Intel has discussed a little more about its Xe GPU architecture and its upcoming roadmap, with some confusing name changes on the way unfortunately.

During its Intel Tech Tour event, Intel unveiled a slide titled "GPU IP & Product Family Roadmap" which laid out its coming releases. There is a slide that includes all of the Xe GPU architectures: Alchemist discrete GPUs, Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake CPUs, as well as its next-gen Panther Lake CPUs which will feature Xe3 GPU chiplets.

The naming scheme seems to be changing with Xe3, which isn't good to see as a few years ago when Intel announced its GPU roadmap, it was clear: Xe was Alchemist, Xe2 was Battlemage, Xe3 was Celestial, and Xe-Next was Druid. These names referred to discrete GPUs (Xe-HPG variants) that Intel was working on at the time, but now the company doesn't like to talk about discrete GPUs... it puts all of its focus on pushing SoCs (regular CPUs with integrated GPUs).

Microsoft is making two high-profile hires that may give an idea of how well the Xbox business is doing, or where management wants to take it in the future.

There's lots of doom and gloom around Xbox right now. Outwardly, console price hikes, Game Pass increases, and unclear communication are Microsoft's biggest problems. On the inside, though, Microsoft is pressuring Xbox to deliver hard-to-reach profit metrics. Buying Activision for $68 billion put Xbox on the hook, and Microsoft's board, investors, and top execs want continual returns on that investment.

Amid the market turbulence and wider macroeconomic disruption, Xbox apparently wants to transform Xbox finances. Microsoft is making two hires that specifically focus on the money-making aspects of Xbox. One of the job listings mentions "driving transformation initiatives with urgency" with the intent of also making sure the studios are on the same page. On paper, Xbox is doing better than ever, with $23 billion revenue earned in FY25. Profit might be a different story, however.

Netflix is bringing games directly to its dedicated TV app, allowing subscribers to play smaller family-oriented party games right on the service.

Netflix has an interesting take on gaming. So far, the company has licensed (and released) actual dedicated mobile games for its users; if you're a subscriber, you can download the game for free. Netflix's biggest win so far is from games that they didn't even make--Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto mobile games were popular, but not popular enough to drive subscription adoption.

That's not Netflix's goal with games, though. The company has bifurcated its titles to make sure the games fit the platforms that they're being played on. Netflix catered its mobile game selection to solo-oriented titles, and the games coming to TVs are family night types of experiences--board games like Boggle, quiz shows like Jeopardy, etc. For Netflix, gaming is more about fostering interactivity than making a boatload of extra cash...and using devices that people already have, like mobile phones, as controllers.

ASUS is the first motherboard maker to officially support AMD's next-gen Zen 6-based Ryzen CPUs on its B850M OC series motherboards.

The company recently announced its new B850M AYW OC motherboard as a new mATX mobo with impressive overclocking features, launching the board for around $190, making it the cheapest B850M OC mobo with an external BCLK generator, and rocking support for DDR5 memory clocking in at over 10,000 MT/s.

ASUS's new B850M AYW OC motherboard features a bigger 64MB BIOS that is ready for updates in the future that will enable support for new Ryzen CPUs from AMD, including the next-gen Zen 6-based CPUs. ASUS isn't the only one, with MSI and ASRock also confirming Zen 6-based Ryzen CPU support on its B850 series motherboards.

SPARKLE has just introduced its new C741-6U-Dual 16P system, which packs up to 16 x Intel Arc Pro B60 Dual 48GB graphics cards for a total of 768GB of VRAM, all running from a monster 10,800W PSU.

The new SPARKLE C741-6U-Dual 16P multi-GPU server supports both single-GPU and dual-GPU variants of the Arc Pro B60 Dual graphics card, the single-GPU version packing 24GB of VRAM, while the dual-GPU ramps that up to 48GB. If configured with 16 of the Arc Pro B60 Dual 48GB cards, you'll have a total of 81,920 GPU cores, and an incredible 768GB of VRAM.

SPARKLE uses a dedicated circuit that extends PCIe connectivity to 16 slots which provides each GPU with its own PCIe 5.0 x8 interface. Both models also use Intel Xeon Scalable processors, either in 4th Gen or 5th Gen.

Sony has full plans to launch its next-generation PlayStation 6 console in 2027 according to a known leaker, says "it's the plan unless any unexpected delays happen".

We've been reporting leaks of the PS6 for months now, where we can expect up to RTX 5090 levels of ray tracing performance from the PlayStation 6, and a performance uplift of an incredible 6-12x faster RT gaming over the base PS5 according to leaker Moore's Law is Dead.

In a new post on the NeoGAF forums by leaker "KeplerL2" who was asked if "2027 was on the table" for the PlayStation 6 release, to which he replied: "Not just on the table, it's the plan unless any unexpected delays happen".

