Latest News - Page 415

A topic like the 'greatest gaming comeback ever' is always going to be arguable and subjective, but you can't argue with the eligibility of No Man's Sky as a contender for this title - a status which has now been cemented by the views of Steam gamers.

As highlighted by Sean Murray, the founder of Hello Games, on X, the rating for 'All Reviews' as scored by the denizens of Steam has just changed to 'Very Positive.'

As Wccftech, which spotted this, points out, that's a long way from the initial reception way back in 2016, where No Man's Sky got some pretty dire feedback from the original players of the game. It was a long time that it was stuck at a 'Mixed' rating, too, as even when more positive reviews started to weigh in, there was a whole lot of negative historical feedback holding the game back on Steam.

It was only earlier in the month the Australian House of Representatives voted to pass new legislation that bans social media for anyone that isn't over the age of 16.

That new legislation has now been voted upon in the Australian Senate, where it was passed, meaning the details of the Bill "Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age)" will be brought into effect. According to the new legislation, social media platforms will now be obligated to implement age verification checks and strategies to prevent social media platforms from being used by underage people.

Services that will fall under these new policies enable users to post material, interact with two or more people, and interact with all other end users, which all of the popular social media platforms, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and X, all fall under.How this new widespread regulation will be implemented is up to the companies behind the social media platform, not the Australian government.

Panasonic was originally founded in 1918 by Kōnosuke Matsushita under the name Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works, and now the founder has been resurrected by the modern-day Panasonic.

Panasonic collaborated with the University of Tokyo to resurrect Matsushita who died in 1989. Engineers fed 3,000 recordings of Matsushita into an AI, along with any relevant writings, lectures, and interviews. Panasonic's Peace and Happiness through Prosperity (PHP) Institute, a think tank originally founded by Matsushita, plugged all of the relevant data into an AI and trained it to character an AI character that is designed to replicate Matsushita's way of thinking and speaking style.

What's the goal of this? Panasonic wants to use the AI replica of the company's founder as a consultant, querying it in difficult situations to see what Matsushita would do based on the current circumstances. Notably, Matsushita was renowned for his incredible management philosophies in business, and is incredibly celebrated in Japan for the transformation of what was once a business that sold lamps into what Panasonic is today.

Tencent has been caught in hot water after Polaris Quest unveiled "Light of Motiram," a new open-world game headed to PC that appears to be directly inspired - copied - from Guerilla Games' Horizon Zero Dawn.

The announcement came with official listings for the title on both Steam and the Epic Games Store. However, no official release date was revealed. Polaris Quest is a subsidiary of Tencent Games, and according to the announcement and the game's description, Light of Motiram is an open-world survival crafting game that takes players to a world overrun by colossal machines, and judging by what can be seen during the trailer, along with all of the provided images in each of the storefront listings, it's safe to say Light of Motiram is HEAVILY inspired by Sony's Horizon Zero Dawn.

The similarities are close, even down to the font used for the title of Light of Motiram, that I personally believe Sony could file a lawsuit against the title's release, similar to how Nintendo is suing the creators of Palworld for what Nintendo believes is IP infringement. Notably, Tencent and Polaris Quest have now been caught in an online barrage of criticism, with many gamers claiming the company has "ripped off" Zero Dawn and Forbidden West while also copying mechanics from Pocketpair's Palworld. Below are screenshots and more GIFs of Light of Motiram, and by those, you can make your own mind up if Light of Motiram is a copy of Guerilla Games' hit franchise.

Qualcomm had a gigantic marketing push with its Snapdragon X laptops a few months ago, but the company has sold only 720,000 units worldwide capturing just 0.8% market share of the AI PC market.

According to recent reports, Qualcomm has sold just 720,000 units of its Snapdragon X laptops globally over Q3 2024, making up less than 1 in every 125 devices sold. Since launch, Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X series mobile processors have a tiny portion of the Windows laptop market, with less than 1.5% of the ecosystem.

Canalys told TechRadar Pro: "As this was the first full quarter of shipments for Snapdragon X Series PCs, we saw sequential growth of around 180% compared to Q2 2024. However, as a proportion of the total Windows market, the products remain very niche, at less than 1.5% share. The top shipping vendor was Microsoft, which has transitioned most of their Surface line to the platform. Behind them was Dell who has embraced the new platform quite strongly in terms of SKU count, followed by HP, Lenovo, Acer and ASUS (all four with similar volumes)".

