Full Circle, the gaming studio behind the new iteration of Skate, has recently announced a restructuring involving layoffs at its headquarters in Burnaby, British Columbia. Founded in 2021 as a subsidiary of Electronic Arts, Full Circle is just the latest in a series of AAA gaming studios to be hit by layoffs, with Ubisoft Toronto laying off 40 employees last week. 

In their public-facing announcement, entitled “skate.’s Next Chapter,” the company lamented that the people affected by layoffs “are talented colleagues and friends who helped build the foundation of skate,” while shouting out the “tens of millions” of people who have explored the Early Access version of skate. released last September. “To our departing teammates: thank you. skate. exists because of your hard work and dedication to the craft.”

The original Skate games were released in the late 2000s for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and marketed as more realistic skateboarding games compared to the rival Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. Fans responded well to the tight controls, inventive city settings, and fun soundtrack, which won the first Skate game the “Sports Game of the Year” award at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, and resulted in commercial success, but the series had been on indefinite hold until the announcement of skate. (known among fans as Skate 4), which was to be a live-service game built around a sandbox-style multiplayer experience, a move that didn’t sit well with many long-time fans of the series.

While the latest Skate game has not yet had a final release, the Early Access version has been available to fans for almost half a year now, and early reviews are mixed. Critics have pointed to the inclusion of microtransactions ($25 clothing for your digital character), the online-only gameplay restriction, and the homogenized character design, while others have praised the free-to-play accessibility.

We don’t yet know how many employees lost their jobs at Full Circle, as the company was not forthcoming, but the parent company, EA, lost approximately 5% of its workforce in 2024, during its last round of layoffs. As for the fate of skate. after these layoffs, much is still unknown and the game still doesn’t have a final release date.

Xiaomi’s Ultra line of phones has always been about one thing: Peak camera performance. The new Xiaomi 17 Ultra, launched ahead of MWC 2026 in Barcelona, pushes the boundaries once more, though it suffers from similar setbacks as its predecessors.

Note that there was no Xiaomi 16 Ultra; the company decided to skip that number and go straight from the Xiaomi 15 and 15 Ultra to Xiaomi 17 and 17 Ultra, likely to “catch up” with Apple, whose latest models also bear the number seventeen. Despite the change, the new Xiaomi phones are very much an evolution of last year’s flagship models.

On the phone side of things, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is an extremely capable Android smartphone, with a 6.9-inch, 120Hz OLED display, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, 16GB of RAM, 512/1024GB of storage, and a 6,000mAh battery with 90W fast charging and 50W wireless charging. It comes in three colors: Black, White, and the sparkly Starlit Green (Xiaomi sent me a black unit, but the Starlit Green looks way cooler).

The 6.9-inch OLED display is excellent.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Where the Xiaomi 17 Ultra differs from the regular Xiaomi 17, which also debuted here in Barcelona, is mainly in screen size (6.9 vs. 6.3 inches), and the camera. The Ultra’s got a massive, Leica-branded camera array on the back, with a 50-megapixel main camera, a 200-megapixel telephoto camera, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera, coupled with a 50-megapixel selfie camera on the front.

At 8.29mm thickness and 218 grams of weight, it’s the thinnest and lightest Xiaomi Ultra phone ever.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

The 200-megapixel, 75-100mm telephoto camera gives this phone otherworldly zoom capabilities, with up to 17.2x of “optical-level zoom.” I’ve tried it out, and was able to take usable photos at 100x zoom or more, far beyond in the distance than what my naked I could see.

Left:
This is what the XIaomi 17 Ultra’s telephoto camera can do.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Right:
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Venture that far out, and AI takes the reins quite heavy handedly, which you’ll see in the way the system recreates the letters of a sign you took in the distance. Still, if you like the idea of having a camera that can take sharp photos of a flower that’s a hundred yards away, this is the phone to do it with.

