Latest News - Page 206

Sony's baseball simulation series recently came to Xbox, and now it could also be coming to PC.

Sony's San Diego studio is hiring for a PC graphics engineer, potentially indicating that MLB The Show will cross over to PC.

"Come join San Diego Studio making a AAA PC title. Our focus is on delivering innovative, high quality gaming experiences. We are seeking a Senior PC Graphics Programmer to join our team in advancing the visual and technical quality of a AAA PC title," the job listing reads.

Hundreds of Blizzard's tech developers have unionized with the Communication Workers of America.

As the video games industry labor market continues to contract, more workers are unionizing in the effort to secure a better foothold in a volatile sector. It's been revealed that almost 400 Blizzard developers have chosen to organize under the CWA labor union, joining other unions within Microsoft's walls.

"We are forming a union to hold leadership accountable and to ensure that we can focus on building amazing experiences for the gaming community," said organizing committee member and Principal Software Engineer Daniel Weltz.

ASUS has just launched its first-ever AMD-powered ROG NUC Mini PC, packing the flagship Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor, and offering up to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU. Check it out:

ASUS announced earlier this month that its deal with Intel was over, and that it had taken over the ownership and responsibility for Intel's NUC (Next Unit of Computing). This means that ASUS no longer needs to manufacture and market its NUC systems on Intel 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th Gen CPUs... and the first thing it did was unleash a new AMD Ryzen-powered NUC.

The new ROG NUC 9 Mini PC is the first-ever AMD Ryzen CPU-powered system, with ASUS opting to use the flagship Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor which packs 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 processing power, and 128MB of L3 cache and AMD's innovative second-gen 3D V-Cache for even more gaming performance.

Apple has launched its new M5-powered iPad Pro, calling it "the most powerful and intelligent iPad ever" which also features Apple's new in-house C1X and N1 processors. Check it out:

The new M5 iPad Pro has been rumored for a while now, launching with a refined minimalist design language, and is now the thinnest product in its lineup. The new 11-inch M5 iPad Pro is only 5.3mm thick, while the bigger 12.9-inch version is just 5.1mm thick, with both of the new iPad Pros feeling sturdier through the use of precision aluminum machining.

We've also got the new Ultra Retina HDR display with tandem OLED technology for deeper blacks, more brightness, and improved HDR. Inside, Apple's new M5 processor is at the heart of the new iPad Pro, with up to 10 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores, with each of them featuring a Neural Processor for improved AI and gaming performance.

Quantic Dream has revealed that it's making a new game called Spellcasters Chronicles, a free 3v3 MOBA outing.

It's a major change in direction as the developer acknowledges (we'll come back to that). The game was revealed on X and looks to be typical MOBA fare with teams of three.

As you can see in the above trailer, you're going to be flying around at pace, chucking spells at your enemies and summoning creatures (with some kind of deck building element for both your creatures and the spells that you wield).

Electronic Arts (EA) was recently bought out by a consortium that is made up of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners investment firm for $55 billion. Now, a union representing EA workers has publicly opposed the sale and privatization of the company, saying employees weren't properly represented during the sale negotiations.

The statement names the United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433, along with the Communication Workers of America (CWA), as now very concerned that the privatization of EA will lead to company layoffs. The union states EA is "not a struggling company," with "annual revenues reaching $7.5 billion and $1 billion in profit each year".

The statement continues, and says EA's success has been "driven by the tens of thousands of EA workers," which made "EA worth buying in the first place."

The Communication Workers of America (CWA) labor union has issued a statement that opposes EA's proposed $55 billion sale.

EA is being taken private in a substantial $55 billion deal. A consortium is buying out EA's shares in the largest-ever leveraged buyout in tech history, consisting of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners--the investment firm of US President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

There's been pushback against the deal, as EA remains the largest US-based independent publisher that the video games industry has left, following Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Labor union CWA has issued a statement on the buyout, expressing concerns that the deal will trigger mass layoffs, project cancellations, and significant labor disruptions--as major industry-shaking acquisitions, sales, and consolidations are wont to do. The EA buyout comes with $20 billion in "junk" debt, indicating unfavorably high interest rates against EA, which could trigger more layoffs and cost cutting. Then there's EA's potent generative AI on the other end of the worries.

