Things get political this week on The TT Show when Jak and Kosta dig into the recent controversy surrounding Elon Musk, X, and the Australian government's attempt to censor specific content. Then, it gets even more political when the topic switches to the US government deeming Microsoft a security risk because all agencies depend on its software.

Plus, Intel partners with the Pentagon to develop microchips for what we can only assume is stuff you'd consider "not good." But hey, that's just the show's second half, as the first half is full of in-depth impressions for No Rest From the Wicked. Thel attest game from the studio behind the excellent Ori series blends Diablo with Dark Souls to deliver something special.

Jak and Kosta also talk about the upcoming rumors surrounding Ubisoft's Far Cry 7, which will feature Mr. Oppenheimer himself, Cillian Murphy, as the villain. Plus, Sony has announced a new PlayStation overlay with PSN Friends and Trophies for its PC games.

The boss of Microsoft's AI division has said that people really need to change their perspective of the emergence of artificial intelligence, and that a different way of thinking about the new technology is consider it a new "species".

DeepMind co-founder, and current CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, held a TED talk last week where he explained his vision for a world that will be mostly driven by artificial intelligence. Suleyman spoke to the crowd and said that it may be useful to think of AI as "something like a new digital species", with his prediction being that humans will come to view AI as "digital companions" and "new partners in the journeys of all our lives."

Suleyman's idea is that artificial intelligence will become so engrained into our everyday lives, much like smartphones have, that we will begin to consider AI-powered pieces of tech, such as Siri, more of a virtual being rather than a tool. This change is perspective will be enabled by the AI's language model that will be designed to enable a much more fluent interaction and response.

The Fallout TV show is the second most-popular series that Amazon has ever made.

With the help of Amazon, Bethesda's irradiated franchise took the world by storm in April. Everyone was talking about Fallout (they still are!), the games saw a huge uptick in players and purchases--there are currently two Fallout games on the PlayStation Store's top 25 best-sellers in the U.S.

According to Amazon, the Fallout series attracted 65 million viewers in just 16 days of availability. It's now the second most-watched series from Amazon Prime Video--The Rings of Power adaptation took the top spot.

Alan Wake 2 has yet to turn a profit on all platforms, game developer Remedy has confirmed.

After more than a decade of simmering ideas on a back burner, Remedy finally got their chance to make Alan Wake 2 when they purchased the IP and publishing rights to the series from Microsoft. Instead of self-funding the game, Remedy took a lucrative deal with Epic Games. The Fortnite-maker would fund development and handle publishing, and in exchange, Alan Wake 2 would launch on the Epic Store, not on Steam. It would also be digital-only on consoles.

It appears these business decisions have impacted sales of the game. Alan Wake 2 has yet to trigger royalty payments to Remedy, meaning the game isn't yet profitable...although it could be soon. Remedy says that Alan Wake 2 has "already recouped a significant part of the investments made by Epic Games Publishing," and the firm says the game has sold 1.3 million units as of February 2024.

Following the release of Alan Wake 2, Tencent has nearly tripled its investment into Remedy Entertainment.

Chinese games giant Tencent now owns 14.8% of Remedy, the developer of Alan Wake, Control, and the Max Payne games. This is a 289% increase from Tencent's previous ownership of just 3.8% of Remedy's shares.

Remedy has partnered with Tencent on a new free-to-play game codenamed Kestrel, which is a reboot from its previous game, codenamed Vanguard. Kestrel is currently in concept phases of development. Tencent's new share buy-up comes months after Remedy announced the reboot.

Nintendo's new Switch 2 console is expected to have magnetic joycons that snap on and off of the main tablet, new reports indicate.

Not even Nintendo's hardware partners know what its new system looks like. Ever-commited to secrecy, Nintendo has reportedly found a unique way to demo its next-gen Switch console: Through touch and nothing else.

Unnamed manufacturer sources tell Spanish gaming site Vandal about the strange meet-up with Nintendo, saying that third-party partners were ushered to stick their hands in a covered box and feel--not see--the Switch 2. Sources in attendance tell Vandal that the next-generation Switch device would have magnetic joycons.