Microsoft has just announced that its first at-scale production cluster of NVIDIA's new GB300 "Blackwell Ultra" GPUs has been installed. Check it out:

The new large-scale and production cluster packs over 4600 GPUs based on NVIDIA's new GB300 NVL72 architecture, connected through next-gen InfiniBand interconnect fabric. The new deployment allows Microsoft to scale to hundreds of thousands of Blackwell Ultra GPUs deployed throughout datacenters across the planet, all working on one workload: AI.

Microsoft says its new Azure cluster powered by NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 "Blackwell Ultra" GPUs can reduce training times from months down to weeks, unlocking the way for training models that are over 100s of trillions of parameters large. The new Microsoft Azure ND GB300 v6 VMs are optimized for reasoning models, agentic AI systems, and multimodal generative AI workloads.

The long wait for Battlefield 6 is finally over as the servers have gone live and players are jumping into the mayhem, and already, EA's latest addition to the Battlefield franchise has blown past the peak concurrent player record for Call of Duty.

Players have been anticipating the release of Battlefield 6 for many months now, and all that waiting has finally paid off as the game is out and hundreds of thousands of players are flooding the servers. Looking at the SteamDB charts, Battlefield 6 has already taken second place in the "24-hour peak" category with a staggering 747,440 concurrent players, beating DOTA 2, and only trailing behind Counter-Strike 2.

If the player count continues at the rate it is now, which is every time you refresh the SteamDB listing for the title, it grows by 10,000 players, by the time you have read this, Battlefield 6 will have doubled Call of Duty's all-time player peak of 491,870 before 24 hours is even over. Notably, Battlefield 6 has already beaten the all-time player peak for the Open Beta, which was 521,000.

The contents of Oblivion remastered's physical deluxe edition have been detailed by Bethesda, confirming the game is not complete on disc.

User suspicions were true: Oblivion remastered's deluxe edition will require extra downloads in order to play through the base game. The full game cannot be played offline. After being community noted on Twitter, Bethesda has published a FAQ explaining what is--and isn't--included in the physical deluxe version.

On social channels, Bethesda had previously said: "The Physical Deluxe Edition includes the base game in disc format for Xbox or PlayStation."

Intel has told us that XeSS 3, its next-gen upscaling tech - which comes with MFG, mirroring NVIDIA's DLSS 4 in that respect - will be backwards compatible with games that support XeSS 2.

As VideoCardz reports, XeSS 3 will be a drop-in affair as confirmed by Intel's Tom Petersen in an interview with PC World on YouTube (see above).

In other words, if a developer has provided support for XeSS 2 in any given game, when XeSS 3 emerges - hopefully early next year - it'll simply work straight off the bat without the dev needing to do anything.

Halo art director, Glenn Israel, joined Bungie 17 years ago and began work on one of the most iconic video game franchises in history. Israel spent nearly two decades curating the artistic direction of the series, but has now announced his departure.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Israel wrote that he is no longer officially "contributing to the Halo universe", adding that there is little he can say at the moment, but "I intend to share the particular story in its entirety when it is absolutely safe to do so next year."

The art director goes on to leave a message to the video games industry, writing that while the "state of our industry seems dire," never forget that you are free to choose. No illusion of security nor promise of wealth or fame or power is worth trading away your health, your dignity, your ethics or values - and no one can force you to."

How much would you fork out for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090? Probably a fair bit, and many gamers would leap at the chance to get one of these GPUs for not much more than a grand - a feat some lucky PC enthusiast managed recently.

Tom's Hardware reports that there have been two tales just shared on Reddit whereby people have managed to get an absolute bargain of an RTX 5090 at Walmart in the US - both of these being the PNY OC model.

First off, NestyHowk grabbed the PNY RTX 5090 for $1,399.99, an eye-opening saving of $600 on the normal price for the Blackwell flagship GPU.

Microsoft's Copilot has received an update that enables Windows users to create Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, and more directly from the chat session.

The new feature is coming to Windows 11 Insiders and will soon be rolled out publicly to all Windows 11 users. Microsoft's Copilot team explained in a blog post that Copilot users will be able to convert conversational ideas, notes, and data into shareable and editable documents with "no extra steps or tools".

Additionally, suppose Copilot responds to a query with 600 words or more. In that case, Microsoft has added an export button that enables a user to send that response directly to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or convert it into a PDF file.

Gamers are patiently waiting to hear more news about Grand Theft Auto 6, which could be the most anticipated game of all time, and now we have a date for when we could expect the GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive to mention the upcoming title.

Take-Two Interactive has scheduled its Q2 2026 earnings call for November 6, which is when the publisher is expected to discuss its upcoming titles, along with the performance of its already released titles. For those who don't know, Grand Theft Auto 6 is scheduled to launch on May 26, 2026.

