KIOXIA has announced that it has begun sampling its next-generation Universal Flash Storage (UFS) Ver. 4.1 memory and storage devices in a JEDEC-standard package built for automotive applications. With an in-house designed controller and the company's impressive 8th generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology, UFS 4.1 devices offer 2.1 times the sequential read performance and 2.5 times the sequential write performance as previous-gen UFS 3.1 devices.

You can also expect to see similar gains in random read and random write performance when comparing new UFS 4.1 devices to UFS 3.1 devices, with 2.1 times and 3.7 times the performance, respectively. KIOXIA notes that UFS 4.1 was built for the next generation of in-vehicle systems and the future of "data-intensive automotive environments," which covers everything from entertainment through to telematics and integrating with on-board computers.

Available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities, KIOXIA's next-gen devices are UFS 4.1 Specification compliant, which includes new performance boosting technologies like WriteBooster Buffer Resizing and Pinned Partial Flush Mode. UFS 4.1 also introduces vendor-specific device health descriptor features to improve monitoring and predictive maintenance. Plus, with KIOXIA's 8th generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory that introduces CBA (CMOS directly Bonded to Array) technology, you've also got the performance and efficiency gains from the company's latest 3D stacking tech.

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud gaming library continues to expand in August 2025, with eight new titles joining the service this week and another ten more announced, so far, for the remainder of the month. The list includes Obsidian's Grounded 2, which is now available to play in Early Access on Steam and PC Game Pass, and the highly anticipated Mafia: The Old Country, which is out next week.

GeForce NOW's unique take on cloud gaming has been a success for the company. Not only does its subscription model include cloud access to games that you own or have access to as part of Xbox's PC Game Pass subscription service, but it also offers high-quality streaming on powerful GeForce RTX hardware with access to technologies like DLSS, G-SYNC, and more.

In addition to the miniaturized backyard-survival of Grounded 2, this week's GeForce NOW additions also include new Steam releases like Frosthaven and Dead Take, as well as PC Game Pass and Xbox arrivals like Farming Simulator 25 and High on Life. Here's the complete list of games added this week, and what's been announced so far for August 2025.

Sony's next-generation PlayStation 6 is reportedly 3 x faster than the standard PS5, it'll use less power and be cheaper than the PS5 when it launches in either late 2027 or early 2028.

In a new video from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, he reports on some of the early PS6 specs which packs AMD's next-gen semi-custom "Orion" APU. MLID says that the new Orion APU will feature 8 x Zen 6 (or later) CPU cores, between 40 and 48 RDNA 5-based Compute Units with GPU clocks over 3.0GHz, with GDDR7 memory on a 160-bit or 192-bit memory bus with 32Gbps speeds.

MLID says that the increased rasterization performance of the next-gen PS6 over the PS5 is expected to be a whopping 3x with ray tracing (RT) uplifts "expected to be higher".

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the year's biggest surprises, a new turn-based RPG that blends real-time mechanics from a small studio out of France. The game has quickly become one of the most celebrated game releases of the year. Released in April, it's currently sitting on an impressive Metacritic score of 93, with a user score of 9.7, and an 'Overwhelmingly Positive' rating on Steam with over 100,000 reviews posted so far.

With stunning art direction and modern Unreal Engine 5-powered tech, it's also a looker, with fantastical and detailed environments, characters, and unique enemies. Although it's been out for a couple of months now, this week Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has added DLSS 4 With Multi Frame Generation support on PC, allowing PC gamers with GeForce RTX graphics cards to boost performance, image fidelity, and responsiveness.

And it's not the only Japanese-style RPG getting DLSS 4 support this week, as Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma now supports DLSS 4 With Frame Generation via the DLSS Override feature in the NVIDIA App. This is a game with a more traditional anime-inspired look, with real-time combat, and the life-sim-style mechanics of the Rune Factory "fantasy role-playing social simulation" series.

