Latest News - Page 231

Intel's Application Optimization (APO) optimizes thread scheduling for select CPUs to ensure efficient resource allocation. When paired with games with Intel APO profiles, the direct result is improved performance across average frame rates and the all-important 1% lows. Recently, Intel announced that it has expanded APO support to include 15 new games, covering a wide range of genres.

As APO is available for Intel's current desktop lineup of Intel Core Ultra 200 Series CPUs, the company has provided internal benchmarks showing that with APO enabled, game performance can be improved by up to 14%. According to the chart, you can see that when APO is paired with the flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and a GeForce RTX 5090 GPU, performance in the ray-tracing-heavy Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition improves by 14%.

Of course, this is on the extreme end of the scale, with popular multiplayer title World of Warships only seeing a 3% increase in performance and single-player sci-fi horror title The Callisto Protocol seeing a 4% increase. On the plus side, the APO improvements also improve 1% low performance, which, for World of Warships, improves by a respectable 9%.

For the release of its latest RDNA 4-powered generation of desktop Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs, AMD chose SK Hynix as its preferred supplier for the GDDR6 memory found in all models at launch. Since the debut of RDNA 4, Radeon GPUs have been shipping with Samsung VRAM instead of SK Hynix. Although this shift shouldn't significantly impact performance, AMD partner XFX has confirmed that it has been a net positive for its Radeon RX 9060 XT lineup.

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT, available in 8GB and 16GB variants, represents the company's mainstream PC gaming GPU for the Radeon RX 9000 Series - with RDNA 4's enhanced ray-tracing performance and AI-powered FSR 4 upscaling, both offering a viable alternative to NVIDIA's dominant GeForce RTX 5060 Series. According to a blog post on Bilibili (via VideoCardz), XFX notes that its 'V3' models with Samsung GDDR6 VRAM are performing up to 10 degrees cooler than SK Hynix GDDR6 models.

XFX states that the Samsung models reached a maximum memory temperature of 77 degrees Celsius, while the SK Hynix version reached a memory temperature of 87 degrees Celsius. This flow-on effect is what makes this interesting, as it resulted in lower fan speeds and noise, as well as a 20W reduction in GPU power consumption.

Hollow Knight Silksong is currently the best-selling game on both the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2's digital storefronts.

Silksong may end up being one of the best-selling indie games of the year. Team Cherry's new metroidvania has topped the best-sellers charts of multiple storefronts--at launch, it was #1 on Steam, and now it's also the top-seller on the Nintendo eShop.

Both versions of Silksong--the Switch and Switch 2 variants--are the #1 best-sellers on their respective platforms. This trend bodes very well for game sales, considering the original Switch has an installed base of over 150 million (the Switch 2 is currently at 6 million).

Bethesda Game Studios once again teases Starfield's second expansion, this time in a marketing promo with an actual logo.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Starfield is getting a second expansion. Last year, Todd Howard confirmed that a second DLC was on the way, and just last week, Starfield producer Tim Lamb also re-confirmed that a "new DLC story" is in the works. There's just one thing missing: The details. After the controversial reception of Starfield's first expansion Shattered Space, Bethesda needs to make a strong effort to win back fans.

From the sound of the expansion, Terran Armada, and the very retro look of the logo itself, it's possible that Starfield's second expansion is space-themed and will incorporate a lot of the features that fans have been asking for vis-à-vis inter-planetary travel. Fans may be able to expect new levels of ship customization, but this remains speculative.

Another former higher-up Xbox executive speaks out about the risk of subscriptions, especially those like Xbox Game Pass that launch high-value products into a Netflix-for-gaming business model.

Just a bit ago, ex-Bethesda VP Pete Hines criticized subscriptions like Game Pass for not properly valuing games and compensating developers. Now former Xbox Game Studios VP Shannon Loftis echoes this sentiment, saying that the Game Pass subscription model has caused tensions within internal teams. The reason? Game Pass is volatile and the service adds another layer of uncertainty to an already risk-fraught industry.

