When we reviewed the MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio graphics card earlier this year, we were not only impressed by its performance but also by MSI's compact and stylish redesign of its popular Gaming Trio model for the RTX Blackwell generation. With the combination of lighting and translucent, frosted materials on the front and a vented metal backplate featuring a holographic MSI dragon logo on the rear, we dubbed it the "best-looking GPU in MSI's arsenal."

And it's this design that serves as the basis for the new custom MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16G MLG EDITION graphics card from the company. The translucent touches are still present, but now feature a darker purple tone, accompanied by the GPU shroud and backplate arriving in a vibrant red color that is not typically seen in custom GPU designs.

If you're wondering what MLG is, it refers to the MLG (Mo-Loong-Gi, or Loong: Nia, meaning "Dragon Princess" in Chinese) character, an original creation from MSI. Her likeness is etched on the metal backplate of the MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16G MLG EDITION GPU next to the holographic MSI dragon.

Modern Bluetooth audio devices have been using the newer Bluetooth LE Audio standard for audio and chat after its introduction with Bluetooth 5.2. In a nutshell, it enables the broadcast and synchronization of multiple audio streams, with the LE standing for 'Low Energy' due to its use of the improved low-power Low Complexity Communications Codec (LC3).

In practice, this means that Bluetooth LE-capable headsets and earbuds can now handle proper stereo streaming with improved voice and chat quality. The technology, until now, hasn't been fully supported in Windows 11 with the older "Bluetooth Classic Audio" codec and technology, resulting in mono and muffled sound when attempting to pair audio with Bluetooth LE chat capabilities.

Outside of the lower latency that wireless 2.4 GHz audio provides, the fact that you can get full audio and chat is one of the reasons why Bluetooth headsets aren't really used for much on a Windows 11 PC outside of dialing into a Zoom call. That all changes, as Windows 11 now offers 'super wideband stereo' Bluetooth LE Audio streaming.

Battlefield 6 will be launching without ray tracing, and it will never have ray tracing, which isn't a bad thing in a gaming world that we're forced to see RT pumped into everything, as BF6 has incredible performance, which is probably a result of the game NOT having ray tracing.

In a recent interview with Christian Buhl, the Studio Technical Director of Ripple Effect (one of the game studios working on Battlefield 6) and Comicbook.com, we're learning that Battlefield 6 will have 600+ options in the Settings menu of the game, and ray tracing will NOT be one of them, ever.

Buhl explained: "No, we are not going to have ray-tracing when the game launches and we don't have any plans in the near future for it either. That was because we wanted to focus on performance. We wanted to make sure that all of our effort was focused on making the game as optimized as possible for the default settings and the default users. So, we just made the decision relatively early on that we just weren't going to do ray-tracing and again, it was mostly so that we could focus on making sure it was performance for everyone else".

The latest developer update for hugely ambitious total-conversion mod Skyblivion reveals some design changes for things like loading screens, menus, and the lockpicking mini-game.

The Skyblivion dev team just released a new gameplay video showing what the first 15 minutes of the game will be like, dungeon tutorial sequence and all. The choice was deliberate and highlighted a bunch of new changes in one fell swoop, spotlighting things like the new colorful and eye-catching birthsign/class menu designs, the completely remade gear designs, and loading screens with "interactive, layered art."

ETOE is rolling out Labor Day savings at Best Buy across three compact, streaming-ready projectors. Whether you want battery-powered portability, auto-focus convenience, or a stylish lamp-like design for small spaces, there's a sharp discount to match.

The ETOE Dolphin is a travel-friendly DLP unit built for on-the-go movie nights. You get native 1080p, 500 ANSI brightness, HDR10+ support, Google TV with Dolby Atmos, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, and a rechargeable battery in a compact, can-style body with a carry strap. Screen sizes ranging from approximately 40 to 150 inches make it easy to set up indoors or outdoors.

The ETOE E3 Pro pairs native 1080p clarity with 4K decoding, 600 ANSI brightness, and a certified Android TV 11.0 experience - including Netflix. It features 20W Dolby Audio for fuller sound and convenience features like auto focus and auto keystone, allowing for a square, sharp image in seconds. (One HDMI input, plus wireless casting via the Android TV platform.)

NetEase has shuttered another Western video game studio in a bid to cut costs, this time affecting a group led by The Old Republic executive producer Rich Vogel.

Chinese games giant NetEase has shut down T-Minus Zero Entertainment, a studio that it helped open in 2023, in a bid to avoid risk and save money. T-Minus was led by Rich Vogel, who served as executive producer on BioWare's Star Wars The Old Republic MMORPG. The group had been developing a third-person sci-fi online project before NetEase pulled funding for the studio.

T-Minus Zero developed a playable demo of their game while under NetEase. Reports indicate that the sci-fi game was enjoyed by NetEase executives, with one essentially saying that it delivered a very distinct Godzilla-esque fantasy where players could take on hulking monsters in epic, city-destroying battles.

NVIDIA will be hosting its annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2025 event once again next year between March 16-19, 2026, in San Jose, California. We should expect the big launch of its next-gen Rubin AI GPU architecture to take the stage.

