Latest News - Page 120

Apple has released its latest updates to iOS 26 and iPadOS 26. The new iOS 26.4 version brings several quality-of-life improvements, an exciting new Apple Music feature, and numerous bug fixes.

Perhaps the most interesting addition in this update is Playlist Playground, an AI-powered song list generator for Apple Music. The feature creates playlists for you based on text prompts. Users can request playlists based on feelings, moods, occasions, and other themes, resulting in an AI-generated song list that matches their request. The Apple Music app will now also notify you of upcoming concert dates in your area, thanks to the Bandsintown integration.

Apple has also added support for Unicode's latest emoji characters. You can now dabble in the realm of conspiracy by using the Bigfoot emoji, labeled "Hairy Creature" in this update. Or, if you are feeling particularly old-school, the update also brings the "Fight Cloud" emoji, which has been permanently etched into our brains thanks to old cartoons. More new emojis include a landslide, ballet dancers, a treasure chest, a trombone, an apple core, and an orca.

Pearl Abyss's new IP continues to break sales milestones, with the game selling millions more copies in just a few days time.

Crimson Desert's success continues as the game gains momentum. South Korean developer Pearl Abyss confirms that the open-world action RPG has now sold 3 million copies in 5 days, up from the previous breakout sales of 2 million sold in its first day. Note that these figures are sell-through, and not just shipments, representing complete sales to consumers.

"We are grateful to share Crimson Desert has sold through 3 million copies worldwide. To everyone who has stepped into Pywel and shared this journey with us, thank you. Your feedback continues to help shape the experience, and we will keep working to make the journey ahead even more enjoyable for our players," Pearl Abyss wrote on Twitter.

Information on Intel's mobile-focused Core 300 series "Wildcat Lake" has been scarce until now. Intel has not yet officially acknowledged or announced the lineup, but the mention of "Wildcat Lake" has slipped into several Intel documents and shipping manifests over the past few months.

That said, we have now unofficially received confirmation of the existence of two Wildcat Lake SKUs. The Intel Core 3 310 and Core 5 320 were spotted in CrossMark and Geekbench benchmarks, respectively. This not only confirms their existence but also gives us a good idea of the performance we can expect from these mobile chips.

Both of these CPUs are 6-core SKUs with two performance cores and four low-powered cores. They also have 2 Intel Xe3 GPU cores for integrated graphics. The clock speeds and TDP numbers are not yet known, but the benchmark page shows a boost clock of 4.6 GHz for the Core 5 320, for what it's worth.

After initially planning to sell 20 million units, Nintendo is cutting Switch 2 production by more than 30% this quarter. Bloomberg reports that Nintendo is revising its original plan to make 6 million units and is now looking to produce 4 million instead, with the reduced output set to begin in April.

Nintendo originally anticipated to ship 20 million units within the console's first year on the market, which ends later this month. The Switch 2 had a record-breaking launch, selling well over 17.3 million units (as of December 31, 2025), reported in February, far surpassing the original console's initial sales. Now, nine months on from launch, the hype may be beginning to dwindle as the company is seeing weaker-than-expected holiday sales, especially in the United States.

Nintendo could be making this move for several reasons. One theory points to Nintendo's upcoming Switch 2 revision, which would feature a replaceable battery to comply with new European legislation. The company is already taking a profit hit on its special Japan-only Switch 2 console, where the more units it sells, the more money it loses on a per-console basis.

Buying the world's fastest gaming GPU, the GeForce RTX 5090, is an expensive endeavour, and the last thing you'd want is to be scammed. Unfortunately, we live in a world where getting scammed is a very real risk, and for one unlucky gamer in India, their new GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5090 WINDFORCE OC 32G turned out to be an empty box filled with bubble-wrapped laundry detergent.

As spotted on Reddit (via VideoCardz), the GPU was purchased for roughly $3,000 USD (yeah, GeForce RTX 5090 prices have skyrocketed since its debut last year) through a third-party vendor. According to the post, the order was 'Fulfilled by Amazon' and actually shipped from one of their warehouses. Once the GPU arrived, the buyer planned to record an unboxing video when they discovered that the physically damaged GIGABYTE packaging contained a 1kg packet of Ghadi detergent powder.

Naturally, this is the last thing you'd want when opening a box that should contain a GeForce RTX 5090. And to make matters worse, Amazon has reportedly refused to issue a refund (after an eight-day review) on the grounds that the correct product was shipped. According to the buyer, the packaging lists a weight of 1.56kg even though the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU in question weighs almost double that.

