Latest News - Page 26

Ever had a family member borrow your Steam Deck only to hand it back with a dead battery? Reddit user ConroyyJenkinss certainly had, and they clearly had enough. Rather than setting a PIN or hiding the device, they built an automated defense system around it, and it is exactly as unhinged as it sounds.

The build starts with a 3D-printed orange spiked case modeled in Blender. The spikes make the Steam Deck uncomfortable to pick up, which is the point. From there, ConroyyJenkinss added a Raspberry Pi, a small speaker, an object detection camera, and a servo motor.

A custom Python script monitors the camera feed and plays an audio warning when it detects someone in frame. If they do not leave within a few seconds, the servo triggers a taser mounted above the device. The taser is loud and designed to scare rather than shock, but the crackling noise alone appears to be doing the job.

Apple's smart glasses have been pushed back again. The device, codenamed N50, was previously expected to be revealed later this year ahead of an early 2027 launch. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is now targeting a reveal at WWDC in June 2027, with a late 2027 release to follow.

Gurman reports that teams developing the glasses within Apple's Vision hardware group are delaying the release due to privacy concerns with smart glasses. The report adds that Apple is working on several hardware and software privacy features not available on current smart glasses products.

On the software side, the company is expected to adopt a similar approach to Meta's recent update, which remotely turns off the camera if the recording indicator light is tampered with. Apple is also planning to process AI features on-device rather than in the cloud, will not send footage to human reviewers or contractors, and will not use recorded video for AI training.

Microsoft expands its PC gaming footprint with a new cross-licensing promotion with Ubisoft.

Xbox today announced the next step in its so-called console-to-PC program, offering free access to specific Ubisoft games. Users who own a copy of select Ubisoft games on Xbox consoles will be able to download and play the same game on PC. The access point is the publisher's Ubisoft Connect app, not the Xbox app, but the cross-licensing origin point is the Xbox console ecosystem.

Titles include a medley of modern games including AC Mirage and Valhalla, Far Cry 6, The Crew 2, and two Rainbow Six games. The licenses for DLC also transfer over, except for consumables, and cross-progression features will carry over to the PC version. Xbox says that there's no reverse freebie--if you own the PC version on Ubisoft Connect, you won't magically unlock an Xbox version.

Xbox servers have gone down just days after the PlayStation Network was hit by its own outage, and Microsoft has officially recognized the problem in a recent statement, but left out perhaps the most troubling aspect that is seemingly emerging at the time of reporting.

As we outlined in a separate report, Xbox began suffering on July 23 when the Live services were knocked offline, subsequently downing critical features and services such as Store, subscriptions, remote play, app access, etc. The problems didn't stop there, as a second outage occurred only a few days later, resulting in some gamers reporting games missing from libraries, inability to sign into accounts, Store access again, and options to purchase a game that a player had already paid for.

That last problem has seemingly reversed itself, as the latest issue for Microsoft is that numerous posts on X are rapidly surfacing claiming Xbox players are currently exploiting a glitch with the Store that enables them to download, install, and play a selection of titles. Some posts claim this exploit is exclusive to discontinued Xbox 360 games on the One and Series X|S, and include games such as Left 4 Dead, Silent Hill: Downpour, and Peter Jackson's King Kong.

Xbox's online services went down for several hours this week, just days after a separate PlayStation Network outage left millions of players locked out of their accounts. Two major outages in one week is a rough coincidence, and it's giving gamers an early look at what an all-digital future might actually feel like.

Xbox's troubles started on July 23, the same day early access opened for Halo: Campaign Evolved, when Xbox Live services went down and knocked out the Store, subscriptions, social features, cloud gaming, remote play, and app access. A second outage followed just days later, this time hitting account sign-ins, the Store, and parts of the Xbox app.

Some players reported games missing from their libraries entirely, along with ownership warnings appearing on titles they had already paid for. Xbox Support acknowledged the problems on X, saying the team was still looking into the sign-in, library, and game launch issues, though it hasn't said what caused either outage.

