Technologies

Marvel Rivals Season 3: New Phoenix Trailer Had Me Screaming ‘What?!’

The new duelist’s first gameplay trailer shows off her explosive abilities and ultimate.

As Marvel Rivals gets ready to kick off season 3 next week, we’re getting our first glimpse at some of the upcoming changes. And, with respect to my poor beleaguered Blade bros, the biggest news for me is that Jean Grey, original member of the X-Men and sometimes terror of the cosmos, is joining the roster as Phoenix.

There’s plenty more coming, including Blade in Season 3.5 next month, but Phoenix is the headliner for me, and here’s our first look at what she can do.

Phoenix’s abilities in Marvel Rivals

Phoenix joins as yet another duelist — an already oversaturated role, but one that feels appropriate for her. She brings a mix of area-of-effect damage that can help chew through groups of enemies as well as mobility that lets her flit around the battlefield to find flank angles.

Phoenix’s primary fire appears to instantly apply damage to enemies with no travel time (also known as hitscan) and apply some kind of flame stacks to opponents, represented by up to three flame icons above their characters. In the trailer, heroes appeared to detonate when hit at full stacks, releasing a burst of additional damage around them.

Her alternate fire sends a rapid-fire burst of flame that creates a series of small explosions, similar to Hela’s alternate fire. In the trailer, we see it used on a group of enemies with maximum flame stacks to detonate everyone and effectively burst down the entire opposing team at once.

Her first ability is a quick dash. In the trailer, Phoenix uses it to jump backward, dodging an enemy Venom looking to crash down on her.

Her second ability appears to be a limited-duration flight, allowing Phoenix to freely fly around the battlefield for a few seconds. The flight is on a resource meter that recharges while Phoenix isn’t flying.

Phoenix’s ultimate is what made me scream. I’ve watched the trailer several times and my best description of how it appears to work is, «You crash to the ground, kill everyone in your way and explode.» And I mean everyone — in the trailer, we see Hela in her ultimate, wherein she flies up into the sky and her health jumps up to 1,000 HP, get erased when Phoenix ults through her. In addition to also killing Rocket and Psylocke in one shot, the ultimate also clears deployables like Rocket’s rez beacon and Peni’s nest while whittling Peni herself and Groot down to a sliver of health in the explosion.

A mobile hitscan hero who with a stacking mechanic and a meteoric ultimate? Yeah, sign me up. Between this and Overwatch 2’s Freja, this longtime support/strategist main may have officially turned into a damage/duelist main.

When does season 3 start?

Marvel Rivals season 3.0 is scheduled to start on Friday, July 11 UTC. Typically, this involves servers going down for a few hours around midnight PT before being turned back on for the new season in the very early morning.

What about Blade? Haven’t we waited enough?

Rivals continues to make Blade fans wait, since that hero won’t be added to the roster until season 3.5. But at least that’s only a month away under the new season structure.

Rivals season 3 balance changes

In the Dev Visions vol. 7 video, Rivals devs gave us a quick breakdown of the upcoming balance changes, though we’re still waiting on full details from official patch notes. Here’s the quick breakdown, with any confirmed details in parentheses.

Buffs:

Venom
Thing (gains a new ability to jump to enemies, possibly knocking down fliers)
Namor (primary fire)
Scarlet Witch (ultimate)
Invisible Woman (healing efficiency)
Mantis (healing and ultimate utility)

Nerfs:

Emma Frost
Iron Man (poke potential)
Punisher (turret)
Mister Fantastic (survivability)
Loki (ultimate charge)
Ultron

Team-up changes

Rivals is adding two new team-ups, tacking heroes onto two existing ones and removing two others (Storming Ignition and ESU Alumnus) from the game. It’s also nerfing another. Here’s the quick rundown:

New — Primal Flame: Phoenix anchors to add damage over time and lifesteal to Wolverine’s attacks after his leap.
New — Ever-Burning Bond: Human Torch anchors to let Spider-Man shoot a burning web with a flaming tracer. (The flaming tracer stacks with Spidey’s regular tracers, devs said.)
Updated — Symbiote Shenanigans: Adds Hela, giving her Soul Drainer Hel Sphere slowing tendrils.
Updated — Stark Protocol: Adds Squirrel Girl, giving her an explosive, homing gauntlet.
Updated — Guardian Revival: Devs said they’d be nerfing some element of the Guardians’ team-up.

Other things coming in season 3

The battle pass is getting some adjustments to account for shorter seasons. Battle passes still offer 10 skins, but you’ll earn tokens at a faster rate to make it easier to progress through the entire battle pass in the shorter time period. Daily missions are also going away, with weekly missions shifting to permanent quests instead of being time-limited. Seasonal missions that offer large batches of tokens are also being added.

Rivals devs also announced a new competitive mode coming in season 3.5 but said we’d have to wait for any details about it.

The game is also adding accessories (which appear to be animated stickers that float above the KO notifications), new chroma options and visual effects for ultimate abilities. Perhaps the nicest quality of life change is the ability to mix & match MVP animations with any skins, instead of having certain MVP animations locked to specific skins.

Rivals needs a win

Season 3 is a major turning point for the hero shooter, marking the start of its new two-month seasons where we’ll be getting new heroes every month — one at the start of the season and one at midseason. The new cadence is an aggressive pace for expanding the game’s roster, and threatens to keep the metagame churning even faster, assuming those new heroes are relevant at launch.

That’s important because Rivals has been bleeding active players since launch. Based on SteamDB data, the start of each new half-season brings in fewer players than the previous. (For example, fewer players joined for season 2.5 than for 2.0.) Most games lose players over time, but for a live-service game, that kind of consistent drop is bad news because it means fewer players coming back each season to spend money on battle passes and cosmetics.

And while Rivals was a hit at launch, the game has struggled with player retention, whether it’s due to in-game toxicity, role-based infighting, frustrating metagames or just generally losing the luster of being a brand-new game.

How do you fix that? Not easily, that’s for certain. But adding an iconic member of the original X-Men and giving her fun gameplay in the form of mobility and unique mechanics can sure help.

I’ll tell you this much: It’s working on me.

Technologies

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal

Technologies

Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
WATCH: Waymo launches new autonomous system in Chinese-made vehicle

Technologies

Qualcomm tumbles 13% as semiconductor stocks retreat from historic AI-fueled surge

Semiconductor equities reversed sharply after a broad AI-driven advance, with Qualcomm suffering its worst day since 2020 amid inflation concerns and rising oil prices.

Semiconductor stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, reversing course after an extensive rally that had expanded the artificial intelligence investment theme well past Nvidia and driven the industry to unprecedented levels.

Qualcomm plunged 13% and was on track for its steepest single-day decline since 2020. Intel shed 8%, while On Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions each lost more than 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, which benchmarks the overall sector, fell 5%.

The sell-off came after a key gauge of consumer prices came in above forecasts, and as conflict in Iran pushed crude oil higher—prompting investors to shift away from riskier assets.

The preceding advance had widened the AI opportunity set beyond longtime industry leader Nvidia, which for much of the past several years had largely carried the market to new peaks on its own.

Explosive appetite for central processing units, along with the graphics processing units that power large language models, has sent chipmakers to all-time highs.

Market participants are wagering that the shift from AI model training to autonomous agents will lift demand for additional AI hardware. Among the beneficiaries are memory chip producers, which are raising prices as supply remains tight.

Micron Technology slid 6%, and Sandisk cratered 8%. Sandisk’s stock has surged more than six times over since January.