Star Wars Outlaws isn't the only game that has missed Ubisoft's revenue expectations.

A few days ago, Ubisoft issued a new report that adjusted its forecast for FY25's earnings. The company dropped its revenue and net bookings expectations for two big reasons: First, Star Wars Outlaws, the new AAA game released by Massive Entertainment, had softer sales that Ubisoft would've liked. The second is that Ubisoft decided to delay Assassin's Creed Shadows outside of its planned holiday 2024 release window, which will ultimately impact sales of the game.

In a conference call with analysts and investors, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot also confirmed that Star Wars Outlaw wasn't the only recent game that hasn't lived up to the company's targets. XDefiant, the anarchic free-to-play shooter that launched in May of this year, also missed the mark.

NVIDIA never manifested the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti into reality, tapping out with the RTX 4090... but we kept hearing about the unreleased GPU and now we've got the IO bracket for the RTX 4090 Ti up for sale.

If the company had released the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti, it would've rocked the full-fat AD102 GPU that would've been binned to the extreme, with what would've been something like a 600W+ power draw. We saw teases of a monster quad-slot cooler in its prototype stage, using a non-traditional cooling and PCB setup that would've made it a very hard sell to consumers.

But now, leaker "Harukaze5719" saw a listing on a third-party seller in China called Taobao, which has an IO bracket that reportedly is for the unreleased GeForce RTX 4090 Ti with the IO bracket reading "GeForce RTX 4090 Ti" with a model number of "PG136F".

After decades of iconic games and beloved characters, Tetsuya Nomura is thinking about retiring from the games industry.

There are few people more instrumental in gaming than Square Enix's Tetsuya Nomura. Throughout his current 33-year run in the games industry, Nomura has done it all: director, producer, designer, artist, storywriter, etc. His artwork has been responsible for shaping some of the most well-known and recognizable video game characters of all time, and he helped mold the visuals in best-selling franchises from Final Fantasy to Kingdom Hearts.

Now after all this time, Nomura has recently expressed that he could retire soon. After all, he is 53 years old, and the typical age of retirement in Japan is 60.

Xbox's mixed messaging is apparently causing tumult both internally with game developers and teams, and externally with long-time fans of the brand.

Microsoft's games division has changed considerably over the last few years. In 2023, Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard King for $70 billion, and the merger added tremendous weight to Xbox as a whole. Xbox was already pressured to deliver growth, but post-merger, those margins are more challenging, with Microsoft's board and top C-suite scrutinizing the games unit more closely than ever before.

This need to hit specific revenue and profit margins has forced disruption within Xbox. Microsoft broke exclusivity in first-party games, bringing hits like Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded, and Sea of Thieves to PlayStation. Then Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was also confirmed for a PS5 release. The dam has broken, and Xbox's consistency is more so aimed at disruption than it is, well, building a walled garden.

While Sony has cancelled Naughty Dog's planned Last of Us online game, Horizon's live service project is still happening and a lot of developers are reportedly working on the project.

Rising costs and high risks have forced Sony to re-think its original live service plan. The company wanted to have 12 live games on the market by FY25, but this number was cut in half, with six projects on the slate and the other six being delayed indefinitely. Sony has already released three of these games, including the mega-hit Helldivers 2, MLB The Show 24, and the failed shooter Concord. So what will the remaining 3 projects be?

According to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, one of these games is the often-rumored co-op game set in Guerrilla's best-selling Horizon universe.

AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D, a popular choice of processor for PC gamers, is apparently running out of stock, with prices spiking upwards - ahead of a possible Ryzen 9800X3D launch.

Naturally, if the next generation of 3D V-Cache CPUs is indeed on the horizon - as some fodder from the rumor mill has suggested, Ryzen 9000X3D might arrive at the end of October - it makes sense that AMD would cut current-gen production, and the 7800X3D could start to run thin on the ground.

