Latest News - Page 27

Modern data centers with racks of high-performance CPUs, GPUs, and memory built for AI consume a lot of power. For those keeping up with the advancements in processors and graphics hardware like NVIDIA's new Vera Rubin and AMD's EPYC 'Venice' and Instinct architectures, you'll know that rack-scale solutions are becoming more power-hungry with each new release.

And with more new and expanded data centers going online every day, a new forecast from Bloomberg's NEF research firm (BNEF) is now predicting that in the United States, data centers are on track to consume 20% of the nation's power and electricity by 2035. Right now, it's estimated that data centers are consuming around 5.9% of electricity in the country, so data center power use is expected to almost triple within the next decade.

In terms of raw power, 20% of the country's electricity in 2035 equates to around 194 gigawatts. A massive figure, but also one that is 83% higher than a previous forecast issued last year. And to make matters worse, the report notes that even with power grid expansion currently happening at a record pace, there would be a power shortfall of almost 20 gigawatts.

Valve's eagerly awaited Steam Frame VR headset is now facing a new roadblock ahead of its 2026 launch, which comes after the Steam Machine launched at a price point even Valve wasn't happy with. Now, new reports are claiming Qualcomm has announced a double-digit price increase for its Snapdragon chips, the very processors that power Valve's upcoming Steam Frame.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the price hike will take effect on September 1, 2026, as Qualcomm has informed its customers that they should expect at least a double-digit increase.

Notably, this price hike is just ahead of the expected Steam Frame release window, which is pegged for later this year. The report states Qualcomm will be targeting a range of its chips, including the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is used in the Steam Frame, to rise in cost by a significant percentage, a move that could directly inflate the final retail price for consumers.

PlayStation's most diehard fans are calling for a 7-day blackout of their PS5s in an effort to protest Sony's decision to end physical disc production of PlayStation games. Sony's decision to end physical copies of PlayStation games has sparked fury among gamers, with many critics citing it as a decision to drive profits higher and remove ownership from gamers.

The protest, organized via social media, urges players to unplug their consoles from August 23 to 30, which is an attempt at directly targeting one of Sony's key metrics: active users. Organizers argue that Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has grown increasingly disconnected from its fanbase, citing the closure of studios like Bluepoint and Japan Studio, along with price hikes for hardware and services such as PSN.

This backlash isn't alone, as a Change.org petition titled "Don't Kill the Disc" has already reached 345,286 verified signatures, indicating there is substantial pushback from the gaming community against the phase-out of discs. Fans claim that Sony's shift toward digital is not only financially driven but a betrayal of the physical gaming culture that helped define PlayStation's identity, with the Change.org petition highlighting E3 2013, where Sony attracted a generation of PlayStation gamers with an advertisement that mocked competitors locking games to their initial buyers, removing the ability to trade it in, sell it, or lend it to a friend.

Microsoft is putting the TPM chip it requires for Windows 11 to another use. The company has announced TPM-based attestation, a new security layer for Key Management Service (KMS), the activation system enterprises use to license Windows across large fleets of devices.

Starting with the next Windows Server release, the feature will become mandatory, and Microsoft is beginning to push readiness notifications to Windows Server 2025 users from August 2026 to give organizations time to prepare.

KMS has been a persistent target for abuse. Pirates have long spun up fake KMS servers that mimic legitimate Microsoft activation infrastructure, effectively tricking Windows into believing it has been properly licensed. The Online KMS method used by the Massgrave collective, for example, keeps activations alive by periodically contacting a spoofed server every six months. TPM-based attestation is designed to make that approach significantly more difficult.

PS5 emulation keeps inching forward, and the latest update comes from SharpEmu, which can now get GTA 5 as far as its loading screen. Footage posted on X shows the game displaying its logo and loading indicators before stalling out in the North Yankton intro sequence.

That's not nothing, but it's also nowhere near playable. This builds on an earlier milestone from a separate project, KytyPS5, which recently got GTA 5's main menu and settings screen to load without any actual gameplay behind it. SharpEmu itself has been busy elsewhere too, having previously pushed Demon's Souls Remake all the way to its character creation screen, up from just booting and crashing a week earlier. Ghost of Yotei has apparently reached its splash screen through similar testing, though it crashes shortly after.