"As a longtime first-party Xbox developer, I can attest that Pete is correct. While GP can claim a few victories with games that otherwise would have sunk beneath the waves (Human Fall Flat, e.g.), the majority of game adoption on GP comes at the expense of retail revenue, unless the game is engineered from the ground up for post-release monetization. I could (and may someday) write pages on the weird inner tensions this creates," Loftis said on LinkedIn.

Subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass have changed Microsoft's games business and the industry at large. All of the major Big 3 platform-holders have their own subscription offering, but Xbox is unique in its approach: its content is not a catalog bin like the competing Switch Online and PlayStation Plus. Microsoft launches all of its biggest first-party games day one on Game Pass, which can lower both the launch and long-term sales of a game product.

This replacement effect is called "cannibalization," where users will subscribe to Game Pass for $20 instead of buying a game at $70. The game is a one-off purchase, but Game Pass is recurring and can be worth a lot more than $70 over time. That's the gamble Microsoft is taking--the idea is to make Game Pass have enough value to keep users subscribed, and hope that subscriptions become the default way to access games. Why? Subscriptions mean you never own anything, and Microsoft has made its business on perpetually leasing software to consumers.

Cannibalization has caused disruption and tensions with game developers. It appears the problem is that game devs don't have a sure-fire way to properly attach a monetary value to their games, leading to layoffs and studio closures when things go badly. We're now seeing more former game industry figures talk about these disruptions, with ex Bethesda VP Pete Hines adding his voice to the mix.

MachineGames wants to make a third Wolfenstein game, and after the success of Indiana Jones, it could be in the works. But everything remains unclear now that Microsoft is ultimately calling the shots.

The modern Wolfenstein games were always supposed to be a trilogy, but the franchise spawned into a web of content that included two full games, standalone DLC, and even a co-op shooter with microtransactions. Now the devs at MachineGames want to finish BJ Blazkowicz's story and wrap up the trilogy with Wolfenstein 3.

In a recent NoClip documentary on the making of Wolfenstein, MachineGames studio head Jerk Gustafsson says that he "hopes" that his team isn't done with Wolfenstein yet, possibly indicating the third game has yet to be greenlit internally by Microsoft.

Activision and Paramount recently confirmed work was being done on a live-action Call of Duty movie, and now reports have surfaced that Activision turned down esteemed director Steven Spielberg to direct it.

The news comes from outlet Puck, which wrote that Steven Spielberg is a longtime fan of the Call of Duty franchise, and really wanted to direct it as he is a longtime fan of gaming, and Call of Duty, in particular. However, Puck reports that three sources have informed the publication that Activision turned down Spielberg after the famed director wanted full control over the production and marketing for the movie, along with the final cut.

According to Puck, that "spooked the team from Activision," and instead the Microsoft-owned company went with David Ellison's pitch that gave them much more control over the process, which ended up being the now solidified deal with Paramount.

Mark Zuckerberg has filed a lawsuit against Meta over Facebook, accusing him of violating its "standards of impersonation" by creating a Facebook page with his own name.

In what sounds like a bizarre turn of events for the entrepreneur, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and now current CEO of Meta, isn't actually suing his own company, but a bankruptcy lawyer from Indianapolis, Indiana, with the same name has filed a complaint. The lawyer, Mark Zuckerberg, is suing Mark Zuckerberg (the CEO) for his Facebook page being taken down five times in the last eight years, which is a Facebook page he uses to advertise his business, and one he has paid $11,000 to advertise on.

According to the complaint filed on Wednesday, Meta accuses Zuckerberg of impersonating the company's CEO, writing to the lawyer that his Facebook page violates the company's "standards of impersonation". The following day, Zuckerberg (lawyer) told 13News that his account was now enabled, which was later confirmed by Meta, with a spokesperson saying the company has "reinstated Mark Zuckerberg's account, after finding it had been disabled in error." Notably, this issue with Zuckerberg's (lawyer) account has been ongoing since 2017.

Lithium-ion portable battery banks are prone to being quite dangerous, and in the worst-case scenarios, they can burst into flames or even explode.