Square Enix has cancelled $140 million worth of games, and multiple games could have been affected.

Today, Square Enix announced it'll be taking a ¥22.1 billion loss in its Fiscal Year 2023 financials as it cancels content that was in the production pipeline. Last quarter, Square Enix CEO Takashi Kiryu announced plans to prioritize quality over quantity--instead of releasing multiple products that may not do well, the team will try to focus on safe bets.

To put the losses into perspective, Square Enix spent about $792 million on games development throughout FY22 as part of its production budget account. The updated spending for FY23 will be published in May.

Blizzard has officially cancelled BlizzCon 2024, but Microsoft didn't make the decision.

BlizzCon 2024 isn't happening. Instead, the billion-dollar live service guru plans to hold several smaller-scale events throughout the year, including worldwide in-person affairs for the 30th anniversary of Warcraft. There's also digital celebrations being planned. Blizzard plans to focus primarily on The War Within expansion for WoW and Diablo IV's new Vessel of Hatred expansion.

Cancelling the event makes sense. Rising operational costs have forced mass layoffs, and Blizzard even cancelled one of its new games to reduce spending. Since Microsoft now owns Blizzard, some have assumed that the decision came from them, but it was actually Blizzard's choice. This tracks because Activision Blizzard King operates as a limited-integration company within Microsoft, which means they get to call their own shots.

There have long been strong rumors that Apple is working towards bringing some big new AI features to the iPhone and Mac via the iOS 18 and macOS 15 software updates, respectively. Now, a new report has detailed how the company has been going about setting itself up to make that happen.

According to a paywalled Financial Times report, picked up by MacRumors, Apple has shared dozens of AI engineers from Google and then set them up in a new lab in Zurich, Switzerland. The report claims that at least 36 engineers have made the switch from Google to Apple including John Giannandrea. He moved from Google to Apple in 2018 and was installed as its AI executive, while many others have followed suit since then.

The report claims that those working in the lab have been looking into the technology that powers OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot and other similar offerings that use Large Language Models to perform tasks. Apple is expected to use these learnings as part of the iOS 18 rollout that will handle some AI-based tasks on-device, increasing performance and privacy.

ASUS is jumping on the Snapdragon X Elite laptop bandwagon with the announcement that it has a notebook, or rather an AI PC, to reveal next month.

The unnamed laptop - presumably a Vivobook, or certainly that's the theory from VideoCardz (we'll come back to that), which spotted the press announcement from ASUS - will be unveiled at a virtual launch event online at 1pm CDT (11am PST) on May 20, 2024. So that's just a few short weeks away now.

If the date sounds familiar, that's because this is when Microsoft will reveal its new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 devices for consumers (business targeted models have already been launched - but they don't have the Snapdragon ARM-based chip inside).

Ubisoft has today confirmed that it will make the Assassin's Creed Mirage game available for download on the iPhone and iPad starting on June 6, although the game's App Store page continued to say June 10. In a press release, Ubisoft confirmed that gamers will need an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max to play the game, while those with iPad Air and iPad Pro tablets with the M1 chip or newer will also be able to get in on the act. With Apple expected to announce new M4 iPad Pros soon, we can expect those tablets to play the new game particularly well.

The game can be preordered from the App Store right now with the title available for all who want to play it for free - although only for the first 90 minutes. After that, unlocking the full version will cost $49.99. Thankfully, that's a one-time purchase that will make the game available for both the iPhone and iPad, so buyers won't have to buy the game twice to play on their phone and tablet.

The Assassin's Creed Mirage game is of course already available for PlayStation, Xbox, and Windows PCs and has been since October of last year. But with the title being such a recent one it's important to note just how impressive it is that Apple's iPhones, albeit its most expensive, are capable of playing these console-quality games. We've already seen games like Death Stranding and Resident Evil make an appearance in the App Store, but those were slightly older titles.