Current rumors point to Sony internally deciding to roll back the number of PC ports for PlayStation games, and now Mike Ybarra, the former President of Blizzard Entertainment, has shed more light on the rumors and provided a perspective on why Sony would make such a decision, if true.

Ybarra pointed to the Steam Machine as a big reason Sony would pull back on PC releases, and to the recent fiasco at Microsoft as the "last nail in the coffin there". Why would these two factors result in fewer PlayStation PC ports? The Steam Machine will run SteamOS, which means it will have direct access to Steam's extensive library of games. Valve's catalogue of games is a significant threat to both Sony and Xbox, with Ybarra writing that Valve is being viewed as a "major new competitor" in the space.

Additionally, the former Blizzard President said Valve is likely to enter the living room and console markets with a Steam Machine, along with 3rd-party variants and different hardware configurations all running SteamOS. Valve currently has the largest gaming platform, with nearly 150 million monthly users, exceeding both Sony and Xbox, and is now entering the console market with a console likely to arrive in variants ranging from $500 to $5000.

A new report reveals that President Trump is currently deciding whether to allow Tencent to maintain its stakes in US-based video game companies ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The ban on Tencent in US gaming-related companies, along with Finnish gaming firms, is due to potential national security risks, as Tencent is directly connected to the Chinese government. According to a Reuters report, top officials have held internal meetings to investigate whether Tencent's investments in US-based companies pose a national security risk.

Notably, a meeting with several cabinet officials was scheduled for Tuesday but postponed due to scheduling issues. For those who don't know, Tencent currently holds stakes in several major game companies, including Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, and Riot, the creator of League of Legends. There is also its $8.6 billion stake in Supercell, the Finnish mobile game maker behind Clash of Clans.

Elgato, which is a part of the Corsair family, has just announced Wave Next, a mix of next-generation audio hardware and software built for modern creators, gamers, and professionals. It's the culmination of observing thousands of real-world setups and listening to feedback, and it's all about enhancing and streamlining workflows while also improving audio processing and how the hardware works.

At the core of the Wave Next platform is Wave Link 3.0, a new piece of free software for everyone that delivers a powerful and intuitive audio mixing solution. No matter the audio hardware, Windows and macOS users can use Wave Link 3.0 to manage hardware and software audio inputs, routing, mixing, and monitoring with an intuitive interface. The software also supports VST plugins for per-channel effects and processing.

Naturally, when paired with Elgato hardware, you've got more functionality, including a dedicated device control panel and native Stream Deck integration with third-party effects available via the Elgato Marketplace. On the hardware side, the key technology that defines the new Wave Next ecosystem is the Wave FX Processor.

Microsoft is working on a new method for storing data, with the goal of developing an ultra-durable archival medium capable of preserving data for hundreds or even thousands of years without degradation.

Currently, Solid State Storage (SSD) and mechanical hard drives generally last 5 to 20 years, with the lifespan of any given drive dependent on how often it is accessed. Instead of improving NAND flash or the mechanical design of a hard drive, Microsoft looked to borosilicate glass, which can withstand temperatures over 500 degrees Celsius, microwaves, water submersion, magnetic interference, electromagnetic pulses, and surface damage such as scratches.

In a new paper, Microsoft reports successfully storing 4.8TB of data on a 120mm-square piece of borosilicate glass measuring 2mm thick. For comparison, a hard drive storage measures typically 63.5 to 88.9mm wide, and can only store 1 or 2GB. To achieve this feat in data storage, Microsoft used femtosecond lasers to write data inside the glass.

The hope for Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 remakes in the same fashion as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion began when Iron Galaxy Studios shared an image of an internal presentation, and the slide open on a computer screen was the iconic Please Stand By loading image from Fallout.

The image also featured the caption, "Today's our February company meeting. It's time to catch up with what the company's been up to and what's coming up next for IG [Iron Galaxy]." That caption plus the image resulted in the Fallout community taking what seemed to be a big hint at something Fallout related happening at Iron Galaxy, and the leap to that being a remake was relatively easy to make considering Iron Galaxy assisted in the port of Skyrim to the Nintendo Switch, and the development of Fallout 76, and The Elder Scrolls Online.

