Technologies
NASA Is Sending Astronauts to Circle the Moon in February 2026: What to Know
The astronauts won’t be landing or picking up moon rocks during their 10-day mission.
It’s been more than 50 years since astronauts last went to the moon, and yet few NASA missions stir the kind of excitement that the Apollo program once did. But now, NASA has new moon plans. The upcoming Artemis II mission, scheduled for February, will be the closest humanity has come to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. And it’ll be setting the stage for another moon landing.
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On Tuesday, NASA announced details of the upcoming mission, which will send four astronauts around the moon and back again.
Artemis II: The Plan
The Artemis II launch window opens Feb. 5, 2026, and lasts up to eight days. That means the mission will launch on Feb. 5 at the earliest and Feb. 13 at the latest.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen will crew Artemis II. Wiseman, Glover and Koch are all Americans, and Hansen will be the first Canadian ever to travel to the moon.
NASA will use the same systems it did during the uncrewed Artemis I flight test in 2022. The launch will use NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which was developed by Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and the United Launch Alliance.
After launch, the Orion spacecraft will perform a series of maneuvers to raise its orbit around Earth. NASA says that Orion will be 46,000 miles away from Earth during this time. For reference, the International Space Station orbits at around 250 miles above our planet.
Orion will orbit Earth twice before separating from the upper stage of the Space Launch System rocket. From there, manual controls will be engaged and the crew will be on its way to the moon. After a few days, the crew will overshoot the moon by about 4,700 miles, giving the crew a rare glimpse of the Earth and the moon at the same time, with the moon in the foreground.
After the overshoot, the crew will begin its return home. NASA refers to this as a free ride, as the crew essentially just has to wait for gravity to pull Orion back to Earth. The trip will take 10 days in total.
We’ll have to wait until 2027 for a moon landing
By the time the Artemis II crew circles the moon, it will have been 54 years since NASA’s final Apollo mission sent astronauts to the moon in December 1972.
During that 12-day mission, the Apollo 17 crew landed on the moon, collected space rocks and investigated potential volcanic activity. The mission was famous for being the first to include a civilian scientist, geologist Harrison Schmitt.
The Artemis II crew will come closer to the moon than any human has since the Apollo 17 mission, but they won’t land on the moon’s surface. Instead, they will fly around it.
The Artemis II mission serves as a test flight to see how well the Space Launch System rocket and Orion perform. The mission will also test and observe the spacecraft to ensure it works as expected. Think of Artemis II as a dress rehearsal for a follow-up mission, Artemis III, which will include a crewed moon landing.
Artemis III is planned for 2027. If it stays on schedule, it will be the mission that puts humans back on the moon for the first time in 55 years. The crew plans to touch down in one of 13 planned landing sites, including the previously untouched south pole of the moon.
Technologies
I’m Excited for Samsung’s Trifold Phone, but Its Design Might Be a Weak Spot
Commentary: Samsung’s trifold foldable might not be as similar to the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate as I thought. And that has me worried.
Ever since I first used Huawei’s trifold phone, the Mate XT Ultimate, I have wanted Samsung to launch a similar foldable. Lucky for me, rumors suggest that Samsung has been developing one for a long time and that the new foldable will be released on Dec. 5, in just a couple of weeks. On an earnings call in August, which Seeking Alpha shared, Samsung teased its triple-screen foldable, saying it aims to be a leader in «innovative form factors like the upcoming trifold device.»
I look forward to Samsung’s trifold because Huawei’s trifold phone, which I have used, is brilliant. I should mention that neither device folds three times; each only has two hinges, which segments the screen into three sections, hence the name. And yes, calling either of these phones a trifold makes as much sense as calling a horizontal board with two wheels a hoverboard.
The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate has two hinges that allow it to fold into a Z-shape. These hinges also let it transform into several devices. Unlike the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which has a single hinge and can be used as either a phone or a mini tablet, Huawei’s device can function as a standard phone, a small tablet, or a full-size tablet. Huawei’s trifold phone has one of the most useful designs I’ve tested, with an interface that is as inventive as it is intuitive. As rumors about Samsung’s trifold phone leaked, I kept imagining how its phone could take what Huawei did to the next level.
