Latest News - Page 48

Microsoft has broken new ground on Steam as Forza Horizon 6 becomes the most popular racing game ever on the platform.

Forza Horizon 6 shows signs of being gaming's latest big hit as the racing sim achieves hundreds of thousands of players on Steam on launch day. New data from SteamDB shows that FH6 managed to hit over 273K players in the last 24 hours, setting a new all-time peak player count not only for Forza Horizon games, but racing games as a genre on Steam itself.

Other details indicate that Forza Horizon 6 may have already made over $140 million in revenue from its premium version alone, dwarfing our own analysis of the game's early advanced access sales on Steam. This could show that consumers are now more price tolerant for higher-end experiences, and that Microsoft's penchant towards FOMO-oriented early access is also working out quite well, as Forza Horizon 6's $120 premium edition is roughly equivalent of two full-priced games from the previous console generation.

Laptops with Intel's Core 300 "Wildcat Lake" CPUs have started rolling out. We have already covered the CHUWI UniBook and Honor MagicBook X14, which have launched at $449 and $849, respectively, giving users two different Wildcat Lake options at different price points. Intel and its partners need to keep the value proposition of these laptops quite high if they are to compete with Apple's $599 MacBook Neo.

This is where "Project Firefly" comes in. According to the Golden Pig Upgrade Pack, a report corroborated by Videocardz, Intel has unveiled Project Firefly in China, an initiative to provide more affordable laptops powered by the Core 300 Wildcat Lake processors. Intel's VP and GM of Client Products in China announced this program as a way to standardize the interfaces of these laptops so they can be reused widely.

Project Firefly aims to optimize the supply chain by borrowing from China's mobile phone market. Apparently, Intel is looking to integrate some standardized phone-derived components, such as adapter boards, into these affordable Wildcat Lake laptops. This project will also allow Intel to work with all partners in the supply chain to reduce costs and increase efficiency by implementing a unified interface.

Forza Horizon 6 is Playground Games' latest entry into the Horizon series that takes place in Japan. Despite supporting both Windows and SteamOS, the game initially had broken Linux support during the game's advanced access period, causing crashes in-game. Luckily, GamingOnLinux reports that Valve has pushed a Proton hotfix that at least partially rectifies the issue and makes the game playable again on Linux operating systems.

When Forza Horizon 6 first entered advanced access, the game reportedly needed "horrible" workarounds to run on Linux at all on AMD GPUs. Some of these workarounds included changing the sampler heap to 2047, mitigation for bugs causing bad aliasing between image descriptors and buffer descriptors on RDNA 3 and 4, and more. Even with workarounds applied, at least one user reported crashing issues on an RDNA 4 GPU. The situation is even worse for NVIDIA gamers who need to wait for a new NVIDIA driver to fix the game's playability issues, and there's no timeline on when NVIDIA will provide this driver update.

There are not enough user reports to confirm how well Valve's latest hotfix is working with Forza Horizon 6; however, GamingOnLinux tested the hotfix on the Steam Deck and a Ryzen 7 5800X/RX 6800-based machine and found the game runs stably after multiple hours of gameplay without crashing. There are still performance-related stuttering problems in-game that are not Linux-related, but at the very least, the game appears to be playable now on Linux through Proton.

Fortnite has officially returned to the App Store, but Epic and Apple are still far from friendly.

After missing out on billions of dollars in revenue, the most popular live service game in the world is now natively available on Apple devices. Epic Games today announced that Fortnite has returned to the App Store for iOS and Mac, further challenging Apple's conduct around digital fees attached to in-game purchases.

Epic Games' blog have chronicled the legal battles against Apple and Google in a series of tit-for-tat posts, detailing the ongoing progress throughout the company's legal battles. One example from today's news: "Fortnite is returning to the App Store now because we are confident that once Apple is forced to show its costs, governments around the world will not allow Apple junk fees to stand," Epic writes.

Warner Bros. Games and TT Games are gearing up for the release of LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, a bold new Batman story that takes players across an open-world Gotham City. All of which has been spray-painted with that lovely LEGO charm.

LEGO Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight officially launches on May 22, but for those who pre-purchased the game, they gain access three days before release, meaning LEGO Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight will be making its way into players' hands in only a matter of hours. However, it appears Legacy of the Dark Knight is suffering from a leak, as images and some gameplay have begun popping up on various social media platforms, with some claiming the title has already been cracked.

According to a report from GameGPU, a user named DenuvOwO published a method to bypass the Denuvo Hypervisor system, which Legacy of the Dark Knight uses to prevent piracy. The method was published on the popular piracy resource CrackWatch, and according to the details, users can run an unlicensed copy of Legacy of the Dark Knight without purchasing an official key.

