Video game publishers could save over $10 per $70 game with Sony's decision to phase out disc production.

The games industry is in turmoil as AI eats into the chip market, stalling growth and leading to absurdly-inflated hardware prices. In a bid to shave costs and boost profits, Sony made a decision that will affect the entire industry itself; physical game discs will stop being produced for new titles starting January 2028. It's the end of an era and the beginning of a digital future primed for profit, and stability, amid the tech sector's tumult.

New reports from GameFile have attached a monetary figure to Sony's controversial decision. Sources tell GameFile that publishers pay roughly 15% to even 20% of a game's MSRP to Sony and Microsoft to produce the physical game discs that are sold by retailers. For a $70 game, that's $10.50, and for an $80 game like, say, Grand Theft Auto 6, that's $12. This math seems to illustrate a clear reason why Rockstar and Take-Two chose to not ship GTA 6 on discs.

After a year of BSODs, freezes, artifacts, and PCIe errors across four separate RMA cycles, one Redditor has finally broken free from what they called their "RTX 4090 death loop."

Reddit user Prudent_Echidna1254 posted on the Zotac subreddit that after sending their Zotac GAMING GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO in for a fourth RMA with just one month of warranty remaining, they waited 30 days before reaching out for an update. Zotac's U.S. RMA team came back with some unexpected news. Rather than sending another RTX 4090, the company is giving them an RTX 5090 SOLID, a card that currently sells for somewhere between $4,300 and $4,500.

"Thought ZOTAC would do me dirty and send me a faulty card that would fail on me again after my warranty would expire," the user wrote. "Well I hit the 30 day mark, shot an email to ZOTAC USA RMA for an update and they were able to get me out of the 4090 death loop I've been stuck with and sent me a 5090."

SK Hynix is doubling down on the AI boom with another massive investment. The South Korean chipmaker's board of directors has approved a 54.3 trillion won investment, roughly $38.1 billion, to build two massive new fabrication plants dedicated to supplying memory for the next generation of AI accelerators and enterprise servers.

SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung said last month that 2027 will be the worst year in the industry's history from a supply perspective. The $38 billion commitment is SK Hynix's answer to that problem.

The company describes the current moment as a structural transformation in which memory has become core infrastructure determining AI performance itself. The $38.1 billion is split across two production centres in South Korea. The larger share, around $24.9 billion, goes toward the Yongin Y2 fab, the second of four fabs planned for the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster.

TrashBench on YouTube, known for doing crazy experiments with computer hardware, did his riskiest test yet, benchmarking a GPU cooled by nothing but water touching the GPU die itself. This "direct water cooling" method surprisingly worked and proved to be very effective, producing better temperatures than AIO liquid cooling.

To make this type of cooling solution possible, TrashBench had to create a fully custom cooling solution that wouldn't short-circuit the GPU and wouldn't let water leak onto the PCB. After a few failed tries on a dead RTX 3060, the YouTuber found a working solution featuring a 3D-printed block with adhesive sandwiched between the block and substrate to prevent water from leaking into the main PCB. Nail polish was used to protect the capacitors around the GPU from short-circuiting. After leak testing the makeshift cooling solution on the dead 3060, TrashBench conducted a cooling test on a working GTX 980 to ensure the cooling system can produce cool enough temperatures under a thermal load.

For benchmarking, TrashBench applied his makeshift cooling solution to an RTX 2060 Super hooked up to a Core i5-7600K test rig and tested the cooling solution against AIO cooling and the GPU's stock air-cooling. In Unigine Heaven, stock cooling achieved 70C, AIO cooling achieved 36C, direct water achieved 28C, and direct water with a freezer achieved 13C. Cyberpunk 2077 showed similar results with the RTX 2060 Super running cooler with direct water than on AIO cooling.

OpenAI's first consumer hardware turned out to be a $230 programmable keypad called the Codex Micro, a niche product built specifically for developers using its Codex coding agent. If that felt like an unexpected first move into hardware, the company's next reported device is a much bigger swing.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, OpenAI is developing a doughnut-shaped smart speaker priced between $300 and $400, with a 2027 launch target and ambitions to replace the smartphone as your primary AI interface.

The hardware is being designed in partnership with LoveFrom, the studio founded by Jony Ive, the former Apple designer. The device will be built from high-quality metal with a premium finish, and will include lights, a camera system, and sensors. The detail that stands out most is the moving parts. These components will physically move when the speaker is responding to the user, with the stated goal of making the device feel more alive than conventional stationary speakers.

