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EA expects Dragon Age: The Veilguard to sell well enough to help supercharge its Q3 holiday earnings.

Electronic Arts just reported its latest quarterly financials and the results were stellar: The publisher delivered over $2 billion in net bookings throughout the Q2 period, largely affected by live services on console followed up with heavy-hitting sports sales of College Football 25, NFL 25, and FC25.

As for the critical holiday Q3'25 period, EA is expected even more growth. Q3'25's net bookings are to deliver up to $2.55 billion revenue, up nearly 8% from $2.36 billion delivered in Q3'24. So what's behind this $190 million increase? EA is counting on BioWare's latest Dragon Age: The Veilguard release to help boost the numbers.

Sony's PS4 Pro actually did well sales-wise, but the newer PS5 Pro has one major roadblock: Price.

The PS5 Pro is an expensive console. Sony is charging $700 for its new mid-gen PS5 Pro upgrade, a price tag that heavily stresses the once-wide gap between console gaming and enthusiast gaming. A $700 console feels like a tough proposition in 2024, especially when consumers are being impacted from rising costs and inflation.

Sony's other mid-gen system apparently did well. In a recent interview with Variety, PlayStation platform business CEO Hideaki Nishino said that the PlayStation 4 Pro had a 20% attach rate. It's hard to know exactly what this refers to--did the PS4 Pro sell 20% of total sales, or just launch sales? According to Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, the PS4 Pro "accounted for less than 15% of total PS4 lifetime sales." That means the PS4 Pro sold less than 18 million consoles, and that was at a $400 price point, significantly less than the PS5 Pro's $700 price.

PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst discusses why Sony laid off hundreds of workers earlier this year, reiterating that it was a business decision.

Over the last few years, we've seen a difference in how CEOs talk about gaming. The Microsoft-Activision merger brought much closer scrutiny to Xbox's financials, leading to clear messaging from executives like Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond, both of which highlighted the realities of running a games business. Former PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan also testified, in length, about numbers and trends in the industry during the FTC v Microsoft federal trial in 2023.

With this spell broken, CEOs are now being more open about business dynamics, merging the internal email-speak we've seen in mass layoff announcements with the mentat-like calculations of executive leadership. The results are light--but still quite eye-opening--explanations of what's going on in gaming.

EA has made the decision to block Linux gamers - including, of course, Steam Deck owners (at least those who haven't switched away from SteamOS) - from playing its popular battle royale, Apex Legends.

In a Reddit post, EA explains that it has "identified Linux OS as being a path for a variety of impactful exploits and cheats."

Due to that, there's been a decision made to block those running a Linux distro from partaking of the game, due to balancing up the small number of Linux players with the apparently considerable instances of cheating that take place.

Samsung has teased that its next-gen 400-layer V-NAND will store more data, more performance, and feature higher reliability through future-gen V-NAND technology.

The company is expected to launch its next-gen V-NAND in 2026 which will be the 10th Gen V-NAND, sporting a 400-layer configuration, far exceeding the current 9th Gen V-NAND by 120 layers (280 layers versus 400 layers). The gap between 8th Gen V-NAND and 9th Gen V-NAND isn't that big (236 layers versus 280 layers) so the jump to 400 layers is exciting, indeed.

How will Samsung do this? The company will use Bonding Vertical (BV) NAND technology, which is different to what is used today with the current CoP (Circuit on Periphery) design. The CoP design has the peripheral circuits on top of the memory stack, while vertical bonding will separate the manufacturing of the storage and peripheral circuits, followed by the vertical bond.

AMD has dropped a heavy hint that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 could be the first game to get its next-gen FSR (presumably FSR 4) that'll leverage AI for the first time.

If Black Ops 6 isn't the first, the game is certainly getting this tech, as AMD's Jack Huynh, who heads up Team Red's Computing & Graphics group, made clear as part of the reveal of the new Ryzen 9800X3D on YouTube (check out the above clip).

Huynh said that AMD is hooking up with Activision to deliver the "absolute best experience on Call of Duty: Black Ops 6" by implementing FSR 3.1 and game optimizations in its drivers, before adding:

Mark Zuckerberg has provided a small update on Meta's work on its new Llama 4 model, which is being trained on a cluster of AI GPUs "bigger than anything" Zuck has seen.

Meta is cooking its new Llama 4 right now, with Zuckerberg telling investors and analysts on an earnings call this week that the initial launch of Llama 4 is expected later this year. Zuck said: "We're training the Llama 4 models on a cluster that is bigger than 100,000 H100s, or bigger than anything that I've seen reported for what others are doing. I expect that the smaller Llama 4 models will be ready first".

Meta's new AI supercomputer with its 100,000+ NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs reportedly cost over $2 billion for the H100 AI GPU chips alone, which means Mark Zuckerberg is signing some fat cheques to NVIDIA. Speaking of which, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently spoke with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, where Jensen said Meta now has 600,000+ NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs to which Zuck replied saying that Meta were "good customers for NVIDIA".

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has said that the use of on-package memory with Lunar Lake was a "one-off for us" and that "you don't want to have volume memory going th rough the channel. It's not a good way to run the business".

