This week, on a more focused episode of The TT Show, Jak and Kosta break down and go through the crazy Helldivers 2 controversy on PC. If you were offline for a few days (and this all played out throughout a single weekend), the decision to force the Helddivers 2's PC players to link their Steam Account to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account caused a veritable backlash storm.

From the review bombing to developers being grilled to Sony and developer Arrowhead's damage control to the surprisingly swift happy ending, Jak and Kosta discuss the implications and consider what might happen in the aftermath.

This week's other big story comes from the world of Apple, with the company lifting the lid on its new iPad Pro lineup powered by the new AI-powered 3 nanometer M4 chip. The big thing here is that it represents Apple's first dip into the world of OLED displays, with a groundbreaking 1000-nit SDR and HDR screen that has two OLED panels in one!

The race to achieve the world's first petabyte-sized SSD is being headed by Samsung Electronics, and the finish line may be closer than we previously thought.

It was only in March last year that reports surfaced that Samsung Electronics was approximately a decade away from creating the first petabyte SSD, but now new research has come out that may reduce that timeline significantly. Firstly, Samsung is preparing to launch its 9th Gen V-NAND flash that features 290 layers stacked, a new global benchmark. Additionally, the manufacturer announced the existence of its 10th Gen V-NAND flash that features 430-layer stacking.

The quest to achieve a 1,000 terabyte, or 1 petabyte single SSD may still be some years away, but recently, we got a peak into the behind-the-scenes at what new technology the company is working on to make that storage goal a reality. Giwuk Kim, a Ph.D student at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), is set to present an analysis on Hafnia Ferroelectrics, and how ferroelectric properties could lead to smaller and more efficient capacitors/memory.

NASA has taken to its website to reveal some brief plans for constructing the first levitating robot on the surface of the Moon.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed plans to construct the first lunar railway system, which will be designed to provide reliable, autonomous and efficient payload transport between locations on the surface of the Moon. The space agency has proposed developing FLOAT, or Flexible Levitation on a Track, which is a system that uses magnetic robots that levitate over the track.

How is this possible? NASA explains the track will be comprised of three layers: a graphene layer that enables robots to float above it using diamagnetic levitation, a flex-circuit layer to generate electromagnetic thrust to move the robots along the track, and an optional, but preferable solar panel layer to catch any sunlight. The additional benefits of FLOAT is the robots won't be touching the track, which minimizes the chance of wear and tear.

DIY gadget YouTuber "Bitluni" has built his own personal RISC-V megacluster, inside of a compact design, check it out:

Overall, the megacluster features 256 x RISC-V-based microcontrollers, operating at a mind-boggling 14.7GHz single-core frequency. Impressive. Remember, these are RISC-V chips, not x86-based processors inside of a regular PC.

The idea behind this is to fit 16 of the superclusters into a single interface, but that created issues down the line, so he designed his own "cluster blade" that featured two microcontrollers mounted on the board, each of them managing the supercluster on top of it. The cluster blade allowed Bitluni to give each supercluster its bus interface.

AMD's next-generation high-end Ryzen AI "Strix Halo" APUs have turned up in new shipping manifestos, featuring up to 64GB capacities and up to 120W TDPs.

The shipping manifestos were noticed by "nbd.ltd" and @harukaze5719, with multiple shipments of the same APU that would've been sent out for evaluation and testing purposes. These manifestos show the Maple DAP reference evaluation platform, which is available in both 32GB and 64GB memory capacities.

The Maple DAP reference systems feature 32GB or 64GB of pre-soldered memory, set by AMD, unlike Intel which is using on-package memory with its next-generation Lunar Lake CPUs.

Before it created Halo and before it created Destiny, veteran game development studio Bungie released the classic first-person shooter Marathon for the Apple Macintosh in 1994. Hailed as the Mac's answer to Doom, Marathon spawned a sequel several years later, leading to the studio's creation of the iconic Halo: Combat Evolved.

With Bungie now a first-party PlayStation studio owned by Sony, the team is developing a new entry in the series called Marathon. It takes place in the same futuristic sci-fi universe as the original but is shifting the gameplay and style to fit the mold of a PvP extraction shooter - ala Escape From Tarkov.

