Latest News - Page 1029

Microsoft could be working on some new gaming-focused Surface products, with a new Surface Gaming laptop teased in some fresh rumors from Prime Gaming, with a spec sheet on the purported new gaming laptop leaked.

The new Microsoft Surface Gaming laptop should roll out with a 16-inch PixelSense Flow Display, with a native resolution of 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and refresh rate of 165Hz as well as Dolby Vision support. The spec sheet suggests Microsoft will be offering the option between mid-range and higher-end Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" mobile CPUs. Microsoft will reportedly offer two options: Core i7-12700H (14-core) or the Core i5-12500H (12-core).

Microsoft's new Surface Gaming laptop has 16GB of LPDDR4x memory by default, with the option for up to 32GB LPDDR4x memory. GPU wise, Microsoft would offer options of between an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU with 8GB GDDR6 memory or the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU with 4GB of GDDR6 memory.

GIGABYTE's new custom GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING OC graphics card has been spotted, mere hours after the list of 11 custom GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards that the company is working on.

It must be the week for factory leaks because we just saw the ZOTAC GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO graphics card smiling for the camera. We saw the retail packaging and the actual graphics card itself -- from the back at least -- but the new GIGABYTE leaks on the custom GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING OC don't include photos of the card itself.

What we do have is the front of the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING OC retail packaging, where we see a slick-looking box with a robot and a triangle -- GIGABYTE style -- but we do have the new NVIDIA font used here, and 24GB of GDDR6X memory confirmed once again.

NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture and its big reveal at GTC 2022 next week is just so close, we can smell the silicon... which the flagship AD102 GPU silicon will have over 75 billion transistors.

The new AD102 GPU with 75 billion transistors means that Ada Lovelace is skipping up real close to Hopper H100, with NVIDIA cramming in 5 billion more transistors for a total of 80 billion transistors. We don't know how the GPU architectures compare just yet, but both of them have huge L2 cache (Ada Lovelace has up to 96MB of cache, and Hopper with up to 50MB of cache).

All that cache takes up space, so the huge 75 billion transistor count on AD102 could be because of that, and why it has close to the same transistor count as NVIDIA's monster Hopper H100 GPU. The news is coming from leaker "kopite7kimi" who posted a vote on Twitter asking followers how many transistors they thought NVIDIA's flagship AD102 GPU had.

Babylon's Fall will soon be taken offline and all characters, data, and content will be inaccessible and deleted, PlatinumGames has announced.

After one of the most disastrous launches in service game history, PlatinumGame's failed GaaS title Babylon's Fall is officially being taken off of life support. The developers have announced Babylon's Fall will be officially shut down on Monday, February 27, 2023 at 11PM PST/2AM EST.

Babylon's Fall has already been delisted from all digital and retail markets and is no longer available for sale anywhere. PlatinumGames an Square Enix have also pulled the game's premium currency from all markets alongside the game's delisting. In February 2023, everything will be removed from the servers and all gameplay data will be completely wiped out and deleted.

Bandai Namco is bringing its legendary fighting game to the PlayStation 5 with the age-old story line intact.

Tekken 8 was just announced at Sony's State of Play event, showcasing impressive new visuals and effects on Bandai Namco's updated engine tech. Like previous Tekkens, the eighth chapter will continue the intense brutal rivalry among the Mishimas; Tekken followed Heihachi's blood feud with Kazuya, and Tekken 8 will chronicle the intense clash between father and son, Kazuya Mishima and Jim Kazama and culminate in a final showdown.

As for the new upgraded tech, the game's reveal trailer was actually captured via in-game rendering on the PlayStation 5: "It is not a pre-rendered movie made for the trailer but rather real-time rendered footage, running at 60 frames per second," Bandai Namco exec Katsuhiro Harada said on the PlayStation Blog.

UPDATE: The LinkedIn profile has been updated with a new figure: Skyrim is now said to have made $650 million in 30 days instead of $1 billion. "Generated $650M in the first 30 days- significantly outperforming forecasts," the listing now reads.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim reportedly made $1 billion in revenues in its first 30 days on the market, according to information connected to a Bethesda marketing manager.

According to info spotted by numbers researcher Timur222 on Twitter, Skyrim could've made $1 billion in revenues in just one month of sales. The data comes by way of a LinkedIn profile for Alex Price, who served as the European brand and marketing manager for Bethesda from 2010 - 2013. Price mentions that Skyrim had "generated $1 billion in the first 30 days," which exceeded Bethesda's internal forecasts by 35%; if accurate, the publisher expected to make $650 million in revenues from Skyrim.

Nintendo has officially confirmed the name of the new Breath of the Wild sequel alongside a release date for the anticipated game.

After years of development and delays, BOTW 2 is almost ready. The Legend of Zelda: The Tears of the Kingdom will launch on May 12, 2023 exclusively on the Nintendo Switch family of consoles.

