Latest News - Page 374

Fans of the long-running MMORPG RuneScape will be both intrigued and surprised to learn that an open-world survival iteration of the game is in the works - powered by next-gen Unreal Engine 5. A recent trademark filing suggests Jagex is leaning toward the name RuneScape: Dragonwilds, and the project is presumably still in development.

The first hints of RuneScape: Dragonwilds surfaced in 2022 when Jagex initially announced the existence of the open-world survival project. In October 2024, the studio put out an official call for closed testers. Beyond confirming it as a survival game set in the RuneScape universe, little else has been officially revealed. Job listings on Jagex's website hinted at a "rich, immersive world" with "large and complex areas," but details on gameplay and release timing remain speculative.

The closest existing comparison to a RuneScape-style survival game is Valheim, which launched in early access in February 2021. Still progressing toward an official release, Valheim draws inspiration from RuneScape, Zelda, and Minecraft, incorporating mechanics like mining, woodcutting, crafting, and skill progression systems. Jagex has already dabbled in the survival genre, having published SCUM in 2018 - a survival title that maintains a mostly positive rating on Steam with over 87,000 reviews.

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing by Nintendo has spawned a new discussion about the possibilities of the Nintendo Switch 2, which includes a new Super Smash Bros. game and GameCube titles being added to Switch Online.

Not long ago, an official filing with the FCC revealed unannounced components within the Nintendo Switch 2, such as two USB-C ports and Wi-Fi 6 support. Now, another FCC filing has alluded to Nintendo working on a new GameCube controller, but this time around the details are much more vague and in the realm of speculatory. The FCC filing suggests Nintendo is working on a new game controller for its upcoming console, with fans speculating it will be a Nintendo Switch Online GameCube controller, which, if true, opens up many new possibilities for Switch 2.

Notably, Nintendo has re-released Bluetooth versions of all its classic controllers to go along with the retro libraries added to the Nintendo Switch Online service. There are Bluetooth versions of NES, SNES, and N64 controllers, which all were released to accompany their respective Nintendo Switch Online libraries. It appears Nintendo is planning the same for the GameCube controller, which means GameCube titles being added to Switch Online. Another possibility of Nintendo releasing a Bluetooth GameCube controller would be for another Super Smash Bros. title, which is the third most popular Nintendo Switch game.

Amidst the AI revolution, programmers, writers and every type of white-collar worker has been affected by the rise of the tools. However, an unexpected area has emerged in the field of sports - using AI to assist with decisions on the basketball court.

Daryl Morey, the GM of the Philadelphia 76ers, was previously known for his 'Moreyball' strategy - utilizing analytics in the construction of a roster, and essentially min-maxing in terms of applying the team's strategies on the court by prioritizing threes and layups.

At a recent conference, Morey opened up about the use of analytics in the AI era. Notably, he expanded on his use of LLMs, in particular, their widespread use within the team's decision-making.

Samsung Display has been awarded a new design patent for a display device, with the patent originally filed back on January 10, 2022, now registered with the US Designs IP Portal, for a repositionable camera system.

The refreshed patent teases an improved camera placement within the display, which could land in smartphones, tablets, and other devices. A moveable camera system on a Samsung smartphone would make a lot of sense, similar to the 2019 release from Samsung and its Galaxy A80 smartphone with a single camera system that popped up and featured a rotating mechanism for selfies.

There is a high R&D cost associated with a rotating camera system on a smartphone, and the larger commercial success might not be worth it in the long run. It could be a gimmick and people would use it, but just how popular would it be? I'm sure we'll see it on a future foldable smartphone from Samsung in the years to come.

With the emergence of AI tools affecting almost every industry, few are more affected than the field of software development. 'Vibe coding' is one of the trends to emerge from that shift, and we'll go into what it is, and how it's affecting these industries.

To start at the beginning - in February 2025, OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI lead Andrej Karpathy coined the term on X. In a widely publicized post, he describes it as a method that essentially involves letting go of the intricacies of generated code - and essentially 'fully giving in' to the vibes. In other words, embracing an intuitive, instinctual approach to writing programs - and forgetting about understanding the code itself.

In practice, what this looks like is a conversational approach to software development. As Karpathy describes, it's giving the chatbot simple, almost dumb, 'vibe driven' prompts - and letting the AI generate beyond your comprehension. For example, a user might prompt an AI coding assistant with something as vague as "Make a flight simulator where you can buy an F-16" and let the AI generate the bulk of the game's code, or "Fix the UI so it looks cleaner, but keep the aesthetic fun." Instead of making manual adjustments, vibe coders just keep iterating with broad prompts like "Make the sidebar padding feel right" or "Tweak the animations so they pop more." The AI takes over, handling all the changes while the coder simply approves or rejects based on vibes alone.