The Xbox Series X is known to be a powerful console, but a recent story just proves its strength in a different way. A TikTok user says his Xbox Series X survived a house fire, and the video he posted afterward shows the console booting up and running games like nothing happened.

The clips come from TikTok user @kai_doggett14, who says a fire recently destroyed his house for reasons that still aren't clear. Among the wreckage, he found his Xbox Series X mostly intact, though the shell was warped and charred in several spots.

In the first video, he plugs the console into a wall outlet and hits the power button. The Xbox logo lights up and the system boots normally, despite heat damage around the top vents and a disc drive that looks bent out of shape.

Call of Duty Black Ops II, a 14-year-old shooter, had the most active users on the PlayStation Network.

A PS3-era game has taken over PlayStation. Activision and Xbox recently had the brilliant plan to re-release the original Black Ops and Black Ops II games onto the PS4 and PS5. These games had previously been stuck on the PS3 for over a decade, and the new release is actually a straight port of the classic released in 2012. New data figures show that the plan has worked incredibly well; Black Ops II has successfully captured the PS Network.

Circana's Mat Piscatella recently shared a look at weekly active users (WAUs) data for PlayStation games in the US. Black Ops II was at the top of the charts, and Piscatella also notes that three separate Call of Duty games reached the Top 10.

RTX 50 series prices in China are increasing massively thanks to new price increases in GDDR6 and GDDR7 affecting NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards. WCCFTech reports that RTX 50 series GPU prices from official distributors selling Colorful cards have increased up to a whopping 60% above MSRP. MSI RTX 50 series graphics cards are also selling up to 20% higher than what they were just a week ago.

According to Colorful's distributor sheet dated July 24th, the highest-end RTX 5080 on the list, the Vulcan W OC 16GB, has increased to ¥13,200 or $1949. The highest-end RTX 5070 Ti on the list, the RTX 5070 Ti Vulcan W OC 16GB, is selling for ¥10,000 or $1,476.65. The highest-end RTX 5070 Vulcan X OC 12GB is selling for ¥7,200 or $1,063. The highest-end RTX 5060 Ti, the Ultra W OC 16GB is selling for ¥5,300, or $782. The highest-end 8GB variant, the Advanced OC, is selling for ¥3,950, or $583. The highest-end RTX 5060, the Advanced OC 8GB, is selling for ¥3,200 or $472.

For MSI, an MSI official distributor price sheet shows price increases of 10-20% for all listed RTX 50 series graphics cards in China compared to a week ago. The RTX 5090 D v2 Ventus 3X OC has increased in value from ¥22,999 ($3,396) to ¥25,999 ($3,839). The RTX 5080 Gaming Trio OC has increased in value from ¥10,999 ($1,624) to ¥12,999 ($1919), and the RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Trio OC has increased in price from ¥8,199 ($1,210) to ¥9,699 ($1,432).

SEGA is shifting to digital and stresses the importance of direct-access delivery on platforms like consoles and PC, but doesn't want to give up on physical entirely.

More publishers are seeking to use digital as a way to grow software sales. SEGA's president and CEO Shuji Utsumi recently spoke about the company's shift to digital, telling Famitsu that it's a vector for increased game sales.

When asked about the most critical part of the plan to boost sales, the SEGA CEO says that digital is the way forward, in part, because the PC market continues to expand. "When it comes to titles we call "full games" for consoles (home game consoles) and PCs, I believe a digital shift is crucial," Utsumi said.

Classic PC gaming series Myst is making a comeback with a brand new release, developer Cyan Worlds has announced.

If you grew up in the 90s, you probably remember Myst, the enigmatic puzzle game that blended novel 3D visuals with classic PC gaming. After decades in between new releases outside of remakes, the creators of Myst have announced a new project.

"We are currently in development of a new game, codenamed Mudfish, set inside the Myst Universe," Cyan Worlds said on their website.

For the first time in 17 years, Microsoft is raising the minimum and recommended PC requirements for Minecraft, with the developer outlining in a blog post that Minecraft: Java Edition will be getting a specification increase to fall in line with modern hardware.

