Latest News - Page 178

CD Projekt has established a core leadership team at its Boston studio to helm Cyberpunk 2's development

The latest results for CD Projekt RED's Q3 period give a quick update on Cyberpunk 2, the upcoming sequel to the best-selling Cyberpunk 2077. Company co-CEO Michal Nowakowski confirms that Cyberpunk 2's foundational senior leadership team is now in place at its Boston group, with 80 developers currently at the studio.

The Boston-centric Cyberpunk 2 team will continue to grow throughout the next two years and more developers from other groups will start attaching themselves to the sequel, including those from the Canadian and Polish subsidiaries.

Black Friday is a great opportunity to snag some great deals on some expensive products for electronics and various tech items. Not to mention most other products on the online marketplaces.

However, Black Friday is a great time to pick up some upgrades for your gaming setup, particularly if you are in need of new hardware to make the jump from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Amazon has discounted several different generations of Intel CPUs for a limited time, with some discounts being as much as 28% off.

If you don't need an upgrade for your rig, maybe a loved one needs an upgrade, or perhaps a nice present for Christmas. Black Friday is the perfect opportunity to secure one of those. Below I have listed the best deals I found on Amazon for Intel CPUs. I have included the original price, current deal price, percentage discount and the money you can save if you purchase them during the Black Friday promotional.

Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney has pushed back against the idea of game stores informing customers that titles have been created with the help of artificial intelligence.

Steam recently adopted the tag "Made with AI" for titles it lists on its online marketplace, with the goal being to inform customers if the game they are considering purchasing was made with the assistance of AI, as many people feel the involvement of AI in game development, and art in general is wrong for a multitude of reasons.

Regardless of whether those reasons are justifiable or not, AI is here to stay, and according to Epic Games' CEO the label is pointless as AI is going to be involved in one way or another in nearly all future production. Sweeney responded to an X post calling for Steam and other digital marketplaces to drop the "Made with AI label," writing, "Agreed" and that the AI tag is only "relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and to digital content licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation."

Black Friday deals are here, and Best Buy is one of the many locations where you can snag a great deal on some upgrades for your gaming setup. More specifically, KTC has slashed prices across three of its gaming monitors.

KTC has Black Friday deals on the monitors mentioned in this article from November 20 to November 29, with discounts on three of its most popular 27-inch gaming monitors. Starting off with the KTC H27E6, a 27-inch 2560 x 1440p resolution Fast IPS panel display that features a 320Hz refresh rate. The H27E6 is the flagship gaming monitor within this line-up, and with its IPS display, it offers stellar viewing angles and great motion performance with its 1ms response time.

As for connectivity, the H27E6 offers 2x HDMI 2.1 ports, 2x DisplayPort 1.4, a USB-A hub, and a headphone jack. Since the H27E6 includes HDMI ports, it means the display gets extra points for versatility, as consoles can be connected, alongside a PC setup, which would take advantage of the DisplayPorts. While consoles can't reach the 320Hz refresh rate the H27E6 is rated for, they will be able to comfortably reach 120Hz through the HDMI 2.1 specification.

The Game Awards is just two weeks away, and many are wondering which big, highly anticipated titles will be at the show to tease more footage.

One of those games is CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 4, but for those that were holding out hope that CD Projekt Red is quietly preparing to drop more footage of the game at The Game Awards, sadly, that won't be happening, as the CEO of CD Projekt Red, Michał Nowakowski, has recently taken to X to confirm The Witcher 4 won't be at The Game Awards 2025.

The confirmation from the CEO comes on the heels of a thank you for The Witcher 4 being nominated for the Most Anticipated Game category at The Game Awards, which appears to be going up against Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 6.

There probably isn't a more active or dedicated community on the internet than the Grand Theft Auto community, which are chomping at the bit for any news regarding the upcoming title, Grand Theft Auto 6.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is the most anticipated game of all time, and because of that it has spawned GTA 6 news accounts, which are dedicated to posting anything and everything related to the upcoming title. However, one such account has now gone from a credible source of GTA 6 news to deemed "worthless" after the account shared a video it claimed was a "leak," which turned out to be AI generated.

