Google’s parent company said it would cut its staff by 6% in its largest-ever round of layoffs, extending a retrenchment among technology companies after record pandemic hiring.
Alphabet Inc.
GOOG 5.72%
said the cuts would eliminate roughly 12,000 jobs across different units and regions, though some areas, including recruiting and projects outside of the company’s core businesses, would be more heavily affected.
The layoffs reached as high as the vice president level and affected divisions including cloud computing and Area 120, an internal business incubator that had already faced cuts last year, said people familiar with the matter.
The Google cuts make January the worst month yet in a wave of tech layoffs that began last year, according to estimates from Layoffs.fyi, which tracks media reports and company announcements. This week,
Microsoft Corp.
said it would eliminate 10,000 jobs, the largest layoffs in more than eight years. Online furniture seller
Wayfair Inc.
said it is laying off about 10% of its workforce, and
Unity Software Inc.,
which provides tools for creating videogames and other applications, also cut staff.
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Earlier this month,
Amazon.com Inc.
said layoffs would affect more than 18,000 employees and
Salesforce Inc.
said it was laying off 10% of its workforce. Last year,
Meta Platforms Inc.
said it would cut 13% of staff.
Technology companies including Google expanded rapidly during the pandemic as life moved online. Recent cuts have been part of a broader pivot toward protecting profit and cementing the end of a growth-at-all costs era in technology. Google executives have in recent months said the company would be tightening its belt, reflecting a new period of more disciplined and efficient spending. But the company hadn’t announced cuts as deep as those of its Silicon Valley peers.
Google hired aggressively as demand for its services rose during the health crisis, leading to more than 50% growth in total employee count across Alphabet since the end of 2019. The cuts this week appeared to fall short of the almost 12,800 employees Alphabet added to its roster in the third quarter last year.
“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Alphabet Chief Executive
Sundar Pichai
wrote in a message to employees sent out Friday and posted on the company’s website.
“I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Mr. Pichai wrote. The corporate mea culpa for overhiring has become a recurring message in recent months at tech companies as executives realized that some of the hiring they undertook to keep pace with soaring demand for all things digital early in the pandemic left them overstaffed as the business environment soured.
Among the executives who have made such apologies are Salesforce Co-Chief Executive
Marc Benioff,
Meta Platforms CEO
Mark Zuckerberg
and Twitter Inc. co-founder
Jack Dorsey.
The recent headlines about tech layoffs don’t seem to match broader economic indicators, which show a strong job market and a historically low unemployment rate. WSJ’s Gunjan Banerji explains the disconnect. Illustration: Ali Larkin
Alphabet recorded $17.1 billion of operating income in the third quarter last year, an 18.5% decrease from the same period in 2021. Google executives partly blamed a slowdown in revenue growth on the company’s historic performance during the tail end of the pandemic. Alphabet shares rose 4.5% to $97.24 in morning trading Friday.
Alphabet earlier this month said it would cut more than 200 jobs at its Verily Life Sciences healthcare business, accounting for about 15% of the roles at the unit. Before that, some of the last major cuts Google announced were in 2009, when the company said it was reducing the number of jobs in its sales and marketing teams by roughly 200 globally.
Activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management, which had called on Alphabet to cut costs aggressively in November, said Friday the company should go further.
“Management should aim to reduce headcount to around 150,000, which is in line with Alphabet’s headcount at the end of 2021,”
Christopher Hohn,
TCI managing director, said in a letter. “This would require a total headcount reduction in the order of 20%.”
Current and former Google employees said layoffs would likely affect the company’s famously loose and collegial culture, which has been widely imitated in the tech industry.
Google employees have long enjoyed one of the most accommodating environments among large U.S. companies. A letter to potential investors in Google’s 2004 initial public offering said the company provided many unusual benefits, such as washing machines, and would likely add more over time.
As job cuts have accumulated in the tech industry, many employees at Google have pressed executives about the possibility of layoffs at the company. At a companywide meeting in December, Mr. Pichai told employees that the company had tried to “rationalize where we can so that we are set up to better weather the storm regardless of what’s ahead.”
A Google spokesman said that Friday’s cuts would affect not just Google, but also other Alphabet subsidiaries, but didn’t specify at what levels. Alphabet subsidiaries include Verily and the Waymo self-driving-car unit. The spokesman didn’t comment on which specific products or engineering units would be affected.
“Alphabet leadership claims ‘full responsibility’ for this decision, but that is little comfort to the 12,000 workers who are now without jobs,” said Parul Koul, executive chair of the Alphabet Workers Union, in a statement. “This is egregious and unacceptable behavior by a company that made $17 billion dollars in profit last quarter alone.”
Alphabet said it would offer U.S.-based employees two months notice, plus 16 weeks of severance pay, along with two additional weeks for each year an employee being laid off from the nearly 25-year-old company has worked there. In other countries, the company will follow local processes and laws, which sometimes require consultations with employee representatives before workers are laid off.
The company will also offer former employees access to resources to help them with their immigration status, job placement and mental health, the spokesman said. Tech companies in the U.S. often have employees on work visas tied to their employment.
Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com and Miles Kruppa at miles.kruppa@wsj.com
Microsoft said Tuesday that it is moving quickly to incorporate artificial-intelligence tools from OpenAI into its products and services. This includes OpenAI’s chatbot called ChatGPT, which launched just over a month ago and has skyrocketed in popularity as users have flocked to the tool, which spits out conversational answers to queries and—much to the chagrin of educators everywhere—can also pen full essays and even poems.
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Chief Executive
Satya Nadella
told a Wall Street Journal panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that “every product of Microsoft will have some of the same AI capabilities to completely transform the product.”
Microsoft already invested $1 billion in OpenAI and is reportedly looking to put even more into the startup, so its interest in making use of the technology is unsurprising. But the news was also another unwelcome development for Google, whose core search business could be threatened by the question-answering function of technologies such as ChatGPT.
The New York Times reported last month that ChatGPT’s launch Nov. 30 triggered Google’s management to declare a “code red” internally. Microsoft is Google’s largest rival in web search, though its Bing search engine still only accounts for a low single-digit percentage of the global market.
Shares of Google-parent
Alphabet
GOOG 0.92%
slipped nearly 1% on Tuesday and have fallen nearly 10% since the ChatGPT launch—the worst performance of the big techs and triple the percentage loss of the Nasdaq during that time. Microsoft’s shares rose Tuesday by a fraction while Nvidia, which specializes in artificial-intelligence chips used in data centers by both companies, jumped nearly 5%.
“We see ChatGPT’s prowess and traction with consumers as a near-term threat to Alphabet’s multiple and a boost for Microsoft and Nvidia,” UBS analysts wrote in a recent report.
ChatGPT indeed seems more than a flash in the pan. Data from Similarweb shows daily visits to the tool’s home page recently surpassed 20 million—nearly double the daily hits the site was generating two weeks after its launch.
But investors might be getting ahead of themselves as far as the impact on Google goes. Not all web queries are created equal—especially ones that will generate revenue through advertising links. ChatGPT specializes in natural-language queries that generate humanlike answers.
Not all of those answers contain correct information, however, and tracing the source of that information is difficult. In a recent report, Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik said there is “an ocean of difference between a general information search query and a monetizable one,” adding that ChatGPT’s shortcomings on the latter were “glaringly obvious.”
Google also has the deeply ingrained behavior of the masses to fall back on. The company has powered more than 90% of global internet searches since at least 2009, according to StatCounter. Even Microsoft’s launch of Bing in the middle of that year didn’t really dent Google’s share.
Ultimately, incorporating AI tools such as ChatGPT could be costly for both companies given the computing horsepower required.
Brian Nowak
of Morgan Stanley estimates that ChatGPT’s cost per query is about seven times as much as the cost to Google for a traditional search query.
That multiple could drop to four times if OpenAI is able to access the lowest price tiers of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, Mr. Nowak estimates. But that is still quite a gap, and one that is reflective of the costs Microsoft might bear as it works ChatGPT and other OpenAI tools deeper into its products.
Such pressure would be untimely. Investors are placing greater focus on both companies’ profits as revenue growth is projected to slow considerably this year. Alphabet’s operating margins are expected to come in at 27% this year—down from 2022 but still about 5 percentage points above what it averaged in the three years before the pandemic. Meanwhile, Microsoft is expected to keep its own margins above the 40% line for the third consecutive year—a feat not managed since 1999.
That may explain why Microsoft finally elected to follow other major techs in reducing its headcount. The company said Wednesday morning that it plans to lay off about 10,000 employees, or less than 5% of its workforce. Many expect Google’s parent to make a similar move soon.
How to spend more when investors want to see less going out the door is a question even ChatGPT wouldn’t be able to answer.
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s new artificially intelligent chatbot, can write essays on complex topics. Joanna Stern went back to high school AP Literature for a day to see if she could pass the class using just AI. Photo illustration: Elena Scotti
If you haven’t heard, Google Stadia is shutting down and closing shop next week. But before the never-quite-successful game streaming service dies, it has provided one neat (and free) little gift you can only play for a few days before it all goes offline.
Launched back in 2019, Google Stadia was a costly and massive investment from Google into the world of video games. Powered by the cloud aka a bunch of servers and off-site computers, Stadia’s big promise was instantaneous gaming on the go. No more updates or expensive consoles. And while it sometimes worked, the high cost of games, lack of features, small library, and internet costs ended up dooming the service. Sure, some superfans logged thousands of hours into it, but for most, it just wasn’t what they wanted or needed from a video game platform.
So it wasn’t surprising that in September of last year, Google announced the end of Stadia. In five days, on January 18, the video game streaming service will shut down. With the end so near, it seemed unlikely that Stadia would receive any new game releases. Yet, Google has published one final game. But don’t expect some big open-world RPG or remake. Instead, the final Stadia game is Worm Game, an internally developed title used to test Stadia long before it became a public service.
We probably were never meant to see or play this Snake-like test game as it sports fairly rudimentary graphics and kinda ugly menus. But in the final days of Stadia, it appears the devs working on the project were able to provide its community one final treat. Even better, anyone can play Worm Game as it’s free. (Which makes sense considering the Stadia store stopped working already.)
The game’s store page features this nice and touching description of the game and what it was used for:
Play the game that came to Stadia before Stadia came to the world. “Worm Game” is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022. It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you. Thanks for playing, and for everything.
