Latest News - Page 1073

MSI detailed one of the user-friendly functions of its next-gen AMD X670 + B650-based motherboards during its recent MSI Insider Livestream.

We are to expect MSI to use screwless + toolless M.2 SSD installation on its new X670 + B650 motherboards, something that MSI is calling "Screwless M.2 Shield Frozr" that lets users install an M.2 SSD under the Shield Frozr M.2 heat sink... all without any screws or tools required.

MSI's upcoming MEG + MPG family of X670 and B650 motherboards will have the new "Screwless M.2 Shield Frozr" feature, including the MEG X670E GODLIKE, MEG X670E ACE, the MPG X670E Carbon Wi-Fi, and many others. For the motherboards without the "Screwless M.2 Shield Frozr" feature, you'll have EZ M.2 clips that also allow for simple installation, where you can slide the M.2 SSD under the non-Shield Frozr M.2 heat sink.

Amazon's new Fallout TV show has begun filming, cast member Walton Goggins has confirmed.

On a new Instagram post, Walton Goggins, who will portray an irradiated Ghoul in the upcoming Fallout TV series, said that Amazon has begun production of the show. The project was expected to enter filming and set production in mid-2022.

"Day 1... FALLOUT... for Amazon. Deep breath.... Exhale... Let's see where this road goes," Goggins said on Instagram.

NetEase has formed a new Western game development studio that will be led by four ex-Halo developers.

Today Chinese monetization juggernaut NetEase announced Jar of Sparks, a new game dev studio located in Seattle, Washington that will make AAA narrative-driven action-adventure games. The studio is made up of top-tier talent including Jerry Hook, who helped launch the multi-billion dollar Xbox LIVE storefront and ship various Halo games. Hook will helm the studio as CEO of Jar of Sparks.

Three other Halo Infinite developers have also joined Hook at the Jar of Sparks studio:

Today Sony Interjective Entertainment announced a major acquisition that will help fuel its ambitious esports plans.

Sony has acquired Repeat.gg, an esports platform that hosts free and paid tournaments in games like PUBG, Warzone, League of Legends, Fortnite, and DOTA 2. Gamers can compete in tournaments, win coins, and trade the coins in for prizes like gift cards from Amazon, the PS Store, Fortnite VBucks, G2A, and even the Nintendo eShop. Repeat.gg's motto is "get paid to PLAY".

The buyout is a major win for Sony and marks an evolution of its own PlayStation Tournaments initiative, which allows gamers to compete for actual PlayStation Store cash.

Sony has confirmed that PlayStation support will no longer advise or interact with consumers on Twitter starting August 1, making it harder to contact PS Support.

As per the official Ask PlayStation account, Sony's support teams will stop using Twitter's social media platform as a way to contact and connect with users experiencing troubles on PlayStation consoles and storefronts. PlayStation Support will no longer use Twitter's replies or DMs to inquire about or troubleshoot issues. Gamers will instead have to contact PlayStation Support directly...but that isn't so easy.

Speaking of contacting PlayStation Support, today's announcement links to a webpage that encourages users to only contact support as a last resort. "If you still need help, select contact us at the bottom of the page," Sony says, but the page has no contact us section. Furthermore, the official PS Support Home page has no direct contact section either, nor is there a phone number for PS Support.

NVIDIA hasn't announced or confirmed its next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU-powered GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards, but now we know the flagship GeForce RTX 4090 is supported in AIDA64.

The very latest AIDA64 6.70.6033 update includes support for the "GeForce RTX 4090" with the AD102 GPU, as well as the new lower-end GeForce GTX 1320, and AMD's new Navi 23-based Radeon Pro W6600 workstation GPU.

It seems rather early to support a graphics card that won't be coming for months, but NVIDIA will unleash its new AD102-based GeForce RTX 4090 in October in 450W according to the latest information. NVIDIA is reportedly waiting for AMD to release its new RDNA 3-based Navi 31-powered flagship GPU before it unlocks its higher-end AD102-based GeForce RTX 4090 Ti, which should have 600W+ power ready to smash benchmarks and games.

Intel will be launching its new Arc A-Series desktop graphics cards later this year, with many leaks and now official teases and confirmations from the Intel GPU team in the last week... now, we have news on the Intel Arc desktop GPU pricing.

The folks over at Wccftech have now leaked the pricing on the new Intel Arc GPUs will be led by the Arc A770 graphics card that Intel says will be priced at up to $399, which will be for the 16GB GDDR6 variant, leaving an 8GB GDDR6 variant to be even cheaper. Intel has reportedly been showing this chart with their major Taiwanese partners (think the likes of ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, etc) according to the leaks.

