Latest News - Page 1028

Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection will release on October 19 on both Steam and the Epic Games Store for $49.99, Sony today announced.

Naughty Dog has revealed a ton of new features coming to its first-ever PC release of the Uncharted series, including support for AMD's Fidelity FX Super Resolution 2.0, ultra-wide monitor support, and full PC spec requirements.

Microsoft and Sony continue publicly arguing about the $68.7 billion Activision-Blizzard deal and the entire world is watching.

Today Sony delivered new controversial comments about Microsoft's proposed Activision buyout. The two billion-dollar tech giants are using some of the largest websites in the video games industry to publicly jab one another in regards to Call of Duty exclusivity and the Activision-Blizzard buyout as a whole. These websites, which are often quoted directly in reports prepared by legal advisors in response to anti-competition probes, have become public forums for what is fast becoming a rivalry between two games giants.

Sony's latest comment has ignited claims of anti-competition; Sony argues if Microsoft assumes control of Call of Duty that it would directly negatively harm the entire market. These are bold claims, and Sony can't adequately back them up without revealing key market data, earnings figures, and other information that is likely confidential and closely-guarded--in other words, Sony can't exactly prove what it is saying to be true without divulging the same documents that it has provided regulatory bodies like the FTC and CMA.

Warzone 2.0 is the largest, most ambitious Call of Duty game or mode in the history of the franchise, complete with a ton of new mechanics, game modes, concepts, and a massive new map to hold it all together.

Today Infinity Ward revealed tons of details about Warzone 2.0, the new standalone F2P platform releasing November 16. Warzone 2.0 isn't just a battle royale--it's so big that you could call it a platform, and Infinity Ward has confirmed that new modes/maps and content are coming to expand the game outside of BR territory.

Warzone 2.0 is coming just weeks after Modern Warfare 2's release, and the F2P game will launch at the same time as MW2's season 1 multiplayer. The mode will include tons of new vehicles, a new map called Al Mazrah (the largest BR map Infinity Ward has ever made) with lots of points of interest, a new DMZ mode coming at launch, new loot mechanics, the fresh Strongholds mechanic, and massively overhauled AI that will scout and combat players throughout the map.

Overseas regulators will extensively examine and scrutinize the logistics of Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion buyout of Activision-Blizzard, sources tell the Financial Times.

Anti-trust and competition regulators all over the globe are currently investigating the Microsoft-Activision buyout deal. Some agencies like Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Competition have delivered no objection decisions on the deal. Others, like the FTC in the United States, the CMA in the UK, and the European Commission have yet to make a formal decision.

Sources have told the Financial Times that regulators in the UK and Europe will look closely at the deal, especially how it could affect the video games market. We've reported in the past that Call of Duty is an unrivaled franchise in sheer sales volume, reach, and consistent earnings, and the UK's Competition for Markets Authority has raised concerns about how Call of Duty exclusivity and Microsoft's cloud market could potentially squeeze competitors.

Hideo Kojima's dev studio has teased a new game, and it's likely the horror project that's been in planning phases for years now.

Kojima Productions recently confirmed it would not show a new game at the Tokyo Game Show, but that didn't stop the studio from hinting at its next project. The teaser comes by way of Kojima's longtime friend Geoff Keighley, who shared a mysterious image on Twitter.

Kojima has also met with horror director Jordan Peele (Get Out, NOPE) and it's possible he showed the horror game to Peele and asked for feedback and criticism.

NASA has taken to its Artemis blog to announce new dates for the Space Launch System's (SLS) upcoming tests and potential launch windows for the Artemis I mission.

A cryogenic demonstration test is slated for no earlier than Wednesday, September 21st. The first flight of the integrated SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft will occur no earlier than September 27th, with a potential backup date being reviewed for October 2nd. The backup launch window would bring the first flight of NASA's Artemis program within a day of the agency's mission with SpaceX to launch Crew-5 to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Crew-5 mission is targeted for no earlier than 12:45 p.m. EDT (16:45 UTC) on October 3rd and will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Artemis I will also be launching. Teams will therefore be planning and preparing both launches simultaneously if the backup launch window for Artemis I is needed. After Crew-5 makes it to the ISS, Crew-4 will return shortly after that.

IBM has built the world's largest dilution refrigerator, or "super-fridge," by experimental volume, for what the company has internally dubbed project Goldeneye.

The super-fridge is a proof-of-concept project for cooling the quantum experiments of the future, as the company had identified several limitations of current dilution refrigerators. Dilution refrigerators are cryogenic devices that use a mixture of Helium-3 and Helium-4 isotopes to achieve extremely low temperatures. However, current devices cannot house larger quantum physics experiments, have limited input/output ports, and cooling power can always be improved.

Goldeneye is not targeted for use with any of IBM's Quantum processors as of yet. Still, it expands the boundaries of what quantum computing experimentation can achieve, with the ability to cool 1.7 cubic meters' worth of experimental volume (about three home kitchen fridges worth of volume) to colder temperatures than outer space. This far exceeds previous dilution fridges, which ranged between 0.4 and 0.7 cubic meter capacities.

