Microsoft has subtly fired shots at Sony over the company's recent announcement that it will be ending production of physical PlayStation game discs in January 2028, and that all new games released following that date will still come in a plastic case, but instead of a disc, it will be a redeemable code for the title.

As you can probably imagine, PlayStation gamers aren't thrilled about the news, and thousands have even expressed their rejection of the idea in a poll that called for Sony to reconsider its decision. To add more fuel to the fire, the Microsoft-owned GitHub has taken to X to announce, "We heard you. And we agree. In light of recent developments in physical media, GitHub is proud to announce that you can now obtain your public repo on CD-ROM."

"Keep it. Lend it to friends. Pass it on to your children. Your code is physically yours, forever. Until you lose it, let's be real." GitHub explains on the website that it's a burned copy of your own GitHub repo, and that supplies are limited, as only the first 1,000 eligible submissions will receive one. Additionally, burned GitHub CDs are limited to one per person, and availability may be limited by country or region.

Sony's stock went up by as much as 7% following its controversial announcement to stop producing game discs.

Investors may approve of Sony's decision to cut production of new PlayStation game discs by January 2028. Since the company broke the news on July 1, Sony's stock has gone up as much as 7%, trading from 3232 JPY at the lowest point of the day of the announcement to a high of 3486 JPY on July 3. At the time of writing, Sony's stock is currently at 3380 JPY.

Sony justified the market-shaking decision by saying that the "general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs." The move to an all-digital environment will let the platform-holder better serve its users in a way that they prefer, the company says.

Elon Musk is reportedly working on a secretive new AI-powered device from SpaceX, and the way it differentiates itself from current smartphones is already raising more questions than it answers.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, SpaceX has been demoing a sleek, iPhone-like handheld device to investors, featuring a proprietary operating system and AI capabilities powered by Musk's xAI division.

The device, described as "slimmer than an iPhone," was reportedly shown ahead of the company's extremely successful IPO. The leak has already sparked speculation about SpaceX's foray into consumer hardware, following Musk's previous comments denying that SpaceX is developing a smartphone.

Sony is preparing to raise PlayStation Plus prices, a decision that comes only a few days after the company announced it will be discontinuing the production of physical PlayStation game discs.

The company confirmed that new subscribers are already facing higher costs and is exploring ways to increase profitability, including through pricing. In a translated Q&A during a June meeting, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino, along with Hermen Hulst and Lynn Azar, said the company is actively working to improve the balance between the value each PSN subscription tier offers customers and the cost of accessing each tier.

They emphasized that PS Plus remains a key profit driver, with record profitability in FY2025 and 40% of users now in higher-tier subscriptions. The price hikes come as the gaming industry wrestles with rising hardware costs, specifically components such as RAM and storage, which are both being gobbled up by the endless demand from the AI sector.

Philips Evnia has launched its M4 monitor lineup, offering gamers Philips' first triple-mode display system that lets them toggle between 1440p, 1080p, and 720p resolutions in real time, removing the need to swap resolutions and refresh rates within the operating system.

The 27M4N3500PT and 27M4N5500PT models are built around Fast IPS panels and deliver high refresh rates across all modes, but the main value proposition of these monitors is the triple-mode, intended as a solution for gamers who play both slower RPG titles where resolution and image clarity are prioritized, and competitive games where high refresh rate is prioritized over image clarity.

Each monitor supports HDR and maintains a sharp 27-inch screen with minimal input lag - a must for competitive and immersive gaming.

Samsung is reportedly working on a wearable future that lives on your face, which many tech experts have pegged as being the format that will replace the smartphone.

Leaked details of the Galaxy Glasses, including a companion app and integration with existing Galaxy wearables, suggest a seamless ecosystem designed to rival Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, which have become the most popular AI-infused smart glasses.

Leaker SammyGuru showcased the Galaxy Glasses Manager app, revealing a familiar setup process that includes enabling permissions and pairing devices. Once setup is complete, the app shows important status information such as battery levels, software updates, and AI assistance.

The iPhone may have played a major role in the decline of U.S. fertility rates since 2007, according to a new study. A research paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests the device accounted for up to 52% of the drop in births between 2007 and 2011.

The study used Apple's early exclusivity with telecommunications carrier AT&T to examine iPhone-specific data, and compared birth rates in regions with higher AT&T adoption to those with higher Verizon adoption. The researchers found a strong correlation between rising iPhone ownership and declining birth rates, particularly among teens and young adults. However, the paper also notes that older generations had correlating declining birth rates in line with iPhone adoption within those demographics.

Furthermore, the study noted a shift in social behavior as being one of the causes of declining birth rates, pointing to reduced in-person social time and increased pornography consumption due to smartphone adoption. The researchers acknowledge that the iPhone is not the sole cause of the fertility decline, as there are many factors at play, with a main one being that as individuals begin to earn more or become more educated, they tend to have fewer children.

A leaked video is giving us a look at an experimental Windows concept that ditches almost everything familiar about the desktop in favor of Copilot. According to Windows Central, which says its sources confirm the footage is real, the project is codenamed "Aion" and appears to date back to 2024.