We've got some great news if you want to get a taste of where it all began. The community-driven team at Aleph One Developers has released a remastered version of the 1994 original - playable on modern PC gaming hardware and available for free on Steam.

MSI and Capcom announced and showcased limited edition Monster Hunter-themed PC gear earlier this year at CES 2024. The line-up of PC hardware included a gaming laptop, GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GPU, a custom gaming controller, case, motherboard, monitor, and liquid cooler. It's quite the line-up, with the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8G GAMING SLIM Monster Hunter Edition GPU now available.

The limited edition graphics card is bundled with the custom Monster Hunter controller, both sporting unique designs inspired by the franchise to help celebrate its 20th anniversary. The custom GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB GPU looks very cool with red, gold, and black flourishes to mimic Rathalos - one of the game's giant monsters.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8G GAMING SLIM Monster Hunter Edition sports a thin 2-slot design and MSI's TRI FROZR 3 cooling system, which includes the company's latest TORX FAN 5.0, core pipe, and airflow setup. However, as a limited edition bundle that also features custom packaging, the price tag is much higher than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB's MSRP of $399 USD. It's currently listed for $499.99 USD at Newegg.

MSI has introduced a new GPU with the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G SHADOW 3X OC, which looks like a darker version of the Ventus 3X reference model we reviewed when the GPU launched in January 2024. The Shadow 3X sports an out-of-the-box boost clock speed of 2640 MHz (which can be pushed to 2655 MHz via MSI Center), so it should perform slightly better than the non-OC Ventus variant.

The big difference here isn't just the color, which takes the silver of the Ventus line-up and switches it out for a darker bronze or brown metallic look. The MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16G SHADOW 3X OC is thinner, 43mm versus 50mm, and lighter, 838 grams versus 1107 grams.

Being thinner and lighter but retaining the same look as the Ventus 3X, MSI's new Shadow line could be the series' next evolution. It represents MSI's most affordable range of GeForce RTX graphics cards.

With a planned release for later this year, rumors, speculation, and insider leaks about the upcoming GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards are ramping up. The most recent rumors suggest that the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 will be released within weeks of each other, much like the initial launch of the Ada Lovelace GeForce RTX 40 Series in 2022.

Built using NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture, the upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 is said to use the new GB203 GPU, while the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 is set to use GB202. Based on leaked or rumored specs, there will be a significant disparity between the two - with GB203 set to include 96 SMs compared to GB202's 192 SMs. Memory bandwidth will be 256-bit on the GeForce RTX 5080 compared to 512-bit on the GeForce RTX 5090.

Although the GeForce RTX 5080 is expected to be more powerful than the current GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card, the US export ban on powerful GPU hardware could be the reason for the GeForce RTX 5080 launching in such a 'cut down' state.

Sony, not Valve, is behind the recent unpopular decisions regarding PlayStation PC games.

A bit ago, Sony learned a tough lesson about PC gamers: They're an austere and fickle audience. This was proven by the mass orbital review bombings that Helldivers 2 recently suffered. Sony has a policy to require PlayStation Network accounts in its games that include online multiplayer. This included Helldivers 2, and gamers had to make a PSN account in order to keep playing.

Predictably, everyone pushed back against this mandate and Sony eventually reversed course. But something else happened along the way: Helldivers 2 was delisted and removed from sale in countries that don't support PSN accounts, all 181 of them. This policy has led to a lot fewer players--and payers--for Sony.

On the heels of reports that Microsoft is unsure whether or not launching new Call of Duty titles on Game Pass is a good idea, Xbox president Sarah Bond reiterates the company's day-one policy for the subscription service.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg Tech, Xbox president Sarah Bond brought up the day-and-date Xbox Game Pass policy as one of the touchstones of Microsoft's core gaming business. Bond says that a plethora of high-profile games are coming to Game Pass later this year. Games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Starfield's Shattered Space expansion, and new Fallout 76/Elder Scrolls Online will be among the releases, but what about Call of Duty: Black Ops Gulf War?

New reports say that Xbox management is conflicted on launching new Call of Duty games on the service. After all, COD titles sell many millions of copies a year--offering new COD games day one would undoubtedly affect these sales. But that seems to be waived by the Xbox president, who hints that Call of Duty 2024 could be among the titles included on Game Pass this year.