However, Iron Galaxy isn't working on anything Fallout related, as the company has cleared up the speculation in a recent X post where the studio responded to an article saying Iron Galaxy was teasing something Fallout related being in the works, "Nope! There is nothing to see here. Sorry to disturb the volcanoes, but that was just a BTS look at our company meeting. We use that slide every month and has nothing to do with anything Fallout being worked on. As you can imagine, we love Fallout, too. Now pardon us as we retreat back into our vault."

Following the shutdown of Bluepoint Games, many fans felt the wind had been knocked out of the sails for a Bloodborne remake being in the works, which was then followed by a swift kick while we were down, as it was revealed Bluepoint pitched a Bloodborne remake to FromSoftware, but FromSoftware said no.

Previous reporting claimed that Sony even approved a remake of Bloodborne, but out of respect to the creator of the game, Hidetaka Miyazaki, and his wishes, they didn't approve of its creation. It was revealed that Miyazaki didn't want anyone else to touch Bloodborne as that game holds a special place in his heart, and that if a remake were to happen, it would be handled by him.

Despite Sony owning the rights to Bloodborne, and could have technically gone ahead with a remake without Miyazaki's involvement, Sony decided to shelve the idea until FromSoftware is ready. Now, Brandon Sheffield has posted on BlueSky with insider details, such as FromSoftware receiving more than 10 pitches for a Bloodborne remake, sequel, or spinoff, which were all rejected.

It looks like NVIDIA has been on a bad run with GeForce Game Ready Driver releases. Earlier this week, we received GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.71 WHQL. This belated update added support for Capcom's Resident Evil Requiem, which was delayed because the initial version (595.59) included a serious bug that affected fan monitoring and even stopped fans from working on some GPUs.

Well, it seems that GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.71 WHQL is also not without issues, as several users are reporting performance drops that appear to be related to GPU core voltage limitations, causing boost clock speeds to drop below 3,000 MHz or 3 GHz even with a manual overclock applied. This is something we were able to replicate on a GeForce RTX 5080, where a previous 3.0+ GHz overclock was now sitting at sub-3 GHz.

This issue is not only being reported on NVIDIA's forums for the driver release but also on YouTube, where creators are showcasing the performance impact of what looks to be a voltage lock affecting all high-powered GeForce RTX 40 and RTX 50 Series GPUs. In Bang4BuckPC Gamer's video below, we see performance in the Heaven Benchmark running on a GeForce RTX 5090 drop from 183 FPS running driver version 591.74 to 144 FPS on GeForce Game Ready Driver 595.71.

Amazon recently dropped the first look at the new God of War TV show, and the image that was posted was quickly passed around social platforms, stirring a controversy that has now sparked a response from one of the creators and designers of the God of War video games.

God of War creator David Jaffe said in a recent video posted to his YouTube channel, where he responded to the first image released by Amazon that shows Kratos looking over the shoulder of his son Atreus, who is lining up a shot with his bow. Jaffe says Kratos' position, or pose in this image, along with his expression, makes Kratos look "stupid". Jaffe went on to say releasing an image like this isn't the right way to introduce these characters that many people haven't ever seen before.

The image was part of an announcement from Amazon about its official entry into production of the God of War TV show, which is starring Ryan Hurst and Callum Vinson as Kratos and Atreus, respectively. Unfortunately, the image resulted in a generally poor response from God of War fans, which began criticizing many aspects of the image, such as the color making the setting too soft, Ryan Hurst's potential bald cap showing, and more.

Capcom's critically acclaimed Resident Evil Requiem has been one of the biggest game releases of the year, and on PC, it has launched in a state that is so polished that it hasn't needed any sort of post-launch updates, hot fixes, or anything, thanks to its rock-solid performance on a wide range of hardware. And to celebrate the launch, modder Czuga has collaborated with Capcom and NVIDIA to create a special custom one-of-a-kind PC.

Essentially, it's Resident Evil Requiem's ruined Raccoon City police station in the form of a gaming PC. Czuga actually received the location's 3D data and designs directly from Capcom and then transformed them into a custom PC using Blender. From there, all the components were 3D printed, hand-painted, and then hand-assembled into the impressive creation you see here.

And yes, sitting in the center of the ruins is a vertically mounted GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition. Other designs touched include green biohazard-inspired lighting for the fans and the CPU cooler. You can check out the build-making process below, in a shot timelapse video showcasing the assembly, painting, and installation of hardware.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach from Kojima Productions and legendary game designer Hideo Kojima is finally making its way to PC on March 19. With support for uncapped frame rates, customizable graphics settings, 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide resolutions, and more, GeForce RTX gamers will also benefit from DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support to enhance performance and smoothness.