Is Worm Game some incredibly important or amazing thing? Not really. However, it’s still really cool to get a peek behind the scenes, and thanks to videos of Worm Game, this little piece of test software will be somewhat preserved for folks to look back at years from now.
In other cool End Of Stadia news, Google has confirmed that starting next week, it will start allowing players to unlock the Bluetooth functionally of its Stadia controller.
This is a nice way to make the controller—which has one of my favorite modern D-pads on it—more useful and easier to hook up to more devices. I doubt the devs who worked on Stadia for years were planning for the controller to be the only thing left of Stadia in 2023, but here we are.
Good Old Games, or GOG, the digital-rights-management-free PC gaming marketplace and platform from CD Projekt, has officially ended a service that already didn’t feel terribly long for this world. What once seemed like a promising way to slowly import portions of your Steam library to GOG, where they could exist in an infinitely archivable format, has now finally evaporated.
GOG launched in 2008 as an alternative to other digital gaming storefronts on PC, focusing on making older, hard-to-find games purchasable. The cherry on top? All of these games would be available without any digital rights management software to restrict what you do with your .exe copies. Unlike Steam, GOG games are much easier to back up and re-install on multiple computers, all without ever needing to get tangled up in any sort of online account authorization. In 2012, the service expanded from older PC-gaming gems to modern titles, keeping the DRM-free policy in place.
In 2016, GOG announced “Connect,” a service that let you connect your Steam library to redeem select titles you already owned as DRM-free copies on GOG, with said games only eligible for redemption in a limited window of time. Those who’ve checked GOG.com/Connect in recent years, however, have found nothing but digital tumbleweeds. And now, in January of 2023, said link and service now just directs to GOG’s homepage, officially signaling the end of this once very promising program.
GOG.com/Connect always had an air of “this is too good to be true.” A service that gives you an extra copy of a game you already own, with no restrictions as to how you can backup, install, re-install, sell, or share it? How even?
But while the service was active, it wasn’t just a great way to migrate to a new platform, but rather a handy way to archive your Steam library. Though Steam is a pretty accessible and reliable platform that often gives you access to games you’ve purchased but have since been pulled off the storefront (2007’s Prey is one such example), DRM is still widely used on the Valve storefront and trying to use the service without a reliable internet connection can easily render a game unplayable, as many a traveling Steam Deck user has discovered. GOG Connect was once a promising solution to this issue. But, the idea of being able to some day move a substantial amount of your library into something archivable, without spending a dime, was just too good to be true.
Like many, I used this service a fair bit when it launched. I’d keep the link bookmarked to visit once a week. But as available games began to dry up, it drifted from memory. I still play the game of “should I get this on Steam or GOG?” every time something I want comes up on both services. The promise of GOG Connect once made that question irrelevant.
is laying off more than 200 employees as part of a broader reorganization, the first major staff reductions to hit Google’s parent following a wave of layoffs at other technology companies.
The cuts will affect about 15% of roles at Verily, which will discontinue work on a medical software program called Verily Value Suite and several early-stage products, CEO Stephen Gillett said in an email to employees Wednesday. Verily has more than 1,600 employees.
Verily oversees a portfolio of healthcare projects largely focused on applying data and technology to patient treatments, including a virtual diabetes clinic and an online program for connecting research participants to clinical studies.
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“We are making changes that refine our strategy, prioritize our product portfolio and simplify our operating model,” Mr. Gillett wrote in the email. “We will advance fewer initiatives with greater resources.”
Originally known as Google Life Sciences, Verily is one of the largest businesses other than Google under the Alphabet umbrella, part of a group of companies known as “Other Bets.” Alphabet had 186,779 employees at the end of September last year, according to company filings.
The robotics software company Intrinsic, another unit in Alphabet’s Other Bets, also said on Wednesday it would let go of 40 employees. A spokesman said the “decision was made in light of shifts in prioritization and our longer-term strategic direction.”
Verily has recently looked to pare back a once-sprawling collection of projects spanning insurance to mosquito breeding. Last year, the company hired McKinsey & Co. and Innosight to do consulting work, The Wall Street Journal reported.
After a period of aggressive hiring to meet heightened demand for online services during the pandemic, tech companies are now laying off many of those workers. And tech bosses are saying “mea culpa” for the miscalculation. WSJ reporter Dana Mattioli joins host Zoe Thomas to talk through the shift and what it all means for the tech sector going forward.
The reorganization is a sign of the continued difficulties facing big tech companies trying to crack the healthcare industry.
David Feinberg,
the head of an ambitious health-focused group at Google, left the company in 2021 to become CEO of the healthcare technology company Cerner Corp.
In the email to employees, Mr. Gillett said Verily would largely focus on products related to research and care, while concentrating more decisions in a central leadership team rather than individual groups.
Mr. Gillett took over as Verily CEO this month, succeeding the well-known geneticist
Andy Conrad,
who moved to executive chairman.
“As we move into Verily’s next chapter, we are doubling down on our purpose, with the goal to ultimatelybe operating in all areas of precision health,” Mr. Gillett wrote to employees on Wednesday. “We will do this by building the data and evidence backbone that closes the gap between research and care.”