If the chart is true, Intel tops out at $400 for the Arc A770 graphics cards and calls the $400-$499 range the "enthusiast" GPU market. Under that, we'll have the Intel Arc A750 with 8GB GDDR6 for somewhere in the $280-$340 market or so, while there'll be the Arc A580 with 8GB GDDR6 for $200-$240. Under that there's the Arc A380 with 6GB GDDR6 for under $100, and the Arc A310 for under $100.

Intel let some of its people out of the Arc GPU labs for some marketing campaign runs with YouTubers, with both Gamers Nexus and LinusTechTipsg getting some hands-on with Arc GPUs... but LinusTechTips got something a bit more special.

The new Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition graphics card was unveiled during the last LinusTechTips WAN show, where the plain-ish, but still good-looking Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition graphics card has a sleek dual-slot design, 8+6-pin PCIe power connectors... oh, and some RGB lighting.

Ex-NVIDIA staffer, now Intel Arc GPU team member Tom Peterson confirms that the Intel Arc A770 that is fast enough for you to play games on, and it also overclocks "really well" he says. Inside, it has the full ACM-G10 GPU with 32 Xe-Cores, and it should have 16GB of GDDR6 memory, too.

Intel has ramped up its Arc GPU marketing over the last week, with the company throwing some weight into getting Arc marketing peeps Ryan Shrout (ex-PC Perspective) and Tom Peterson (ex-NVIDIA) onto the sets of YouTubers. But now... a big flex is coming from Intel marketing boss Ryan Shrout.

In a tweet out of nowhere, with absolutely no context and even doing a quick Google, results on it come up scarce -- and I should know, I write GPU content, live, breathe, and report on tech industry rumors for a living -- the Intel Arc A780. Shrout tweeted: "Despite some rumors to the contrary, there is no Intel Arc A780 and there was never planned to be an A780. Let's just settle that debate".

We will be seeing the Intel Arc A770 and Arc A750, both of which we've heard about, reported on, and now the Arc A750 has even been teased in the flesh. But the Arc A780, which was never really a thing, was "never planned". Cool, thanks Intel. There is no debate to settle, but Intel marketing is definitely taking things down a weirder path than AMD and NVIDIA... even after having ex-press that should have some power to do things differently after jumping across the fence from tech press to tech marketing for Intel.

NVIDIA has just pushed out a new GeForce 516.79 hotfix driver, which fixes some issues that were present in the not-so-old previous GeForce driver.

The new NVIDIA GeForce 516.79 hotfix drivers "improves gameplay stability" in Apex Legends, and some of the games freezing in Overwatch. Red Dead Redemption 2 receives a performance improvement when using DLSS, where in the previous driver gamers were getting less performance.

NVIDIA staffer Manuel explains on the NVIDIA website: "A GeForce driver is an incredibly complex piece of software, We have an army of software engineers constantly adding features and fixing bugs. These changes are checked into the main driver branches, which are eventually run through a massive QA process and released".

Apple's new M2-powered MacBook Air is in some hot water... with its new fanless laptop being redesigned, and yet, unable to run on a sustained workload without huge drops in performance.

The new Apple M2 MacBook Air is completely fanless, but when under stress performance drops by around 25% against the fan-cooled, and higher-end M2 MacBook Pro. In a new video by The Verge, they have tested the Apple M1 MacBook Air, against the new M2 MacBook Air, and the higher-end M2 MacBook Pro in Cinebench R23.

In the first test, it's just the regular Cinebench R23 benchmark where the performance results in a score at the end: the previous-gen M1 Air scores 6803, while the new M2 Air scores 7706. But when they're run on a 30-minute loop, the performance drops to 5369 and 6757 points for the M1 Air, and M2 Air, respectively.

Intel seems to have kinda kicked off its marketing campaign, without changing much: giving their new cards to YouTubers (this isn't free) to save on huge multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns... and now, we have a tease of the smaller (and what should be called the) Intel Arc A310 graphics card.

In a new photo, Alexey "Unwinder" Nikolaychuk aka the creator of RivaTuner/MSI Afterburner overclocking tools for graphics cards, posted a picture of the new Intel Arc A310 underneath a picture of MSI's absolutely mammoth GeForce RTX 3090 Ti SUPRIM X graphics card.

We don't know what pre-production card this actually is, but it should be the Arc A380... with a tiny card and dual-fan cooler and single-slot (?) design. We shouldn't have too much longer to wait before we see the full details on Intel's new tiny, and cute Arc A310 graphics card. In this area of the GPU market, AMD has its new Radeon RX 6400 and NVIDIA with its GeForce GTX 1630 graphics cards (also available in low-profile, and single-slot designs).

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While the Untied Kingdom still does not classify lootboxes as gambling, the government has issued a warning to video game companies in regards to lootbox access by children.

