Author: Trent Meikle

When Electronic Arts (EA) gave the world EA Play roughly ten or so years ago, it already felt like customers were being ripped off. EA Play is the company’s subscription-based service, which charges users a monthly or yearly fee in exchange for access to a library of washed-up FIFA titles and the odd half-decent title (see Mass Effect and It Takes Two). Now, the service is seeing a massive price hike effective immediately. Emphasis on massive. By the time EA Play reached South Africa’s shores, it rocked up with a fee almost worthy of consideration: R50/m or R200/year. Aside from the aforementioned library of…

Xiaomi is a big hit in the Stuff offices, especially where the Redmi Note series is concerned. Xiaomi isn’t just a hit machine, though. Like that dodgy season of Community (you know the one we mean), there have been some duds in the past. But now it’s back and firing on all cylinders. At least, that’s the impression we got after spending some time with the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G. Let’s first address the elephant in the room. The pinnacle of the Note series, the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ has had a massive price jump. What once used to cost R11,000…

Realme is the king of special edition phones. This is undebatable. Just check out the Naruto-themed Realme GT Neo 3. But if you’re not all that into anime, Xiaomi’s newly announced Redmi Turbo 3 and Pad Pro — arriving in a smattering of Harry Potter regalia — might convince you that it is in fact, The King™. There’s just one problem. Like the shinobi-clad Neo GT 3, Redmi is reserving the right to purchase one of these glorious devices for residents in the company’s homeland; China. Unless you’ve got an in with someone in China, we’ll have to make do with gaping…

Following the disheartening news that was April’s official petrol and diesel prices (disheartening for some, anyway), we had high hopes that fortune might favour the country’s petrol drivers this May. According to fresh data from the Central Energy Fund (CEF) captured yesterday, 8 April, that won’t be the case, though SA’s diesel drivers are set to secure yet another win. Should the CEF’s predictions come true, it’ll be the country’s petrol drivers forced to bear the increased prices by the time the first Wednesday of the month (1 May) rolls around. That’s when the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy,…

Dominating the short-form media domain apparently isn’t enough for TikTok. The Chinese company, under ByteDance’s watchful eyes, is reportedly looking to broaden those horizons with a new photo-sharing application called TikTok Notes. If that’s the moniker they’re going with, we’d hate to see what made it to second place. While Twitter/X is still considered the king of text — an area TikTok will likely try and invade with an app called ‘TikTok Snap’ or something similar — Meta’s Instagram still rules the photo-sharing realm. It’s here that Notes will have to make its stand if it has any hopes of…

Canal+: no white flags here Canal+, unlike its forebears, isn’t backing down. It’s desperately looking for an ‘in’ to Africa’s content scheme, and it’s hoping to do that through a total buyout of MultiChoice, owners of DStv and SuperSport. Despite turning down the French firm’s initial offer in February, Canal+ returned with a vastly improved offer that, by the look of it, MultiChoice is deeply considering. According to MyBroadband, MultiChoice has informed shareholders that an independent board has been established to seriously consider Groupe Canal+’s offer to purchase the remainder of shares it does not already own, valuing the broadcaster at roughly…

The streaming industry is actively changing (for the worse), but there isn’t much we can do about it. After Netflix printed out a blueprint detailing how to pull off a password-sharing crackdown, it was only a matter of time before the rest caught on. Disney, which has yet to turn a profit from its plus-named streamer, is — perhaps unsurprisingly — the next to jump on the bandwagon. Disney’s finally cashing in This shouldn’t come as a big surprise. The House of Mouse first began notifying customers in the US of their greedy hearts in February, and now it’s time…

Oh, Rain. You know we love you. But that becomes a little more difficult when you announce a price hike across your entire spectrum of products. We won’t stop loving you, of course, but was there no way we could have done this, say, next year? Or maybe never? According to the company, no. In an email sent to Rain customers yesterday, the company is placing the blame at the feet of inflation. Don’t get too down. Rather than add to the pile of increases hitting South African wallets this April — DStv, Eskom, Vodacom, and petrol, to name a…

Huawei is back, folks. Not that the Google-less conglomerate ever left, but you know what we mean. It’s back in the spotlight, vying for a chunk of your April salary. Meet the company’s Nova 12 series, a follow-up to last year’s 11 range, of which the 11 Pro passed through Stuff’s offices with… mixed results. We’re hopeful Huawei’s got its head back on straight for the Nova 12 line-up, consisting of the Nova 12i, Nova 12 SE, and the “soon-to-be-released” Nova 12s. No ‘Pro’ model has been mentioned just yet, but don’t expect that to be the case forever. Until then,…

Anyone who became a little too familiar with their television sets back in the early months of COVID-19 probably remembers DStv’s WildEarth show on channel 183. Its sole purpose is to live-stream ‘safaris’ to millions globally and offer an escape from a crowded house. Now, it’s being pulled from DStv entirely at the end of April. WildEarth is dead, long live WildEarth TV Instinct might be kicking in, compelling you to shout DStv down and force them to overturn the decision. But it’s not one DStv can make. At least, not entirely. It’s WildEarth’s, whose chair, André Crawford-Brunt, reckons it’s…