Anyone who has built a PC knows the anxiety of checking whether a CPU cooler will actually fit before pulling the trigger. You find the case spec sheet, check the maximum CPU cooler height, compare it to the cooler dimensions, and breathe a sigh of relief when the numbers work out. Noctua wants you to know that those numbers might be lying to you.

The Austrian cooler manufacturer has been physically hand-measuring over 100 popular PC cases in-house, and what it found is that the official clearance figures printed on case spec sheets are frequently wrong. In most cases, the actual clearance is higher than advertised, meaning builders are sometimes settling for smaller, less capable coolers than their chassis can actually accommodate. But the opposite is also true in some cases, which is the more dangerous scenario.

Corsair's Frame 4000D lists 170mm of cooler clearance, but Noctua measured 180mm of usable space, a full 10mm difference that could determine whether a flagship dual-tower cooler fits or not. The NZXT H2 Flow is listed at 75mm but measures 79mm, which is enough to fit Noctua's NH-L12Sx77 that would otherwise appear incompatible on paper. Thermaltake's TR100 lists 68mm but actually provides 70.7mm, opening the door to a larger cooler than the spec sheet suggests.

Microsoft appears to be preparing a limited-edition Xbox controller themed around Gears of War: E-Day. The controller, reportedly called the Storm King, was leaked by Dealabs writer billbil-kun, who has a strong track record with hardware leaks and claims an official announcement is expected within the next two weeks.

The controller features a cracked black-and-red design intended to resemble fractured volcanic rock. The left stick remains black, while the central section, including the D-Pad, Xbox button, View, Menu, and Share buttons, is finished in blood red and surrounded by the Crimson Omen, the iconic Gears of War logo featuring a cog and skull.

The right stick and X button also use the red finish, while the A, B, and Y buttons remain black, giving the controller a contrasting two-tone look. Billbil-kun described the design as "beautiful" and said it "blew us away," although the final product will have to speak for itself once Microsoft officially reveals it.

John Romero has a piracy story that most game developers would never tell publicly, and it says a lot about how id Software thought about getting Doom into as many hands as possible. Speaking at a QuakeCon 2026 panel, the id Software co-founder explained how the studio not only tolerated pirates distributing Doom in Taiwan, it actively reached out to them and cut a deal.

Doom was released in 1993 using a shareware model. The entire first episode was free to copy and share, while the remaining two episodes required ordering the full game directly from id Software. The model was designed to spread the game as widely as possible, and it worked, but it also meant unofficial sellers began packaging the free shareware episode and selling it as their own product.

"You would go to the store and you would see 10 different boxes that all had the same shareware Doom in it," Romero said. "It was awesome. We were totally happy with that." Taiwan was a particularly active market for this kind of distribution, and rather than trying to shut it down, id Software saw an opportunity.

Support for GTA Online will continue following the launch of GTA 6, Take-Two Interactive management reiterates.

GTA 6 might be the most anticipated game in recent memory, but there's just one problem: It's a singleplayer-only game. GTA Online pulls in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in gross revenue. Without a live service component, GTA 6 will rely on raw sales (at least at launch), which adds weight to the game's $80 and $100 pricing.

To keep the recurrent consumer spending, well, recurring, Rockstar will keep supplying GTA Online with new content. How this will happen remains a mystery--will GTA Online shift from GTA V's locale of Los Santos in the Pacific to Leonida in the Atlantic? Will GTA 6 remain an offline, singleplayer-only game in perpetuity? Take-Two's executives won't say, but company CEO Strauss Zelnick does confirm the online mode will continue.

A few weeks ago, we saw NVIDIA RTX GPUs successfully run on ARM-based Snapdragon laptops through modding NVIDIA's latest RTX Spark development driver on the laptop. YouTuber ETA Prime put the new driver to the test, showing what level of gaming performance the RTX Spark driver and Snapdragon X2 Elite are capable of producing.

Tests were conducted using an RTX 4060 paired with a Thunderbolt 5 GPU dock running at 40gbps, with an ASUS Zenbook A16 using a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme SoC. One unfortunate quirk with the RTX Spark drivers is that the RTX 4060 is allegedly the fastest GPU that works well with the drivers. Putting in a more powerful GPU, including an RTX 5070 Ti, reportedly resulted in worse performance than an RTX 4060.

