Latest News - Page 369

Since Elon Musk moved closer to the Trump administration and took up the reigns of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new regulatory body designed to reduce fraud, waste, and operating costs in the US government, Musk's businesses have taken a sharp hit, notably Tesla.

Musk's political leanings have resulted in him becoming much more divisive, and that is being reflected in Tesla's stock price, which has seen a dramatic drop in value since December 2024, when its stock was priced at approximately $462 per share. Now, Tesla shares are valued at $236 per share, bringing them back down to September 2024 levels. However, that isn't all of Tesla's problems.

A new report from the Financial Times revealed that Tesla is missing approximately $1.4 billion from its books. The report cites an investigation into Tesla's cash flow statements and capital expenditures over the last six months of 2024. According to the FT report, the investigation found holes in the books totaling the reported missing $1.4 billion. Tesla's cashflow statements reveal the company spent $6.3 billion on "purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales" throughout the second half of 2024.

With NVIDIA launching four GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs this year, the company has yet to formally announce its mainstream RTX Blackwell offerings - the GeForce RTX 5060 and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. Based on leaks from reputable sources, we have quite a few specs on these cards (see below), alongside word that NVIDIA plans to launch both 8GB and 16GB variants for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti.

When we can expect these cards to hit retail shelves is up in the air - the rumored late-March launch for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti has come and gone. Although NVIDIA doesn't usually announce new gaming hardware at GDC or its GTC events, many expected an RTX 5060 Series reveal in the past week.

According to information from Board Channels (via Videocardz), a forum where NVIDIA partners offer information on things like supply, the current word is that the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti's launch has been delayed to mid-April, with the GeForce RTX 5060 arriving in mid-May.

The two NASA astronauts who were initially going up to the International Space Station (ISS) for nine days but ended up staying there for 286 days weren't paid any overtime.

In a recent article by The New York Times, a NASA spokesperson revealed the two NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, received a regular 40-hour-per-week salary, with no additional pay for holidays or weekends, despite the obvious egregious overtime they both ensued. Additionally, Mike Massimino, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions, said, "[There's] no hazard pay, there's no overtime, there's no comp time," and ultimately, "there's no incentive to stay in space longer."

However, astronauts do receive incidental amounts for reach they're in space, but since Suni and Butch were on a long-term stay, it only equated to about $5 per day, which totals out to just $1,430 for the entire duration of the trip - 286 days.

God of War fans should mark their calendars as a new DLC is arriving for God of War Ragnarok on March 20, which has been announced in celebration of the franchise turning 20 years old.

The first God of War game was released in 2005, and since then, it has become a staple franchise in PlayStation's portfolio of titles. However, the franchise really locked itself in when Kratos was rebooted in 2018 with the release of the God of War, which went on to win Game of the Year. In 2022, the rebooted character received a sequel, God of War Ragnarok, which won Best Narrative, Best Action/Adventure, but fell short of Game of the Year to Elden Ring.

In celebration of how far the franchise has come, PlayStation and developer Santa Monica Studios are releasing a new DLC for Ragnarok - the Dark Odyssey Collection. The new DLC will be released on March 20 and will be free for all players who own a copy of God of War Ragnarok. The DLC contains Dark Odyssey Armor and an appearance change for Kratos, along with companion armor to match.

The NVIDIA App has been updated to version 11.0.3, which brings several new features to the table, including Optimal Settings support for seven titles. The most notable update is the new ability to customize the DLSS Override settings when enabling DLSS 4, which allows "precise tuning of the new transformer model to optimize performance or enhance image quality." You can set the render resolution percentage to find the right sweet spot between Ultra Performance (33%) and DLAA (100%).

Control over the input resolution is an excellent feature, as DLSS 4's new transformer model significantly improves image quality at all resolutions - adding another level of control beyond choosing Performance (50%), Balanced (58%), or Quality (67%). This NVIDIA App update also adds legacy Control Panel features, namely "Display Scaling Settings," which let you choose from "different scaling modes, including integer scaling" and "Display Color Settings" - another highly requested feature.

