Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions (DS) division, responsible for the company's semiconductor business, will be paying performance-based bonuses of up to 100% of base salary.

Samsung's semiconductor competitiveness has increased greatly this year, with huge sales in HBM memory and securing important supply contracts with NVIDIA for next-gen HBM4 memory. Samsung recently announced the payment rate for the second half of 2026's "Target Achievement Incentive" (TAI)" was on its internal bulletin board on December 22, reports Korean outlet AJU news.

TAI is one of Samsung Electronics' internal performance-based bonus systems, with each division's performance evaluated once per year -- in the first half, and second half of the year -- and a differential payment of up to 100% monthly base salary is made, with the second-half TAI payment hitting Samsung staffers' accounts on December 24.

Hitman developer's new James Bond game has been delayed by a few months, and is now set to launch in May.

007 First Light has officially been pushed back by two months from its original March 2026 release, and is now coming on May 27, 2026 to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Switch 2.

IO Interactive says that 007 First Light is currently playable from start to finish, and that the extra time will allow the studio to polish gameplay to ensure it's up to par with what audiences expect from such a prestige entertainment brand. The studio also reminds fans that they are an independent developer-publisher tackling the James Bond game on their own, putting greater emphasis on first impressions and launch sales.

NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 5090 D graphics card has been tested by ASUS China's Tony Yu, with ASUS's new high-end ROG Strix 27 Pro gaming monitor, ready with its 5K resolution of 5120 x 2880 @ 180Hz.

ASUS's new ROG Strix 27 Pro gaming monitor is one of the first "mainstream" 5K monitors, with its 27-inch panel and its 5K high-refresh "dual mode" function that knocks the native 5120 x 2880 resolution down to 2560 x 1440, and drives up the refresh rate of 180Hz to an uber-smooth 330Hz.

Tony mentioned that Windows scaling really helps the ASUS ROG Strix 27 Pro gaming monitor, as the 27-inch panel at 5K has an impressive 218 PPI, with the ASUS China boss using 200% scaling that makes everything better on the eyes, especially text. One of the biggest things to point out with the 5K monitor over a 4K monitor is that the 5K panel has around 78% more pixels than 4K, making it harder on the GPU.

Vince Zampella, one of the co-creators of Call of Duty and its development studio Infinity Ward, has died in a car crash while driving his Ferrari this weekend.

Zampella is the boss of Respawn Entertainment, and the former CEO of Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward, and also released the latest Battlefield 6 to success, was involved in a single-car crash on the scenic road north of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Mountains. NBCLA reports that Zampella was driving his Ferrari when it veered off the road just exiting a tunnel, hit a concrete barrier, and the passenger was ejected out of the car, explains the California Highway Patrol (CHP).

The CHP said that Zampella was trapped in his car as it caught fire, dying at the scene, while his passenger died at the hospital, authorities told NBC4 Investigates. There aren't many more details just yet, with a witness providing a video of the crash that involved the 2026 Ferrari 296 GTS to authorities, showing Zampella crashing into the barrier just after exiting the tunnel.

Video game prices aren't expected to increase in 2026, but microtransactions might be a different story.

In-game purchases could get a price hike next year as the games industry seeks greater shareholder returns. The market is currently stressed due to consumer spending habits, rising software and hardware production costs, and economic unknowns like tariffs and trade disruptions. As a result, big players like Microsoft have conducted three price increases throughout 2025 alone--two Xbox Series MSRP bumps and a $10 increase to Game Pass.

Software, however, has stayed at $70 (which in itself is a relatively new baseline price that was set just five years ago). Ampere Analysis analyst Piers Harding-Rolls believes that games will stay at $70 throughout 2026, but Nintendo's new $80 price ceiling could give companies more wiggle room.

Grand Theft Auto 6 will cost $70 and not $100 at launch, former Rockstar animator Mike York predicts, with the rationale that there's simply no reason to damage consumer goodwill with such a dramatic price hike.