Google’s peers have cut jobs recently in response to worsening economic conditions and a decline in online advertising. Last week,
Amazon.com Inc.
announced layoffs that will affect more than 18,000 employees, the most of any tech company in the past year.
Tech Layoffs Across the Industry: Amazon, Salesforce and More Cut Staff
At a companywide meeting in December, Google CEO
Sundar Pichai
said he couldn’t make any forward looking commitments in response to questions about layoffs. Google has tried to “rationalize where we can so that we are set up to better weather the storm regardless of what’s ahead,” he added.
Activist investor TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet in November to reduce losses in Other Bets such as Verily, writing in a letter to Mr. Pichai that the company had too many employees.
Alphabet’s Other Bets recorded $1.6 billion in operating losses from $209 million in revenue during the third quarter last year, mostly from the sale of health technology and internet services.
Verily said in September it received $1 billion in funding from Alphabet and other investors, without naming the backers. The private-equity firm Silver Lake, Singaporean fund Temasek Holdings and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan previously invested in the company.
If you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you’re in for a pretty sweet time starting on January 17. And if you’re not, the first catalog update for 2023 is tough to say no to. The latest injection of games to Sony’s subscription service features some undead co-op slaying, Super Saiyan shenanigans, a couple of classic games, and much more.
The PlayStation Plus subscription service, much like other gaming subs, regularly updates with new games every month. The service is spread across three tiers, Essential, Extra, Premium, which each cost $10, $15, and $18 a month respectively. Premium gets you the largest catalog (it’s the only tier that nets you access to PSX games) as well as letting you take advantage of Sony’s game streaming service (once known as PS Now). This month’s highlights include Back 4 Blood, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Devil May Cry 5, Just Cause 4, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, and Syphon Filter 3, among others.
In a blog update, Sony laid out the following additions to PS Plus Extra and Premium tiers:
PS Plus Extra and Premium PS4 games
Back 4 Blood Dragon Ball FighterZ Jett: The Far Shore Just Cause 4: Reloaded Life Is Strange: Before the Storm Life Is Strange Sayonara Wild Hearts Omno Erica
G/O Media may get a commission
Up to $100 credit
Samsung Reserve
Reserve the next gen Samsung device All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
PS Plus Extra and Premium PS5 games
Back 4 Blood Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition Jett: The Far Shore Just Cause 4: Reloaded
If you’re on the Premium tier, you’ll also get the following PlayStation One classics:
Syphon Filter 3 Star Wars Demolition Hot Shots Golf 2
If you haven’t played Devil May Cry 5 yet and you like stylish hack-and-slash action, it should probably be your first download of the lot. Otherwise, I definitely recommend giving Syphon Filter 3 a spin. The stealthy action series never reached critical acclaim quite like Metal Gear Solid did, but it’s definitely a pleasant trip down PlayStation memory lane. Let’s not resurrect the Snake vs. Gabe wars in the comments though, please. (Obviously Snake wins.)
When Steam best seller Vampire Survivors made the surprise jump to mobile last month, it wasn’t just as compulsively playable as its PC and console counterparts, it was also free. And unobtrusively so. In a sea of aggressively monetized and sometimes downright exploitative smartphone games, it stood out all the more. Developer Poncle now explains that the crappy app marketplace is the reason Vampire Survivors’ free port exists in the first place.
Vampire Survivors was itself inspired by a 2021 Android game called Magical Survival, but its explosion in popularity on Steam early last year led to its own clones on the App and Google Play stores as players searched for a game that didn’t yet exist on the platforms. “Months passed by and a large number of actual clones—not ‘games like Vampire Survivors,’ but actual 1:1 copies with stolen code, assets, data, progression—started to appear everywhere,” Poncle recently wrote in an end of 2022 update on the game’s Steam page (viaPC Gamer). “This forced our hand to release the mobile game ASAP, and put a lot of stress on the dev team that wasn’t even supposed to worry about mobile in the first place.”
The developer said they tried to look for a business partner to work with them on a mobile version of the game, but nobody they spoke to was on board with “non-predatory” monetization. The biggest App and Google Play store games are all free, but most still collect their pound of flesh one way or another. Many gate progression unless you wait a certain period of time or pay, while others monetize gameplay benefits aimed at milking repeat customers lovingly referred to as “whales.” A few operate like thinly veiled slot machines. Vampire Survivors doesn’t use any of that. Instead it relies on completely optional ads.
Read More:5 Beginner Vampire Survivors Tips To Easily Slay The Gothic Roguelite
The hit bullet hell roguelike has you fighting ever growing hordes of monsters while you collect upgrades. Every game ends at 30 minutes no matter what, but the better the playthrough, the more gold players earn to unlock permanent upgrades and features you get. The free mobile version of Vampire Survivors capitalizes on this in two ways. On a particularly long run, you can “cheat” and get a second life if you watch an ad. And once you die, you can watch a second ad if you want to retain more of your gold. The completely optional tradeoff makes the excellent mobile version even better.
“If you’re like me [and] wanted VS on mobile, you’d have been happy to just pay a couple of bucks for it and call it a day; but the mobile market doesn’t work like that and by making VS a paid app I’d have cut out completely a lot of new players from even trying the game,” Poncle wrote. “This is why we ended up with a free-for-real approach, where monetization is minimal and is designed to never interrupt your game, always be optional and in your control trough a couple of ‘watch ads’ buttons, and doesn’t have any of that real money sinks that mobile cashgrabs are usually designed around.”
