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Your Wednesday Briefing: A Race to Dominate the Metaverse

We’re covering Microsoft’s huge bet on the metaverse and the contenders at the Australian Open.

Playing Call of Duty: Black Ops at Paris Games Week in 2018.Credit…Benoit Tessier/Reuters

Microsoft bets on gaming and the metaverse

Microsoft agreed to buy Activision Blizzard, the video game maker behind hits like Call of Duty and Candy Crush, for $68.7 billion in cash. The deal will position Microsoft for the next generation of the internet.

The acquisition, Microsoft’s largest ever, would catapult the company into a leading spot in the video game industry and could strengthen its hand in virtual and augmented reality. The takeover would make Microsoft the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony, the company said.

U.S. regulators face a challenge in deciding how to approach the huge deal. Microsoft has expanded its gaming business to surpass $10 billion in annual revenue. In anticipation of a longer review, Microsoft said it did not expect the Activision deal to close until the next fiscal year, which ends in June 2023.

Metaverse: The name for the virtual worlds many companies are putting money into is more of a buzzword than a big business for now. But the Activision deal could give Microsoft a significant boost against Facebook, which is considered the leader in the metaverse. Our tech columnist explains what the hype is about.

Context: One main driver of video game deals is the race for exclusive content: Locking up a major franchise like Call of Duty or Skyrim, for instance, could force fans to switch from Sony’s PlayStation to Microsoft’s Xbox, if Microsoft chose to make a game exclusive.


The Brooklyn Hospital Center, facing its biggest surge of Covid patients since spring 2020.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Omicron in the U.S. hits hospitals hard

A wave of Omicron cases may be cresting in the northeastern U.S., but the number of Covid patients is at a record high and climbing, overwhelming hospitals whose staffs have been hollowed out by the coronavirus.

The average number of Americans hospitalized with the coronavirus is 157,000, an increase of 54 percent over two weeks. And the number could continue increasing for some time. Experts say data on deaths and hospitalizations tends to lag behind case numbers by about two weeks.

Hospital staffs are severely stretched, doctors’ groups say, after relentless surges in the U.S. that have surpassed those of most countries. Many workers are sick with Covid and others have quit under the pressure of the pandemic.

Though the idea of the virus becoming a manageable part of daily life has gained traction, experts warn that there is no guarantee that the population is building enough natural immunity and that there is no certainty around future variants.

Data: More than 790,000 new infections are being reported in the U.S. each day. Deaths now exceed 1,900 a day, up 50 percent over the past two weeks.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In other developments:

  • Hong Kong plans to cull 2,000 hamsters after a Covid outbreak at a pet store.

  • The police in Hong Kong arrested two former flight attendants for Cathay Pacific who have been blamed for a wave of Omicron cases that led to a return to pandemic restrictions.

  • Tonga residents fear that aid workers will bring Covid to their island nation, after a volcano eruption and a tsunami.


Naomi Osaka won her tennis match against Camila Osorio on Monday. Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York Times

Big comebacks at the Australian Open

After a tumultuous year and a four-month layoff during which she questioned what she wanted from tennis, Naomi Osaka is back on the court.

Today she will play Madison Brengle in the second round at the Australian Open after winning her Monday match.

Before her pause from tennis, Osaka was the dominant figure in the sport and the world’s highest-paid female athlete at just 23 years old. On her return, she said, “I’m not sure if this is going to work out well.”

Also on Wednesday, Simona Halep will play Beatriz Haddad Maia.

Ashleigh Barty, the women’s No. 1, is back, too, after ending her season following the U.S. Open last year. Her possible matchup with Osaka will be her toughest test.

Men’s players will make the most of Novak Djokovic’s absence after Djokovic lost a visa battle with the Australian government. Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are tied with Djokovic for 20 Grand Slam titles each, and both want to be the first to hit 21 and make history.

THE LATEST NEWS

Asia Pacific

The quakes occurred after three days of heavy rainfall, which left mud-brick houses vulnerable.Credit…Abdul Raziq Saddiqi/Associated Press
  • Two earthquakes struck western Afghanistan, killing at least 27 people.

  • Kazakhstan’s former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, posted a video in support of the current leader, his first public comments since unrest gripped the country.

  • The N.B.A.’s Golden State Warriors distanced themselves from a minority stakeholder in the team after he said “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs,” the Muslim minority group that China has repressed.

