Latest News - Page 1206

AMD is going from stride to stride right now, where the company has proudly announced it has had a huge 68% increase in annual revenue for FY 2021 -- while Q4 2021 revenues beat analyst expectations.

Team Red posted 75% year-over-year increase in revenue at $2.2 billion, with 17% quarter-over-quarter driven by higher EPYC and semi-custom processor sales. AMD also posted higher operating income, with $762 million compared to $243 million in the previous year -- and $542 million in the previous quarter.

This is thanks to higher revenue and richer product mix, while AMD has been expanding the internal deployments of its new 3rd Gen EPYC processors, with AMD EPYC processors now powering more Cloud-based providers. AMD has also teased its next-gen 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa" processors that will drop later this year... especially with the monster 96 "Zen 4" cores and next-gen memory + I/O.

EA confirms it will continue bringing its core games to EA Play, and the subscription service may one day serve non-gaming content too.

In a recent Q3'22 earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson teases that EA Play could get content that goes "beyond gaming."

Wilson doesn't elaborate, but it's possible EA could use its subscription service to deliver transmedia content such as TV shows and even smaller films based on wholly-owned franchises like Apex Legends or Battlefield.

EA plans to release as many as 4 new projects in FY23, which aligns with previous comments made by the publisher.

EA confirms it has 3-4 new unannounced projects that it will release in the Fiscal Year 2023 period (April 2022 - March 2023).

"There are 3-4 more games coming in FY23 that we haven't announced yet. We are trying to grow our portfolio year-over-year with new titles, new IP, new expansion,"

Apex Legends will deliver nearly $1 billion in revenues through Fiscal Year 2022, EA confirms.

Since its 2019 debut, Apex Legends has become one of the most profitable franchises in EA's portfolio. The franchise generated over $1 billion in total lifetime revenues in less than two years, and made $600 million alone in FY2021. Now the game is expected to deliver even more in FY2022.

In a recent Q3'22 earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said Apex will make "close to $1 billion in FY22." This revenue was driven by a sharp 30% spike in players during the holiday period, as well as 540 million accounts worldwide, of which 180 million were MAUs.

EA has seemingly cooled down on its gung-ho plans to support NFTs.

A bit ago, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said NFTs and play-to-earn were "important parts" of gaming's future. Now Wilson's discussion on NFTs is more lukewarm.

In a recent Q3'21 earnings call, Wilson delivered new comments on NFTs that seem to consider the incredibly strong pushback from the controversial speculative business model.

EA says Battlefield 2042's sales were "disappointing," executives say the sales miss will reduce its overall net bookings forecast by $100 million.

EA is aware of the Battlefield 2042 situation and acknowledges that sales have missed their expectations. The publisher says DICE's new shooter delivered "disappointing results," and while no actual sales figures were announced, the company talked up the game in previous calls with extraordinary confidence.

"Battlefield 2042 did not meet our expectations," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in a Q3 earnings call. "Some of the decision choices that we made did not resonate with our community. We are fully committed to realizing full potential of the game and fully committed to our fans."

Destiny 2's new The Witch Queen expansion might become the most popular post-release DLC in the game's history.

The Witch Queen is already a massive success with over 1 million pre-orders so far, Bungie has announced. A quick bit of math shows Bungie has made at least $40 million from Witch Queen pre-orders so far, assuming every single purchase was the standard $39.99 edition. The mix is likely a lot higher as gamers opt for the more expensive deluxe edition ($79.99) and the 30th anniversary edition ($99.99).

"Thank you to the more than ONE MILLION Destiny players who have pre-ordered Destiny 2: The Witch Queen. With your incredible support, it's on track to be the most pre-ordered expansion in Destiny 2 history," Bungie said.

PlayStation functionality has arrived on Discord. It's pretty basic right now, but it could evolve into a real game-changer for both.

Yesterday PlayStation became integrated into popular chat app Discord. The features are barebones and aren't any different to how Xbox accounts are integrated. As Discord hints, this might be just the beginning, though: "We're excited to continue our partnership with PlayStation and explore how we can collectively create great shared experiences for your friends and communities."'

So what's next? Discord may be a part of the most transformative PlayStation feature introduced to date.

The FTC, not the Justice Department, will examine Microsoft's buyout of Activision-Blizzard for instances of possible anti-trust.

The Federal Trade Commission will be scrutinizing the Microsoft-Activision deal. The convergence of the two tech giants would see Microsoft becoming the third most lucrative video games company in the world behind Sony and Tencent while locking down billion-dollar properties like Call of Duty in the process.

Sources tell Bloomberg that FTC regulators plan to closely investigate whether or not the deal constitutes anti-trust or unfair advantage. If its determined that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard will materially harm competition (for example, Sony could lose over $260 million a year if Call of Duty were kept off of PlayStation platforms), the FTC could sue to block the acquisition similar to how the commission is trying to block NVIDIA's takeover of ARM.

Well, here we are boys and girls... we're in the month of February, which means NVIDIA has completely missed its launch window of January 2022 for its flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card. The reason for this article is because I noticed our friends at VideoCardz writing a new article titled "Did NVIDIA just forget to launch GeForce RTX 3090 Ti?" and yeah... of course they did, and TweakTown knows why.

If you remember, over two weeks ago now on January 14, I exclusively reported that NVIDIA had "halted production" on its new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. After NVIDIA revealed the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti at CES 2022 and Jeff Fischer himself said to "tune in later this month for more details".

It's now past January, and we're into February and the only details you've gotten about NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti firstly came from me here at TweakTown exclusively -- production on the RTX 3090 Ti has been halted -- secondly, EVGA teased its highly custom GeForce RTX 3090 Ti KINGPIN graphics card... aaaand that's it.

