Latest News - Page 31

Nintendo confirmed a Switch 2 price hike to $499.99 coming in September, and if you have been sitting on the fence, Woot just handed you the strongest reason yet to jump off it. New customers to the retailer can grab a brand new Nintendo Switch 2 for just $399 using the promo code GIFT26 at checkout, which is $100 below the incoming September price and $50 below the current standard retail price.

The base listing on Woot sits at $449. The GIFT26 code knocks $22 off for returning customers, bringing it to $427. First-time Woot customers get an additional discount on top of that, pushing the final price down to $399. The deal is limited to one unit per customer and ends at 11:58 PM CT on July 25 or while supplies last. Given how demand for the Switch 2 has held up since launch, stock running out first is the safer assumption.

If the new unit sells out, Woot also has a Grade A certified refurbished Switch 2 bundled with Mario Kart World for $439. It comes with original accessories, the retail box, a 90-day warranty, and a Mario Kart World game code that is either unused from the original customer or a freshly added replacement. Unlike the new console deal, no promo code is required, with the bundle already discounted by $70 from its regular $500 price.

Battlefield 6 just got its latest major update, Season 4, which introduces the biggest map in the game so far. Tsuru Reef is a large and dense island chain that sees a previous luxury resort become the battleground for land, sea, and aerial combat supporting all modes in the game. It also introduces a new wave system for the water that adds a dynamic layer to the series' all-out warfare.

Throw in new vehicles, weapons, and the return of the classic Wake Island map that's set to debut later in the season, and Battlefield 6 continues to evolve as it heads toward its first anniversary. However, all is not well for PC players rocking the latest GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards, as several players have been reporting issues with the game crashing when using the latest GeForce Game Ready 610.74 WHQL driver.

This has led the official Battlefield Comms account on social media platform X to issue a statement confirming the "NVIDIA GPU Driver Crashes on Certain Maps." The statement confirms that the issue affects NVIDIA GPUs, "more concentrated among players using GeForce RTX 50 Series cards," but not all PC gamers with GeForce RTX cards are affected.

Noctua and Pulsar Gaming Gears have launched the Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition, a gaming mouse with a 40mm Noctua NF-A4x10 fan built directly into its underside to keep your palm cool during long sessions. It is now available on Pulsar's official website and at authorised retailers for $179.95.

The mouse uses a carbon composite exoskeleton with ventilation cutouts throughout the body. This is done to both keep the weight down and to let the embedded fan push air directly upward toward your palm. The goal is to reduce hand sweat to maintain grip during extended or intense gaming, especially for professional e-sports players.

Fan speed is adjustable across multiple levels through a button and wheel combination or a web-based driver, and it can be turned off entirely when you do not need it. At 73 grams including the fan, the Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition is heavier than the standard Feinmann F01. For a mouse positioned around lightweight gaming, that is worth knowing before purchase. The Noctua colourway, predictably, is the familiar beige and brown that has become Noctua's signature across all its products.

It's tough out there. Getting components for a first gaming build feels like a war right now. The memory crisis and AI-driven hardware rush have pushed prices to the point where even talking about a good deal feels like rubbing salt in the wound. So here is one more story about someone who walked into Costco for groceries and walked out with a gaming rig that should cost over $2,000.

The story comes from Reddit user u/klcp20, who was doing their weekly Costco grocery run when they spotted the last remaining iBUYPOWER gaming PC on display. The system originally retailed for $1,899, but Costco had marked it down to $1,140. After tax, the total came to just $1,220. The receipt also included a $4.99 rotisserie chicken, which might just be the only item that offered better value than the PC itself.

The specs are what make this genuinely jaw-dropping. Inside the box is an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB SSD. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D alone still carries a hefty premium, and the RTX 5070 isn't exactly a budget GPU either.

Over the weekend, hundreds of Old School RuneScape players reminded the gaming community why MMOs can create unmatched gaming experiences, as these players assembled in monk robes, wielding white staves and holy symbols, for a pilgrimage through the PvP-enabled Wilderness zone. Their mission? To spread the teachings of Saradomin, a god within the RuneScape law.

What began as a peaceful march to the Revenant Caves carrying holy symbols, lobsters, and white staves quickly devolved into organized chaos. The idea was to march to the caves, which are located within the PvP area, and scold anyone found with a skull above their character, as that is proof they have attacked another player within the PvP area and are considered "not friendly." When one of these offenders was discovered, the zealots proceeded to follow them and type, "Brother, your skull concerns us."