ASUS has announced the new ExpertCenter PN55 Mini PC powered by AMD Ryzen AI 400 Series Processors. And although the simple design is built to offer a compact Copilot+ PC with up to 55 TOPS of XDNA2 NPU performance and 96GB of DDR5-5600 memory, these little black boxes can also become Steam Machine-like devices that could comfortably sit underneath or next to a TV.

With the flagship AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 option, including AMD Radeon 890M graphics, you're looking at one of the most capable PC gaming APUs currently available, with enough performance to handle current AAA-style games running at a lower resolution with optimized settings. And with 16 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units and a Boost Clock speed of 3100 MHz, it's enough to deliver a smooth 60 FPS experience in a wide range of games with Medium or High graphics settings.

Of course, that's not what the ASUS ExpertCenter PN55 is built for; it's a compact and powerful productivity device for the AI era of computing. With the AMD Ryzen AI 400 Series Processors and integrated Radeon 800M graphics, it supports up to four 4K displays, NVMe SSD storage, WiFi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4, and includes six USB ports (including USB4) in its compact 130 x 130 x 34mm build.

Digital Foundry has posted an interview with PlayStation console architect Mark Cerny about the recent release of the updated version of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) for the PlayStation 5 Pro. The update, also referred to as PSSR 2, delivers a notable improvement in image quality, with results comparable to AMD's FSR 4.1.

In the interview, Mark Cerny confirms in more detail that PSSR and FSR Redstone share the same technology base. One of the more notable takeaways is how PSSR works compared to FSR 4.1 and how it leverages the PS5 Pro's less capable AI hardware to deliver a similar result.

"FSR Redstone and the new PSSR have somewhat different implementations due to the underlying hardware, e.g., FSR Upscaling uses 8-bit floating point, and PSSR uses 8-bit integer," Mark Cerny explains. "The MAC counts (i.e., the amount of math involved) also vary a bit, and training data is similar but not exactly the same. None of the above factors seems to make much difference in the results. The various flavors in the updated FSR Upscaling really are rather close to the new PSSR."

Sitting down for an extended discussion on the Lex Fridman podcast, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang responded (again) to the criticisms surrounding the company's recent DLSS 5 announcement. DLSS 5's reveal, which is designed to take game data and transform rendered images to deliver photorealistic lighting that wouldn't be possible with current hardware, has sparked widespread backlash over how the AI model seemingly changes the look of characters.

As seen in the example above from Capcom's Resident Evil Requiem, the main issue raised by the wider gaming community and media alike centers on how it makes characters look different. To the point where it's being referred to as an AI filter that gives characters like Grace a look similar to several AI-generated images circulating on social media depicting attractive people.

"I think their perspective makes sense," Jensen Huang said when asked by Lex Fridman about the response to DLSS 5. "And I could see where they're coming from because I don't love AI slop myself. You know, all of the AI-generated content increasingly looks similar, and they're all beautiful, so I'm empathetic toward what they're thinking. That's just not what DLSS 5 is trying to do."

AMD has released the AMD FSR SDK 2.2, now available on GPUOpen for game developers. This is a notable update because it adds the latest versions of AMD's FSR 'Redstone' technologies for RDNA 4 GPUs and the Radeon RX 9000 Series, with the arrival of AMD FSR Upscaling 4.1 and AMD FSR Ray Regeneration 1.1.

AMD FSR 4.1 is the latest version of the company's AI-powered upscaling solution, delivering image quality comparable to NVIDIA DLSS. FSR 4.1, already available for PC gamers in titles like Crimson Desert as part of the latest Radeon drivers, enhances image quality with sharper visuals and improved clarity and detail on moving objects. It also improves the ultra-performance preset, which upscales from a lower resolution, as well as the dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) mode.

FSR Ray Regeneration 1.1, which is an AI-powered denoiser similar to DLSS Ray Reconstruction, also improves the image quality and realism of ray-traced lighting, with Crimson Desert being the first title to implement the update. This feature is designed to enhance ray-traced reflections and global illumination.

Few games have gathered as much pre-launch hype as Crimson Desert has over the past few months. Gamers were excited to experience the vast open world with tons of interactive elements, and that excitement translated to sales as well. However, the excitement soon took a slight downturn as AI-generated artwork was found in the game.

