On the heels of Sony announcing it will be ending production of physical PlayStation discs, researchers have looked into how long PS5 and PS4 game discs will last, giving PlayStation gamers an idea of how long they will have access to their games before they vanish.

According to a new study from the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), PS4 and PS5 games will remain playable for anywhere between 10 to 20 years, and after that, the discs aren't guaranteed to work. The findings come as Sony announced it will stop producing physical game discs in January 2028, sparking renewed debate over the future of physical media in gaming, and what it means to actually own a game you have purchased.

The study focused on read-only Blu-ray discs, like those used for PS4 and PS5 games, and found that these discs begin degrading the moment they're manufactured. "Discs, whether they are optical discs or any other kind of media, are degrading from the day you get them," said Ern Bieman, a Heritage Information Analyst at the CCI. One of the biggest problems with disc storage is that the storage layer is extremely thin, meaning even minor scratches, humidity, or heat can result in the disc being unreadable.

Apple is preparing a new way for people to access its pedigree of devices, as a new report from Bloomberg reporter and renowned Apple insider Mark Gurman has revealed the "Apple Upgrade" service, a new leasing program designed to make its hardware more accessible to a wider range of people.

Partnering with Klarna, Apple's new program will allow users to lease iPhones and Apple Watches for 24 months, and Macs and iPads for 36 months. At the end of the term, users can choose to keep the device, pay off the remainder, return it to the company, or upgrade to a newer model. The service is structured like any other subscription, and aims to shift device ownership from a one-time purchase to a recurring, more manageable expense, which translates to Apple having more of its products in more people's hands.

Apple's upcoming service comes at a time when the company recently increased its hardware prices across its lineup, excluding the iPhone. With the leasing option, the company is trying to maintain demand among users who might otherwise delay or skip an upgrade, or see the price increase as the breaking point for an upgrade they otherwise would have purchased if it were the original or a lower price. The partnership with Klarna also signals Apple's willingness to experiment with new financial models to stay competitive in a tightening consumer market.

A key executive has left Microsoft years ahead of the next-gen Project Helix console, opting for a similar role at an AI company instead.

Jared Palmer, the engineering VP that was directly appointed by new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, is now leaving Microsoft. "Personal update: I've joined Cognition to lead engineering. I'm grateful to Asha Sharma and everyone at Xbox for an amazing year," Palmer announced on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Both Sharma and Palmer previously worked together in a similar arrangement at another Microsoft division, CoreAI, with Sharma serving as president and Palmer as VP. At Xbox, Palmer was involved with "removing friction and increasing productivity," and according to a memo from Sharma, Palmer was also working directly with her on Xbox's "most complex product and engineering problems."

Every industry report this year has landed like bad news, so it is genuinely refreshing to see one that does not. TrendForce's latest forecast says NAND flash supply and demand should finally balance out during the second half of 2027, effectively ending the shortage that has hammered SSD prices for the past two years.

The near-term outlook, however, is still not pretty. TrendForce expects a 4% to 6% supply deficit for the rest of 2026, so NAND prices are not dropping anytime soon. The firm does point to rising wafer output from SK hynix, Micron, Samsung, and YMTC, along with process node upgrades, as the reason supply should finally catch up.

Weaker consumer demand is also playing a role, since prices have already climbed high enough that plenty of buyers are holding off on upgrades and stretching out their current storage instead.

Most of the time when we talk about Amazon messing up a shipment, it doesn't usually end well for the buyer. However, this newest "reverse scam" actually proved to be quite the opposite. A Japanese Amazon customer paid for a single Intel Core i5-14400 and ended up with five sealed retail boxes on their doorstep. The buyer posted a photo of the stack on X, saying they had no idea why four extra processors showed up alongside the one they actually ordered.

The likely explanation is a warehouse scanning error. Intel ships some processors in distribution cartons holding five individual retail boxes, and it looks like a worker scanned the barcode on the outer carton and treated the whole thing as a single unit. Amazon hasn't confirmed this, so it's still just the leading theory from people replying to the post. It's also a strange mirror image of the reverse scam cases we've covered, where a buyer somehow walks away with more than they paid for.

What happened next is perhaps even more interesting, depending on your view of the world. Plenty of replies told the buyer to stay quiet, sit on the extra chips, or just sell them. That's not far off from what we've seen play out on the other side of Amazon's fulfillment mess, where a buyer who received a mismatched SSD had to fight to even prove something was wrong. Here it's the opposite problem, and the internet's advice was basically to keep the free stuff and move on.

Classic games are on the comeback, and Old School RuneScape in particular is seeing tons of interest.

2000s computer lab-era classic Old School RuneScape is apparently quite prosperous despite being a decades-old game. In a recent interview with The Games Business, Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy says that the Monty Python-esque RPG has now broken almost all of the milestones and metrics that Jagex uses to measure the game's success.