For example, there was a Delta Air Lines flight that had to make an emergency landing in Fort Myers, Florida, in July 2025, after a portable battery caught fire mid-flight. Lithium-ion batteries are cheap to manufacture, have quite a high energy density, meaning they can contain quite a lot of charge, and can charge quite quickly. But the cons are that the liquid electrolytes are flammable, and if the battery is damaged, overcharged, or shorted, the battery can overheat, swell, and, as we saw with the Delta Air Lines flight, catch fire.

The solution? A new battery technology. Introducing solid-state power banks. KUXIU has sent out its S2, a solid-state power bank that is designed to be much safer than its lithium-ion counterparts, and to demonstrate its safety, I used a hammer to puncture a hole directly in the center of the power bank. Solid-state power banks replace the flammable liquid within lithium-ion battery banks with a solid or gel substance, significantly improving thermal stability, reducing heat buildup, and increasing charging stability.

Lenovo has teased its new concept ThinkBook VertiFlex laptop with a rotatable 14-inch display, and a powerful, feature-packed Thunderbolt 5 smart dock.

The new Lenovo ThinkBook VertiFlex laptop has a 14-inch display inside of an ultra-slim 17.9mm body that weighs only 1.39kg, with the display rotating around depending on how you want to use it. This provides users with the ability to tweak between Portrait and Landscape viewing modes, without having to move the laptop around.

This is great for someone who uses split-screen multitasking, reviewing code, document viewing and writing, and more. Lenovo's new ThinkBook VertiFlex can also tether to your smartphone using Lenovo Smart Connect, so that you get a huge display as a phone mirror (in portrait and all). This is just a concept for now, with Lenovo not clear on whether the VertiFlex laptop would make it to the market.

GIGABYTE has just revealed its new AI TOP CXL R5X4 memory expansion card, letting AI TOP motherboard owners add another 512GB of RAM to their system. Check it out:

The new GIGABYTE AI TOP CXL R5X4 won't work on every motherboard, instead it will only work on two motherboards: the TRX 50 AI TOP and W790 AI TOP, with GIGABYTE reminding users that they should contact the company before making the purchase to make sure.

The AI TOP CXL R5X4 uses the regular PCIe 5.0 x16 interface, supporting CXL 2.0/1.1 operation, with four DDR5 DIMM slots for registered ECC memory modules, for a total of up to 512GB (128GB x 4 sticks). GIGABYTE's new AI TOP CXL R5X4 measures 12.0 x 25.4cm and features a 16-layer HDI PCB.

The developers behind first-party PlayStation game Days Gone are planning another shot at a live service game, or a project with some sort of multiplayer element, new job listings indicate.

Sony Bend is hiring a creative director for a new unspecified game, and based on the requirements, it sounds like it'll be a live service game. The studio requires that candidates have experience with how multiplayer games are developed and designed.

Reports indicate that the Bend, Oregon-based studio was already working on a live service game for Sony, but this project was cancelled, leading to heavy layoffs at the group. It's unclear how this creative director job listing fits into the current plans, or whether or not the listing is old and no longer valid.

Square Enix's Tetsuya Nomura tells fans not to worry about the upcoming sequels in their favorite franchises--the games are in good hands, and everything is going according to plan.

It's been 3 years since Kingdom Hearts IV was revealed with a triumphant CGI trailer. But fans shouldn't be concerned--game director Tetsuya Nomura and his team are making great strides KH4, and publisher Square Enix already has plans on when it'll reveal more footage and gameplay details.

Nomura says the same about Final Fantasy 7 Remake part 3, the final chapter in the multi-generational FF7R trilogy that started in 2019. Things are going smoothly, at least according to Nomura, perhaps reflective of Square Enix's new disciplined approach to games development and cross-platform releases.

Silksong's opening performance may turn into a case study in indie game success, especially with how fast it accumulated over 500K players.

Hollow Knight Silksong is out now, and it's so popular that it crashed multiple stores on release. Now it's setting new player milestones on Steam and breaking its previous records, achieving over 560K peak players on the platform. The numbers are eye-opening to say the least--to put Silksong's performance into perspective, it had more than double No Man's Sky's all-time peak player count.