NVIDIA GTC is all about GPU technology, with data center being NVIDIA's biggest revenue driver by far, with developers, researchers, and other professionals descending upon San Jose for the event. Last year at GTC 2025, NVIDIA unveiled its next steps in GPU architectures with the company confirming its Blackwell Ultra (NVL72), and Vera Rubin architecture for 2026, scaling to huge NVL144 systems for hyperscale deployments.

The company even teased its Rubin Ultra (NVL576) for 2027, and its next-next-gen Feynman architecture that will roll out in 2028. NVL72 = 72 AI GPUs per server, NVL144 = 144 AI GPUs per server, but with Rubin Ultra coming in 2027... NVL576 = an insane 576 AI GPUs per server, which is truly mind-blowing.

Intel has been suffering against AMD for many years now in the CPU business, but the tide is slowly turning... while a newly-filed patent from Intel teases software-defined Super Cores, which would see smaller cores working together as a bigger Super Core to boost single-threaded performance.

Normally, we'd see larger cores used in a CPU but they've got their limits, with a single huge core having diminishing returns, with Intel's new patent "EP4579444A1" showing how Intel wants to overcome these issues through an SDC aka "Software Defined Super Cores".

The idea behind SDC is that Intel would use more cores than a single large core, fusing them together -- virtually -- when required. For example, two smaller cores could work together instead of a larger core dividing the workload, which would boost single-threaded performance considerably.

Konami could be ready to continue the Metal Gear Solid series without Hideo Kojima at the helm, but exact details on what's next remain unclear.

It's been 10 years since Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released, and since then, Konami hasn't made a sequel or carried the main franchise forward. Instead of immediately focusing on Metal Gear 6 when Hideo Kojima left in 2015, Konami shrugged off expensive AAA budgets and coasted on mainstay franchises like eFootball/PES and Yu-Gi-Oh. Then in 2020, Konami ramped up a new internal game dev team specifically focused on console games, a new report from Bloomberg reveals.

After five years of development, this dev team has just released the fruits of their labor and intensive efforts, showing that they have the ability to make new Metal Gear games--at least production-wise (it'll be hard to match Kojima's eclectic touch). Konami recently launched Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid 3 released on PlayStation 3, to high acclaim. This has emboldened the Japanese games-maker, who now says they have a team that's capable of making new mainline Metal Gear sequels.

Pearl weapons are coming back to Borderlands 4, but they won't be available in time for the game's September launch.

In a bit of exciting news, Gearbox has confirmed that the ultra-unique pearlescent weapon rarity will return to the franchise. Pearls will be re-introduced via a new Borderlands 4 content drop as part of a robust post-launch content roadmap. Gearbox revealed its plans, confirming that pearl weapons will be added into the game in the first quarter of 2026 (Jan - Mar) as a free update.

The decision is part of the developer's frenzied focus on serving players as many features as possible. Borderlands 4 opens up gameplay in new ways, adding in a grappling hook and even a double jump for the first time in the series, while iterating upon tried-and-true mechanics to create something new like the cross-license weapon crafting system.

"Nobody has a human right to simulate and enact fantasies of rape and extreme violence against women," Caitlin Roper, the Campaigns Manager at Collective Shout, explained in a recent email interview with me. "Not being able to access rape games from popular gaming platforms is a minor inconvenience, not a violation of a person's rights. Payment processors get to determine if they do not want to host illegal content, including rape, sexual violence, incest, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and bestiality."

Collective Shout, a small group from Australia, created a stir within the PC gaming community when it targeted Steam, the biggest storefront and platform, with a campaign that resulted in payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard threatening to pull their service from the platform if Valve didn't remove games depicting sexual violence against women.

Valve was forced to comply with the demands of the payment providers and changed Steam's policy to reflect the new changes. The response from the gaming community was nothing short of an uproar, with thousands raising concerns that a new precedent has been set - Valve having to bend the knee to payment providers and ban games that weren't previously against the platform's terms of service.

Chinese monitor manufacturer HKC and its sub-brand Antgamer have just teased a new backlit display prototype, teasing an insane 1000Hz refresh rate and zoned backlighting for improved clarity.

Antgamer recently unveiled its new ANT257PF gaming monitor featuring a blistering-fast 750Hz refresh rate, and with most higher-end gaming monitors shipping with between 240Hz to 500Hz refresh rates with the backlight being on continuously, sample-and-hold blur can get in the way and tarnish your high FPS experience.

The company is addressing this with its new 1000Hz Backlit Display at a recent conference in China, with the tweaked 1000Hz monitor sporting a zoned backlight system. On regular LCDs the entire backlight turns on and off as a single unit, where a zoned backlighting system will see the backlight divided up into multiple smaller zones, which can be individually controlled.

The Battlefield 6 Open Beta was a huge success for the company, with millions of gamers jumping into the battlefield, and a "substantial number" of them were on, or below minimum PC specs.

In a new interview with Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl and Eurogamer, we're learning that out of the first initial waves of PC gamers who played the Battlefield 6 Open Beta, most of them were on lower-end PC hardware. Buhl discussed the work that Battlefield Studios and EA did to make sure Battlefield 6 was optimized for older, lower-end hardware.

