Light Start: Branson in space, Super Mario 64 sets new record, Witcher season 2 heads to Netflix and Sony TV will be made by robots

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Richard Branson goes to space

At the tender age of 70, British billionaire Richard Branson went on his longest journey yet — to the stars. This weekend, the Virgin Galactic space plane carried a full cabin of humans out of Earth’s orbit for the first time. It was also Branson’s first time outside the safe haven of our planet. 

“Welcome to the dawn of a new space age,” said Branson after a perfect landing at Spaceport America in New Mexico. He also called it the “experience of a lifetime” in a staticky radio transmission from the Unity spacecraft as it descended back to its home base. This weekend’s launch of the VSS Unity passenger rocket plane marked the company’s 22nd test flight of its SpaceShipTwo system. It was also the fourth crewed mission outside Earth’s atmosphere, but this time the cabin was at full capacity — two pilots and four passengers lovingly called ‘mission specialists’, of which Branson was one. 

Source: Cnet[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

A sealed Super Mario 64 cost more than you’d expect

Last week, a sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda for NES sold for $870,000 — then a sealed copy of Super Mario 64 said ‘Hold my beer’ and sold for almost double that. This weekend one lucky owner sold the Nintendo 64 classic game in mint condition for an eye-watering $1,560,000 — setting a new world record. 

This all went down at Heritage Auctions on Sunday, breaking the record that the Zelda game had just set two days prior. The Verge accumulated all the highest bids on videogames over the past few months, and it looks like its value has risen at an unprecedented rate since mid-2020. “Over the past 12 months, the record for the most expensive video game ever has risen dramatically,” The Verge reports. In June last year, someone handed out $114,000 for a copy of Super Mario Bros. Now, you can expect to make literal millions (even more in Rands if you’re from around here) for a mint condish Nintendo 64 game it seems. Moral of the story? Go rummage through your old game stuff — you may be sitting on a goldmine. 

Source: The Verge[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

The Witcher Season 2 heading to Netflix in December

The wildly popular Witcher series, made by the US-based streaming service Netflix, is officially getting a second season in 2021. It may be late 2021, but fans can expect to see more of Geralt of Rivia (aka Henry Cavill) on 17 December of this year. 

This date was revealed at the inaugural online WitcherCon event hosted by Netflix and CD Projekt Red. One thing fans didn’t get, however, was a full season 2 trailer. We’ll have to make it work with a behind-the-scenes preview and some additional teasers like the episode titles and a preview of the fan-favourite coin-tossing bard Jaskier’s new look for season 2. The adaptation for the screen is based directly on the novels and short stories by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski and not the games per se. We’d be lying if we didn’t say the director worked in some Easter eggs for fans of the games. Don’t expect the show to mirror the games at all though. In addition to The Witcher season 2, we’re also getting The Witcher: Blood Origin, a six-part live-action prequel miniseries and The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, an anime spinoff film also slated for late-2021.

Source: The Verge[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Sony TVs will be made by robots soon

Apparently, robots are out to take our jobs — for now, those jobs are mainly in tech assembly. According to new reports, Sony is planning to automate its whole supply chain for its TVs. The main reason? To cut costs. Human labour can be expensive, ey. 

The head of Sony electronics, Kimio Maki, spoke to the Financial Times, detailing that the company’s TV production lines in Malaysia should be fully automated (robotic) by the fiscal year of 2023. This process will cut the company’s production costs for TV manufacturing by a whopping 70% according to the interview with Maki. The company isn’t stopping there either. “Maki said that Sony also wanted to increase its use of robotic automation in smartphone and camera manufacturing, although it would keep some human workers on those production lines,” Business Insider reports. “I don’t think automation alone using robots will bring enough merits. The key is to use digitalization to link both sales and manufacturing,” he said to the newspaper. 

Source: Business Insider[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]