TSMC may soon gobble up more of the semiconductor market as rumors are indicating Samsung has abandoned development on its bleeding-edge 1.4nm process.

At the moment, TSMC holds approximately 67% of the semiconductor market, but according to the latest rumor, that number could soon increase as Samsung has decided to concentrate its efforts on increasing yields from its 2nm GAA node. The news comes from an insider who states Samsung is shifting its attention to its 2nm GAA process to increase yields ahead of the release of its Galaxy S26 series, which should be rocking the foundry's latest flagship SoC, the Exynos 2600. But why wouldn't Samsung be pressing ahead with its bleeding-edge tech?

There are a few reasons why Samsung could cancel its 1.4nm process and the first is production for the Exynos 2600 is scheduled to begin in May, and current reports indicate that trial runs of its 2nm GAA node only secured a 30% yield. Another reason is that Samung's fabrication plant is struggling quite a bit, perhaps more than what is publicly reported, and the decision to focus efforts on 2nm node yields indicates issues with the development of the 1.4nm process.

CoolIT has just announced its latest liquid cooling cold plate, destined for high-powered data centers, capable of dissipating an incredible 1.4kW of heat.

The liquid cooling specialist says that doubling the heat dissipation over current industry standards regarding single-phase Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) solutions. NVIDIA is about to host it GTC (GPU Technology Conference) next week, where we should be introduced to its heavily beefed-up GB300 "Blackwell Ultra" AI GPU with a larger 288GB of HBM3E, and a much higher 1.4kW of power consumption... perfect for a new direct liquid cooling plate that can handle 4kW.

Kamal Mostafavi, VP of Engineering, said: "CoolIT continues to lead the industry in performance. We are thrilled to show silicon leaders that single-phase DLC will continue to be a key enabling technology with demonstrated capability for up to 4000W processors. Single-phase direct liquid cooling - known for being the most mature, reliable and scalable liquid cooling technology - is also more than capable of cooling ultra-high watt microprocessors for the foreseeable future".

GMKTec's upcoming Mini-PC powered by AMD's new Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU has been tested, with the new prototype Mini-PC packing some serious Strix Halo APU power.

ETA Prime has an exclusive first look and benchmark of GMKTec's new Strix Halo APU-powered Mini-PC, with the flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 tested. This APU features 16 cores and 32 threads of Zen 5 processing power with a chunky 40 Compute Units of RDNA 3.5 GPU, providing some serious gaming horsepower than anything the competition has to offer.

GMK's new EVO-X2 Mini-PC will be detailed in length at AMD's upcoming Advancing AI event in Beijing, China, where GMKtec will be detailing its new Mini-PC. In the games that ETA Prime tested, we have Cyberpunk 2077, the just-released GTA 5 Enhanced, Marvel Rivals, Spider-Man 2, DOOM Eternal, Mortal Kombat, and God of War Ragnarok.

NVIDIA launched DLSS 4 alongside its new GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs earlier this year, and it has been one of the most talked about aspects of the latest GPU generation. The shift to a transformer-based Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction model, available to all GeForce RTX gamers, has been a game changer for image quality. Gaming in 4K using DLSS 4's 'Performance' preset now delivers better image quality than DLSS 3 'Quality' and native rendering with TAA.

This is the next step in the shift toward a future where hardware and software innovations driven by AI will boost performance and image quality, and usher in a new era of high-quality ray-tracing with RTX Neural Shaders. DLSS 4 also introduced the brand-new Multi Frame Generation, exclusive to the GeForce RTX 50 Series.

An evolution of the Frame Generation that launched with the GeForce RTX 40 Series, Multi Frame Generation leverages powerful AI hardware and RTX Blackwell's architecture to generate up to three additional frames to deliver a smoother gaming experience that is still responsive. DLSS 4 is one of the most impressive gaming technology releases in 2025, and NVIDIA has just released a new research paper that details how it works and the advancements it brings to neural rendering.

The upcoming GeForce RTX 5060 specs leaked from industry insider @kopite7kimi a week ago. With 3840 CUDA Cores, a 25% increase over the GeForce RTX 4060, it should offer a decent performance increase over one of the most popular GPUs among PC gamers. The leak confirmed 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM for the GPU, offering a 50% bandwidth increase with the same capacity.