Assassin's Creed Shadows has had one of if not the most tumultuous lead ups to release out of the entire Assassin's Creed franchise, and now we have discovered that half of the team working on the project has never made a game before.

The news comes from legendary Assassin's Creed developer Marc-Alexis Côté who is known for his work on previous Assassin's Creed titles and is the current Vice President Executive Producer for the entire Assassin's Creed franchise. Marc-Alexis Côté spoke at the External Development Summit 2024, where he revealed that since the pandemic, Ubisoft has adopted a lot of junior developers, saying, "Probably half the team that's building Assassin's Creed is building a game for the first time."

As for other Shadows news, Insider Gaming has heard that Ubisoft will begin sending out preview/review copies of Assassin's Creed Shadows mid-Janaury, specifically the week of the 13th. Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson wrote that this is an indicator that Ubisoft is on track for the February 14 launch of Shadows, following the delay of the title due to mounting criticism over artistic choices and further polishing before release.

For years, Nintendo fans and gamers have been asking themselves (and others): When will the Nintendo Switch 2 get its big reveal, and when will it launch? The latest rumor from a credible source on the Weibo forum points to an announcement that could be right around the corner - with a release to follow soon after.

Although the source has accurately leaked or confirmed the contents of multiple Nintendo Direct streams in the past, at this point, anything related to the Nintendo Switch 2 release should be taken with a big ol' grain of salt. That said, we'd love for this one to be true.

And that's because the source of the rumor claims that the Nintendo Switch 2 will get its big reveal sometime in January 2025, with a global launch or release sometime in March 2025. This would put the Nintendo Switch 2's release much sooner than many expect, with analysts and insiders currently pegging a second-half-of-2025 release for the long-awaited console.

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW Black Friday Deal is now on, with 50% off the first three months of new GeForce NOW Ultimate and Performance memberships. Ultimate subscribers get access to a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU and can stream their games up to 4K at 120 FPS or 1080p at 240 FPS. Performance tier members can stream at up to 1440p at 60 FPS.

Both plans fall under the new rules limiting the monthly game time GeForce NOW subscribers can access to 100 hours. NVIDIA notes that this time limit covers 94% or most of its users, and those exceeding the 100-hour allotment can continue to game on the 'free' tier or pay extra. This has been widely viewed as a controversial change to GeForce NOW's operation, so it's worth reiterating here.

Back to the Black Friday Deal: In addition to the 50% off GeForce NOW Ultimate and Performance memberships for new users, SteelSeries is offering a 30% discount to members (via the GeForce NOW rewards program) on its Stratus+ and Nimbus+ controllers. These cloud-ready controllers can be paired with any Android or iOS device running GeForce NOW.

Rumors suggest Intel will release its first desktop Battlemage GPU product, the Intel Arc B580, around December 12. We've already seen retail leaks of models online from Intel's partners at ASRock, with new reporting via Videocardz seemingly confirming a reference 'Limited Edition' model of the GPU coming from Team Blue in a couple of weeks.

However, based on the specs and naming, it does look like Intel's second-gen Arc desktop GPU line-up is launching with its entry-level or budget variant first. That's another thing; we also know from the retail listings that the B580 is priced at around $250, making it cheaper than the GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600. Throw in 12GB of VRAM, and it could be a budget winner.

As for those rumors that Battlemage would be Intel's last hurrah in the desktop GPU space, that doesn't look like it's the case. According to @jaykihn0 on X (via NotebookCheck), Intel is developing desktop Arc Celestial GPUs for release in 2025 or 2026, which will be followed up with Arc Druid.

8BitDo's new Xbox Edition Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard and Retro R8 Mouse feature a design inspired by the original Xbox console, specifically the Transparent Green Edition. The custom Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard's arrow keys also adopt the red, blue, green, and yellow of the Xbox controller's ABXY buttons.