Notably, the pilgrimage participants intentionally didn't bring any weapons to attack any other players, as this was a humble and peaceful rally of Saradomin followers. Led by Reddit user jan7283, the "Brothers of the Monastery" claimed they had no weapons and no plan beyond delivering divine warnings to skull-holding PvP aggressors. The popularity of the first pilgrimage spawned the idea for a second journey planned for July 25, but this time to the Chaos Altar, an altar of the competing god Zamorak.

Sales data from one of gaming's most influential geographies shows a major downturn for physical game sales.

Sony's decision to cut physical game discs has prompted major online pushback, however the vast majority of gamers in regions like the US have been favoring digital for years now.

Insights and sales info from trusted data-tracker Circana show that physical game sales revenue peaked in 2009 with an estimated $11.5 billion earned, dropping down to just $1.6 billion by 2026. That's a negative CAGR rate of -10.36% across the aforementioned period. Sony's own sales data shows that physical game sales were at a negative CAGR of -9.26% from FY17 to FY25.

Microsoft has secured the second cross-subscription licensing deal for Xbox Game Pass while also bringing a new control scheme to Quest Touch controllers.

Users who subscribe to Meta Horizon+ will also get bonus access to the Game Pass Starter Edition, a smaller sampling of games that reflect the Xbox brand. Horizon+ is an all-you-can-play subscription service for Meta's VR headset--it's kind of like the Game Pass of VR, so this feels like a good synergy for the two services. Microsoft first introduced this promo Game Pass Starter Edition with a partnership with Discord Nitro back in May.

"Starting today, eligible Meta Horizon+ subscribers now get a starter edition of XBOX Game Pass where available, offering access to 50+ games, 10 hours of cloud gaming each month, and Rewards for playing," reads a post on the Xbox Wire.

Mike Brown, the former creative director of Forza Horizon 5, has weighed in on Xbox's ongoing turmoil. His take lands right at the center of the subscriber math Microsoft has been dealing with all year.

Speaking on the MinnMax podcast, Brown said Game Pass was a good idea, but that the subscription simply never pulled in enough paying members to support what Microsoft built around it.

On the heels of Sony announcing it will be ending production of physical PlayStation discs, researchers have looked into how long PS5 and PS4 game discs will last, giving PlayStation gamers an idea of how long they will have access to their games before they vanish.

According to a new study from the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), PS4 and PS5 games will remain playable for anywhere between 10 to 20 years, and after that, the discs aren't guaranteed to work. The findings come as Sony announced it will stop producing physical game discs in January 2028, sparking renewed debate over the future of physical media in gaming, and what it means to actually own a game you have purchased.

The study focused on read-only Blu-ray discs, like those used for PS4 and PS5 games, and found that these discs begin degrading the moment they're manufactured. "Discs, whether they are optical discs or any other kind of media, are degrading from the day you get them," said Ern Bieman, a Heritage Information Analyst at the CCI. One of the biggest problems with disc storage is that the storage layer is extremely thin, meaning even minor scratches, humidity, or heat can result in the disc being unreadable.

Apple is preparing a new way for people to access its pedigree of devices, as a new report from Bloomberg reporter and renowned Apple insider Mark Gurman has revealed the "Apple Upgrade" service, a new leasing program designed to make its hardware more accessible to a wider range of people.

Partnering with Klarna, Apple's new program will allow users to lease iPhones and Apple Watches for 24 months, and Macs and iPads for 36 months. At the end of the term, users can choose to keep the device, pay off the remainder, return it to the company, or upgrade to a newer model. The service is structured like any other subscription, and aims to shift device ownership from a one-time purchase to a recurring, more manageable expense, which translates to Apple having more of its products in more people's hands.

Apple's upcoming service comes at a time when the company recently increased its hardware prices across its lineup, excluding the iPhone. With the leasing option, the company is trying to maintain demand among users who might otherwise delay or skip an upgrade, or see the price increase as the breaking point for an upgrade they otherwise would have purchased if it were the original or a lower price. The partnership with Klarna also signals Apple's willingness to experiment with new financial models to stay competitive in a tightening consumer market.

A key executive has left Microsoft years ahead of the next-gen Project Helix console, opting for a similar role at an AI company instead.