"For Old School RuneScape, I think we've broken just about every record we've ever had--every major metric in the last 12 months, multiple times. It's an unbelievable heater. We've been really happy with how that game performed," Bellamy said.

Microsoft has fixed a major issue surrounding select Dell PCs where a buggy Windows Update was causing unintentional shutdowns to occur. BleepingComputer reports that Microsoft has released out-of-band emergency updates KB5121767 and KB5121768 fixing the shutdown problem for affected systems that installed the KB5101650 update. KB5121767 is aimed at Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2, and KB5121768 is geared towards Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC 2024.

For the uninitiated, Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday cumulative Windows Update caused a driver conflict with Windows 11's USB-C Connection Manager Interface and Intel's Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant Driver. The conflict not only could cause shutdowns, but Microsoft also reported additional issues such as poor performance, increased heat, and increased battery drain. The Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant Driver is responsible for connecting Intel's DTT and CST drivers to Windows. DTT, or Dynamic Tuning Technology, is responsible for optimizing performance, power, acoustics, and thermals on a supported Intel machine. CST, or Context Sensing Technology, detects user presence in front of a system to run features such as Wake on Approach or Walk away Lock.

The issues were great enough for Microsoft to withhold the driver from affected systems until a fix could be made. If you want to know if your system is affected, a yellow exclamation point will appear next to the Intel Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant driver in Device Manager. Microsoft says if your device is unaffected, you don't need either of the aforementioned Windows Updates, as they only fix this specific issue and are out of Microsoft's normal update cycle.

Sony has launched a new legal offensive against AI music generator Udio, this time over 30,117 allegedly unlicensed recordings used to train its models.

The new suit includes tracks by Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson, among others, and comes after the court rejected Sony's attempt to expand its original lawsuit filed in 2024. Notably, the 2024 lawsuit was filed by Sony, Warner Brothers, and Universal against Uncharted Labs and Suno, the creators of Udio, and Suno, two AI music generators.

However, the court rejected Sony's request to add 30,000 new songs it believes Udio unlawfully used to train its AI model on June 29, as it was too close to the end of the discovery phase of the lawsuit. Although Sony was told by the court that it's free to pursue the new 30,000 songs for copyright infringement, just not as part of the case filed in 2024.

TSMC, the world's best semiconductor manufacturer, is set to raise foundry prices by up to 10% in 2027, according to a report from Nikkei Asia.

The price hike reportedly covers both mature and advanced 7nm and below processes, which are used for Apple's A-series and M-series chips. The increases, finalized in recent weeks, are attributed to rising material, equipment, and construction costs, with TSMC citing a "strategic, not opportunistic" approach to its pricing. Additionally, the price comes after it was discovered TSMC will soon have to generate and store its own electricity, which is going to be a monumental task considering TSMC consumes about 9% of Taiwan's total electricity grid.

The report states TSMC intends to give clients time to adjust before the new pricing kicks in at the start of 2027. Additional high-performance computing orders will face further premiums of 10 - 15%, potentially pushing total costs for some advanced chips over 10% higher. According to Nikkei, Apple is expected to be one of the hardest hit, with the price increases likely to line up with the rumored launch of the iPhone 18 and 20th anniversary models, which means the following year we may see further price increases in devices using TSMC's chips.

Nintendo's latest security push for the Switch 2 may have just been undermined by a developer who cracked a universal exploit that works entirely offline. Gezine's discovery doesn't rely on web-based vulnerabilities or Nintendo Online, making it far more resilient to quick patches, and it's a vulnerability on both the original Switch and Switch 2.

The exploit, confirmed by the developer on X, operates in userland, meaning it's within the code a user interacts with rather than within the operating system of the device. Additionally, this exploit doesn't depend on browser-based code execution or previous methods that required save file transfers through Nintendo's network. By avoiding WebKit and leveraging a new entry point, Gezine bypassed the ARM PAC protections that Nintendo added to the Switch 2's firmware.

This discovery could be a foundational step toward full homebrew and modding capabilities, which open the door to things like save file backups, emulation, and custom applications running on Nintendo hardware. Given the modding scene's past achievements, including running PC ports of games like Final Fantasy VII Remake, or the entire release of Tears of the Kingdom leaking onto PC, the implications of such an exploit are quite severe, especially for Nintendo, which is famously against any form of modding or tweaking of its hardware and games.

CD Projekt Red has confirmed that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be receiving a new DLC called "Songs of the Past," and also when the developer plans to unveil it to hungry fans.

While most RPG gamers are looking forward to Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 and CD Projekt Red's Witcher 4, a new piece of DLC content is arriving for one of the most iconic RPG experiences ever released, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt Red has confirmed in a recent X post that it will be unveiling Songs of the Past at Gamescom 2026 Opening Night on August 25 at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 8pm CEST.

