Latest News - Page 391

Xbox Game Studios' new boss shares his perspective on Microsoft's multi-platform games strategy, ultimately saying that the plan is good for creatives and consumers alike.

Microsoft no longer believes in exclusive games and is now selling its first-party games on PlayStation and Nintendo to maximize revenues. It's part of a strategy that uses terms like "broad reach" to emphasize just how much opportunity there is on rival hardware. The move has been polarizing, with many feeling that having no exclusive content will jeopardize Xbox hardware from the inside out.

Whatever the case may be, for the near- and mid-term, Microsoft is getting a revenue boost from multi-platform releases. The unpopular decision appears to be good for business, at least for now. We've heard executives like Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty comment on this decision, but what about the people that're closer to the creatives?

AMD has announced a new Monster Hunter Wilds game bundle with its RX 7000 GPUs and Ryzen 9000 and 7000 processors.

The new bundle gives gamers a free copy of Monster Hunter Wilds (value: $70) with selected pieces of hardware in the usual manner.

The following AMD CPUs will qualify you for the freebie (but do note that as ever, you need to purchase from an eligible retailer that AMD has drafted into the scheme):

Fable has been delayed to 2026, but Microsoft softens the blow by revealing new pre-alpha gameplay footage for the anticipated RPG.

The next Fable game will have an extra year for development, Xbox has announced, and developer Playground Games is reportedly making big strides with the game's progress. Aided with Eidos Montreal, Playground's new vision for Fable is touted as the "most beautiful" in the history of the series.

Alongside the game's delay announcement, Xbox Game Studios head Craig Duncan also teased new details about Fable, complete with pre-alpha gameplay footage. The sequences even included some bits of combat and apparently showcased Fable's seamless transitions between dialog and combat.

Samsung has officially unveiled its next-gen 9100 PRO Gen5 SSDs, with read speeds of up to 14.8GB/sec and comes in up to a monster 8TB capacity. Check it out:

The new Samsung 9100 PRO Gen5 SSD has sequential read speeds of up to 14.8GB/sec (14,800MB/sec) and writes of up to 13.4GB/sec (13,400MB/sec) which is a huge 99% performance improvement over the last-gen 990 PRO Gen4 SSD. The random reads and writes are now also much higher at 2200K IOPS and 2600K IOPS, respectively.

Samsung has designed an advanced heat management solution on the 9100 PRO Gen5 SSD that improves power efficiency by up to 49% over previous-gen models, with its optimized thermal pad integrated 8.8mmT heatsink for 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, with a thicker 11.25mmT heatsink for 8TB Gen5 SSD.

In news that AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D owners were experiencing CPU failures, with ASRock motherboard users finding it more common, ASRock is out and ahead of the issue releasing new BIOS updates for their fleet of AM5 motherboards.

In an email sent to us here at TweakTown, ASRock explained it had "observed reports on Reddit from users experiencing unexpected boot issues and error codes when using ASRock AM5 motherboards paired with minority proportion of AMD Ryzen™ 9000 series processors. To enhance user experience, ASRock promptly released the latest 3.20 Beta BIOS for its AM5 series motherboards, further improving AMD Ryzen™ 9000 series processors boot issues".

"Users can download and install the BIOS from the official ASRock website or use the BIOS Flashback function on their motherboard for a quick update. ASRock also promises to continue enhancing the compatibility of its products".

Warner Bros Games is shutting down Monolith Productions, the developers behind the popular Middle-earth series of games, and the new Wonder Woman game has been cancelled.

WB Games is making big changes to its games portfolio and talent roster. Sources have told Bloomberg'sJason Schreier that Warner Bros.' games division will close Monolith Productions, the high-profile studio responsible for big hits like the Middle-earth action-adventure duo, which introduced the iconic Nemesis system. The studio also made the popular FEAR first-person shooter series that blended action with horror. Monolith had originally been established in the 90s before being acquired by WB in 2004. The studio's website now redirects to the WB Games website.

Warner Bros. is also axing Monolith's turbulent Wonder Woman game, which had been in development for years and had reportedly been rebooted. Earlier reports paint a dismal picture for WB Games with big holes in the slate. Management had originally expected to achieve $3 billion from gaming, but this target remains in question as former WB Games president David Haddad prepares to leave the company.

AMD's new super-popular Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor is now in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with multiple people posting on Reddit reporting crashing and failure incidents on their new Zen 5-based X3D gaming CPU.

There is a huge megathread on the ASRock subreddit, with an "abnormal" amount of Ryzen 7 9800X3D processors failing inside of systems, and it looks like the issues are more common on ASRock motherboards. Moderators of the thread have reported that an "abnormal amount of 9800X3Ds that are dying, often (but not exclusively) on ASRock boards".

