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.

Boston Dynamics, one of the world's leading robotics manufacturers, has released a new video on its YouTube channel showcasing how one of its Spot robot dogs has received a makeover.

The robotics design and engineering company released a new video showcasing one of its Spot Mini dogs in a suit of sparkly fur, which the company describes as a "custom costume". Seemingly, the idea behind the video and the costume is to "explore the intersections of robotics, art, and entertainment." The video is certainly a glimpse into a potentially dystopian future of the world where four-legged robotic dogs dressed in sparkly costumes have taken over the world and are running the streets in dazzling glory.

Boston Dynamics doesn't provide too much information on why Spot has been renamed to "Sparkles", or why this video even exists in the first place. The only pieces of information Boston Dynamics gives are the intent to explore the intersections of robotics, art, and entertainment, and "Spot is meeting another strange dog and making friends through the power of dance" - which they certainly do.

There has been a lot of rumor and information surrounding AMD's upcoming RDNA 4 generation of Radeon RX 8000 Series graphics cards. On track for launch later this year (at the earliest), we know that AMD is skipping a flagship high-end model in favor of more affordable and mainstream options that will sit in the GeForce RTX 4070 and Radeon RX 7800 XT price range.

With the top chip being less powerful than the current Radeon RX 7900 XTX flagship, you might not think that RDNA 4 would be all that exciting. Well, following on from confirming that all RDNA 4 GPUs will use the same GDDR 6 memory that Radeon cards have been using for years, insider and known leaker @Kepler_L2 on X/Twitter has teased something pretty exciting for the future of RDNA.

It's all about ray tracing, with Kepler stating that the ray-tracing hardware for next-gen RDNA 4 is "brand new" and not simply a revision or upgrade of the current Ray Accelerators found within each Compute Unit.

AMD's revenues for Q1 2024 rose to $5.5 billion, a year-over-year increase driven by the incredible demand for all things AI. AMD's 'Data Center' revenue saw an increase of 80% year-over-year to deliver $2.3 billion, with 'Client' revenue seeing a year-over-year increase of 85% in revenue to hit $1.4 billion.

Products in AMD's AI Instinct AI GPU lineup, server-grade EPYC CPUs, and the Ryzen 8000 Series of processors for desktops and mobile devices are driving sales and growth. But it's not all sunshine and AI rainbows, as AMD's 'Gaming' revenue saw a massive decline, down 48% year-over-year - which offset AMD's revenue for the quarter.

Gaming covers AMD's PlayStation and Xbox console hardware, Radeon GPUs for PC gaming, and SoC devices that combine Ryzen processing with Radeon graphics. The dramatic decrease in gaming hardware revenue matches Microsoft's recent report stating that Xbox hardware sales decreased by 31% year-over-year.

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.