The roughly three-minute clip leaked on the Discord server BetaWiki and shows a desktop built on Win3, a stripped-down Windows codebase that runs largely through Microsoft Edge. There's still a taskbar and a Start menu-like launcher, but the whole thing revolves around a multi-modal Copilot input box instead of icons and folders. Ask it to find a file, open an app, or check your schedule, and Copilot handles it. A feature called "Spaces" automatically groups related apps and sites so you can jump back into a task with one click.

Since Aion is web-based, it reportedly can't run traditional Win32 apps natively. Instead, heavier desktop software would stream in through a Windows 365 Cloud PC. Microsoft declined to comment when Windows Central reached out, and it's unclear if this ever moved past an internal concept or hackathon project. From the video examples, however, it does look like the project got fairly deep into development.

Contractually bound to do so, Krafton has agreed to pay developers at Unknown Worlds a bonus worth up to $250 million after management allegedly tried to use ChatGPT to find a way out of the situation.

Thanks to huge sales, Subnautica 2 developers at Unknown Worlds have won their bonus. Bloomberg reports that the fiasco with Krafton has been settled, and the publisher will pay out up to $250 million to the seaworthy game developers as part of contract terms.

As part of the legal settlement, current Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill plans to leave the studio under mutual terms. Krafton had previously fired Gill (and the rest of Unknown Worlds' key management team), which ultimately led to a lawsuit and the eventual payout. In that lawsuit, it was revealed that Krafton's CEO allegedly used ChatGPT in an attempt to find a way out of the bonus situation.

Intel looks like it's cranking output back up on its older Core chips, and DDR4 demand seems to be the reason behind it. According to a Channel Gate report citing the BoBantang WeChat channel, Intel is preparing to boost the supply of 10th, 12th, 13th, and 14th Gen Core desktop processors during Q3 2026, with most of that extra inventory heading to mainland China.

The 10th Gen Comet Lake and 12th Gen Alder Lake chips reportedly get the biggest increase, while 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake stock should just stay steadily available rather than ramping dramatically. It is important to add that this comes on top of vendors already restarting DDR4 motherboard production over the past month or so.

The timing lines up with China's 618 shopping festival, after which offline DIY retailers were apparently told to push DDR4 platforms as their main focus, while DDR5 builds get steered toward online retail and internet cafes instead. It is worth flagging that all of this traces back to one regional trade channel, so it's not confirmed by Intel directly yet, though multiple outlets are now reporting the same underlying leak.

South Korea has announced one of the largest semiconductor investments in history. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will jointly invest 800 trillion won, roughly $518 billion, to build four new memory fabrication plants in the country's southwest, with an additional 81 trillion won allocated to a high-bandwidth memory packaging hub in the Chungcheong region.

The announcement was made at a presidential briefing attended by Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung received a deep bow from both executives after they committed to the plan.

The scale goes beyond just the two chipmakers. South Korean technology and energy firms will invest an additional 550 trillion won in new AI data centers over the next decade. Samsung separately published plans to invest 2,100 trillion won through 2040, while SK Group announced 1,400 trillion won earmarked over the same period. Combined, the two memory giants have pledged 3,200 trillion won in total investment, covering both the new southwest cluster and previously announced projects.

Google has launched Nano Banana 2 Lite, the latest addition to its in-house AI image generation lineup. In a blog post on Tuesday, the company said that Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash are now available as tools for high-volume, fast-turnaround workflows.

Nano Banana 2 Lite generates images in approximately four seconds and costs $0.034 per 1,000 images. This makes it the fastest and cheapest image model in the Nano Banana family. Google is positioning it as a direct replacement for the original Nano Banana, which has now been designated a legacy model. It sits below Nano Banana 2, which Google describes as the "generalist workhorse" of the lineup, and below Nano Banana Pro for more demanding use cases. All generated content is automatically tagged with Google's SynthID digital watermark.

The model is available through Google AI Studio, the Gemini API, and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform for developers. On the consumer side, it is accessible through the Gemini app, AI Mode in Google Search, NotebookLM, Google Photos, Stitch, Google Flow, and Google Ads. On Arena's text-to-image leaderboard, Nano Banana 2 Lite currently sits at fifth, behind OpenAI's gpt-image-2, which leads the pack, and Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.5 in fourth.

Is Baldur's Gate 4 ever going to happen? Hopefully, yes, but the problem is that Baldur's Gate 3 is such a tough act to follow that it's seemingly difficult to find a dev team up for the challenge of making the next instalment.

PC Gamer reports that after Baldur's Gate 3 was a storming success, and Larian decided to leave the franchise (which wasn't an immediate departure, if you recall, and Larian did actually begin work on BG4 for a short time), Hasbro looked around for someone to take up the next iteration in the heavyweight RPG franchise.

The second person Hasbro asked to take on BG4 was James Ohlen, an ex-BioWare developer who headed up Archetype - the development studio making Exodus for Hasbro (Wizards of the Coast) - who was a co-lead designer on Baldur's Gate 2. Indeed, Kevin Martens, the other co-lead designer on BG2, was also at Archetype.

Beloved Fallout New Vegas studio Obsidian Entertainment is reportedly safe from closure in Xbox's upcoming layoffs.