The developer says the experiment so far has been a success, with high user reviews and lots of new players coming in through word of mouth. The only thing now is to figure out how to introduce the Legacy of Moonspell DLC which costs $2 on PC.
“The problems we’re facing are the same mentioned above: how do we make it fair, but also accessible to players who are only into free games,” Poncle wrote. “We’ll figure something out and publish the DLC asap!”
Goodbye, 2022 – and hello to the shiny new world of 2023! Granted, it doesn’t look much different yet, but then we are only a few hours into the new year.
So, what were our tech highlights of the past 12 months – and what can we expect to see in 2023? In short: lots. Virtually every week brought a massive new product launch or big story in one of the categories we cover, from the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island to the arrival of QD-OLED screen tech in TVs, and from ever-more-powerful graphics cards to AI-powered autofocus in cameras. And 2023 promises to be every bit as exciting, beginning right away with the tech fest that is CES 2023.
If you’re subscribed to TechRadar’s newsletters you’ll already have seen this round up appear in your inbox in the shape of our Year in Review; if you haven’t subscribed yet – well there’s your new year resolution for 2022…
So, without further ado, read on for our 2022 highlights and 2023 predictions.
Phones
Fantastic foldables, and a fuss about Nothing
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 was one of the smartphone highlights of 2022 (Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
2022 didn’t see any great leaps forward in the smartphone space writes Lance Ulanoff, US Editor-in-Chief. We mostly got more of everything – better cameras, brighter screens, and incremental improvements in performance and battery life. But there were some innovations that made the year’s best new phones significantly more interesting than what came before.
Apple officially split its handset line down the middle, finally putting the flagship model in a lower tier with slightly less-than screen technology. We’ve had better cameras on the Pro line for a while, but the iPhone 14 (opens in new tab) line pushes the distinction between Pro (premium) and regular (good enough for most) further. What this means is that the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus (opens in new tab) kept legacy screen technology (the notch!), while the iPhone 14 Pro (opens in new tab) and iPhone 14 Pro Max (opens in new tab) got the fungible Dynamic Island (opens in new tab), which I love. Apple was also one of the first, in the US market at least, to do away with the physical SIM slot in favor of an eSIM-only setup.
While Apple reached for the stars with the first satellite SOS system (opens in new tab) on a consumer smartphone, Samsung might be offering the more fully-rounded set of updates across its handset line. It remains firmly committed to the foldable space and, while the Galaxy Z Fold 4 (opens in new tab) and Galaxy Z Flip 4 (opens in new tab) weren’t major redesigns, both handsets feel a lot less like flexible tech oddities and more like super-versatile ‘regular’ smartphones; maybe next year they’ll be a little cheaper. The company’s Galaxy S22 line was generally excellent, with the beefy and S Pen-friendly Galaxy S22 Ultra (opens in new tab) being the highlight – and its Space Zoom (opens in new tab) photography magic remains unmatched in the smartphone space.
Perhaps the most talked-about device was the – in my opinion appropriately named – Nothing Phone 1 (opens in new tab). A lot of people got very excited about a handset with a transparent chassis, but there’s, well, nothing special about this device, other than that it’s a potential competitor for Samsung, OnePlus and, much less so, Apple. I wonder if we’ll be talking about the Nothing Phone 2 next year.
Google packed the year with the Pixel 6, Pixel 6a and the refreshed and more premium-feeling Pixel 7 Pro (opens in new tab) (and 7), which has excellent cameras and some cool tricks like the Magic Eraser (opens in new tab).
What we didn’t get this year was ultra-fast charging, battery capacity breakthroughs, thinner phones, or brand-new screen technologies. I think all of those things are possible in 2023; at the very least, expect iPhones with USB-C, and even some charging-port-free handsets.
Audio
A victorious year for vinyl
No phono stage, no amps, and no extra wires to trip on: vinyl got so much easier in 2022 (Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Ed Choo )
The humble analog record’s surprising renaissance continued in 2022, writes Becky Scarrott, Senior Audio Writer, not only with intriguing new vinyl-plus physical music formats (opens in new tab) touted by Bob Dylan himself, and inexpensive products that allow you to cut your own record (opens in new tab) (and then play it), but with ever-more innovative ways of enjoying your burgeoning collection of LPs and 45s.
The 2021-issue Rega Planar PL1 (opens in new tab) remains one of the best turntables you can buy, but setups that don’t require multiple boxes and a set of passive speakers cluttering up your den were the order of 2022 – see Victrola’s Sonos-certified deck (opens in new tab) for starters. All it needs is a Sonos wireless speaker and the Victrola companion app on your device – plus of course your lovely stacks of wax.
Now headphones: wired audiophile-grade cans got cheaper (see Sivga’s Oriole proposition (opens in new tab)), while the best true wireless earbuds (opens in new tab) and over-ears went to both extremes, with the JLab Go Air Pop (opens in new tab) costing less than a round of drinks (and being ridiculously good for the money) and the Focal Bathys (opens in new tab) setting you back a month’s rent.