Optimal Settings, NVIDIA's custom in-game graphics settings tuned for various GeForce RTX GPUs that offer the best balance of performance and image quality, are now available for Avowed, DYNASTY WARRIORS: ORIGINS, FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Sid Meier's Civilization VII, and SUPERVIVE.

"The language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here." The latest Drop + The Lord of the Rings collaboration sees the arrival of a pair of new keyboards inspired by "Mordor's Eye and its tongue," the Dark Lord Sauron. We reviewed the excellent DROP CSTM80 Mechanical Keyboard last year, praising its next-level customization build quality and excellent type-feel. So, if you're keen on putting this level of cool-looking evil on your desk, it's worth picking up.

In addition to the Drop + The Lord of the Rings Black Speech CSTM80 keyboard (which is currently available for a discount price of $199 USD), there's also the more compact Drop + The Lord of the Rings Black Speech CSTM65 keyboard (available for $179 USD). Both feature a custom MT3 Black Speech Keycap Set and a Decorative Case inspired by the darker side of The Lord of the Rings.

As the DROP CSTM boards are fully customizable regarding the top plate/case, keycaps, and switches, you still have that freedom here. The CSTM80 and CSTM65 'Black Speech' keyboards ship with Gateron KS-3 Milky Yellow Pro Switches and Gateron PCBA-Mounted stabilizers, which DROP says "rival Sauron's own."

Lenovo isn't as well known as other GeForce RTX GPU makers because its custom designs are built for the company's prebuilt Legion gaming PCs. Lenovo Legion is the company's premiere gaming brand. With custom pre-built gaming rigs on offer, Lenovo China has updated its 2025 line-up with new machines with custom Lenovo Legion GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090D GPUs.

The RTX 5090D represents the cutdown variant built for the Chinese market that adheres to specific standards. Both RTX 5080 and RTX 5090D models sport three 10cm fans and a shiny metal look with RGB lighting on the sides and the rear vents. Any quad-slot GPU will always be massive, and these look like futuristic bricks that wouldn't look out of place in Cyberpunk 2077's Night City.

These Lenovo Legion machines also have Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPUs, custom Legion AIO coolers, and a 360mm radiator. The flagship RTX 5090D configuration has 64GB of DDR5 memory and 2TB of storage - with a hefty price tag of around $5,800 USD.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was the second best-earning game of February 2025 in the United States, new reports from analyst firm Circana show.

Another month has gone by, and that means a new update on the US games market. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella recently shared the latest findings on Bluesky and confirmed some breakout software hits for February 2025. Capcom's astronomical Monster Hunter: Wilds led the charge as the #1 best-seller for February, which makes sense as the game broke 8 million sales in 3 days. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II also had incredible success in the United States, especially when compared to the first game.

Remedy's latest game FBC: Firebreak is an interesting breath of fresh air from the developer, taking on a multiplayer co-op design centered around Control's outrageous and unhinged cursed relics and items.

Ask anyone who's played Control and they'll tell you that Twilight Zone-y/Needful Things-esque cursed items are one of the best parts of the game. These objects are called Altered Items, and are often innocuous, innocent-looking things like refrigerators, jukeboxes, and even a rubber duck. Everything is cursed and does something radical, volatile, and unpredictable, often bending reality to comedic effect.

Remedy built an entire co-op shooter around this premise. It's called FBC: Firebreak, and it's something that should be on your radar if you like Control. In Firebreak, gamers play as a kind of supernatural MIB-meets-X-Files cleanup force that wipes out hordes of enemies in bouts of co-op survival. The big selling point is the chaos that ensues during gameplay. You can attach those cursed Altered Items to your guns to create goofy makeshift weapons straight out of Dead Island, including attaching haunted piggy banks to giant poles that create a "paranatural coin tornado" on striking, or a garden gnome that "summons lightning storms."