But then Samsung showcased its dual-hinge phone at a tech exhibition during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in South Korea, where The Chosun Daily filmed the Galaxy trifold in all its glory. When I saw the video, I was worried. This isn’t what I hoped for. From what I saw, Samsung’s trifold might not live up to my expectations. I’m sure it’ll have unique use cases with its big tablet-size folding screen, but it might miss the mark.
Huawei vs. Samsung trifold: Two hinges and two different designs
Both the Huawei Mate XT and Samsung’s upcoming trifold phone have two hinges, but there are major hardware differences between the two devices.
First, the Mate XT’s hinges fold in opposite directions, giving it a Z-shape. In comparison, Samsung has designed the two hinges to fold in the same direction — inward, to form a G-shape. As CNET’s David Lumb reported, it is ironic that the company with a Z-series of folding phones didn’t adopt that shape and format for its trifold.
Second, the Huawei trifold has a single screen that unfolds into a bigger display. On the other hand, Samsung has added a separate cover screen because you can’t access the inner screen once it is folded closed.
Both these design choices come with their own share of durability and functionality concerns.
Huawei’s design is more flexible than its Samsung counterpart in terms of functionality. The Mate XT has only one display, but that screen is large and can convert into three smartphone/tablet designs — at least that’s why I had always thought people called this a trifold phone, despite folding only twice. You can use the Mate XT like a regular phone (fully folded), a book-style foldable (one hinge folded and the other unfolded) and a tablet (fully unfolded).
In comparison, Samsung will likely offer two ways to use its trifold device — as a phone or a tablet. Samsung’s design could protect the inner display when it’s closed, but there’s a separate screen for external use, like the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Huawei’s trifold has its soft folding display exposed at all times. Samsung’s design may prove to be more durable in the long term, but it also limits the device’s functionality.
The whole point of using a trifold is to have a three-in-one device in your pocket, and that’s why I think Huawei’s design makes more sense.
All this harkens back to the early days of book-style versus taco-style foldable designs. Book-style versions, such as the original Galaxy Fold, had a screen that folded in half and was protected inside the phone’s body when shut. Taco-style variants, like the original Huawei Mate X, had a screen that bent in half to wrap around the outside of the phone like a taco shell: always visible, less protected.
It’s all about the aspect ratios
I didn’t expect to like the Huawei Mate XT when I first started using it. After all, it is (comparatively) thick and weighs 298 grams. However, I saw unique use cases once I started traveling with the phone. I used it for reading, browsing, multitasking, watching my favorite movies and playing games, among other things. I also installed Google apps, which eliminated the need to carry a separate tablet for content consumption or productivity-focused tasks.
Huawei Mate XT Ultimate measures 3.6mm thin when fully unfolded and 12.8mm thick when folded. For context, the Apple iPhone Air is 5.6mm thick, whereas Samsung’s 2024 Galaxy Z Fold 6 measured 12.1mm when folded. (The Galaxy Z Fold 6 launched in the same year as Huawei’s trifold.)
When I use the Galaxy Z Fold 7, I’m mostly on the cover screen for browsing and reading, just as I would with any other phone, and rarely unfold it — mostly because it is so thin when closed. I only open it up to watch a video, but when I do, the letterboxing on the main screen drives me nuts. (It always does, even on the 13-inch iPad Air.) So, I tend to use the hinge to prop it up and watch videos on half the screen.
But in my time with the Huawei trifold, I unfold it much more to use as a mini tablet for browsing and reading, and I unfurl it completely when I want a truly immersive movie-watching experience on its full 10.2-inch main screen.
The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate gives you three different screen experiences, depending on how many of its segments you have opened or closed. It’s a 6.4-inch screen with a 2,232×1,008-pixel resolution (think Pixel 10 Pro Fold‘s cover screen), a 7.9-inch display with 2,232×2,048 pixels (think a little smaller than the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s main screen), and a 10.2-inch screen with a 3,184×2,232-pixel resolution (think nearly the size of an iPad).