In the heavy-hitter arena, the Sony WH-1000XM5 (opens in new tab) arrived, and predictably bettered their own siblings (but only just), and the Apple AirPods 2 (opens in new tab) solidified what we already knew about Apple’s talent in head-tracked Spatial Audio and active noise-cancellation – as long as you stick within the iOS bubble.
And somewhere in the melee, a new King of midrange over-ears emerged: the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless (opens in new tab). Gosh those are good…
But perhaps the most exciting development in wireless audio in 2022 wasn’t the actual wireless over-ears (opens in new tab) (or buds) themselves, but the software inside them. Hi-res Bluetooth codecs are advancing at a rate of knots, but the SoC (system on chip) hardware they’re built into is also under near-constant improvement. In December, Oppo went live with a new chip (opens in new tab) that’s claimed to bring Bluetooth wireless resolution up to the standards audiophiles might deem acceptable – and crucially, the chip will fit into earbuds.
The promise? Wireless audio over Bluetooth that finally sounds every bit as detailed, clear and impactful as a wired listen. We await 2023 with bated breath…
Computing
New MacBooks shine amid the component wars
The Apple MacBook Pro (M2, 2022), left, and MacBook Air (M2, 2022) (Image credit: Apple / Future)
(Image credit: Christian Guyton)
It’s been a busy year for us tech-heads in the TechRadar Computing Team, with a veritable flood of new devices and components landing in our laps throughout 2022 writes Christian Guyton, Computing Editor. As much as we hate to admit it, Apple looks like the winner of this year in computing tech; its second-generation M2 silicon landed in new MacBook Pro (opens in new tab) and MacBook Air (opens in new tab) models, and proved without a doubt that Apple is taking its chip business seriously.
The other big players in the processor game haven’t been slacking off, though. AMD came out kicking with its new Zen 4 generation of CPUs, headlined by the impressive Ryzen 9 7950X (opens in new tab). It was a short-lived victory, however, with Intel returning to reclaim its processing crown with the incredible Core i9-13900K (opens in new tab) flagship chip.
AMD has been embattled elsewhere, too; the race to produce the best graphics card heated up to a fever pitch in 2022, with Nvidia releasing the phenomenally powerful GeForce RTX 4090 (opens in new tab), only to fall down spectacularly with the RTX 4080 (opens in new tab). Team Red was able to capitalize on this, releasing the excellent Radeon RX 7900 XTX (opens in new tab), one of the best GPUs we’ve seen in recent memory. Unsurprisingly, both flagship cards sold out almost immediately, and stock is still hard to find in many regions.
This was also the year we finally got to see Intel properly step back into the GPU game, with actual desktop cards going on sale and a commitment to a long-term roadmap (opens in new tab), despite the rocky start that Intel’s Arc graphics department endured. This is definitely something we’re excited to see more of next year; a third player in the GPU market, especially one as seemingly committed to budget products as Intel, is only a good thing for consumers. Bring on 2023!
Gaming
A big year for TRG, but a fallow year for games
This year’s biggest release, God of War Ragnarok, was among the titles hit by delays (Image credit: Sony)
(Image credit: Future)
Right at the end of 2021, we launched TechRadar Gaming – and it couldn’t have come at a stranger time writes Julian Benson, Editor-in-Chief, TechRadar Gaming.
2022 was a decidedly odd year in the video game industry. We felt the impact of the pandemic keenly in the release calendar, and while there were a few big releases earlier in the year, namely Elden Ring (opens in new tab) and Horizon Forbidden West (opens in new tab), we endured months of AAA first-party famine before God of War Ragnarok’s (opens in new tab) release in November.
Microsoft was the main victim of delays, with both Starfield (opens in new tab), the highly-anticipated sci-fi RPG, and Redfall (opens in new tab), the co-op shooter from Dishonored’s Arkane Studios, slipping into 2023, leaving the Xbox Series X (opens in new tab)|S without a major first-party release this year. Nintendo, too, had to delay its biggest release, its follow-up to Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (opens in new tab), until May next year. Multiplatform releases weren’t spared either, with both Hogwarts Legacy (opens in new tab), the open-world Harry Potter RPG, and Suicide: Kill the Justice League (opens in new tab), pushed into 2023.
However, the gaps left by major developers created space for smaller games to gain the attention of players. In July, the most talked-about release was Stray (opens in new tab), a game where you play as a cat wearing a backpack exploring a futuristic city populated by androids. Then in August, our own Cat (who is decidedly a human) was caught by an indie RPG called I Was A Teenage Exocolonist (opens in new tab), where you play through a decade of a child’s life on a distant planet, trying to survive the dangers of colony life.
In 2023, we can look forward to all of those aforementioned delayed games, and a batch of big releases that were always due out next year. On top of that we have hardware releases, such as the DualSense Edge (opens in new tab) pro controller for the PS5 (opens in new tab) and PSVR 2 (opens in new tab) virtual reality headset. It’s going to be a busy time to be a gamer (and a games journalist).
Entertainment
A mixed bag for movies, shows, and streaming
Top Gun: Maverick wowed audiences and cemented itself as one of the highest-grossing movies of 2022 (Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
(Image credit: Tom Power)
2022 has been a fascinating year in the world of entertainment writes Tom Power, Entertainment Reporter. The movie, TV, and streaming industries have largely put the perils of the Covid-19 pandemic behind them, but each sector has faced its fair share of challenges over the last 12 months.
