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Naughty Dog, the landmark developers behind the Last of Us and Uncharted game series, today announce a surprising new direction for the studio's latest project.

Naughty Dog's new IP was revealed at The Game Awards 2024, and it's nothing that we expected. The new game is called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, a name that hearkens back to the old golden PC big box days of yore where it seemed every game had some sort of outlandish subtitle.

Intergalactic's stylish four-and-a-half-minute trailer was pure visual eye candy, matching high-tech deep sci-fi futurism set thousands of years from now with 80s-style, old-school analog designs. The result is an eclectic mix that blends Alien with Guardians of the Galaxy, complete with the pizzazz and madcap flair you'd find a drifting bounty hunter space punk.

Mafia: The Old Country premiered its first cinematic gameplay trailer at The Game Awards. The 2K and Hangar 13-developed game showcases its brutal 1900s Sicily setting. Described as "the start of a new crime saga for the acclaimed Mafia franchise," it features a story that goes back to the roots of organized crime.

Although this and previous Mafia games are linear, narrative-driven experiences, the fact that you could drive around cities to take on crime-related missions has always meant that the franchise has been closely linked to Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series. Despite their very different styles, Mafia and GTA comparisons have been made for almost two decades.

The trailer for Mafia: The Old Country also provides a release window, Summer 2025, or sometime during June, July, or August. With the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 on track for a holiday 2025 release, no doubt 2K will want to get its crime game out months before the gaming world collectively jumps into Rockstar's next GTA game.

It's official: Onimusha is back, and ready to bring bizarre swordplay chaos to a new generation.

While scouting Capcom's franchises, one thought comes to mind: When's a new Onimusha coming? After all, the franchise sold 8.7 million copies since the PS2 era. That might be enough interest to warrant a new game at some point. Now that's actually happening: Capcom is resurrecting the long-dormant Onimusha franchise.

At the Game Awards 2024, Capcom revealed Onimusha: Way of the Sword, a new adventure set in a demon-infused Kyoto, Japan that features an all-new protagonist.

Virtua Fighter is back with a new mainline entry, and the developers of the Yakuza series are making it.

The video games industry's first-ever 3D fighting game is back in the limelight. It's been years since the last big Virtua Fighter game, and SEGA is reviving the franchise--and many others--as part of its big new reinvigorated content slate.

At The Game Awards 2024, SEGA announced the next Virtua Fighter project...but no real details were revealed. That info will be saved for later.

The Elden Ring franchise is expanding with a new game, but it's not a sequel or an expansion.

Tonight at The Game Awards 2024, FromSoftware and Bandai Namco announced Elden Ring: Night Reign, a new standalone co-op experience that's coming in 2025. Gamers won't have to own the original game in order to play Night Reign, and it's unclear where it will fit in in regards to the series' lore.

"This is an action game in which you take on overwhelming situations together with other players," FromSoftware writes on its website.

CD Projekt RED officially announced a new Witcher game at The Game Awards 2024.

It's official: CD Projekt's next Witcher title stars Ciri as the main protagonist. The project was revealed at TGA '24, and it's called The Witcher 4. It's a action RPG just like The Witcher 3, and this time around Ciri has some awesome new tricks up her sleeve, including a brand new grappling hook weapon that she can ignite with the Igni spell.

The Witcher 4's reveal trailer was a cinematic-style experience similar to the original previous games, complete with some brutal combat, a true exploration of monsters and men, and some distinct industry-leading visuals. Witcher 4 is the start of a new 3-game trilogy that stars Ciri, so we're in for a multi-year ride of Witcher games that could span various console generations. While CD Projekt has not announced when The Witcher 4 will come, it's likely due out sometime by 2026, and CD Projekt has entered principal development on the project.

Former Marathon creative director Christopher Barrett is suing Bungie for an astronomical $200 million, which is close to what its parent company Sony paid for Spider-Man darling Insomniac Games back in 2019.

Last year, Bungie and Sony fired Christopher Barrett, who was then the creative director of Bungie's new nascent extraction shooter, Marathon. The reason for the firing, which is the entire focus of the lawsuit, remains unclear, but Bloomberg reports that 8 different women came forward with allegations of inappropriate behavior against Barrett.

Now Barrett is suing both Sony and Bungie in Delaware's Chancery Court, which is essentially a special court focused on businesses incorporated within Delaware. The legal complaint, which was made public by Barrett, alleges that Sony and Bungie "deliberately destroyed Barrett's reputation by falsely, and publicly, insinuating they had investigated Barrett and found that he had engaged in sexual misconduct."

Sony officially confirms that it has sent a letter of interest to acquire manga and anime publishing powerhouse Kadokawa Corp.

Sony has 1.7 trillion yen (about $11.7 billion) to spend on strategic investments, share repurchases, and acquisitions and buyouts across the next three years. This treasure trove isn't just spent on buying studios like Bungie, which Sony purchased in 2022 for $3.7 billion. It's spent on all things, including buying up shares in companies like Epic Games, re-purchasing shares to drive up value, and of course the aforementioned company acquisitions.