Battlefield 6 is an even bigger success than analysts had predicted.

EA has confirmed Battlefield 6 is the fastest-selling game in the franchise with over 7 million copies sold in 3 days on all platforms, making it one of the best-selling games of the year at launch. These numbers pose an interesting challenge to Call of Duty's reigning Modern Warfare 2, which sold an estimated 14.3 million copies in 10 days.

"Following a record-shattering Open Beta in August, Battlefield 6 now has the biggest opening ever in the storied Battlefield franchise. Battlefield 6 hit all-time highs for franchise sales during the first three days of launch, selling over 7 million copies and counting," EA confirmed in a press release.

If you are a Windows 11 user who likes to switch between light and dark modes depending on the time of day, Microsoft has introduced a new feature just for you.

Microsoft has added Light Switch to the suite of PowerToys, an app available for download from the Microsoft Store that includes various features, tips, and instructions on maximizing Windows 11 functionality. PowerToys is designed for Windows power users, but I recommend downloading it and taking a look at what it offers. There are some interesting tips and tricks inside that may speed up your workflow or make your Windows 11 experience easier.

As for Light Switch, users can navigate to the feature within the side bar on the left-hand side of PowerToys, and once pressed, they will be presented with several different customization options. Users will be able to change the time at which light and dark mode are automatically switched on, and which parts of the PC the modes are applied to. For example, I have set Light Switch to Manual and selected dark mode to apply to all parts of my system, including supported applications.

In late July, Sony filed a lawsuit against Chinese publisher Tencent, alleging Tencent's game "Light of Motiram" copies key elements from Sony and Guerrilla Games' Horizon franchise, including story, characters, art style, and branding.

Sony made three claims for relief across seven instances of harm, and pushed for a judge to force Tencent into admitting it allegedly infringed on Sony's Horizon intellectual property. Furthermore, Sony demanded that Tencent destroy all promotional material that infringes on the Horizon IP, along with paying $150,000 for each instance of infringement. Furthermore, Sony seeks costs, expenses, and damages.

These allegations were addressed by Tencent, which altered the Light of Motiram's Steam page, including the removal of specific screenshots and modifications to the game's description. Additionally, Tencent fired back with a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that Horizon franchise developer Guerrilla Games had admitted that Horizon was not an original idea.

Battlefield 6 is off to a roaring start with millions of players flocking to the military shooter to cause absolute mayhem in whatever way they possibly can. But what if you could cause that mayhem in more game modes? Well, that just might be the case as datamining has revealed what may be on the horizon.

A new report from Insider Gaming has cited several lines of code that suggest Battlefield 6 could be getting six new game modes. Yes, six. Not one, or two, but six. Currently, Battlefield 6 has the following game modes: Conquest, Breakthrough, Rush, and Domination. But if this datamining proves to be accurate, we could also see the addition of Raid, Payload, Sabotage, SquadShootout, Strikepoint, and TankHunt.

The publication discovered these lines of code within the files of Battlefield 6, leading to speculation that developers are currently working on them and that they will be released at a later date. For those who don't know, the codename for Battlefield 6 within its files is "Glacier," and "MP" refers to multiplayer. Notably, Insider Gaming also discovered evidence that naval combat is being worked on by the developers, which is something that has been officially recognized by Battlefield Studios as a community request.

Apple just announced a refresh of its MacBook Pro line-up, with the new models featuring the latest M5 chip. But not every owner of Apple's latest MacBook Pro will get a charger in the box, as the company has decided to leave it out for a selection of its customers.

Apple unveiled the new 14-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M5 chip yesterday via a press release, and the new model is largely unchanged from the previous generation, besides the new and improved M5 chip. Reports indicate the new M5 chip uses the same fabrication process as the M4, sporting 10 GPU cores and 10 CPU cores, along with a 16-core neural engine. Apple touts the M5 chip as having the "world's fastest CPU core" with up to 20 percent faster multithreaded performance compared to the previous gen M4 chip.

