Latest News - Page 273

Game devs might want to learn AI to help boost their leverage and overall advantage in the games industry, Valve boss Gabe Newell says.

AI is expected to help the games industry by streamlining operations and giving creators more tools, but it's also impacting jobs at a time when companies are aggressively cutting costs. Valve's Gabe Newell of all people offers some advice to game developers who are looking to augment their skills while staying competitive--using AI could make video game creators more valuable in the long run.

In a recent Q&A with YouTuber Zalker Saliev, the patron saint of PC gaming offered his perspective on AI as it relates to programming and skill building, at least in the interactive space. Newell believes that workers in the field should make use of AI in some way, if for no other reason than to "scaffold" their abilities.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot outlines the company's major objectives to investors and shareholders, confirming a forked approach for its upcoming games.

A week ago, Ubisoft held a general meeting of shareholders and presented the company's new vision. Ubisoft will now focus on two types of games and markets: Action-adventure games like Assassin's Creed, and online-driven live games like Rainbow Six Siege. While this isn't necessarily a new development, Ubisoft refers to this segment as 'native service games' and says it's worth €120 billion.

In the shareholder report, Ubisoft says native service games "build and develop recurring revenue through communities." Through this trajectory, Ubisoft hopes Rainbow Six Siege will break into the top 5 service games in terms of MAUs.

NVIDIA's next-gen GB300 AI servers have entered production, with the new GB300 "Blackwell Ultra" AI servers to begin shipping in September... on time, and ready to rock and roll.

In a new report from DigiTimes picked up by insider @Jukanrosleve on X, we're hearing that NVIDIA's new GB300 "Blackwell Ultra" AI servers have entered production according to supply chain sources. Industry sources add that they expect a smooth production trajectory into the second half of 2025, which is said to be from a strategic shift that's making it easier for AI server manufacturers.

NVIDIA decided to reuse the motherboard design from its current GB200 platform -- known as the Bianca board -- for its new GB300 platform. This move has significantly shortened the learning curve for suppliers, many of which were struggling to keep up with NVIDIA's incredibly fast product update cycle in the past. One ODM representative noted: "there are no major issues with the GB300 at this stage. Shipments should proceed smoothly in the second half".

Netflix has ordered a live action adaptation of Ubisoft's best-selling Assassin's Creed video games franchise.

A new Assassin's Creed show is on the way from Netflix, with Westworld executive producer Roberto Patino and Halo producer David Wiener joining together to create and produce the project.

"Netflix has officially greenlit the live-action Assassin's Creed series," Ubisoft announced. "In 2020, Ubisoft and Netflix announced they entered into an agreement to develop content based on the globally popular Assassin's Creed video game franchise. This live-action adaptation is the first series to be developed under the agreement."

The GALAX GeForce RTX 5090 D is one of the best custom RTX 5090 graphics cards on the market, with an XOC BIOS that allows for an insane 2001W power limit now leaked online.

GALAX's custom GeForce RTX 5090 D HOF XOC graphics card is a monster custom offering that sports dual 16-pin power connectors, and with the right BIOS, it can be pushed up to a huge 2001W power limit. These custom BIOSes aren't released to the public and rather to extreme and professional overclockers, but now the XOC BIOS has been leaked online.

We've recently seen the GALAX RTX 5090 D HOF XOC graphics card setting new world records on the benchmark scene, with its GPU pushed to an insane 3650MHz and its 32GB of GDDR7 memory pushed to 36Gbps. We've also seen the GALAX RTX 5090 D HOF XOC hit eBay with a starting price of $5500... so even if you've got one of these cards, you've paid a helluva lot for it, and would want that juicy custom XOC BIOS to push 2001W of power into it.

AMD is reportedly cooking up a new semi-custom APU codenamed Magnus, which will be used inside of the next-gen Xbox and/or PlayStation 6 consoles.

In a new video from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, we're hearing some information on a new mega APU dubbed "Magnus" that sports a huge 264mm2 graphics die on a 384-bit memory bus, and a 144m2 SoC die that's connected through a bridge die that connects the graphics die to the 11-core CPU die. The 11-core CPU die sounds weird (11 cores, right?!) which is split between 3 x Zen 6 cores and 8 x Zen 6c cores.

The purported new Magnus APU is a semi-custom chip made by AMD that should be for Microsoft's next-generation Xbox console, but leaker MLID says it could be used in the upcoming PlayStation 6 console. Another leaker chimed in to this post, Kepler_L2, noting that "that is probably the next-gen Xbox, the codenames that AMD uses for PlayStation SoCs are from Shakespeare characters".

In a surprise move, Microsoft today abruptly shut down its digital entertainment storefront on Xbox and Windows, meaning users can no longer purchase TV shows and movies from Microsoft's stores. This marks the end of digital non-gaming media purchases on all video games consoles.