That X account is Zap Actu GTA6 shared a video that gained 8 million views in just 24 hours before it was removed by the uploader. The account claimed it was a "leak" of GTA 6 gameplay, but this wasn't gameplay at all, it was AI-generated footage. Notably, this same account shared similar videos earlier in the months, some of which have large numbers of views, but this recent video really hit the mainstream as many viewers of the video didn't realize it was AI and took the video at face value.

Bungie is currently going through a rough patch, with Sony recently confirming that the once-esteemed studio has fallen $200 million short of expectations, and most of that shortfall can be attributed to the declining performance of Destiny 2.

Sony stated during a recent earnings call that Destiny 2's underperformance has resulted in Sony having to record a $204 million impairment loss against Bungie's assets, which means that Sony has put on the books that Bungie's assets are now worth $200 million less than what it originally valued them at when it purchased the studio in 2022.

Most of that reduction in value can be attributed to the declining Destiny 2 player base, which has shrunk from the once-316,000-player peak nearly three years ago to just 15,000 daily players today. Despite Destiny 2's struggles, leaks have surfaced suggesting that Destiny 3 is in very early stages of development, with two separate sources, Colony Leaks and CheddaLeaks, both writing in X posts that Destiny 3 is in the works at Bungie.

Google could soon bring customization to your YouTube homepage, with the company currently testing a new feature it calls "Your custom feed."

Google has briefly explained the new feature in a recently posted thread on a support page, where a company employee wrote that its new experimental feature enables users to "customize recommendations for your Home feed."

Adding more explanation to the feature, the post states that for those who are part of the experiment, they will see "Your Custom Feed" appear on the Home page as "a chip besides Home", and after clicking it, they will be able to update Home feed recommendations by entering a "simple prompt".

TSMC accused its former Senior Vice President, and now the Executive Vice President at Intel of stealing trade secrets after they departed from the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer in October.

TSMC filed a lawsuit in Taiwan's Intellectual Property and Commercial Court against Wei-Jen Lo, a former TSMC employee who worked at the semiconductor manufacturer for 21 years and, before that, at Intel for 18 years. Lo has since returned to Intel, joining the company in October, and now TSMC is accusing its former staffer of leaking trade secrets and confidential information to its direct competitor.

Intel has since responded to the allegations in an emailed statement, writing, "Based on everything we know, we have no reason to believe there is any merit to the allegations involving Mr Lo." Additionally, Intel pointed to its policies and controls it has in place that strictly prohibit the use or transfer of any third-party confidential information or intellectual property, and stated, "We take these commitments seriously."

With all of its seasonal sales events, Steam doesn't really do Black Friday Sales - until now. With significant savings covering thousands of games, plus a great deal on the Steam Deck 256GB LCD handheld (it's 20% off and on sale for $319.20 USD), it's also great to see that there are big discounts on games that are still pretty fresh. Probably the best deal on a massive 2025 release is DOOM: The Dark Ages, which is 50% off at $34.99 USD.

id Software's third game in its modern re-imagined DOOM trilogy shifts the focus to a more grounded and fast-paced melee and gun combat flow that includes a versatile shield, alongside an expanded focus on telling a cinematic story as you take control of the DOOM Slayer in a medieval sci-fi fantasy world. Visually, it's also one of the most impressive releases of 2025, thanks to its ray-traced lighting effects and id Software's world-class engine technology.

Although it's a single-player only game, DOOM: The Dark Ages recently received a significant update that expanded the options, features, and flow of the post-campaign Ripatorium arena mode. This is definitely a game made for FPS fans; however, it's not the only major 2025 FPS game on sale as part of Steam's Black Friday Sales.

Elon Musk has challenged the best professional League of Legends team to versus Grok 5, xAI's latest iteration of its artificial intelligence software.

That League of Legends team is T1, a South Korean esports organization that has won a staggering six League of Legends World Championship titles. T1 won the most recent League of Legends World Championship, marking the first three-peat in the history of professional League of Legends. In an effort to test Grok 5's skill, Elon Musk has taken to his personal X account to outline some rules for the match.