As for the GPU, Apple states the M5 chip will offer 1.6x faster graphics performance in pro apps and 1.6x higher frame rates in games compared to the previous generation. Moreover, Apple states the M5 MacBook Pro will perform 1.8x faster in "AI video-enhancing performance" in Topaz Video, along with 1.7x faster 3D rendering in Blender, and 1.2x faster build performance during code compiling in Xcode.

The US government has raised concerns with the $55 billion buyout of Electronic Arts (EA) by a consortium that is made up of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners investment firm.

In a letter penned by senators Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the senators express concern about the buyout's potential to result in foreign influence campaigns and general national security risks. The senators point to PIF and its "reputation" as a strategic arm of the Saudi government, and how Saudi Arabia is making its way into different facets of cultural institutions, such as sports and video games.

Additionally, the letter states that Saudi Arabia's attempt at buying influence can be seen through the acquisition of EA, as the company was purchased at more than $10 billion above EA's trading value, which is strange considering EA's stock has largely remained stagnant for half a decade. The senators also point to the involvement of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.

A few days ago, Valve's Steam broke its CCU (concurrent user) record with 41.6 million PC gamers (or 41,666,455 to be exact). This impressive figure represents a staggering 10 million more users than the concurrent user records from 2022 and 2023, serving as a reminder that the global PC gaming market continues to grow and expand, with Steam leading the charge.

This figure isn't a surge or anomaly, as tens of millions of PC gamers log into Steam every day or keep their PCs on. However, with this new CCU milestone recorded on October 12, many are attributing it to the recent string of popular PC game releases: namely, Battlefield 6 and Hollow Knight: Silksong. That, along with the latest Steam Next Fest, which offers gamers a bunch of demos of unreleased titles to play.

That said, free-to-play titles like Counter-Strike 2, DOTA 2, and PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS continue to be the most played games on the platform. As of writing, Battlefield 6 is sitting in third place as the most played game on Steam, with games Banan, Bongo Cat, Delta Force, Marvel Rivals, and Warframe rounding out the top ten.

PowerColor's range of custom Radeon GPUs represents some of the most highly sought-after models among PC gamers thanks to their stylish designs, lighting, and overall thermal performance. And its latest, the new PowerColor Hellhound Reva AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB GDDR6 graphics card, is no different. However, it's a GPU that follows the recent trend of GPU makers creating characters and designing products around them.

Here, 'Reva' is a 22-year-old female from the distant future who has travelled to current-day Earth that has cat-like ears and 'Shatterclaw' made from the "strongest metal particles" that can break through both physical and "energy" shields. She also possesses 'Chrono Sight' that lets her predict the next 30 seconds of the future. And to top it off, she looks to be part-robot that somehow only weighs 49 kilograms.

Granted, it's all a little silly and fun, and there's definitely a market for attractive anime-inspired females adorning PC gaming gear. The Hellhound Reva Radeon RX 9070 XT appears to be a special edition model, as it features Reva on the metal backplate and comes packed with Reva goodies.

Although its internal custom GPUs are designed and built for its Legion PC gaming systems, LENOVO is expanding its offerings by introducing its first RDNA 4-powered custom graphics cards with the LENOVO Legion Radeon RX 9070 XT. This new GPU is included as an option for the 2025 Blade 7000P Mobile on Desktop (MoDT) gaming PC, which pairs desktop graphics with an AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D or Ryzen 9 8945HX mobile processor.

The GPU sports a similar design to the company's custom GeForce RTX 50 Series cards, resembling a stylish triple-slot brushed metal brick with RGB lighting on the side. Spec-wise, LENOVO's variant appears to be based on AMD's reference design, featuring a Boost Clock speed of 2970 MHz and 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit interface.

This isn't the first time LENOVO has offered Radeon products as part of its PC line-up; however, it's the first time the company is offering AMD's flagship offering, as the Radeon RX 9070 XT is currently the most powerful Radeon gaming option on the market.