Redditor u/SoupaSoka says that the posts are "frequent enough that we'd like to consolidate discussion here as well as provide consolidated updates if any news comes from ASRock, AMD, or elsewhere". Well, here's another source for you guys.

NVIDIA has now admitted that its GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards are also affecting by missing ROPs, joining the RTX 5090 and RTX 5070 Ti with the same issue.

The company released a statement to The Verge, with NVIDIA GeForce Global PR director Ben Berraondo explaining: "Upon further investigation, we've identified that an early production build of GeForce RTX 5080 GPUs were also affected by the same issue. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement".

NVIDIA has also amended its previous statement released when it was discovered that its new ultra-enthusiast flagship GeForce RTX 5090 (and RTX 5090D) and latest GeForce RTX 5070 Ti were missing ROPs in some cases.

AMD is busy working on its next iteration of AFMF (AMD Fluid Motion Frames) and it should arrive alongside the RX 9070 graphics cards.

That's the contention of a report from VideoCardz, which observes that AFMF 2.1 is inbound (taking the baton from version 2.0), and it promises to improve the image quality of the tech.

As a quick refresher, AFMF is Team Red's driver-level frame generation, which has the major advantage of not requiring the game developer to code in support. It works with everything (well, most games) via the driver, but at the same time, the weakness is that it upscales the full frame (interface and all the trimmings, which can make UI elements look shoddy).

The next Fable game has slipped into 2026, Microsoft has officially confirmed.

Playground Games will have some extra time to refine their new high-fantasy adventure. In today's Xbox Podcast, Xbox Game Studios head Craig Duncan announced that Fable will no longer release in 2025, and will instead launch in an undetermined period sometime next year.

Management did not give an exact reason for the delay, but it's possible that the daunting sales-hungry juggernaut that is Grand Theft Auto 6 could have something to do with the delay. GTA 6 is expected to sell in the tune of billions of dollars at launch, and is forecasted to uplift the entire games industry through boosted software, hardware, and services. Publishers are wary of this level of competition.

With the rise of artificial intelligence-generated content, gamers are calling for Valve to implement a new filter into Steam so they are able to filter out generative AI games.

A recent Steam forum suggestion thread has gained quite a bit of traction, suggesting Valve implement a new filter into the Steam store that filters out games that feature AI-generated content. Steam users have managed to keep the threat at the top of the page by using their Steam points to give it awards in hopes that Valve sees the thread and the support for the filter to be added. The filter wouldn't be unlike other filters Valve has added in the past, such as the option to hide NSFW games.

Many of the Steam users who are in favor of the new filter have taken issue with the AI models used to generate content and have likely acquired their training data illegally, which means other people who haven't consented to their data being taken. Valve has yet to respond to the popularity of the suggestion, but the company has already begun identifying games that contain AI-generated content on the Steam store listing for the game, which has set the precedent for other gaming storefronts to follow suit.

Underwater data centers are not a new idea - neither are 'floating cities' of compute clusters, for that matter - but the scope of a growing initiative over in China is certainly impressive.

Global Times (via TechRadar Pro) reports that a new data center capsule - measuring 18 meters long, and 3.6 meters in diameter - has been launched in Lingshui (a county in Hainan Province, China).

The new capsule is linked to an existing underwater data center, with this project in Hainan first kicked off by the data center firm Highlander back in 2023 (as the first commercial effort of its kind).

It seems Monster Hunter Wilds has performance issues even on Sony's latest hardware, with an early analysis indicating the game is struggling to maintain a consistent 30FPS.

According to French outlet GamerSyde, Monster Hunter Wilds on the PlayStation 5 Pro forces players to choose between different display modes, and when Resolution mode is selected, the game targets 30FPS and doesn't come with an option to disable raytracing, which, if disabled, would give more performance. Moreover, Resolution mode uses PSSR to upscale from a native resolution of 3072 x 1728p to 4K, and even with PSSR upscaling technology, Monster Hunter Wilds still isn't able to hit a consistent 30FPS on the PS5 Pro. GamerSyde speculates the inconsistent framerate or frequent drops in FPS are a result of incorrect frame pacing.

Moving to Balanced and Performance modes. Balanced mode hits an upscaled resolution of 2496 x 1404p and also doesn't have an option to disable raytracing. The report states the framerate in this mode is also quite inconsistent, with frequent spikes that can make the image lose quality. As for Performance mode, the early analysis found the PS5 Pro is capable of reaching 60FPs, but to achieve this framerate, the image quality has to be significantly reduced. The image quality hit can be attributed to PSSR struggling to upscale from the mode's native resolution of 1080p.

We've just caught a hint about how AMD might be pricing its incoming RDNA 4 graphics cards, and it's supposedly from the horse's mouth.

This info comes from VideoCardz, and it should be regarded with caution as ever, in the form of a slide which is purportedly from a recent AMD press briefing.

