Latest News - Page 249

DeepSeek rattled the AI industry when it unveiled the R1 model earlier this year, proving that a sophisticated AI model doesn't need an egregious amount of GPU horsepower to compete with already existing AI models.

But where is the company's next-generation AI model, R2? According to a report from the Financial Times, the upcoming AI model was blundered when the company was pressured by the Chinese government to use Huawei chips to develop it. Three unnamed sources spoke to the publication and said the upcoming model is struggling in development due to unstable Huawei chips, immature software, and other factors. Notably, these unnamed individuals said the new model wasn't even able to complete a single training run.

DeepSeek R2 was initially planned for release in May 2025, but was postponed with no reason provided. It was noted that the R2 model's performance was falling below the standards set by the company, specifically DeepSeek's CEO Liang Wenfeng. There were also trade restrictions on NVIDIA's AI GPUs, which are now coming down as a new deal has been struck between AI GPU makers and the US government.

The gameplay reveal for Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is scheduled to take place at Gamescom 2025, which is only a few days away, but ahead of the unveiling, the playable characters in the four-player co-op campaign have been leaked.

The leak comes from prominent Call of Duty leaker TheGhostofHope, who took to their X account to share the names and images of the four characters. According to the leaker, players will be able to select from the following characters: David "Section" Mason, Mike Harper, Eric Samuels, and Chloe "Karma" Lynch. As for what is confirmed, the official Call of Duty X account recently shared the below post, which stated it will be revealing Black Ops 7 on stage at Gamescom 2025 on August 19.

The reveal for Black Ops 7 begins at 11 AM PT and will be on Gamescom's official YouTube and Twitch channels. Considering the last reveal for Black Ops 7 was a cinematic trailer, we can expect the upcoming worldwide reveal to feature gameplay.

A video posted to X by creator ottr has showcased the difference in gun recoil between controllers and mouse & keyboard in Battlefield 6.

With the second open beta coming to a close, some players may have felt like they have been absolutely obliterated by enemies when it comes to aim, and while in most cases this is most certainly a skill issue, a previously undiscovered factor may also be at play. Ottr showcases the difference in recoil between firing a weapon with a mouse and firing it with a controller. Ottr uses the same weapon and revealed that firing weapons with a controller has less recoil than with a mouse.

The footage shows a smaller spread of bullet holes when the weapon is fired using a controller, while also having less recoil in general. Now, is this aim assist? No, technically not, as aim assist only kicks in when a player is aiming at an enemy target. So, imagine this recoil combined with the natural assist that controllers give players.

Meta is currently preparing to release its first smart glasses with a dedicated display, and according to reports, the glasses will be cheaper than initially anticipated.

A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a known industry insider with a reliable track record for the movements of big tech companies operating in Silicon Valley, suggests that Meta is prepared to accept lower margins to boost demand for the upcoming smart glasses. Notably, the new glasses are being called Hypernova internally, and are a precursor to the fully-fledged augmented reality glasses the company is striving towards.

Gurman writes that the new glasses will be unveiled sometime next month, and they will feature a small screen for mini apps and alerts. The screen will be located in the right-hand lens of the smart glasses and can be controlled with the included wrist accessory. As for the unreleased product's price, previous estimations pegged the price tag to be $1,000, which is a steady jump from the $200 to $400 Meta Ray-Ban glasses that don't feature any displays.

Samsung is losing its grip on the DRAM market as SK Hynix continues to eat away at what was once a completely Samsung-dominated sector of the industry.

A new report from Korean media has claimed SK Hynix has now stolen away the DRAM crown from Samsung, a position the company held strongly for approximately 10 years. What has SK Hynix done to achieve this newfound success? HBM technologies are the driving factor behind SK Hynix climbing to the top of the DRAM market, with the company positioning itself to become the first option for any HBM needs.

Reports indicate that Samsung has experienced the most significant drop in market share since the company began sharing its records in 1999, with the Korean giant dropping from 41.5% to 32.7%.