Unlike a book-style foldable (like the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold), when the Huawei Mate XT is completely unfolded, its 10.2-inch screen offers a 16:11 aspect ratio, which is closer to what you’d get on a MacBook Air‘s 16:10 display, so there’s less letterboxing when watching movies, TV shows or YouTube videos. It also retains the reading-friendly square-ish aspect ratio of a book-style foldable and folds into a «normal» proportioned phone.
In comparison, the Samsung trifold is likely to skip the option of having it transform into a book-style mini tablet. Samsung’s trifold device will feature a 6.5-inch outer screen and a tablet-size 10-inch folding display, according to the report by The Chosun Daily. This would allow Samsung to have two distinct two-in-one fold phones: a book-style foldable for productivity-focused workloads (Galaxy Z Fold) and a G-shaped fold for better content consumption (the Galaxy trifold).
However, after using the Huawei trifold full time, I want a phone with two hinges to be an all-in-one device, one that I can use as a phone and also unfold into a book-style mini tablet for reading/browsing, as well as into a full-size tablet to watch movies on the go. I found the Mate XT Ultimate especially handy during long commutes or long-haul flights due to its three distinct forms.
As for durability, I haven’t noticed any scratches on my Mate XT after a month of heavy use. The two creases have held up well, and the hinges are as strong as ever, too. When traveling, I always make sure to use the included case, which protects the always-exposed side of the screen. I can even use the case’s built-in kickstand to prop it up when the screen is fully unfolded. I even dropped the phone once, but thankfully, it didn’t break.
I am still excited to see what Samsung has to offer with its new folding phone. I understand the G-shaped design might increase the phone’s durability (compared to the Mate XT Ultimate) and that the South Korean company probably needs to have a mass-production device ready. However, Huawei has already sold more than 470,000 Mate XT trifolds, according to an IDC report (via CNBC). If I’m paying $3,000 for a trifold phone, I shouldn’t have to choose one with a screen that doesn’t allow me the design that I want. I’d rather have the Mate XT Ultimate, where I can have it all.
Technologies
How to Feed Astronauts Bound for Mars? Try Protein Made Out of Thin Air
It’s a long trip to the red planet and space is tight, but eating well could require just a few simple ingredients.
There are no grocery stores on Mars, and resupply from Earth is many months away. As much food as future astronauts to the red planet may pack for the trip, inevitably, they’ll have to create some food of their own in an inhospitable environment. Whether they go the fanciful farm-to-table route with locally sourced potatoes, like Matt Damon’s character did in the 2015 film The Martian, remains to be seen. But they may have an even more science-forward option.
Creating protein out of thin air.
That’s the goal of a partnership between the European Space Agency and a company called Solar Foods, formed out of a scientific research program less than a decade ago, which opened its first large-scale production facility in 2024.
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The project, dubbed HOBI-WAN (for «hydrogen oxidizing bacteria in weightlessness as a source of nutrition») in a nod to the Star Wars movies, is an outer space version of a process that Solar Foods has been working on already here on Earth. That effort involves growing bacteria in a vat with water, air and nutrients, and then drying out the bacteria, turning them into a protein powder called Solein for human consumption.
A key next step will be to test Solein production on the International Space Station.
«Providing a sustainable and nutritious food supply which meets the energy requirements of the crew is one of the biggest challenges in human spaceflight exploration beyond low Earth orbit,» ESA said in a blog post. «In cases where pre-deployed food depots or continuous resupply missions from Earth are impractical, resource-heavy, or technically unfeasible, cost-effective alternatives are required.»
Making protein powder from air
The central goal of the HOBI-WAN project is to determine whether production of the protein-rich powder can take place in microgravity conditions.
The process is complex, but essentially it’ll be letting nature take its course.
«Solar Foods produces Solein by a process called gas fermentation,» Arttu Luukanen, the company’s senior vice president of space and defense, tells me. The gas fermentation process, he says, creates single-celled organisms that feed on hydrogen gas and use it to «sequester» carbon. From there, the bacteria are fed «minerals of life» such as ammonia as a nitrogen and hydrogen source.
