Sony is cutting the price of its PlayStation VR 2 headset in March. The VR 2 will be discounted to just $399.99, down from the original $549 pricing when it launched in February 2023. The headset will also see a price cut in Europe (€449.99), the UK (£399.99), Japan (¥66,980), and other regions.
Sony is positioning the price cut as a “fantastic time to dive into the exciting world of PS VR2,” but it also comes nearly a year after the company reportedly paused PSVR 2 production to clear excess inventory nearly . A Bloomberg report in March suggested Sony was trying to shift unsold inventory of the VR2 headset, and this fresh price cut suggests that the PS5 accessory still isn’t selling as well as Sony had hoped.
At $549, it was more expensive than the PS5 itself, and a lack of content has certainly held it back. The $399 pricing could certainly help shift units, particularly as you can also use the VR 2 headset on a PC now thanks to Sony’s $60 adapter. Sony is also reportedly working on Apple Vision Pro support for its PSVR 2 controllers, which we might hear about at some point this year.
Each Pokémon Presents stream is special in its own way, but we’re expecting big things from this year’s showcase given the imminent arrival of the Switch 2. A new console means a new generation of games like Pokémon Legends: Z-A and the franchise’s next mainline title. But there should also be some major updates for more casual games like Pokémon TCG Pocket, Pokémon Sleep, and Pokémon Go. We’ve already gotten a little (animated) taste of what Nintendo has been cooking up, but there are even more reveals in store, which you can follow along with right here.
Michigan State Spartans guard Tre Holloman gave college basketball fans a preview of the madness to come in March when the men’s tournament begins.
The No. 8 team in the nation was locked in a battle against the No. 16 Maryland Terrapins. The two Big Ten Conference teams were tied at 55 apiece. Terrapins guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie missed his chance at a go-ahead bucket when the Spartans rebounded.
Holloman got the ball in his hands and launched it from around 65 feet and nailed the shot. His Spartans teammates were jubilant as the crowd in College Park, Maryland, was left silent.
Michigan State won the game, 58-55.
"Every day at home, the night before a game, that last practice, we have the guys go around. Everybody gets a shot at a half-court shot. The last two games, Tre has made two of them. He’s made one (before) each game," Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo said. "I thought that thing was in when it left. I really did."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., chair of the House Oversight DOGE subcommittee, threatened potential "criminal referrals" during a hearing Wednesday on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
"This committee, based on this hearing and witness testimonies, will consider recommending investigations and criminal referrals," Greene said, beginning a line of questioning after several witnesses made opening remarks to the committee. The congresswoman reiterated that Hunter Biden was on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma when his father, Joe Biden, was vice president.
"The prosecutor general of Ukraine at the time, Viktor Shokin, was investigating Burisma for corruption. Biden threatened, and it's on video, to withhold 1 billion of USAID grant to Ukraine if Shokin wasn't fired," Greene said, before questioning one of the witnesses, former USAID official and Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, Max Primorac.
"In your estimation, roughly what percentage of USAID funding is doled out to bad actors or to efforts that don't have the best interests of Americans in mind?" Greene added.
Primorac said it was discovered through the work of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that USAID has been paying out over 50% to overhead charges and the inspector general of USAID "criticized the agency for not knowing the overhead charges being handed out to all of these actors for $142 billion of disbursements."
"That is extremely troubling," he added.
Another witness, Middle East Forum Executive Director Gregg Roman, said in his opening statement that he was there to testify "because there’s a fox loose in the henhouse of our foreign aid system – a system intended to uplift lives abroad that instead has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to radical and terrorist-linked organizations."
"If we don’t fix these fences now, we risk fueling violence against our allies, our troops, and potentially ourselves," he said, later adding: "I urge this committee to make a formal criminal referral to the Department of Justice regarding USAID's systemic failure to prevent taxpayer dollars from reaching terrorist organizations. USAID’s reckless bureaucrats should be dragged not just in front of this committee, but before a criminal court judge who can get to the bottom of this travesty and lock up any government official who risked the lives of innocent people around the world to advance these radical anti-American pet projects."
Greene did not specify who would potentially be the recipients of the criminal referrals.
The chairwoman said that the "Democrat-run USAID should not get to use our federal government – our U.S. taxpayer dollars – as their party piggy bank to push their radical agenda in countries that we have no business giving money to."
Greene said 95% of all political contributions from USAID employees go to Democratic Party candidates or PACs.
"The revolving door between USAID employees and NGOs that receive USAID funding is undeniable. Maybe we should consider investigating whether USAID funding has made it back to Democrat campaigns?" she later asked.
In her closing remarks, Greene again posed bringing criminal referrals in connection to USAID funding.
"What we have heard today is that USAID has been used as a tool by Democrats to brainwash the world with globalist propaganda to force regime changes around the world," she said. "But if USAID funded terrorism that resulted in the death of Americans," Greene added, "then this committee will be making criminal referrals."
Committee Democrats spent the hearing arguing that the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID was illegal, and is "reordering the global stage" to favor foreign adversaries and "undermining global democracy."
Amazon just revealed its first quantum computing chip, Ocelot, marking a step forward in its push to develop large-scale quantum systems. Developed by the AWS Center for Quantum Computing in Pasadena, California, the chip marks a key move in Amazon’s […]
'Trial by Fire,' starring Laura Dern, fictionalized the real-life case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted of murdering his three daughters by arson in 1992
Though gone, Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa’s love will live on.
The couple, aged 95 and 64, were found dead in their Santa Fe, New Mexico, home alongside their dog on Feb. 26, the Santa Fe County...