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New gameplay footage strongly indicates that Sonic Frontiers could be SEGA's next breakout hit.

SEGA has something special with its new Sonic game. Dubbed Sonic Frontiers, the game looks to be for Sonic what Breath of the Wild is for Zelda. It's a highly ambitious and surprisingly chaotic open-world game where Sonic speeds, slides, and battles in style.

The recent gameplay teaser was indeed brief, but had enough content to hint at a project that's been in development for many years and one that could be the Sonic dev team's magnum opus. It's likely Sonic Frontiers will lead the charge in SEGA's new sales targets for the current fiscal year.

Despite being a relatively niche market, Sony is making substantial investment into its next-gen PlayStation VR 2 platform.

VR isn't a big market compared to consoles, but Sony is still spending big on its new PS5-powered VR headset. In a recent business meeting, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan says the company has put lots of effort into securing a wide variety of PSVR 2 games and content to help attract PS5 owners. Sony plans to release over 20 big PSVR2 games when the HMD launches.

"Relating to investment into PSVR2, we clearly will tailor the amount of spend to the point in the lifecycle that the PSVR2 finds itself. Right now there is a considerable amount of money that has been spent on partnerships with indie and third-party developers to secure a considerable pipeline of attractive virtual reality content at the launch of PlayStation VR 2," Ryan said.

Ubisoft has officially announced a 60FPS update for Assassin's Creed Origins on next-gen consoles.

The rumors were right: Assassin's Creed Origins is getting a big frame rate jump on consoles. The update will boost Origins to 60FPS on next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles starting June 2, Ubisoft has confirmed.

Fans have been clamoring for an Origins FPS boost update for a while now, and since Ubisoft won't release a mainline Assassin's Creed game in 2022, now is the perfect time to revitalize one of its older and most impressive games in the series. It also helps that Origins is monetized through microtransactions, and that the game has been added to Xbox Game Pass this week.

Sony expects its direct-to-consumer PlayStation Direct business to triple by 2023, and this growth could squeeze retailers like GameStop.

Sony is cutting out the middleman with its relatively new PlayStation Direct direct-to-consumer (DTC) business. The idea is for Sony to distribute and sell games, console hardware, accessories, and merchandise on its wholly-owned storefront and while keeping all sales (and paying all costs). The model has seen moderate success growing from $228 million in FY20 to $458 million in FY21 due to PS5 sales.

PlayStation Direct is expected to really take off in FY22 (ending March 2023). Sony expects its DTC business to triple to $1.5 billion during the year as it expands to more European territories during the fiscal year. This move could further erode Gamestop's $6 billion games retail business (Gamestop is responding with digital commerce such as its new NFT marketplace).

The GPU rumor mill is spinning back up for NVIDIA's next-gen Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, and upcoming GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs... of which, the GeForce RTX 4090 is launching first.

NVIDIA is expected to unleash its new flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card in August, the new GeForce RTX 4080 a month after in September, followed by the GeForce RTX 4070 in October. AIB partners still have significant numbers of GeForce RTX 30 series GPU stock left, so we'll have to see those gone first before a next-gen GPU family can be launched.

We're expected to see NVIDIA to debut the new GeForce RTX 4090, GeForce RTX 4080, and GeForce RTX 4070 all on the same day... but then stagger the launches in the weeks after.

A study on the new carbon capture method titled "Direct Air Capture of CO₂ Using a Liquid Amine-Solid Carbamic Acid Phase-Separation System Using Diamines Bearing an Aminocyclohexyl Group" has been published in the journal ACS Environmental Au.

Researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a new direct air capture (DAC) system for removing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere. The system passes atmospheric air with relatively low concentrations of CO₂ through an aqueous solution of isophorone diamine (IPDA), causing the carbon dioxide to react rapidly and create a solid product.

The solution can also be mildly heated to release the CO₂, allowing it to be collected and concentrated for storage or other applications. Heating the system to release the CO₂ enables it to be reused to capture more CO₂. The IPDA solution can capture 99% of the CO₂ in air and turn it into a solid carbamic acid precipitate.

A paper discussing potential alien civilizations titled "Estimating the prevalence of malicious extraterrestrial civilizations" has been uploaded to the pre-print server arXiv.

The paper is a thought experiment written by Alberto Caballero from the University of Vigo in Spain, who authored a recent paper on the origin of the famous Wow! signal, published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. The paper estimates that in our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are potentially about four "malicious extraterrestrial civilizations."