Buhl explained: "We built maps, and had to go to our artists and tech artists to adjust these maps so they were more performant. We've put in a lot of effort across the board to make sure these performance targets were set, and whether you're on min spec or ultra spec you're going to get the experience we're targeting".

Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen2 might shift into high marketing gear, with rumors swirling that it will be dubbed the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen5, and that we'll see huge 4.61GHz clock speeds and 50% more performance than its predecessor.

In new rumors from Weibo tipster Digital Chat Station, we're hearing new information on Qualcomm's purported Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen5 processor, which was reported tested on Samsung's unreleased Galaxy S26 Edge with a higher-binned part as its performance cores on Geekbench 6 were a huge 4.74GHz, instead of the regular 4.61GHz in previous rumors.

Qualcomm seems to be going with the same 2 + 6 cluster of CPU cores like the Snapdragon 8 Elite, with the Performance cores at a default of 4.61GHz and a tweaked (through higher-binned silicon) of 4.74GHz, with the Efficiency cores at 3.63GHz. On the GPU side, Qualcomm is using the Adreno 840 with the leaker saying that we'll see default clocks of 1.20GHz, which is 100MHz more than the 1.10GHz on Adreno 830.

Intel has admitted it dropped the ball with desktop processors and Arrow Lake CPUs, hoping to turn things around with its next-generation Nova Lake CPUs in 2026.

Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner spoke at the Deutsche Bank 2025 Technology Conference, talking about Intel's upcoming products including desktops and servers, with some comments on consumer CPUs.

He mentioned Intel's high-end CPU positioning and that its Arrow Lake chips had lower gaming performance than their predecessors, and that AMD had picked up aggressively in the same space with its Zen 5-based Ryzen CPUs. AMD has done a phenomenal job with its X3D processors as well, with the super-popular Ryzen 7 9800X3D being a kick-ass gaming CPU.

Yoshi-P weighs in on the current Final Fantasy XIV mod fiasco and explains his stance on how mods can be used in the game.

A bit ago, Square Enix sent a cease and desist order to the creator of the Mare Synchronos mod for Final Fantasy XIV. This sparked uproar in the MMORPG community, sparking fear about other mods shutting down and leading to general controversy. Typically, Square Enix has turned a blind eye to FFXIV mods and has taken a "let it be" approach, but this time they chose to get involved.

Now game director Yoshi-P has stepped in to deliver an official statement on the situation and explains how Square Enix feels about mods in the mega-popular online game. Ultimately, it comes down to two things: Neither Yoshi-P nor the publisher really mind if you use mods as long as you don't infringe upon other players and negatively impact the core gameplay experience.

Hundreds of Blizzard developers have unionized to fight what they call a "passion tax" in the games industry, which can weigh heavily on beleaguered workers.

Microsoft has recognized another union in the video games industry as 450 game developers at Blizzard's Team 3 (Diablo) have voted to come together under the Communication Workers of America (CWA) labor union. The new union joins other recognized groups like ZeniMax Workers United, Raven Software's QA union, and World of Warcraft's collective of QA testers.

Hello Games just released another major update for No Man's Sky that adds new features like ship building, online crews with friends, a new corvette ship class, and ship-free space exploration.

No Man's Sky Voyagers updates the game to Version 6.0, bringing a slew of new features to the space sim. Gamers can now team up together as crewmates on the same ship while playing online, and even build their vessels together with the new craft customization options.

In a bold new step for a game that seems to just one-up itself at every turn, No Man's Sky is now letting players explore the cosmos in their spacesuits. Well...you can float around at least, but more things might come of this in the future.

Microsoft will end the year with 42 million Xbox console users, analyst firm Omdia predicts.

While competitors Nintendo and Sony share console sales figures, Microsoft stopped reporting Xbox units in the disastrous Xbox One era. Since then, Microsoft typically only reveals a few key data points: revenues, maybe an update on monthly active users and time spent playing cloud games. If a few big games launched, odds are that Microsoft once again took over Sony's PlayStation charts because their titles are now breaking exclusivity.

As for Microsoft's home turf, things are looking rather...saturated. The company has acknowledged lack of growth on console, prompting a hard pivot off-platform with breaking software exclusivity and offering services like Game Pass and cloud streaming on PC and mobile. One analyst firm believes that Xbox's user base will 'flatline' to ~42 million by the end of 2025. Other estimates say that the Xbox Series X/S shipments could be as high as 35.9 million, but this isn't technically the installed base of users. The cross-over between the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S generation remains unclear.

PC gamers who access Steam in the UK will soon have to verify their age in order to even see mature games on the storefront.

The UK is ready to start enforcing The Online Safety Act, forcing new strict guidelines on service providers. Valve has announced some changes to how users in the United Kingdom will be able to access Steam, confirming that age verification will now be required to access certain games on the platform.

So, what counts as a mature game on Steam? There are currently over 6,300 games tagged as mature on Steam, and while there are adult-themed games in the mix, there's also big titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and GTA V included. This will effectively gate off access to some of the biggest AAA games to minors, who, under the auspices of the age rating systems, aren't technically supposed to be playing these games anyway.