Musk wrote that Grok will "see" the game the same way a human would, but through a camera positioned in front of a monitor. A handicap will be imposed to account for reaction latency, so Grok can't react any faster than a human.

It's no secret that power supply capacity has increased in recent years to meet the higher power requirements of high-end CPUs and GPUs. That said, when looking at mainstream hardware like the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and the GeForce RTX 5060 or Radeon RX 9060 XT, there's no real need to go all out with a 1000W PSU; you'll be just fine with a 550W or 650W PSU.

And if you're looking for something in the affordable 550W to 750W range, you might want to take a look at ENDORFY's new Vero L6 lineup, which includes 550W, 650W, and 750W models. These new power supplies are all ATX 3.1 compliant and include a fixed 12V-2x6 cable for modern graphics cards, a single Stratus 120 mm fan for cooling, and high-quality capacitors rated for 105 degrees Celsius operation.

ENDORFY's Vero L6 power supplies are also Cybenetics Silver- and 80 PLUS Bronze-certified for efficiency, Cybenetics Noise Rating Standard++-rated for quiet operation, and feature a full range of electrical and thermal protections, including OVP, OCP, OPP, OTP, and more. Throw in a double-sided PCB with heat dissipation in mind and a 5-year warranty, and it's a PSU range for those looking at building a PC gaming rig on a budget.

With Valve's Steam Machine announcement, the idea of a mini gaming PC that sits next to or underneath your TV like a gaming console is on the minds of gamers everywhere, and for good reason. Gaming on a couch with a big-screen TV is simply more comfortable than sitting at a desk. And with that, the new MINISFORUM AtomMan G1 PRO, which features a design inspired by the PlayStation 5 console, looks like a pretty impressive Steam Machine alternative.

The MINISFORUM AtomMan G1 PRO is powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX, a mobile Zen 4 CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads and a Boost Clock speed of up to 5.4 GHz. It also features a low-profile desktop GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card that can run at its full 145W power draw, thanks to the AtomMan G1 PRO's integrated 350W PSU.

MINISFORUM notes that, with the RTX 5060, 25% more powerful than the RTX 4060 and featuring DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support, the AtomMan G1 PRO can run Cyberpunk 2077 at 214 FPS at 1080p and several other titles at 200+ FPS.

Valve added tags and labels to Steam games that feature AI-generated content a while ago, and it also updated the submission process so developers can disclose the specific AI tools they used to help create their games. To get a good picture of how it looks, simply check out the ARC Raiders store page, which includes an "AI Generated Content Disclosure" section.

Granted, the AI disclosure on the ARC Raiders store page is pretty generic and doesn't specifically mention the game's use of AI-generated voices, but it's there for those wanting to know which games have been developed with AI-based tools. Valve added the tag and requirement well over a year ago, which is a long time in the fast-moving AI space, and many are wondering if it's still required, as most creative and productivity apps have all been steadily adding AI tools and features.

In a response to someone saying exactly that, Epic Games founder and CEO responded with an emphatic, "Agreed." Adding that putting an AI tag "makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production."

NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 5080 earlier this year with an MSRP of $999; however, as anyone who followed the GeForce RTX 50 Series launch knows, very few models were available at this price. And for the most part, GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card pricing has sat in the $1,100+ range for several months.

With Black Friday sales now underway, the good news is that the 4K enthusiast RTX Blackwell GPU is on sale for at or below MSRP. And given the current memory crisis, which is driving up prices for PC gaming hardware, now might be the best time to pick up a GeForce RTX 5080 for a while. That is, if you've been eyeing the GeForce RTX 5080.

Walmart currently has a great deal on the PNY GeForce RTX 5080 OC 16GB, which is on sale for $949, $50 off the $999 MSRP. As an OC model, it ships with a Boost Clock speed of 2.73 GHz, a notable bump from the 2.62 GHz reference spec.

We all know about the insane DRAM price increases that are affecting RAM prices in a massive way, but also GPU prices as they have a bunch of VRAM on them (up to 32GB for the RTX 5090), but now MAINGEAR CEO Wallace Santos has weighed in on the situation.