All the ingredients go into a bioreactor along with water and gases that are pumped in «a bit like a big SodaStream,» Luukanen says. This provides the bacteria with the proper environment to reproduce, which they do very quickly. Once the bacteria have reproduced to a sufficient quantity, they’re harvested. Some of it is set aside to seed the next round in the bioreactor, while the rest is thoroughly dried and pasteurized.
These dried and pasteurized bacteria form the Solein product, which is composed of 78% protein, 6% fat (primarily unsaturated), 10% dietary fiber, 2% carbohydrates and 4% mineral nutrients. Luukanen says the powder can be flavored in any number of ways and on its own imparts «a very mild flavor of umami.»
But can it work in space?
Solein production will be harder to do in space. The weightless environment, plus the limited cargo capacity and reduced space for the bioreactor, add challenges that ESA and Solar Foods believe they can solve.
«[The] main difference for the experiment onboard the ISS is the lack of gravity, which means there is no buoyancy, which alters greatly how liquids and gases behave,» Luukanen says. The other challenge is limited physical space. Solar Foods uses bioreactors that can hold 20,000 liters or more, while the bioreactor heading to the ISS will be significantly smaller — a «few tens of liters.»
Extra steps will be required for gas safety, process monitoring, quality assurance and maintainability, as there won’t be bioprocess engineers on board to babysit the process. The product made in space also won’t be dried into a powder, at least not at the ISS. In the event of a leak, having a cloud of powder floating around in a zero-gravity environment wouldn’t be ideal.
So in space, Solein will likely be served up as a paste.
Reduce, reuse, recycle
The last big factor is the ingredients. They’ll have to be altered to account for the lack of resources available in a long-term space flight. Recycling has long been a key component of living in space, and that’ll be true for Solein production.
That means using CO2 from crew respiration and recycling the hydrogen gas made when the ISS uses electrolysis to turn water into oxygen for the crew. On Earth, making Solein requires a lot of water.
There will also be substitutions, such as using urea instead of ammonia, since ammonia would be dangerous if there were an accident. But that doesn’t mean that astronauts will be using urine like they do for «recycled coffee.»
«On Earth, we use ammonia, but for the ESA project, we’ve decided to use synthetic urea instead, mainly because it is not potentially hazardous like ammonia is if there is a spill,» Luukanen says. «Recovering the urea from urine is in principle possible, but given the small portion of urea needed, it may not make sense, especially if the urea extraction from urine involves complex and heavy equipment.»
How long could this process feed astronauts?
A trip to Mars is a much bigger time commitment than an excursion to the moon. NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission will see astronauts circle the moon for the first time in nearly half a century, but the trip will last only 10 days. In terms of food, it’s not that big of a deal. For missions like Escapade, where two satellites will travel to Mars, the trip will take two years. Heading to the red planet, astronauts will need to pack more than a picnic.
Should the Solein project prove successful, the amount of food it generates could theoretically feed a team of astronauts for hundreds of days while using much less cargo space than today’s space meals. Luukanen says that, as the project is being designed, the only thing astronauts would need to carry would be mineral salts, and they wouldn’t need that much.
«Even for a five-[person] crew, 900-day mission to Mars, we are talking of [less than]100 kilograms of mineral salts,» he says.
Other technologies may also help recycle nitrogen and minerals, which would allow astronauts to reuse those materials onsite, further extending food supply.
Using the protein powder, astronauts could make all sorts of food with the right additional ingredients. Luukanen says Solar Foods has developed recipes ranging from ice cream to cream cheese ravioli. Some of them were showcased during NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, which highlighted methods for long-term food solutions, including a no-light food-growing method called Nolux and a closed ecosystem that can autonomously grow food and maintain insects for use in an astronaut’s diet.
It might not be what you’d expect from a Michelin-starred restaurant or even your neighborhood deli, but it’ll likely be better than a steady diet of Mars-grown baked potatoes.
Technologies
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Endless Gaming Crossovers
In navigating my own love-hate relationship with this phenomenon, I talked to some of the devs behind them to get a better sense of how these crossovers work and why companies pursue them.
