Latest News - Page 112

Crimson Desert has proven to be one of the biggest and most notable releases of the year. This sprawling open-world action-adventure also pushes PC visual fidelity and performance to the limit with vast, detail-packed environments. That said, there's always room for improvement, especially when it comes to the game's ray-tracing.

Beyond Dreams, a YouTube channel that regularly mods the look of games via the ReShade post-processing injector, has uploaded a new video showcasing what Crimson Desert looks like running in 8K with a 'Complete RT' overhaul that dramatically improves Global Illumination (RTGI) and Ambient Occlusion, with cinematic changes made to grass rendering, color grading, and depth of field effects. It also adds a shaky-camera effect to give the presentation a more realistic, photoreal look.

Although the depth of field effects while you're playing an open-world action-adventure don't make a lot of sense, the improvements to Global Illumination are immediately apparent. With ReSTIR GI, Crimson Desert's environments and lighting look more natural, transforming the game from its "video game" look to something that definitely showcases the benefits of RTGI.

The new Dell XPS 14 for 2026 is now available, and with reviews popping up, one in particular has caught our attention for showcasing seriously impressive battery life. As seen in the review from Hardware Canucks, testing a model with an Intel Core Ultra 7 355 'Panther Lake' processor, measuring battery life with 'simple web browsing' with a peak display brightness of 150 nits, the Dell XPS 14 managed to achieve a seriously impressive runtime of 43 hours and 3 minutes.

This is almost triple the runtime of the MacBook Air 15's 14 hours and 30 minutes running the same test, showcasing that battery life on a Windows-based laptop has come a long way in recent years. However, there is one caveat to the 43 hours: VRR, or Variable Refresh Rate. Although VRR is a common feature in many modern displays, especially those built for gaming, the Dell XPS 14's display takes this one step further by offering a 1 Hz battery-saver mode.

Yes, this means the display refreshes its image only once per second, and it's best suited to mostly static workloads, like working in a spreadsheet. This is why the Dell XPS 14 was able to run for over 43 hours; however, the overall efficiency of the new Intel Core Ultra processors also played a big role.

AMD has announced that its annual AMD Advancing AI 2026 event is scheduled for July 22 to 23 in San Francisco, California. The annual AI everything event is designed to bring together developers, researchers, partners, and other customers to "experience the latest in AI infrastructure, architecture, and development."

As the company's flagship AI event, similar in scope to NVIDIA GTC, we can expect a few announcements during the opening keynote with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su. During last year's event, AMD lifted the lid on its Instinct MI350 accelerators, teased its Helios rack, and even presented a look at EPYC CPUs powered by next-gen Zen 6 architecture.

With the AMD Instinct MI450 and Zen6-powered EPYC Venice CPUs on track for release this year, this will probably be the venue and time we get a deep dive and more details on these new technologies. Plus, introduce the next-gen Instinct MI500 accelerators, reportedly on track for 2027, and additional software updates.

Just a bit ago we published a report that Xbox has more games on the PlayStation Store's pre-order charts than Sony does. Now we've found an inverse relation, with Sony having more games than Microsoft does on the Xbox's top-sellers charts in the US.

The relationship between Sony and Microsoft is rather interesting. Seen as fierce rivals, especially during the FTC v Microsoft case in 2023, the two are also close bedfellows when it comes to big billion-dollar games like Minecraft, and after the merger, Call of Duty. While Xbox and PlayStation are competitor-rivals, they also maintain a symbiotic relationship, and this bond has only grown now that Microsoft has broken content exclusivity for good and all.

The dynamics of each company are likewise interesting. Sony is following Microsoft's lead to an extent, bringing multiple first-party funded and/or published games to Xbox, but only in the context of live service games like Marathon and Helldivers 2 (both of which appear on the Xbox list) as well as sports games like MLB The Show (this also pops up).

Last month, a malware toolkit called DarkSword had Apple users holding their iPhones a little tighter. The exploit could be used to break into older iPhones and iPads running iOS 18.4 through 18.7 simply by visiting a website hosting malicious code. Even legitimate websites that had been breached could be affected. The exploit could steal messages, browser histories, location data, and cryptocurrency, then upload everything to an attacker-controlled server. Bad news all around.

Apple responded by rolling out updates to address the two known exploits: Coruna, which affects devices running iOS 13 through iOS 17.2.1, and DarkSword, which targets iPhones running iOS 18.4 through 18.7.

There was a catch, though. Apple only patched iOS 18 for devices unable to run iOS 26. This left anyone who could upgrade but chose not to completely exposed. That is how Apple typically operates. If you are running an older version of iOS on a device that can be updated, Apple will withhold security patches until you make the jump to the latest version.