$70 games have been here since Sony and Microsoft kicked off Gen 9, and then Nintendo just raised frontline prices of its big tentpole Switch 2 games to $80 (although few games have actually launched at this price). Ever since Epyllion's Matthew Ball postulated on GTA 6 launching for a $100 base price, there's been lots of speculation that Rockstar and Take-Two could just follow through and actually charge that for the game.

The idea would generate tons of upfront revenue, sure, but that's already expected to happen. As we know from our GTA franchise earnings calculations, there's a lot of money to be made from GTA Online post-launch. It's believed that GTA 6 could have some sort of $100 edition, but the base standard version of the game would still retain normalized pricing. That's the thinking that former Rockstar Games animator Mike York has on the topic, with the developer telling Esports Insider that he believes GTA 6 will launch at $70 because Rockstar has no real need to be "greedy."

Microsoft has denied reports about a steep profit goal for its Xbox games division, telling CNBC that the recent Bloomberg reports aren't factual.

Microsoft has apparently delivered rare comments on the profitability of its Xbox business. The $3.61 trillion market cap company has denied rumors about profit target mandates within Xbox. Back in October, sources told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier and Dina Bass that Microsoft was pressuring Xbox to deliver a 30% accountability margin--Microsoft's own internal term for a profit margin. Now Microsoft tells CNBC that the profit margin reports are inaccurate.

Achieving that kind of margin would be a significantly high goal, especially considering Microsoft's now-inflated revenues. Buying Activision Blizzard King added several billions of dollars to Xbox's yearly earnings; Microsoft's gaming revenues went from $15.48 billion in FY23 to $21.52 billion a year later following the integration of Activision.

I don't think the RAM scams will slow down, with a Redditor purchasing a Corsair Vengeance DDR5 memory kit from Amazon but received DDR4 sticks that had scam DDR5 stickers on top. Check it out:

Redditor u/Leading-Growth-8361 has received some "fake" RAM and posted the pictures on Reddit, he said that he purchased a Corsair Vengeance DDR5 kit (two sticks) from Amazon, but noticed that the heatsink casing on the modules was loose. He continued building his PC, but discovered the RAM wouldn't fit on his motherboard... that's because they weren't DDR5 sticks, but DDR4 sticks.

DDR4 modules have the cutout a little out from the middle of the goldfinger, with the user saying that both of the sticks he received look to be the same. That's when he decided to detach the heatsink and discovered an "unknown kind of RAM".

Digital Storm will unveil its next-gen flagship desktop gaming PC at CES 2026, with the upgraded Aventum X, and it looks gorgeous from just the few teaser photos the company has online. Check them out:

The company has the Aventum X system on the market now, with high-end custom liquid cooling and easy serviceability, with the chassis using fixed inlet and outlet ports on the motherboard tray, which make it easy to disconnect liquid cooling parts without tearing the whole loop apart.

Digital Storm offers high-end Intel and AMD processor offerings, with up to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (starts at $5064) , the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (starts at $5032), and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9960X (starts at $7153). There are plenty of RAM, SSD, and GPU options depending on how much power you want inside of your Aventum X gaming PC.

New reports indicate that Nintendo will not be resupplying stock of the Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle, which matches up with disclaimers on official sales promos.

If you want a Switch 2 as well as the new Mario Kart, now might be the time to buy. According to new reports, the Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle has been discontinued and will no longer be produced. The bundle was a launch year promo meant to drive sales adoption of the new higher-priced Switch 2.

The Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle is still on sale across major retailers and won't be pulled off of shelves. The best price right now is over at Best Buy where the bundle is currently $449.

Gran Turismo 7 is one of PlayStation's most successful live games in terms of player interactions, with millions of players engaged every month.

A new interview at the Gran Turismo World Series in Japan reveals some interesting facts around Gran Turismo 7, and the overall state of the five year-old racing game that Sony considers as one of its key games-as-a-service titles.