When my friends want to play Magic: The Gathering, I wade through my two-dozen or so decks built for Commander — the card game’s casual, multiplayer format. I might choose the deck built around Elenda, the Dusk Rose, a vampire saint who can create legions of vampires. Maybe I’ll take my Narset, Enlightened master deck, which lets me cast powerful spells for free when she attacks. Both Elenda and Narset are original characters from Magic: The Gathering.
Or maybe I’ll grab my Lightning, Army of One deck, constructed around the Final Fantasy 13 character, so I can attack people for absurdly high amounts of damage. Maybe my Godzilla deck will engage in glorious combat against my friends’ decks led by characters from Dracula or Warhammer 40K. Would Eowyn from Lord of the Rings be a better match-up against the forces of the Imperium?
It’s a double-edged sword, this impulse toward crossovers. And it’s happening in games far beyond Magic: The Gathering.
Overwatch featured skins from Persona 5 in September, Halo armor and weapons showed up in Helldivers 2, and edgy looter shooter Borderlands 4 is showing up in… golf game PGA Tour 2K25. The crossover crown lies eternally with Fortnite, thanks to its never-ending influx of skins from games, movies, comics and real-life celebrities — leading players using the Sabrina Carpenter skin to stop shooting each other and, say, hold impromptu concerts instead.
When the elements fit each other are handled with care, it’s a fun way for fans to engage with multiple interests simultaneously. But when it feels carelessly thrown-together or when the elements don’t mesh, it can feel like a cash grab that hollows out the original property. And what works for one player might feel egregious or immersion-breaking to another.
«Am I the problem?» I ask myself, as I work on a fourth Magic deck built around a Final Fantasy character, after spending hundreds of dollars on cards and accessories from the set.
I do realize that the money I spent on the release event and weekly drafts screamed to Hasbro, «It’s working!» At the same time, playing with cards from that Final Fantasy set was also the most fun I’ve had with Magic in several years.
Corporations betting big on brand crossovers feels like the unavoidable consequence of a world in which players look more and more for customization and ways to show off their personalities and interests, which dovetails with companies looking for lucrative ways to attract new players and increase revenue in ongoing games. Is other media filtering into popular games about the joy of including familiar faces, or does it turn characters into digital bumper stickers, starved of their identity from their original context?
The answer, like it or not, is both.
Money is a big part of the motivation, but expanding reach and offering customization also factor in
Blending different properties together generally requires an intense collaboration between the property owners and the game inviting the crossover. So what makes these gaming collaborations worth it for those parties?
There’s a financial incentive, to be certain, as Hasbro has made astonishingly clear. In its second-quarter 2025 earnings call, CEO Chris Cox noted that Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy set made $200 million in revenue in one day, while it took the Lord of the Rings set six months to hit that milestone. To put those two collaborations in the context of original Magic: The Gathering sets, the bestselling Magic set before Lord of the Rings was Modern Horizons, which made $200 million over two years.
Admittedly, $200 million in 24 hours is performance that Magic: The Gathering will likely struggle to replicate, even with the overabundance of outside properties coming next year: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Hobbit, Star Trek and Marvel. Still, Cox said the company feels good about the collaborations set to launch next year in terms of pleasing players and bringing in revenue. And Final Fantasy ultimately points to the financial power of a good gaming crossover, one where the properties are handled thoughtfully and intentionally (even if some of that intention is making the collaboration more collectible).
To better understand how and why these crossovers happen, I talked with some of the people powering these gaming collaborations.
There were «a lot of clues» both internally and externally that Magic could support these kinds of crossovers in the game, said Aaron Forsythe, Magic: The Gathering’s vice president of research and development.
Sets like Lord of the Rings and Final Fantasy can also help funnel new players into a game that has been around since 1993.
«With Final Fantasy, we have seen a marked increase in play participation, especially among players who haven’t previously participated in our Organized Play programs,» said Rebecca Shepard, the vice president of franchise for Magic: The Gathering. That participation also extends after the launch of sets based on the other properties, which Magic brands Universes Beyond.
