Latest News - Page 416

Tesla has announced that its vehicles are now autonomously driving from the factory floor, to loading bays, without any humans needed in the process.

The company posted to its Tesla AI account on X, showing it has automated the process that saves dozens of employees, and thousands of hours of time per year. Tesla is using its FSD (Full Self Driving) technology in unsupervised mode inside of their software to drive this (no pun intended).

In the video that Tesla shared, you can see the electric vehicles navigating intersections on their own, finding its way to an available bay, and parking itself. This is achieved by using the AI hardware inside of each Tesla car, as well as the computer vision system, also inside of every EV it makes.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 helped Xbox hit a new all-time revenue high for Game Pass subscriptions, and it's possible this growth could've helped Game Pass make more than Xbox hardware during the Holiday 2024 period.

Things are on the up and up for Xbox, at least when it comes leadership comments. The latest holiday 2024 earnings results show a $500 million+ decline in total Xbox platform earnings, but the downward pull was mostly due to hardware. And since hardware is sold at a loss, reductions in actual Xbox console shipments/sales can actually boost Xbox's total profits.

While we didn't refreshed Xbox Game Pass subscriber numbers, we did get a vital snippet if info from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The subscription actually made record-breaking revenues throughout the Q2'FY25 / Holiday 2024 period, driven by Black Op 6's megaton launch on Xbox Game Pass.

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card just launched, and now we've got some performance targets from AMD for its new Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards... where it looks like we can expect the RX 9070 XT to fall inside of 10% of the performance of the RTX 5080.

In a new video from leaker Moore's Law is Dead who has gone through GeForce RTX 5080 reviews and overlayed the performance targets for the new RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 in 4K gaming, when looked at from HBU's review data from 17 game average performance at 4K, we can expect the new RX 9070 XT to have performance that's within 10% of the RTX 5080.

This means that AMD's new flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT could get pretty damn close to the 4K gaming performance of the RTX 5080, and if sold at $599 to $649, could really stir up the gaming GPU market. Furthermore, the Radeon RX 9070 non-XT should have 4K gaming performance that'll sit above the RTX 5070 and below the RTX 5070 Ti... right in the middle, in fact, and just under the RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7900 XT.

Spider-Man 2 spins its web onto the PC in less than 24 hours, and now we have PC system requirements, and PC-specific enhancements that have been unveiled. Here's the trailer:

Spider-Man 2 has been tweaked by the team at Nixxes, with the game developed by Insomniac and until now, a PlayStation exclusive, a "technological and graphical showcase utilizing tools like ray tracing to bring the city of Marvel's New York to life". However, on the PC there are new ray tracing options, NVIDIA DLSS, and so much more.

NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 will launch with Spider-Man 2 on the PC, as well as NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction technology, improving ray tracing performance if you've got the right hardware. There's also ultrawide monitor support, with Nixxes providing support for 21:9, 32:9, and even 48:9 aspect ratios on triple-monitor gaming PCs. Nixxes' team of engineers and artists "worked hard ensuring all cinematics in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 are adapted to be fully viewable in aspect ratios up to 32:9".

NVIDIA is distancing itself from Samsung and its HBM memory, with CEO Jensen Huang saying the company "can't trust Samsung Electronics' High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) products and engineers".

In a new report from Korean outlet Hankyung, which reports that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said in front of Samsung executives: "is a customer of Samsung Electronics, not an employee. Stop calling and asking questions. I can't trust Samsung Electronics' high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products and engineers. We cannot trust and do business with them because senior executives change frequently".

However, even just weeks ago at CES 2025, NVIDIA said "there is no doubt about the success of Samsung Electronics' HBM". Samsung has been struggling to get its HBM3E memory off the ground -- well, out of the semiconductor fabs, you know what I mean -- with NVIDIA reportedly working "as fast as it can" to have Samsung's new HBM3E memory certified to use on its world-leading AI GPUs.

Xbox hardware revenue is down to its second-lowest point in the last 10 years...but this isn't actually bad news for Microsoft right now.

Microsoft's latest Q2FY25 results have been posted, showing interesting results for Xbox. Based on the data provided, Xbox gaming earned $6.581 billion throughout the Holiday 2024 quarter, driven significantly by content and services (game sales, microtransactions, subscriptions, etc). Xbox hardware only accounted for 15% of total revenues, or about $1.01 billion.

These numbers mean that FY25 saw the second all-time low for Xbox hardware revenues in the last decade, second only to the $815 - $830 million earned in the Holiday 2019 quarter. Interestingly enough, this is actually a good thing for Microsoft...at least for the time being.

Microsoft's shift towards high-margin businesses like Xbox Game Pass may have helped make the games division more profitable throughout the holiday 2024 period.