The comments from Gelsinger followed Intel's recent Q3 2024 earnings report, with the Intel CEO speaking with big bankers who were asking some great questions (and getting even better answers). We now know that Intel's next-gen Panther Lake CPU will be 70% manufactured in-house at Intel Foundry, with Panther Lake being the first client CPU on its new Intel 18A node.

Gelsinger confirmed that Panther Lake is gearing for release in 2H 2025, and will not feature on-package memory like the just-launched Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs have. Nova Lake will succeed Panther Lake, and it too will not feature on-package memory, something Intel will be doing moving forward.

AMD's upcoming Strix Halo APU has received some more details ahead of its CES 2025 unveiling, with a teaser render of the new Strix Halo APU available below:

The fresh information on AMD's upcoming Strix Halo is coming from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, with a full leak on the details inside of the Strix Halo APU. We can expect 16 cores of Zen 5 processing power, a huge 40 CUs of RDNA 3.5 GPU power, a larger 120W TDP, and support for LPDDR5X-8533 memory. MLID says that the flagship "at least" trades blows with NVIDIA's current-gen GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU.

We can expect 32GB and 64GB models to launch in the first half of 2025, with flagship 128GB models launching in 2H 2025. AMD is expected to unveil Strirx Halo at CES 2025, with MLID adding that workstation models are launching in Q1 2025. However, Strix Halo APU-powered gaming laptops aren't expected until Q2 2024.

Intel lost a chunky $16.6 billion this quarter, which was revealed in the company's recent Q3 2024 financial results, just a week after the launch of its new consumer desktop CPU series in the Core Ultra 200 chips hitting the market, led by the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K.

The company beat expectations, pulling in $13.3 billion in revenues, but after its massive internal restructuring changes -- and many other happenings at Intel right now -- posted $16.6 billion in losses for Q3 2024. The $13.3 billion of revenue for Q3 2024 is down 6% year-over-year, but also up $500 million from Q2 2024.

Intel's massive upheaval and restructuring changes, and massive losses from its Foundry business, saw Intel's gross margin dropping to 15%, a historical minimum for Intel. Not good. Intel's product group had profits, generating revenues of $12.9 billion, Intel Foundry earned $4.4 billion (but down from $4.7 billion from Q3 2023) while its chip production unit bled $5.8 billion.

ASUS has just launched its new ProArt Display 5K monitor, a new 27-inch 5K (5120 x 2880) panel aimed at professionals, priced at $799. Check it out:

The new ASUS ProArt Display 5K features a 27-inch IPS-based panel with a native 5120 x 2880 resolution, and is factory calibrated and Calman Verified, offering 99% DCI-P3 and 95% Adobe RGB color gamut coverage. ASUS specifies that a Delta <2 color accuracy, which is something high-end monitors need to achieve.

The 27-inch IPS panel has a pixel density of 218 ppi, some 2.6x higher than a regular 27-inch 1080p monitor, thanks to its huge 5K resolution of 5120 x 2880. The ASUS ProArt Display 5K "PA27JCV" features HDR10 support, and is VESA DisplayHDR 500 certified.

BioWare's long-awaited Dragon Age: The Veilguard is finally out. On PC, it looks stunning thanks to real-time ray tracing and is exceptionally well optimized to run on a range of hardware. And for those with a GeForce NOW Ultimate subscription, it's playable over the cloud with full RT, DLSS, and even G-SYNC on a GeForce RTX 4080-powered rig.

GeForce NOW, NVIDIA's cloud gaming platform that lets you play the games you own on Steam and Epic Games Store and have access to via PC Game Pass, is set to have an even bigger November thanks to the inclusion of one of the most anticipated PC releases in years - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.

The new FPS and sequel from GSC Game World will be released on November 21, and GeForce NOW subscribers will have access to it via their Steam, Xbox, or PC Game Pass libraries.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said that Call of Duty: Black Op 6's launch was the biggest in the franchise's history, setting day one and opening weekend sales records on PlayStation. According to Steam data, its PC launch (the game is also available on Battle.net) was at least 60% bigger than last year's Modern Warfare III. As the first Call of Duty to launch day one into Xbox Game Pass, it did so while setting a record for the number of new Game Pass subscribers in a single day.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a massive success, almost single-handedly justifying Microsoft's unprecedented acquisition of Activision Blizzard. And just in case you needed some more proof that Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty is a juggernaut, one of the biggest internet service providers in the United States, Comcast, has announced that Call of Duty's launch led to the week of October 25 becoming the "biggest week in Internet history."

According to Comcast, the pre-launch downloads accounted for 19% of the ISP's total network traffic, which includes everyone on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox downloading upwards of 100GB to jump into the action on day one.

Corsair's latest keyboard, the new K70 PRO TKL, is one for competitive gamers. It introduces the highly sought-after Rapid Trigger feature alongside FlahsTap, which aims to "revolutionize in-game movement."