She noted that Universes Beyond releases also lead to increased interest in older products, demonstrating the crossovers’ ability to drive interest in the game’s original creations.
Magic’s designers have spent decades creating multiple in-game worlds or «planes» with their own lore, characters and mechanics. To a certain degree, crossovers are baked into its premise.
But what about something with a considerably smaller scope, like the hero shooter Overwatch 2? The team-based game is set in nearish future Earth, where other Blizzard games like Diablo and Starcraft are minimal parts of the world as references and outfits. But aside from a small Lego crossover, other external properties were mostly only winked at… until the game introduced skins from the popular manga and anime One-Punch Man back in 2023.
The game’s collaborations started out as infrequent events, but now show up roughly every season.
The Overwatch team was nervous for its first collaboration and took a cautious approach, said Aimee Dennett, Overwatch’s associate director of product management. Devs wanted to ensure that heroes were still recognizably Overwatch characters while also maintaining the integrity of the game’s lore. The solution was described as «our characters are cosplaying,» meaning that the Overwatch heroes maintain the iconic parts of their visual identity, while incorporating elements that are recognizable as the characters from the crossover properties.
There are also internal motivations for these opportunities.
«We’ve found that it has such a positive effect on the team,» said Overwatch’s Art Director, Dion Rogers. People who work on the game are also fans of these properties, and the opportunity to design those crossovers can be a creative spark for the developers.
Fortnite didn’t start the party, but it did invite basically everyone
Fortnite is the de facto example of crossovers in gaming. It represents an astonishing evolution of a concept that kicked off decades ago.
Video game publishers were firmly protective of their properties to keep their games unique, but gaming website Giant Bomb asserts that crossovers started in earnest with 1992’s Battle Soccer, where Godzilla could take the pitch against giant mech Gundams and superheroes from Japanese TV. A few years later, Marvel’s X-Men faced off against Street Fighter characters in a move that would eventually spawn the Marvel vs. Capcom series of fighting games.
Crossovers ramped up in the 2000s with Sonic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake as the first two characters not owned by Nintendo to show up in Smash Bros. Brawl, a few years before horror movie villain Freddy Krueger first appeared in a Mortal Kombat game. Thematically, these all make some sense — but Fortnite took crossovers to another level.
The crossovers started with the Infinity Gauntlet limited-time mode, where players could transform into Thanos, the villain of the 2019 film Avengers: Infinity War. It was quickly followed by the first Marvel-themed skins for Black Widow and Star-Lord that any player could wear. That kicked off a wave of Fortnite crossovers that would grow beyond Marvel to also include DC Comics, Star Wars, celebrities and various other games.
More have followed in Fortnite’s wake. The jump to include characters from other media besides video games has proven popular, with games like Mortal Kombat bringing in the villainous superhuman Homelander from The Boys, and the asymmetrical PVP horror game Dead by Daylight leaning heavily into killers and survivors from various games and movies — and also Nicolas Cage as himself, delivering some truly amazing voice lines.
Still, when it comes to bringing in everything from everywhere, nothing tops Fortnite, where crossover events feel less like guest stars and more like the first stop for major franchise promotion. And the cumulative results are, for lack of a better word, bonkers. Now a squad of Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga and Sabrina Carpenter can face off against a squad made up of Darth Vader, the Joker, Thanos and Mortal Kombat’s Sub-Zero… and then perform *NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye dance on the villains’ corpses.
Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, declined to comment for this story.
Convenience and customization… at a cost
While crossovers with other properties help bring revenue and new players into games, they also risk alienating players whose primary interest is in their games’ original concepts and who may feel the crossovers move the game away from its identity.
«We listen and learn more than folks realize but at the same time, our goal of making Magic for everyone — because it is — can also frustrate our existing players,» said Shepard in response to a question about the feedback to Universes Beyond and the seemingly polarized responses online.
You can see that frustration in videos from prominent Magic creators, with titles like «The Problems With Universes Beyond — Even if You’re NOT a Hater» and «Half of Magic: The Gathering Will Not Be Magic: The Gathering.» The discussions in those videos touch on multiple elements, but center around the proportion of and execution of Universes Beyond sets and how those sets do or don’t gel with the rest of the game.