First, the positives: we saw the return of true blockbuster films on the big screen. From massive superhero films, such as The Batman (opens in new tab) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (opens in new tab), to somewhat surprising billion-dollar hits like Top Gun: Maverick (opens in new tab), studios stepped up their game to deliver films that took our breath away. On the TV and streaming front, hugely popular shows returned to critical acclaim, such as Stranger Things season 4 (opens in new tab), while new hits like The Rings of Power (opens in new tab), Wednesday, Andor (opens in new tab), Severance, and House of the Dragon lit up our screens.
But it hasn’t been plain sailing for the world’s biggest studios – or for fans of movies and TV shows. Marvel faced (and continues to face) its biggest test yet, with audiences underwhelmed by some of its Phase 4 productions, and accusations of employees enduring intolerable working conditions. Netflix endured a torrid year, losing millions of subscribers (opens in new tab) and cancelling projects left, right and center, while Warner Bros’ merger with Discovery has drawn plenty of criticism, with numerous shows and films inexplicably cancelled at the last minute (RIP Batgirl) or removed from HBO Max without explanation.
There’s plenty to look forward to next year, with some big new movies (opens in new tab) slated for release, and highly anticipated TV series set to debut. Still, if 2022 has taught us anything, it’s that the industry can’t rest on its laurels, particularly as the cost of living crisis continues to bite. Dark days may be ahead but, if studios continue to pump out crowd-pleasing content for us to enjoy, 2023 should be a largely better year for fans and creators alike.
Televisions
Bigger, better, brighter, cheaper: TV tech in 2022
Samsung’s S95B, a QD-OLED model that transformed the TV landscape in 2022 (Image credit: Samsung)
(Image credit: Future)
By some measures, 2022 has been a massive year for TVs writes Al Griffin, Home Entertainment Editor. And I’m not just talking about screen sizes, though the year did see the arrival of the first 97-inch OLED and 98-inch QLED models, from LG and Samsung, respectively.
The biggest TV news for 2022 was the arrival of QD-OLED sets, which easily settled in among the ranks of the best 4K TVs (opens in new tab) in a year when there was plenty of tough competition from standard OLED models like the LG C2 (opens in new tab), our top pick for the TechRadar Choice Awards (opens in new tab). QD-OLED merges Quantum Dots with OLED tech to create brighter displays with enhanced color definition, and the results can be appreciated in TV wonders like the Samsung S95B (opens in new tab) and Sony XR-A95K (opens in new tab).
Other important trends to emerge in 2022 were the availability of mini-LED backlight tech in a wider range of TVs, including models from budget brands like Hisense (opens in new tab), along with a much expanded range of 120Hz 4K sets (opens in new tab). A mini-LED backlight lets TVs achieve the high peak brightness level necessary for uncompromised display of HDR sources, while a 120Hz display supports the high-frame-rate gaming that’s possible with next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles.
What will 2023 bring for TV shoppers? At the upcoming CES tech expo we expect to see companies roll out even better-performing QD-OLED models (opens in new tab) in larger screen sizes, and mini-LED will continue its expansion into more and cheaper sets. There will be better and brighter regular OLED TVs from the likes of LG, and TCL will astound us with a range of ultra-large sets at ultra-low prices. TechRadar will be reporting on all of it in-person live from Las Vegas, so make a point of following our CES 2023 (opens in new tab) coverage.
Cameras
A throwback year, with glimpses of an AI future
The Fujifilm X-H2S led a revival of crop-sensor cameras (Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Mark Wilson)
2022 will go down as the year affordable cameras made a much-needed comeback writes Mark Wilson, Cameras Editor. Full-frame had dominated for the past few years, but in 2022 we saw crop-sensor systems – like Micro Four Thirds and APS-C – make an emphatic return, with a wave of launches. And that was very good news for our beleaguered wallets.
It was Fujifilm, in particular, that delivered the best alternatives to full-frame. Its new flagships, the Fujifilm X-H2S (opens in new tab) and X-H2, pack modern shooting power into small and (relatively) affordable packages. Similarly, the OM System OM-1 (opens in new tab), rising from the ashes of Olympus, rocketed to the top of our guide to the best cameras for wildlife photography (opens in new tab).
2022 was also, finally, a great year for entry-level mirrorless cameras. The Canon EOS R10 (opens in new tab), the spiritual successor to the camera giant’s much-loved line of entry-level DSLRs (known as the Rebel series in the US), became our new best camera for beginners (opens in new tab). For keen hobbyists, we also saw the arrival of the Fujifilm X-T5 (opens in new tab) and Canon EOS R7, two ‘sweet spot’ models that are destined to become big-sellers.
Not that pro shooters were left in the cold this year, as Canon and Sony both introduced compelling full-frame powerhouses. The Canon EOS R6 Mark II (opens in new tab) is a solid upgrade of one of its best cameras, while the Sony A7R V (opens in new tab) showcased the kind of AI-powered autofocus that we can expect to see develop at a rapid pace next year.