It's worth being realistic about what any of this actually means. PS5 emulation is still roughly where PS4 emulation was in its earliest days, and it took projects like ShadPS4 a long time to go from loading screens to functional gameplay. RPCS3, the PS3 emulator, needed years of work before commercial games became reliably playable, and that project had to deal with the Cell processor's notoriously strange architecture along the way.

Gaming handhelds are all the rage nowadays, but what if I told you a 15-year-old handheld can still play modern games? A homebrew developer has found a way to stream Xbox Cloud Gaming through Sony's discontinued PlayStation Vita, turning a 2011 handheld into an unlikely way to play modern Xbox titles.

The project is called GreenVita, built by a developer known as Day-OS. It's apparently not emulating any Xbox hardware at all. The Vita just receives video and audio from Microsoft's cloud servers and sends controller input back over Wi-Fi, the same way any other Xbox Cloud Gaming device works.

Under the hood, GreenVita is a native Rust application rather than something running through the Vita's browser, and it uses egui and SDL2 for its interface while leaning on the handheld's hardware H.264 decoder to process the incoming stream.

COLORFIRE is expanding its MEOW lineup again, this time with a PC case built for cat owners who want their entire setup to match. The new ME26A brings a woodgrain front panel, cat-ear styling, and a paw-shaped power button to a Micro-ATX build that apparently doesn't skimp on actual hardware support either.

The chassis uses a light gray shell with orange accents and paw-print graphics scattered across the exterior. A tempered glass side panel shows off COLORFIRE's orange tabby mascot, Bobi, and there's a magnetic dust filter sitting on top. It's a lot busier looking than a typical case, but that's kind of the point with this brand.

Underneath the cat branding, the ME26A seems to be a fairly capable case. It supports Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX boards, including rear-connector designs, and there's room for graphics cards up to 435mm long.

Microsoft is experimenting with a new console OS update that will help reduce the time it takes for games to download and install.

A recent Xbox update preview build introduces a smart client feature that aims to boost download speeds. Xbox insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring (basically a fancy name for the Xbox users who test things out before anyone else) are currently testing OS Version XB_FLT_2608GE26100.9400.260719-2200, which adds the new intelligent download feature.

"Users will experience a new feature to optimize game install and update speeds by introducing a smart download client. Shortly after your game download begins, the client will check which content servers are available for the install or update. It will then test the connection speed to each server pool and select the fastest available connection for that install. The speed test will rerun periodically during the install or update to ensure that the client continues using the fastest available connection."

Jensen Huang has joined X, and his first post was not about GeForce GPUs, driver updates, or Blackwell. Instead, the NVIDIA CEO used his debut to share a letter signed by NVIDIA and 24 other companies urging US policymakers not to restrict open-weight AI models.

"AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country," Huang wrote. "Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty. The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models."

The letter, titled Open Weights and American AI Leadership, argues that restricting open models would stifle competition, push innovation overseas, and concentrate the gains of AI in the hands of a small number of companies. It also warns that relying exclusively on closed models creates a single point of failure. "If everything just becomes one single model, one single point of attack, one single source of failure, I think the world is much, much more vulnerable," Huang said separately to Axios.

Roku has increased prices across its entire streaming hardware lineup, with some devices now costing up to 60% more than they did just a month ago. The company confirmed the increases to The Desk, with a Roku executive attributing the move to shortages of memory and other components driven by the AI boom.

Roku has updated its website with the new prices:

There is still a brief opportunity to buy at the old prices. Roku is currently listing the previous MSRPs as sale prices on its official store, although purchases are limited to three units per model. Retailers such as Amazon and Best Buy also continue to sell existing inventory at the lower prices, but only until current stock is exhausted. After that, the higher prices will apply across the board.

