Latest News - Page 336

In celebration of May the Fourth, Aspyr has released its classics bundle, Star Wars: Grand Collection. Switch players can play through nine classic Star Wars titles, while PlayStation users can re-experience six classics on modern hardware.

The titles span from 1999, with Star Wars: Episode I Racer, to 2008, when Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was released. The team from Aspyr Media has been working to port these titles to the PS4, PS5, and Switch since 2019, and the latest bundle aims to get the entirety of its works into the hands of gamers.

There's a total of nine games to experience on the Switch, including:

A Twitch streamer was sent material of MindsEye, a game developed by Build a Rocket Boy, a studio founded by former Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies.

The Twitch streamer known as Agent was sent the material and played it on stream for thousands of people to see, with the footage showcasing the title's driving mechanics, graphics, gameplay, and some fragments of the story. MindsEye is published by IO Interactive and is scheduled to release on June 10 on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

The release of the title marks the first major title coming out from Build of Rocket Boy, and it appears the title is at risk of going unnoticed in the plethora of gaming news, as the game is less than a month away from releasing, and the marketing campaign for it has been next to nothing. The links to the leaked footage have been posted to Reddit, where commenters are saying that despite the footage looking decent, the publisher hasn't made any noise about the title.

It was announced earlier in the week that Electronic Arts (EA) was laying off as many as 300 to 400 people in an effort to reduce running costs due to the current economic climate. Now, EA-owned developer Codemasters has confirmed it has been hit with layoffs and that development on future rally titles has been paused.

Earlier this week, EA announced it was ending its partnership with the World Rally Championship (WRC) and has now confirmed in a new statement to VideoGamesChronicle that it has "reduced some roles" at Codemasters, the rally games developer. EA didn't state how many people were let go from the developer, but did say that some roles are going to be redeployed as many as possible, "against our strategic priorities," which appears to be different areas of EA Sports.

It was only a day before this announcement that EA confirmed it reduced running costs affecting as many as 400 employees, including 100 employees at Respawn, the developers of Apex Legends and Titanfall. As for Codemasters, the exit of the developer in creating rally games marks the end of a more than 20-year-long run, which began all the way back in 1998. EA initially purchased Codemasters for $1.2 billion in early 2021, earning the publisher the rights to F1 and FIA World Rally Championship licenses, along with owned IP such as Grid, Dirt, and Project Cars.

The roadmap for the Assassin's Creed franchise has been leaked online, showcasing what Ubisoft has in-store for fans of the franchise over the next six years.

In an exclusive report from Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, it's detailed that the next mainline Assassin's Creed game will be set in China and is codenamed Jade. The reporter states that Ubisoft is expected to release as many as nine new Assassin's Creed games over the next six years, with 2 RPGs, 3 Remakes, 1 "smaller experience," 2 multiplayer games, and 1 mobile title being in the works.

As for Jade, Henderson writes that Ubisoft is intending to release a new mainline Assassin's Creed RPG game every 2-3 years, with remakes and "smaller experiences" sprinkled in between the mainline releases. If this timeline stays true, we could see the Assassin's Creed Jade at the earliest, in 2027. Additionally, Henderson adds that the release timeline was shaken up by the delay of Assassin's Creed Shadows. Following the next mainline Assassin's Creed game, Ubisoft is slated to release a title codenamed "Invictus," which is an Assassin's Creed game inspired by Fall Guys.

The Assassin's Creed franchise has found itself in a peculiar spot after developer Ubisoft has seen incredibly lackluster support for its newly released titles, along with a rocky launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows that was plagued with tumultuous marketing and delays.

Following the launch of Shadows, Ubisoft entered into a new partnership with Tencent to manage its top IPs, such as the Assassin's Creed franchise, and now we are hearing about what the developer has in store for the franchise in the future. In a new exclusive report from Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, Ubisoft has multiple Assassin's Creed projects in the works, specifically what will happen with the franchise over the next six years.