Researchers from Curtin University in Western Australia have uncovered an ancient reef structure on the Nullarbor Plain, a large, barren expanse in the desert of southwestern Australia.

The Nullarbor Plain is the world's largest single exposure of limestone bedrock, spanning about 200,000 square kilometers (77,220 square miles), and emerged from the ocean roughly 14 million years ago. According to the researchers, because large swathes of the area have been relatively unaffected by weathering and erosion processes for millions of years, partly due to the area's dryness, the region's ancient history is well preserved.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4090 "Ada Lovelace" graphics card is nearly here, and now we're finding out that a couple of the top-end Ada GPUs will be split into two variants.

The first of them will be the new GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards which will arrive in two forms: 450W default TGP and 600W+ OC mode for custom RTX 4090 variants from AIB partners. Moore's Law is Dead has pushed out a new video updating his audience with the latest from his sources.

The first source told him that the GeForce RTX 4090 will launch in the "first half of October" while the GeForce RTX 4080 launches in the "first half of November (as of now)". His source does state what I was reporting on earlier today: that NVIDIA will launch the RTX 4090 first (October) then the RTX 4080 16GB and RTX 4080 12GB in November, followed by the RTX 4060 series GPUs in January at CES 2023.

As we march into the launch of NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 40 series "Ada Lovelace" GPUs, we're hearing more about the Ada launch lineup: GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 4080 16GB, and GeForce RTX 4080 12GB according to the latest leaks.

NVIDIA will be launching the GeForce RTX 4090 in all its next-gen GPU glory in October, but in November we'll be greeted by not one, but two new GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards. The first is the higher-end GeForce RTX 4080 with 16GB of GDDR6X memory, clocked at a higher 23Gbps bandwidth for up to 768GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

Inside, the GeForce RTX 4080 16GB will use the new AD103-300 GPU with 9728 CUDA cores, with a GPU boost of up to 2505MHz (nearly the same as the RTX 4090, with a boost clock of up to 2520MHz). NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4080 has a default TGP of 340W, while it can be modified up to its maximum power limit of 516W. Remember, the 340W + 516W power numbers are for the RTX 4080 16GB graphics card model.

AMD's new Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" processor might rock out with its 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 4 processing power at up to 5.85GHz... but how will you get there?

We've been told all of the official stuff about the new Ryzen 9 7950X -- 16 cores and 32 threads based on the new Zen 4 architecture, made on TSMC's new 5nm process node, with up to 5.7GHz CPU clocks and a price of $699. AMD has a default 170W TDP while 230W PPT when the Ryzen 9 7950X (and Ryzen 9 7900X) is overclocked.

But now, the folks over at Wccftech have talked with some sources and revealed that the peak frequency for AMD's new flagship Ryzen 9 7950X processor will be "rated a little higher" than the 5.70GHz boost clock, but note that temperatures play a very important role here. The 5.70GHz CPU frequency on the Ryzen 9 7950X is only going to be hit if you've got the cooling chops to pull it off.

Lenovo is joining the custom GeForce RTX 4090 family of graphics cards with GIGABYTE and ZOTAC this week, with its new quad-slot GeForce RTX 4090 LEGION graphics card... and man, it's a beast. Check it out:

The new leaked photos of Lenovo's upcoming GeForce RTX 4090 LEGION graphics card show us that it is an absolute, utter, case-crushing, and PCIe port-crushing quad-slot, right-over-your-motherboard crazy size. It's a quad-slot GPU with an updated RTX 40 logo design (the new font NVIDIA is using) and a single 12VHPWR power connector.

Lenovo's new custom RTX 4090 LEGION graphics card barely fits into their in-house LEGION gaming case, which the company does for its LEGION gaming brand of pre-built PC systems. It's actually a really interesting-looking design, something I actually dig -- just like I did with Lenovo's custom Radeon RX 6900 XT LEGION graphics card.

NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 4090 "Ada Lovelace" flagship GPU is getting more and more detailed as we get closer to launch, where we're hearing about maximum TGP and GPU boost clocks.

The new flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card will use the AD102-300 GPU with 16384 CUDA cores with GPU boost clocks of up to 2520MHz according to VideoCardz, who combined the specs for the RTX 4090 from multiple sources and reports from leaker "kopite7kimi" and from the Chiphell forums, keep in mind that NVIDIA has AD102 in full-fat form, where it will reportedly have up to 18342 CUDA cores.

We also find out that the default TGP will be 450W while the maximum configurable TGP is 660W, with the maximum TGP being tweaked through the BIOS and might not be available to all of the custom GeForce RTX 4090 models that get released.

Exclusive: As we get closer to the launch of NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 40 series "Ada Lovelace" GPUs, we're seeing more and more leaked on the cards, but now I've just heard from an anonymous source of mine that NVIDIA has been stockpiling next-gen graphics cards for a couple of months now.