Competitive esports gamers may need to get their drool rags out for this one, as the world's first 750Hz refresh rate gaming monitor has been launched.

Yes, that figure is real. A 750Hz gaming monitor has been launched by HKC, and it's specifically named the Ant esports ANT257PF. During CES earlier this year, Koorui announced the G7, a 750Hz refresh rate TN panel gaming monitor. However, that monitor has yet to be released, meaning HKC has swooped in to be crowned the world's first for the 750Hz specification.

The ANT257PF measures at 24.5 inches and features a Fast TN panel at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (FHD). As you can probably imagine, with such an intense refresh rate, and not to mention the name of the product, HKC is aiming the ANT257PF specifically at esports gamers, who are gamers that are playing titles such as League of Legends, Counter-Strike 21, Valorant, and Rocket League.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is scheduled to be unveiled at Gamescom 2025, and ahead of the deep dive, we are expected to get the price for both of the upcoming editions for the title have been leaked.

According to reliable leaker billbil-kun, Call of Duty Black Ops 7 standard edition will be priced at $69.99, while the Vault Edition will be priced at $99.99. These prices are hardly surprising as it's what we have come to expect from the Call of Duty franchise. It would actually be more surprising if Activision decided to price the game below the standard $70 premium game price tag.

It was only recently that it was leaked there will be no Nintendo Switch 2 version of Call of Duty Black Ops 7 at launch, which was also news leaked by billbil-kun. Now, that doesn't rule out the possibility of a Nintendo Switch 2 version being released sometime after the initial launch. As for the launch date, the leaker also revealed that Activision would be releasing Call of Duty Black Ops 7 on November 14, 2025.

EA eventually wants to morph Battlefield into an annualized franchise similar to Call of Duty, or at least that's what securities analyst Michael Pachter was told.

The Call of Duty franchise is unique because no other series on the planet is able to make as much money per year and sell as many copies as Call of Duty. The series has made over $35 billion in lifetime earnings and has sold over 425 million copies (Modern Warfare 2019, for example, sold 41 million copies). COD is a juggernaut, but EA wants to strike back with their big Battlefield renaissance.

According to analyst Michael Pachter, EA aspires to make Battlefield more like Call of Duty and release new games every year. This transition is going to take some time, though. In the latest episode of the Pachter Factor show, the analyst says he was told by EA's Byron Beedle (second in command under Respawn's Vince Zampella) that Battlefield could become an annual series in 5-6 years.

The second open beta weekend for Battlefield 6 is almost over, but before the mayhem comes to a close, datamining has resulted in two new maps being discovered. While they aren't playable, it gives us a look at what is on the horizon.

The datamined images were posted to the /r/Battlefield subreddit by Reddit user "Happysufigeee" who wrote the maps were discovered in an early build of Battlefield 6 and show 3D views of the landscape. The images, which can be seen above and below, are also available to download in the full 23K resolution as they are reportedly from the Blender viewport. For those who don't know, a Blender viewport is the 3D workspace where a developer is interacting with their models.

The Eastwood map and Mirak are reportedly standard all-out warfare maps that are separate from the upcoming Battle Royale mode. Additionally, Eastwood is rumored to be a season 1 map that will be launching alongside another LA based map called Badlands. As for what is confirmed, a Battlefield 6 developer recently confirmed that larger maps would be introduced "soon," presumably after the last open beta weekend and at launch.

The most expensive GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card is now available to purchase, with the ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition on sale in Dubai for $9205.

The ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition features 5kg of real gold and is now available through a UAE-based retailer. The card launched for $8000 and is now available for purchase through Microless but it'll cost you a pretty penny: $9205.48 to be exact. This price is after a 20% discount, which still makes it more expensive than MSRP.