That’s the kind of photographic tech I’m looking forward to the most next year. The likes of Dall-E (opens in new tab) and Midjourney have given us a taste of how AI algorithms are set to revolutionize our creative lives in 2023. They could ultimately challenge the definition of photography itself; but this year, I’m excited to see what they can do for mirrorless cameras and phones like the hotly-anticipated iPhone 15.
Fitness
Apple goes Ultra, Fitbit goes wrong
The Apple Watch Ultra signaled Apple’s entry into the ‘rugged’ smartwatch space (Image credit: TechRadar)
(Image credit: Matt Evans)
A year or two ago, we were seeing new fitness products that had been rushed into production during the pandemic, when everyone assumed that exercising at home was going to be the new norm writes Matt Evans, Fitness and Wellbeing Editor. Now, though, outdoor exercise has returned to pre-pandemic levels, and our tech is once again geared towards empowering us to get outside.
Premium smartwatches have gone rugged, with Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro (opens in new tab) and the much-vaunted Apple Watch Ultra (opens in new tab) leading the charge. Both are chunkier watches designed for trails and other adventures, with more accurate GPS and reinforced cases to withstand the elements. The Watch 5 Pro has a raised bezel and improved route-tracking features, while Apple went one step further, and made the Watch Ultra a working dive computer. However, neither stole the award for our fitness device of the year: that honor goes to Garmin, king of the adventure watch space, for its excellent Forerunner 955 Solar (opens in new tab).
Sadly, Fitbit didn’t get the memo. After a year of technical issues (opens in new tab) with its existing slate of products, the Fitbit Versa 4 (opens in new tab) and Fitbit Sense 2 (opens in new tab) enjoyed a splashy launch in September, but both failed to improve on their predecessors. The Fitbit Inspire 3 (opens in new tab) fitness tracker fared better, but we were disappointed that Fitbit slashed the Inspire 2’s free Fitbit Premium subscription from one year down to just six months, removing lots of value from the device. Peloton has also suffered badly this year, with rounds of layoffs and bad press overshadowing the launch of its new rowing machine (opens in new tab).
As for 2023,I don’t believe we’re going to see the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for a few years, but more funky stuff, like the Huawei Watch D’s (opens in new tab) on-wrist blood pressure cuff, is set to appear. As the cost of living bites, and production issues continue to plague major retailers, the philosophy of ‘health is wealth’ is going to be pushed rather heavily, with less focus on performance and a greater emphasis on wellness.
Although reviews have been mixed, we actually like the Logitech G Cloud. It’s an Android-powered handheld designed to play AAA titles through game-streaming services, in addition to mobile games. You can even play retro titles through emulators like RetroArch. The controls are solid, the hardware feels great, the battery life is astounding, and the seven-inch, 1080P screen is easy on the eyes. The handheld feels a little under-powered, though, and struggles with some of the more processor intensive mobile games currently available, even if your phone would have no issue with them. At $349, it’s only $50 cheaper than Valve’s entry-level Steam Deck. If Logitech knocks the price down a bit for 2023, the G Cloud would definitely be worth considering.
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 gives Americans the right to sue companies over anticompetitive behavior, a fact which 10 self-described gamers are using to take Microsoft to court, aiming to halt the company’s acquisition of Activision.
As reported by Bloomberg Law, the complaint, filed today and obtained by Kotaku, states that the plaintiffs, or “video gamers” as they’re described, are concerned that “the [Microsoft and Activision] merger may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly;” this merger, the complaint states, would specifically be in violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act, which states that acquisitions that diminish competition are prohibited under U.S. antitrust law. The complaint not only cites the scale and scope of the Activision and Microsoft merger as problematic, but also that this latest proposed union follows numerous other Microsoft acquisitions ranging from its 2014 purchase of Mojang all the way up to its acquisition of Rare in 2022.
Thoroughly laying out console, PC, and AAA gaming, as well as subscription services as “Relevant Product Markets,” the suit calls attention to just how many large franchises will fall under Microsoft’s corporate umbrella should the merger go through. Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Doom, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Halo, and The Elder Scrolls are just some of the cited examples. It maintains that currently Microsoft and Activision compete directly through these titles and services like Battle.net, the Microsoft Store, and Game Pass. The merger would shatter that competitive dynamic.
Should the merger go through, the suit claims, Microsoft would hold “outsized market power and the ability to foreclose key inputs to rivals and further harm competition.” The suit mentions competition both whereas it concerns sales to consumers, as well as the competition in the industry to “hire and retain talent within specialized video game labor,” which would be “lessened” under the merger.
Kotaku has reached out to Microsoft for comment.
The proposed MIcrosoft / Activision merger has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since its initial announcement. Perhaps most worrying for Microsoft is the recently filed lawsuit from the FTC. The feds allege that, should this merger go through, it would pose serious harm to competition in the video game industry, citing past behavior of Microsoft to prioritize Xbox and Windows PCs as platforms for its games. Microsoft has disagreed, stating that the Activision acquisition would “bring Call of Duty to more gamers and more platforms than ever before.”
Speaking of Call of Duty, in response to criticisms of its intended merger with Activision, Microsoft has pledged to continue to deliver Call of Duty to other platformsfor at least 10 years. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has categorized Sony’s criticisms of the acquisition as an attempt to “protect its dominant position on console” and that it seeks to grow by “making Xbox smaller.”