In a recent interview with GT Planet, Polyphony Digital CEO and series producer Kazunori Yamauchi confirms that GT7 still has around 2 million players a month. These are strong numbers that have a firm and established position among the PS5's user base, which was 119 million monthly active users throughout July - September 2025.

Valve has depleted its inventory of LCD Steam Decks, and the company has no plans to produce more.

The Steam Deck OLED has now become the base model for Valve's handheld-PC hybrid. It's been discovered that that the LCD model is now greyed out and listed out of stock on the Steam Deck order page. In a disclaimer below the product buy links, Valve says that once the Steam Deck LCD is gone, it's gone for good.

"We are no longer producing the Steam Deck LCD 256GB model. Once sold out, it will no longer be available," the site reads.

NVIDIA could possibly discontinue the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB variant over GDDR7 memory prices, keeping the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB on the market, and pushing gamers up to the RTX 5070 instead of using the precious 16GB of GDDR7 memory on the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB model.

In a new post on the Board Channels, we're hearing that NVIDIA could put a production pause on the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB which could eventually lead to the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB being discontinued completely. This is because of a massive increase in GDDR7 memory chip prices, leading NVIDIA to change its strategy on the mid-range Blackwell GPUs.

The RTX 5060 Ti is available in both 16GB and 8GB variants, with NVIDIA to cull the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB variant over higher costs, keeping supply flowing of the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB variant instead. NVIDIA would then push gamers up to the RTX 5070 which comes in both 16GB and 12GB variants, keeping the GDDR7 memory chips from the possibly discontinued RTX 5060 Ti 16GB for its higher-end RTX 5070 graphics cards.

Gamers now have an idea of what to expect from Blizzard Entertainment as management outlines plans to launch one or two big pieces of content per year, whether it be a fully-fledged game or an expansion update.

Two years after Microsoft took the reins, Blizzard is moving to a more predictable cadence of games and content. Blizzard is known for taking multiple years in between big releases and primarily subsisted off of expansions, content updates, and microtransactions. In 2022, the devs released Diablo Immortal, spiking Activision's mobile earnings to all-time highs, and then enjoyed megaton sales with Diablo IV a year later, which has made over $1 billion in revenue.

So what's next for Blizzard? In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Blizzard president Johanna Faries outlines a basic business model that sees the company launching 1-2 digital products a year. There's just one catch: That doesn't mean just full games or sequels, and expansions like Lord of Hatred and World of Warcraft's new Midnight expansion also count.

EA's latest Battlefield shooter is a big hit with an estimated 20 million copies being sold since the game's October debut.

Battlefield 6 is currently the #1 best-selling game in the US by revenue, temporarily beating Call of Duty, which is a rare win for EA's franchise. The Battlefield brand, once prestigious, has fallen off in recent years in both sales and players, leaving little competition for Activision's billion-dollar war series. That battle has been reignited, and analyst firm Alinea Analytics predicts that Battlefield 6 has already sold more than 20 million copies.

"Battlefield 6 took the #1 [spot], marking a massive return to form for the franchise. Our data shows Battlefield 6 has now amassed more than 26 million players (also including free-to-play REDSEC). The base game alone has sold over 20 million copies. As we covered earlier this year, this resurgence was driven by listening to the community's wishes and returning to the franchise's roots," Alinea's Rhys Elliott notes.

Researchers have mapped the real-world movement of rats into DOOM, enabling these pesky rodents to move throughout the DOOM world and even fire in-game weapons.

The team explained that an entire VR setup was constructed from scratch to enable rats to play DOOM, and it involves a ball driver mechanism that the rats sit on top of, and when they move across the surface of the ball, the directional movement is input into DOOM. The first version of the setup featured minimal sensors and no panoramic screen, but the rats have received an upgrade in the form of upgraded sensors and a foldable AMOLED screen with 180 ° horizontal and 80 ° vertical FOV with Full HD resolution.