Last week, we reported on Phison's CEO discussing "severe shortages" expected to hit the NAND-based flash memory and SSD market due to a manufacturing shift prioritizing AI data centers and systems. This week, ADATA chairman Chen Lebai (via DigiTimes) has chimed in to confirm that DRAM, NAND Flash, SSDs, and even traditional HDDs are about to face an unprecedented and historic shortage as we head into 2026.

As foundries struggle to keep up with demand, including prominent players like Samsung Electronics, Micron, and SK Hynix, this will not only lead to rising prices but also make it much harder for consumers and non-AI-focused customers to get what they need. ADATA's chairman notes that when it comes to accessing stock for its own products, it's now competing directly with large cloud-based companies that are buying as much capacity as they can for their data centers.

He also states that this is the first time he has seen a situation where everything from DDR4 and DDR5 memory to NAND-based SSDs and traditional HDDs is experiencing simultaneous shortages. It has already reached the point where Chen Lebai is instructing his sales teams at ADATA to sell sparingly and focus on existing customers.

For PC gaming and hardware enthusiasts, it's relatively common knowledge that NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card is restricted for sale in China. This means that NVIDIA's partners are unable to export this particular RTX Blackwell GPU to the region, which is why the GeForce RTX 5090D and RTX 5090D V2 GPUs were created. These China-only cut-down models comply with the US government-based export restrictions and controls on GPUs that can be sold in China.

And this is why a recent Reddit post showcasing a picture that claims to be from China has gone viral. The image shows pellets full of brand-new GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards, the full-fat restricted versions, with what appears to be hundreds of cards. And to top it off, they're all MSI models, with the company's Ventus 3X and Gaming Trio variants clearly visible.

Since these GPU restrictions, which also cover AI and data center NVIDIA cards, went into place, there have been reports of companies and third parties circumventing the export restrictions. Allegedly, they are doing this by funneling GPUs into China via Singapore, and there are investigations underway. It's a sensitive topic, and with this new picture depicting hundreds of MSI-branded GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs making their way to China, the company has released a statement that says, no, it's not secretly selling RTX 5090s in the region.

Netflix will use generative AI to make new games and interactive experiences for its subscribers, and is hiring a high-salaried director to lead the initiative.

Netflix has been making a big splash into gaming over the last few years. The streamer acquired multiple studios and brokered deals to secure some of the most popular mobile game ports, including Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto trilogy remaster. Netflix's tactics have been anything but ordinary, and that trend will continue as the company tries to find new ways to bring value to its IP catalog.

Generative AI is one of the biggest experimental technologies that Netflix is willing to try, at least for its gaming ambitions. Everyone seems to be using generative AI for different things--Xbox is using it to remove developers from the equation altogether with its MUSE gen AI, and EA created their own ChatGPT chat bot that uses prompts to change in-game worlds on-the-fly. Netflix isn't quite sure what they want to use their gen AI for when it comes to games, but they did just bring games natively right into the TV app with mobile phones as controllers. So things are clearly ramping up.

AMD has showcased its next-gen Helios rack-scale AI solution, teaming with Meta and the Open Compute Project community for the most advanced rack-scale reference system from AMD.

AMD's next-gen Helios AI rack is powered by the AMD CDNA architecture, with next-gen Instinct MI450 series GPUs rocking up to 432GB of next-gen HBM4 memory, and up to 19.6TB/sec of memory bandwidth. Inside, AMD's new Helios AI rack will house 72 x MI450 series AI GPUs that delivers up to 1.4 exaFLOPS of FP8 and 2.9 exaFLOPS of FP4 performance, with 31 TB of total HBM4 memory and 1.4 PB/s of aggregate bandwidth - a generational leap that enables trillion parameter training and large scale AI inference.

Helios also sports up to 260TB/sec of scale-up interconnect bandwidth, backed by 43TB/sec of Ethernet-based scale-out bandwidth, making sure that there is seamless communication between GPUs, nodes, and racks. AMD says that its next-gen Helios AI system delivers up to an incredible 17.9x higher performance over previous-gen racks, and 50% more memory capacity and bandwidth than NVIDIA's next-gen Vera Rubin AI system.