Caballero used data on how many external invasions have occurred over the last 50 years on Earth, meaning when one country invades another. Extrapolating this data to a galactic scale and pairing it with the estimation of as many as 15,785 civilizations that may inhabit the Milky Way allowed Caballero to determine that about 4.42 alien civilizations could be malevolent towards us. However, only 0.22 civilizations are capable of interstellar travel.

The collective net worth of the three billionaires has dropped significantly since the start of the year.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the year-to-date (YTD) change in Elon Musk's net worth is a $46.4 billion drop, Jeff Bezos' net worth has dropped by $53.2 billion in the same period, and Bill Gates' has dropped by $15.1 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, another Big Tech billionaire, has lost $53.4 billion so far this year, almost half of his net worth.

As of May 31st, Musk's net worth sits at $224 billion, Jeff Bezos' at $139 billion, and Bill Gates' at $123 billion, ranking them at first, second, and fourth on the list of the world's richest people. Slotting in at third place is Bernard Arnault, with a net worth of $133 billion, the only person in the top six of the list to not come from the United States, instead hailing from France. Arnault's net worth has also dropped significantly, by $44.7 billion.

Iraq is one of the most climate-change-affected countries globally, suffering from extreme droughts for months and dropping water levels in the region.

The recently emerged settlement dates back to the Bronze Age and is a 3,400-year-old city once located along the Tigris River. Water levels of the Mosul reservoir have dropped enough to reveal the city, which is believed to have been an important settlement in the Mitanni Empire between approximately 1550 BC and 1350 BC.

Since December, water has been diverted from the Mosul reservoir to preserve crops suffering during the drought. Now, archaeologists are tasked with excavating and documenting as much of the city as possible before the water levels rise and submerge it once more.

The new discovery increases China's estimated total uranium reserve to two million tonnes, an amount close to that of Australia, one of the world's most uranium-rich countries.

The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) found the industrial-grade uranium deposits at a depth of 3,000 meters (9843 feet), about six times deeper than most of the country's uranium mines. The majority of the country's uranium mines are typically small and have poorer ore quality, and the new mine makes a "major breakthrough" according to the CNNC.

Over 70 percent of China's uranium supply comes from other countries like Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia, which China uses to expand its nuclear power supply rapidly. China builds about seven to eight new reactors each year, meaning its nuclear power supply is growing faster than any other country's.

DeLorean's first electric vehicle has been teased, with the upcoming Alpha5 set to push past 300 miles per hour, pack a fast-charge rate of around 150kW, and a style that will turn heads when it flies past. Check it out:

The new gull-winged Alpha5 is a beautiful-looking electric vehicle capable of hitting 60mph in around 2.99 seconds, and 0-88mph (hey, that's important, it's a DeLorean) in just 4.35 seconds. Inside, the DeLorean Alpha5 has a 100kWh battery with up to 300 miles of range (or so) and a top speed of 155mph.

DeLorean's new Alpha5 electric vehicle has a four-seat layout, with some wicked gull-winged doors and two separate displays inside -- one behind the wheel for the driver -- and another on the center console for the passenger.

Apple's next-gen iPhone 14 will be released later this year, and inside we're looking at the new A16 SoC that will be made on TSMC's new 5nm process node according to industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

In a flurry of new tweets, Kuo says that Apple's new A16 SoC will continue using TSMC's N5P process node -- which is the same as the current-gen A15 SoC. The reason? TSMC can't make enough chips on its next-gen N3 node this year in order to meet Apple's insatiable demand, while N4P is an improved variant of N5, going into mass production later this year.

Kuo states that the "significantly better N3 & N4P won't start mass production until 2023" and that "N5P & N4 are the latest technologies Apple can use" for their products in the second half of 2022, finishing off the first tweet with "N4 has no advantages vs. N5P".

AMD's new Mendocino APU specs have been leaked out, which will be the basis of future entry-level Athlon + Ryzen 5-powered laptops later this year.

The upcoming AMD Mendocino APU will reportedly pack a 4-core, 8-thread Zen 2-based CPU with RDNA 2 GPU cores, with the APU made on TSMC's fresh 6nm process node. AMD's new Mendocino APU is already powering AYANEO's new Air Plus handheld console, which launches later this year.

AMD is updating its Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU cores in the Mendocino APU, optimized on the TSMC 6nm node, and adding 4MB of L3 cache. We're expecting up to 10 hours of battery life, with active cooling inside of future laptops expected as passive designs on Mendocino requires more engineering... and would increase the cost of the laptop to the consumer.

It's a huge day for supercomputers, with AMD powering the world's fastest supercomputer -- the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) "Frontier" supercomputer -- and now NVIDIA has announced it is powering the "Venado" supercomputer.