ASUS first revealed the exotic GPU in China, after exclusively launching it in the Middle East, but Microless will ship it worldwide... at a cost, obviously. The ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition features a GPU boost clock of up to 2580MHz, and OC clocks of up to 2610MHz, which is identical to the ROG Astral RTX 5090 OC Edition. You're just paying for the super-exotic design, and that 5kg of gold.

Seasoned games writer John Dombrow has joined Bethesda Game Studios to design quests, possibly for a new Starfield expansion or The Elder Scrolls VI.

Bethesda is busily crafting The Elder Scrolls VI, and no Bethesda game is complete without memorable quests. That's why Bethesda hired John Dombrow as a senior quest designer to help on new projects--whether that's the rumored Starfield expansion or the next big-budget Elder Scrolls, we can't say for certain.

Dombrow is credited as a writer on 16 games, many of which are RPG-based and have strongly impactful storylines. He's mostly well-known for his work on Mass Effect 3 for the gut-wrenching Priority Tuchanka mission, and his writing in Dragon Age Veilguard, where he crafted Davrin's (excellent) storyline, as well as the dramatic and action-packed Siege of Weisshaupt sequence.

Securities analyst Michael Pachter criticizes Sony's move towards live services and blames Jim Ryan for a lot of PlayStation's problems, especially Concord's historic failure.

Since 2019, I noticed a big trend in PlayStation's earnings: add-on content made more money than anything else. Free-to-play games were (and still are) making billions of dollars a year. Sony knew this, and decided to use its COVID-19 earnings overage surplus to fund its own first-party live service games. Sony initially wanted to release a whopping 12 live games by March 2026. When Concord failed and was yanked off the market, Sony scrapped the plan and significantly reduced the lineup due to improper execution, the worldwide economic market, industry trends, etc.

Analyst Michael Pachter says this dismal failure is key evidence that Sony are "bad managers" for live games, and that they "don't know what they're doing." Sony bought Bungie for $3.6 billion to help lead their live service initiative, but Concord passed Bungie's "rigorous" vetting process and Bungie themselves had to recently delay their own live game Marathon due to quality concerns.

Chris Hansen, the journalist and face of the "To Catch a Predator" television series that aired during the mid-2000s, has announced he is now targeting Roblox, following the uproar controversy surrounding the platform being used by many child predators.

To Catch a Predator focused on investigating and exposing adults who attempted to engage in sexual activities with minors, and involved the use of decoys, which were typically young-looking adults who posed as underage teens in online chatrooms. Why that is important is because Roblox recently banned and sent a cease and desist letter to YouTuber Schlep, who was doing exactly the same thing on Roblox.

The banning of Schlep was the catalyst for Roblox to be caught in what is now a global controversy with its platform, as the company said to Schlep that it's against its terms of service to engage in "simulated child endangerment conversations, sharing or soliciting personally identifiable information (PII), [and] directing users to move conversations off-platform."

Roblox Corp. stock drops nearly 9% as it faces a scathing lawsuit from Louisiana's attorney general.

Roblox is being sued by the state of Louisiana for allegedly "permitting and perpetuating an online environment in which child predators thrive." The news has spread rapidly, leading to public outcry and backlash, and the game-maker's stock took a hit from the fiery controversy. Roblox's stock dropped 8.96% after the news of the lawsuit broke.

The gaming platform is among the most popular video games on the market right now with over 82 million daily active users--for comparison, Sony's entire PlayStation platform has 120 million monthly active users--and the company generated $3.6 billion in 2024 from its user base, which is primarily children. The games-as-a-service platform has been closely scrutinized for its business practices and safety policies, especially those involving children.

An Intel employee was sued by the company in 2021 for allegedly stealing trade secrets and sending them to Microsoft. That former Intel employee has now been sentenced.

Varun Gupta, a former Intel employee of 10 years, was sued by the company in 2021 for taking confidential documents to his new employer, Microsoft, in 2020. These documents included approximately 4,000 data files that featured critical company information such as Intel's pricing strategies, rival business analysis, and more.