And when it comes to DLSS, NVIDIA has confirmed that on day one, GeForce RTX owners will be able to enable DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution via the override feature in the NVIDIA App. Announced and launched earlier this year, DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution introduces a second-generation advanced transformer model for AI-powered upscaling, delivering a notable, dramatic improvement in image quality.

DLSS 4.5 is a game-changer in its own right, as using the DLSS 4.5 'Performance' or 'Balanced' mode in 4K, which upscales from around 1080p, can often deliver a sharper and more detailed image than native rendering. This will be a part of the Death Stranding 2: On the Beach GeForce Game Ready Driver that is set to arrive ahead of the game's March 19 debut.

Custom GPUs created to celebrate games and iconic franchises are few and far between, which is why it's always a pleasant surprise when one debuts. This week, MSI unveiled a pair of new GeForce RTX 5070 graphics cards, created in collaboration with Blizzard Entertainment to celebrate the launch of the MMO's latest expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight.

With two designs, an MSI x World of Warcraft: Midnight GeForce RTX 5070 Light Edition and Void Edition, MSI and Blizzard have drawn on the elven lands of Quel'Thalas and the expansion's story for the physical design. In addition, the shell and cooling appear to be based on MSI's fantastic Gaming Trio models, with transparent panels, lighting, and metallic flourishes.

"The Void Edition embodies the rising Voidstorm, featuring bold, sharp lines and shadow-infused visual elements that reflect the relentless power of darkness," MSI writes in the announcement. With its dark fans and blue and violet colors, it's a striking look that would be well placed in any WoW fan's rig.

The limited-edition MSI GeForce RTX 5090 LIGHTNING Z not only features one of the most impressive GPU designs we've seen to date, but with its premium custom PCB and power delivery, the out-of-the-box 800W default OC mode delivers the fastest 4K gaming performance you can find. As detailed in our in-depth review, it's so fast that it feels more like a GeForce RTX 5090 Ti than a custom RTX 5090.

Well, even though the GeForce RTX 5090 is technically unavailable for sale in China, it looks like MSI has also released a China-exclusive version of this impressive GPU called the MSI GeForce RTX 5090D v2 LIGHTNING Z. This news arrives via Bilibili user 'Hardware Patrick Star' (via VideoCardz), confirming that MSI has released a separate batch of these limited-edition GPUs for the Chinese market or has allocated some of the 1,300 total global units to become GeForce RTX 5090D v2 variants.

The GPU we see here is number 909 of 1300. Created for China as a gaming GPU that adheres to US-government-based restrictions, the GeForce RTX 5090D v2 features the same 21,760 CUDA cores as the mainline RTX 5090, but with 24GB of GDDR7 VRAM on a 384-bit memory bus, versus 32GB of GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus.

With one-third of the power consumption and a smaller footprint, Micron has unveiled a memory world first, a monolithic 32Gb LPDDR5X die powering a high-capacity 256GB LPDRAM SOCAMM2 module. And with 2TB of LPDRAM per 8-channel CPU, Micron says you're looking at a 2.3x speed increase in the all-important 'time to first token' metric.

Yes, this impressive memory module is designed to serve the AI and Data Center markets, targeting LLM inference and workloads where memory capacity, bandwidth, efficiency, and latency influence performance and scalability. SOCAMM2 presents an ideal solution, as its smaller footprint and lower power consumption make it more attractive than traditional server memory like RDIMMs.

Micron says that it has been collaborating with NVIDIA in the development of sophisticated memory for AI, which has led to the world's first 256GB LPDRAM SOCAMM2 module. Although GPU VRAM is critical for AI, fast system or server memory is right there, as KV cache offloading moves key/value data from GPU memory to lower-cost solutions like this.

Seagate has announced its next-generation Mozaic 4+ storage platform, which leverages the company's heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) based storage technology. Qualified and currently in production, Seagate notes that its latest HAMR drives will support capacities up to 44TB in hyperscale environments.