Ubisoft has planned nine new Assassin's Creed games over the next six years, and not all of them are traditional Assassin's Creed experiences. Some are multiplayer, some are remakes, and others are "smaller experiences." As for mainline Assassin's Creed games, the report states Ubisoft intends to release a new mainline title every 2-3 years, with these remakes and smaller experiences littered in between the launches of the mainline titles. Below is what Ubisoft has in the works, with most of the titles being codenamed. The following is generally in order of release.

Bandai Namco has officially lifted the veil on Elden Ring: Nightreign, only a few weeks out from its release, with the publisher dropping a 10-minute-long overview trailer showcasing an in-depth look at what players can expect.

The trailer kicks off by explaining players will have three in-game days to prepare for a coming boss battle, and during that time, players will have to decide what route they want to take to gear up for the big battle. The trailer says players will need to decide whether to split up and explore by themselves or as a group.

Pre-planning will be challenging as each run of Nightreign, which takes players to a place called Limveld, will be different from the last, as players will encounter random bosses, fluctuations in boss placement, environmental damage such as meteor strikes, and loot being consistently different from run to run.

TikTok has been fined more than half a billion dollars over allegations of illegal data practices, including funneling user data back to China.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has put TikTok in its iron sights as the prominent video platform has been slapped with a 530 million euro, approximately $600 million, fine, as the regulatory body claims TikTok cannot guarantee user data is being stored per the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines. Moreover, the DPC states that TikTok admitted to storing limited European data in China, which the social video platform has denied in the past. TikTok has since informed the DPC it has deleted that data.

The fines against TikTok from the Irish data protection authority could certainly be damaging to the company, which is still fighting to stay within the United States. For those who don't know, TikTok was banned in the US for being a potential national security risk. US authorities were concerned that TikTok could be used as a surveillance app for China to spy on Americans, considering TikTok's owner, ByteDance, is a Chinese government-affiliated company.

In late April, PlayStation unveiled the Collector's Edition for the upcoming sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, Ghost of Yōtei, where it described the edition as the "best Collector's Edition we've ever produced."

For $250, buyers of the Collector's Edition will get all of the pre-order bonuses, including all in-game items from the digital deluxe edition, along with a digital copy of the game. That last point is a particular point of contention among collectors, as PlayStation is shipping this collector's edition with a digital copy rather than a physical copy, which many buyers of collector's editions aren't very fond of in general.

This means if a video game collector wanted everything from the Ghost of Yōtei, and most importantly, add another physical game to their wall of collected games, they will have to spend $250 on the Collector's Edition, and then buy the physical edition of the game separately. Unfortunately for collectors, this seems to be the common practice for new first-party Sony titles, as the same approach was taken with Horizon Forbidden West, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and will be the case for the upcoming Death Stranding 2.

Apple has posted its Q2 2025 financial results, with the company pulling in $95.4 billion in revenue -- down from the record-breaking $124.3 billion in revenue from the previous quarter -- with its "bread and butter" doing quite well, as always.

Apple broke industry estimates for its Q2 2025 revenue, and enjoyed some healthy business in all departments apart from one. Apple's "bread and butter" is the iPhone, which pulled in $46.84 billion in revenue, compared to $45.96 billion from the previous quarter: driven by the new iPhone 16e release.

The recent launches of the new 13-inch and 15-inch M4 MacBook Air laptops helped boost up Macrevenue, with $7.95 billion in earnings compared to $7.45 billion in Q1 2025.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang remains concerned over Chinese tech giant Huawei, warning that we could see a future where Huawei AI chips would fight in the global market against NVIDIA AI chips.

Jensen has urged US lawmakers to "ease off" pressure on NVIDIA AI GPU exports, saying that the US and China are in an "AI war" where there's a rather fast race for AI models and cutting-edge hardware capabilities. The US government has been tightening restrictions on AI GPUs, but Huawei has been working around this and capitalizing on it by ramping up AI chips and even AI clusters in China.

These issues were raised during a closed-door meeting between NVIDIA executives and the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday, where a senior staff source said: "If DeepSeek R1 had been trained on (Huawei chips) or a future open-source Chinese model had been trained to be highly optimized to Huawei chips, that would risk creating a global market demand for Huawei chips".

