Technologies

Dune: Spice Wars Early Access Preview — Beautiful but Complicated

This video game brings Arrakis to life in impressive detail, but controlling the planet will take all of your focus.

The timer on my phone pinged me as I crossed my fourth hour in Dune: Spice Wars, and I felt good about my progress. I commanded a massive Fremen army through Sietch Tabr, and my crew of Fedaykin had just reclaimed an area from the Harkonnen. I heard the familiar «for Liet!» as I sent another wave in to support this new outpost, successfully boxing in what was left of the Baron’s forces. What started as a battle of four armies was about to be reduced to two, and the final army hadn’t taken any new territories from me in over an hour. Victory felt close, which was why my heart sunk extra deep when the message that I’d just been defeated unexpectedly filled the screen. While I was busy waging war on the surface of Arrakis, the leader of The Smugglers had bought enough favor within the Landsraad to secure all the support needed to ensure the planet would be under their control for the foreseeable future.

If none of that made sense to you and your only exposure to Arrakis is what you saw in Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 Dune movie, Dune: Spice Wars may not be for you. Like the Dune universe itself, this strategy game is complex in ways I still don’t feel like I fully grasp, even a week after this game in the Early Access form being made publicly available on Tuesday, 26 April. But if you’re already a fan of the generations of stories told around planet Arrakis and have a lot of time to spend on a deep strategy game, you’re going to have a great time even if the computer delivers a sudden and crushing defeat.

A military base surrounded by red sands in Dune: Spice Wars

Dune: Spice Wars starts you off with a choice between four familiar armies: House Arrakis, House Harkonnen, The Fremen and The Smugglers. Each of these armies have essentially the same goal — to control Arrakis through any means possible. And in this real-time strategy game with 4X elements, meaning the goals are to expand, exploit, exterminate and explore, victory can come in one of three ways depending on how you play. You can take the classic strategy route and crush your enemies through sheer overwhelming violence, you can control all of the governing positions of Arrakis and rule as a duly elected leader or you can seek a victory through hegemony and buy control of Arrakis through influence gained throughout a campaign. Neither path is necessarily easier than the other, but your play preference will influence which outcome is the most readily available.
Each army has obvious strengths and weaknesses for each of these victory conditions. The beloved House Atreides makes a victory through governance easier, while Harkonnen could more easily win through hegemony if you took that path. The Smugglers are natural spies and influencers, great at building trust through trade, while Fremen of Sietch Tabr have the unique ability to gain desert power through partnership with other Sietches as you come across them. Each army is more than capable of victory through domination, but that only works in your favor if the other armies aren’t hiding in a corner of the map trying to win through other means.

No matter which army you choose or how you decide to play, once the fight for Arrakis begins you have so much to do. There are constant distractions from the task at hand, from Landsraad council votes to internal rebellions stoked by enemy armies to constant random sandworm attacks. Ignoring any of these things has dangerous consequences: Your enemies might gang up on you and encourage the Landsraad to double your cost to train soldiers or a village may suddenly turn on you and the militia garrisoned there may choose to burn it all down, forcing you to start over again. This is a separate process from maintaining your own intelligence and counterintelligence missions and making sure you have enough resources to keep expanding your empire. Oh, and the longer the game goes on, the more spice needs to be paid to CHOAM or you’ll get new taxes on other resources. It’s a lot, and can become overwhelming late in the game.

A dusty desert landscape in Dune: Spice Wars

This might not be such a challenge to manage if the folks at Shiro Games had seen fit to give this game a proper tutorial. Instead, at the start of your first play-through there’s a set of text and image slides you can click through to explain how it all works. But there are so many different systems and menus that a more interactive and playable tutorial would help you along. More than this, the first couple of minutes in this game are crucial. While you’re reading a tutorial, the other three armies are securing their second spice field. The game deserves a better introduction, and I hope it gets added before this title leaves early access on Steam.

To the credit of the folks at Shiro Games, this game is easily the most faithful to the Dune universe that I’ve played. While the Atreides and Harkonnen need to rely on spice harvesters which need to be rescued at wormsign or conflict from another army, Fremen spice gatherers have no such difficulties. There are some troop types that rely on projectile weaponry, but it’s not the dominant form of combat. There are clear places the sandworms can’t travel, the movement and combat types for each army are varied in ways that make sense and the larger map feels consistent with Arrakis in the books. It’s not perfect — at one point I was playing as the Fremen and spotted a roaming group of soldiers the game had simply labeled «Locals,» which doesn’t make any sense at all — but this is loads better than what Dune fans have had in the past. I also lost a Fedaykin squad to a sandworm attack, which is technically possible in the context of the world but feels extremely unlikely given who the Fedaykin warriors are.

Dune: Spice Wars is fun even when I’m losing, but I’m also very much the target audience here. I’ve been reading these books for going on 25 years, and many of my teenage evenings and weekends were spent playing Dune II, Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune. I get a genuine kick out of being able to zoom in and see an Ornithopter scanning a new area, or watching a Harkonnen hit squad fire up their half-shields before rushing into battle. But if I’m being totally honest, I don’t have time to dedicate 5 hours to a game on a regular basis, so I’d love to be able to jump into a quick skirmish where the only victory condition was domination. This game is great if you’re a huge Dune fan who also loves 4X strategy games and has a lot of time on your hands, but that venn diagram doesn’t have a ton of overlap. I hope Shiro Games uses the time in Early Access to at least address the learning curve so it won’t push away what audience it has.

Technologies

Forza Horizon 6 Focuses on Japanese Car Culture: Here’s What to Know

The racing series’ latest edition, out in May, includes stunning views of Mount Fuji.

