Latest News - Page 281

Matt Turnbull, an executive producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing, has found himself in hot water after he suggested that the recently let-go 9,000 Microsoft workers should use artificial intelligence-powered tools to help deal with their emotions surrounding losing their jobs.

In what appears to be the latest completely tone-deaf response to the widespread layoffs hitting Xbox and companies under its umbrella, the public's response to this message from Turnbull was vitriolic, causing the Xbox Game Studios Publishing executive to remove the post from his LinkedIn account. One X user called Turnbull's suggestion "plain disgusting," while another wrote on LinkedIn, "I had to read this twice to make sure it wasn't satire."

This suggestion from Turnbull has come at a time when Microsoft has pledged to invest $80 billion into developing AI, which, to many, is part of the reason why the company decided to lay off 9,000 employees across its various divisions. To many affected by these layoffs, or simply anyone looking in from the outside, Turnbull's suggestion reads, "To get through your current emotional state caused by the job loss, use the tool that has seemingly replaced you." This suggestion from Turnbull is the equivalent of saying you should ask your replacement for advice on how to cope with being fired.

The assumption that older PC technology becomes cheaper once newer technology arrives is quickly becoming a thing of the past, as prices for DDR4 and GDDR6 memory are set to skyrocket by up to 43% in the third quarter of 2025, which is right around the corner. The news arrives via TrendForce, which has posted a new report covering its findings on the three major DRAM suppliers.

When it comes to DDR4 and mobile LPDDR4X memory, the reason for the sharp increase in pricing is that these products are nearing the end of their life cycle (EOL) as companies transition to next-generation DDR5 technology. This means that the continued demand for older DDR4 technology, alongside "potential hikes in US import tariffs," may see DDR4 pricing increase by 38 to 43% with LPDDR4X pricing increasing by up to 23 to 28% for the PC market.

The growing demand for the newer DDR5 memory technology will also lead to an increase in pricing in the third quarter, but by a significantly lower amount, ranging from 3 to 8% for the consumer market. And with NVIDIA's latest generation of GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs shifting to cutting-edge GDDR7 memory, the shift in production capacity for the newer technology also means that GDDR6 memory is in short supply.

The artificial intelligence chatbot Grok has received a new update from its creators at xAI and has now been caught spouting antisemitic posts across X. The creators of the chatbot have since recognized the problem and responded.

The latest update to Grok is the fourth iteration of the new chatbot, which went live on July 9. Shortly after the update was pushed out, users began prompting the newly upgraded chatbot with a range of different questions, some of which probed to see where the new guardrails for its responses were set. Users were surprised when Grok began posting antisemitic responses to seemingly blank-slated questions, with the chatbot even going as far as to call itself "MechaHitler" and praise Hitler.

Grok jumping over its guardrails with this new update comes after xAI founder Elon Musk publicly stated he was unhappy with how the AI chatbot answered questions, saying Grok produced answers that were too "woke". On Friday, Musk said that Grok had been "improved significantly," and users would notice a difference after the July 9 update was pushed out.

War Thunder requires no introduction; the free-to-play, military-themed, massively multiplayer game has been offering players the opportunity to immerse themselves in real-world aviation, armored vehicles, and naval craft for over a decade. In that time, the game has received countless updates, with its latest, the Leviathans major update, adding real-time path-traced lighting to the game.

Now, when most gamers hear the phrase "path tracing," their mind goes directly to a high-end GPU like the GeForce RTX 5080. Granted, Path Tracing is extremely hardware-intensive, but War Thunder developer Gaijin Entertainment is limiting the technology to Path Traced Global Illumination, or PTGI. Alongside the new path-traced lighting, the studio is embracing new tech to boost ray-tracing performance.

This includes support for Opacity Micro Maps (OMM) and Shader Execution Reordering, which are currently included in the latest preview version of the DirectX SDK. War Thunder already features ray-traced shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion, and with the new Path Traced Global Illumination, the game looks even more impressive.

NVIDIA's DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation arrived earlier this year with the GeForce RTX 50 Series of RTX Blackwell gaming GPUs, and it has been a game changer for image quality and performance. With over 120 titles featuring either native DLSS 4 support or DLSS 4 support available via the DLSS Override feature in the NVIDIA App, we can add three more PC games to the DLSS 4-compatible list this week.

First up, there's the player-driven fantasy of Mortal Online 2, which offers players a sandbox world with no rules and the freedom to build, trade, build houses, explore, loot, and of course, raise more than a few swords in massive PvP battles. Developer Star Vault AB notes that the Unreal Engine 5-powered title offers the largest draw distance or "visibility range" for any MMO.

With the arrival of its first major expansion, Reckoning, Mortal Online 2 is adding DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support to boost performance. It's worth noting that the enhanced DLSS 4 Super Resolution is available for all GeForce RTX gamers, while the new Multi Frame Generation is exclusive to the GeForce RTX 50 Series.

Games industry analyst Chris Zukowski has shared a few choice words about PC gamers, specifically those on Steam, in a new blog post. "The amazing thing about Steam and its player base is that they buy games they aren't going to play," Chris writes in the opening, as part of a message to game developers. "More than likely, the person buying your game is not going to play it."