New reports say that Sony is eyeing Kadokawa Corp for its next buyout. If Sony bought Kadokawa, it would inherit a vast billion-dollar global multimedia empire that could fill in the missing pieces in Sony's IP catalog. Kadokawa is a leading publisher of manga and anime across the world, and it also owns a few game studios, including the popular Elden Ring developer FromSoftware as well as Spike Chunsoft.

Bungie acknowledges that it has a lot of work to do before Destiny 2 players trust the studio again.

It's tough out there in the games market these days. No one is immune to the current inflation-driven climate, and everyone's cutting costs. Some, like Sony, made a $3.7 billion acquisition during a period of low operating margins and is now paying for its Bungie buyout both with cash and with cost-controlled bloodletting.

So far, the acquisition may not be seen as very favorable for Sony. Destiny 2 has apparently missed revenue targets, stressing the studio to find new ways to grow Destiny 2's earnings. This, combined with high production costs, led to a restructuring of Destiny's content roadmap.

The next-gen MacBook Air is already strongly rumored to arrive early in 2025, benefiting from the new M4 chip, and we've just seen a heavy hint that this is indeed what's happening - and it comes from Apple itself.

MacRumors noticed that with the release of macOS Sequoia 15.2, the update for the operating system contained references to the "MacBook Air (13-inch, M4, 2025)" and the "MacBook Air (15-inch, M4, 2025)," which are pretty clear clues that these new laptops are inbound.

We don't get a release timeframe, of course, but if Apple is putting files in place in macOS Sequoia right now, that suggests the launches are close at hand.

On November 15, Alex Jones confirmed that satirical website The Onion had purchased his conspiracy theory website InfoWars, following Jones being ordered to pay more than $1 billion in damages that resulted in him declaring bankruptcy.

Jones was ordered to pay more than $1 billion in damages for spreading misinformation about the tragic event that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The $1 billion in damages caused Jones to declare bankruptcy, with some of his assets going to a bankruptcy auction, which is where The Onion won the bid for the InfoWars website. The Onion intended to turn the InfoWars website into "a very funny, very stupid website" with the assistance of "hall of famers" from The Onion and Clickhole.

However, Jones said he would push back against the purchase by The Onion, and it appears he has gained the favor of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez following a two-day hearing. According to reports, Lopez has denied The Onion's bid to purchase the website, saying he doesn't believe the bid is enough money. "I don't think it's enough money," he said in his ruling. "I'm not going to approve the sale...I think you've got to go out and try to get every dollar. I think that the process fell down."

It was in January this year that NASA announced its helicopter living on the surface of Mars sadly died after a crash landing on its 72nd flight.

The helicopter named Ingenuity arrived on the Red Planet in February 2021 as an engineering experiment to see if flight in Mars' extremely thin atmosphere was possible. Ingenuity became the first aircraft to conduct a powered and controlled extra-terrestrial flight, solidying its name in the space exploration history books. Ingenuity went on to serve NASA's Perseverance rover as a forward scout.

NASA sent Ingenuity ahead of Perseverance, and with the helicopter's cameras, NASA was able to plot a path of least resistance for the rover, along with evaluating any upcoming valuable scientific prospects. However, Ingenuity crashed on its 72nd flight on January 18, 2024, which resulted in its rotor blades sustaining critical damage preventing flight. Ingenuity's team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said that Ingenuity crashed due to its navigation systems having too little information to make accurate decisions. The team attributes this to the monotone color of the Martian surface.

Gemini 2.0 has arrived, and alongside the announcement of the highly anticipated update of Google's AI companion is a teaser for new AI assistant-powered smart glasses.

Google may very well be preparing to make a smart glasses-related announcement, as the company has teased via a new YouTube video posted to its official channel, "Project Astra," a demonstrative video showcasing the future capabilities of an AI assistant. Currently, in the research prototype phase, Project Astra was detailed by Google DeepMind product manager Bibo Xu, who revealed that a small group of people within Google's Trusted Tester program would be testing Project Astro on the prototype glasses.

Notably, Google's Trusted Tester program consists of members who get to play with Google prototype products, most of which never make it to market, which may have thrown a dampener on the idea of Google releasing these glasses showcased in the above video. However, when asked about the glasses Xu said, "for the glasses product itself, we'll have more news coming shortly."

NASA has taken to its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) blog to announce the official discovery of seven strange celestial objects, with the findings being published on Monday, December 9, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These celestial objects are known as "dark comets," which are astronomical objects that look like asteroids but strangely move through space like a comet. These odd objects were first discovered less than two years, but according to NASA the first inkling of dark comets was a March 2016 study that found an asteroid seemingly randomly deviated from its course, changing its orbit.

NASA writes the behavior of dark comets could explain the 2016 study documentation, as the lead author of the December 9 study, Davide Farnocchia of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, explained, "When you see that kind of perturbation on a celestial object, it usually means it's a comet, with volatile material outgassing from its surface giving it a little thrust." However, when researchers looked through instruments, the object named 2003 RM appeared as an asteroid, just a single light dot on the display. By comparison, a comet typically has a long tail that is depicted as a thinning streak from a center point of light.

