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Warcraft Arclight Rumble guide: Navigate Blizzard's mobile strategy game
How to collect and command an army of Warcraft Minis
One of Blizzard's most prominent franchises was always World of Warcraft (WoW), and if you didn't happen to own a PC, you might've skipped it entirely. But Blizzard's latest mobile game will finally bring the magic of the WoW franchise to another platform. So, to commemorate the legacy that WoW has left behind, Blizzard has constructed a mobile action strategy game, Warcraft Arclight Rumble.
Torchlight: Infinite's second closed beta begins soon, here's how to sign up
You have four days to register until beta two rolls out
This past January, we learned that the latest iteration in the popular Torchlight action RPG series would be coming to mobile, with the first closed beta kicking off that month. I went hands-on with the initial beta and came away rather impressed. The game is still in active development, and a second closed beta will kick off on April 25, which means you have four days to toss your hat in the ring if you'd like to participate in the upcoming closed beta.
Samsung's One UI 4 beta program starts recruiting testers for last year’s Galaxy Z phones
Want to take part? Move to South Korea
Samsung has been steadily moving forward with updating its phones to the new One UI 4 based on Android 12. The Galaxy S21 received a stable release earlier this week and the Z Flip3 and Fold3 are getting ready to wrap up their beta testing. Now Samsung's preparing for the next phase of its efforts, as the company looks for users to beta test One UI 4 on the Galaxy Z Flip, Z Flip 5G, and the Z Fold2.
Destiny 2 crossplay is now live across Stadia, PC, Xbox, and PlayStation
After a shaky start, it's finally ready to go
One of the more persistent problems with Stadia is that, due to a relatively low amount of players versus established platforms like Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, its multiplayer games can sometimes feel a little empty. Destiny 2 will fix that problem sometime this fall ... or right the hell now, because the developers accidentally turned on crossplay a little early.
The Official Pokémon YouTube channel has announced a new Pokémon game for Android, iOS, and the Nintendo Switch. It's called Pokémon Unite, and it's a MOBA. As you would expect, you'll be tasked with collecting Pokémon as part of the MOBA's team-based online-multiplayer battle arena gameplay. Unsurprisingly, Pokémon Unite is being developed in partnership with Tencent, so I fully expect the game to land as a blatant cash grab, just like Pokémon Café Mix. Clearly, The Pokemon Company is intent on running this franchise through the mud, just so long as it can make a quick buck with lazy clones on mobile. As expected, there is no release date, no talk of target regions, and of course, nobody's mentioned anything about monetization.
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Android's long-awaited Nearby Sharing may be just about ready. The feature, which allows you to share files between Android devices quickly, easily, and wirelessly, has been compared to Apple's AirDrop, and Google has confirmed to us that a beta test for Nearby Sharing is actively rolling out via the Play Services beta. We've also managed to snag a quick hands-on to show you how it works.
Tencent reveals Don't Starve: Newhome, a new mobile game based on the original survival series
A closed beta will take place in July, and you can sign up right now if you live in the US or Canada
You can already find the first two titles in the Don't Starve survival series on the Google Play Store, and both of these ports were published by the original developer Klei Entertainment. Well, it would appear that Klei has granted Tencent access to the property to create a new mobile game built from the ground up for mobile. Currently, Tencent is offering a closed beta sign-up for the game, which will enter into testing this July. So if you'd like to take an early look at Don't Starve: Newhome, make sure to register for beta access on the official webpage.
Last year, Google introduced Smart Compose to Gmail, a feature that takes the words right out of your mouth and completes sentences for you. It seems that it's both popular and reliable, as the company wants to start a test of the service in Google Docs, helping you complete common phrases and sentences more easily.
If you're a developer working on an Actions on Google service or you're a maker of a smart home device or connected gadget and would like to try out your new Assistant action in different scenarios, you're a little limited for options. You likely will have to test it internally among your team, if you have one, but beyond that, you can't account for every situation and bug and will have to deploy at some point and hope things don't go wrong when many people start using it. But now you can test it out, as you would an Android app.
NVIDIA already does a lot of things right by its users from providing timely Android version updates to keeping the software as clean as possible and even staying at the forefront of streaming services and options. Now, it's taking one more step toward conquering your heart as one of the best Android OEMs by launching a new SHIELD Preview Program where you can test upcoming features of the SHIELD Experience Upgrade software before they roll out to the public.
HBO's online and app-based streaming options are surprisingly competent - they put the likes of DirecTV and Comcast, much larger organizations with ostensibly more resources, to shame. But that doesn't mean that there's no room for improvement. To that end, HBO is now publishing a beta version of, um, NOW, the cable-free standalone app for streaming cordcutters. It's available on the Play Store now via the standardized opt-in interface.
Honor 6X owners, pay attention. Huawei has announced on its Honor Twitter account that it has opened up Nougat/EMUI 5 beta testing for the phone. Signing up only requires you to email your IMEI number(s) to the address in the tweet.
Back in November, Samsung started beta testing the Nougat update for the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. Since then, it has rolled out several updates to squash bugs and answer feedback, but it looks like the beta test is now over. The team posted a notice to those who were participating in the beta program saying that it will end on December 30 at 24:00 (so December 31 at 00:00).
Last week, the Play Store rolled up some beta testing features in its version 6.7 update, but they quickly disappeared as Google reverted them back in a server-side change. The company later announced these features at I/O as part of a series of improvements to Google Play that also include lots of developer console changes.
There are only a few months left (probably) before the young and young at heart will be able to live out their Pokémon fantasies in glorious augmented reality with the upcoming Pokémon GO game. But a select few will get an early ticket to Kanto (or wherever you set a Pokémon game with an entire planet's worth of playing surface). Today The Pokémon Company announced that it was looking for participants for the game's "Field Test," and registration is open on the US site. (It may be open to others, but we can't verify that.)
If you're around the same age as me, you fondly remember playing the Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG for short) for hours in middle school. Or more accurately, you remember watching all the other kids play it because your parents couldn't afford to buy 10,000 licensed pieces of cardboard just so you could get a shiny Blastoise. (It's OK, I played the Game Boy Color version for vicarious thrills.) As it turns out, the Pokemon card game is still rolling along with a huge following, and now there's even an online digital version. Yes, that's a video game based on a card game based on a video game - try to keep up.
Google is always making little tweaks to its apps, and now you can get an early look at some of those tweaks by beta testing the Google app. That's the one that powers the Now Launcher, Google Now cards, Now On Tap, and more. Just a few clicks and you're in the exclusive beta testing club. There's not much to see yet, but who knows what the future holds?
Following VLC on Android over the last couple of months has felt a little bit like a shell game. It all started in December when VideoLAN declared VLC was finally leaving behind its Beta status. The app retained the same package name, org.videolan.vlc.betav7neon, but was to be considered stable. Earlier this month, a brand new version 1.0 VLC app appeared in the Play Store with a package name and title devoid of the word 'beta.' This new app was to become the channel for stable releases, while the original listing was again repurposed for beta releases. This only lasted a few days before the new version vanished from the Play Store on devices and ceased to be installable from the web, at least for many of us.
Beta tests for new software releases aren't anything new for Android phones or tablets - they're often referred to as "soak tests," especially when manufacturers and carriers are involved. According to an anonymous tipster, Motorola is instituting a new confidential test program, giving at least some users access to much earlier updated builds for Android phones. Our source says that he or she was invited to test out a KitKat 4.4.2 build for the DROID RAZR M.