Gupta had access to these files at Intel as he was an Intel product marketing engineer. Prior to his transition to Microsoft, Gupta copied the files over to a portable storage device and then uploaded them to a Microsoft-issued work laptop.

Grinding Gear Games co-founder and Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson has an interesting theory: Minecraft is actually a hardcore action RPG.

Minecraft technically fits the bill as an aRPG, or at least that's what isometrically-obsessed game dev Chris Wilson thinks. In a recent video on his YouTube channel, Wilson makes the case that the child-friendly simulator is actually a brutal role-playing game where knowledge and skill are the keys for voxel mastery.

"There's a surprising amount of RPG in there. When I first dabbled with the game in 2011, it was pretty simple: You build bases out of blocks. But nowadays there's experience, levels, items, enchantments, and end-game bosses. The game even has builds," Wilson said.

LEGO Voyagers launches this September on consoles, PC, and even Apple Arcade.

Back in 2020, during the height of COVID-19, LEGO formed a video game studio called Light Brick Studio to work on digital titles. Their first game was a $20 LEGO brick-building sim with limited capabilities. Now the group's second major release is on the horizon: LEGO Voyagers, a new child-friendly game that wants to tap the success of two-player co-op games like It Takes Two and the more recent Split Fiction.

Light Brick Studio has revealed that LEGO Voyagers will release on September 15, 2025 on a multitude of platforms, including PS4/PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch (also playable on Switch 2), PC (via Steam and Epic Store), and, surprisingly, the Apple Arcade subscription service.

Valve has officially acknowledged that PayPal isn't available at checkout for some Steam users, following the recent controversy with payment providers threatening to withdraw their services that resulted in Valve removing a bunch of adult games from that platform and issuing a policy change.

The problem with PayPal arose in early July, with some users reporting they were unable to use PayPal at checkout, and now Valve has offered an explanation as to why PayPal has seemingly disappeared. According to a statement provided to Rock Paper Shotgun, PayPal has been removed as a payment option for some users due to PayPal's acquiring banks deciding to stop processing any Steam transactions, effectively cutting off PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies.

Currencies still available on Steam for PayPal transactions are as follows: EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD. For those out of the loop, Valve was recently threatened by big payment providers such as Visa and Mastercard to remove a selection of adult games from Steam following a letter penned by a women advocacy group, Collective Shout. The group called for prevention of Valve and the creators of the adult games from profiteering off the exploitation of women.

Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has a word of warning to publishers who greenlight expensive game budgets.

Thanks to inflation and complexity, games are more expensive to make now than they've ever been. Competition is fierce, and a miss on a big-budget game can lead to substantial write-offs and studio closures--which is exactly what happened to PlayStation's failed Concord and game developer Firewalk Studios.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, former PlayStation studios chairman Shawn Layden cautions devs to reel back high $200 million+ budgets because odds are the devs may not be able to make a profit. The budgets really aren't feasible unless the teams are in the caliber of a dev like Rockstar Games, who can sell 25 million copies easy.

There's substantially more heat on billion-dollar games titan Roblox as Louisiana state Attorney General Liz Murrill sues the company for allegedly creating an online environment where child predators are permitted to thrive.

The state of Louisiana is suing Roblox for allegedly failing to protect the millions of minors on the platform. The scathing 39-page complaint alleges that Roblox "has permitted and perpetuated an online environment in which child predators thrive, directly contributing to the widespread victimization of minor children in Louisiana."

Louisiana AG Murrill outlines three causes for action in the complaint: 1) violation of Louisiana's Unfair Trade Practices Act (LUTPA) by willfully deceiving players about the dangers of child predators on the platform; 2) Negligence and public nuisance, claiming that Roblox has a responsibility to "protect children from predators" on the platform, including preventing registered sex offenders from making accounts; 3) and unjust enrichment, which states that Roblox sold their product to Louisiana citizens in "a manner that was unfair, unconscionable, and oppressive."