CD Projekt Red is working on a new expansion for Wild Hunt, which released in 2015, and has been rumored for quite some time, and according to those rumors, this new DLC for Wild Hunt is intended to bridge the gap between the events in The Witcher 3 and what we will experience in The Witcher 4. Furthermore, reports indicate the DLC won't introduce a completely new region as Blood and Wine did, but instead expand on the region of the map that is available in the base game of Wild Hunt.

NVIDIA opened its keynote at the annual SIGGRAPH 2026 event in Los Angeles this week with an updated and in-depth look at DLSS 5. And compared to the announcement and debut from GTC earlier this year, which led to widespread backlash for the generative AI tool designed to add photorealistic lighting and detail to a scene, it was night and day.

In addition to providing a more technical look at how it works, the big thing with this presentation was showcasing how much control game developers will have over DLSS 5, and how they will be able to direct the look, feel, and intensity of the technology to "preserve artistic intent."

From a high level, this updated version of DLSS 5 includes three real-time models that developers can use, each presenting photorealistic lighting with different intensity. These models, dubbed Model A, Model B, and Model C, can be used on different scenes and characters, with the option to mix and match. Like DLSS Super Resolution, some of the models are more intensive and complex than others, but all are designed to run on a single GPU.

ADATA Chairman Chen Li-bai has disregarded talk of an AI bubble, stating it's too early to discuss and isn't relevant until 2040 at the earliest. Simultaneously, he warns that DRAM shortages will persist for another 10 years due to the seemingly endless hunger of the AI and data center sectors.

Truly, this isn't something consumers want to hear right now, especially considering how much prices have increased for desktop memory due to the global shortage as a result of AI companies gobbling up supply and luring memory manufacturers with checkbooks to produce AI memory rather than consumer DRAM.

Chen argues that the global tech market has underestimated the surge in memory and power infrastructure needs. AI compute demand is rising at an unprecedented pace, along with demand for electricity, memory, storage, and various other components. According to Chen, this demand isn't expected to stop anytime soon, and is only really the beginning.

In the generative AI era, if you're on social media, then odds are you've been seeing or watching several AI-generated videos. And with the lifelike quality of generative AI content now at a point where it can be hard to tell what's "real" or not, there's a genuine need for AI content to not only be flagged but detected to ensure transparency and minimize the spread of misinformation.

At the latest SIGGRAPH event that's currently underway in Los Angeles, NVIDIA announced the Synthetic Video Detector NVIDIA NIM microservice, which is built for media outlets, newsrooms, and enthusiasts. It's an AI-assisted detection model designed to detect AI-generated video content.

According to NVIDIA, this NIM microservice "analyzes video frame by frame to produce a classifier score of whether it contains synthetic content." And with that, individuals or teams can then review and analyze flagged clips and videos. NVIDIA notes that based on its own internal testing, the Synthetic Video Detector NVIDIA NIM microservice model's detection accuracy reached 92% on uncompressed video.

Sony's PlayStation 6 is expected to deliver a major hardware improvement over the PS5, as a newly uncovered patent outlines a redesigned cooling system, which comes only days after another patent was discovered for what appears to be the PS6 controller.

The patent, filed in June 2026, points to a more efficient heat pipe design intended to maintain standard thermal performance despite the console being positioned upright or horizontal. If the design outlined in the patent makes it to the final product, we can expect Sony to focus on its upgraded cooling system in its PS6 marketing. It's likely the result of the new cooling system is a reduction in component temperatures and noise pollution, particularly under load.

The new system appears to replace the PS5's liquid metal with a sealed heat pipe, which should translate to a general improvement in thermal stability across both orientations. The PS6 is expected to be digital-only, with Sony recently announcing it will be phasing out physical disc production by 2028, which soft-confirmed the PlayStation 6 will be launching without a physical disc drive, as it wouldn't make sense for Sony to launch a new console with a disc drive only to stop producing physical discs only a few years into that console's lifecycle.

When it comes to GPU monitoring, one of the biggest stories in recent weeks has been third parties restoring GPU Hotspot temperature readings on GeForce RTX 50 Series cards. Although unofficial, the consensus is that these readings can be beneficial in troubleshooting issues relating to cooling and performance, which is why tools like HWiNFO have now added this feature.

This week we've got another revelation for GeForce RTX monitoring, this time related to GPU memory. Thanks to the Brazilian Paulo Gomes mod team, who discovered a way to read temperature data on individual memory modules by accessing memory-mapped I/O (MMIO), which can then be mapped to physical modules surrounding the GPU die. According to the team, current memory temperature readings always show the current hotspot reading; this new mod expands this to cover individual modules.