The memory crisis has pushed gaming hardware to price points that would have seemed absurd just a few years ago. The Steam Machine launched at over $1,000. The Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X have all seen price increases this year, and next-generation consoles are rumored to cross the $1,000 mark as well. For Amazon Games general manager Jeffrey Gattis, all of that is, at least potentially, good news for Luna.

Speaking with The Game Business and the BBC, Gattis made the case that cloud gaming's long-standing problem has been that consoles were cheap enough that there was never a compelling reason to look elsewhere. "Historically, cloud gaming has been a little bit of a solution in search of a problem," he said. "Consoles, for the most part, have been relatively inexpensive until now."

"We saw the Steam Machine opening at $1,000," Gattis told The Game Business. "We hear rumors about consoles, because of the RAM crisis, pushing up over $1,000 in Gen 10. So I do think you get to a point at which more people will be in the consideration set for a cloud gaming solution, just because of the sheer cost of buying dedicated hardware."

We've seen our fair share of Steam Machine-inspired hardware since its launch, from the Stim Machine (which later had to change its name, and no, not because someone finally admitted it sounded ridiculous) to several mini PC clones. But none of them commit to the bit quite like this one, whose case may well cost more than the gaming PC sitting underneath it.

Reddit user DaKrazyKid calls the build the RAM Machine, and while the hardware inside is respectable, the real spectacle is the 36 RAM sticks bolted to the outside of the case. The creator didn't reveal how much the case or all those memory modules cost, but says Valve's original Steam Machine and its 16GB memory configuration inspired the project, and SignalRGB is now giving the one-of-a-kind build away.

The concept is exactly as literal as it sounds. The mini-ITX case is wrapped in 36 DIMMs, with four modules stacked per side in illuminated columns. Sixteen are RGB sticks synchronized through SignalRGB, while the remaining 20 are purely decorative. None of the exterior modules are functional. The only working memory is a non-RGB 32GB Patriot DDR5-8200 kit hidden inside the case.

Electronic Arts is gaining more heated attention after introducing a $150 version of its annualized EA Sports FC sports sim.

EA is about to go private in the largest leveraged buyout in history. The $55 billion take-private share buyout was principally led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, and key markets like the EU have approved the deal. Ever since the privatization deal was announced, EA has been under fire for introducing controversial things like paywalling some progression features in College Football 27 by adding paid microtransactions to singleplayer modes (these were later removed).

Now the publisher is under scrutiny for the latest business tactic: a new edition that introduces a higher topline price for the definitive experience. The new EA Sports FC27 game has three editions: The standard edition at $70, the ultimate edition at $100, and then an ultimate plus edition for $150. That's a +50% price increase from the previous ultimate edition's $100 cap, and more than double the price of the base game. The value that's included is pretty staggering if you're a die-hard enthusiast, though, and includes nearly $100 worth of FC Points microtransaction currency spread across 5 months, as well as full season passes and more.

We're continuing our TweakTown giveaways, rewarding our registered members and newsletter subscribers with top-tier hardware every week. For our latest giveaway, we've teamed up with ADATA to give one lucky winner a compact, high-speed external SSD with plenty of capacity for games, creative projects, backups, and other important files.

There will be one winner in total, and the prize is an ADATA SE880 2TB portable external SSD.

ADATA lists maximum sequential read and write speeds of up to 2,000 MB/s, along with a 20Gbps USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 Type-C interface.

Rockstar Games co-founder and Absurd Ventures CEO Dan Houser isn't bothered by the ongoing debate on how software should be delivered, but also says that consumer demand should be met for physical games.

Iconic Rockstar alums Dan Houser and Lazlow Jones recently attended San Diego Comic Con to promote projects from their Absurd Ventures multimedia group, including a new comic book in the American Caper series. At the event, IGN interviewed the duo, and one of the questions was about disc vs digital.

"I don't know that I care," Houser said. "But, if people want that, companies should provide it. But I don't know that I personally care."

Sony had a busy Comic-Con panel for the God of War franchise. Santa Monica Studio confirmed that God of War Laufey, the spinoff starring Kratos' wife, now has a release date of February 16, 2027. That matches the release window that had already leaked ahead of Sony's official announcement. The studio also announced an entirely separate God of War game that puts Kratos back in the lead role.