The new recommended and minimum system requirements came into effect on July 21, which means performance and visual quality are no longer guaranteed on hardware that falls below each of the requirements. Microsoft now recommends 16GB of RAM, a 2020s-era CPU, and a GPU with at least 6GB of VRAM to hit 1080p at 60FPS, while the 1080p at 30FPS requires 8GB of RAM, a discrete GPU, or 12GB integrated graphics, along with a 4-core processor and a Vulkan 1.3-capable GPU that has at least 2GB of VRAM.

The updated specs are intended to future-proof performance and discontinue older, more outdated hardware. Players who once met the recommended requirements are now likely to fall below the new minimums. If for whatever reason you begin suffering performance issues, the company suggests switching to the Bedrock Edition for those on subpar hardware, though mod support will be limited. Used PCs in the $350 - $500 range can bridge the gap, offering a decade of gameplay if Microsoft sticks to its 17-year spec routine change.

007 First Light has witnessed the arrival of its first patch, and on top of that, Denuvo has been dropped from the game.

If you recall the launch, the developer of 007 First Light waited until the game was just a week from release before revealing that Denuvo DRM would be included. That led to quite the backlash from gamers who had already pre-ordered, and viewed the developer's move with some cynicism.

The good news is that Denuvo has just been canned, as TechPowerUp reports, after 007 First Light has only been on sale for two months. The revelation came via SteamDB, which observed the removal of the DRM as part of its tracked changes for the games on Valve's platform.

Windows 11 is getting a change to speed up the process of deleting a large file, as seen in a new preview build.

Windows Latest spotted that in the blog post for a new preview in the Experimental channel (build 26300.8935), Microsoft notes: "File deletion in File Explorer is now faster in certain scenarios when deleting large, fragmented files."

This is another tweak in a broader set of work from Microsoft which aims to boost the performance of File Explorer in one way or another, and it'll doubtless be a welcome move for anyone who has ever sat staring at a file deletion dialog box wondering why it's taking so long.

The notorious hacking group Anonymous has officially targeted Sony over its decision to end the production of physical PlayStation discs, with the group taking to its X account to share a warning, "The End of Owning Your Games is Coming".

The group explains the difference between purchasing a physical copy of a game, which in many cases enables the owner to play the game without the need for an internet connection or an active account. Additionally, a physical copy also means if the game is removed from the PSN Store, it will still work, while also being able to trade it in, lend it to a friend, or resell it.

Anonymous goes on to write that Sony, by removing physical copies of games, means the only way to access PlayStation games is digitally, which is a purchase of a license that Sony holds the revocability rights to in perpetuity, meaning Sony can disable access to your game at any given time, despite you having "bought" or "purchased" it. The company even outlines in its Software Usage Terms that any terminology such as "own," "purchase," "buy", and "sell" "do not mean that ownership is actually being transferred to you," writes Anonymous.

US gamers are pre-ordering the more expensive $100+ editions of video games on the PlayStation Store.

In the games industry, billion-dollar companies are passing down the higher costs of production right to consumers. Current trends indicate that gamers are now willing to pay higher prices for specific games, including $100 or even $150 under special circumstances.

The current pre-order positioning on the PlayStation Store in the US gives indications on how gamers in this region are buying games. The listings show a clear trend: Seven of the top 10 best-earning pre-ordered games are for editions that cost over $100. The top 6 pre-orders are for editions of games that cost $100 or more, including EA's new controversial $150 FC27 Ultimate Plus Edition. This reinforces our previous findings of price tolerance in the console gaming space.

Users of Claude should be concerned, as a treasure trove of share links has appeared in public search results, raising fresh and very warranted concerns around conversation privacy with AI models.

The spotlight was put on Anthropic's Claude over the weekend after a Reddit post gained significant traction on the r/ClaudeAI subreddit. The post showed a screenshot of a Google Search result with the following in the text box, "site:claude.ai/share," and below it a bunch of clickable conversations with Claude. For those who don't know, Claude can create publicly shareable links of conversations, which enable users to share conversations between each other, which can be for various purposes such as sharing ongoing software development, brainstorming sessions, designs, and more.