Recently, a retail listing from an unknown Chinese retailer (via Videocardz) listed higher-than-expected pricing for the upcoming GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti. The interesting thing about the listing is that it shows the GeForce RTX 5060 having 12GB of VRAM - the first time we've seen this configuration online.

Based on the source's unknown quantity, it's probably safe to say that the GeForce RTX 5060 will launch with 8GB of fast GDDR7 memory. This has been widely reported for a while now. Ultimately, this has raised our hopes of a new mainstream GPU from NVIDIA with 12GB of VRAM especially when we're reminded that the popular GeForce RTX 3060 launched with 12GB of VRAM back in 2021.

Microsoft describes Copilot for Gaming as an "AI-driven sidekick" designed to be your "personalized gaming companion" that will offer Xbox support, recommend games, install them for you, and even show up in-game to provide advice and tips. Microsoft notes, "Xbox Insiders can get an early preview of Copilot for Gaming on mobile soon."

In a recent episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, Xbox Corporate Vice President of Gaming AI Fatima Kardar, joined by Vice President of Next Generation Jason Ronald, formally introduced Copilot for Gaming and showcased concept videos of it in action in Overwatch 2 and Minecraft.

The demos show an unnamed player communicating with Copilot for Gaming using natural language. In Overwatch 2, the AI answers questions about what hero to choose, provides breakdowns of recent play, and gives advice based on historical data that includes the player's skill and abilities. As a proof of concept, it's an interesting demonstration however having the player talk to AI instead of their teammates is a little weird.

Apple's new Mac Studios have been used in a cluster of 4 systems, where they're combined idle power consumption is less than a network switch at around 33W.

Content creator and developer Alex Ziskind deployed his own personal Mac Studio cluster with 4 machines, which are powered by Apple's new M3 Ultra processor. Each of the Mac Studios feature an ethernet port, with Ziskind running all 4 systems into a network switch at the bottom where he runs multiple commands through a single network (and it looks great, too).

When he ran the 4-way Apple Mac Studio cluster, Ziskind noticed that the idle power consumption of the M3 Ultra-powered cluster was sitting between 32W and 34W of power, but noticed that the network switch at the bottom was actually consuming more power than the Mac Studio cluster at idle. Even fully fired up and all threads loaded, the M3 Ultra is an extremely impressive piece of silicon.

Traditionally, we've associated Valve and Steam as the number one platform for PC gaming, where you can access your library of games - new and old. Of course, Valve has been dabbling in hardware for several years, from the Valve Index to its most recent success, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck isn't the first PC gaming handheld to release. Still, thanks to the console-like nature of SteamOS (regarding usability, features, and efficiency), it's helped usher in a new era for portable PC gaming.

In 2024, Valve released the Steam Deck, including the Steam Deck OLED variant in Australia - officially bringing the handheld to a new market. In 2024, Valve opened the door to other hardware manufacturers shipping SteamOS on devices like the Legion Go instead of Windows 11. Valve's 'Deck Compatibility' program, which extends to these new SteamOS systems now includes around 17,000 'Playable' or 'Verified' games.

Valve has communicated in the past that it is developing a Steam Deck 2. However, it's waiting on a massive generational uplift in performance and efficiency before it brings the highly anticipated handheld to market. In the meantime, the Steam Deck is growing in popularity. In 2024, playtime increased by 64% compared to 2023 - over 330 million hours.

As one of the few private companies that is a powerhouse when it comes to PC gaming, Valve isn't beholden to shareholders. And with that, unlike Sony and Microsoft or even Ubisoft, we don't get quarterly reports detailing things like users, growth, and detailed revenue breakdowns from a financial perspective. However, Valve has released its Steam Year In Review 2024 which gives us a glimpse into the continued success of the platform and company.

"2024 was a year of growth for the Steam platform," Valve writes. "In December of 2024, we crossed 39 million peak concurrent users for the very first time (and while we were drafting this post, the platform crossed 40 million). Steam has nearly doubled in peak concurrent users since March of 2020, when online platforms saw big spikes in activity due to Covid-19 quarantine."

Revenue from new game releases, measured as gross revenue from the first 30 days of release, has increased 10X since 2014. Like the peak concurrent user count, revenue has doubled since 2020.

SpaceX is nearing its goal of putting humans on the surface of Mars, but before we go, the company will send humanoid robots, with the first slated to launch next year.

That is, of course, if Elon Musk's famously optimistic plans come to fruition in time and Starship development continues to make leaps and bounds. However, the latter doesn't seem to be the case as of late, or at least for the last two launches of Starship, the company's selected mode of transportation to Mars. SpaceX lost contact with Starship in the last two launches, resulting in a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly Protocol (RUD) having to be initiated, or boom.