The new Corsair K70 PRO TKL ships with the company's brand-new Corsair MGX Hyperdrive magnetic switches, which incorporate Hall-effect sensors for fast magnetic activation. This is excellent for the keyboard's Rapid Trigger support, which allows key presses and de-presses to be registered instantly. Corsair notes that its new switches outpace "even the best mechanical switches."

Being magnetic, you can customize the actuation distance per key between 0.1mm and 4.0mm. With this, it's not just a keyboard for competitive shooters like Valorant, Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - but one suitable for all games.

CD Projekt Red has announced that Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which includes the fantastic Phantom Liberty expansion, will be available for Macs in early 2025. The studio notes that it will be compatible with devices "with Apple silicon," which means hardware with one of the M chips - including the new M4 Pro and M4 Max.

Apple only announced these chips earlier in the week, with the company saying that the M4 family has "the world's fastest CPU core" and a faster GPU with a "2x faster ray-tracing engine." This is important to remember in relation to Cyberpunk 2077 because CDPR has confirmed that the Mac version will support path tracing and frame generation.

It will be very interesting to see Cybeprunk's visually stunning RT Overdrive (or path tracing) mode running on Apple hardware. Currently, it's only playable on GeForce RTX 40 Series hardware with DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, Ray Reconstruction, and Reflex. Yeah, that's a lot of RTX tech required for path tracing.

Microsoft has delayed its Recall feature yet again, amid all the controversy, the company pushed its big Copilot+ PC feature into December (as it's now missed its promised October release)

Brandon LeBlanc, senior product manager of Windows, in a statement to The Verge: "We are committed to delivering a secure and trusted experience with Recall. To ensure we deliver on these important updates, we're taking additional time to refine the experience before previewing it with Windows Insiders".

The company originally pulled its Recall feature from launch over security concerns -- it was logging everything, like, everything, everything -- ahead of the Copilot+ PC launch with Qualcomm. Now there are AMD and Intel processors with NPUs inside of laptops, and the big Recall feature launching in October, is delayed into December.

Intel's new Core Ultra 9 285K processor has been used with an ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Apex motherboard, and an LN2-optimized heatsink from Diabatix to achieve a bunch of OC world records with the CPU overclocked to a bonkers 7448MHz (7.4GHz).

This achievement was made possible in a collaboration between ElmorLabs Ltd., BenchMarc, OGS, and CENS, using a copper heatsink designed by Diabatix and manufactured by 3D Systems. The teams used Intel's new flagship Core Ultra 9 285K processor, and the ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Apex motherboard with an LN2 cooling system and a copper heatsink designed by Diabatix and manufactured by 3D Systems.

The heatsink was custom-built to work with liquid nitrogen, which we all know as a substance that runs at an extremely low temperature, allows for continuous, stable performance under high-temperature conditions (like overclocking the hell out of a new Core Ultra 9 285K processor). Diabatix notes on its website that liquid nitrogen is commonly used in high-performance cooling for its ultra-low temperature capabilities, but "it also requires carefully designed components to handle these conditions effectively".

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has achieved strong success on Steam, breaking into the top-selling games on Valve's platform while also setting new concurrent player records for publisher Electronic Arts.

After 10 years of waiting, BioWare's latest RPG is finally here. Dragon Age: The Veilguard picks up right where Inquisition left off, featuring more action-oriented gameplay and adjusted game mechanics. Despite controversy from the game's characters and themes, Veilguard looks to be a big hit on PC.

As IGN notes, early SteamDB numbers show that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is not only pulling in strong player counts, but is actually the most popular singleplayer game under EA's label on the platform. Veilguard peaked at 70,414 concurrent users, behind Need For Speed Heat's 86,000, but beating Mass Effect Legendary Edition (59,817), Jedi Survivor (67,855), and Jedi Fallen Order (46,550).

One analyst expected Microsoft to lose around 6 million Black Ops 6 sales because of Game Pass, but that number might actually be lower.

Microsoft's latest bet may have paid off, but we can't know how well things went without actual figures. The latest gambit sees Microsoft trading short-term sales for long-term ecosystem growth. That's why Microsoft put Call of Duty, a $31 billion franchise that can sell 25 million games in a single year, onto Xbox Game Pass.

The goal is to grow subscribers and player numbers at the potential sacrifice of game sales--a trend that has punctuated Microsoft's games business since the introduction of the Xbox Game Pass subscription service. Microsoft has admitted that Game Pass can "cannibalize" game sales, a concept that sees users simply paying $20 to subscribe to Game Pass rather than paying $70 to buy the full the game.

Supermicro is in a lot of trouble right now, with its stock price plummeting 35% today after its accounting firm, Ernest & Young, resigned citing unreliable management and possible law violations.

Ernest & Young's letter was cited in an SEC filing, which explained: "We are resigning due to information that has recently come to our attention which has led us to no longer be able to rely on management's and the Audit Committee's representations and to be unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management, and after concluding we can no longer provide the Audit Services under applicable law or professional obligations".

The accounting firm also put into question Supermicro's ability to act with "integrity and ethical values". Supermicro has of course rejected Ernest & Young's claims in its filing, saying that there were "no reportable events" that would implicate Supermicro in any wrongdoing.