This is seemingly what's happening, at least according to a report from Tom's Hardware, which chews over CPU price rises in the US over the past couple of months.

With the arrival of new flagship AM5 X870 motherboards for the new Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs and the entire Ryzen 7000 Series line-up, the new flagship AM5 chipset brings a lot to the table - full-speed PCIe Gen 5 support for graphics and storage, USB4 as standard, and overall improvements and optimizations for overclockers.

With new motherboards hitting the market this week, AMD has also updated its AGESA BIOS firmware to improve Ryzen 9000 Series CPU performance and latency. The Ryzen 9000 Series launch - covering the Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 7 9700X, Ryzen 9 9900X, and the Ryzen 9950X - hasn't been without issue. In fact, for many people, it felt rushed, which is why we've had to wait months for the new motherboards to arrive. There have been various updates, including ones for Windows.

With the new firmware, AMD is also confirming that X870 boards are now optimized for the one-click AMD EXPO DDR5-8000 memory kits, which are already available. This is a long-awaited AMD upgrade; even the Ryzen 9000 Series launch saw memory speed and builds top out at DDR5-6000.

Outside of the efficiency gains, the overall reception from the Ryzen 9000 Series CPU launch has been lukewarm - especially regarding gaming performance and gen-on-gen improvements. Since launch, we've seen Windows updates that boost performance, and now, with the launch of AMD X870 motherboards, there's a new BIOS firmware update that aims to improve performance and latency.

AGESA PI 1.2.0.2 has two main updates. The first is a new warranted 105W cTDP power rating for the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X. According to AMD, the company landed on 65W for the launch because it was focused on delivering "efficient performance." However, for those wanting more performance, the 105W modes for these two CPUs will provide more performance, especially in multithreaded workloads.

AMD also confirmed that the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X have already been validated at 105W, so switching to the new mode "won't be pushing them beyond their design limits." According to AMD's internal testing, the new 105W mode for the Ryzen 7 9700X makes it up to 10% faster.

With the AVerMedia X'TRA GO (GC5150), an innovative capture card, dock, and charging station for portable gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck that we reviewed, the company explained that it was the first product in its new mobile and versatile GO Series. Today, we've got two new GO products from AVerMedia - a microphone and a flexible boom arm.

The AVerMedia VERSATI GO (AM310G2) is a portable and powerful USB cardioid microphone with an impressive 96KHz/24-bit sample rate designed to capture rich and natural broadcast-quality audio. It is priced at $69.99 USD. Designed primarily for voice and minimizing background noise for creators, the USB-C connection makes it an easy plug-and-play option.

The AVerMedia FLEXI GO (BA311L) pairs with the VERSATI GO or any number of products, including cameras and webcams. It's a flexible boom arm that works at various angles and can support high-profile and low-profile setups. The multi-angle joints and tool-free installation are designed to make it as flexible as possible. It is priced at $99.99 USD.

Thermal Grizzly has launched its innovative WireView Pro GPU device, which we first saw at Computex 2024. This device protects your graphics card from potential damage by measuring and monitoring temperature and power directly at the connection point.

This device exists because the GeForce RTX 40 Series introduced the new 12VHPWR power connector. At launch, there were reports of issues with connectors and cables melting when improperly seated or connected to a high-powered GPU like the GeForce RTX 4090.

The move from multiple 8-pin power connectors to a new 16-pin connector, which has now been revised and refined with the new 12V-2x6 connector, is part of the new ATX 3.1 and PCIe Gen6 standard, so it's here to stay. This makes the WireView Pro GPU a very handy device.

Microsoft Recall, the AI-powered search tool for Copilot+ PCs, was quickly delayed after people realized what it did and how it worked. For those who needed a reminder, Recall was touted as the big AI feature for Copilot+. It would continuously take screenshots of your PC, index them, and use generative AI to turn them into a searchable database of your PC history.