The post makes the point that, in the current entertainment field, with services like Netflix and HBO Max, alongside live-service games like Fortnite, game developers are competing for people's time in a fragmented market. However, when it comes to Steam, Valve's platform is so successful and lucrative for game developers of all sizes because the audience is "full of super die-hard hobbyists."

This means it's more about collecting games and building a library without worrying about "how much money they are spending." Granted, it doesn't hurt that Steam's annual Summer Sale (which is still live) brings significant discounts to a wide range of games annually.

The new Razer BlackWidow V4 Tenkeyless HyperSpeed is the latest wireless gaming keyboard from the company, and it ships with a Power Saving Mode that offers up to 980 hours of battery life. An impressive number that might leave you forgetting how to charge it once that time runs out - joking, of course. Simply plug in the USB cable and you'll be back up and running.

The Razer BlackWidow V4 Tenkeyless HyperSpeed features a new dedicated Battery Life and Status button that you simply need to hold for three seconds to enable Power Saving Mode. And that's 980 hours in either low-latency Razer HyperSpeed Wireless or Bluetooth mode, which is even more impressive.

There's a lot more to the new Razer BlackWidow V4 than its industry-leading battery life; it's also a fully customizable board with hot-swappable switches supporting both 3-pin and 5-pin options. There are also two layers of dampening foam underneath the hood for a smooth typing experience, alongside lubricated stabilizers, an enhanced PCB, and a top-mounted steel plate.

MSI's new Claw A8 gaming handheld has been benchmarked, with AMD's new Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU tested against Intel's Lunar Lake processor.

In a new video from a Chinese content creator, MSI's new Claw A8 gaming handheld was tested as the new handheld has launched on Chinese e-commerce platforms, but it hasn't officially launched anywhere else. Inside, the new Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU has 8C/16T of Zen 5 processing power at up to 5.0GHz clock speeds, and 16 Compute Units of new RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU power.

This is a big upgrade over the lackluster Intel Meteor Lake processor inside the original MSI Claw gaming handheld, but the company did upgrade its Claw to the newer Intel Lunar Lake architecture, which is superior thanks to its improved Xe2 GPU architecture.

Apple is working on next-gen silicon that recently turned up in an internal build of iOS 18, including the new A19, A19 Pro, M5, and C2.

In a new report from AppleInsider, which had exclusive information provided to them, an internal build of iOS 18 included references to multiple unannounced Apple Silicon chips for a bunch of different hardware platforms. Apple's new iOS 18 has a build number of 22A91871y, is a NonUI variant of iOS 18, lacking the regular consumer-oriented iOS user interface, instead featuring just rudimentary applications designed primarily for hardware testing.

AppleInsider's report includes a video that explains how the unit's operating system contains codenames and identifiers that line up with multiple unreleased Apple Silicon chips, including new M-series processors, the next-generation C2 5G modem, an Apple Watch chip, and more.

AMD launched its new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9000 series CPUs earlier this month, and now the flagship Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX processor has been tested in Geekbench with a score of over 30,000 points.

The current record holder on Geekbench is Intel's previous-gen Core i7-13700K processor with 33,962 points, which is because Geekbench usually favors Intel in multi-threaded CPU tests, but that doesn't mean that they're faster in multi-threaded operations than Threadripper chips with more cores and threads.

AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series "Shimada Peak" CPUs are now out, with the flagship Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX, which pushes 30,170 points, slightly less than the 30,579 points out of the Zen 4-based Ryzen Threadripper 7995WX chip.

NVIDIA is preparing to launch its new DGX Spark, a new mini supercomputer with a huge 1000 TOPS of AI workload power and a cost of $4000.

In a new report from Taiwan Economic Daily, we're hearing that NVIDIA is preparing its new DGX Spark mini supercomputer for a retail launch this month, with AIB partners like ASUS, MSI, and GIGABYTE to soon introduce their own DGX Spark mini supercomputer to the market.

Inside, the new DGX Spark uses NVIDIA's new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, which has been optimized into a desktop form factor. NVIDIA's new GB10 features a powerful NVIDIA Blackwell GPU with fifth-generation Tensor Cores and FP4 support, with 1000 TOPS of AI compute power for fine-tuning and inference with the latest AI reasoning models, including the NVIDIA Cosmos Reason world foundation model and NVIDIA GR00T N1 robot foundation model.

Apple's new ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air smartphone has been teased in a new video on X, showing a dummy model of the rumored design of what will be Apple's thinnest iPhone ever. Check it out:

We've been hearing tons of rumors that Apple's ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air smartphone will be just 5.5mm thick at its thinnest point, passing the iPhone 6 at its thinnest point with 6.9mm. In order to get the iPhone this thin, Apple has had to make some compromises including decreased battery life, a single rear-facing camera, a single speaker, and the A19 processor over the A19 Pro.

Inside, we should expect a 6.6-inch display, Apple's new in-house A19 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 24-megapixel front-facing camera, 48-megapixel rear-facing camera, Face ID technology, titanium casing, Apple's in-house C1 5G modem, and charging speeds of up to 35W power.