According to the Reddit post, these publicly shareable conversations contain "noindex" tags, which is a standard instruction website owners can give to search engines informing them they can visit the page, but cannot list it in search results. Typically, Google, Bing, and other search engines honor this request. Notably, if the page has "noindex," it is still reachable if you know the specific URL. However, it appears not all of the Claude conversations contained "noindex" before being indexed by Google, as now those links have surfaced on social media platforms and the conversations have been exposed.

Meccha Chameleon players have found themselves in the crosshairs of a sophisticated cyberattack after malicious Steam Workshop maps infected devices and led to the official Discord server being taken over. The attack has resulted in infected PCs and a compromised developer account.

The exploit was discovered by independent researcher Feint, who found that some custom maps such as Laser Tag Neon contained code that wrote a batch file to a player's Documents folder. From here, the file then attempted to use PowerShell to download additional malware and remote access trojans.

Developer Haganeiro confirmed the vulnerability was patched in update 3.1.0, but warned users to scan their systems and avoid the original Discord server. The map has since been removed, and the malware has been disabled for players who haven't installed the update.

Thanks to advances in silicon, namely chips like the powerful AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 300 Series, compact desktops and mini PCs that can support local AI have become something of a mainstay in recent times. And this is exactly where MSI's compact and minimal PRO MAX EDGE AI+ desktops fit in, as they can support and ship with up to 128GB of LPDDR5X-8000 unified memory, with up to 96GB able to be dynamically allocated as VRAM for the GPU.

The MSI PRO MAX EDGE AI+ ships with a compact 4-liter aluminum chassis, and underneath the hood it ships with up to an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor. Yes, this makes the PRO MAX EDGE AI+ desktop another 'Strix Halo' device, which pairs a 16-core, 32-thread processor with integrated Radeon 8060S graphics with 40 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units.

This combination makes it an on-device AI system that MSI says can support up to 126 TOPS of total AI performance across the NPU and GPU. In real-world usage, this is enough to run LLMs with up to 120 billion parameters. And for the tokenmaxxing, it can support up to 15 tokens/sec when running 109 billion parameter models.

ASRock has launched a pair of OLED gaming monitors with the new Phantom Gaming PGO27QSA and PGO27QSA-W. The only difference between the two is finish: the PGO27QSA sports a classic black design, while the PGO27QSA-W arrives in minimal white.

Both sport 27-inch QD-OLED panels with a QHD (2560x1440) resolution, a fast 240 Hz refresh rate, and a 0.03ms (GTG) response time to minimize ghosting and enhance motion clarity. ASRock notes that these are monitors built to support PC gaming, whether you're playing an FPS, MOBA, or cinematic action-adventure.

Rounding out the specs, you've got 99% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage with Delta E<2 color accuracy for vibrant, realistic colors as well as AMD FreeSync Premium support for VRR. As for the physical design, the ASRock PGO27QSA series features a flat ergonomic stand that supports height, swivel, tilt, and pivot adjustments.

Framework, the hardware maker of modular and repairable systems, has issued a new update on the 'volatile silicon market' and the current memory and storage crisis affecting consumer technology. And as expected, it's not good news, as the company's update relates specifically to LPCAMM2 memory modules and the cost of its Framework Laptop 13 Pro.

"We've consistently held and communicated a philosophy of absorbing price increases wherever we can, making pricing predictable and ensuring that when you place a pre-order, you'll be able to get the product you ordered at the price you ordered it at," Framework's Nirav Patel writes. According to the post, Framework has been able to absorb price increases until now.

"We recently received a cost update from our LPCAMM2 supplier that goes far beyond anything we had predicted and anything we're able to absorb without placing our ability to operate at real financial risk," the post continues. "Rather than the low-to-mid double-digit percentage increase we had forecast from Q2 to Q3 on LPCAMM2 costs, we received prices that are more than double that of the prior inventory we had brought in."