Jared Palmer, the engineering VP that was directly appointed by new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, is now leaving Microsoft. "Personal update: I've joined Cognition to lead engineering. I'm grateful to Asha Sharma and everyone at Xbox for an amazing year," Palmer announced on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Both Sharma and Palmer previously worked together in a similar arrangement at another Microsoft division, CoreAI, with Sharma serving as president and Palmer as VP. At Xbox, Palmer was involved with "removing friction and increasing productivity," and according to a memo from Sharma, Palmer was also working directly with her on Xbox's "most complex product and engineering problems."

Every industry report this year has landed like bad news, so it is genuinely refreshing to see one that does not. TrendForce's latest forecast says NAND flash supply and demand should finally balance out during the second half of 2027, effectively ending the shortage that has hammered SSD prices for the past two years.

The near-term outlook, however, is still not pretty. TrendForce expects a 4% to 6% supply deficit for the rest of 2026, so NAND prices are not dropping anytime soon. The firm does point to rising wafer output from SK hynix, Micron, Samsung, and YMTC, along with process node upgrades, as the reason supply should finally catch up.

Weaker consumer demand is also playing a role, since prices have already climbed high enough that plenty of buyers are holding off on upgrades and stretching out their current storage instead.

Most of the time when we talk about Amazon messing up a shipment, it doesn't usually end well for the buyer. However, this newest "reverse scam" actually proved to be quite the opposite. A Japanese Amazon customer paid for a single Intel Core i5-14400 and ended up with five sealed retail boxes on their doorstep. The buyer posted a photo of the stack on X, saying they had no idea why four extra processors showed up alongside the one they actually ordered.

The likely explanation is a warehouse scanning error. Intel ships some processors in distribution cartons holding five individual retail boxes, and it looks like a worker scanned the barcode on the outer carton and treated the whole thing as a single unit. Amazon hasn't confirmed this, so it's still just the leading theory from people replying to the post. It's also a strange mirror image of the reverse scam cases we've covered, where a buyer somehow walks away with more than they paid for.

What happened next is perhaps even more interesting, depending on your view of the world. Plenty of replies told the buyer to stay quiet, sit on the extra chips, or just sell them. That's not far off from what we've seen play out on the other side of Amazon's fulfillment mess, where a buyer who received a mismatched SSD had to fight to even prove something was wrong. Here it's the opposite problem, and the internet's advice was basically to keep the free stuff and move on.

Classic games are on the comeback, and Old School RuneScape in particular is seeing tons of interest.

2000s computer lab-era classic Old School RuneScape is apparently quite prosperous despite being a decades-old game. In a recent interview with The Games Business, Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy says that the Monty Python-esque RPG has now broken almost all of the milestones and metrics that Jagex uses to measure the game's success.

"For Old School RuneScape, I think we've broken just about every record we've ever had--every major metric in the last 12 months, multiple times. It's an unbelievable heater. We've been really happy with how that game performed," Bellamy said.

Microsoft has fixed a major issue surrounding select Dell PCs where a buggy Windows Update was causing unintentional shutdowns to occur. BleepingComputer reports that Microsoft has released out-of-band emergency updates KB5121767 and KB5121768 fixing the shutdown problem for affected systems that installed the KB5101650 update. KB5121767 is aimed at Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2, and KB5121768 is geared towards Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC 2024.

For the uninitiated, Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday cumulative Windows Update caused a driver conflict with Windows 11's USB-C Connection Manager Interface and Intel's Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant Driver. The conflict not only could cause shutdowns, but Microsoft also reported additional issues such as poor performance, increased heat, and increased battery drain. The Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant Driver is responsible for connecting Intel's DTT and CST drivers to Windows. DTT, or Dynamic Tuning Technology, is responsible for optimizing performance, power, acoustics, and thermals on a supported Intel machine. CST, or Context Sensing Technology, detects user presence in front of a system to run features such as Wake on Approach or Walk away Lock.

The issues were great enough for Microsoft to withhold the driver from affected systems until a fix could be made. If you want to know if your system is affected, a yellow exclamation point will appear next to the Intel Innovation Platform Framework Processor Participant driver in Device Manager. Microsoft says if your device is unaffected, you don't need either of the aforementioned Windows Updates, as they only fix this specific issue and are out of Microsoft's normal update cycle.

Sony has launched a new legal offensive against AI music generator Udio, this time over 30,117 allegedly unlicensed recordings used to train its models.

