Latest News - Page 293

PlayStation still has no plans to mimic Xbox Game Pass's biggest selling feature.

Xbox Game Pass was created to disrupt the industry and build a new service-oriented business model. This plan worked so well that both Nintendo and Sony put their own unique spins on what the FTC would call "value-added, multi-game subscription services," creating the 3-tiered PS Plus and Switch Online subscriptions. But unlike Xbox, neither Nintendo nor Sony were willing to put their biggest games on a subscription on day one because of the impact to sales (a phenomenon referred to as "cannibalization").

Now Sony management has reiterated its original plan. Sony remains steadfast in its commitment to avoid launching marquee first-party PlayStation games onto PS Plus. In a recent interview with Game File, Sony VP of global services Nick Maguire laid out a familiar game plan for PlayStation Plus.

Square Enix has seen the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and has been inspired to take the Final Fantasy franchise back to where it began, turn-based.

The decision to return to command-based RPGs comes after Square Enix was disappointed with the sales of Final Fantasy 16, which saw the developer take a shift in direction with the title, particularly with its combat, which was compared to games such as Devil May Cry. The sharp directional change caused a split with Final Fantasy fans, with some praising the new direction for the franchise and others wanting a return to a turn-based combat system.

It seems turn-based combat system fans will be getting what they want. Square Enix has responded to an individual who, during an investor call, got a chance to speak to the developer and advocate for this change.

Peak, the comedy climber that is currently climbing its way up Steam's Most-Played games, was actually conceived in a hot tub in Sweden and then brought to an Airbnb in South Korea for a month-long development jam.

Peak, which has already obtained more than 1 million sales in just the week it has been available, has gained an incredible amount of attention within the gaming community recently, as clips of the strange characters called scouts have been circulating on various social media platforms, causing the game to spread like wildfire. For those who are out of the loop, Peak is a cooperative climbing and survival game developed by Landfall and Aggro Crab.

Players assume the roles of stranded nature scouts who must ascend a perilous mountain to escape a mysterious island. It has gained quite a lot of popularity for the value of proximity chat experiences, funny encounters/setbacks, and overall comedic approach. Peak hit a staggering 102,799 concurrent players.

The world's largest digital camera has been switched on and begun capturing images, and each of these images measures a staggering 61,440 x 51,200 in resolution.

The newly functional world's largest digital camera is located at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón, approximately 8,799 ft up a mountain in the Chilean Andes. The camera has been operational for 10 hours, and since it began snapping photos of the galaxy above, it has discovered 2,104 new asteroids in the solar system.

The camera weighs a staggering three tonnes and features a ridiculous 3,200 megapixel sensor. It is capable of capturing feverishly high-resolution images so high-resolution that if the camera were pointed at the Moon, it would be able to snap an image and see a golf ball on the surface. The first pictures released by scientists operating the capture show 10 million galaxies, which is a small start as it covers just 0.05% of the camera's overall goal to map out 20 billion galaxies through taking regular survey images.

Dangerous malware has been detected on both the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. Researchers have dubbed the nasty piece of software "SparkKitty."

The cybersecurity researchers at Kaspersky discovered SparkKitty in January 2025 and explained the malware uses optical character recognition to scan through an infected device's photos to harvest any relevant data that can help with deciphering a cryptocurrency wallet recovery phrase.

The idea behind this strategy by the malware creators is to stumble upon a screenshot or a photo of a user's cryptocurrency recovery phrase within their gallery. Most cryptocurrency exchanges tell users to write down their recovery phrase after their wallet is created. Most users promptly do this and then take a quick photo of the phrase in case the piece of paper is lost or simply for quick access to the phrase.

Ubisoft has rolled out a new update for Assassin's Creed Shadows, which adds several new features such as a new crossover story quest, a new nightmare difficulty setting, and a new open-world alarm system.

The new update is scheduled to be pushed on June 25 at 7am PT / 10am ET, and is relatively big depending on the platform it's being downloaded on. For example, the new update comes in at 6.27GB on the PS5, and much larger on PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles at 19GB.

One of the main aspects of the update is the new quest called A Critical Encounter, which features Robbie Daymond's character Rufino from Critical Role's Assassin's Creed Shadows one-shot. Daymond voices the character in the quest.

Sony has been summoned to appear in court as a class-action lawsuit filed against the company alleges its PlayStation Store pricing has violated laws.

The lawsuit was first announced in February 2025 and can be traced back to the Dutch consumer group Massaschade & Consument, alleging Sony "artificially" increased the prices of its products on the PlayStation Store. The Dutch consumer group described Sony's actions as an abuse of power, and summarized the price increases as a "Sony Tax."