One of the things that stood out with Silksong was just how fast that it managed to achieve this player count. I watched the game's player counter grow in real time; in little over two hours, I saw Silksong go from 108,879 players to 535,213, which used to be the previous peak (the game has now beaten this by tens of thousands of users). This means that the game tacked on an additional 426,334 players in just a few hours, increasing its player count by nearly five-fold.

Capcom and Legendary Pictures reveal the cast for the new Street Fighter movie, which has now entered production at Paramount.

A date has been set for the new Street Fighter film's premiere: the new live action adaptation will release in theaters on October 16, 2026 ahead of the Halloween season.

The film is set in 1993, in the era when Street Fighter II took over arcades across America, and now has an official logline description:

A team of three developers released Hollow Knight: Silksong yesterday and in less than 24 hours the game has attracted more than half a million players.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is developed by Team Cherry, an Adelaide, Australia, based team that consists of three individuals. Notably, Silksong was the most wishlisted game on Steam, and when it was confirmed at Gamescom 2025 the title was being released in 2025, fans of the franchise that exploded in popularity during the pandemic were elated, as Team Cherry had radio silence on the project for many years.

Now that Silksong is out, the franchise has reached record-breaking numbers, with the new release beating the all-time concurrent player count for the original Hollow Knight game in just 15 minutes. Using data from SteamDB, Silksong has managed to pull 562,814 concurrent players for a new all-time peak record, which was set just 3 hours ago at the time of reporting.

Lenovo's Legion Go 2 has been officially announced, and while it's much bigger in size, it comes with a much bigger price tag - $400 more than the original. But now it also comes with the new Xbox full-screen experience.

The Verge has reported that Lenovo spokesperson Jeff Witt has informed the publication that the Legion Go 2 will be the first handheld outside of the ASUS ROG Ally that's now confirmed to get the new Xbox full-screen experience. The spokesperson said users will be able to switch the Legion Go 2 to Xbox full screen in the spring of 2026, which is only months after the product launches in October this year.

The Legion Go 2 will be the first console to receive Microsoft's highly anticipated Xbox full-screen experience after ASUS launches its new Xbox ROG Ally's on October 16. For those who don't know, the Xbox full-screen experience is running over the top of a cut-down version of Windows 11. What happens when one of these devices is booted up is that the user is presented with a normal Windows 11 login screen, and once logged in, the desktop disappears and the Xbox app opens, hiding the traditional Windows desktop.

The release of the Nintendo Switch 2 introduced a hotly debated feature, the Game Key card. Instead of getting the entire game on the cartridge, the buyer would receive a download code.

For collectors and anyone who enjoys the plug-and-play nature of physical game cards, Game Key cards were the antithesis, and, unfortunately for these users, many studios jumped at the opportunity to use Game Key cards. Notably, Nintendo still provides the option of physical game cards with the entire game on the card itself, meaning no download is required. These cards can hold up to 64GB of storage, which falls short of some bigger games.

However, the size of the physical card may not be the deciding factor, as a Ubisoft developer has explained that performance was the deal breaker between Ubisoft going with a physical card release or the Game Key card with a download for the release of Star Wars Outlaws on September 4. In a social media post, audio architect Rob Bantin said the Snowdrop engine "relies heavily on disk streaming for its open world environments," and that "the Switch 2 cards simply didn't give the performance we needed at the quality target we were going for."

NBA 2K26 is launching this week, and 2K Sports has taken the opportunity to tease that it's "going back to school," with a new experience.

In a new X post, 2K has confirmed that it's currently working on a "college basketball experience" that will feature "more than 100 programs across the country, from powerhouses to Cinderella stories". Notably, EA originally had a proposal for an exclusive game with the College Licensing Company (CLC), which was approved, and would have included all Division 1 men's and women's college basketball programs. The title was planned for release in 2028, but schools didn't agree to the exclusivity.

Then reports began popping up that 2K was pursuing licensing, with 2K's owner, Take-Two Interactive, changing its plans from making college teams a DLC in NBA 2K to making an entire game. As of now, UCLA has signed an agreement with 2K, and now it appears 2K is on the hunt to get more schools on board for the upcoming title. As for when it will release, reports indicate that a college basketball video game could be released as soon as 2027, but that will depend on how many schools sign on.