The artwork depicted a battle scene filled with mounted soldiers; however, the horses' bodies were somewhat blended with those of the soldiers. This was a telltale sign that generative AI was being used, leaving many gamers with a sour taste in their mouths. More egregiously, however, Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss did not use Steam's generative AI disclosure on the store page.

After facing backlash, Pearl Abyss has issued a statement through the @CrimsonDesert_ X account. The company accepts that the artwork was AI-generated; however, it was created early in the development process for experimental purposes and was not intended for the final release.

In a not-so-shocking turn of events, it now looks like Google Search is incorporating generative AI to make questionable changes to the headlines of its search results. Google Search has been a trustworthy search engine for people of all kinds since its inception, with a very straightforward "what you see is what you get" approach. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced plans to integrate AI into search in 2025, and now it seems they are expanding on it even further.

In a recent discovery by The Verge, it seems like Google is putting its own unwelcome twist on several headlines using the power of our "good" friend, generative AI. The Verge uncovered multiple instances in which Google replaced headlines it had written with new ones that sometimes detracted from the original meaning.

One particularly egregious example was that the headline "I used the 'cheat on everything' AI tool, and it didn't help me cheat on anything" was changed to "Cheat on everything AI tool." This was particularly infuriating, as it almost entirely changes the meaning the article's author was trying to convey. The new AI-generated headline can easily be mistaken for a product endorsement rather than the scathing criticism it was.

Bethesda's paid mods program has been controversial from the start, and the publisher will continue leaning into its user-generated content business model moving forward.

Right from the get-go, Bethesda's Creation Club was heavily criticized among gamers. Mods are a big reason why Bethesda games are so timeless--the free player-created content can expand the game well past its original limits and unlock all kinds of new experiences that weren't possible at launch. Before it was acquired by Microsoft, Bethesda decided to get into mods, treating them as microtransactions that creators could sell, and the Creation Club was born.

The program has changed since it was introduced in August 2017. At the time, Bethesda made both free and paid mods available in Skyrim Special Edition and Fallout 4, initially separating the paid content from the digital mods that gamers could download for free. Now, however, free and paid mods are lumped together and the program is simply called Creations.

EA is delisting its cops-and-robbers Battlefield game on consoles starting in May, but the game will still be sold and remain playable on PC.

Battlefield Hardline will be sunset starting in May, EA has announced on its support forums. Starting in late May, Hardline will no longer be purchasable on PS4 and Xbox One, and a month after that, the multiplayer servers will also be taken offline.

Interestingly enough, Hardline is still being sold for a more premium price on Steam despite being an 11-year-old Battlefield title. The ultimate edition is being sold for $40 without an option for the cheaper standard edition, and EA is even still selling a $50 microtransaction bundle that effectively unlocks all multiplayer progression items at once. That shortcut bundle is actually more expensive than the game itself. Or gamers could also just get a month of EA Play for $5.99 to access the game, too.

Microsoft will show off a handful of third-party partner games coming to Xbox in a special showcase this Thursday, including a closer look at the next game from the creators of the Yakuza series.

The new Xbox Partner Preview stream will debut March 26, 2026 at 10am PST/ 1pm EST, giving players a glimpse of what's to come with key third-party games like Stranger Than Heaven, an ambitious and stylish new third-person action game from SEGA's famed Ryu Ga Gotoku studio (Yakuza), as well as new content and updates from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developer GSC Game World.

"The latest installment will include news on upcoming games from partners including Sega, GSC Game World and Owlcat Games, plus brand-new reveals, world premieres and Xbox Game Pass announcements," reads the Xbox Wire post.

Crimson Desert is one of the fastest-selling new IPs on the market with multi-million sales in its first day, but the game's strong initial launch performance hasn't entirely convinced investors.

Shortly after Crimson Desert's release, the share value of South Korean developer Pearl Abyss took a major hit. The company saw their stock drop by 40%, and the publisher's shares have yet to meaningfully rebound despite the game's breakout success; Crimson Desert managed to sell over 2 million copies on all platforms in its first day, making it among the quickest-selling new titles and new intellectual properties on the modern games market.

Today was the first new day of trading on the Korean Exchange after Pearl Abyss made the sales announcement, and unfortunately, the shares have yet to really bounce back. The company's stock did technically see an increase of +250 KRW (about $0.17), representing a smaller +0.60% boost.