Romero Games hasn't shut down, and now it's looking to shop its new first-person shooter to other games publishers.

News of Romero Games' demise has been exaggerated. It's true that the Xbox layoffs led to the cancellation of Romero's new first-person shooter, but since that game is set in a new IP, the studio retains the right to bring the project to another publisher. And that's what they intend to do--the group is currently weighing publishing offers.

Essentially, Romero Games was working with an unnamed publisher (believed to be Bethesda) on a new first-person game. This project wasn't even announced yet, and the publisher pulled funding because of the Xbox layoffs. Romero's game is now in limbo, a space in between funding rounds. The funding was cut, and Romero Games did indeed have to lay off some of its workers.

Chinese display manufacturer BOE is expected to capture 51% of Apple's MacBook display panel orders this year, up from 39% in 2024, according to new reports.

In a new story from MacRumors, BOE is expected to ship around 11.5 million units to Apple in 2025, which represents the first time that the Chinese display manufacturer will supply over half of the display panels used throughout Apple's MacBook family of laptops.

In a new report from market research firm Omdia, Apple's growing demand for display panels for its MacBook Air was instrumental in the change, benefiting BOE in a big way, but it won't last forever. Apple is forecast to buy 22.5 million display panels for its MacBook laptops this year, representing a 1% year-over-year increase.

Yesterday was July 7, aka Bungie Day, and Destiny 2 community lead dmg04 shared an optimistic message to fans.

If you ask fans, Destiny 2 isn't in the best place right now. But to be fair, the same could be said about Bungie itself. Hit with mass layoffs, another art plagiarism scandal, and the indefinite delay of its new game Marathon, Bungie's internal morale is reportedly at an all-time low.

This schism has affected Destiny 2's development, with content being sparse and drawn out in seasonal events, updates, and expansions. There's also the potential looming threat of Sony's buyout clause, which states that Bungie could lose its independence to Sony if the developer fails to meet financial targets. While Sony does technically own Bungie after the $2.7 billion acquisition, the Destiny developer operates as its own entity.

NVIDIA currently uses SK hynix and Samsung GDDR7 memory chips for its GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs, but Micron is about to step into the GDDR7 memory chip supply chain.

In a new report from Benchlife, supply chain sources have said that in addition to SK hynix and Samsung GDDR7 memory chips, NVIDIA has added Micron's new GDDR7 memory for its RTX 50 series. This means that there are now 3 versions of GDDR7 memory to choose from moving forward.

Micron announced its GDDR7 memory chips in a press release in 2024, announcing that it had started sampling GDDR7 memory chips. As it stands, Micron's new GDDR7 memory is available in two different versions: 28Gbps and 32Gbps, on its 1β process.

Bethesda could be working on more than one new Fallout game, and it sounds like Fallout 3 remastered could be among the lineup.

Bethesda parent ZeniMax was recently hit by the Xbox cuts, leading to various team layoffs, the cancellation of an important MMORPG project, and the departure of a studio director. The company is currently riding the strong current of Oblivion remaster sales alongside Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76.

While Bethesda Game Studios continues work on The Elder Scrolls 6, there are now reports that work is underway on multiple Fallout games. Bethesda has said in the past that Elder Scrolls 6 comes first, then the next numbered Fallout, so one of the new games isn't the mainline Fallout 5.

LG Innotek has proposed a new way to make smartphones thinner than ever before, removing solder balls that attach chip substrates to motherboards, replacing the solder balls with Copper Posts.

The new packaging method developed by LG Innotek sees the placement of copper columns on the substrate before solder balls are applied on top, rather than bonding the balls directly to the surface.

The resulting structure reduces the spacing between solder balls by approximately 20% compared to traditional layouts, while keeping the same electrical performance. LG says that its new method would provide smartphone designers with more flexibility in making slimmer smartphones, while increasing available space for things like bigger batteries.

Meta has just poached Apple's best AI engineer, another dagger into the heart of Apple's efforts into AI, of which it has been failing since its introduction with Apple Intelligence.

In a new report from Bloomberg, we're hearing that Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer, and manager in charge of Apple's foundation models team, is leaving the company and joining Meta's new superintelligence group, "according to people with knowledge of the matter".

Meta offered Pang a deal he couldn't refuse: a huge package worth tens of millions of dollars per year, as Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has been on an AI hiring spree, pulling in major AI leaders including Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman "with high compensation", adds Bloomberg.

Apple is expected to launch its new iPhone 17e smartphone in spring 2026 using the same budget-friendly OLED display that will be reused from the current iPhone 16e smartphone.

In a new report from TheElec, picked up by insider @Jukanrosleve on X, we are hearing that the same budget-friendly OLED display on Apple's current iPhone 16e will be reused for next year's iPhone 17e, with the company aiming to maintain its annual iPhone shipments at between 220 and 230 million units.

BOE and Samsung Display are reportedly involved in the OLED development project for the iPhone 17e, with a "high probability" that LG Display is also involved. BOE, Samsung Display, and LG Display are supplying OLED panels to Apple, while BOE will provide the largest volume out of the three display manufacturers.