AMD's latest entry in its Ryzen 9000 X3D lineup is the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, the world's first CPU with a dual 3D V-Cache design. Dell was actually one of the first companies to accidentally confirm the CPU's existence before launch, listing the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 in one of its configurations before quickly calling it an error and claiming it was meant to be the Ryzen 7 9950X3D.

Today, Dell's Alienware X handle has officially announced the newest addition to its Area 51 desktop lineup, powered by the 16-core, 32-thread Zen 5 flagship Ryzen 9 9950X3D2. This makes it the most powerful pre-built desktop the company has ever offered, with the processor bringing a dual X3D chiplet design, 192MB of L3 cache, and a total of 208MB of cache for superior gaming and productivity performance.

Interestingly, before the announcement, Dell had contacted VideoCardz to say that reports claiming the Area 51 would feature the 9950X3D2 were inaccurate. And now all of a sudden it has done exactly the opposite. Perhaps the company wanted a surprise announcement and was trying to keep things under wraps, but it could have simply not responded at all.

A modder and game maker wants to answer a question that has plagued PC gamers since the early 2000s: What would Diablo 2 be like with a first-person view like Elder Scrolls?

Diablo 2 as an FPS is surprisingly smooth--that is, if it's built by a skilled digital artisan with Unreal Engine 5's toolkit. YouTube creator and UE5 whiz I Make Games has released new gameplay footage for a side project meant to drum up interest for some kind of first-person, action-adventure Diablo game.

The result is an interesting look at a potential spin-off for the franchise, one that's more focused on in-your-face action similar to Skyrim. The Forgotten Tower has never seemed so dark and ominous, with the fallen clan goat men crowding the screen. The animations also show what sorceress abilities like ice blast and blizzard would be like in a dungeon-crawling 3D environment.

NVIDIA is reportedly running into manufacturing challenges with its next-generation Rubin Ultra GPU and is now considering a significant architectural revision. The standard Rubin, built for large-scale AI training, is on track to begin mass shipments this summer. Even before that rollout, reports about the more advanced Rubin Ultra are starting to surface, and its current roadmap may be hitting some real technological walls.

To understand the problem, it helps to know what Rubin Ultra was originally planned to be. NVIDIA introduced a dual-die architecture with the standard Rubin, meaning two silicon chips packaged together into one unit. Rubin Ultra was meant to take that further with a four-die setup, essentially doubling the base design into a much larger package. However, those ambitions may have pushed TSMC's advanced packaging technology past its practical limits.

Reports from Taiwan's Commercial Times suggest that NVIDIA may scale back the Rubin Ultra to a dual-die design, similar to the standard Rubin. The original design reportedly included 16 HBM4 memory stacks, around 1 TB of memory capacity, and CoWoS-L packaging.

New information has surfaced on Eidos-Montreal's cancelled games lineup, as per reports from Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson.

Like most of the games industry, Eidos-Montreal has had to adjust to new stark financial realities, culminating in three rounds of layoffs at the studio. New reports say that the recent wave of layoffs also came with the official cancellation of a big-budget AAA project that had been in development for multiple years.

Sources tell Insider Gaming that Eidos-Montreal had spent hundreds of millions of dollars producing an open-world third-person game set in a fantasy world. The game was apparently called Wildlands, but was known internally as P11, so-named because it was the 11th project that the studio had worked on. It was said to be almost complete before its cancellation.

Information about Intel's Wildcat Lake has been slowly emerging over the past few weeks. CPUs belonging to this yet unofficial lineup were first spotted on Geekbench and CrossMark, with another Core 3 304 entry surfacing later. Now, more information about Intel's Core 300 "Wildcat Lake" lineup has been uncovered by reputable leaker @Jaykihn on X (formerly Twitter).

According to the leak, the Intel Core 300 lineup will feature 6 SKUs, ranging from the base Core 3 304 to the flagship Core 7 360 CPU, with three Intel Core 5 SKUs in between. These CPUs are designed for efficiency, since they are mobile chips, which is why the leaked TDP ratings range from 15W to 35W across all SKUs.

Each CPU features a hybrid configuration, with two "Cougar Cove" P-cores paired with four low-power efficiency (LPE) cores. This configuration completely discards the "Darkmont" E-cores in favor of the LPE cores.

ShiftUp, the devs behind PlayStation hit Stellar Blade, are working directly with horror maven Shinji Mikami on a new game project.

The rumors were true: ShiftUp and Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami have joined forces. ShiftUp, headquartered in Korea, has acquired Shinji Mikami's Japanese studio Unbound and will help fund and publish new projects, including Mikami's first game.