NVIDIA announced last week that Taiwan tech giants were preparing NVIDIA Grace CPU-powered servers, and now we have our first: the new Venado supercomputer that's being constructed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The new VENDAO supercomputer is capable of a huge 10 exaflops of peak AI performance.

It feels like a little bit of "me too" with NVIDIA's announcement of the Venado supercomputer, but more concrete details will be provided at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany later today. The new AMD CPU + GPU-powered Frontier supercomputer was teased yesterday, and now we have the NVIDIA CPU + GPU-powered Venado supercomputer here today.

The massively powerful new Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) supercomputer dubbed "Frontier" has broken the 1.1 exaflops barrier, becoming the first machine in the world to breach the historic exascale barrier.

The Department of Energy (DOE) will operate the new Frontier supercomputer in Tennessee, USA, with the system costing up to $1.8 billion to build and is now the world's fastest supercomputer, overtaking the Fugaku supercomputer in Japan. ORNL's new supercomputer is powered by AMD 3rd Gen EPYC CPUs and AMD's newest Radeon Instinct MI250X GPUs.

Inside, we have 74 purpose-built HPE Cray EX supercomputer cabinets with 9408 AMD EPYC CPUs for a total of (a bonkers) 8,730,112 processing cores, and 37,632 AMD Instinct MI250X GPUs with a power efficiency rating of 52.23 gigaflops/watt. There's 700PB of data storage with peak write speeds of an insane 5TB/sec (5000GB/sec).

Apple is gearing up for a huge event at its WWDC 2022 on June 8, where we are now seeing reports of references to "realityOS" in recent trademark filings.

Apple is still working on its AR headset, which has been plagued by issues in the last few months but ahead of its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) we are ramping up for a tease of its AR headset on June 8. Vox Media product manager Parker Ortolani tweeted that "It cannot be a coincidence that the "realityOS" trademark owned by a company that seemingly doesn't exist and is specifically for "wearable computer hardware" is being filed around the world on June 8, 2022".

Ortolani shared not one but two filings to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which he noticed was registered by a company called Realityo Systems LLC... which is probably just a shell company so that no one sniffs to close to Apple and discovers what's going on... until now. It's not the first time Apple has used a shell company for a product release: previous versions of its macOS share the same address as Yosemite Research LLC, the shell company hiding those macOS operating systems.

Sony plans to release 3 live games from now until March 2023, and we may know what these titles are.

Sony is doubling-down on live games as part of its new PlayStation business model revamp. The company plans to release 12 live games by March 2025, and 3 of these games will launch during this fiscal year. From now until March 2023, Sony wants to release 3 live service titles onto the market.

Clues may indicate what to expect from the slate of unannounced titles. In a recent Q&A session, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan says Destiny is not one of these titles. "Destiny is not included in the 3 games slated for FY22. The two other ones are yet to be announced," he said.

Sony is shipping thousands of PlayStation hardware devkits overseas to the United States.

A bit ago we reported that Sony had shipped mystery PlayStation console prototypes over to the United Kingdom. Now the company is doing the same with its console development kits.

According to international shipping ledgers, Sony has shipped thousands of PlayStation hardware devkits overseas from Japan to Los Angeles and Oakland, California. From January to April, Sony Japan has sent out over 57,000lbs of devkit freight. Assuming the devkits weigh the same as a normal PS5, or 8.5lbs, Sony may have shipped as many as 2,867 PS5 devkits overseas.

Diablo Immortal will not launch in Belgium and The Netherlands due to strict anti-lootbox regulations, Tweakers has reported.

Blizzard's new free-to-play Diablo Immortal game will not launch in regions like Belgium and The Netherlands due to ongoing restrictions in microtransaction-driven games in those regions. Back in 2018, Belgium banned randomized lootboxes and in 2020, Dutch courts sued EA over their in-game lootboxes. The ruling was eventually overturned in 2022, but publishers like Activision-Blizzard don't want to take any chances.

That's why Diablo Immortal will simply skip Belgium and The Netherlands. Blizzard's decision to not launch Diablo Immortal in these regions is "related to the current operating conditions for games in those countries," a representative told Tweakers.

Sony is confident its new PlayStation platform will surpass current market growth trends thanks to its wealth of gaming content, services, and hardware.

No longer restricted by the console market, PlayStation is expected to grow considerably over the next few years. In a big phase-change, Sony is bringing first-party games and experiences to mobile and PC. It's also investing heavily into live service games.

Based on current industry trends, Sony expects these bets to pay off. The level of diversification across all segments--premium PS5 games, new PSVR2 hardware, digital software, microtransactions, and services--has armed Sony with confidence that it could beat the current compound annual growth rate trends of the games industry and surpass current revenue forecast trends.