Although they look like traditional platter hard drives, Seagate's HAMR-based storage opens the door to increased storage density and capacity through a process that uses lasers to heat and cool in nanoseconds. Currently, the 4+ TB of storage per-disk or layer has led to capacities reaching an impressive 44TB, with Seagate's roadmap forecasting a future where 10TB per-disk will enable drives with 100TB of storage.

To achieve higher capacity, Seagate has incorporated a next-gen suspension architecture and an enhanced system-on-a-chip for higher-density recording while maintaining "enterprise-class reliability." The big thing here is that these hard drives present a high-capacity, cost-efficient storage option for data centers and AI models that require and use large volumes of data for training and other purposes.

Cicana analyst Mat Piscatella reveals a quick snippet of info about the video games industry that speaks volumes on what's to come.

Gaming has become increasingly more and more digital-centric throughout the last decade. It's to the point where console-makers are starting not to even put in optical disc drives in their systems by default any more; all new PlayStation 5 consoles are discless by default, and Microsoft was the first to introduce the digital-only console with the Xbox Series S. Predictably, this hardware lockout has helped accelerate digital adoption, leading to consumers buying fewer and fewer physical games throughout the years.

Now we have an interesting tidbit from Circana executive director Mat Piscatella, who routinely delivers updates on games industry numbers in the United States. According to Piscatella, 2025 was an all-time low for physical game spending in the United States; buyers in the region spent less money on physical games last year than any other period in Circana's 30-year tracked history.

Highguard is being pulled offline and will officially shut down on March 12, Wildlight Entertainment today announced.

The games industry will soon lay to rest another games-as-a-service title, and this time it's Highguard that will be interred to the live service graveyard. The developers at Wildlight today confirmed that Highguard will go dark on March 12 (which happens to be the same day that Black Ops Royale launches in Warzone).

Highguard will have been on the market for less than 2 months before its shut down, handily beating Concord's short lifespan of two weeks. The developers released a statement thanking players for their time and patience, and also confirming one last update will be released before the game goes offline permanently next week.

Call of Duty Warzone is getting a new 100-player battle royale mode inspired by Black Ops 4, and it's coming next week.

Activision has announced Black Ops Royale for Warzone, a new 100-player, team-based BR mode that takes cues from Black Ops 4's original Blackout multiplayer game type.

Warzone's new Black Ops Royale takes place in the new Avalon map introduced in Black Ops 7, and pits 25 teams of 4 players against one another in a chaotic quest for dominance. This time around, though, players won't get to select loadouts and will have to scavenge and collect gear across the map, and Activision has also removed the Gulag, as well as the ability to buy items.

Apple might have accidentally strayed into some serious faux pas territory by leaking the name of its budget MacBook that's rumored to be launching tomorrow.

Based on a regulatory document spotted by MacRumors, the device will be called the MacBook Neo. That's the name provided in the document, alongside a model number - A3404 - on Apple's website.

Or it was, because as soon as MacRumors published its article highlighting the MacBook Neo reference, it disappeared from the online document. Naturally, that's par for the course with any leak.

Microarchitecture analysts from Chips and Cheese have reported that the CPU cores on NVIDIA's GB10 "Superchip" can deliver desktop performance on par with AMD and Intel offerings.

The experts looked at the CPU cores on the GB10 and discovered they were Cortex X925 cores designed by Arm and licensed by NVIDIA for the GB10. Taking a closer look at the Cortex X925, the experts discovered it has a big 10-wide instruction decoder, substantial cache memory, a hefty branch predictor, and several concessions to reduce overall power.

The analysts landed on the Cortex X925, which is designed to maximize performance, and according to the experts, that performance is on par with AMD's Zen 5 and Intel's Lion Cove in their fastest desktop implementations. The report shows the Cortex X925 going up against cores in both the Intel and AMD chips, and being a worthy contender, but what is most impressive is that the Cortex X925 is able to go toe-to-toe with Intel and AMD, and be doing it with a peak clock speed of 4GHz, which is far below AMD and Intel's 5GHz.

Apple has announced a new MacBook Air with the M5 chip running the show inside the laptop.

As well as the M5 here, the other notable move is that the entry-level model costs $100 more than previously - but there's a reason for that. Namely that the amount of base storage has been doubled to 512GB. You still get 16GB of unified RAM on-board.

Another upgrade that stands out is that there's Wi-Fi 7 support here, which is great to see, along with Bluetooth 6 courtesy of Apple's new N1 wireless networking chip.