Mikami says that the new project is a sizable game, but won't offer specifics: "For the first time in a while, I'll be fully involved on-site to work on a fairly large game, and I'm really looking forward to it."

UK-based Analyst firm Ampere Analysis examines how the Switch 2's launch has affected third-party game sales, leading to a substantial +76% increase in software earnings on the Switch ecosystem.

Thanks to unrelenting software exclusivity, consumers typically buy Nintendo first-party games to play on Nintendo consoles. These titles are designed to be must-haves that can't be played anywhere else. Yet the Switch 2's release has catalyzed a mighty push of third-party software--which makes sense, because 3P vastly outnumbers Nintendo's catalog.

According to a new report from Ampere Analysis, the Switch 2's release helped boost third-party software sales by over 75% year-over-year, tacking on an additional $1 billion in revenue over a 9-month period. (Note: these sales are across both the Switch 1 and Switch 2 platform). The firm does a breakdown estimation on how much the top companies earned during the launch blitz, with Warner Bros. leading the charge primarily due to Hogwarts Legacy's success.

ASUS UK has revealed pricing for its updated family of ROG Zephyrus G14/G16 laptops with Intel's latest Panther Lake CPUs, as reported by Notebookcheck. If you were looking to get your hands on one of these laptops, be ready to pay a hefty price. ASUS UK has ballooned the price tag of the base G16 model by almost 30% as compared to last year. This is largely because the new base model now sports an RTX 5070, pushing the entry point into a higher price bracket.

It is important to note that these prices reflect the market in the United Kingdom, which is subject to VAT (Value Added Tax). That said, our comparison is within the same market, so we're likely to see a similar upward trend in the global market as well. The USD pricing provided in this article is estimated by removing the UK's standard VAT from the list price.

The floor for ASUS' 2026 lineup has shifted significantly. The most affordable G14 (GU405AP-SY004W) now starts at £2,899 (~$3,195), packed with an RTX 5070 and the Core Ultra 9 386H. If you want the larger G16 (GU606AP-TB003W) with the same specs, that entry point climbs to £3,199 (~$3,525). For context, last year's G16 with the RTX 5060 is now available for as low as £2,099 ($2,320). Whether you compare it to the base MSRP (a 30% hike) or to current retail prices (a massive 60% jump), there is a clear upward trend in pricing for these newer models.

Sony has long been rumored to be quietly working on a new handheld gaming device, and now renowned leaker KeplerL2 has shared details on how powerful Sony's upcoming device will be.

KeplerL2 became a voice of authority in the PC gaming community for accurate leaks on GPU architecture, providing SKUs, hardware specifications, and more. Now, Kepler has written in a new post on the NeoGAF forums that the GPU within Sony's PS6-generation handheld is "a bit ahead of XSS in raster (and ofc massively ahead in RT/PT)." Adding, the new handheld will also come with Sony's AI-powered upscaler, which would presumably be a version of PSSR, likely PSSR 3.

Sony is currently calling the PS6 handheld "Project Canis", and leaked specifications indicate that it will be rocking 4x Zen 6c cores, 2x Zen 6 LP cores, 16x RDNA 5 CUs, 192-bit LPDDR5X (24GB), and a 135mm² TSMC 3nm chip. According to Kepler, this device will outperform the Nintendo Switch 2, and depending on the AI upscaling performance, will beat out competing Microsoft handhelds such as the Xbox ROG Ally X. Kepler writes that Sony's new version of PSSR for the handheld will even be better than DLSS 4.5, which NVIDIA only announced at GTC 2026.

Salesforce is bringing a massive overhaul of its popular enterprise communication platform, Slack. The headline is a serious makeover for Slackbot, the platform's AI-powered personal agent, transforming it from a simple chatbot into a full-fledged enterprise agent capable of drafting emails, scheduling meetings, and going through your inbox for specific information. This release puts Slack closer to what the company describes as an agentic operating system.

The most useful addition is "reusable AI skills", which let users define specific tasks for Slackbot from start to finish. Once created, these tasks can be deployed on demand across a variety of scenarios. There is also a strong focus on sharing and co-developing tools within an organization, meaning if you find a prompt useful, you can share it with your team. Slack comes with a built-in library of AI skills, but users can also create their own.

Slackbot also gets a Deep Research mode, and the chatbot will now conduct multi-step investigations rather than instantly responding. The new version also brings MCP (Model Context Protocol) client integration, allowing Slackbot to connect to and coordinate with external services and tools. This includes creating Google Slides, drafting Google Docs, and interacting with more than 2,600 apps in the Slack Marketplace.

