It's been another big week of news and happenings in the tech, gaming, and science space, and Jak and Kosta are back with a new episode of The TT Show - TweakTown's official podcast. This week, they go all-in on the massive Xbox leak that revealed console refresh plans, new games, new controllers, and a possible switch to ARM-based computing for the next Xbox console generation in 2028.

This week, Kosta sits down with the Head of Product over at XPG, Luca Fiore, to discuss to talk about the company's new Battlecruiser II chassis, what goes into the development of a case, industry trends, and why it's so important to engage and take on community feedback. And thanks to XPG, we've got a massive prize pack of gear to giveaway. Head here for more info!

Jak and Kosta also look at the state of mobile gaming when you can hook up the new iPhone to a TV to play Resident Evile with a PS5 controller. Plus, the GeForce RTX 4090 finally meets its match - and it's not Crysis or the latest Cyberpunk 2077 update. It's a display!

Microsoft sees the path to achieve 100 million+ Xbox Game Pass subscribers by 2030.

The recent FTC v Microsoft trial leaks were some of the biggest in the history of interactive entertainment. The erroneously-uploaded files offer a candid look at upcoming plans for Xbox, including new mid-gen refreshes and a potential hybrid compute console that could change the future of gaming.

The leaked documents show that Xbox Game Pass is a big part of this plan. Microsoft eventually wants to lead the Big 3 hierarchy and help usher the industry into a new age of disruption, and it wants to use Game Pass to help make it happen.

If you're a big Apple Pencil user you might be in for a treat when the next iteration is finally announced. It's long overdue - the last Apple Pencil release was in 2018 - and if a new leak is accurate the Apple Pencil 3 will come with something we haven't seen on an Apple stylus to date.

That leak comes via the X leaker Majin Bu and appears to claim that Apple will ship the new Apple Pencil with support for interchangeable tips that will be connected to the main body of the device via magnets. Apple uses magnets in a variety of its products and in all kinds of different ways, so this wouldn't be at all surprising.

The leaker claims that the new tips offered by Apple would be specifically designed for different things with tasks like drawing, writing, and painting all likely to get their own versions. The change would offer tips of different sizes and widths to suit their purpose, with the iPad also likely recognizing which tip is in use and then having apps change their behavior to match.

If you bought the Apple Watch Edition back in 2015, you're probably not going to want to keep reading this because we've got some bad news for you.

According to an internal Apple memo seen by MacRumors, the original Apple Watch has now been added to Apple's list of obsolete products. That happened on September 30 which means that you're now using an Apple Watch that you might want to consider replacing. The problem? Some people bought the Apple Watch Edition which, depending on the model bought, could have cost up to $17,000.

The list of obsolete models includes the 18-karat gold model which was discontinued in 2016 after, presumably, nobody bought it. It was replaced in Apple's lineup by the white ceramic model which was arguably nicer to look at and cost a lot less - just $1299.

The hugely popular video-based social network TikTok is testing a new ad-free tier that will allow people to pay a monthly fee and then browse videos without having to deal with ads.

The new feature is only in the testing phase right now but a new Android Authority report notes that the new ad-free tier is being tested at $4.99 per month in the United States, but there's no telling whether that price will remain the same throughout the testing process. It also isn't clear whether the price will be the same in local currencies when the ad-supported tier goes live in additional countries, either.

The Android Authority report says that there are strings in the latest TikTok for Android app that show the service is ready to ditch ads - but only for a price. TikTok has not yet publicly commented on any plans to charge a free to remove ads, but it's something that other companies already do.

A throwback post from one of PlayStation's former bosses gives a quick reminder of Sony's handheld production numbers.

There was a time when Sony challenged Nintendo in the handheld market. We all know how that went (while Sony has exited the dedicated handheld business, the spirit of the PSP and Vita live on with the new $99 PlayStation Portal remote play tablet), but gaming was way different nearly 20 years ago.

Sony's first handheld, the PlayStation Portable, was a big success. Official Sony shipment records show that the PlayStation Portable sold-in/shipped "over 76.4 million units." Now thanks to Shawn Layden, who was president of Sony Computer Entertainment America from 2014-2018, we know how many PSP units that Sony actually produced.

Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh processors are nearly here, or at least that's the rumor, and we've just had another hint of how these next-gen CPUs could be priced.

Intel's next-gen desktop CPUs should be with us in just over two weeks, so the rumor mill reckons (Image Credit: Intel)

As VideoCardz spotted, this comes from a retailer in Canada (and not the first one to spill purported pricing).

That retail outlet was Canada Computers, with the product pricing no longer visible, as is usually the case with these sorts of leaks when they're widely reported. (Indeed, it should be noted that the Raptor Lake Refresh products weren't directly visible on the website, but could be viewed if the specific model was searched for).

SEGA has officially cancelled its first Super Game, and it's possible that the new business model is now under question.

SEGA has an ambitious vision. The Japanese publisher wants to create an entirely new genre to provide long-term sustainability--not exactly an original idea, but SEGA did come up with a term to describe this new genre: Super Games. So what is a Super Game? It's kind of a spin on the live service/games-as-a-service model, but there's some criteria.

To qualify as a Super Game, a title will target $1 billion in lifetime revenues. That's a pretty lofty target that takes publishers years to achieve--however, some like Activision can achieve it in a single year--and the closest thing that SEGA has right now is Phantasy Star Online 2.

Meta's metaverse avatars have come a long, long way, showing that the company's billion-dollar loser is starting to look like a winner.

At the behest of Mark Zuckerberg, Meta has spent tens of billions of dollars on mixed reality. The company is trying to create the metaverse, a nascent concept that combines digital avatars with mixed reality peripherals to deliver realism in a digital space. For Meta, the goal is to create a new digital world that can be monetized over time through advertising while also linking up to entertainment services, content delivery, and social experiences.

Meta has lost over $33 billion on the metaverse so far, burning through Facebook revenue in an attempt to grow the new digital realm. In the past, Meta has faced ridicule for its cartoony metaverse avatars--the digital representations of people in that metaphysical space. Now Mark Zuckerberg shows off just how far Meta has come with its new hyper-realistic code avatars...and things are looking pretty impressive.

Microsoft made the decision to roll out the revamped Dall-E 3.0 image creation capability to Bing AI users at the weekend - but demand means the feature is working slower than expected.

As Microsoft's head of Advertising and Web Services, Mikhail Parakhin, explained on Twitter, the company kicked off the broad rollout of Dall-E 3.0 to Bing chatbot users at the start of the weekend (on September 29, with it expected to reach everyone by the end of the day).

However, what Microsoft didn't count on was how many folks out there would want to head over to Bing AI and try out the new image generation.

Space is a weird and wonderful place, and instruments that space agencies have put out into the void are constantly at work documenting anything of interest to researchers.

One of those instruments is the famous Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in operation for more than 30 years. Despite its age, Hubble is regularly used to snap extremely impressive and scientifically valuable images of the cosmos, with NASA highlighting one such image of a pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 107. NASA explains in a recent blog post that Arp 107 is a celestial object that is in the midst of a collision, with one Seyfert galaxy on the left and a smaller companion galaxy on the right.

Notably, a Seyfert galaxy is a galaxy that contains an active nucleus, or an active supermassive black hole at its center. NASA writes that it can observe Arp 107's spiraling whorls, which are areas of intense star formation, along with a "bridge" that's connected to the smaller companion galaxy. NASA explains that this "bridge" consists of dust and gas, and is a result of the gravity of the larger Seyfert Galaxy. Furthermore, Arp 107 resides approximately 465 million light years away from Earth.