Microsoft has given racing-game fans a deeper dive into the upcoming Forza Horizon 6, and on Friday announced a May 19 release date for Xbox and PC. Premium Edition buyers will get early access on May 15, but PlayStation 5 owners will have to wait until sometime later in 2026 to play.

The publisher provided a first-look video that shows stunning views of Japan, including cherry blossom-strewn rural roads, ice-enclosed courses, neon-lit Tokyo streets and plenty of views of Mount Fuji.

The game will launch with 550 collectible cars, and Microsoft will display two on the cover: the 2025 GR GT Prototype and the 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Microsoft says the open-world game will focus on Japanese car culture, with the player in the role of a new arrival to the country guided by two close friends, motorsports fan Jordy and car builder Mei.

The locations will be divided into districts, ranging from bustling urban areas such as Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing to suburbs, industrial docklands, and more rural areas.

What to know about Forza Horizon 6

Progress in the game will include unlocking new cars and more advanced races, plus a journal of digital mementos inspired by stamp collecting.

The game features eight player houses across Japan that serve as fast-travel points. And new to the game series is The Estate, a piece of land players can acquire and build on.

Inspired by Japanese car culture, Forza Horizon 6 will add Car Meets that’ll serve as social spaces for players.

The Standard Edition costs $70, the Deluxe Edition costs $100, and the Premium Edition, which unlocks early access and includes several Car Packs, costs $120. The game will also be a Day 1 release on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and will be available on Steam and Xbox Cloud as well.

Technologies

TikTok Deal Will Keep It Online in the US, but Your Experience of the App Might Change

TikTok has secured its future by agreeing to split the US app from the global business. But the deal will spark changes to the app’s algorithm.

TikTok has dodged a ban and secured its long-term future in the US by announcing a deal on Friday that will see a joint venture take over US operations of the popular social video app. The deal marks the conclusion of a protracted battle over the app’s continued presence in the US, which dates back to President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

TikTok in the US will now be run by TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, which was established by a White House executive order issued in September 2025. At its helm will be CEO Adam Presser, previously the head of operations, who led TikTok’s efforts to ensure that the data of the app’s US users was kept secure. Shou Chew, the CEO of TikTok’s international operations, will serve on the joint venture’s board of directors.

«TikTok USDS Joint Venture’s mandate is to secure US user data, apps and the algorithm through comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity measures,» the company said in a statement. «It will safeguard the US content ecosystem through robust trust and safety policies and content moderation while ensuring continuous accountability through transparency reporting and third-party certifications.»

The venture has three managing investors — Silver Lake, Oracle and MGX — which each hold a 15% stake. Oracle also will be responsible for protection of US user data and of the freshly retrained algorithm, which will be specific to the US version of the app.

Presidents Trump and Joe Biden raised concerns over a potential national security threat posed by TikTok, because of its Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance, which will retain a 19.9% stake in the new joint venture. During both of his presidential terms, Trump has attempted to ban TikTok, but also delayed the ban’s implementation.

The deal announced on Friday arrived moments before the deadline set by the White House for TikTok to comply with its September executive order. In a post on his social site Truth Social, Trump said he was «so happy to have helped in saving TikTok.»

«I only hope that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok,» said Trump. He also thanked China’s President Xi Jinping for working with the US and approving the deal. «He could have gone the other way, but didn’t, and is appreciated for his decision,» he said.

How TikTok might change for you

TikTok has more than 200 million users in the US, and if you’re one of them, the deal announced on Friday will allow you to continue using the app without the ongoing fear of it being banned.

It also won’t see you cut off from creators in China, or the rest of the world. People in the US will still be able to watch videos from Europe, such as last year’s viral «nothing beats a Jet2 holiday» trend. TikTok users outside of the US will still be able to follow their favorite American creators.

In the TikTok newsroom post, the company addressed interoperability, saying that the deal would «provide US users with a global TikTok experience, ensuring US creators can be discovered and businesses can operate on a global scale.»

Where the experience might change is in the content that is recommended to you. Under the terms of the deal, TikTok’s algorithm will be retrained, tested and updated based on US user data. This will have a knock-on impact on what you see on the platform, according to Kelsey Chickering, principal analyst at Forrester.

«TikTok’s power lies in its content graph — an algorithm that learns from thousands of user signals to deliver hyper‑relevant, highly addictive videos,» said Chickering. «With a US joint venture retraining that algorithm on domestic data, the experience will change — maybe for the better, maybe not. One thing’s certain: TikTok in America won’t be the same.»

In spite of the interoperability that will see US TikTok users connected to those across the globe, it does seem likely that the focus on US data will lead to a shift away from the global nature of the content that the algorithm currently serves up to you.

«TikTok’s US algorithm will now be trained on US data, which means what trends — and what dominates feeds — will feel distinctly American,» said Chickering. «Global content will still appear, but its ranking will change.»

Exactly how this will look may differ from person to person, and will likely take some time to come into effect as the joint venture begins the retraining process. TikTok didn’t immediately respond to questions regarding how long it expects retraining the algorithm to take, when US TikTok users should expect to be impacted by changes and whether it will issue public updates about this process.

One potential pitfall the company might want to avoid, Chickering said, is moderating the US version of TikTok in a way that tilts too far toward any one particular political viewpoint, or fails to curb misinformation. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) — and his subsequent algorithmic changes that alienated users and advertisers — is a cautionary tale in this regard. With Instagram Reels already vying to replace TikTok, the company will likely want to avoid making changes that could spark a mass exodus of people.

«For now, it’s speculation,» said Chickering. «It remains to be seen how new leadership will wield this power and whether moderation policies will evolve.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Friday, Jan. 23

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 23.

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

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Hope you’re familiar with a certain blond actor (8-Across)! Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.