Huawei has launched the Qingyun M273U, a 27-inch dual-mode 4K monitor that supports a maximum 320Hz refresh rate and 100W USB-C charging, a feature we typically see in office or editing-focused monitors.

The Qingyun M273U is built around a 3840 x 2160 IPS panel that has a 160Hz refresh rate in 4K mode, but it can switch to 1080p at 320Hz for smoother gaming performance. The panel covers 95% of DCI-P3 and supports HDR Vivid, and for those looking for a matte finish, Huawei is launching the Soft Light Edition, which adds anti-glare and low-blue-light features. The Soft Light variant also includes a 4.1-channel speaker system and a USB-C port that delivers 100W of power delivery.

Huawei is targeting both office and gaming users with this monitor, offering a blend of high-resolution productivity at a reasonably fast refresh rate, but then the option to completely lock in and focus on gaming at a much lower resolution and an intensely high framerate.

Apple is reportedly developing a new blood pressure sensing feature for the upcoming Apple Watch, one that goes beyond the current hypertension notifications and could perhaps require a hardware upgrade.

According to Digitimes, the feature is under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and could debut on the 2026 Apple Watch Ultra 4, which may also receive a major redesign and improved health sensors.

The current hypertension notifications, introduced in September 2025 with watchOS 26, use heart sensor data and machine learning to detect signs of chronic high blood pressure over a 30-day period. But, the current hypertension notifications are designed as an early warning message, not a proper diagnostic tool.

Valve veteran Chet Faliszek has called out Krafton CEO Changhan Kim's reliance on ChatGPT for legal strategy during the Subnautica 2 contract dispute, and now that the title has done gangbusters in terms of players, many, including Faliszek, are wondering if Krafton will have to pay out that $250 million bonus.

As the sequel breaks records on Steam with over 467,582 concurrent players, the burning question remains: will Kim finally have to pay the $250 million bonus he tried to avoid? Faliszek, now with Stray Bombay, says the situation is a real-time case study in what happens when a major studio tries to circumvent contractual obligations.

"Half a million people are playing it right now," he said in a YouTube video, noting that the game's success has made the legal fallout unavoidable.

Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman after a jury unanimously ruled he waited too long to file his claim, meaning the statute of limitations prevented a ruling in Musk's favor.

The verdict dismisses Musk's allegations that OpenAI's pivot to for-profit violated its founding mission and committed unjust enrichment. Musk alleged that OpenAI strayed from its original mission of being a non-profit company to a profit-driven model that prioritized commercial success. The trial centered around Musk's 2024 lawsuit, which made the aforementioned accusations.

However, a nine-person jury found that the statute of limitations had expired, with Musk having left the company in 2018. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed, dismissing all claims as "untimely."

NVIDIA has begun hand-delivering its first custom CPU designed for Agentic AI. The Vera CPU featured 88 custom Olympus cores, an impressive 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth, and 50% faster per-core performance under full load. And with that, NVIDIA Vice President of Hyperscale and High-Performance Computing, Ian Buck, personally hand-delivered the first Vera CPUs to the biggest AI companies in California: Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Although NVIDIA is synonymous with generative AI thanks to its GPUs, Agentic AI still requires a powerful CPU to handle tasks such as long-context retrieval. "Vera is a new class of CPU designed with that reality as its starting point," NVIDIA explains. "This gauntlet of concurrent, real-time tasks puts pressure on CPUs in ways traditional core-density focused designs were never built to prioritize."

As the successor to Grace, Vera underscores the growing importance of CPUs in AI, and the Vera CPU is the first data center CPU to use LPDDR5X memory, delivering 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth. And with that, even though it will ship as part of the Vera Rubin platform that combines CPU and GPU technology, it's also set to be made available as a standalone CPU solution. NVIDIA's hand-delivery of the first Vera CPUs signals that Vera and Rubin are entering their respective full production phases for a global rollout in the coming months.

The PC hardware market is in an unprecedented state, with memory and storage prices increasing dramatically, and the biggest players all focused on serving the data center market and the AI boom. However, even in this climate, Dell has announced a new, affordable Alienware gaming laptop, the Alienware 15 for 2026.

Alienware is Dell's premium PC gaming brand, so seeing a more affordable entry is both surprising and welcome. Starting at $1,299 USD, the new Alienware 15 certainly hits the right sweet spot, price-wise, especially for a laptop with a 15.3-inch 16:10 WUXGA (1920x1200) panel that sports a 165Hz refresh rate and is built for gaming. And best of all, it has gone through the same rigorous testing as the flagship Area-51 for durability and long-term reliability.