General Motors (GM) announced on Tuesday that it will exited the robotaxis business it has invested more than $10 billion in since 2016, sparking Microsoft to announce it expects an impairment charge of approximately $800 million in the second quarter of next year as a result of the departure.

According to reports, General Motors will be exiting the robotaxi business, specifically the Cruise autonomous driving company, citing "time and resources" to develop a sufficiently substantial fleet to compete against the already established businesses operating in the robotaxi market. Notably, Microsoft picked up a minority stake in Cruise back in January 2021, amounting to approximately a $2 billion investment that involved institutional investors such as Honda Motor.

General Motors doesn't appear to want to try and compete with robotaxi vendors such as Waymo, Tesla, and Amazon, with the company explaining that Cruise could generate as much as $50 billion in revenue by 2030, but this business arm of GM was expendable, especially considering that it isn't even the company's core business.

A group of hackers connected to the Russian government have launched cyber attacks at Starlink-connected infrastructure in Ukraine to target devices being used by Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline. Microsoft has confirmed the infrastructure has been compromised, and currently, investigators still don't know what vulnerability was exploited.

Microsoft has labeled the group as "Secret Blizzard," and according to reports and the latest Microsoft Security blog post, in at least one instance this year when Ukrainian frontline devices were targeted, Secret Blizzard used infrastructure created by a cybercrime group Microsoft tracks as Storm-1919. In another instance,e Secret Blizzard leveraged infrastructure from another group called Storm-1837, a Russian-based cybercrime group that targets Ukrainian drone operations.

So, how did they gain access to the infrastructure? Microsoft explains the cybercriminals between March and April this year used a bot swarm attack to install the XMRIG cryptocurrency app on targeted servers. Typically, hackers will install this malware and then use the device's resources to mine a cryptocurrency, which they then sell online for real money. However, Microsoft writes the ultimate objective of bot swarm malware was to install Tavdig, a backdoor Secret Blizzard used to conduct reconnaissance on the target device.

Fujitsu has just shown off a sample of its new Monaka processor: a new Armv9-based 144-core chip that is destined for data centers of the future.

Last week, the Japanese company announced it was working with Broadcom to use its new 3.5D eXtreme Dimension System in Package (3.5D XDSiP) platform, and now we're being introduced to Fujitsu's new Monaka processor.

The new Monaka chip is a large CoWoS system-in-package (SiP) that has 4 x 36-core compute chiplets, made on TSMC's N2 process node with 144 Armv9-based cores with enhancements that are stacked on top of SRAM tiles, in a face-to-face (F2F) layout, using hybrid copper bonding (HCB).

MSI has just launched its new MAG 321CUPDF gaming monitor in China, featuring a 31.5-inch VA panel and 4K 160Hz + 1080p 320Hz Dual-Mode functionality. Check it out:

The new MSI MAG 321CUPDF gaming monitor is the first Dual-Mode monitor with a curved panel, and while we've seen multiple Dual-Mode monitors they're mostly OLED panels, where this is a VA panel. We have a 31.5-inch VA panel with a native 16:9 aspect ratio, and two different resolutions and refresh rates depending on what you're doing on the MAG 321CUPDF gaming monitor.

The 31.5-inch VA panel rocks a native 4K resolution at up to 160Hz, but its Dual-Mode function allows 1080p at up to 320Hz, which is perfect for esports, twitchy gamers. If you're playing AAA games, then that 4K resolution with a 160Hz refresh rate is going to be damn good... while if you want all the frames possible, 320Hz can be enjoyed... albeit at the lower 1080p resolution.

Samsung has still yet to pass HBM3E memory qualification from NVIDIA, and now it seems that won't be happening this year as it is "realistically impossible" for Samsung to supply its HBM3E to NVIDIA this year.

In a new report from Korean media outlet Daily Korea, we're learning that Samsung's supply of HBM3E memory to NVIDIA this year looks "impossible" in both 8-layer and 12-layer HBM3E form. The reason for the delay is that Samsung is reportedly still unable to meet NVIDIA's requirements for chip performance.

Daily Korea's source said: "It is realistically impossible for Samsung Electronics to supply 8-layer and 12-layer HBM3E to NVIDIA this year. The reason for the delay in supply is that we were unable to meet NVIDIA's requirements for chip performance".

There is a distinct annoying difficulty in getting files off an iOS device and onto a Windows machine, especially when you know how easy it is with an Android. Microsoft is trying to solve that problem, and has explained how in a recent announcement.

Redmond has taken to its Windows Blogs to share how it plans on bridging the gap between operating systems, and according to the announcement, Windows Insiders will soon be able to "seamlessly share files" between an iPhone and a Windows 10/11 machine when both devices are connected via Phone Link, and the Link to Windows app. There are some requirements for this new feature, but it's more than likely you will have already met the criteria.

An iPhone needs to be running iOS 16 or higher, and the Link to Windows app on your iPhone needs to be version 1.24112.73 or higher. Phone Link version 1.24112.89.0 or higher is also required. Additionally, those interested in taking advantage of this new feature to quickly move files from their iPhone to their Windows machine will also need to opt into the Windows Insider Program. It should be noted that some users are reporting that this feature is not working as intended for iPhone users running the recently released iOS 18.2 version.