"Hey Recall, what was that funny video I watched last night on YouTube," or "Hey Recall, can you put together a list of all the new sneakers I was looking at a few weeks ago." These are two examples of a potential use; however, early hands-on with Recall showed that its screenshots were not only unencrypted but would contain sensitive material like banking information, and the database itself was an indexed wet dream for hackers.

Well, Recall is coming back, and in a new Microsoft blog post, the company has outlined how this latest version is designed with "security and privacy in mind" and core principles like ensuring sensitive data is always encrypted and that other users won't be able to access encryption keys.

Recently, we reported that Ubisoft's Star Wars Outlaws failed to meet initial expectations for the publisher, with the company citing '"softer than expected' sales. The open-world Star Wars game from the studio behind The Division was met with a mixed response from fans and critics alike. However, Ubisoft was okay with the game's Metacritic score of 76.

The publisher describes Star Wars Outlaws as the first 'open-world' single-player game set in the iconic universe. However, its mix of stealth and simple arcade-style action didn't gel with many players. It didn't help that the game launched poorly, and in some cases, it had broken enemy AI, animation bugs, and a general sense that it was unfinished or lacked polish.

With the game set to make its Steam debut on November 21, the development team has released an updated roadmap and promised to fix its many issues before this date.

The world's first HD Haptics Gaming Cushion, that's how the company introduced the Razer Freyja at its annual RazerCon 2024 event. The cushion is designed to sit on top of a gaming chair, where the company's Razer Sensa HD Haptics technology aims to make you feel the game you're currently playing - in your body. Razer has a long history of producing head-turning products, and this is one of them.

Force-feedback is something that hardware makers and game companies have been playing around with for decades. In the 1990s, Sega created a bit of hardware that you strapped to your chest so you could feel each hit or movement when playing 16-bit Genesis games. Later that decade, Nintendo released the Rumble Pak for the N64, which helped make controller vibration and haptics a new standard.

This is a roundabout way of saying that even though it might seem silly to put a vibrating cushion on a chair for gaming, there's a definite benefit. Putting this on a racing rig so you can feel your car's engine would be fantastic, likewise for flight simulators.

It looks like CUDIMM memory modules are here to stay, with Chinese manufacturer COLORFUL stepping into the ring with new DDR5-9600 CUDIMM memory kits coming.

What is CUMM exactly? It's a memory that enhances signal integrity, which allows memory manufacturers to drive up memory frequencies that are independent of the memory controller. The benefit? You'll get improved stability and reliability at higher memory speeds, with CUDIMM memory modules starting at 6400MT/s.

We're now seeing COLORFUL debut its higher-end DDR5-9600 CUDIMM memory kits, with a CAS latency of 44. COLORFUL has joined multiple memory manufacturers that are pumping out CUDIMM memory, which includes Biwin, V-color, and Asgard all revealing CUDIMM memory modules recently. CUDIMM memory modules should exceed DDR5-10000 specs in the coming weeks, once we get companies like Corsair and G.SKILL unleashing their own custom designs.

NVIDIA has been dominating the GPU business for over 20 years now, and with some new data from 3DCenter, we get an even clearer picture of Team Green's dominance.

NVIDIA has had the most GPU market share since 2002 and has slowly clawed more and more away from AMD -- Intel isn't even in the picture here, and no one is surprised by that (integrated GPUs don't count here). You can see from 3DCenter's data that NVIDIA really started to ramp things up with the GeForce 500 series GPUs in 2010.

But from there, the crypto mining boom post-GeForce GTX 10 series GPUs and into the RTX 20 and RTX 30 series GPUs saw NVIDIA pull away from AMD big time. Since 2020, you can see that AMD has just continued to dwindle in discrete GPU market share, with the RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs falling on their face -- in fact, after the launch of the Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs, AMD is experiencing its lowest point in discrete GPU market share. Ouch.