Throw in a dedicated Xbox Button that brings up the Windows Game Bar, and it's a pretty incredible-looking keyboard - especially for longtime Xbox fans. Unlike other retro keyboards from 8BitDo, the Xbox Edition includes per-key RGB lighting to complement the transparent design. The Xbox Edition supports Bluetooth and low-latency 2.4 GHz wireless and ships with those large programmable buttons that debuted with the standard Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard.

The custom Retro R8 Mouse is also a looker, with a similar Transparent Green design. It ships with a charging dock and customizable side buttons on the left and right that look like the Xbox controller's ABXY buttons. Hardware-wise, it includes the high-performance PAW 3395 26K sensor that supports an 8K polling rate.

If you own a Belkin BoostCharge Pro Fast Wireless Charger power bank, you need to immediately stop using it, as there's a potential fire risk with this accessory.

Belkin issued a notice of a voluntary recall of all these power banks, the full name of which is the 'Belkin BoostCharge Pro Fast Wireless Charger for Apple Watch + Power Bank 10K' (and the model number is BPD005).

There's a manufacturing defect, we're told, which could lead to the lithium battery overheating and a resulting fire hazard.

Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is widely considered one the best entries the long-running franchise has seen in years, from its campaign to its competitive multiplayer modes and the all-new zombies action. And now we can add 'biggest Call of Duty ever' to its accolades, with Activision announcing that Black Ops 6 has had the biggest 'first 30 days' of any CoD.

"In the first 30 days from launch, together you made Black Ops 6 the biggest Call of Duty ever," Activision's post reads. Regarding three key metrics: total players, the number of hours played, and the number of multiplayer matches, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 sits on top of the Call of Duty mountain.

However, things aren't great for all Black Ops 6 and Warzone players, as Activision's RICOCHET Anti-Cheat initiative, which combats Call of Duty cheaters, is working overtime.

There was a time when every major publisher decided that its PC releases would require signing into and using a custom launcher, which would still be required even if you purchased and wanted to play a game on Steam or the Epic Games Store.

Outside of having more things minimized to your system tray, additional launchers are often buggy and bloated - case in point: the 2K Games launcher.

Well, there's good news: 2K Games has announced that its launcher "has been removed from every game that used it on Epic and Steam," meaning you can play games like Bioshock Remastered, Bioshock 2 Remastered, Bioshock Infinite, The Quarry, the Mafia Trilogy Definitive Edition games, and Marvel's Midnight Suns without having to go through the 2K Launcher.

Earlier this week, we reported on retail listings for new Intel Arc B580 GPUs from ASRock being spotted, pointing to an imminent release of the very first Battlemage desktop graphics cards. According to rumors, the entry-level follow-up to the Intel Arc A580 could be here as early as December, with new retail listing leaks (via @momomo_us on X) confirming a price point of around $250 USD.

This price is for the Intel Arc B580 Limited Edition GPU from Intel, which will probably feature a design similar to the reference models we saw for first-gen Arc GPUs. A $250 price point would make the Intel Arc B580 an affordable new GPU with an impressive 12GB of VRAM and a cheaper card than the GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600.

However, $250 is notably higher than the Intel Arc A580's $179 launch price, so the overall value will naturally come down to performance and how it handles 1080p gaming across competitive and cinematic AAA titles. Also, we finally have additional specs for the card so we can see how it stacks up against the previous-gen A580.

Companies developing artificial intelligence tools require large swaths of data for AI training, and what better way to gather large quantities of data than by scraping it from people using popular applications or programs?

@nixCraft, an author of Cyberciti.biz has claimed Microsoft is participating in this type of scheme with Office, and it's Connected Experiences. According to nixCraft, Redmond's Connected Experiences feature automatically scraps data from Word and Excel files, and that data is used to train Microsoft's AI tools, such as Copilot. According to reports, this feature is turned on automatically, which means user-generated Word documents and Excel files are included in Microsoft's AI training dataset unless the user manually disables the feature.

However, following reports sourcing @nixCraft's claims, Microsoft has since responded, saying customer data within Microsoft 365 apps, which includes Word and Excel, isn't used to train the company's Large Language Models (LLMs), the underlying technology powering AI tools such as Copilot, or ChatGPT. Microsoft also added, "This setting only enables features requiring internet access like co-authoring a document."