Around the World

Protesters took to the streets of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, on Monday to demand a return to civilian rule.Credit…Marwan Ali/Associated Press
  • Sudanese security forces killed seven people and injured at least 100 others during a protest, a doctors’ group said. U.S. diplomats are expected in Khartoum this week for talks on reviving the country’s transition to democracy.

  • Seeking to head off a potential assault on Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Russia’s foreign minister on Friday. Russian diplomats have been told to prepare to leave Ukraine, in a possible clue to Vladimir Putin’s next move.

  • Prime Minister Mario Draghi could become the first sitting prime minister in Italy to make the leap to the presidency, a move that has already unleashed political machinations.

  • Éric Zemmour, the anti-immigrant, far-right pundit running in France’s presidential elections, was fined 10,000 euros for inciting racial hatred when he called child migrants “thieves,” “rapists” and “murderers” in a 2020 television interview.

A Morning Read

View of a bridge and trees at the park in Shekvetili.Credit…Daro Sulakauri for The New York Times

Many Georgians believe that Bidzina Ivanishvili, an eccentric billionaire and the former prime minister of Georgia, still wields power behind the scenes. A park that opened to the public in 2020 is a manifestation of his opaque but overwhelming presence in Georgia. Ivanishvili personally vetted most of the 200 trees that were transplanted to the park, which cost him tens of millions of dollars to create, on Georgia’s Black Sea Coast.

What Is the Metaverse, and Why Does It Matter?


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The origins. The word “metaverse” describes a fully realized digital world that exists beyond the one in which we live. It was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash,” and the concept was further explored by Ernest Cline in his novel “Ready Player One.”

An expanding universe. The metaverse appears to have gained momentum during the online-everything shift of the pandemic. The term today refers to a variety of experiences, environments and assets that exist in the virtual space.

Some examples. Video games in which players can build their own worlds have metaverse tendencies, as does most social media. If you own a non-fungible token, virtual-reality headset or some cryptocurrency, you’re also part of the metaversal experience.

How big Tech is shifting. Facebook staked its claim to the metaverse last year, after shipping 10 million of its virtual-reality headsets and announcing it had renamed itself Meta. Google, Microsoft and Apple have all been working on metaverse-related technology.

The future. Many people in tech believe the metaverse will herald an era in which our virtual lives will play as important a role as our physical realities. Some experts warn that it could still turn out to be a fad or even dangerous.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Fuller views of motherhood

Mainstream films and TV often paint motherhood in broad strokes. A mother is either endlessly devoted to her children, or her absence serves as fodder for a protagonist’s origin story, as our critic at large Amanda Hess writes. But more productions are now challenging those notions with complex portrayals.

In “The Lost Daughter,” Leda (played by Olivia Colman), an academic, leaves her young daughters to pursue her career, as many deadbeat fathers have done before her. “Children are a crushing responsibility,” she tells a pregnant character. Yet the movie reserves judgment and depicts Leda as a human being, not a monster. “We can dislike her, but we are never permitted to revile her,” Jeannette Catsoulis writes in a review.

There’s also Penélope Cruz’s character, in “Parallel Mothers,” a pregnant 40-year-old woman who befriends a teenage mother-to-be and makes an immoral decision about their newborns. “Instead of reassuring audiences that mommy is always a bastion of safety, these filmmakers have created mother heroines who are unpredictable, erratic and even a little bit frightening,” Emily Gould writes in Vanity Fair.

Even the “Sex and the City” reboot “And Just Like That …” is part of the trend. At one point, Miranda — a mother to a hormonal teenager — tells a character who is considering having children that there are many nights she wishes to “go home to an empty house.”

These works, Gould writes, “present their mothers as full human beings, even when their needs are structurally opposed to those of their children.”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Credit…Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Give smothered chicken some flair with mushrooms and small onions in the gravy.

What to Read

The Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston reveals her intellectual breadth in a collection of essays, with some appearing for the first time.

What to Listen To

Keyboard music from the other Bach — Johann Sebastian’s second surviving son.

Now Time to Play

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Greek sandwiches (five letters).

And here is today’s Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.


That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Melina

P.S. A new series from NYT Cooking, “On the Job With Priya Krishna,” looks at the unheralded workers who make the food industry run. Watch the trailer.

The latest episode of “The Daily” is about the toll of America’s air wars.

Sanam Yar wrote the Arts and Ideas section. You can reach Melina and the team at [email protected].

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