Microsoft appears to be turning over several new leaves with Windows 11 - or indeed rewriting the entire book to an extent - with plans to improve and fix the OS, and we might even see the return of the ability to install the operating system with a local account.

Windows Latest spotted a post on X (via TechRadar) from Scott Hanselman, who is a VP, Member of Technical Staff, at Microsoft, and one of the execs behind the big project to fix everything about Windows 11 which is apparently now in full swing for 2026.

As we saw at the weekend, this campaign includes bolstering performance - and reducing the overheads Windows 11 places on the system, including the RAM consumed - as well as cutting away elements of AI, and providing more control over Windows Updates.

A new open-source inference engine, flash-moe, by Daniel Woods, has successfully run a 400B-parameter Large Language Model on an iPhone 17 Pro, a device with just 12GB of RAM. The project leverages Apple's "LLM in a Flash" research, in which model weights are streamed on demand directly from the device's NVMe storage rather than preloading the entire 400B parameter set into system RAM. That said, at 0.6 tokens per second and a TTFT (Time To First Token) of almost 50 seconds, the demonstration serves only as a proof of concept for the time being.

Typically, dense models require all their weights to be preloaded into memory to ensure low-latency access. However, Mixture of Experts (MoE) models, such as Qwen's 3.5 series, use a small subset of 'experts' rather than activating all 400B parameters for each request. The specific model in question is Qwen3.5-397B-A17B (2-bit quantized), which is a 397B model with 17B active parameters. Per Daniel's published paper, only 5.5 GB of weights are resident in memory at any time, even for a massive 400B model.

After a series of optimizations and a custom metal GPU pipeline written in Objective-C, the project demonstrates that streaming MoE models from consumer-grade SSDs is possible and yields acceptable results. The paper used an M3 Max MacBook with 48GB of system RAM, achieving 5.74 tokens per second when running Qwen3.5-397B-A17B. This speed was achieved after 90+ experiments, with a baseline of 0.28 tokens per second, yielding a 20.5x improvement.

After images and videos, Generative AI has found its way into video game development. Gamers and developers are trying to figure out whether the technology adds value or strips away authenticity from video games. Capcom has decided which side of the line it wants to be on and has clarified its stance on generative AI.

In a recent summary of its investor briefing session, Game*Spark spotted that Capcom addressed investor questions on how the studio is handling generative AI in its games. Capcom explained that it will not be using AI-generated assets in its titles for the time being.

However, that doesn't mean it plans on abandoning the technology entirely. The studio states it will use generative AI to boost efficiency in departments such as graphics, sound, and programming.

The gaming community has done it again. Pearl Abyss, the studio behind chart-topping title Crimson Desert, has changed course and announced that support for Intel Arc GPUs is on the way. The announcement comes right after Pearl Abyss officially confirmed that the game does not support Intel Arc GPUs at all, and explicitly suggested that Arc owners seek refunds.

The studio has now updated its stance following community backlash and says it is working on compatibility and optimization support for Intel Arc GPU systems.

A new benchmark at Geekbench, courtesy of hardware sleuth HXL on X (formerly Twitter), shows Intel's unreleased Core Ultra 9 290K carving through x86 records with ease. However, since this SKU was a no-show at Intel's latest reveal, this benchmark is merely a glimpse of a chip that may never see the light of day.

On March 11, Intel officially pulled the curtain back on its Core Ultra 200 Plus series, the desktop "Arrow Lake Refresh". However, the reveal was limited to only two CPUs: the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, conspicuously leaving behind a third SKU that had been haunting the rumor mill, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, which is also the topic of today's conversation. These "Plus" chips aren't a ground-up architectural overhaul; instead, they rely on faster clock speeds, increased die-to-die (D2D) interconnect frequencies, and the introduction of the Intel Binary Optimization Tool (iBOT) for select games and titles.

The test setup for this benchmark features ASUS' ROG STRIX Z890-E GAMING WIFI motherboard, coupled with 64GB of DDR5-6800 memory. Interestingly, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus appears in Geekbench with its full retail branding rather than a generic engineering string, suggesting that Intel pulled the plug at the absolute last minute, possibly after samples had already reached motherboard partners. Specifications-wise, we are looking at 24 cores (8P+16E) and 24 threads, with a rated maximum frequency of 5.6 GHz, while frequencies during the benchmark hit almost 5.8 GHz. This almost mirrors the existing Core Ultra 9 285K configuration, except for the clock speeds, where the 285K is advertised to hit a maximum of 5.7 GHz.