Windows 11 24H2 is Microsoft's latest update that's currently available in the company preview channel for those that wish to opt-in to the Windows Insider Programme.

However, Windows 11 24H2 has been riddled with problems, most of which have been identified and confirmed by Microsoft, with fixes meant to be on the way. One of the biggest problems with 24H2 is the seemingly widespread error that stops PCs and laptops made by Dell from shutting down or even entering sleep mode.

The problem was first discovered by Windows Latest and later confirmed by Dell in an official statement on the company's website. According to the reports, the problem can be traced back to the Dell Encryption app and the latest installation of Windows 11 24H2. Compatibility errors between these two resulted in affected Dell systems being unable to shutdown.

The Solar Orbiter is on a journey toward the Sun, and last year, in March, it reached the halfway point where it snapped twenty-five images of our local star, which have now been stitched together to form an insanely high-resolution image of the Sun.

For those that don't know, the Sun is preposterously large compared to Earth, with its diameter measuring 1.39 million km across (863,705 miles), compared to Earth's diameter of 12,769 kilometers (7,926 miles). Given its massive size, the Sun is responsible for 99% of the mass in the Solar System while also being the anchor point that all objects in the Solar System orbit due to its intense gravitational pull. The Sun has been doing this for the past 4.6 billion years, and while it can be violent and unpredictable at times with its constant outbursts of charged particles, without it, we wouldn't have life on Earth. Check out the image here.

Despite its necessity, we still don't know everything about the Sun, which is why the European Space Agency (ESA) has sent the Solar Orbiter on a journey to investigate it, with the space probe tasked to capture high-resolution images of our local star as it progresses. The Solar Orbiter was launched in February 2020 and is equipped with high-resolution imaging equipment, along with instruments to measure the Sun's magnetic fields and solar wind. The Solar Orbiter will come within 42 million km (26,097,590 miles).

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-led brain chip company, announced its preparing its next round of experiments, and this time around patients will be able to control a robotic arm with their thoughts.

Neuralink took to its official X account to announce a new "feasibility trial" that's goal is to expand the company's Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) offerings. Notably, the new trial will use the N1 implant, which involves controlling "assistive robotic arm". Neuralink writes the new trial has the objective of taking one of the first important steps to not only restoring digital freedom but also physical freedom for those suffering from paraplegia and other physically debilitating ailments.

Along with a description of the new trial, the company posted a link to its patient registry, which suggests Neuralink is still looking for the right patient. While Neuralink has never attempted this kind of trial before it has been conducted others in the past, with reports indicating that Caltech researchers implanted what was described as a "neural prosthetic device" into the brain of a paraplegic man. The device was connected to a robotic arm that he was able to control with his thoughts.

With Black Friday Sales in full effect, the Steam Autumn Sale has also started and will run until December 4 at 10 a.m. There are countless game deals worth revisiting, from recent releases to award-winning titles to indies and classics.

With up to 95% off discounts, you'd be hard-pressed not to find a game worth clicking on that 'Add to Cart' button. You can also save big on the Steam Deck, with Valve currently offering a 25% discount on the Steam Deck 512GB LCD, bringing its price down from $449 to $336.75. This is a great deal because the Steam Deck is still one of the best PC gaming handhelds on the market.

With that, we've decided to go through Steam Autumn Sale deals to find the best deals under $10 and $5, from classics in franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Assassin's Creed, The Witcher, Mass Effect, Halo, and Fallout to indie hits like Valheim and Subnautica, which are getting sizeable discounts.

Amazon has reportedly developed a new video AI model codenamed Olympus, a new generative artificial intelligence (AI) that can process images and videos (as well as text) according to The Information.

The outlet reports that Amazon's move with its new video AI model will reduce its reliance on Anthropic's chatbot, Claude, which is a popular model that Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers. The Information talked to two sources, who said that the new large language model (LLM) is codenamed Olympis, and will be capable of understanding and processing scenes in images and videos, helping people look for specific scenes for their video.

This can include making the best coffee, raindrops falling to the ground, and so much more with easy text prompts according to The Information's sources. Amazon's new Olympus video AI model could be announced as soon as next week, with the annual AWS re:Invent customer conference according to The Information's source.