I've been speaking with a few industry sources of mine, with one of them well-connected in Taiwan saying that NVIDIA has been stockpiling GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 4080 16GB, and GeForce RTX 4080 12GB graphics cards since August. Yeah: next-gen GPUs have been waiting for us... sitting in warehouses... dormant.

Towards the end of July 2022, I reported that Chinese GPU suppliers said they were getting their first batches of GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards arriving in August. We didn't hear much after that, but we have been hearing rumbles from the leaks, and then we've recently seen the retail packaging for the custom GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING OC and ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO graphics cards.

Following an executive leadership shake up, 343 Industries has today confirmed that microtransactions will not come to Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

343i has abandoned all plans to monetize the Halo Master Chief Collection and will not sell in-game Spartan Points for real money. The studio announced the news in a recent Halo Waypoint update:

"We can confirm that we will not be further pursuing purchasable Spartan Points for MCC," the statement reads.

After losing an estimated $200 million from Avengers and Guardians of Galaxy, Japanese games publisher Square Enix is afraid of risk and is taking big measures to combat it...including possibly selling off stakes of its developers.

In a recent Q&A with investors, Square Enix made some very interesting comments about the future of its game studios. Executives in the Japanese games publisher, which is known for major franchises like Final Fantasy, said that management is open to the idea of "forming joint ventures and taking minority stake" in order to reduce the significant volatility involved with making games.

This volatility and risk was exposed with two major flops for Square Enix; the company's duo of Marvel games, Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, not only missed internal expectations but led to an estimated loss of $200 million. This heavy loss led Square Enix to sell its entire Western game studios branches, which include Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal, to Embracer Group for just $300 million. Also included in the deal were franchises that continually missed Square Enix's lofty expectations including Tomb Raider and Deus Ex.

NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card is back in the headlines, this time it's turned up at a Vietnamese retailer where the RTX 4090 is up for pre-order.

The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card is up for pre-order with Vietnamese retailer AZPC, which has the "basic RTX 4090 version" listed for 50 million VND ($2100 USD or so) while the "premium RTX 4090 version" is listed for 60 million VND ($2520 USD or so).

We don't know if the retailer has the GeForce RTX 4090 contracted so they know the price, or if they're just guessing, but "I_Leak_VN" on Twitter noted that they think AZPC workstation stores price on the RTX 4090 pre-order is the "most realistic price because Vietnam also had this price when the new RTX 3090 was released".

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger had some choice words to say during the Evercore ISI TMT conference last week, where he admitted the company will bleed data center market share to its competitors until at least 2023... regaining market share in 2025 or 2026.

Gelsinger said that the competition -- AMD -- has "too much momentum" right now, as their Ryzen and EPYC processors steal customers (both gamers and data center) away from Intel. Intel did have its next-gen Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" platform planned for... well... now, but that has been delayed until 2023.

Interestingly, during the Evercore ISI TMT conference, the Intel CEO said that the company will "likely exit" more of its businesses as they "continue to prune and get more focused". Recently, Intel nixxed its Optane business out of nowhere, even after the team were showing off next-gen designs in the months prior to their axing.

NVIDIA will be unleashing its new monster GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card next month, but the other Ada Lovelace GPU releases in the GeForce RTX 4060 will use 8 PCIe lanes.

The news of AD106 and AD107 GPUs will have 8 PCIe lanes is coming from leaker "kopite7kimi" with a new tweet which said AD106 "is not very strong" and that its 3DMark TimeSpy Extreme score is under 7000. The leaker also noted that AD106 and AD107 "are using PCIe x8".

NVIDIA could roll out its fleet of GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs with PCIe 5.0 support, giving the higher-end GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 4080, and GeForce RTX 4070 all the same PCIe 5.0 x16 lanes. These cards will be powered by AD102, AD103, and AD104: AD106 and AD107 -- if these rumors are true -- won't need 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0, so 8 lanes of PCIe 5.0 will be enough (which has the same bandwidth as PCIe 4.0 x16 for current-gen motherboards).

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is forging ahead with its 2nm process node technology, now that it's nailed the 4nm node for NVIDIA and its new Hopper H100 GPUs, 3nm is coming and 2nm... begins soon.

TSMC is currently nailing down its 3nm process node technology, which Apple will be using for its next-gen SoC inside of the iPhone 15 in 2023. TSMC is currently making wafers of Hopper GPUs for NVIDIA with the Hopper H100 being made on TSMC's new 4N process technology, with the 4nm process node by TSMC optimized and designed exclusively for Hopper H100.

After that comes 3nm for various designs including Apple, which we'll see in iPhones and their upcoming AR/VR headset in 2023 and beyond. Once 3nm is in products and being used across the world, TSMC has its future-tech 2nm process node technology, which the Taiwanese giant says will enter mass production in 2025.