Now, a new press release from the Massaschade & Consument states many Dutch PlayStation owners believe they have been pressured into "digital only" consoles since the release of the PlayStation 5 generation, and allegedly, consoles "work exclusively with digital games instead of physical discs."

Microsoft has been fighting the long defeat against the adoption rate of Windows 11, as the official ending of Windows 10 support ends in October this year, and more than half of Windows users are still on the previous generation OS.

The Redmond-based company has been attempting to sway Windows 10 users to adopt the latest operating system for the better part of its existence, with Microsoft really ramping up its efforts in the past year with in-operating system advertisements, messaging and constant public reminders.

While Windows 10's user base is trickling down it isn't decreasing at a rate that will see the majority of Windows 10 users moved over to Windows 11 before the October deadline arrives, meaning there will be millions of users left behind on machines that will no longer be receiving security updates, leaving them vulnerable to attacks as time passes.

Since the recently announced trade tariffs targeting China and other countries where consumer electronics are manufactured, there has been mounting pressure to bring tech manufacturing back to the United States.

Unfortunately, the US doesn't have the facilities, nor the experience, to manufacture devices such as Apple's iPhone at the scale necessary to meet demand. Despite these challenges, work is being done to make US consumer electronics manufacturing a reality, and one example has popped up demonstrating the difficulty of releasing a USA-made electronic device at a reasonable price.

Purism has unveiled the Liberty Phone, a home-grown device that comes with some concessions compared to Apple's iPhone or other major smartphones on the market. Firstly, the Liberty Phone is priced at $1,999, as the device costs approximately $650 to manufacture.

Another one of Microsoft's first-party games is crossing over to PlayStation 5 later this year, this time with Ninja Theory's Hellblade II.

Hellblade II: Senua's Saga is getting a new enhancement patch on Gen 9 consoles and PC alongside the game's official PS5 release. Senua's sequel is set to release on PS5 on August 12 with two editions: the standard $49.99 version, and a deluxe $69.99 SKU that comes bundled with an upgraded PS5-ready version of the first Hellblade, alongside an official soundtrack.

The new Hellblade II: Senua's Saga Enhanced edition will be optimized for both the PS5 and PS5 Pro, offering major performance upgrades like doubling the frame rate to 60FPS. The Xbox Series X/S and PC versions also run at 60FPS in performance mode, and Ninja Theory has added in a new very high graphics preset on PC. The devs also say that the enhanced edition will be Steam Deck verified at launch.

NVIDIA has officially announced the GeForce RTX 5050 desktop and laptop GPU. The desktop variant is the first new 50-class card for PC gaming since the GeForce RTX 3050. Availability is expected in the second half of July, and pricing will start from $249, making the entry-level GPU the most affordable option in the GeForce RTX 50 Series lineup.

In its announcement, NVIDIA confirms that "x50-class GeForce GPUs are among the most popular in the world," second only to 60-class GPUs like the RTX 3060. The RTX 5050 is being marketed as an entry-level RTX GPU, an upgrade for older 50-class systems with GTX 1050 or RTX 3050 GPUs, and a solution for home theater PCs.

Although NVIDIA's benchmark and performance charts for the RTX 5050 focus on DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, there is some raw performance data for esports and competitive games like Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, and Overwatch 2. NVIDIA confirms that the new GeForce RTX 5050 is 60% faster on average, in raw raster performance, than the GeForce RTX 3050.

Apple has some big changes for its upcoming iPhone 17 family of smartphones, with its higher-end iPhone 17 Pro leaked with a vapor chamber cooler and a thin copper plate, which will help with overheating, and more.

The new iPhone 17 Pro smartphone will have a vapor chamber cooling system that should offer lower operating temperatures, providing smoother gaming under maximum load. Majin Bu has shared a fresh image of the purported vapor chamber cooling system inside of Apple's new iPhone 17 Pro, but we still don't know how the company will be implementing the technology.

Apple will be experiencing its first time using a dedicated thermal management for the iPhone, compared to competitors like Samsung and its higher-end Galaxy S25 Ultra smartphone which has had vapor chamber cooling technology for a number of years now. Vapor chamber coolers manage and dissipate heat inside of the devices more effectively than the likes of graphite sheets used on the iPhone 16 Pro.

HPE and NVIDIA have launched new AI factory offerings at the HPE Discover event in Las Vegas, covering everything from modular AI factory infrastructure and HPE's AI-ready RTX PRO servers, to the next-generation of HPE's turnkey AI platform, HPE Private Cloud AI.

The portfolio combines NVIDIA Blackwell accelerated computing, NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet, NVIDIA BlueField 3 networking technologies, NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, and HPE's entire portfolio of servers, storage, services and software. This now includes HPE OpsRamp Software, which is a validated observability solution for the NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory, and HPE Morpheus Enterprise Software for orchestration.