Additionally, the rats are now firing weapons within DOOM. As the researchers explain, the rats have the ability to pull a custom-built hand-operated lever that, when activated with one of their paws, fires a weapon in-game. Positive in-game actions trigger a liquid reward in the form of sugar water delivered through a precise dispensing mechanism. The results of this entire setup were that the rats successfully learned to navigate the virtual environment and trigger the shooting mechanism.

GTA 6 could turn into a huge MMORPG says an industry veteran, as it has all of the hallmarks of an MMORPG cooking in the ovens at Rockstar Games.

In a new interview between our friends at Wccftech and game developer Rich Vogel, who has worked on some gigantic games including Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, DOOM (2016), New World, Halo Infinite, and Gotham Knights, said that many of the planned features for GTA 6 -- if confirmed -- would make it more like an MMORPG.

Vogel and two other MMO veterans were asked if there's still an audience for big Western-made MMO games, to which he replied: "Yes, I believe a large audience is waiting for the right MMORPG to emerge. Consider the millions of players who have played and continue to play WOW, SWTOR, ESO, UO, EverQuest, Fallout 76, and others. The problem is that no publisher is willing to invest the money and take the risk at this time".

DRAM suppliers are truly the new Santa Claus as they pick and choose who they're providing chips to, with HBM being a "black hole" to DRAM production capacity says the chairman of Etron.

Etron is a famous Taiwanese IC company that specializes in DRAM and SoC design, with its chairman, Lu Chao-Chun, who has said that DRAM giants Samsung and SK hynix are the new "Santa Claus". He added that memory customers are now "grateful" for even getting supply allocated, which is one of the reasons he calls Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron the new "Santa Claus".

Etron's chairman says that one of the main reasons the DRAM supply chain has been completely disrupted is from a few years ago, where DRAM manufacturers weren't worried about increasing production capacity, as demand was at a new all-time low because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Intel will reportedly have four SKUs of next-gen desktop Nova Lake CPUs with bLLC (Big Last Level Cache) with differing core counts, ready to fight AMD's super-popular X3D processors.

The flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 series "Nova Lake" CPU for the desktop will feature up to 52 cores and 288MB of bLLC cache, while the Core Ultra 7 chip will feature up to 28 cores and 144MB of bLLC cache. It wasn't long ago that we were reporting on leaks that only Intel's new unlocked K-series Nova Lake desktop CPUs in the "Core Ultra 400S" family would feature bLLC cache.

In new rumors from @Haze2K1, we're hearing that Intel will have four SKUs with bLLC but one of them will feature a different core configuration. The four SKUs in question will feature two dual compute tile models which will be part of the Core Ultra 9 family, and two single compute tiles that will be ready for the Core Ultra 7 family.

R-Type Dimensions III developer ININ Games prematurely reveals that lower-capacity Switch 2 cartridges are on the way, and then deletes the original post, clarifying that they have nothing official to announce.

Nintendo may be ready to release smaller Switch 2 cartridges in an effort to alleviate developer frustrations. Reports indicate that Nintendo only produces 64GB cartridges for the Switch 2, which are more costly to produce than the lower-tier models used on the Switch 1. This means developers who choose to ship full games onto actual physical Game Cards will typically have to pay a higher price, on top of having to deal with the slower memory bandwidth offered by Nintendo's ROMs.

Today, R-Type Dimensions developer ININ Games issued a lengthy post telling gamers that Nintendo had "announced two new smaller cartridge sizes for Nintendo Switch 2." The devs then deleted this post, later issuing a correction statement clarifying that Nintendo has not actually announced anything. Interestingly enough, ININ had originally said that the physical Switch 2 cartridge of R-Type Dimensions III was increasing in price by 10 euros to reflect the higher production costs associated with the lower-capacity Switch 2 carts.