The new suit includes tracks by Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson, among others, and comes after the court rejected Sony's attempt to expand its original lawsuit filed in 2024. Notably, the 2024 lawsuit was filed by Sony, Warner Brothers, and Universal against Uncharted Labs and Suno, the creators of Udio, and Suno, two AI music generators.

However, the court rejected Sony's request to add 30,000 new songs it believes Udio unlawfully used to train its AI model on June 29, as it was too close to the end of the discovery phase of the lawsuit. Although Sony was told by the court that it's free to pursue the new 30,000 songs for copyright infringement, just not as part of the case filed in 2024.

TSMC, the world's best semiconductor manufacturer, is set to raise foundry prices by up to 10% in 2027, according to a report from Nikkei Asia.

The price hike reportedly covers both mature and advanced 7nm and below processes, which are used for Apple's A-series and M-series chips. The increases, finalized in recent weeks, are attributed to rising material, equipment, and construction costs, with TSMC citing a "strategic, not opportunistic" approach to its pricing. Additionally, the price comes after it was discovered TSMC will soon have to generate and store its own electricity, which is going to be a monumental task considering TSMC consumes about 9% of Taiwan's total electricity grid.

The report states TSMC intends to give clients time to adjust before the new pricing kicks in at the start of 2027. Additional high-performance computing orders will face further premiums of 10 - 15%, potentially pushing total costs for some advanced chips over 10% higher. According to Nikkei, Apple is expected to be one of the hardest hit, with the price increases likely to line up with the rumored launch of the iPhone 18 and 20th anniversary models, which means the following year we may see further price increases in devices using TSMC's chips.

Nintendo's latest security push for the Switch 2 may have just been undermined by a developer who cracked a universal exploit that works entirely offline. Gezine's discovery doesn't rely on web-based vulnerabilities or Nintendo Online, making it far more resilient to quick patches, and it's a vulnerability on both the original Switch and Switch 2.

The exploit, confirmed by the developer on X, operates in userland, meaning it's within the code a user interacts with rather than within the operating system of the device. Additionally, this exploit doesn't depend on browser-based code execution or previous methods that required save file transfers through Nintendo's network. By avoiding WebKit and leveraging a new entry point, Gezine bypassed the ARM PAC protections that Nintendo added to the Switch 2's firmware.

This discovery could be a foundational step toward full homebrew and modding capabilities, which open the door to things like save file backups, emulation, and custom applications running on Nintendo hardware. Given the modding scene's past achievements, including running PC ports of games like Final Fantasy VII Remake, or the entire release of Tears of the Kingdom leaking onto PC, the implications of such an exploit are quite severe, especially for Nintendo, which is famously against any form of modding or tweaking of its hardware and games.

CD Projekt Red has confirmed that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be receiving a new DLC called "Songs of the Past," and also when the developer plans to unveil it to hungry fans.

While most RPG gamers are looking forward to Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 and CD Projekt Red's Witcher 4, a new piece of DLC content is arriving for one of the most iconic RPG experiences ever released, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt Red has confirmed in a recent X post that it will be unveiling Songs of the Past at Gamescom 2026 Opening Night on August 25 at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 8pm CEST.

CD Projekt Red is working on a new expansion for Wild Hunt, which released in 2015, and has been rumored for quite some time, and according to those rumors, this new DLC for Wild Hunt is intended to bridge the gap between the events in The Witcher 3 and what we will experience in The Witcher 4. Furthermore, reports indicate the DLC won't introduce a completely new region as Blood and Wine did, but instead expand on the region of the map that is available in the base game of Wild Hunt.

NVIDIA opened its keynote at the annual SIGGRAPH 2026 event in Los Angeles this week with an updated and in-depth look at DLSS 5. And compared to the announcement and debut from GTC earlier this year, which led to widespread backlash for the generative AI tool designed to add photorealistic lighting and detail to a scene, it was night and day.

In addition to providing a more technical look at how it works, the big thing with this presentation was showcasing how much control game developers will have over DLSS 5, and how they will be able to direct the look, feel, and intensity of the technology to "preserve artistic intent."

From a high level, this updated version of DLSS 5 includes three real-time models that developers can use, each presenting photorealistic lighting with different intensity. These models, dubbed Model A, Model B, and Model C, can be used on different scenes and characters, with the option to mix and match. Like DLSS Super Resolution, some of the models are more intensive and complex than others, but all are designed to run on a single GPU.