And the good news is that this covers GDDR6, GDDR6X, and the new GDDR7 memory found on the GeForce RTX 50 Series. With the new mod, the latest HWiNFO beta includes these readings alongside the Hotspot.dll plugin for MSI Afterburner from Asder00. However, due to the different memory configurations, there is some nuance to the data. For GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs, it has 16 memory packages, but you've only got eight measurement points covering paired GDDR7 modules.

Samsung Display has announced that it has begun "full-scale" supply for its new tandem OLED panels built for laptops. These new panels stack two layers, which enhances efficiency alongside delivering higher brightness that's not possible with standard or older OLED panel technology. This is great news for laptops, as not only do you get the near-infinite contrast and premium color accuracy of OLED, but now you've got the sort of brightness suitable for bright rooms and even outdoor settings.

And when it comes to brightness, these new tandem OLED panels from Samsung can reach a peak brightness of up to 1,600 nits, which is a 40% improvement over single-layer OLED. And with that, these panels meet the requirements to achieve the new VESA DisplayHDR True Black 1400 certification for OLED displays.

This certification requires a display to reproduce black levels of 0.0005 nits or lower alongside a peak brightness of 1,400 nits across 10% of the active pixels on the screen. It's a notable and significant step up from single-layer OLED and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 1000. One of the first laptops to launch with this new Samsung tandem OLED panel for laptops is the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition, which earned its True Black 1400 certification earlier this month.

With the GeForce RTX 50 Series, MSI introduced new GPU designs alongside refreshed versions of its classic, tried-and-true models. One of the new design variants is the INSPIRE series, which features a compact form factor with a minimal, understated design best-suited for creators looking for a stylish GPU for their workflows and build. Of course, INSPIRE GPUs are still optimized for PC gaming, but deliver that with a more understated look.

And with that, when MSI introduced the INSPIRE lineup, the GPUs featured a brushed silver-and-gold finish with black fans and accents. Cut to 2026, and MSI is introducing a stealthy black variant (thanks, VideoCardz), with the product page for the new MSI GeForce RTX 5080 16G INSPIRE 3X OC BLACK now live. In addition to the black color, the revamped design also includes etching-like patterns on the front not present in the original design.

With dimensions of 288 x 112 x 50mm, the compact 2.5-slot design is compatible with ATX, M-ATX, and even ITX cases. The ZERO FROZR cooling is powered by MSI's new STORMFORCE fans with enhanced airflow via the custom core pipe and finstack design on the heatsink. It also includes a nickel-plated copper baseplate for the GPU and memory, with a vented metal backplate with MSI and GeForce RTX branding.

When it comes to portable gaming audio, over-the-ear headsets account for most of the options currently available. With the launch of Razer's new Hammerhead V3 X Hyperspeed earbuds for Xbox and PlayStation, it's a nice little reminder that there are in-ear options that can still deliver low-latency audio with chat functionality that's optimized for consoles and PCs.

And they're available in two flavors: the black and green Razer Hammerhead V3 X HyperSpeed for Xbox and the white Razer Hammerhead V3 X HyperSpeed for PlayStation. Outside of the different look, both offer the same hardware and features, with the Xbox variant including support for the Xbox console's custom low-latency wireless audio technology.

The low-latency "gaming-grade" audio for the Hammerhead V3 X Hyperspeed earbuds is powered by the company's Razer HyperSpeed Wireless 2.4 GHz tech found across its entire range of gaming headsets. As earbuds, they also support Bluetooth 5.3 for portable lifestyle use, including more recent low-latency BT tech for mobile gaming when paired with a smartphone, gaming handheld, or laptop. They also support Razer SmartSwitch Dual Wireless tech for seamless switching between 2.4G and BT modes.

The industry's push towards higher-priced games has apparently worked, as data suggests that gamers are more willing to buy higher-priced editions of video games when given the option.

Sony's digital PlayStation Store pre-order charts illustrate a potential trend in price tolerance. The current PS Store rankings indicate that gamers are willing to spend extra money on more expensive versions of new titles. This is especially true for Grand Theft Auto VI, whose $100 Ultimate Edition was the #1 top pre-ordered game in all nine tracked geographies--US, CA, UK, FR, ES, DE, SA, JP, and HK.

That's not the only game whose more expensive version is selling ahead of its basic SKU. Halo Campaign Evolved's Premium Edition is ahead of its cheaper counterpart, but this game is an encapsulation of multiple effects, including capitalizing on pent-up demand and the novelty of Halo's first release on PlayStation. Even still, PlayStation gamers are more willing to pay the extra $20 for Halo CE's Premium Edition due to the compelling offer of 5 days of advanced access. That's a substantial chunk of time--a full work week's worth of gaming.