UPDATE:Team17 is ending its NFT worms project.

On the news that Worms developer Team17 is supporting NFTs (much to the dismay of its employees), multiple indie studios stand in solidarity and push back against the speculative platform.

NFTs are a hot unregulated craze that's rife with profit, speculation, and scams. Major games-makers like Ubisoft, EA, and Square Enix have expressed interest. Konami and Ubisoft have actually pulled the trigger and minted NFTs based on Castlevania and Ghost Recon. Now smaller publishers like Team17 are using their brands to do the same.

A new study published in Nature Climate Change has modeled the future of floods in the United States.

Researchers have estimated that the annual cost of flood damage in the U.S. will increase by 26.4 percent by 2050. The average annual flood losses amount to about $32 billion and are estimated to increase to $40.6 billion in 2050, based on 2021 dollar values. Their research emphasizes that the brunt of this financial hit will fall on disadvantaged communities.

The missile launched was the Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM).

North Korea conducted the launch on January 30th, and South Korean and Japanese officials estimated it reached a maximum altitude of about 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers). It flew for roughly 30 minutes, flying over Japan and landing in the Pacific Ocean to the east as it completed an approximately 500 mile (800 kilometers) journey.

A paper by the European Space Agency (ESA) has investigated the potential for hibernation in Mars-bound journeys.

Engineers have to account for about two years worth of food and water to keep an astronaut crew alive on a mission bound for Mars and back. Animals typically enter a state of torpor during hibernation, reducing their metabolic rate and conserving energy. With a 25% reduction in metabolic rate, engineers could reduce the size of a spacecraft carrying the crew and the number of supplies necessary considerably.

A study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes the new estimate.

More than a hundred scientists have used global forestry datasets from the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative and TREECHANGE to estimate that there are approximately 73,724 tree species on Earth. This number is roughly 14% higher than the current number of known tree species in these datasets, which amounts to 64,100 documented species.

The researchers estimate that there are about 9,200 currently undiscovered species', roughly 40% of which they believe are found in South America. The undiscovered species' are likely rare, with small populations and restricted to relatively confined regions, making these trees particularly vulnerable to human disruptions such as deforestation or climate change.

A newly published study in the journal Matter describes the RNA pill.

A research team from MIT has developed a capsule containing RNA to administer vaccines, hoping to bypass the need for injections such vaccines usually require. They were able to deliver up to 150 micrograms of RNA into the stomach of pigs, an amount greater than the 30 to 100 micrograms of mRNA found in COVID-19 vaccines.

A college student that is a fan of tracking aviation created a Twitter bot that tracks and publishes the location of Elon Musk's private jet.

19-year-old Jack Sweeney created a bot that interprets all of the relevant public flight data for Elon Musk's private jet taking off and landing, allowing the bot to predict where it was going and then post the information to Twitter. Elon Musk's private jet wasn't the only aircraft Sweeney tracked, several other bots were created for Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and other celebrity figures. However, the Twitter account for Musk's private jet "ElonJet" gained the most followers, with it currently having 260,000+ at the time of writing.

Protocol published an article with Sweeney that reveals a conversation between the SpaceX CEO and the bot creator. Musk asked Sweeney, "Can you take this down? It is a security risk", Sweeney replied, "Yes, I can, but it'll cost you a Model 3 only joking unless?". Musk said, "I don't love the idea of being shot by a nutcase". It seems Musk is concerned that the public data will allow for people such as paparazzi, fans, or dangerous stalkers to track his location and ambush him at airports. A very real problem for people of high celebrity status.

Scams have been plaguing the NFT space for quite some time now, and with so many new projects coming out it's difficult to determine which ones will hold their value and which ones won't.

An example of a project "not holding its value", or purely being a scam is The Big Daddy Ape Club, an obvious rip-off project of the immensely popular/expensive Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that have been purchased and promoted by a variety of celebrities and athletes. Individuals that invested into The Big Daddy Ape Club were scammed as the NFTs were never minted by the creator, who ended up walking out with approximately $1.13 million.

The individuals behind The Big Daddy Ape Club secured "verification" from the a decentralized-identity-verification company called Civic, based in San Francisco, which may now result in investors coming after Civic for providing "verification" on a project that was a scam. Additionally, new policies are being created by insurers to protect NFTs and digital assets, however, insurers first advise that investors take the necessary steps in doing their own due diligence in researching the project to find out if its legitimate.

Actor Tom Cruise has sat down with NASA astronaut Victor Glover to talk about the experiences of being an astronaut and what it's like to spend extended periods of time aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Cruise is interviewing Glover ahead of his scheduled time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to film a movie. Glover was a part of the first operational crew mission to the ISS in November 2020 that used SpaceX's, now frequently used, Crew Dragon spacecraft. Cruise and Glover discussed what it's like to experience the g-forces created by the rocket launch, as well as what it's like to sleep aboard the floating laboratory.

Another topic discussed was the smell of the International Space Station, where Glover says that the ISS smells very much like a hospital, with it similarities being that it smells like a sterile, antiseptic, germ-free environment. Additionally, the NASA astronaut says that the smells are localized, but the module on the space station that houses all of the workout equipment as well as the bathroom smells like a "locker room".

China's space agency has released a stunning video of its first Mars probe orbiting the Red Planet in celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year.

The China National Space Administration has released the footage of the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter making its journey around the Red Planet. The video is a selfie of the spacecraft and displays its body, engines, solar array as well as some of the surface of Mars making an appearance in the background.

After launching from China in July 2020 and arriving at Mars in February 2021, the Tianwen-1 probe has been observing the Red Planet for a whole year along with its lander and rover counterparts that are exploring the Martian surface.