GeForce Game Ready Driver 580.88 - WHQL is here, and in addition to adding day one support for Mafia: The Old Country, which is out on August 8, it fixes several bugs alongside adding 62 new G-SYNC Compatible gaming displays. Mafia: The Old Country, from Hangar 13 and 2K, is the latest entry in the long-running crime-saga series, with the action taking place in 1900s Sicily.

The Unreal-powered title will require a decently specced rig to run, with the minimum GPU for 1080p with upscaling listed as the GeForce RTX 2070. And that's the minimum, with the developers recommending PC players jump in with a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or equivalent graphics card. On the plus side, GeForce gamers have access to DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, DLSS Frame Generation, DLSS Super Resolution, and NVIDIA Reflex to boost performance, fidelity, and responsiveness.

The latest driver also adds support for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's DLSS 4 update, which brings the technology to one of the most talked about and celebrated games of the year. Outside of game support, GeForce Game Ready Driver 580.88 also adds a whopping 62 new G-SYNC Compatible displays, which is a seal of approval that you're going to get a fantastic baseline Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) experience.

NVIDIA has announced that it's ending GeForce Game Ready Driver support for its Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures after a final driver release in October 2025. This includes popular GeForce GTX 10 Series graphics cards like the GTX 1060, 1070, and 1080. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey results, around 6.5% of all PC gamers are still rocking a Pascal-powered GeForce GTX 10 Series GPU.

There are more GeForce GTX 10 Series GPUs than there are Radeon RX 7000 or RX 9000 Series cards. Although Game Ready Driver support is ending for these older NVIDIA GeForce architectures, which covers day one support and optimization for new games and fixes, NVIDIA will still be releasing security updates for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs for the next three years.

"GeForce GPUs based on Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures will transition to receiving quarterly security updates for the next three years (through October 2028)," NVIDIA writes. "Our support lifetime for these GPUs reaches up to 11 years, well beyond industry norms."

Steam's new video player came at a pretty high cost--Valve had to re-encode all of the game trailers that have ever been uploaded to the PC store.

Valve just surprise launched a nifty update to Steam's video player that makes it much more bandwidth-friendly, which is a big deal if you ever need to watch your data thresholds (Steam, in particular, is known for being a gargantuan data hog on mobile). The video player is also much more functional on non-desktop platforms, including the Steam Deck, devices running Steam Big Picture Mode, and mobiles like Apple's iPhone.

This endeavor took some time, though; according to Valve, the company had to tweak every single game video file uploaded to the Steam library. This amounted to 400,000 files in all, so the next time you hop on Steam and watch some footage, be aware of the effort that went into making it work.

The Metal Gear Solid franchise breaks 63 million copies sold ahead of the anticipated MGS3 remake.

Metal Gear is one of the most enduring video game franchises on the planet. According to Konami's latest company profile report, Metal Gear Solid has sold approximately 63.3 million copies across all platforms as of June 2025. Such a high volume of sales across only 11 game releases is quite a feat, especially with the last big Metal Gear game releasing 10 years ago with 2015's The Phantom Pain. The last update that we had made was 2 years ago, where MGS sales were at 60 million.

Konami is poised to release the new Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater MGS3 remake later in August, and it's possible that Delta could push total franchise sales by 1-2 million units at launch. With two Metal Gear releases in the last couple of years--The Metal Gear Solid Master Collection and the aforementioned MGS3 remake--the company seems highly invested in the series.

Xbox PC is out, Xbox on PC is in...at least that appears to be the case.

A bit ago, Microsoft quizzically changed its branding terminology for PC gaming. Reference to Windows was removed altogether; Microsoft's shiny new name for the platform was Xbox PC. This confused gamers worldwide, especially with reports that Microsoft's next Xbox will be a PC-console hybrid that runs Windows.

Now it looks like Microsoft may have changed branding once more. "Xbox PC" has become "Xbox on PC," with the new moniker showing up in promotional materials for Grounded 2 and a new Age of Mythology expansion.