It's a presentation slide about 'what gamers want' from their graphics cards and unsurprisingly, one of those factors is more accessible GPUs when it comes to pricing.

Apple has long been rumored to be quietly working on a foldable smartphone, and with multiple independent industry insiders confirming its existence, it appears the upcoming smartphone is all but officially announced.

At the beginning of the month, reports surfaced that Apple was closing in on a display supplier for its upcoming foldable smartphone, presumably called the iPhone Fold. According to sources, Apple has a laundry list of technical requirements for the foldable display, which includes impact resistance and crease prevention. According to an insider who spoke to ETNews, Apple has made the decision to "eliminate creases completely, regardless of cost, in order to differentiate their foldable phone from existing models."

The insider told the publication Samsung Display will provide the foldable screen, and that Apple has been working with Samsung Display since last year on the design for the upcoming display, ensuring it meets all of Apple's technical requirements. According to the publication, Apple has acquired new materials to "make the crease disappear" and has taken a different approach to overcoming the crease problem by taking a step back perspective of the entire design of display, its materials, the hinge, and the smartphone body.

Microsoft has subtly launched a new version of Microsoft Office for Windows users, but it has arrived in an intentionally gimped state.

The new version of Microsoft Office has been unsurprisingly paywalled by the Redmond-based company, with the suite of apps being based on their full counterparts, but access to the entirety of each app's features is locked behind a Microsoft 365 subscription. Additionally, advertisements are present on-screen at all times when a user is within each of the free apps, and this new free version of Office only allows files to be saved to Microsoft's OneDrive, which means users are unable to edit files locally stored on a device.

The list of limitations don't stop there, as the free Office apps don't come with support for add-ins, dictation, advanced formatting, designer, smartart, and many other features. Judging by what is available, Microsoft solely intends these free versions of the Office apps to be used in their most barebones state, with the lack of features being the enticing aspect of getting users to sign up for Microsoft 365.

Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was robbed on Friday last week of approximately $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency, and fingers are being pointed at North Korea.

Bybit officials confirmed the theft of more than 400,000 Ethereum, along with staked Ethereum coins, just hours after the theft took place. According to the disclosure by Bybit, the cryptocurrency coins were initially stored in a "Multisig Cold Wallet" but were then transferred out to an exchange hot wallet where they were then distributed out of the exchange altogether to wallets with unknown owners. Now, researchers at Elliptic, a blockchain analysis firm, has said the moves bear the calling cards of North Korean attackers who have reportedly already washed the funds.

So, how did this happen? Multisig Cold wallets are some of the most secure digital wallets available to cryptocurrency traders, as the idea behind the wallet is much like a nuclear missile launch that requires multiple people to engage. Just like the missile, the wallet requires two or more authorized persons to digitally sign before access can be granted. Immediately, speculation began on how the wallet was drained, with many pointing fingers at Safe, the company that provides the infrastructure hosting the cold wallet. However, Safe conducted an internal examination of its systems and found no traces of unauthorized access.

Before Ghost of Tsushima became one of PlayStation's biggest success stories, Sucker Punch Productions was just a small studio trying to keep up with the likes of Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games. In a recent creator-to-creator discussion, founder Brian Fleming admitted that the studio was so intimidated by its competition that they rarely even spoke to them.

During the PlayStation 2 era, Sucker Punch was still a young studio, having just landed its first major deal with Sony for Sly Cooper. Meanwhile, Insomniac and Naughty Dog had already established themselves as PlayStation powerhouses, releasing Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter - games that defined the platforming genre at the time.

Netflix has been the subject of viewer backlash following the release of their latest true-crime docuseries American Murder: Gabby Petito. The series, which chronicles the murder of 22-year-old Petito, utilizes voice recreation technology to simulate the voice of the victim, used throughout the show to read out journal entries and text messages and provide narration.

The three-part series, released this week, opened with a disclaimer stating: "Gabby's journal entries and text messages are brought to life in this series in her own voice, using voice recreation technology." It's reported that the Petito family gave their blessing for the recreation; however, viewers have been quick to slam the creative decision. Calling it"a violation", "weird as hell," and an "unsettling use of AI".

In an interview with Us Weekly, filmmaker Michael Gasparro defended the decision, stating that the AI narration brings her story to life in a more powerful way, and that they wanted to tell the story "as much through Gabby as possible."

Chegg has officially filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of unfairly diverting traffic from educational publishers with its AI-powered search results. In a recent Q4 earnings call, the ed-tech company claimed that Google's AI Overviews, which provide instant, AI-generated answers at the top of search results, are negatively impacting student learning and the online education ecosystem.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that Google's AI Overviews unfairly retain traffic that would typically go to Chegg and other content providers. Chegg claims this practice is harming students by reducing access to step-by-step educational resources, replacing them with low-quality, unverified AI summaries.