, Exclusive to RTX 50-series "Blackwell" GPUs
NVIDIA has confirmed that DLSS 5 will officially launch on September 3 alongside NBA 2K27, and it will remain exclusive to GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs. When asked directly at a Gamescom technical briefing whether older cards would ever receive support, NVIDIA gave a flat answer: "It's RTX...
Trump Names Pastor to Advise Administration on Tobacco Health
WASHINGTON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Pastor Darrell Scott will serve his administration as an adviser for tobacco health issues on a committee that advises the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "For far too long,
Cowboys OT Broderick Jones Blames Steelers for Past Failures
Newly-acquired Dallas Cowboys offensive tackle Broderick Jones had excuses for his failures with the Steelers. The post Cowboys OT Broderick Jones Blames Steelers for Past Failures appeared first on HEAVY.
GTA 6 Removes The Series' Worst Feature
Out-run the cops without breaking your controller.
gamescom 2026’s Steam wishlist winners
gamescom wrapped up last weekend, and it was bloody fantastic. It really felt like the industry had a spring in its step again. The show itself was BUZZING, with 368K attendees (+3% over last year), maxed-out exhibit space, and Opening Night Live pulling over 78M online views (+7.5%). Let’s have a look at the games at the event that brought in the most new Steam wishlists between August 23 and 30. One quick thing before we start, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but wishlists are NOT a barometer for launch sales (they’re bookmarks, not baskets is what we always say over here at Alinea). With that aside, wishlists are a nice gauge of hype, so let’s dive in. Witche(r)s and Warlocks take the top two spots The biggest game of the event (by new wishlists, anyways) wasn’t a game at all. It was an expansion. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past, nabbed 451K Steam wishlists by the end of the weekend. It’s a big example of something we bang on about constantly: proven IP with built-in fandom is the most powerful force in this market. But said IP can also ripple into other external success stories (more on that later!). Anyway, Songs of the Past debuted at Opening Night Live, and it’s the first Witcher 3 expansion in over a decade, landing next year after a full Witcher 3 remaster (free for existing owners!) arrives next month. The Witcher 3 has sold around 66M copies, and I’ll be one of those owners jumping back in to refresh myself on the core game (like there isn’t enough to play!), then play the expansion next year. This is all part of CDPR’s plan. The studio is clearly whetting everyone’s appetite for The Witcher 4 in 2028 via a classic bridge strategy. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Releasing a free 4K remaster next month – followed by a proper expansion in 2027 – keeps IP top-of-mind across a huge gap between content (games-wise, anyway). It kind of echoes Capcom’s evergreen catalogue strategy. And outsourcing co-development to Fool’s Theory (a studio led by trusted Witcher 3 veterans) keeps CDPR’s internal headcount focused on The Witcher 4. #2 by wishlists between Aug 23 and 30 went to another giant IP: Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, published by Wizards of the Coast and developed by Invoke Studios (a team of ex-Far Cry, Watch Dogs, and Splinter Cell devs). It’s due to launch in 2027, and it looks brilliant so far. It’s a dark-fantasy open world with third-person spell-slinging. It’s a very Witcher-ish aesthetic. As you might expect, 48% of Warlock’s Steam wishlisters have played Baldur’s Gate 3, and 46% have played The Witcher 3. One to watch. For sure! Mash-ups: Anime GTA (!?) and a city-builder for kids (and adults) Ananta took #3 with 302K new wishlists. It’s an open-world game that looks like GTA and Persona had a baby. It was published by NetEase, developed by Naked Rain, and got a trailer at Opening Night Live. I got hands-on at the show, and it wears its influences openly; there’s literal web-slinging (very Spider-Man) and a LOAD of mini-games (Like a Dragon). It’s free-to-play and out in January. For Ananta, Naked Rain is taking the free-to-play, cosmetics-only route. That’s certainly a choice for a single-player open-world game. Without gacha mechanics driving high ARPU, Ananta is betting purely on top-of-funnel reach and long-term retention. This puts pressure on skin appeal when there’s no multiplayer lobby to flex in (although, co-op is reportedly coming later). Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Then there’s Lego Skylines (273K wishlists between Aug 23 and 30), which does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a cosy Lego twist on the city-builder genre, as shallow or as deep as you fancy (five min quick sesh or ten-hour no-lifer session; latter for me). There’s some family-friendly stuff in there like couch co-op, which is only really viable on console. Iceflake Studios, which Paradox acquired back in 2020 is developing this one. So Paradox is probably looking for a family-friendly onramp to its rad Cities: Skylines games. The overlap there is plain, with 33% of Lego Skylines wishlisters having played Cities: Skylines and 16% Skylines II. There’s no doubt plenty of parents here (and uncles, ahem) planning to indoctrinate the next gen of city-builders. I’ll definitely be playing with my youngest nephew. This one could be big and educational. I’m very curious to see more. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Mature IP, new and old, rounds out the list As for the rest of the list of gamescom games by new wishlists between Aug 23 and 30: Heroes of Might & Magic III Remake got 189K new wishlists. It remakes the iconic 1999 turn-based-strategy classic in full 3D and 4K. It follows this year’s Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era (~1.8M copies sold, as per our estimates), and around a quarter of the III Remake wishlisters have played Olden Era, including 7% of them this month. Wardogs – a $40 PvP shooter – added another 146K to an already massive pile (nearly 1.6M total). It’s published by Team17 and made by Bulkhead. It plays somewhere between the tactical squad stuff of … Squad and the all-out-chaos battlefield of … Battlefield. It’s up to 100 players, and it’s out in about 10 days. It’s already pre-sold over 500K copies on Steam ($16.6M), boosted by a pre-order-only beta. It sold another 70K copies during gamescom, too. Afterworld managed 121K new wishlists. It’s a Paradox-made post-apocalyptic grand-strategy game, and it was announced at the show. It’s a departure from Paradox’s usual historical stuff, and the studio’s first new setting in over a decade. The Paradox purists are into it, with over half its wishlisters having played Hearts of Iron IV (19% this month) and 41% Crusader Kings III (17% this month). Metro 2039 got 110K during the show, tunnelling its total past 1.3M. Nearly 40% of wishlisters have played 2020’s Metro Exodus, the previous mainline title in the series. The Metro novels are Russian, dev 4A Games is Ukrainian, and it’s set in Moscow, so it’s unsurprising that – after the US (17.3% of wishlisters) – the next two countries are Russia (12.7%) and Ukraine (10.0%). The Blood of the Dawnwalker drew in (the blood of) 108K new wishlisters, now totalling an impressive 1.7M (at a $70 price point, though). It’s an open-world dark-fantasy action-RPG set in 14th-century Europe (with vampires!), made by some former Witcher devs at Rebel Wolves. Again, it shows. Over half of Blood of the Dawnwalker’s wishlisters have played The Witcher 3, and its #2 market is Poland, home of Rebel Wolves. That’s that hometown-hero effect we keep banging on about again! And Blood of the Dawnwalker plays very well, by the way. While it looks like a Witcher clone on the surface, it actually brings a lot to the table mechanics-wise. I love the whole time-as-a-currency spin on RPG gameplay. It gives the game a different, refreshing pace. Essentially, you start Blood of the Dawnwalker with a pool of 480 action points spread across 30 days and 30 nights. As for how the game performs, we’ll be posting some numbers next week, so hit subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready. Subscribe The Witcher’s legacy ripples Make no mistake: on a high level, this was The Witcher‘s gamescom. The #1 game by wishlisters was a Witcher 3 DLC. Warlock is clearly Witcher-inspired – as is Blood of the Dawnwalker, which was made by ex-Witcher devs. There was a lot of other cool stuff on the floor that we’ll no doubt be covering in subsequent newsletters, though! As always, wishlists went through the roof for sequels, remakes, DLC, and licensed IP. As always, though, these wishlists will likely convert to about 5% to 10% of launch-day buyers, with the probable exception of The Witcher DLC – the exception that proves the rule. Either way, we’ve got a nice, diverse list here – one that is very Witcher-y, Paradox-y, and – if you’re a fan of great games on Steam – a bloody good list. We even got a bunch of new IP to get excited for. Great gamescom! Even if we are still processing that unfathomable number of mini Kölsch beers! One more thing: GTA 6 broke the internet (again) Move aside, Spider-Man and The Odyssey (I love you both, really). But the decade’s defining entertainment zeitgeist is round the corner. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Rockstar dropped an extended look at GTA 6 last week. It was INSANE, the most impressed I’ve ever been by a showcase like this. You can see the budget seeping through every second of the extended look, and this level of game is unobtainable for any other publisher. Everyone’s going nuts, and rightly so. GTA 6 is out in holiday 2026, and it’ll be the biggest entertainment release ever, full stop. For those without a PS5 or Xbox Series console, a $500-$900 console is a big ask in this economy, but GTA will pull a lot of last-generation-console fence sitters over the current-gen fence either way: The autumn timing puts GTA 6 on (digital) shelves for the holidays, meaning a PS5 or Xbox (let’s be honest, mostly the former) will be on many a Christmas and Hanukkah list. Demand will outweigh the struggling supply, though, and PS5 Pros are already sold out and being sold at a markup via scalpers. Every console that isn’t on a shelf is a sale deferred or lost, and worse, it hands scalpers the margin. GTA has cultural clout that reaches everyone. It’s been a mainstream fixture since 2001’s GTA III and its clout has only grown exponentially since then. There’s a touchpoint for every generation alive. The FOMO-word-of-mouth double punch does the rest. Loading... It’ll reactivate the lockdown cohort, the millions who picked up gaming in 2020-21 and churned. GTA 6 will bring them back. Remember when College Football 25 brought a bunch of US gamers to current-gen consoles? GTA will do that globally. Once they’re back (or upgraded), and all GTA’d out, the fresh current-gen-console folks will check out the rest of the current-gen catalogue they missed. GTA Online, if not free to play, will also lead to a boost for PS+ and Xbox Game Pass, another boost for the ecosystem players. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Even some of the smug PCMR 60FPS crew won’t be able to resist their FOMO and will bite the bullet on a console to play this one early (then double dip). The consoles cost the same as a decent stick of RAM these days anyway lmao… Don’t get me wrong, though. GTA 6 is no silver bullet for the mature console market, but it does prime the current gen for a couple of strong swan-song years. And it’ll also give the consoles more users from which to maximise ARPU. ‘’We are in the latter half of the lifetime cycle of [the PS5],’’ said Sony President and CEO Hiroki Totoki in a Wall Street Journal interview. ‘’That means we do not need to aggressively sell the console today; rather than that, we are focusing on the current revenue from the current user base.’’ The biggest, best premium games always arrive late in a console cycle, so getting more players aboard now, ahead of that content storm (the new current-gen-only Call of Duty included), is a clear win for the platforms. On the Netflix thing, though: let’s all chill out a bit, like. Half my LinkedIn feed was going bonkers treating the reveal debuting on Netflix like it’s the future of entertainment. It wasn’t. It was a six-hour head start, and Netflix left that detail out of the “first-of-its-kind partnership” press release. The extended look hit Netflix at 3pm ET on 27 August, then went up on YouTube and Rockstar’s site for everyone six hours later. And it was all over social immediately, anyways. This reveal was going to reach an untold number of people whether it debuted on Netflix, YouTube, a Times Square screen, or a group chat. The last trailer did nearly half a billion views in a day with no gatekeeper at all. Netflix just stood next to that audience for six hours, borrowing it. It’s was a tidy deal for Netflix, sure. But every outlet on earth was breaking the thing down frame by frame by the evening anyway. Anyway. I’m hype. And we’ll be covering some GTA numbers on the newsletter soon. So hit subscribe below to get that in your inbox when it’s ready! Subscribe The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
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