Microsoft has more best-selling games on PlayStation than it does on its own Xbox platform, new data from Circana's Q2 report has revealed.

New data may indicate how Xbox users choose to spend money on the platform, at least in the United States. According to Circana's Q2 games industry report, Microsoft had more best-selling games on the rival PlayStation Store than it did on its own Xbox console platform.

The data shows that for Q2 2025, which runs from April 6 - July 5, Microsoft took up six slots on the PlayStation Store's top 10 best-sellers list in the US. Conversely, Microsoft only had four of the ten best-sellers on Xbox consoles. This trend could indicate that Xbox console gamers subscribe to Xbox Game Pass to supplement game purchases, however Oblivion's place on the Xbox charts does confirm that Xbox gamers do still choose to buy first-party games en masse.

Oblivion Remastered has reached 9 million players in little over 3 months after release.

The new Oblivion remake just unlocked another performance milestone, reaching a whopping 9 million players across consoles and PC. That's up +5 million users since April, where Xbox revealed that Oblivion Remastered had reached 4 million players just days after launch.

For reference, it took the original Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion nearly 10 years to reach this many players, as the game had sold 9.5 million copies by 2015.

Battlefield 6 embraces user-generated content (UGC) with the new Portal mode, allowing gamers to create and share custom content.

Battlefield 6 is more than just a game, it's a platform, and a clear example of EA embracing what I've referred to as Games-as-a-Platform.

The platform aspect that EA refers to is the culmination of all of Battlefield 6's parts, including Portal, which might be one of the most important things for the game's long-term use. Portal is basically Battlefield's version of Halo Forge that was made specifically for customs. This time around Portal is much more robust, giving players what looks to be a powerful SDK for custom map and mode creation.

The Battlefield 6 multiplayer reveal trailer has just gone live, and more than 300,000 people were tuned into the livestream to witness the mayhem.

Battlefield Labs has officially released the multiplayer trailer, and the destruction has been dialed to the maximum for this new Battlefield. The new trailer showed quite a lot, including various weapons, vehicles, both sides of the fight (Pax Armata and NATO), and new mechanics such as being able to drag downed allies. Additionally, the trailer showcases various maps, locations, and environments.

According to Battlefield Labs, destruction is going to be more important than ever in Battlefield 6, as players will be able to use environmental destruction to their advantage to take out high-ground enemies positioned on it, destroying cover, creating cover, and more. Battlefield Labs also confirmed that classes are back: Assault, Engineer, Recon, and Support. Each of the classes will have distinct combat advantages.

The official unveiling of the Battlefield 6 multiplayer is only two hours away, and ahead of the unveiling, a portion of the trailer has leaked online, revealing that it features Limp Bizkit's song "Break Stuff".

It's just one of those days for EA, and much like everything surrounding Battlefield 6, the highly anticipated multiplayer event has leaked ahead of time. Unfortunately for hungry fans of the franchise, the leak is only the last 15 seconds of the upcoming trailer, and it doesn't show that much.

We catch glimpses of vehicles such as tanks being used to take down helicopters, first-person views of fighter jets being piloted, a soldier throwing a smoke grenade to provide cover for a downed teammate before initiating the new drag mechanic, and, of course, intense levels of environmental destruction.

Microsoft has made another change in Windows 11 which is for European users only, moving away from the practice of promoting Edge - and we wish these nuances would be more widely deployed to the US and elsewhere.

Windows Latest reports that in the European Economic Area (EEA), the widgets board in Windows 11 now opens links in the default browser, rather than overriding that preference to use Microsoft's own Edge app.

So, if you've set Chrome - or Firefox, Opera, or whatever alternative - as your default web browser, links from the widget panel will open in that browser, as they should do.

In a recent earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the future and how AI will be integrated into our everyday lives, specifically with a device that enables the AI to see what we see, hear what we hear, and speak directly to us.