South Korea is pushing all-in with AI, with South Korean companies pledging to invest a combined 65 trillion won (around $48.9 billion USD) into AI development by 2027 in order to better compete with the global leaders in AI, the presidential office said on Thursday.

The investment plan was announced during an inaugural meeting of the presidential committee on AI, which was launched to create an AI strategy and coordinate AI research and development efforts, said Park Sang-wook, the presidential secretary for science and technology.

In the meeting, he called for collaborate efforts between the South Korean government and private sector for the country to become one of the top three global leaders in AI by 2027. He said: "It is a time when AI determines national capabilities and economic growth, becoming a key factor in the economy and security. The world's major nations are staking everything on securing AI technology and leadership to win the digital supremacy competition".

ASUS is preparing some expensive new flagship Z890 motherboards, with a US retailer listing Z890 motherboards from ASUS including the flagship ROG Maximus Z890 EXTREME motherboard costing over $1100.

The company will have 10 models of new Z890 motherboards: with the flagship ROG Maximus Z890 Extreme, ROG Maximus Z890 Apex, ROG Maximus Z890 Hero, ROG Strix AZ890-A Gaming, ROG Strix Z890-I Gaming Wi-Fi, and the ROG Strix Z890-E.

Starting with the flagship ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Extreme motherboard which is listed with retailer HSSL for $1111.87, priced at around $100 more than its predecessor in the ROG Maximus Z790 Extreme. Under that, we've got the ROG Z890 Apex motherboard priced at $812.29, which is almost $200 more than its predecessor which launched for $649.99.

Sony's next-generation PlayStation 6 console is going to be a monster, with its backwards compatibility amplified by the release of the impending PlayStation 5 Pro.

In their weekly podcast, the folks at Digital Foundry talked about the PS5 Pro being a victory, even if gamers don't buy it. Just like the standard PS4 which benefitted from the release of the PS4 Pro, where games that have questionable performance on the PS4 Pro run beautifully on the standard PS5, while games using dynamic resolution scaling benefit from the boosted power inside of the PS5.

However, the same will apply to the PS6 which will benefit from the improved PS5 Pro console. Why? Because if the better-looking games run at 30FPS on the faster PS5 Pro, that means that when they're run through backwards compatibility on the next-gen PS6, they'll look (and run) even better: most likely hitting 60FPS.

Intel's next-gen Core Ultra 7 265K "Arrow Lake-S" desktop CPU has been pictured, right after we saw an engineering sample (ES) of the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K processor.

Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 5 265K processor has been spotted in QS form as well, with leaker "harukaze5719" posting some pictures on X of a QS (qualifying sample) of a "Q33K" processor, which fellow leaker "Jaykhin" said simply "265K" referring to the Core Ultra 5 265K "Arrow Lake-S" desktop CPU.

The new Core Ultra 5 265K processor will feature 20 cores (8P+12E) and 20 threads, with boost clocks reaching up to 5.5GHz. The processor simply says "INTEL CONFIDENTIAL NA Q33K" on it, but the final retail versions will have the proper branding of "Core Ultra 5 265K" on this "Q33K" QS processor.

Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro console features "dedicated custom hardware" that was co-developed with AMD that is in the GPU block, revealed by a new interview by IGN.

The site sat down with PlayStation Senior Principal Product Manager Toshi Aoki, when he started talking about the new PS5 Pro and its 8K gaming support, adding "but that's not our headline". He continued, adding: "It's more of the cherry on the cake...if you are one of the small percentage of people who have an 8K TV, you could get that from supported games. It is something that we have to work together with developers and also the TV manufacturers in the future....But right now we are really focused on the main use cases, which is 4K TV owners having that high-level visual fidelity and playing at [60 FPS]".

In the meantime, the new beefed-up PS5 Pro console will favor improvements to the GPU over the CPU, with Aoki saying that the PS5 Pro packs "dedicated custom hardware" that was co-developed with AMD that resides in the GPU block, and that games will be patched to use that part of the block.