SpaceX will need to overcome significant design hurdles in order to get Starship to a place where a Mars journey is viable, and one of those hurdles is getting the upper stage, or the cargo part of the rocket, back on the surface of Earth for evaluation and improvement. However, that requires a technological breakthrough in heatshield technology, according to Elon Musk, who explained the struggles of simply recovering that part of the rocket in his last appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.

A new Star Wars game will be announced next month by Respawn Entertainment and Bit Reactor, according to recent reports.

The reveal has been set for a stage appearance by both Respawn and Bit Reactor on April 19 at the Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo, Japan. Currently, there isn't much known about the upcoming title besides it being a Star Wars -turn-based strategy game, and that it's being developed through a production collaboration with Bit Reactor, a studio that formed by veteran developers of the popular turn-based franchises XCOM and Civilization studio Firaxis Games. Respawn will be producing the title, while Bit Reactor will lead its development.

If turn-based titles aren't for you, and you are a Star Wars fan, don't worry, as this isn't the only Star Wars title currently in the works, as Respawn is working on a sequel to the Star Wars Jedi franchise. This sequel was announced in May 2022 under the title Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and last year, while publisher EA announced 700 layoffs across its company, EA Entertainment president Laura Miele stated that Respawn will be focussing its efforts on creating the upcoming title, along with providing support for Apex Legends.

Valve's Counter-Strike 2 is undoubtedly growing in popularity as the first-person shooter (FPS) has once again shattered the all-time high player peak record, according to the charts.

The latest figures sourced from SteamDB indicate Counter-Strike 2 has smashed through its previous record of 1.72 million players with a new figure of 1,824,989. Notably, this isn't the highest all-time peak player count for Steam since records started, as that title is still held by PUBG: Battlegrounds, and its 3,257,248 players.

PUBG is followed by Black Myth: Wukong with 2.4 million and then Palworld at 2.1 million. Counter-Strike 2 is currently sitting in fourth place with 1.82 million, and at the time of writing this, it currently has 1.6 million concurrent players, which is a little more than double PUBG's concurrent player count at 760,000.

The God of War franchise is about to turn 20-years old and in celebration of one of the most popular PlayStation franchises a new DLC is being released for God of War Ragnarok.

The first God of War game was released in 2005, and since then the franchise has gone through some major changes, with the most prominent being in 2018 when the game was rebooted. Notably, Santa Monica Studio game director Cory Barlog explained during the Raising Kratos behind the scenes that the chopping of the tree at the start of God of War 2018 was symbolic of the old franchise coming to an end and a new one beginning. Boy, was that a good decision, as God of War 2018 went on to win Game of the Year and breathe new life into the franchise.

The follow-up title released in 2022, God of War Ragnarok, while it didn't win Game of the Year, was still met with praise by fans, and won Best Narrative, Best Action/Adventure, losing Game of the Year to Elden Ring. Now, in celebration of how far the God of War franchise has come, PlayStation has announced 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 that own a copy of God of War Ragnarok.

Recent speculation suggests that The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remake is coming - and fast. Rumors point to a possible April announcement and launch - an almost unheard of move in the games industry. While leaks hint at its legitimacy, there's another compelling reason to believe in a surprise launch: Todd Howard has wanted to do this for years.

At E3 2015, Howard took the stage to reveal Fallout 4. Not only did Bethesda showcase over 30 minutes of gameplay footage (a rarity for a launch announcement), but the real shocker was the release window - with the game being made available just four months later. This strategy went against the industry norm, where big-budget titles typically endure drawn-out marketing cycles spanning years.

As fans of Grand Theft Auto and The Elder Scrolls would know, the wait for new entries is often agonizing. Worse, when games finally do launch, they can be riddled with bugs, optimization issues, and cut content. But Fallout 4 proved that a shorter marketing cycle could work - and Howard has taken note.

Valve is rumored to release its SteamOS onto the desktop PC at any moment, seeing PC gamers freed from Windows and its bloatware, with SteamOS "almost here" according to a new post on X.

X user @SadlyItsBradley posted that SteamOS is "almost here" but made further comments that he "didn't make the image I posted above. it's the official generic splash screen for SteamOS general release (non-Steam Deck devices). Kathiel Rayna replied, saying"please tell me this isn't copium and indeed a public official SteamOS is gonna be a thing soon!"

@SadlyItsBradley replied, saying: "not copium. Valve pushed a ton of commits to prepare for SteamOS general public release".