That device is smart glasses, or AI-infused smart glasses. Zuckerberg believes that in the future, if you don't have AI smart glasses or some way to immediately interact with AI, "probably [going to be] at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people." This take from Zuckerberg isn't surprising, and when looking ahead, generally it does make sense for smart glasses to be the device to one day make the smartphone obsolete, given the small form factor, familiarity with the form factor, and already established societal integration.

However, for smartphones to be made obsolete, the glasses would need to at the very least do everything a standard smartphone can do, while maintaining a similar price. The tech just isn't there yet, but Meta is working on that. Meta has been working on smart glasses such as its Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Oakley Meta glasses that enable users to listen to music, take photos and videos, and ask Meta AI questions about what they are looking at in real life.

Micron has just unveiled the world's first Gen6 SSD with the introduction of its new Micron 9650 Gen6 SSD, capable of up to 28GB/sec reads for next-gen Gen6-ready data centers.

The new Micron 9650 Gen6 SSD features its in-house G9 NAND flash, aimed at high performance and low latencies for data center servers. Micron's new family of three SSDs uses vertical integration and its in-house G9 NAND, DRAM, and firmware to ensure that its new SSDs pack leading performance for servers, high capacity, high speeds, lower latencies, all while consuming less power.

Micron's new 9650 Gen6 SSD has up to 28GB/sec of sequential read speeds -- twice that of the 14GB/sec capable in Gen5 SSDs -- and up to 14GB/sec in sequential writes. This means that Micron's new 9650 Gen6 SSD has the fastest speeds out of the box, but does it with 25% improved efficiency at random writes, and up to 67% better efficiency at random reads.

NVIDIA is reportedly considering the move to CoWoP (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Platform) PCB packaging for its next-gen Rubin R150 AI GPUs.

In a new report from Digitimes, their sources have said NVIDIA is looking into CoWoP PCB packaging for its next-gen AI GPUs, with CoWoP (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Platform) PCB removing the package substrate and connects the interposer directly onto the motherboard.

There are some major benefits to using CoWoP with Signal and Power integrity improvements, reduction in substrate losses, and bringing the voltage regulation closer to the main GPU die. These interfaces also increase the NVLink IC capabilities, while CoWoP packaging also doesn't require a package lid, which means the thermal solution is capable of making direct contact with the silicon. This means reduced costs as there's no need for a package lid, as it's eliminated with CoWoP.

Xbox Game Pass made nearly $5 billion in annual revenue in FY25, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed in a recent conference call.

Microsoft is typically coy with Game Pass numbers, but today the company released a surprising bit of info about the service. Game Pass generated nearly $5 billion in service revenues throughout FY25, company CEO Satya Nadella confirmed, but no one single game drove results. An interesting tidbit: At $5 billion annual revenue, Game Pass would have made up 21% of Xbox's total revenues ($23.455 billion).

The Microsoft CEO also said that 50 million people played Call of Duty Black Ops 6, indicating that the game significantly weighted Game Pass sign-ups. Minecraft also saw huge engagement and revenue thanks to the wildly successful Minecraft movie, and Nadella also highlighted Microsoft's broad business strategy for Xbox, confirming that over 40 games were in development.

Microsoft's games division has delivered a record-breaking $23 billion in annual revenue for the first time ever.

Xbox's full-year results are in, and they're triumphantly good: Microsoft generated $23.455 billion from gaming throughout FY25, more than it ever has before. This is a staggering milestone for the Xbox brand as it approaches PlayStation levels of annual revenue; for reference, Sony made nearly $30 billion from PlayStation last fiscal year.

Software and services led the charge, accounting for a whopping 95% of annual Xbox revenues. Hardware saw a decline by -25% year-over-year to $270 million, and as numbers-cruncher Welfare JBP notes, this year delivered the sixth lowest hardware revenues in Xbox history.