Epic Games makes good on its promise to expand its freebies lineup to its mobile storefront.

On the heels of a landmark ruling against Google, and favorable outcomes from the European Union's Digital Markets Act, the Epic Games Store on mobile continues to grow and expand throughout 2025. The store was introduced in 2024 and has expanded slowly over time as Epic adds new content to library. The games lineup now includes 47 titles on Android and 31 games on iOS, Epic notes.

The next major update was about the free mobile games that the EGS will offer. Epic has confirmed they will give out free mobile games on the Epic Games Store every week, and users can check in every Thursday for the lineup. With such a slim offering of games, this implies that Epic will either subsidize most of the content library or add new content over time (perhaps also while subsidizing costs through freebies).

PlayStation's indie liaison believes that Grand Theft Auto 6's theoretical megaton success will help the entire video games industry grow, and that GTA 6 will not necessarily compete with indie games--there's room for both on the market.

For all intents and purposes, it's been half-joked that GTA 6 will save the games industry. The mantra "survive till '25" had been thrown around internally among game developers for a reason--it was believed GTA 6 would spark platform sales of all kinds, and new users would be keen to buy a bunch of new games to fill out their libraries. If you could hold on until GTA 6 launched, you might have a better shot in absorbing some earnings from GTA 6's staggering industry-spanning network effects.

Industry analysts have made their predictions on GTA 6's success, but now we've heard some quick words from someone who works inside PlayStation's indie department. At GDC 2025, PlayStation's head of creators Greg Rice told GamesRadar that GTA 6's launch offers an opportunity to developers to attract spending from a new wave of users who bought in to play Rockstar's latest game.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered is coming to the PC with its system requirements revealed: you'll need a GeForce RTX 4080 or Radeon RX 7900 XT for 4K 60FPS goodness.

At a bare minimum for 720p at 30FPS, Naughty Dog recommends an Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 1300X processor, as well as an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT. 16GB of RAM and 150GB of SSD are required across the board from minimum to very high PC requirements.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered at 1080p 60FPS on the Medium preset has a recommended Core i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 3600 processor, with the GPU requirements increasing to an RTX 3060 or RX 5700. For 1440p 60FPS on the High preset, you're looking at a Core i7-9700 or Ryzen 7 3700X for the CPU, and the RTX 3070 or RX 6800 for the GPU.

Microsoft shared an image of a new Xbox UI in a GDC 2025 blog post, then removed it. The interface in question had a Steam tab.

What's going on with Xbox? Microsoft will still make consoles. That's been confirmed. There's also plans to make a universal storefront that combines consoles, Windows, and mobile gaming in one. One critical part of this store idea, an easy-to-use way to actually browse, buy, and curate games across three different platforms--is now starting to take shape.

So what is Microsoft up to exactly? This time, it's nothing super dramatic. Don't expect Steam games to start showing up on your Xbox console any time soon. The image looks to be an internal mock-up and not a finalized design (the "console" UI is just a bigger version of the mobile UI, and the "action-adventure" genre is listed twice).

Assassin's Creed Shadows appears to off to a good start on launch day despite pressure and controversy.

It looks like Ubisoft may have pulled it off: AC Shadows is showing signs of being a hit release. The new Feudal Japan-set mainline Assassin's Creed game is the #1 top-seller on Steam right now, and it's also #4 on the PlayStation Store. Now today Ubisoft celebrates the game's official launch with a new milestone: Shadows has already been played by over 1 million people on all platforms.

"It's not even 4PM here in Canada and Assassin's Creed Shadows has already passed 1 million players! Thank YOU from the bottom of our hearts for joining this adventure in Feudal Japan. We are beyond excited to start this journey with you!" Ubisoft wrote on Twitter.

If you didn't think that high-end versions of NVIDIA's RTX 5090 were expensive enough - and they most certainly are - a new version of the ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 is going to come with a price tag that'll surely make any wallet quake with fear.

Mainly because this graphics card is decked out in gold (the shroud is golden) and signed by none other than Jensen Huang himself (at GTC 2025).

