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2025 is here, and Valve has now capped off the new year by revealing the best-selling and best-earning Steam games of the prior year.

2024 was a big year for Steam. The platform-and-launcher consistently set new player records throughout the year, eventually establishing the new top concurrent record of 39.3 million. Valve also raked in billions of dollars through game sales and monetization, collecting their share of live service and AAA singleplayer spending.

The top-earning Steam games of 2024 saw some new entrants break into the list, including Helldivers II, Palworld, and the chart-topping Black Myth: Wukong. All of these newer challengers have sold over 10 million copies each. Other interesting trends see Baldur's Gate 3 retain a spot on the chart, alongside usual suspects like Counter-Strike, Apex, PUBG, DOTA, and Call of Duty. It's also good to see Destiny 2 on the list given Bungie's and Sony's current financial issues.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has published a new Nintendo patent for AI-based image upscaling, giving us an idea of the kind of tech being used in the upcoming Switch 2 console.

Note: The following patent was published on December 31, 2024 in the United States, but was originally domestically filed on July 13, 2023 and published on November 9, 2023 in Japan.

It's 2025, and Nintendo's new Switch 2 console should be revealed soon. While gamers have been waiting, there's been a few Switch 2 leaks--some of which could be pretty huge if they turn out to be true. And just days ago, the USPTO published a very interesting new Nintendo patent that delves into how the company is using AI upscaling technology in the Switch 2 hardware.

The voice actor for G-Man from the Half-Life franchise has just teased his return to the Half-Life franchise in 2025, check out Mike Shapiro's post on X below:

Mike Shapiro is the voice actor behind both G-Man and Barney from the Half-Life franchise, posting on X a video celebrating the year ahead. Shapiro speaking in the G-Man voice said we can enjoy some "unexpected surprises" and that we'll see him in 2025... well then.

We've been hearing tons of new information on Valve's new codenamed HLX, which is expected to be Half-Life 3, which will push the boundaries of game physics, destruction, NPC AI behavior, and more. Valve has also been working on a new ragdoll and gore systems... something that would be perfect for not just Half-Life 3, but a future Left 4 Dead 3, too.

ASUS has just unveiled its new ROG Swift PG27UCDM gaming monitor, rocking a 26.5-inch 4K 240Hz OLED panel, and supports the new DisplayPort 2.1a standard with full UHBR20 specification. Check it out:

The new ASUS ROG Swift PG27UCDM gaming monitor has a 26.5-inch 4th Gen QD-OLED panel with a pixel density of 166 PPI, which is a big improvement over the 27-inch 1440p models with 53% greater pixel density.

On the connectivity side, the 4K 240Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor features the latest DisplayPort 2.1a connectivity with the full UHBR20 specification. This means that the ROG Swift PG27UCDM can drive its full 4K 240FPS with lossless quality without needing Display Stream Compression (DSC) technology.

MSI's new Raider 18 HX NRE gaming laptop has been leaked, which will reportedly feature Intel's new Core Ultra 9 285HX "Arrow Lake" CPU and NVIDIA's current-gen GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU.

The new Intel Core Ultra 200HX series are high-end enthusiast processors designed for laptops, with HX series processors featuring a 55W TDP by default, but gaming laptop manufacturers are expected to puosh the power envelope to somwhere up to 200W for combined CPU and GPU performance.

Intel's flagship Core Ultra 9 285HX processor will feature 24 cores and 24 threads, with a base CPU clock of 2.8GHz and a boost clock of up to 5.8GHz (no confirmation on that just yet). MSI's new Raider 18 HX gaming laptop will feature 64GB of RAM (with unknown speeds for now).

In some shocking news, a Tesla Cybertruck that was filled with explosives and fireworks-style mortars has exploded outside of the Trump Tower in Las Vegas, Nevada, in what's being described as a "possible act of terror".

The explosion from the Tesla Cybertruck was the result of very large fireworks and or a bomb, with "all vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of explosion" according to Telsa CEO Elon Musk.

Elon explained "we have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself. All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion". This was in a reply to his own post on X, which explained:

With NVIDIA set to release a new generation of desktop and laptop GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards this year, today we've got an early look at mainstream GeForce RTX 5060 laptop GPU performance via a leaked 3DMark Time Spy benchmark from reviewer Superalloy Skittles at Bilibili (via Huang514613 on X and Videocardz).

The synthetic 3DMark Time Spy benchmark is a DirectX 12 API test that has been around for a few years. The GeForce RTX 5060 laptop GPU's Graphics Score of 13821 indicates that NVIDIA's new mainstream laptop GPU will deliver a 30% performance increase over its predecessor, the GeForce RTX 4060. And a massive 70% increase over the GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPU.

We're also seeing a 10% improvement compared to the GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU, which is nice to see. As a synthetic benchmark, the performance might not translate 1:1 to in-game performance, but it indicates that NVIDIA targets a typical 30% gaming performance improvement for the Blackwell generation.