Since the second trailer was released, we haven't heard anything significant about the title, aside from a wealth of details about the characters, environments, and locations. The release of the second trailer was five months ago, which means we could hear something regarding GTA 6 during the earnings call.

Not a single human has set foot on the surface of the Moon since December 14, 1972, which was when Apollo 17 astronauts completed their final moonwalk. Since then, only robots have explored the surface of Earth's closest neighbor. However, that is about to change in the coming years.

NASA has announced the date for Artemis II, the mission that will take four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the Moon. Artemis II comes after Artemis I, which was an uncrewed mission that involved the Orion spacecraft being sent on a test journey around the Moon to see how the spacecraft would fare with mission goals and general journey. Artemis I was a success, and now NASA is moving to Artemis II, a crewed mission that will follow a similar path to Artemis I, but this time with humans aboard the Orion spacecraft.

Artemis II will be the foundation of future Artemis missions, with each of the four astronauts undergoing strenuous testing both before and after they return from the journey. For example, blood samples will be taken before the crew leaves and then taken again after they return, as researchers want to know if the human body experiences any significant changes throughout the mission, which, if found to be the case, preventative measures will be made before Artemis III, the mission where humans will walk on the surface of the Moon.

Samsung will be unveiling its new tri-fold smartphone in the coming weeks, which should be called the Galaxy Z TriFold, with new reports suggesting it'll feature not one, not two, but three batteries inside.

The new Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold smartphone has been revealed in some new patent images, showing the triple-folding smartphone will feature three batteries, and unfold into an ultra-thin smartphone when it's completely unfolded into a tablet.

GalaxyClub has the new patent images that Samsung filed in South Korea, giving us a look at the innards of the tri-fold smartphone. One of the images shows there are two hinge mechanisms to keep all three pieces of the phone together, while also keeping the foldable smartphone properly folded without leaving a gap between the panels.

Samsung's new Galaxy XR headset has had some juicy leaks ahead of its reveal, with details on the design, specifications, launch details, and more for the Apple Vision Pro competitor.

In a new report from Android Headlines, they've got the scoop on Samsung's new Galaxy XR "Project Moohan" headset ahead of its reveal later this month. Starting with the design of the headset, Samsung's new Galaxy XR looks pretty futuristic and similar to the Apple Vision Pro headset, with a curved front visor, matte metallic frame, and soft-touch interior padding.

The Galaxy XR weighs in at 545g, which makes it lighter than the Vision Pro, and it sports a rear strap dial to adjust the tension for your personal liking. Samsung has also added ventilation slots and detachable light shields, meaning that Samsung has made comfort one of its key highlights of the Galaxy XR.

Intel's new Fab 52 semiconductor facility at its Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Arizona, produces the most advanced logic chips on American soil, and is part of the $100 billion that Intel is investing to expand its domestic semiconductor operations.

The company has advanced R&D and production in Oregon, joined by high-volume fabrication in Arizona, as well as packaging operations in New Mexico, providing Intel a unique position to support key national priorities and provide strategic capacity for Intel Foundry customers.

The company says that its Fab 52 facility builds on Intel's vast 56 years of US-based R&D and manufacturing advancement, and marks a major milestone as the company builds a trusted leading-edge US foundry for the AI era.

Intel will be launching its next-generation Panther Lake "Core Ultra Series 3" processors at CES 2026, available inside of new laptops in Q1 2026.

The new Panther Lake CPUs will feature new technologies including new P-Cores, E-Cores, Xe3 GPU cores, and NPU/IPU. Intel is combining all of this technology into a multi-tile solution that will not just be for laptops, but new AI PCs, and other products.

One of the more exciting things about Panther Lake is that the CPU tile is being fabbed in-house on Intel's new 18A process node, while the Xe3 GPU will be fabbed at TSMC on its N3E process node.

Microsoft's next-gen Xbox is still on the way according to leaks, with the full specs and even pictures of the custom Magnus APU that will power Xbox Next. Check it out:

In a new video from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, we're getting full specs and photos of the semi-custom AMD Magnus APU that will power the next-gen Xbox. We have a huge 68 CUs of RDNA 5 GPU power, which means the new Xbox has more RDNA 5 CUs than the PlayStation 6 which reportedly has 52-54 CUs of RDNA 5.

MLID says that Magnus has at least 24MB of L2 cache for the GPU, up to 3 x Zen 6 CPU cores joined by 8 x Zen 6c cores with 12MB of L3 cache. The next-gen Xbox will reportedly have a 192-bit memory bus with up to a whopping 48GB of GDDR7 memory. This is once again more than the PS6 from recent leaks (also from MLID) stating the PS6 would have a 160-bit memory bus and up to 40GB of RAM support.