In a new chat between our friends at Wccftech and MAINGEAR CEO Wallace Santos, we get some more insight to the retail supply chain for PC gamers, and how it is affecting them. Wccftech asked Wallace: "With analysts projecting that memory shortages could extend into 2027, what advice would you offer consumers, whether building their first PC or upgrading an existing system, on how to navigate rising prices and potential component constraints?"

MAINGEAR CEO Wallace Santos explained: "We've already seen DRAM prices skyrocket due to the shortages and are holding off those price changes for our customers as long as we can. For consumers that are interested in getting a new PC or upgrading their current system's GPU, SSD or RAM, they should consider shopping now and looking for offerings that have not seen price increases yet. MAINGEAR is offering pre-built units for Black Friday right now that were sheltered from these price increases".

MSI's new MEG X870E ACE MAX motherboard specifications have been listed in China, with the mid-cycle "refresh" mobo featuring 3 x PCIe 5.0 slots, and dual Gen5 M.2 SSD slots, as well as "next-level CPU" support.

MSI's upcoming MEG X870E ACE MAX motherboard sports an 18+2+1 phase SPS DrMOS power design, with 4 x DDR5 UDIMM slots with support for memory overclocking at up to 8400 MT/s and beyond. On the storage and expansion side of things, it features 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, 1 x PCIe 5.0 x8 slot, 1 x PCIe 5.0 x4 slot, 2 x PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 SSD slots, 3 x PCIe 4.0 x4 slots, and 4 x SATA III ports. On the rear, I/O includes USB4 40Gbps Type-C ports.

There's a larger 64GB BIOS on the MEG X870E ACE MAX motherboard, which provides the motherboard support for "next-level CPU" upgrades with better compatibility, says MSI. The next-level CPU upgrades most likely refer to AMD's upcoming Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 and Ryzen 7 9850X3D2 processors with dual X3D cache (up to 192MB of L3 cache on the 9950X3D2). It could also refer to the next-gen Ryzen 10000 series CPUs based on the next-gen Zen 6 architecture, which will debut in 2026.

Noctua has confirmed that each of its CPU coolers that work on the Intel LGA1700 and LGA1851 sockets will work on Intel's next-gen LGA1954 socket that will debut with its next-gen Core Ultra 400 series "Nova Lake" desktop CPUs.

The company previously confirmed that LGA1700 and LGA1851 sockets both share the same mounting layout, with Noctua even offering free upgrade kits for older coolers before LGA1700 support. But the company recently updated its FAQ, including Intel's new LGA1954 socket being supported, meaning a single mounting kit will handle three generations of Intel CPU sockets.

Noctua has model-specific exceptions like the low-profile NH-L9i family of CPU coolers, but for the rest of the tower and dual-tower CPU coolers, if it supports the LGA1700 socket, it'll support both LGA1851 and the next-gen LGA1954 sockets.

AMD's flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card has outsold NVIDIA's entire family of GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs at one of the biggest retailers in Germany.

Mindfactory's latest sales report on graphics cards for the week just gone have 925 units of the Radeon RX 9070 XT sold, compared to NVIDIA's best-selling RTX 50 series GPU -- the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti -- which sold just 390 units in comparison. AMD's mid-range Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics card even outsold the RTX 5070 Ti, with the 9060 XT selling 515 units last week.

However, if you combine all of the GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" GPUs you get to 920 units combined, while the RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9070 XT sold 925 units at Mindfactory last week... some truly stellar numbers, and an achievement for AMD.

We now have an official release date for World of Warcraft: Midnight, and the eleventh expansion for the veteran MMORPG will arrive on March 2, 2026.

Wccftech spotted the release date reveal trailer on YouTube - check it out above. This launch date should mean that early access kicks off on February 27, but that hasn't actually been confirmed by Blizzard yet.

At any rate, this means that there's only just a touch more than three months to wait before the player base can get stuck into this latest World of Warcraft expansion where you "return to the Elven kingdom of Quel'Thalas and stand against Xal'atath and her Void army."