Technologies

Marvel Rivals Cross-Play: How PlayStation, Xbox and PC Players Can Queue Together

Your friends can join you in a heroic battle, no matter which platform you’re playing on.

Marvel Rivals pulls some of the most popular comic book heroes through time and space, creating situations where unlikely allies band together in epic battles. Just like these characters, gamers are able to nurture bonds across platforms as they jump into the fight.

The hit hero shooter is available on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and on PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store, letting most of today’s gamers enjoy the Marvel power fantasy. Some content is exclusive to specific platforms — the Spider-Man PlayStation costumes come to mind — but the game doesn’t have any major differences from platform to platform otherwise.

Cross-play is enabled by default in Marvel Rivals, which means you can queue with your friends even if they’re on a different platform. The catch is that limits are imposed on the matches you can queue for in a cross-play enabled lobby.

Here’s everything you need to know about Marvel Rivals cross-play, including when you can and can’t play with your friends on other platforms and whether you can carry over your Marvel Rivals account progress from one platform to another.

When is cross-play enabled in Marvel Rivals?

Though cross-play is enabled by default for noncompetitive modes, the feature is turned off for certain platforms in competitive modes to provide the fairest experience for all players. Xbox and PlayStation players can be matched together in competitive lobbies, but PC players have their own competitive queues.

These are all of the Marvel Rivals modes you can play with friends on different platforms:

Quick Match
Doom Match
Practice vs. AI
Practice Range
Limited-time events (like Clone Rumble)

Though Marvel Rivals won’t allow cross-playing gamers to access competitive modes, quick play matches still have a behind-the-scenes skill calculation to try and make the fairest possible matches for all players, at least according to NetEase.

Is there cross-progression in Marvel Rivals?

Whether you’re interested in climbing the ranked ladder across different platforms or you just want to make sure your costume closet remains intact, cross-progression is a big deal for Marvel Rivals players.

Despite creating an in-game username unique to your Marvel Rivals account, it’s not currently possible to enable cross-progression from one platform to another. This means you’ll have to advance any PC and console accounts separately — neither your rank nor your cosmetics will carry over. Be careful which account you spend your real money on, especially as the game adds more costume-altering options.

While console and PC ranked lobbies look completely different, it’s not completely out of the question that some form of cross-progression is added to Marvel Rivals in the future, allowing players to consolidate their skin collection, character and battle pass progression under one account.

NetEase Games is aware that cross-progression is an oft-requested feature from Marvel Rivals fans. Thaddeus Sasser, then a game director for Marvel Rivals, shared that the feature could be on the docket for development post-launch in an interview with WCCF Tech last year.

«As you can imagine, [cross-progression is] extremely complicated to pull off, so we’re still looking into it,» Sasser said. «We’ve heard that the audience has already suggested this several times, so we’re looking into it.»

It’s unclear if this feature is still being considered for Marvel Rivals in 2025.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for June 9, #463

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 463 for June 9.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Todays NYT Strands puzzle features a bunch of mysterious words. Some are a bit difficult to unscramble so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: What you see isn’t what you get

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Hiding in plain sight

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

CALL, CALLS, FALL, FALLS, SAME, SEAM, LAND, ROSE, COVE, CANE, CANES, FLUME, FLUMES, DIGS, MEAL, COLA, CARD, CASE

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

MASK, CLOAK, COVER, FACADE, DISGUISE, CAMOUFLAGE

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is FALSEFRONT. To find it, start with the F that’s two rows over from the far left and two letters down. Wind around into a question mark.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 9, #729

Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 9, No. 729.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Do you play the NYT Spelling Bee? If you do, you should be able to ace the purple category in today’s NYT Connections puzzle. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Control-C.

Green group hint: Don’t wait till the last minute.

Blue group hint: Pals to plan a heist.

Purple group hint: Think another NYT online game.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Keyboard shortcut commands.

Green group: Secure in advance.

Blue group: Crime organization.

Purple group: Spellling Bee ranks minus a letter.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is keyboard shortcut commands. The four answers are paste, print, quit and save.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is secure in advance. The four answers are book, order, request and reserve.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is crime organization. The four answers are crew, family, ring and syndicate.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Spelling Bee ranks minus a letter. The four answers are genus, goo, mazing and slid. (Genius, good, amazing and solid.)

Technologies

I Made Google Translate My Default on iPhone Before a Trip and It Saved Me More Than Once

Google Translate supports far more languages than Apple’s app, and it’s easy to make the switch.

If you’re traveling overseas this summer, the Google Translate app can come in handy to quickly translate a road sign or conversation. The latest Google Translate update allows you to pick the app as your default translation app for Apple iPhones and iPads running iOS and iPadOS 18.4 and later. Previously, you were limited to the built-in Apple option.

Google began leveraging AI to boost Google Translate’s offerings, adding 110 languages last year to increase its total support for 249 languages. Compare that to Apple Translate, which supports 19 languages. Neither Google nor Apple responded to a request for comment.

Both apps offer voice and text translation, including a camera feature that lets you instantly translate by pointing your camera at text. Both also allow you to use translation features without an internet connection, which can come in particularly handy when traveling to more remote locations.

After using both, I found that the Google Translate picked up speech a little quicker so I didn’t have to constantly repeat myself, and the audio pronunciations were a little easier to understand than on Apple Translate. I switched to Google Translate as the default on my iPhone, and here’s how you can, too.