Technologies

Nintendo Direct: How to Watch, What Games to Expect from Wednesday’s Livestream

We’ll get 40 minutes about Nintendo witch games coming in the first half of 2023, so you can expect to see The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Nintendo will offer a taste of the games coming to Switch in a Nintendo Direct on Wednesday, it said in a tweet Tuesday. The Feb. 8 livestream will include «roughly 40 minutes of information» about titles launching in the first half of 2023, a lineup that includes the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

When does the Nintendo Direct start?

The Nintendo Direct livestream starts at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, which converts to 10 p.m. GMT or 9 a.m. Thursday AEST.

How to watch the Nintendo Direct

The event will be streaming from Nintendo’s YouTube channel. We’ve embedded the YouTube link above, so you can watch right here.

What games will Nintendo show during its Nintendo Direct?

The majority of Switch owners are eagerly awaiting The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the sequel to 2017’s Breath of the Wild, which got a trailer during last September’s Nintendo Direct. It’s out on May 12, so we can expect details about that game’s story and gameplay mechanics.

Pikmin 4 is scheduled for release in 2023, so Nintendo will likely give us a look at the colorful real-time strategy game and narrow down the release date.

Nintendo will likely reveal the new release date for Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, the remake collection featuring two Game Boy Advance turn-based strategy games. It was originally scheduled to come out last April, but got delayed due to the war in Ukraine.

It could reveal details of an expansion or update for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, since those games are expected to add compatibility with the Pokemon Home mobile app soon. That might be held for Pokemon Day, Feb. 27, since the company typically announces something big in a livestream celebrating the game series’ anniversary.

Other upcoming titles include Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe (an enhanced port of the 2011 Wii game) and Octopath Traveler 2 on Feb. 24, as well as Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon on March 17.

We’ll probably get hints about Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s next batch of downloadable tracks, since wave 4 should be arriving soon, as well as updates about when Mario Party 3, Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2, 1080 Snowboarding and Excitebike 64 will be added to the N64 retro library in the Switch Online subscription service.

It’s also possible the company will look at upcoming non-Switch projects: its first US Super Nintendo World theme park opens next week and the Super Mario Bros. movie hits theaters on April 7.

People anticipating Metroid Prime 4 probably shouldn’t get their hopes up though — it’s been nearly six years since that game was announced and we have yet to see gameplay. At least we got Metroid Dread.

Could a Switch successor be revealed during the Nintendo Direct?

It’s unlikely that Nintendo will take the focus away from Tears of the Kingdom and other upcoming games, but we’ll likely see the company’s next console soon. The Switch will be six years old in March, and the technical issues of games like Pokemon Scarlet and Violet highlight the aging hardware (along with Sony and Microsoft’s technically superior PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X competitor consoles).

The Switch sold 122.55 million units overall as of the end of 2022, the company announced its latest earnings report on Tuesday, putting it ahead of the PS4 and making it the third best-selling console of all time. It’s now behind only the DS (at 154 million) and PS2 (155 million).

Despite hitting this milestone, Bloomberg noted Nintendo missed console sales targets toward the year’s end. Company boss Shuntaro Furukawa didn’t answer questions about its next console, it noted. Last year, VGC reported that Furukawa said that a smooth transition to the next generation of hardware is «a major focus» for the company — we can expect to get a firmer sense of its plans this year.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #707

Hints and answers for Connections for May 18, #707.

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.

Today’s Connections puzzle is a mix of difficult and easy. The purple category does what most purple categories do, and makes you really break down how you think about the words. 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: School days.

Green group hint: About there!

Blue group hint: Sure, let’s go.

Purple group hint: The Scarlett Letter.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Tasks for a student.

Green group: Encouraging responses in a guessing game.

Blue group: Up for anything.

Purple group: What «A» might mean.

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 tasks for a student. The four answers are assignment, drill, exercise and lesson.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is encouraging responses in a guessing game. The four answers are almost, close, not quite and warm.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is up for anything. The four answers are easy, flexible, game and open.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is what «A» might mean. The four answers are area, athletic, excellent and one.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #441

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 441 for May 18.

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.

Today’s NYT Strands will probably be easier if you have some basic knowledge about a certain type of vessel. You don’t really need to have ever been on one, since the answers show up in books and movies all the time. 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: Riding the wind.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: famed song by Christopher Cross.

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:

DULL, TILE, TILER, SEER, GALE, GALES, HAIL, SAIL, LEEK, GLUE, HALL, TALL, HEAT

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’ve got 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:

HELM, HULL, KEEL, MAST, STERN, RIGGING, RUDDER, TILLER

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is SAILBOAT. To find it, start with the S that’s four letters down on the farthest row to the left, then wind across, up and down.

Technologies

Google I/O 2025: How to Watch and What to Expect

With Android 16 out of the way, Google I/O will certainly be all about AI.

Google I/O 2025 takes place on May 20 and 21 with Google’s big keynote happening on day 1. We expect Big G to talk about its myriad innovations across its ever-expanding portfolio of products — almost certainly with a huge focus on AI every step of the way. If we collectively cross our fingers, promise to be good and eat all our vegetables then we may even be treated to a sneak peek at upcoming hardware.

Read more: Android 16: Everything Google Announced at the Android Show

Google also hosted a totally separate event that focused solely on Android. The Android Show: I/O Edition saw the wrappers come off Android 16, with insights into the new Material 3 Expressive interface, updates to security and a focus on Gemini and how it’ll work on a variety of other devices.

By breaking out Android news into its own virtual event, Google frees itself to spend more time during the I/O keynote to talk about Gemini, Deep Mind, Android XR and Project Astra. It’s going to be a jam-packed event, so here’s how you can watch I/O 2025 as it happens and what you can look forward to.

Google I/O: Where to watch

Google I/O proper kicks off with a keynote taking place on May 20, 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT, 6 p.m. BST). It’ll almost certainly be available to stream online on Google’s own YouTube channel, although a holding video is yet to be available. There’s no live link on the I/O website yet, either, though you can use the handy links to add the event to your calendar of choice. Expect links to a livestream to be available closer to the day.

What to expect from Google I/O 2025

Little chat about Android 16: As Google gave Android 16 its own outing already, it’s likely that it won’t be mentioned all that much during I/O. In fact at last year’s event, Android was barely mentioned, while uses of the term «AI» went well over a hundred.

Android XR: Google didn’t talk much about Android XR during the Android show, focusing instead on the purely phone-based updates to the platform. We expected to hear more about the company’s latest foray into mixed-reality headsets in partnership with Samsung and its Project Moohan headset, so it’s possible that this is being saved for I/O proper.

Gemini: With Android being spun out into its own separate event, Google is evidently clearing the way for I/O to focus on everything else the company does. AI will continue to dominate the conversation at I/O, just as it did last year (though hopefully Google can make it more understandable) with updates to many of its AI platforms expected to be announced.

Gemini is expected to receive a variety of update announcements, including more information on its latest 2.5 Pro update which boasts various improvements to its reasoning abilities, and in particular to its helpfulness for coding applications. Expect lots of mentions of Google’s other AI-based products, too, including DeepMind, LearnLM and Project Astra. Let’s just hope Google has figured out how to make this information make any kind of sense.

Beyond AI, Google may talk about updates to its other products including GMail, Chrome and the Play Store, although whether these updates are big enough to be discussed during the keynote rather than as part of the developer-focused sessions following I/O’s opening remains to be seen.