The news was part of the latest Nintendo Direct showcase that included a brief teaser trailer. There wasn't a whole lot of new info but previous coverage gives a better idea of what to expect from the game. Tears of the Kingdom will take Link to the skies of Hyrule with tons of above-the-clouds exploration that also connects to the mainland, complete with what appears to be an enchanted floating stone glider for transportation.

The old-school N64 classic GoldenEye 007 is coming back with some modern upgrades.

One of the most pivotal console shooters of all time is returning after 25 years, complete with 4K resolution support and more. Today Microsoft announced that Rare's beloved GoldenEye 007 FPS is coming to Xbox Game Pass soon with a massive boost to in-game visuals. GoldenEye's impending Xbox release will support 4K resolution--a heavy upgrade over the game's original 320x237 resolution on the Nintendo 64--complete with 16:9 aspect ratio support, better frame rates, and achievements.

Multiplayer is also included, but the Xbox version only has split-screen local MP. Online multiplayer is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch Online version. What's interesting is the Switch version is actually the native N64 game with the added bonus of online multiplayer (an active NSO subscription is required to access the game and play it online, though).

Pierre Hintze helped salvage The Master Chief Collection and turn it into one of the best games on the market. Now he's leading 343 Industries.

Yesterday 343 Industries founder Bonnie Ross announced she was leaving the studio after 15 years of Halo franchise expansion. Taking her place is Pierre Hintze, who is largely credited with helping course correct The Master Chief Collection and streamline the game's once-disastrous multiplayer. Now Hintze has taken the role as head of 343 Industries and aims to turn Halo Infinite around, too.

"Head of Production Pierre Hintze will become Studio Head effective immediately. The 343 team is hard at work shipping the Winter Update, the biggest Halo Infinite update since launch," Microsoft told Windows Central.

Splatoon 3 is now the fastest-selling video game in Japanese history, breaking records set by all other games in all previous console generations.

Splatoon 3 is set to be Nintendo's next mega-hit and has become an incredible sensation in domestic markets. Nintendo has announced that Splatoon 3 has sold an incredible 3.45 million copies in just 3 days' time. According to data compiled by Game Data Library on Twitter, Splatoon 3 has set a new launch sales record for Japan, beating the previous record of 2.68 million copies sold by Animal Crossing New Horizons at launch.

A quick bit of math reveals that Nintendo has made at least $206.965 million from Splatoon 3's sales in Japan alone (the game retails for $59.99 in both stores and on the eShop). Further investigation reveals that Splatoon 3 made neared the Nintendo Switch's entire third-party game sales revenues for Q1 FY23; Third-party games made up 24% of Nintendo Switch software sales revenues in Q1, or $289.34 million. Splatoon 3 also made up 22% of total first-party game sales revenues in Q1'23, or $931.49 million.

Sony announces September State of Play event that will kick off today, Sept. 13 at 6PM EST.

It's happening: After weeks of asking for updates, Sony finally answers fans and will deliver a new State of Play event today. The September State of Play will kick off at 6PM EST / 3PM PST on the official PlayStation Twitch and YouTube channels.

Much to the dismay of fans, the event won't be focused on God of War Ragnarok. Instead Sony will showcase new and upcoming games from its Japanese and worldwide partners across a spectrum of platforms including PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and the PlayStation VR 2 headset, which is coming in 2023. Sony confirms that 10 games will be shown during the event which is timed around the annual Tokyo Game Show in Japan.

A study on the diamonds titled "Sequential Lonsdaleite to Diamond Formation in Ureilite Meteorites via Chemical Fluid/Vapor Deposition" has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Australian researchers have confirmed the presence of a rare type of diamond called lonsdaleite in ureilite meteorites from the mantle of a dwarf planet that was destroyed in our inner solar system. The dwarf planet is thought to have collided with a large asteroid roughly 4.5 billion years ago, creating localized high temperatures and pressures that led to the creation of the diamonds.

These diamonds are also found in ureilite on Earth, suggesting the diamonds may have found their way to Earth from this dwarf planet. Lonsdaleite, named after crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, has a hexagonal structure to its atoms that theoretically allows it to be up to 58% harder than regular diamonds, which have a cubic structure. This makes it potentially extremely useful for manufacturing other ultra-hard materials, such as those used in mining applications.

Two studies on the diamonds titled "Density, not radius, separates rocky and water-rich small planets orbiting M dwarf stars" and "Three types of planets around red dwarfs" have been published in the journal Science.

Researchers from the University of Chicago have found that significantly more exoplanets may have more water than first thought, up to as much as half water and half rock. However, much of the water is embedded in the rock instead of flowing on the surface. They found these types of planets were much more common around M-dwarf red dwarf stars, the most common type of star in the universe.

The satellite for NASA's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission experienced communications difficulties on September 8th.

The satellite is owned and operated by Advanced Space, and mission controllers could not receive any telemetry data the satellite was attempting to send for roughly 24 hours. The issue arose around the time the satellite began its third trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-3). Towards the end of the maneuver, it suffered an anomaly that led to uncontrollable changes in the spacecraft's attitude (its pitch, yaw, and roll).