Creative director Cory Barlog used the panel to fill in some of the gaps on Laufey. He called it an "expansion" rather than a spinoff, saying the studio wanted fans to "see how things connect" once the next mainline game arrives.

The game follows Faye after her death as she fights through Everywhen, a realm gods end up in once they die, taking on figures from multiple mythologies along the way. That mythological angle was actually rumored months before Sony confirmed the game existed, tracing back to early leaks pointing at a new title built around Kratos' wife.

Everybody wants to see more of GTA 6, but Rockstar has gone quiet on the trailer front after dropping the second one. However, Rockstar Games might be gearing up for another GTA 6 trailer sooner than expected. Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, appearing on a recent podcast, said he expects the third trailer to land around August 6, timing it closely to Take-Two's next earnings call.

He was clear that he doesn't have anything concrete pointing to that exact date, but he's basing the prediction on how Rockstar and Take-Two have handled marketing beats in the past, usually clustering big reveals around investor calls.

Police in Shihezi, in China's Xinjiang region, have detained two men accused of quietly dismantling gaming PCs inside hotel rooms and walking off with the memory sticks. Not the CPUs or the graphics cards, just the RAM.

For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, eSports hotels are a real thing in China, and a pretty popular one. Guests book a room the same way they'd book any hotel, except the room comes with a bed, WiFi, and a full gaming PC set up and ready to go. Groups of friends can show up, order food, and grind through the night on a proper rig without owning any of the hardware themselves. It sounds almost too convenient, which might explain why it turned into a target.

According to local police reports, one of the men checked into a hotel back in May and pulled two RAM sticks out of a gaming PC while nobody was looking. When that went unnoticed, he brought in a partner, and the pair spent the rest of the month hitting three more hotels. By the time they were done, they'd pulled 16 memory modules total, then sold them off through second-hand marketplaces and small computer shops.

Building an x86 system without any components from Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA is starting to become more feasible thanks to growing competition from Chinese CPU and GPU makers. YouTuber GPUSpecs published a video pairing the LX7G100 with a Zhaoxin KX7000 CPU to see how a gaming PC with no Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA components fares in games. Performance was playable, with more demanding AAA games such as Cyberpunk 2077 achieving just above 30 FPS.

The YouTuber initially ran the Zhaoxin KX7000 with 16GB of DDR4 and a Moore Threads MTT S80 GPU with 16GB of GDDR6 memory in a previous video. But the system struggled to play any graphically intensive games such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Black Myth: Wukong at near 30 FPS due to immature graphics drivers. To fix this, the YouTuber swapped the MTT S80 for a Lisuan LX7G100 featuring more stable and mature graphics drivers.

The much more potent LX7G100 was able to boost frame rates to the point where performance was being bottlenecked by the CPU. Forza Horizon 5 achieved 62.5 FPS average at 1080p using low settings, Cyberpunk 2077 achieved 32.8 FPS average, and Red Dead Redemption 2 achieved 39 FPS average at 1080p medium settings. Shadow of the Tomb Raider in DX11 mode provided unplayable performance around 15 FPS, but in DX12 mode the game ran considerably better, achieving 62 FPS average at the highest settings at 1080p. Resident Evil 3 ran at 1080p, achieving 67.2 FPS average. Black Myth Wukong ran at 30 FPS average at 1080p low settings.

Bethesda says that The Elder Scrolls VI won't be delayed, and the development roadmap is not affected by the recent layoffs that hit Bethesda Game Studios, ZeniMax, and Xbox as a whole.

The ongoing development process for high-profile games is expected to be impacted by Xbox's heavy layoffs, which amounted to 1,600 workers across multiple studios, groups, and divisions. Some games, like Bethesda's highly-anticipated sixth Elder Scrolls game, are apparently on track...or at the very least the roadmap remains intact.

Popular YouTuber MrMattyPlays recently passed a bunch of questions to Bethesda and received a few answers. When asked if TESVI could be delayed as a result of the layoffs, Bethesda replied: "No, the roadmap is unaffected."