Without any warning, Microsoft has ceased sales of TV shows and movies on its storefronts. Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S users can no longer buy or rent digital media--all existing purchases will be retained and can still be watched, however.

"Microsoft has stopped selling new movie and TV content. Existing customers can continue to access their previously purchased content on Windows and Xbox devices. Players can continue to play personal videos on Xbox devices. Windows customers can continue to have access to playback and the download functionality," reads an Xbox support article.

The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers were within the network of the US Army National Guard for many months without anyone knowing.

The attackers, known as Salt Typhoon, were within the National Guard's network for as long as nine months, and during this time, they stole sensitive data such as administrator credentials, network traffic diagrams, personally identifiable information (PII) of service members, and geographical maps. Notably, during its stay within the National Guard network, Salt Typhoon also accessed the data traffic between the state's network and every other US state, along with four territories.

Unfortunately, due to Salt Typhoon gaining access to the state's network traffic, there is a possibility of the attackers jumping to other networks as well, further compromising additional government infrastructure. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) didn't confirm how Salt Typhoon gained access to the network, but the group, which is part of the wider Chinese state-sponsored hacking group "Typhoon", is known for infiltrating networks through various means, such as exploiting existing vulnerabilities in routers and other network-related hardware.

The CEO of Ubisoft has confirmed a new Ghost Recon title is currently in development, and that it will be a first-person shooter.

The confirmation for the long-rumored Ghost Recon game came from Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, who was answering questions in a shareholder meeting held on July 10. During the meeting, Guillemot discussed the success of Rainbow Six Siege and how that demonstrates the company's expertise in the live-service gaming market.

Yves added that Ubisoft intends to capitalize on its upcoming launches by continuing to "enhance" the experiences it currently offers "such as The Division and Ghost Recon."

FromSoftware currently has quite a lot on its plate at the moment, as the developer is currently working on continuous new updates for the recently released Elden Ring: Nightreign, and the upcoming title The Duskbloods, which is headed exclusively to the Nintendo Switch 2. However, there is reportedly a third title in the works, and the studio is deep into its development.

According to a new report by MP1st, FromSoftware is currently working on a project codenamed "FMC," with the studio reportedly already being deep into the development of the title that, if it continues at this pace, will release sometime in 2026. Unfortunately, the codename doesn't reveal much about what the title could be about, but from previous FromSoftware games, we have learned that codenames starting with "F" typically relate to the Dark Souls or Armored Core series.

Souls series creator and president of FromSoftware, Hidetaka Miyazaki, said in the past that the Souls series was finished, meaning this new project isn't likely to be a sequel. However, that doesn't rule out the possibility of there being one. What is more likely, if this unannounced title is Souls-related, is that it's the long-rumored remaster of Dark Souls 3, as the first and second games within the franchise have already been remastered, so it just makes sense to remaster the third as well.

It seems that employees aren't the only ones at the company being laid off, as Microsoft has fired its movies and TV store on Xbox and Windows platforms.

Reports indicate that Microsoft has discontinued the ability to purchase new movies and TV shows from the Microsoft Store on both Xbox and Windows. Users will still be able to access content they have already purchased, with Microsoft confirming users will still be able to download on Windows and in HD max resolution. However, users wanting to access the content will still need to view it through the Movies & TV app on Windows or Xbox. Additionally, Microsoft isn't offering refunds to users.

The Movies & TV app and store emerged in 2015, following Microsoft's launch of the service with Zune Video Marketplace in 2006, and its subsequent replacement with Xbox Video in 2012. This evolution ultimately led to the current Movies & TV app and store. It appears Microsoft doesn't want to compete with the likes of Amazon, Netflix and, particularly, Apple in the streaming video services market. It remains unclear how long Microsoft will keep the Movies & TV servers online.

NVIDIA and the University of Bristol have unveiled what is now the United Kingdom's fastest supercomputer, as well as one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers globally.

NVIDIA has taken to its blog to announce the Isambard-AI supercomputer, which features 5,448 NVIDIA Grace Hopper superchips that are cooled through a series of liquid-cooled HPE server cabinets, each containing 440 GPUs.

The system is designed for research purposes and will be utilized to investigate topics spanning from materials science to the discovery of new drugs aimed at maintaining a healthy human population. Moreover, the system was assembled in under two years, whereas typical projects of this size typically take around three years to complete.

Intel has filed documents that reveal the company is planning to lay off as many as 5,000 employees in California and Oregon.

Intel's goal of moving to reduce company-wide headcount by 20% and reduce operating costs comes after the company has already shed approximately 16,000 workers in August 2024, which was shortly after the company underwent, and in some ways still enduring, one of its biggest failures in recent memory - 13th and 14th-gen processors Raptor Lake processors being unstable due to hardware degradation.

These issues and Intel's lack of public acknowledgment of them until pressured by consumers resulted in the company breaking consumer trust and having to participate in a lengthy RMA process for any affected customer.