Once the combined operations team re-established communication and received telemetry data, it was clear the satellite was still in an unstable configuration. Its solar panels were also making less power than the spacecraft needs, making it no longer power positive. As such, the teams from NASA Deep Space Network, Terran Orbital, and Advanced Space declared an operational emergency on the evening of September 8th.

A brand new mineral has been discovered on the Moon by Chinese scientists, found inside samples of lunar material collected by the Chang'e 5 lunar probe in 2020.

The name of the mineral was announced to be Changesite-(Y) by Dong Baotong, the vice chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority, after its confirmation as a new mineral by the International Mineralogical Association's (IMA) Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC). It is the sixth new mineral found on the Moon, making China the third country to have found one, following the United States and the former Soviet Union.

The mineral has been named Changesite-(Y) is named as such after the Chinese moon goddess Chang'e. It is a phosphate mineral that forms columnar crystals and was found inside lunar basalt particles or volcanic rock. A single crystal was isolated by Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology researchers, with a radius of 10 micrometers. Helium-3 was also found in the samples, which has potential as a fuel source for nuclear fusion.

A rocket flying for the latest mission of Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin failed and crashed shortly after lifting off on Monday, September 12th, 2022.

The New Shepard rocket flew for the NS-23 mission and carried no people on board, only an assortment of experiments. The capsule managed to safely separate from the failing rocket as its emergency launch abort system kicked in about a minute into the flight when flames engulfed the single engine at the bottom of the rocket. The capsule parachuted to the ground below in the desert minutes later, while the rocket crashed down.

The rocket used for the mission is the same that Blue Origin uses to take customers to the edge of space, the most recent flight being last month, bringing the total passenger count to 31 people. Following the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is grounding New Shepard rockets until it concludes an investigation into the event. No one was injured, and no damage was caused by the crashing rocket, and Blue Origin later took to Twitter to write, "Booster failure on today's uncrewed flight. Escape system performed as designed."

Uber Eats has announced that it has partnered with autonomous tech developer Nuro, with a new 10-year contract signed in the last few days that will see a bigger rollout of Nuro's driverless delivery robots.

The companies will begin a slow rollout of Nuro's newest driverless delivery robots, where they'll make deliveries in Houston and Mountain View, California, and then extend out to the Bay Area in the months after. Nuro was the first company to get an autonomous deployment permit from the state of California, and they were also the first to introduce autonomous vehicle operations in Arizona, California, and Texas.

But the bigger issue here is that Uber will eventually not have to pay human drivers to deliver food and other goods to customers through its Uber Eats service, something the company has been aiming at and working towards for a while now. Autonomous vehicle technology hasn't been as fast as the company hoped, and this new 10-year contract doesn't mean we'll see Uber Eats rolling out autonomous delivery robots immediately.

GIGABYTE is cooking up quite the family of next-gen GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards, with the company filing 11 new RTX 4090 graphics cards with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC).

The new listings are for 11 custom models of GIGABYTE's extensive family of GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards, from the flagship GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 AORUS EXTREME WATERFORCE, down to the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 WINDFORCE 3X graphics card.

GIGABYTE will be offering its RTX 4090 WINDFORCE 3X, RTX 4090 EAGLE, and RTX 4090 GAMING graphics cards will be offered in "OC" models as well. Above that, there's the GIGABYTE RTX 4090 AORUS MASTER, RTX 4090 AORUS EXTREME, and then the water-cooled RTX 4090 AORUS XTREME WATERBLOCK and RTX 4090 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE graphics cards. Quite a stack of flagship Ada there, GIGABYTE.

ZOTAC's new GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO graphics card has been spotted, turning up on the Baidu forums with a sneak peek at the re-designed cooler and new retail packaging.

NVIDIA should be announcing its next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture at its upcoming GTC 2022 event, where the company has announced its new "GeForce Beyond" special broadcast, where we're expecting to see the new GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards announced (at least one: the new GeForce RTX 4090).

AIB partners are now making their custom GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards, with ZOTAC's upcoming GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO graphics card featuring a new design, a wicked-looking (and chunky) backplate, and what appears to be plenty of RGB lighting. ZOTAC has also updated its retail packaging here -- with the new font that we've seen in recent leaks on NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card -- where you can see in the bottom left, and top of the box has new font for the "GeForce RTX 4090" branding.

Intel seems to be addressing rumors that its future-gen Arc desktop GPUs have been nixxed with a few tweets from ex-RTG boss over at competitor AMD, Raja Koduri.

Raja posted a new picture after the story broke that the "decision had been made" to cancel the Intel Arc desktop GPUs and that we might not even get to see Arc "Celestial" launch. Intel hasn't got its Arc "Alchemist" GPU to market yet, while Arc "Battlemage" drops next year... it seems that Battlemage is going to be a single low-end or mid-range die versus an exciting new multi-die GPU.

The picture that Raja posted was of the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition graphics card that he "bumped into" at the Toronto volume validation lab, adding that the GPU is still "getting ready for launch".