With NVIDIA days away from formally announcing its next-generation GeForce RTX 50 Series of PC gaming GPUs, the leaks and rumors are coming in thick and fast. The latest arrives courtesy of Hong Kong outlet HKEPC (via Videocardz) and points to a January 21, 2025 launch for the GeForce RTX 5080.

This new information is in line with previous reports stating that NVIDIA will launch the new Blackwell generation of GPUs with the GeForce RTX 5080, with the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 and mid-range GeForce RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti following in late January and February, respectively. There's no word on the specific release date for these models, but January 21 for the GeForce RTX 5080 makes sense, with the reveal happening on January 6 at CES 2025.

NVIDIA's latest architecture will power the GeForce RTX 5080 and move to a more advanced process. Like other models in the 50 Series, it's set to adopt cutting-edge GDDR7 memory for a significant increase in overall memory bandwidth. However, it will retain the same 16GB capacity as its predecessor.

The 2924 Steam Awards winners have been announced, where the PC gaming community votes for various titles across various categories. The big winner for 2024 is Black Myth: Wukong, the visually stunning Souls-like action-adventure from Chinese developer and publisher Game Science.

Black Myth: Wukong won the Game of the Year Award, beating Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Helldivers 2, and Balatro. The game also won the Best Game You Suck At Award for its challenging but rewarding gameplay and the Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award for its impressive adaptation of the popular centuries-old Journey to the West story.

Other notable winners include Helldivers 2, taking home the Better With Friends Award for its engaging co-op multiplayer gameplay, beating out Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, Palworld, Sons of the Forest, and Satisfactory. Here's a look at all the winners (highlighted in bold) and nominees in each category.

NVIDIA's purported next-gen graphics cards, the RTX 5080 and 5070 Ti GPUs, have been listed by a PC maker, ahead of what should be their imminent reveal at CES 2025 (at Team Green's big keynote on January 6).

The product listings for gaming PCs from iBuyPower (picked up by @momomo_us on X, as flagged by VideoCardz) have now been taken down, but they showed two of NVIDIA's Blackwell GeForce graphics cards, the RTX 5080 and 5070 Ti as mentioned. Both were listed with 16GB of video RAM as previous chatter from the grapevine has suggested.

These are the rumored models that will in theory be first to arrive, alongside the flagship RTX 5090.

TSMC is expected to drive up the prices of its 5nm and 3nm process nodes by 5-10% and its CoWoS advanced packaging by 15-20% thanks to unstoppable AI demand.

In a new post by LTN, we're learning that reports from the semiconductor industry that will see TSMC driving up the prices of its 5nm and 3nm advanced processes, which will fall in line with foundry prices for advanced packaging production capacity. We all know TSMC dominates the semiconductor world, and since they're the only ones capable of making the world's most advanced chips, price increases are on the way in 2025.

AI demand is also driving up TSMC's advanced process node and advanced packaging costs, with 3nm a nd 5nm nodes having tight production on capacity, with price rises of 5-10% expected starting in January 2025, while CoWoS advanced packaging costs will increase 15-20% as the market is oversaturated with mature processes.

NVIDIA's next-gen ultra-enthusiast GeForce RTX 5090 32GB is in the headlines again, this time teasing its 16+6+7 phase power design, 14-layer PCB, and up to 600W TGP on custom RTX 5080 graphics cards. Oh boy.

In a new post from Benchlife and their AIB contacts, we're hearing that the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 will use a 16+6+7 phase design, compared to the 20+3 phase design used on the RTX 4090, and the 18+3 phase design on the RTX 3090 Ti. The outlet also reports that we'll see a 600W TGP on the RTX 5090, but we should see numbers lower than that on the RTX 5090 Founders Edition.

Benchlife also reports that the GeForce RTX 5090 will use a 14-layer PCB, which is most likely destined for the reference board of the RTX 5090, and NVIDIA's in-house GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won is rumored to be meeting with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at CES 2025 next week to discuss all things HBM4 memory for future-gen AI GPUs.

In a new post from The Korea Times, we're learning that the two executives would be meeting at CES 2025 to discuss HBM4, which the SK hynix boss was asked to expedite HBM4 memory by 6 months by Jensen for NVIDIA's next-gen Rubin R100 AI GPUs coming in 2025.

At SK Group's AI conference on November 4, Chey said that Jensen has been consistently requesting more HBM memory chips with each new GPU release. At the conference, the NVIDIA CEO sent in a video message where Jensen talked about the important role that HBM memory has in the breakthroughs from NVIDIA.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is expected to make over $3.2 billion in its first 12 months on the market, with estimates of over $1 billion in pre-orders for the 2025 game already.

In some new projections from analysts at DFC Intelligence, Rockstar is poised to rake in $3.2 billion from GTA 6 in its first year alone, with analysts forecasting over $1 billion in pre-order sales before the game has even hit the market. Yoshio Osaki, the CEO of IDG Consulting, called GTA 6 "one of the biggest entertainment launches in history, not just in games but for all media".