With the controversial DLSS 5 set to launch later this year, which leverages AI to transform a game's lighting and visuals to achieve a more photorealistic look, it sounds like this might only be the beginning of a DLSS future focused on advanced neural rendering. According to a new rumor from the known NVIDIA and GeForce RTX insider 'anthony256,' the company plans to debut DLSS 6 with the Rubin-powered GeForce RTX 60 Series.

As for what it will enable game developers to do, well, it's definitely ambitious and controversial. Leveraging the advanced 6th Generation Tensor Cores in the GeForce RTX 60 Series that are currently being tuned and finalized specifically to accelerate neural rendering, DLSS 6 will take a bold leap beyond even Multi Frame Generation and DLSS 5, with a powerful new AI model that can generate "infinite gameplay."

Now, the claim of leveraging AI to generate "infinite gameplay" is a little vague, so let's take a closer look at a couple of DLSS 6 examples that NVIDIA is reportedly showcasing to game developers to get them on board. One includes a form of procedural generation in which DLSS 6 takes an existing open-world Elder Scrolls-style RPG and leverages its visual assets and game data to generate new locations, enemies, and even boss battles in real time. The demo apparently expands the developer-created world as you play, making it larger and packed with more to do.

Elon Musk has teased that Tesla is quietly working on a secret new vehicle, and that it will be much "cooler" than a classic minivan.

The teaser from Musk comes from an official reply from the Tesla CEO on X, in which he responded to a user who asked him to build a minivan. Musk wrote, "Something way cooler than a minivan is coming". Musk didn't provide any more details on this mystery vehicle, but that didn't stop Tesla fans from stirring the pot of speculation. Some users landed on a "CyberSUV," which would essentially be a modified version of the Cybertruck, better suited for suburban environments.

There were also guesses that Tesla is working on a Robovan, which Musk has mentioned in the past, but has never seen the light of day. While many are excited about the idea of Tesla creating something "way cooler" than a minivan, those who have been following Musk's "teaser" announcements in the past will know to be cautiously optimistic about timelines and even touted products making it to public release.

DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi Frame Generation is now available. After going hands-on with NVIDIA's updated Frame Generation technology in recent days, it's safe to say that it not only improves the Multi Frame Generation technology that debuted with DLSS 4, but it's a version of the technology that makes a lot more sense for a lot more games. And this all comes down to the Dynamic part of the technology, which is a game-changer in the making.

Now, it's worth reiterating what DLSS Frame Generation and Multi Frame Generation do, and what they're useful for, alongside their strengths and weaknesses. As most PC gamers who have used the technology know, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation and competing technologies leverage AI to generate frames between traditionally rendered or upscaled frames, enhancing motion clarity and smoothness.

Although latency increases when frames are not natively rendered, Frame Generation also leverages NVIDIA Reflex to ensure that a game with Frame Generation enabled still feels as smooth as one running natively at around 60 FPS. Multi Frame Generation takes this one step further by increasing the number of generated frames, leveraging GeForce RTX 50 Series hardware to keep frame pacing and latency in check, delivering the immersion that comes from playing a game running at 200+ FPS.

Microsoft and Playground Games are preparing to launch Forza Horizon 6, Playground Games' next foray into the world of Horizon, and this time it's headed to Japan.

Forza Horizon 6 is launching on May 19, but ahead of the debut, details about a preview have surfaced online, easing some cautious fan concerns. One of the biggest concerns with Playground Games' description of the Forza Horizon 6 world was whether the world would feel hollow, given how big it is. That doesn't seem to be the case, as a YouTuber with an Xbox Series X preview build of the title has described a world with abundant traffic and extremely detailed environments.

Unsurprisingly, the video showcasing the preview has been taken down from the channel, along with subsequent Reddit posts outlining the YouTuber's experience. The early code provided to the YouTuber granted access to one hour of progression, after which the YouTuber entered free roam around Tokyo. Despite takedowns of the content, some Reddit posts have gathered the details into a list.

Crimson Desert, the latest large-scale open-world action-adventure RPG from the developers at Pearl Abyss, has garnered quite a lot of attention since it released on March 20, 2026, and now we are starting to get some sales figures.

A report by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, citing a shareholders' meeting with the CEO of Pearl Abyss, states that Crimson Desert sold 2 million copies worldwide within the first 24 hours of its launch and, by the end of the first four days, had moved 3 million copies. That number has now increased to 4 million copies sold, as positive word of mouth and healthy reviews keep attracting new players to the latest open-world RPG.

The shareholder meeting also revealed that Pearl Abyss is looking into a Nintendo Switch 2 port for Crimson Desert, but such a port will entail compromises, as the Switch 2 has vastly different hardware specifications than the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series consoles. At the moment, Crimson Desert has nearly 37,500 reviews on Steam, with the majority giving it a positive score, earning it the "Very Positive" moniker.