New reports say that Obsidian Entertainment may be one of the studios that could be sold--or even shut down--as part of Microsoft's impending Xbox layoffs. Now trusted Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has clarified that this isn't the case.

"Despite a report this morning, I can confirm that Obsidian is *not* in negotiations to avoid shutting down. Plenty of details are still up in the air surrounding the layoffs (picture will be clear on Monday) but Xbox is keeping Obsidian, according to people familiar with the situation," Schreier said this morning on BlueSky.

Sony's decision to cut production of physical game discs by January 2028 was in the works for a while, sources tell Österreichischer Rundfunk's local Salzburg branch.

New reports indicate that Sony's plans to kill off PlayStation discs may not be easily reversible. According to ORF's Salzburg news org, Sony's DADC (Digital Audio Disc Corporation) is retraining staff at an Austrian-based media production facility in Thalgau, with various restructurings happening behind the scenes. The plant will now produce Sony's advanced Micro Optics technology instead.

According to ORF Salzburg, people close to the matter say that this process has been planned for "some time," however it's unclear how long Sony's plan to cut game discs has been mulled over. It's possible that this decision was years in the making, as Sony started to cut Blu-ray disc production as early as July 2024. At the time, the decision only affected recordable media like BD-R discs.

Rockstar Games has put out a bunch of new job listings as the developer ramps up to the highly anticipated launch of Grand Theft Auto 6, and some of these job listings have revealed what Rockstar describes as a "Creator Platform".

It has been rumored and speculated for quite some time that Rockstar will significantly expand GTA Online in Grand Theft Auto 6, with some theories even suggesting the online service will receive the Roblox treatment, allowing players to host and customize community servers. By doing this, Rockstar will have created a user-generated content ecosystem, which ties directly into its acquisition of FiveM and RedM, two standalone online versions of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption Online.

Rockstar then created a storefront called the Cfx Marketplace that sells digital content, such as items and cosmetics. Essentially, Rockstar recognized the value of the GTA Role-Playing community and community servers in general, and is now officially bringing them into the fold under what it describes as the "Creator Platform". Job listings on Rockstar's website are calling for multiple positions under the "Creator Platform," which may just be an internal name and not what it's called within GTA 6.

Oblivion Remastered is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on August 11, 2026, following rumors dating back to April that claimed the title would debut on Nintendo's latest console.

Bethesda confirmed the release date following a delay, now positioning the UE5-powered remake as one of the major RPG titles to make it to Nintendo's next-gen system.

The physical version will include the full game on cartridge, a welcome change for Switch 2 owners tired of hybrid cloud/digital releases, and certainly a breath of fresh air for any Nintendo Switch 2 owners who also own a PlayStation, as Sony only recently announced the end of physical PlayStation games.

Acer's 1,000Hz Predator XB273U F6 is finally more than just a tease, but it may not be what you expected.

The monitor, now listed on Amazon for $699.99, delivers a 540Hz QHD mode and a 1,000Hz 720p mode, positioning it as a dual-purpose esports tool. But the trade-off in resolution for speed narrows its practical use.

The XB273U F6 sports an IPS panel with dual-mode support. However, potential buyers should note the advertised 1,000Hz mode is locked to a 1280 x 720 resolution, making the XB273U F6 designed for fast-paced shooters but unfortunately not great for general use or media consumption.

Following news that Sony is officially ending physical game production in January 2028, the gaming community is ablaze with criticism of the decision, which is now being followed by rumors that Xbox is walking the same path, and now thousands of gamers are casting votes in hopes of making Sony reconsider.

Sony confirmed via a recent blog post that it was ending production of physical game discs in January 2028, meaning beyond that date new Sony games won't be arriving on physical discs, and as if a gamer walked in to a store to buy a new PlayStation game they will be given the plastic cover of the game and within it a redeemable code for the title - no disc.

Sony and PlayStation are undoubtedly facing heavy backlash for this decision, with the company explaining the transition to purely digital is inevitable, and that currently physical disc sales only make up a fraction of its total game sales. Despite Sony's purported inevitability, fans have rushed to renowned media outlet and tech expert channel Digital Foundry to pledge a vote the channel is running, which gives an anecdotal insight into how the gaming community is feeling about Sony killing physical media.

PC hardware has never been more expensive, and the ongoing memory crisis deserves most of the credit for that. Cinder City, an upcoming open-world third-person shooter from NC and Big Fire Games set in a dystopian near-future Seoul, recently made headlines as the first PC game to recommend 64GB of RAM. It has since walked that back.

The game's Steam listing originally recommended 64GB of RAM alongside an RTX 4060, a combination that baffled just about everyone. 64GB is more RAM than a PS5, an Xbox Series X, a PS5 Pro, and a Nintendo Switch 2 combined. Only 4% of Steam users have that much, and a 64GB DDR5 kit currently starts at around $800 on Newegg.

NC and Big Fire Games have now updated the listing. The recommended GPU has been bumped from an RTX 4060 to an RTX 4070, which at least makes more sense for a game billing itself as a visually ambitious open-world title. The recommended RAM, however, has been dropped all the way down to 32GB.