The results of this culminates in a pre-integrated, modular infrastructure stack to help teams get AI into production faster. This new full-stack, turnkey AI factory solution will offer HPE ProLiant Compute DL380a Gen12 servers packing NVIDIA's new RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs.

Apple's new ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air has surfaced with new details inside of the iOS 26 Beta 2, teasing a 6.6-inch display size and more information regarding the native resolution.

The new iPhone 17 Air ultra-thin smartphone has been teased inside of iOS 26 Beta 2, confirming that the 6.6-inch display should have a native resolution of 2736 x 1260, something that isn't seen on other iPhones on the market. MacWorld found that there's a new version of the iconic clownfish wallpaper inside of iOS 26 Beta 2, with a resolution of "420x912x3" which will deliver a 2736 x 1260 resolution.

With this pixel count, Apple's upcoming iPhone 17 Air points to the 6.6-inch display and its 2736 x 1260 resolution. Previous reports from insider Ming-Chi Kuo stated that the iPhone 17 Air would have a 6.6-inch display size and resolution of 2740 x 1260. The new reveals from iOS 26 Beta 2 show that Kuo was very close to the new information.

Chinese AI giant DeepSeek is helping Chinese military and intelligence operators access NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs, even after the US government banned NVIDIA from handing the AI chips to China

DeepSeek has been using shell companies operating in Southeast Asia to access high-end semiconductors that can't be shipped to China under tightened US export restrictions.

A senior State Department official told Reuters in an interview: "We understand that DeepSeek has willingly provided and will likely continue to provide support to China's military and intelligence operations. This effort goes above and beyond open-source access to DeepSeek's AI models".

Techland's new Dying Light Retouched update will be out on all platforms on June 26, complete with visual boosts and more.

The Dying Light franchise turned 10 years old this year, and to celebrate, the developers over at Techland put together some extra bonuses for their community. One big addition is Dying Light Retouched, a new game patch that adds a higher level of detail to the last-gen classic.

The free Retouched update isn't a remaster, but Techland did say it was a significant amount of manual work to make the adjustments. These enhancements include 8K Ultra shadow quality, tweaked lighting, boosting LOD from 260% to 340%, increased texture quality, and improved physics-based rendering.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced plans to develop a new nuclear power plant, which will be the first new nuclear power plant to be built in New York in decades.

The Trump administration has pushed for "energy dominance" in the United States, and with tech companies needing more and more power for their AI data centers, New York wants to be at the center of that action with a new nuclear power plant.

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority president and CEO Doreen Harris said in a press release: "The use of advanced nuclear technology can provide the State with a greater diversity of its energy resources that will support New York's goal of a growing economy with a reliable, zero-emission electricity system".

Microsoft is planning a significant round of layoffs in the Xbox games division, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

New layoffs are set to happen at Xbox. New reports indicate that Microsoft will conduct another large layoff in the Xbox games unit next week as part of a company-wide restructuring. These layoffs will be on top of the 6,000 job eliminations that Microsoft made last month.

Today's news marks the fourth round of layoffs at Xbox in the last 18 months. To stem costs and help equalize margins, Xbox management has laid off thousands of workers over the last year and a half across all of its operating groups (Activision Blizzard King, ZeniMax Media, and Xbox Game Studios).

ASUS has tested its new BTF 2.5 power connector for its in-house GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, which is better than the new 16-pin 12V-2x6 power connector, with improved reliability and lower temperatures.

ASUS introduced its new BTF ecosystem expansion at Computex 2025, with the BTF family of products including the new "GC-HPWR" power connector for motherboards, paving the way for GPUs like the ASUS RTX 5090 BTF to be powered without its 16-pin power connector, feeding all of the power into the motherboard itself.

The new GC-HPWR (Graphics Card - High Power) connector has reached version 2.5, and is found on ASUS's new motherboards, is capable of sending 1000W of power through the motherboard and into a graphics card. ASUS General Manager Tony Yu used the company's in-house ROG Strix GeForce RTX 5090 BTF through a bunch of tests, displaying the capabilities of the GC-HPWR connector.

Meta formally announces a special edition Xbox-themed Quest 3S virtual reality headset as Microsoft further expands beyond consoles.

Microsoft wants to bring Xbox services to all devices that can play them, including VR headsets. But there's just one problem: Making hardware is expensive, and Xbox VR was nixed a while back. That's the impetus behind today's hardware reveal, the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition.

Rather than make its own VR headsets, Microsoft teamed up with Meta to make an Xbox-branded Quest 3 headset. The bundle is Xbox only in name and color palette--it's still just a Quest 3S--but it does come with a custom Xbox controller and 3 months of Xbox Game Pass for $399. The headset is now available over on Meta's website.