The Weekly Authority: Pixel 7 payment issues

⚡ Welcome to The weekly authoritythe Android authority Newsletter that breaks down the top Android and tech news of the week. The 217th edition is here, with Google Pixel 7 payment issues, Galaxy S23 specs, great news for Silent Hill fans and more.

🎮 I’m really excited about the Silent Hill news, but now I’m longing to play a similar horror game. Any recommendations for me? I’ve tried The Medium but I’m too big a wimp (although Alien Isolation was perfectly fine) 🙈

Elsewhere:

• The specs for the unofficial Essential Phone sequel are coming, but is it worth $1,000?
• Speaking of pricing, Nothing Ear 1 gets a huge price increase to $150.
• Android 13 support is coming to Windows 11 via WSA, but there’s no release date yet.
• Have you switched to eSIM yet? Let us know by voting in our poll.
• Fossil smartwatches get Wear OS 3 update with some big omissions: No access to Google Assistant.
• Nvidia launches its 12GB RTX 4080 card and says it wasn’t properly named. Following criticism, she has flagged the card with stats that overstate her performance.
• Verizon warns prepaid customers about the latest security breach: it looks like around 250 accounts have been compromised.
• Starlink will officially launch Starlink aviation next year, offering speeds of up to 350Mbps with a latency of just 20ms for aircraft equipped with its Aero Terminal.
• And Uber will start showing you targeted ads based on where you’re going, while waiting for your ride and while you’re driving, raising privacy concerns.
• Finally: Tired of folding laundry? AI breaks robot folding speed record.

• meshablehas the horrifying true story behind John Graff from The Watcher.
• Speaking of horror, Return to Silent Hill will bring Konami’s horror franchise back to theaters fifteen years after the 2006 film, with director Christophe Gans returning but no release date just yet.
• And we’ve got your weekend inspo: the best new streaming movies, including the horror sequel V/H/S/99, the Hulu original horror movie Matriarch, and more.
• We’ve also got the best new TV shows to stream, including Amazon Prime Video’s sci-fi drama The Peripheral – and Riche’s review is already here.
• A new trailer of Tom Hanks’ latest film A Man Called Otto, a remake of the 2015 Swedish comedy A Man Called Ove, itself adapted from the novel by Fredrik Bakman: Hanks plays the grumpy, recently widowed man who is his neighbor help him become part of his local community again.
• Elsewhere, the 4K Chromecast with Google TV now gets Android 12 with privacy improvements and more.
• Broke Up With Your Partner? Netflix profile transfers are for you: you can keep recommendations, lists, saved games and more.
• Meanwhile, Netflix will crack down on password sharing globally in early 2023 — here’s how it could work.

• Konami confirms Silent Hill 2 Remake will be coming to PS5 and PC, but no release date announced yet – we’ve also seen the reveals of three new games, Annapurna Interactive’s Silent Hill: Townfall and No Code, Silent Hill: Ascension, comes in 2023 from the studio of JJ Abrams, Bad Robot, and Genvid, and Silent Hill f, from Ryūkishi07, an acclaimed psychological horror visual novel creator.
• Razer Edge pricing, specs revealed: does it have an edge over competing handhelds?
• Microsoft is building its own mobile gaming store to take on Apple and Google.
• Netflix is ​​expanding into cloud gaming, opening a new studio in Southern California.
• And we got our first look at the Dead Space remake: Excited, us?
• Speaking of new games, French game publisher Focus has released some interesting titles and they’re coming soon: A Plague Tale: Requiem launched on Tuesday, and Evil West, about the hunt for vampires in the American Wild West, lands in November.
• Some big Minecraft news: Minecraft Dungeons Halloween-themed additions, camel mobs, a Batman DLC, and a detailed look at Minecraft Legends launching in 2023.
• Finally, Eurogamer has a neat round-up of everything you missed in Thursday’s Resident Evil Showcase, including an action-packed look at the RE4 remake, due out on June 24th.

This week we would like to wish the console of many of our childhoods, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), a happy birthday.

• The NES was released this week (October 18th) 1985 in the US.
• It had first appeared in Japan in July 1983 as the Famicom, or Family Computer, and sold over 2.5 million units in its first year of sales.
• Where the Famicom was white, with red controllers and buttons, the NES was larger and mostly gray.
• Initially, the NES only launched in New York City, followed by Los Angeles in February 1986.
• The 8-bit console was not released nationwide until September 27, 1986.
• On the same day, Nintendo released 18 games including Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Hogan’s Alley, Duck Hunt, Pinball, Wild Gunman and more.
• The NES was the starting point for many popular franchises with titles like Final Fantasy, Castlevania and Legend of Zelda.
• But the console’s most popular game was Super Mario Bros, which to date has sold over 40 million copies worldwide – and it’s the second best-selling video game of all time, behind Wii Sports.

Here are a few things we bet you didn’t know about the NES:

• A Nintendo World Championship cartridge was once sold on eBay for $100,088.
• Super Mario Bros has secret levels, but you’ll need a top-loading NES, a Super Mario Bros. cartridge, and a copy of the NES game Tennis to access them – plus this guide.
• Yes, we all love Zelda, but at the time, the president of Nintendo’s state-side division thought the game had too much text and was too difficult to appeal to a US audience. Shows how wrong you can be!
• Nintendo set up helplines for gamers: in the 80s there was no internet to consult if you got stuck with your game. Nintendo launched the Powerline, a phone service where gamers familiar with Nintendo games would help you. The service was revived for just one weekend in 2016 to celebrate the NES.
• Final Fantasy is a huge franchise these days, but it has humble roots as a single game on the NES. If you get bored with dragon fighting, you can pause and play a traditional slide puzzle minigame, although it was quite difficult to access – you had to press “A” and “B” 55 times in a row while on a Ship. Hard to believe we’re complaining about gamer thumbs these days!

If you’ve got a craving for retro gaming, these days you can buy an NES on eBay for between $50 and $150. You could snag one of the best NES emulators for Android, or you could just snag a Switch to get your Nintendo fix. We’ve rounded up some of the best free Nintendo Switch games, including titles like Brawlhalla and Pokemon Quest, as well as the top Switch eShop games you should definitely get today.

tech calendar

• Oct. 26 at 7pm PT: Nothing Ear Stick Launch Event
• November 8th: Skull and Bones release date on Xbox Series S/X, PS5, PC, Stadia and Luna
• November 9th: God of War: Ragnarok launches on PS4, PS5
• November 9th to 11th: Mediatek Executive Summit 2022
• November 15-17: Snapdragon Summit by Qualcomm
• 11/18: The Dark Pictures: The Devil in Me will be available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X and PC

Paula Beaton, Editor.