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Call of Duty 2027 is already being leaked online ahead of the official worldwide reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. The leaks come from a reputable Call of Duty source and claim the title won't be Advanced Warfare 2 and will be set in a completely new "sub-franchise".

The information comes from none other than @TheGhostOfHope, who recently took to their X account to announce that the Call of Duty releasing two years from now (2027), developed by Sledgehammer Games, "will NOT be Advanced Warfare 2 and will instead be set in a completely new sub-franchise." Adding, the COD 2027 will be set during the "Modern era," but won't feature any jetpacks. Furthermore, Hope added that there will be a big focus on movement, and Zombies aren't currently planned for the game.

Hope also wrote that "Get High" will be returning in COD 2027, which doesn't refer to drug use, but instead to moving or positioning to a high vantage point on the map to gain a tactical advantage over your enemy. This would include climbing on rooftops, ledges, scaffolding, etc. Lastly, Hope writes there may be a focus on martial arts within the gameplay as well, with players being able to perform "karate kicks" and "karate chops" as examples.

Intel went through and, in some ways, is still in the midst of one of its biggest failures as a company when it was discovered that 13th and 14th-gen processors were encountering a myriad of issues, such as unstable behavior and crashes related to high-frequency instability, silicon quality, exceeding power draw beyond advertised specs, and degradation. All of these problems Intel sat on until owners gained enough attention that the company was forced to respond.

Intel attempted to mitigate the issue by rolling out several patches, but those didn't really work, and even today, the company is still having to deal with 13th and 14th gen customers trying to RMA their CPU over instability issues. A Firefox developer has revealed that crash reports of 13th and 14th gen CPUs have sharply increased recently, with the developer saying the rise in Raptor Lake crashes is associated with the rising temperatures in Europe and regions across the Northern Hemisphere. The developer said, "your machine is crashing more often because of the summer heat."

The developer goes on to say that Raptor Lake systems have known timing/voltage issues that are worse with increased temperatures. The developer goes on to say, "Things are so bad at this time we had to disable a bot that was filing crash reports automatically," due to the frequency at which the reports were coming in. It appears the voltage fluctuations within these Raptor Lake CPUs are increasing due to the heat in the region, resulting in more instability and, therefore, crashes.

AMD has confirmed that it will be launching its new Radeon AI PRO R9700 workstation-ready graphics card on July 23, built on the full-fat Navi 48 GPU die and features 32GB of GDDR6 memory.

The company has specifically tuned the new Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics card for lower-precision calculations and demanding AI workloads, with AMD noting that it delivers up to 496% faster inference on large transformer models compared to NVIDIA's Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 5080.

AMD's new Radeon AI PRO R9700 will also be around half the price of NVIDIA's new RTX PRO Blackwell GPUs, with the Radeon AI PRO R9700 at launch being offered only inside turnkey workstations from OEM partners like Boxx and Velocity Micro.

GravaStar and Yeston have just unveiled their new Mercury Nova Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card, combining the RDNA 4 GPU with a cyberpunk-inspired design. Check it out:

The new Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card combines AMD's new RDNA 4 architecture with GravaStar's iconic sci-fi design language, with the company designing the Mercury Radeon RX 9070 XT for PC gamers, custom PC builders, and collectors who want power and personality.

Yong Huang, Founder & CEO of GravaStar, explains: "This collaboration represents everything GravaStar stands for-performance, artistry, and pushing boundaries. We've taken AMD's next-gen gaming power and housed it in something visually extraordinary. This isn't just a GPU -- it's a conversation piece".

FurMark 2.9 has been released with the popular GPU tool supporting a bunch of new GPUs including the GeForce RTX 5050 and Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics cards.

GPU companies aren't the biggest fans (pun intended) of FurMark 2.9 as it is often referred to as a "GPU virus" because it puts graphics cards under extreme GPU loads that games and benchmarking don't usually do. It's nothing out of the ordinary, as other benchmarking tools do similar things to your PC hardware (like Cinebench punishing your CPU loading every core and thread).

FurMark v2 is a Vulkan-based GPU tool that works on both Windows and Linux, with special versions in the wild that also support Arm-based hardware. The latest FurMark 2.9 release supports new graphics cards like NVIDIA's just-released GeForce RTX 5050 and the workstation-based AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700.

Intel has reportedly moved its next big event from California to Arizona, where it'll host its Panther Lake CPU reveal event in Phoenix.

The upcoming Intel Technology Tour event will be held in Phoenix, Arizona, and it'll mark the first time that the company has held a huge event in the region according to a new report from DigiTimes. The reason why the event being held in Arizona is significant is that Texas is quickly becoming a huge hub for the semiconductor business on US soil, with TSMC building multiple facilities in the state.

We should expect some big things from the Intel Technology Tour event, where it'll flex its semiconductor foundry muscles against TSMC, where Intel will discuss its Foundry strategy, as well as talk about its "latest PC and data center processors".