Back in 2019, the UK's Gambling Commission determined that looboxes did not constitute as gambling despite activating and instilling similar behavior patterns (lootboxes technically do not lead to material real-world monetary winnings, thus cannot be classified as gambling). Now in 2022, the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) reiterates that lootboxes aren't gambling...but the government has nonetheless sent a warning to billion-dollar publishers like EA and Activision-Blizzard.

The warning is pretty clear: The UK government wants games companies to restrict minors and children from being able to buy lootboxes similar to how the Xbox platform requires parental approval to buy content from within a game. The government plans to establish a new group within the DCMS and co-ordinate closely with games companies/platform-holders, and will also conduct significant research in a Video Games Research Framework group.

Microsoft has complied with the Federal Trade Commission's request for more information regarding the Activision-Blizzard acquisition proposal, sources have told Seeking Alpha.

The biggest gaming buyout in history could close by next month; By August 17, Microsoft could officially become the new owner of Activision-Blizzard, one of the most powerful and profitable video game publishers on the planet. Federal Trade Commission regulators in the United States are currently evaluating key documents, information, and details about both Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard in order to assess whether or not the megaton deal would be fair to investors, consumers, and the overall video games market.

The acquisition's regulatory process appears to be going smoothly and swiftly. Months ago, Microsoft company president Brad Smith confirmed the FTC had issued a Second Request--a step in the regulatory approval process where the FTC collects information on games, earnings, and everything else from both companies--and that the deal was moving fairly quickly.

On the heels of major adaptations like Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings, Amazon is putting a lot of effort into making the new Fallout TV show look and feel authentic.

New set photos from Amazon's Fallout TV show reveal that everyone involved is apparently taking the adaptation very seriously. A few new shots from the Fallout show have appeared on the internet that depict the gritty, post-apocalyptic world--more specifically the iconic Super Duper Mart and two rust-bucket vehicles.

There's no shots of characters like protagonists, raiders, NCR operatives, 1950s robots or the hulking Brotherhood of Steel power armor, but so far the visuals are a great representation of what Fallout currently is and the original cRPG that it was back in the 1990s.

Warframe developer Digital Extremes has announced Soulframe, a captivating, mysterious, and exotic fantasy MMORPG.

Soulframe is a new free-to-play action "hybrid-MMORPG" with enchanting presentation. Digital Extremes is trading sci-fi with deep fantasy in a way that reminds me of FromSoftware's shift from Armored Core to Dark Souls or Elden Ring. There's certainly some mythical lore beats expressed throughout Soulframe's cinematic trailer, matching strange otherworldly technology with swords and sorcery, complete with a towering fox-wolf as a companion.

Digital Extremes has described Soulframe's world as a "mirror universe" to Warframe, and is directly inspired from the colorful and explosively creative fantasy worlds of the 1970s and 1980s including the stark brutality of sword-wielding enemies from likes of Ralph Bakshi all the way to the glowing gardens of Legend with Tom Cruise.

Programmer Reuben Ward is remaking the beloved old-school PS2 classic Simpsons Hit and Run in Unreal Engine 5.

What would a Simpsons Hit and Run remake look like on today's consoles? Probably something like the ambitious remake project that reubs is currently working on.

The coder is currently putting together an impressive recreation of Simpsons Hit and Run complete with modern Unreal Engine features and effects, including RTX lighting, revamped textures and shaders, and improved real-time physics effects. The result is absolutely glorious...but you won't ever get to play it. Ward has no plans to release the files for viewers or fans.

Ubisoft has announced its new free-to-play The Division mobile game and promised a polished, action-based experience.

A bit ago, Ubisoft confirmed it was working on various free-to-play games across mobile, PC, and console, including Ghost Recon Frontline, and two new games in The Division universe: Heartland, and the newly announced Resurgence. Ubisoft is opening up closed testing registrations (NDA protected) for The Division Resurgence and reveals new details about the game.

Resurgence is billed as delivering AAA gameplay in a free-to-play mobile form factor, which seems like an oxymoron...until you remember that full-priced AAA games typically ship with microtransactions anyway these days (especially games from Ubisoft). Resurgence aims to recreate the shoot-and-loot action from the original games complete with a galaxy of collectible and customizable gear, representing prime opportunities for microtransactions.

CD Projekt Group's stock and market capilization value has dropped by more than half since Cyberpunk 2077's release.

Cyberpunk 2077 was a transformational game for CD Projekt Group. The product shipped over 13 million copies at launch, more than double of The Witcher 3, and has now reached over 18 million sales. Cyberpunk 2077 was so successful that CD Projekt made $447 million in the quarter the game launched, which is more than any other full-year period in company history.

Despite success, Cyberpunk 2077 was riven by controversy with the game's poor performance on PS4 and Xbox One. This led to massive share value drops, triggering lawsuits and big spending on updates, patches, and fixes.