Apple CEO Tim Cook has personally thanked President Trump and his focus on domestic (US) semiconductor manufacturing, pledging that his company would invest $500 billion in the US over the next 4 years.

Tim Cook has promised that Apple will invest $500 billion in the United States in the next 4 years, and that it has a long-standing relationship with domestic suppliers.

Cook said in his virtual presentation during President Donald Trump's celebration of his first 100 days in office: "I want to take a moment to recognize President Trump's focus on domestic semiconductor manufacturing, and we will continue to work with the administration as we invest in these areas".

With the gradual shift from traditional search engines to AI chatbots, it was inevitable for tech companies to explore ways to monetize AI chatbots through digital advertising. That time appears to be upon us, with Google's ad network beginning to display ads in chatbot conversations.

As reported by Bloomberg, Google's AdSense network began testing AI-based ads last year on apps including iAsk and Liner. Since then, Google's AdSense for Search network has expanded to include generative AI conversations, a move that seeks to consolidate its position as a leader in search, AI, and digital advertising.

Microsoft has increased the prices of its Xbox consoles, accessories, and games across different regions to account for the newly implemented trade tariffs introduced by President Trump. Now, an industry analyst is predicting that Sony could follow suit.

Xbox is raising the price of Xbox consoles and controllers globally, beginning sometime this Holiday season, with the US seeing the steepest price increases for the Xbox Series X console of $100 to $599.99 and the base Series S model increasing by $80 to $429.99. Additionally, prices of games have increased by $10, breaking the standard $70 and moving first-party Xbox titles to the new standard of $80. This news from Xbox comes after PlayStation announced it was increasing the price of its digital PS5 console in the UK, Europe, and Australia.

Daniel Ahmad, Niko Partners analyst, has now predicted Sony won't escape the impact of the tariffs and will likely follow Xbox in raising the price of its console in the US, along with its first-party games. The reason? Same as Xbox, manufacturing costs increasing, cost of game development increasing, and global market conditions eating into profit margins that need to stay at similar levels to appease shareholders. As for Nintendo, the company hasn't yet raised prices as a large portion of the Switch 2 stockpile is being manufactured in Vietnam.

The folks at G.SKILL don't sleep, releasing memory kit after memory kit, and today we have the introduction of the new Trident Z5 NEO RGB hitting 8400 MT/s speeds... but in a deliciously high-capacity 128GB kit of RAM.

G.SKILL nailed the high-end frequencies on single DDR5 modules, but now the company is showing off some blazing-fast Trident Z5 NEO RGB memory with a huge 128GB high-capacity kit but at 8400 MT/s speeds. We have been seeing speeds in higher 24GB and 32GB modules, and we know how hard it is to push 8000+ MT/s speeds in dual-DIMM configurations, so G.SKILL has been cooking here.

G.SKILL reached those huge DDR5-8400+ speeds on the ASUS ROG X870E APEXmotherbaord, with the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor. The large-capacity 128GB of RAM at 8400 MT/s speeds was achieved on CL44-58-58-94.

In a recent X post, Ubisoft Brazil hinted at ports for Rainbow Six Siege and Assassin's Creed: Mirage on the Switch 2, utilizing a graphic that features the two titles alongside Star Wars: Outlaws and the all-but-confirmed Assassin's Creed: Shadows.

The post, translated from Portuguese, asks: "Which Ubisoft game would you like to play on the Nintendo Switch 2?" The author begins by suggesting Rayman Legends - a title already available through Switch 1's backwards compatibility. However, the graphic of choice, which features the four games imposed on a Switch 2 device, strongly hints at official ports for Rainbow Six Siege and Assassin's Creed: Mirage.

Star Wars: Outlaws was confirmed to be arriving on the Switch 2 in an official blog post on April 3. While Assassin's Creed: Shadows has not been formally announced for the Switch 2, ratings and website elements were sighted on the PEGI website a fortnight ago - suggesting that it's only a matter of time before the flagship title is adapted for the platform.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has told analysts that almost all iPhone sales between April and June this year won't be made in China.

