As of August 9th Intel had shipped 1 million Skylake CPUs worldwide. The new CPUs will go on sale on September 1st in Asia and in 6 weeks will be available worldwide. While Intel already launched their K series Skylake desktop SKUs last month, they are now announcing the launch of their entire introductory Skylake lineup including both desktop and mobile segments.

Intel predicts that Skylake will last approximately 4 years, meaning that we should expect even more SKUs in the future. A lot of microarchitecture information was disclosed during technical sessions at IDF and I already wrote that up here.

Skylake features a broad range of designs. The microarchitecture can scale all the way from Y-Series mobile chips (SoC) all the way to Xeons and powerful desktop models. The new lineup will feature a Y-Series for tablets and compute sticks, a U-Series for mini PCs and notebooks, an H-Series for more powerful mobile devices, and the S-Series for desktop. The desktop SKUs will maintain the same Core i3/i5/i7 naming scheme. The CoreM lineup has been further segmented into Core M3/M5/M7 to better identify performance and power packages.

Device manufacturer ARCHOS has unveiled the ARCHOS Diamond Plus, a larger screened model of the Diamond smartphone. ARCHOS plans to show off the device during IFA in Berlin, which starts later this week.

The device features a 5.5" FHD IPS screen (1920x1080) that is powered by an Octa-Core A53 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB internal storage. It runs the Google Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system. The phone itself will be released sometime in November and will cost around $273 at launch.

"There's no reason customers should have only one model option in our quest to offer 4G/LTE smartphones to a greater public," said Loic Poirier, CEO of ARCHOS. "Offering a larger-screened product with a slightly different design gives ARCHOS customers more diversity and choice."

DICE is planning on conducting an expansive beta test for Star Wars: Battlefront that will let players test out the iconic 40-player Walker Assault mode.

According to EA's new devblog update, the Star Wars: Battlefront beta will roll out "early October" across PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The beta will let gamers will clash in the epic Battle of Hoth in the prestigious 20 vs. 20 Walker Assault mode, which pits the Galactic Empire against the Rebel Alliance for some old-fashioned iconic wide-scale chaos: snowspeeders tripping down AT-AT's, groundforces gunning down snowtroopers and the skies will be alight with lasers as the two sides dogfight in the clouds. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader will join the battlefield as hero characters, wreaking havoc in the name of the Light and Dark sides of the Force.

According to the latest data from JPR, NVIDIA has pushed into owning 81.9% of the GPU AIB market. AMD on the other hand, dropped from 22% to just 18% this quarter, and when looking at the year-over-year data, AMD has dropped down from 38%.

JPR's report finds that total AIB shipments decreased this quarter, down to 9.4 million units. AMD's quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments decreased by a sharp 33.3%, while NVIDIA's dropped 12%. JPR also noted that the "demand for high-end PCs and associated hardware from the enthusiast and overclocking segments has bucked the downward trend and given AIB vendors a needed prospect to offset declining sales in the mainstream consumer space".

I feel quite privileged to have all of my systems powered by SSDs, with the biggest ones being 480GB. But those 1TB SSDs are just huge, and by the looks of things, they're only going to get bigger, and very quick.

Intel is working with Micron in their joint collaboration in IMFT, where the two giants will be making some sweet NAND together. With that in mind, Intel is now projecting to have 30TB SSDs by 2018, and passing 100TB by the end of the decade. Hitting 100TB+ SSDs isn't going to be easy, with Intel expecting datacenters and the enterprise markets to move over to flash-based storage quicker and quicker.

As it stands, flash-based storage is used to cache "hot" data, but Intel wants to see SSDs used for much more than that in the enterprise. The chipmaker sees NVMe-based solutions taking over, thanks to their reduced overheads and increased speeds and lowered latency.

Sony has just announced the Australian availability of its most exciting tablet yet, the Xperia Z4 Tablet. The Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet is the world's lightest and thinnest 10-inch tablet, which is quite the achievement for Sony, especially against Samsung and Apple.

The Xperia Z4 Tablet features a 10.1-inch 2K display, an 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor and weighs in at just 393g (13.8oz) for the 4G-capable model while the Wi-Fi-only model weighs 389g (13.7oz). As usual, the Xperia Z4 Tablet features IP68 waterproof protection, with dust tight rating with cap-less microUSB charging.

Sony is selling the new Xperia Z4 Tablet through Telstra for an RRP of $888, or on a 24-month plan through Go Mobile Broadband for $62 per month.

With the Final Fantasy 7 Remake on the way, legendary Square Enix alum Tetsuya Nomura takes us back to the late 90's to discuss how one of the most iconic juggernauts in video game history was made.

Final Fantasy 7 was a pivotal moment in history for Square Enix and gaming as a whole: the game rode the mighty wave set forth by the original PlayStation, ushering in a new era of 3D visuals that breathed true life into the game via cinematics, polygons, and characters with real heart (you teared up during Aerith's infamous scene, admit it).

"The original game was the first time in Final Fantasy that all of the creation of characters and environments was rendered in 3D," Nomura said in an interview with PlayStation Magazine. "It was a time of big changes when we went from sprites to something more lifelike and in 3D, and it was just such an iconic moment. And we just packed so much playable content for players to experience, I feel that maybe that's one of the great reasons that that game had such an impact on fans. We were able to create a new game-playing experience. And on top of that, the characters. Not only the transition of 2D to 3D polygons, just that their personalities were more drawn out, they were more human and you can attach emotionally to those characters."

It turns out that many people aren't afraid of fallout from Ashley Madison's high-profile data breach, with "hundreds of thousands" of new members reportedly signing up for the site in the past week. In addition, 87,596 women also signed up for the infidelity website, according to Avid Life officials.

"Last week alone, women sent more than 2.8 million messages within our platform," according to Avid Life Media.

"Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated. Despite having our business and customers attacked, we are growing." However, CEO Noel Biderman stepped down as head of the company, and additional shakeups are possible - though it looks like a bit of notoriety could be helping the website.

Final Fantasy XV will be released sometime in 2016, it has been confirmed, though an exact launch date hasn't been revealed just yet. Square Enix also shared new concept art and gameplay video for gamers to take a look at:

"We're proud of our technical capabilities and the work we've done to help shape the open-world genre," said Christofer Sundberg, co-founder and chief creative officer at Avalanche Studios. "We hold the FINAL FANTASY franchise, and the team working on it, in such high regard and are excited to be a part of the next chapter."

Earlier this month, it was confirmed Final Fantasy XV would receive a simultaneous game launch across the world.

It looks like Konami is quite impressed by the PC performance of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, with a company executive recently noting that gameplay is "stunning."

"The PC version is stunning," said Jon Edwards, marketing executive at Konami, in a statement to MCV. "We are so pleased to be able to release it alongside the console games, and that Kojima Productions has worked so hard to make it such a strong version."

Edwards also had this to add: "Like Ground Zeroes, the graphics are stunning in the new 4K mode, while the scale and online elements within the game are a perfect fit for the format. Metal Gear Solid V is such an entertaining game, we always wanted it to play strengths of its host format, and the PC edition certainly does that. It is a stunning conversion."