Microsoft just reported its Q2FY25 results, giving us a status update on the Xbox brand. All-told, revenue was down around 7%, dropping from the all-time high of $7.111 billion earning in Q2FY24 down to $6.581 billion, representing a hefty half-billion dollar increase. Despite the drop, though, this is the second-highest holiday period in Xbox history (thanks in no small part to ABK's contributions).

Nestled in the earnings report is also mention of operating income. Remember that Xbox is part of Microsoft's More Personal Computing division, and it's not its own branch. That means we don't get operating income/profit info for Xbox (despite us being able to glean info from leaked documents).

On the heels of the comments from Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gives an update on the future trajectory of Xbox.

Xbox has one singular goal above all else: To meet (or ideally surpass) the profit margin goals that are set by Microsoft's CFO and board. The group has two ways to meet this goal: Cut costs and improve business margins.

We've heard Xbox talk about high-margin businesses in the past. Key examples include digital game sales and subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass. A big example of Microsoft executing on high-margin opportunities is launching Black Ops 6 onto Xbox Game Pass, although the exact business dynamics are blurry. Another example is how Xbox is breaking exclusivity to launch its games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms.

Xbox reports its second-highest holiday quarter thanks to the help of Activision Blizzard King's billion-dollar contributions.

Today Microsoft revealed its earnings results for Q2 FY25, which runs from October - December 2024. The holidays are critical for games companies, and Xbox managed to pull in $6.581 million in total revenue throughout the 3-month period. Unsurprisingly, this is the second highest quarter of earnings in Xbox history, and the second-highest Q2 earnings behind Q2'FY24's all-time high of $7.111 billion.

"Gaming revenue increased $1.2 billion or 11% driven by growth in Xbox content and services, offset in part by a decline in Xbox hardware. Xbox content and services revenue increased 24% driven by the impact of the Activision Blizzard acquisition," reads Microsoft's earnings report.

Sony has relented to pressure from PC gamers, drops the unpopular PS Network login requirement for some singleplayer PlayStation games on Steam.

The PSN login controversy hit Sony at an extremely inopportune moment, and it was almost big enough to destabilize Helldiver II's breakout success. Back then, Sony originally wanted everyone to make a PSN account to play Helldivers II and gave an ultimatum to fans--make a PSN by Summer, or you'd be locked out of the game. Significant push-back caused Sony to change its policy and bend to its audience. Now Sony is making more concessions with its PSN login policy.

Sony today announced that it will not require PlayStation Network logins for select upcoming singleplayer games on PC. Instead, gamers will be able to choose whether or not they want to sign in with a PSN account. If you do sign in, you'll get bonuses like trophy support and extra in-game unlocks similar to Ubisoft Connect.

It looks like gamers are moving on from the PS4 at least with PS Plus freebies, and Sony is taking the hint.

Sony wants the PS5 to beat the PS4 in every way possible--sales, profits, services, accessories, etc. So any time there's an opportunity to sunset Gen8 features, content, or delivery, Sony might take it. Something like that is now happening with PS Plus freebies.

SIE today announced that PS4 games will no longer be a "key benefit" of the PS Plus Monthly Games and Game Catalog. Starting January 1, 2026, PS4 games are no longer guaranteed as monthly content for PS Plus subscribers, and Sony will offer free PS5 games instead.

Netflix has made a change to its iOS apps that's been wanted by a fair few iPhone and iPad owners for some time now.

The addition of a single button to download a whole season of a show is now present in these apps, a feature that's already on Android, and has been eyed jealously by owners of Apple hardware.

Hat tip to 9 to 5 Mac for spotting this, and Netflix explains in a news post:

BioWare isn't ready to enter full production on the next Mass Effect game, so EA has moved core BioWare dev teams to other projects.

Now that Dragon Age: The Veilguard has shipped (and missed targets), BioWare is now focusing on its next big AAA project: Mass Effect 5. But the studio isn't quite ready to ramp up to full production just yet. ME5 starts out as all game do: with a small, tight-knit core team that outlines the vision in pre-production phases--in this case, the game is being led by series vets like Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, and Parrish Ley.

So what do the other BioWare devs do while the smaller team outlines the early framework for ME5? According to general manager Gary McKay, they can find new jobs/placement at other EA studios. It feels like BioWare is shedding extraneous teams to reduce costs while re-allocating resources for parent EA, who is assuredly disappointed with the performance of BioWare's most recent game.

NVIDIA has spilled the beans on its Blackwell GPUs and the chips inside the RTX 5070 models by publishing the official documentation for all of its next-gen GeForce graphics cards.

As VideoCardz noticed, the PDF that NVIDIA provided tells us some more details about the spec of the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti, and clarifies what chips are used in those GPUs.

Of course, we already have core counts, but now we know that, just as rumored, the RTX 5070 Ti uses GB203, the same GPU as the RTX 5080 (but cut down, obviously). Whereas the RTX 5070 vanilla employs the GB205 chip, again as speculation has claimed for some time now.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer clearly outlines the future of Xbox as it pertains to exclusivity, re-affirming plans to expand games, content, and services to as many screens as possible.

