What’s up, gamers? Much like me after watching Nosferatu, the tech and gaming world doesn’t sleep. While we’re past CES and all the big reveals there, there’s still plenty of fresh news keeping us on our toes.
First and foremost, Nintendo finally announced that Switch 2 would be released this year. The US TikTok ban is also expected to go through this weekend unless a Hail Mary buyer or executive order manages to stall the ban. Elon Musk was also accused of paying people to boost his Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2 accounts.
All this and more in this week’s tech and gaming news recap.
5. Nintendo announces Switch 2
While many Australians were sleeping, Nintendo finally dropped a trailer for an upcoming Nintendo Direct, revealing all the details of the upcoming Switch 2. In the trailer, Nintendo showed off the console’s new slick design, which revealed the console will be bigger and backwards compatible with most physical and digital Switch games. It’s unclear which games won’t work on the new console as of now or if this disclaimer is to cover Nintendo’s ground legally in the future, just in case.
Nintendo also announced that select cities worldwide will get a hands-on opportunity to try out the Switch 2. Melbourne will be the only city in Oceania to get its hands on a Switch 2 at Centrepiece at Melbourne Park on Olympic Boulevard.
Registrations for the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 Experience will open for anyone with a Nintendo Switch Online account on January 18 at 11am AEDT until January 26 at 11:59 pm. You can click here to enter the randomly selected draw if you’d like to be one of the first.
4. Americans flock to Chinese social media site RedNote as TikTok ban seems certain
With the TikTok ban right around the corner, hundreds of thousands of Americans have pre-emptively jumped ship over Xiaohongshu, widely called RedNote, a Chinese video-sharing app.
Many Chinese users on the app have already begun making videos welcoming the 700,000 Americans who are joining the platform. The move is inspired by some looking for a similar experience to TikTok but is also in defiance of the reasoning behind the ban. Many Americans disagree with the reasoning for the ban, believing their data is already being sold and used to exploit them by companies operating in their own country.
While Australia itself isn’t facing a TikTok ban, some Australians have also made the leap. Dr Alexia Maddox, director of digital education at La Trobe University, told The Guardian that this is due to anxiety around the social media ban in Australia, wanting to secure a presence on an emerging app and secure their user name on a fresh platform.
We’re in a weird social media time right now, and we’re all looking to switch from our previous legacy platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) to something new. Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, and Lemon8 managed to draw some attention, but they haven’t really been able to rock the boat in a meaningful way. With our own social media ban hitting Australia by the end of the year, it’s tough to say what the future of these platforms will look like by 2026.
3. Elon Musk is accused of being a fake gamer
Many an eyebrow was raised this week when Elon Musk’s personal Path of Exile 2 account was discovered. The account had a character that had reached the high level of 97, a near-impossible feat for most working a full-time job. This was also done in the game’s hardcore mode, meaning if your character died, they’d be deleted, and you’d have to start fresh with a new character.
These accusations grew more after Musk decided to stream himself playing the game, demonstrating that he had no idea what was happening with the game or his character’s build.
For a period of time, Musk was also the ‘number one Diablo 4‘ player in the world due to setting a world record for clearing endgame content. It’s a whole thing. Most Diablo players don’t really try for it. But it takes a significant time sink to reach a level, collect the specific type of gear, and grind said content repeatedly to learn the ins and outs. Needless to say, as a tech CEO of three companies and now appointed government official? Yeah, many aren’t buying it.
This blew up into an entire feud as Asmongold, an internet gamer personality whose house you can smell just from photos, weighed in. Asmon agreed, claiming that Musk was most likely not the only person playing on that account. This prompted Musk to leak private DMs, take away his blue check on X, and attack Asmon’s character.
Along with the Adrian Dittman story, the ever-growing lore of Musk being a really weird dude gets deeper. Godspeed to whoever is editing his Wikipedia page in real-time.
2. Woman loses €830,000 euros to Brad Pitt AI scam
There’s downbad and then there’s this.
After years of believing she was in a romance with actor Brad Pitt, Anne, a 53-year-old French woman, was conned out of €830,000 ($1,384,615 AUD) to said scammer. Anne believed she had been engaged in a long-distance relationship with the actor for over a year.
At the time, Anne was married to a wealthy entrepreneur when the scammers first reached out to her. She claimed they “knew how to speak with women”, prompting her to divorce her husband so she could pursue Fake Brad Pitt.
The scammers claimed Pitt needed $1m from Anne for a kidney transplant. According to Fake Brad Pitt, the Fight Club actor couldn’t access his money because his divorce proceedings restricted access to his bank accounts. She was then sent laughably fake AI-generated images of the actor in the hospital.
It wasn’t until the real Brad Pitt announced his relationship to Ines de Ramon in November last year that Anne realised she was being conned.
Another reason among many to probably never reply to hidden messages.
1. Until Dawn movie adaptation drops trailer
The first trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation of the hit 2015 game Until Dawn is getting a video game adaptation just dropped, and yeah, it do look spooky.
The movie’s story looks pretty different from the original video game, which might alienate some fans of the original. Here’s the official synopsis:
One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor centre, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one… only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening.
Trapped in the valley, they’re forced to relive the nightmare again and again — only each time, the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realises they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.
The movie stars Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell and Peter Stormare. The film is also directed by David F. Sandberg, who made Lights Out and Shazam. The movie will be released in cinemas from April 24, 2025.
Overall, it looks like a decently scary flick with some callbacks to the original game (the Wendigo looks like it appears in the trailer). Fans of the original game might be a little disappointed that the movie won’t be a more traditional adaptation, though.
The post Nintendo Switch 2 Announced & Americans React To US TikTok Ban: Tech & Gaming News This Week appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