The ASUS ROG Astral flagship is pricey enough as it is - the liquid cooled edition already weighs in at $3,410 on the ASUS store in the US. So, a golden and signed version of the ROG Astral is going to command a price tag that far exceeds a mere few grand.

The release of Assassin's Creed Shadows has reached the Japanese government, which expressed deep concerns about its contents and how it may translate to events in real life.

Members of Japan's government brought up Ubisoft's recently released Assassin's Creed Shadows in parliament, saying some of the game's contents are disrespectful to Japan's culture and heritage. Officials specifically pointed out how players can destroy sacred religious shrines within the game and how villagers within these shrines can be slaughtered by players.

Additionally, officials pointed out how Ubisoft didn't obtain permission from the organizations and relevant regulatory bodies to put the shrines/landmarks in the game, claiming Ubisoft took them without permission. Ubisoft has now addressed some of these concerns by Japan's government in a day-one update, which now makes the relevant religious items within sacred shrines totally indestructible.

NVIDIA has revealed the latest batch of games which are supported on GeForce Now, and the big hitter here is Assassin's Creed Shadows.

As you're likely aware, today is the day Assassin's Creed Shadows has been released on PC, Mac, Xbox and PS5, with the game also arriving on NVIDIA's streaming service, too.

You can't fail to have noticed the controversy around performance and how smoothly Assassin's Creed Shadows runs (or it doesn't) on PC, particularly with higher-end rigs looking at cranking up details at 4K resolution (which may be ambitious, let's put it that way).

Balatro likely needs no introduction at this point - it's a roguelike deck builder that takes poker and runs in a very different direction than the traditional card game - and we've just discovered that it initially got off to a seriously stumbling start.

As PC Gamer reports, the first Balatro demo (which emerged back in 2023) had an embarrassing hole in the code that meant the entire game could be unlocked using Notepad.

Wout Van Halderen, who is communications director at Playstack, the game's publisher, admitted this in a talk at GDC. Apparently, it really was the case that editing a game file in Windows Notepad could get you access to the full version, rather than the limited 50 rounds of play that the demo was restricted to.

Ahead of Nintendo's official deep dive into the highly anticipated Nintendo Switch 2, we have a new rumor from a user who was almost on the money when it came to leaking the console's GPU performance.

Here's what has happened. Famiboards user Secretboy called the Nintendo Switch 2 would have 3 TFLOPS in docked mode and 1.4/1.5 TFLOPS in handheld. Ten days later, it was leaked the Switch 2 will have 3.1 TFLOPS docked and 1.72 TFLOPS in handheld - pretty damn close for a guess. Secretboy also claimed in January the Switch 2 would feature a 120Hz LCD screen, and would come with HDR/VRR support.

Secretboy has now reiterated those claims, saying he has heard confirmation the next generation console will have a 120Hz refresh rate in handheld with an LCD screen, and support both HDR and VRR (Variable Refresh Rate).

PlayStation fans from the classic era of consoles will be glad to know a classic from Disney Pixar is making its way over to the modern consoles.

That classic is the Disney game WALL-E, which was actually previously leaked about a month ago by the Taiwanese Ratings Board and picked up by Gematsu. However, the original leak didn't reveal what version of WALL-E would be coming to the PS4/PS5, but now we have a better idea, thanks to True Trophies, which revealed the platinum trophy list for both PS4 and PS5. The now-published trophy list has confirmed the WALL-E game is the classic PS2 title, which we can assume will be remastered before it releases on modern consoles.

What confirms this WALL-E game is the PS2 title and not the PSP version is the trophies related to the title's multiplayer mode, "Head-to-Head," and those trophies are: "That's One Green Machine" and "Victory for Wall-E". These trophies refer to the Plant Collection and WALL-E Race modes, respectively. Both of these modes weren't included in the PSP version of the game. By extension, the trophies do confirm the inclusion of a local multiplayer mode. You can check out the full trophy list below.