Apple is doing its best to avoid the newly implemented tariffs implemented by President Trump, which are particularly aimed at China's manufacturing prowess. The idea behind the tariffs is to bring manufacturing back to the United States by making it expensive for US-based companies to outsource manufacturing to other countries, particularly China.

However, technology manufacturers, along with many other various companies, can't simply switch to US-based manufacturing overnight and still maintain steady product launches, but what they can do is increase the manufacturing of products in countries where it has already established manufacturing lines. Cook has told analysts that nearly all iPhone models sold in the US during April and June 2025 will be shipped from India, as Apple is looking to avoid as much as it possibly can the 45% tariff on Chinese imports.

Grand Theft Auto 6 has been officially delayed by Rockstar Games, with the developer saying it needs more time to complete development of the highly anticipated title.

The announcement of GTA 6 being delayed until May 26, 2025, has resulted in Take-Two Interactive's share price sliding by as much as 7% at the time of reporting, marking a deep decline for the publisher. Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has responded to the announcement of the delay with a recent statement, saying the publisher fully supports Rockstar's decision, and that "While we take the movement of our titles seriously and appreciate the vast and deep global anticipation for 'Grand Theft Auto 6,' we remain steadfast in our commitment to excellence."

Despite the announcement of the delay, Take-Two still anticipates delivering a multiyear period of growth for its business, which will include "enhanced value for our shareholders." More specifically, Take-Two reiterated that it expects it achieve sequential increases in net bookings in fiscal 2026 and 2027, saying it believes it will achieve record levels of bookings during both periods.

A startup co-founded by OpenAI CEO and founder Sam Altman has launched its eyeball-scanning orbs in the United States.

The startup behind the odd-looking orbs is called Tools for Humanity, and it's pioneering the World Human Verification project, which it unveiled on Wednesday. The idea behind the project is to produce a device called an Orb that is able to scan the irises of an individual and assign a verifiable identification profile, putting that identification profile on the blockchain to verify that you are, in fact, human. Yes, that is right, Sam Altman's co-founded startup wants to verify your humanity with a device. But why?

The use is quite practical, as World intends to create digital "proof of human" tools which it believes will be useful in the future, since AI will eventually become so sophisticated it will be difficult to distinguish humans from AI agents on the internet. The idea is that World will create a WorldID with the gathered unique IrisCode from an individual, and with that, users will be able to log in to various platforms and services, including Minecraft and Reddit.

Rockstar Games has officially delayed the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, and now we are hearing that even the developers at the studio didn't believe the game was going to release in its original release window of Fall 2025.

In a recent post on Bluesky, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier revealed that Rockstar's official delay isn't shocking even for developers at the company. The reporter said that no one he has spoken to at Rockstar has believed that Fall 2025 was a "real window for a very long time now." The reason? Simply, too much work, not enough time, and a "real desire from management to avoid brutal crunch." The Bloomberg reporter goes on to write that GTA 6's delay has "seemed inevitable for months if not longer."

The official delay of GTA 6 to May 26, 2026, has been followed by a statement by Rockstar Games' publisher Take-Two Interactive, which Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two said in a recent statement that the publisher "fully supports" Rockstar's decision to delay the release to fulfill it's creative vision for GTA 6.

Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, has responded to Rockstar Games' recent announcement delaying the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI.

Rockstar Games has officially unveiled the release date for Grand Theft Auto 6, and while fans of the franchise are eager to know when it will be released, the news comes as bittersweet as we do now have a release date, but it's six months later than originally planned. GTA 6 is now releasing on May 26, 2026, with Rockstar stating in a recent announcement, "We need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve."

On the heels of the Rockstar announcement is a statement from Take-Two Interactive Chairman and CEO, Strauss Zelnick, who said the publisher "fully supports" the decision to take additional time to complete the development of GTA 6 and fully realize Rockstar's intended creative vision. Moreover, Zelnick said GTA 6 is promised to be a "groundbreaking, blockbuster entertainment experience that exceeds audience expectations."