The YouTuber tested 3DMark TimeSpy, Forza Horizon 6, Cyberpunk 2077, Project Cars 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and DOOM: The Dark Ages with the aforementioned setup. In Forza Horizon 6, the Snapdragon laptop and RTX 4060 combo achieved playable frame rates (unfortunately, the frame rate counter failed to work in this game specifically). Performance in Cyberpunk 2077 was around 60 FPS average at 1080p high settings, using DLSS in quality mode. Bumping up the resolution to 1440p dropped frame rates down to around 40-50 FPS average, and using 1440p with X2 frame generation boosted frame rates up to around 70 FPS average.

A video making the rounds on X shows what's being called a "3D OS," built around a cube-shaped desktop. It looks like there is a window mapped to each of five faces, while the viewer's perspective sits on the sixth.

The user who posted it, kapilansh_twt, captioned it "I built the first 3D OS," though that claim isn't confirmed, and it's not clear whether they're the actual developer or just sharing someone else's project. Either way, it looks like a real custom build, not a mockup.

In the clip, apps run on each face of the cube, and the demo drags a window from the right side across to the left, then down to the bottom, all on a normal 2D laptop screen. It's a neat trick of perspective, using rotation and depth to fake a spatial desktop without any headset involved. There seems to be some kind of head tracking involved, although that could very easily be faked using camera trickery.

The logistics of buying new games on discs, especially big titles like GTA 6, just don't make sense for consumers, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says.

Take-Two's latest Q1'FY27 earnings call offers further evidence of gaming's continued shift towards digital access. In the call, company CEO Strauss Zelnick commented on Sony's decision to cease disc production for new games released after 2028.

Zelnick was specifically asked if Sony's decision to phase out disc production would have any impact on Take-Two's gross margin. The question implies that TTWO could benefit from the cost reduction that comes from moving to discs to code-in-box software delivery, and while this wasn't really addressed, Zelnick did say that buying big games in disc format just isn't sensible for consumers any more.

A Hong Kong-based eBay seller is now selling GeForce RTX 2080 Ti cards modded with 22GB of VRAM, double the 11GB the card shipped with back in 2018. The listing costs $499 and promises a working "Turbo" blower-style card, though buyers won't get to pick the brand. The seller's description says the card could be a GIGABYTE, MSI, ASUS, Leadtek, or whatever happens to be in stock that day.

Listing photos show a GIGABYTE blower card alongside a box stacked with modded units ready to ship, plus a GPU-Z screenshot confirming 22,528MB of memory on a running card. The seller's feedback score sits at 99.6 percent, and buyers on the listing itself, at least 38 of them, report the cards work as advertised.

VRAM mods like this trace back to modders in China, where cards like the RTX 4090 have been effectively banned from export under US sanctions. Rather than let older or restricted hardware go to waste, some workshops there have been stripping cards down, swapping in higher capacity memory chips, and reselling them with server-friendly blower coolers built for AI racks rather than gaming rigs.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has a pretty optimistic take on the industry's hardware pricing problem. However, the gaming world has been skeptical of his solution for years. His idea? More game streaming.

During Take-Two's latest earnings call, which was mostly about how well GTA 6 is expected to perform, Zelnick also fielded a question about rising console and PC hardware costs. He admitted the price hikes aren't great for the industry, since fewer working machines means fewer potential customers. He doesn't think it will matter much longer, though, because he's betting on streaming to widen the install base.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick believes that Grand Theft Auto 6's $80 and $100 editions are appropriately priced.

GTA 6 is one of the most anticipated games of all time, and Take-Two and Rockstar intend to fully capitalize on this with priced-inflated editions--one at $80, and the ultimate edition at $100. By virtue of its size, GTA 6 is expected to help normalize higher prices for higher-profile games. The move has been somewhat controversial among enthusiasts; however, data indicates that gamers on PlayStation are not only ready and willing to buy higher-priced editions of games, but it appears that most gamers are also willing to spend $100 for GTA 6.

In Take-Two's latest Q1'FY27 earnings call, company CEO Strauss Zelnick says that he believes Rockstar Games made the right choice with GTA 6's pricing, going on to say that the studio could have charged different prices given the hype of the game itself.

GTA 6 has been pre-ordered so many times that Take-Two is cautiously tallying up the numbers, with the publisher potentially growing wary of the figures.