That tension exists with most gaming crossovers. I wasn’t initially a fan of Overwatch’s move into collaborations. For me, the image of Doomfist in a yellow suit and flowing cape cheapened a character who’s supposed to be a surly big bad in the Overwatch universe. To me, it felt tonally mismatched with his identity, and I feared Overwatch feeling less like Overwatch as a result.
But the response I saw was largely positive. A change being celebrated doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for the game, nor does outcry mean a change is bad. But there were clearly people who wanted the customization and expression of anime skins, highlighting the tension inherent in gaming collaborations like this.
Magic’s Aaron Forsythe acknowledged the competing interests, saying, «Players that have been with us for a while don’t feel the need for a change of this magnitude, and I appreciate how this hits them. But we’re doing this both because we want to grow the game — and we are — and because we think it’s another really fun way to enjoy it.»
For longstanding fans who have played the game for years, perhaps even decades, it may feel like the resources for the game’s original ideas are being diverted to fuel crossovers.
There are degrees, though. In the case of Magic: The Gathering, one-time Secret Lair drops like Sonic the Hedgehog that mostly show up in casual multiplayer formats may not seem as disruptive. But over the course of next year, Magic will release four more sets based on outside properties, bringing the total to seven such sets in two years. More than any individual card or set, that density of outside properties might feel particularly unwelcome, contributing to the feeling that it’s just Fortnite now.
Everyone is here (and here to stay)
I think a lot of the response to crossovers comes down to two things: how well the concept fits and how good the execution is. Fortnite itself has become a conglomeration of various game types — from Battle Royale to Lego to Ballistic, festivals and Creative modes — so the game featuring skins from all kinds of movies, games and celebrities sort of fits into that «everything for everyone» idea.
Something like Dead by Daylight is an example of using crossovers with a narrower focus, incorporating horror icons that fit its gameplay and lore. Resident Evil characters trying to escape from Halloween’s Michael Myers doesn’t make total sense, but there’s enough of an internal logic in the genres of slasher films and survival horror games for it to work.
And, despite my initial reservations about Overwatch’s collaborations, I was immediately enthralled when I saw Kiriko’s Suki skin from Avatar: The Last Airbender. In addition to giving me a new outlet for my favorite character from the show, it just fit the visual identity and the concept of the Overwatch hero, a protector in her own right.
The people behind the games acknowledge how much that matters. «If we don’t do this right,» Overwatch’s Rogers told me, «the fans will call us out.» Players have their own ideas of what fits and what doesn’t, and they aren’t shy about voicing those feelings. But Rogers said that getting it right instead helps maintain the identity of the game’s heroes.
Similarly, Magic’s Shepard said one step in the process of evaluating potential crossovers is feeling out whether it feels like «an authentic relationship» for the game and its players. The challenge, however, is that each player’s mileage will vary when it comes to that authenticity.
There’s no putting these crossovers back in the box, for better and worse. We’ll continue to have more options to play as our favorite characters across a variety of games. Right now, if I wanted to, I could fire up Street Fighter 6 and play a game as Chun-Li in the context of her original series. I could then swap over to Fortnite and run around sniping people as Chun-Li before logging into Overwatch and playing as Juno in her Chun-Li skin, healing people with a Martian mediblaster. And then over the weekend, I could play Magic: The Gathering with my friends and pull out a deck built around a Chun-Li character card.
For Chun-Li superfans, that’s great. At the same time, my Magic opponents may be sick of playing against characters from Stranger Things, Jurassic Park and Marvel, which might break the immersion of the game for them.
The demand is there and the complaints are valid. Companies will follow the money. But each game’s developers have to find their own way of squaring the crossover — justifying (or not) how another creative world collides with theirs.
For Overwatch’s Dennett, as the game grows and changes, so does the team’s philosophy about collaborations — because pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the hero shooter sparks the imaginations of its player base.
«It’s sort of a self-reinforcing cycle, where our players grow and change so much, and so do the types of collaborations, and the types of collaborations change, which grows and changes our players.»
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