Left:
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Right:
The zoom on this phone is so good, it’s worth providing another example. It’s like having a set of binoculars.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

To add an exclamation point to the phone’s camera capabilities, Xiaomi also sells two optional photography kits which consists of two different cases that turn the phone into something that really looks like a compact camera, and add a few buttons, visual details, and battery life to the mix. The smaller Xiaomi 17 Ultra Photography Kit makes more sense to me as the phone still retains somewhat normal dimensions; the two-part Xiaomi 17 Ultra Photography Kit Pro makes it a bit too big for my taste.

The photography kits look cool, but they make the phone a lot bulkier.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

The kits, as cool as they may be, illustrate the most obvious drawback of this phone: it’s too much of a camera. It’s top heavy, has a smaller battery than the regular Xiaomi 17, and – due to its massive camera bump on the back – doesn’t support Xiaomi’s wireless, magnetic battery. Don’t get me wrong, this is one powerful phone, but it’s primarily aimed at photography enthusiasts. Kudos to Xiaomi for making the Ultra lighter than ever, though at 218 grams it’s still not exactly lightweight.

If you want your Xiaomi 17 Ultra to be a little more…Leica, there’s a special version just for you, shown as a surprise announcement during Xiaomi’s big unveiling in Barcelona. Called the Leica Leitzphone, it shares most of the specs with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, but has a somewhat retro design which calls to mind classic Leica cameras, and a couple of Leica-specific photography modes.

This one is for the Leica fans.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

It also has one extra feature: The ring surrounding its camera bump can be rotated to increase or decrease zoom. I’ve tried it out, and it appears to be quite precise, though you do have to be careful not to place your fingers in front of the lens while shooting.

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra starts at 1,499 euros in Europe; there’s no info on U.S. availability yet. The Leica Leitzphone is starting at a hefty price of 1,999 euros, and it will be available in select markets and locations.

Xiaomi likes to bring cars to Barcelona; the company gave us the first glimpse of its SU7 Ultra supercar during last year’s MWC in March.

This year, however, Xiaomi has unveiled something that’s pretty far out there, even by its own standards. Called the Xiaomi Vision Gran Turismo, it’s a hypercar that was designed to go really fast while slicing through the air in a way not many cars (or race cars, for that matter) can (Xiaomi says it’s been “sculpted by the wind”).

It feels kinda empty in there.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

The company will bring the concept car to its MWC show floor in Barcelona on March 2, presumably when we’ll learn more about its powertrain, acceleration, battery, and other trivialities. Today, however, Xiaomi was mostly focused on how the air flows through the car, using a variety of wind tunnels and channels (and even a moving part on the car’s bottom) to make it more efficient.

The wheels and wheel covers are special, too.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Even the car’s wheels have special covers that are (somehow) magnetically set in place so they don’t rotate while the car moves, as that would also increase drag.

I bet your car doesn’t have a cocoon-shaped sofa.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Inside, it gets even nuttier. The seats are out; instead, you sit in a “cocoon-shaped sofa” with an x-wing steering wheel with five tiny displays, some of which apparently double as (contextual?) buttons. Most of the things you associate with a traditional car are gone; instead, it’s you in that sofa-shaped cockpit, that steering wheel, and the road. The car’s a two-seater, so don’t expect to bring your family on a trip in this one.

Fortunately, you might be able to get a cocoon-shaped sofa/cockpit for your home.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

In fact, most people probably won’t be able to afford a car like this, but Xiaomi’s got you covered, as it plans to release a gaming console/cockpit shaped just like the car’s cockpit, so you can race around in your own little cocoon in the relative safety of your home.

We don’t know how fast it goes. We don’t know where the batteries are, given that the car appears to be mostly wind tunnels under that cockpit. We don’t know if it’s ever going to make it to market. But boy, does it all look cool.

We’ll hopefully find out more on March 2 when that show floor opens, so stay tuned for pics and videos.