GTA 6 is one of the most anticipated video games of all time, so it's no surprise that millions of people have pre-ordered the game. While Take-Two and Rockstar haven't revealed exact numbers (analysts estimate GTA 6 pre-orders have made around $260 million), publisher CEO Strauss Zelnick did comment on scale.

"I can say that the level of pre-orders is unprecedented and astonishing, and we're very grateful for that," Zelnick said in a recent interview with Variety.

Bose has announced its next-gen noise-canceling headphones, the QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen). Boasting a "refreshed industrial design" that delivers a more modern look compared to the popular first-generation, it's also leveling up the noise-cancellation, which has been one of the main reasons that Bose QuietComfort Headphones have been a go-to option for many.

With the arrival of the QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen), Bose is now calling its noise cancellation technology QuietControl, and this second-gen release adds a brand-new dynamic feature, alongside improved noise cancellation for those who wear glasses. The QuietControl six-microphone system now better compensates for gaps in the earcup seal for glasses wearers to maintain "effective noise cancellation."

In addition, a new ActiveSense feature that works alongside Aware Mode now tunes the noise cancellation more naturally. Bose says that it can handle sudden spikes in background noise, like the sound of a passing train, in a way that wasn't possible before. Users will also have complete control over the noise cancellation settings via the Bose app to fine-tune the performance to suit their needs.

The annual FMS: the Future of Memory and Storage 2026 event took place in Santa Clara, California, this week, where the biggest names in storage, enterprise, and AI gathered to showcase and discuss the latest advances across both memory and storage. And with some of the biggest names showcasing their next-gen technology for the first time, some of the more notable award winners this year include KIOXIA, Micron, and Samsung.

This year, KIOXIA unveiled its new GP1 Series PCIe 6.0 SSD series, purpose-built for advanced AI infrastructure. As the first super-high IOPS PCIe SSD optimized for expanding GPU memory, powered by KIOXIA XL-FLASH generation 2 low-latency flash memory, the GP1 Series impressively delivers up to 10 million random read IOPS. And with that, it more than earned its FMS: the Future of Memory and Storage 'Best of Show' award in the 'Specialized Storage' category.

When it comes to the FMS 2026 Grand Prize, that was awarded to Micron and its new 6600 ION NVMe SSD, which delivers high-capacity storage up to 245TB of usable capacity for AI and cloud infrastructure. Built with 4‑bit‑per‑cell (QLC) technology and Micron G9 QLC NAND, it offers massive storage in a compact form factor with PCIe Gen5 performance. Micron notes that the small form factor allows companies to scale in a way that hasn't been seen before.

In recent weeks, the memory and component crisis for consumer technology has seemingly gone from bad to worse. For PC gamers looking to upgrade, price increases for a wide range of components are the new norm. When it comes to GeForce RTX and Radeon RX graphics cards, in recent weeks we've heard about another round of price increases taking effect - with 20, 30, and even 40% price hikes on the table. And it's all because of DRAM.

Even with rising memory prices, demand for GPUs for gaming and local at-home AI is still there; however, based on a new notification from Japanese retailer Sofmap, high prices are only part of the issue. DRAM supply (GDDR6 and GDDR7) isn't simply a matter of paying more to get the same thing; there's a shortage.

The retailer states that ahead of the next big price increase happening this month, GeForce RTX graphics cards have been selling "extremely well." And with stock running out, the retailer notes that future restocks for cards like the GeForce RTX 5070, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5080 are "unstable" and that if you "really want one," you better hurry.

NVIDIA's RTX Neural Texture Compression technology, which leverages AI to significantly reduce the VRAM footprint for game assets while maintaining image fidelity, is the sort of tech we need right now. In its most extreme use case, it can reduce texture sizes by up to 90%, which would make 8GB or 12GB of VRAM enough for 4K gaming.

With the current memory crisis driving GPU prices up, it makes sense for game developers to look to technologies like RTX Neural Texture Compression alongside DLSS as ways to improve performance and image quality for millions of gamers. NVIDIA has made the RTX Neural Texture Compression SDK available to game developers for a while now, but the latest RTX Neural Texture Compression (NTC) SDK v0.10.0 BETA release (available on GitHub) adds support for RTX Spark and Windows on Arm.

RTX Spark is NVIDIA's first SoC product for premium laptops and mini PCs, which combines a 20-core NVIDIA Grace ARM processor with an integrated RTX Blackwell GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores. Although RTX Spark laptops are expected to launch with combined memory pools of up to 128GB, RTX Neural Texture Compression is still a worthwhile addition.