Xbox exclusivity is now extinct. Microsoft wants to expand its business laterally and use its rival-competitors to sell more games. This means offering once-Xbox exclusives onto PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2, and following the powerhouse $74 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard King, Xbox has made a thorough transition into a service-driven company. This means embracing all platforms to maximize sales/microtransactions (also remember that Microsoft/Activision are contractually bound to keep shipping the $31 billion+ Call of Duty franchise on Sony and Nintendo platforms).

Now in a recent interview with Gamer Tag Radio, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer dispels all confusion with Microsoft's plans going forward. All games, content, and services are fair game for other platforms, devices, and/or screens. In other words, Xbox wants to maximally expand its reach, especially on rival platforms.

Americans could soon be hit with a price hike for sought-after electronics as President Trump pushes the idea of tariffs on foreign production of computer chips.

President Trump is looking to implement tariffs on foreign production of semiconductors and computer chips in all forms in an effort to bring manufacturing of these components to American soil. The idea behind the tariffs, which could range between 25 and 100% tax, is to force foreign manufacturers to either pay the exorbitant fee to import their goods or choose to manufacture their products on American soil. However, there is a third option, and that involves foreign manufacturers increasing the price of their products, which essentially means consumers will have to pay for Trump's import tax.

In Trump's crosshairs with these tariffs are Taiwanese semiconducting manufacturer TSMC and South Korean giant Samsung, which produces various computing products such as CPUs, GPUs, storage, and memory modules. Notably, TSMC and Samsung have agreed to build fabrication plants in the US, but TSMC has been somewhat hesitant to manufacture its cutting-edge technologies on US soil and instead opts for those advanced chips to be manufactured in Taiwan. Unfortunately, companies such as Apple, NVIDIA, and others are only really interested in TSMC's best offerings.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has revealed during a recent podcast that gamers can expect Xbox titles making their way over to the Nintendo Switch 2.

Spencer appeared on the latest episode of Gamertag Radio, where he spoke with Danny Peña and Parris Lilly about several topics, and one hot topic that was brought up was the Nintendo Switch 2. Spencer was asked about his reaction to Nintendo's latest console unveiling, where he said that he's excited the successor to the Nintendo Switch will feature a bigger screen and that Xbox is "really looking forward to supporting them with the games that we have."

The Microsoft Gaming CEO goes on to applaud the efforts made by the Nintendo team in creating a new device category following the immense success of the Nintendo Switch. Moreover, Spencer touches on Xbox's long-time stance of having their titles on as many screens as possible, and not just the Xbox platform.

Scientists have admitted to a blunder in space, and it involves Elon Musk's car. The admittance highlights the importance of accurate near-Earth object tracking.

The Minor Planet Electronic Circular listed the discovery of an asteroid on January 2, but the entry into the database was promptly removed after the researchers realized the object wasn't an asteroid at all but Elon Musk's car, specifically the Tesla Roadster that was launched into space on February 6, 2018. The correction was issued less than a day after the discovery of the suspected asteroid, with an editor notice being published informing readers the designation of 2018 CN41 "is being deleted".

While the misidentification of the object was corrected promptly by the researchers after they realized the object's orbit matched the orbit of the Falcon Heavy Upper stage with the Tesla Roadster attached, the mistake does highlight a problem with space-object identification in general.

The fate of TikTok currently stands upon the edge of a knife, and if it strays but a little, it will fail, to the ruin of 170 million users across the United States.

TikTok is currently in limbo as the US government initiated the ban of the app, citing national security reasons as lawmakers found the app could be used to harvest the data of the 170 million Americans that use it and feed that data to the Chinese government. TikTok was given an ultimatum by the US government with a deadline of January 19.

That ultimatum was to sell the app to a US government-verified entity or be banned from both app marketplaces and US telecommunications services. The January 19 deadline was reached, and TikTok was briefly made unavailable in the US for approximately 16 hours.

Google has responded to the recent declaration by President Trump that the Gulf of Mexico will be renamed to the Gulf of America.

One of the first things President Trump did once he entered office was to declare the Gulf of Mexico was to be renamed to the Gulf of America, and now Google has announced it will comply with Trump's new naming scheme as the search conglomerate states it will abide by official government sources for all its naming of locations, as it has done in the past. Google took to X, where it wrote that it had received many questions regarding the name change, and that it has a "longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources."

Moreover, Google explained it uses the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) as its source for naming locations, which is the US government's official source for geographic names. Trump's executive order gives a 30-day deadline for the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, along with the renaming of Denali to Mount McKinley. Google states once the change has been lodged in the GNIS the change will be reflected in Google Maps. However, there's a caveat.