Take-Two Interactive -- the publisher of GTA 6 -- CEO Strauss Zelnick, said "I think Rockstar Games will once against deliver something absolutely phenomenal". The Financial Times quoted Zelnick, who addressed the huge expectations, where he added: "I never claim victory before it occurs... but the anticipation is high".

Almost 19,000 PC games were released on Steam throughout 2024, 18,965 to be exact, a number that is around 32% higher than in 2023. 2024 saw the most significant single jump in game releases for a year compared to the past, with 18,965 in 2024 compared to 14,310 in 2023. However, with such a large number of new PC game releases, most of them are categorized as "Limited Games" on the platform.

As outlined by SteamDB, Limited Games on Steam are titles that haven't met a specific sales threshold to gain access to community features like Steam Trading Cards, emoticons and backgrounds, badges, and the ability for players to display in-game items and achievements in their showcases.

Of the 18,965 releases in 2024, Steam DB notes that 14,981, or 79%, are classified as Limited Games, more than the total number of games released on the platform in 2023.

One-Netbook has collaborated with Sugar Cubes on the new ONEXSUGAR gaming handheld, which rocks an interesting dual-screen design with a rotatable controller, check it out:

The new ONEXSUGAR gaming handheld features a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC and will run the Android operating system, so it won't go head-to-head with Windows-based gaming handhelds. We don't know much about the detailed specifications inside of the ONEXSUGAR, as whoever worked on the video seems to love dark environments.

We do know that there are dual displays on the ONEXSUGAR, with both of them capable of being opened at the same time, or you can choose to just use the primary display. Once you've opened up the second display, the controllers on the ONEXSUGAR can be rotated, and attached to the bottom of the screen. This changes the entire orientation of the controls on the controller, providing some wicked customization on the new Android-powered gaming handheld.

When we had the chance to go hands-on with the new ZOTAC GAMING ZONE handheld at Computex earlier this year, we were immediately impressed. With its robust Steam Deck-like form, vibrant 800-nit 120 Hz OLED display, fast memory, and Ryzen 7 8840U processor with integrated Radeon 780M graphics, it presented a viable alternative to other Windows-based devices like the ROG Ally from ASUS.

When it comes to PC gaming handhelds, OLED can be a game changer in its right thanks to the excellent contrast and color accuracy; however, ZOTAC's handheld arrived on the market several months after similar non-OLED devices from Lenovo, ASUS, and MSI hit the scene.

With CES 2025 right around the corner, AMD is expected to announce the new Ryzen Z2 series of chips for handhelds. And with that, ZOTAC is teasing a new GAMING ZONE device with "stronger hardware."

TSMC has announced it has started mass production at its first fab in Japan, with the Japanese government pushing to secure its supply chains for critical, and essential goods -- with the semiconductor industry being a key part of that.

The new fab in Kumamoto Prefecture produces logic chips with 12nm to 28nm process technologies, destined for carrs and image sensors, with recent news that TSMC's fab in Japan secured customers like Sony and auto parts maker Denso. TSMC has plans to build its second factory in Japan next to the first fab to produce higher-end 6nm chips, with construction aiming for March 2025, and operations beginning by the end of 2027.

Japan is wanting to secure its position in the semiconductor industry as soon as possible, with on-going tensions between the US and China (and Taiwan) set to continue to escalate, especially before President Trump is sworn in on January 20, 2025. TSMC has been offered $6.3 billion in subsidies from the Japanese goverrnrment, too.

Sony gives a pretty clear explanation on why the PlayStation Portal isn't natively running games like the PS Vita or Nintendo Switch.

The $199 PlayStation Portal is a curious device--it started out as only supporting Remote Play, meaning gamers already had to have a PlayStation 5 in order to actually play anything on the handheld. It was essentially a receiver-only device, although Google's engineers did hack a Portal to run a PSP emulator.

Now Sony is bringing cloud streaming to the PS Portal via a new beta program. This allows gamers to just buy a $199 PS Portal and play PS5 games through the cloud all without having to own an actual console. But many have wondered why Sony took this route in the first place? In a word, it all comes down to profits (the PS Portal is very profitable), and creating a new dedicated handheld platform would cost a lot of time and money.

Lenovo's new ThinkPad X9 14/15 laptops have been leaked, with shots of the new laptop teasing that the company has dropped its popular "pointing stick" or the Lenovo TrackPoint... check it out:

The new Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14/15 laptops have been leaked by WalkingCat on X with a show of the new TrackPoint-less laptops shared ahead of CES 2025 next week. Inside, the new laptops are expected to feature Intel's new Core Ultra 200 series CPUs, but we don't know if they'll be Arrow Lake or Lunar Lake chips.

The new ThinkPad X9 looks thinner but drops some of its connectivity options, with the new ThinkPad X9 14/15 laptops featuring just a single USB Type-C, USB Type-A, and a mini-jack port.