However, as we're talking about an affordable gaming laptop in 2026, the entry-level $1,299 configuration features 16GB of DDR5 memory, the 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 220 processor, and the GeForce RTX 4050 laptop graphics card. For those wanting an Intel processor or the more powerful GeForce RTX 5060 laptop GPU, the price increases pretty dramatically. That said, no matter the choice, owners will have access to NVIDIA DLSS to boost performance.

LG is set to break the boundaries of gaming monitor performance with the world's first 1000Hz, 1080p display, the UltraGear 25G590B launching this year.

This 24.5-inch IPS panel is designed for competitive esports players who demand the fastest possible response times and frame rates, offering a native 1000Hz refresh rate at Full HD resolution. Unlike previous 1000Hz monitors that were limited to 720p, the 25G590B marks a major leap in performance without sacrificing resolution.

This makes it a compelling option for FPS and other high-speed competitive games where split-second reactions can mean the difference between victory and defeat. LG has positioned the monitor as a tool for not just gamers, but also for anyone who needs pixel-perfect clarity with extreme responsiveness.

ZOTAC GAMING is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and in the lead-up to Computex 2026, the company is giving away a wide range of impressive hardware, from GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards to PC cases and all-in-one mini PCs built for gaming, like the ZBOX MAGNUS ONE. And in keeping with the anniversary theme, the giveaways are all custom 20th-anniversary-edition hardware.

On the official promo page for the event, ZOTAC notes that it plans to unveil and showcase several "exciting new products" at Computex this year, and that this little competition is part of the company's initiative to give back to the community. There are 20 prizes up for grabs, with new items given away weekly. And, the company says that each week the "prizes only get better," so be sure to bookmark the competition to maximize your chances of winning something cool.

The celebration is currently in its third week, and this week (May 18 through to May 24), ZOTAC is giving away two very cool GPUs, the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 5070 Twin Edge (20th Anniversary Edition) and the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 5070 Ti SOLID SFF (20th Anniversary Edition).

It's always going to be an uphill battle when it comes to performance and compatibility for any new player creating and releasing a new discrete graphics card for PC gaming. Even Intel required months, if not years, to fine-tune its Arc Graphics drivers and architecture to deliver a noteworthy alternative to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX and AMD's Radeon RX offerings. The latest player to join the lineup of PC gaming GPUs is Lisuan Technology, a Chinese company that is on the cusp of releasing the new Lisuan LX 7G100 gaming GPU.

What makes this release interesting is that it has officially earned Microsoft WHQL certification, the first for a Chinese GPU manufacturer. This essentially means that official driver support for the Lisuan LX 7G100 gaming GPU will receive the all-important Microsoft Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) certification tick for Windows.

Game support for the first-generation GPU will be broad, including popular APIs such as DirectX 12, Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL 4.6, and OpenCL 3.0. Lisuan Technology has previously stated that performance would be comparable to the GeForce RTX 4060, but in-game performance will depend on driver support and optimizations. On that note, the company says that right out of the gate, over 100 titles will run as intended on the GPU.

Nintendo has announced a goofy experimental new smartphone app Pictonico that turns photo-taking into a game, and a gallery into a canvas for wacky minigames.

Nintendo is embracing its unpredictable energy with Pictonico, a new mobile app that allows users to take and transform digital photos in a gamified way. The experiences are kind of like little social microgames, not unlike WarioWare infused with the zany spirit of the Game Boy Camera from the 1990s, while adding a new level of personal fun when players play with their friends.

Pictonico will be free but it will also have microtransactions, and the free version is predictably limited--quite restricted, actually. The selling point here is the minigames, which Nintendo sells in two "volumes"--Volume 1 is $7.99, and Volume 2 is $5.99. Unfortunately, Pictonico's free version only has three minigames.

Xbox is preparing for more change in the next few years than it has seen in its entire 25-year history, according to a senior Microsoft executive.

Guy Richards, director of ID@Xbox, revealed during the Digital Dragons Conference 2026 that the company is entering an era of unprecedented transformation. "We believe there's going to be more change happening in the next couple of years than the 25 years that got us here," he said. This includes a return to the iconic green branding, the revival of the FanFest event, and ongoing overhauls to Xbox services such as Game Pass, Copilot AI, and other features within the Xbox ecosystem.

Under new CEO Asha Sharma, Microsoft is shifting how it operates, bringing in leaders from its CoreAI division and rethinking long-standing strategies. The company has already made significant moves to change Xbox, such as rebranding to XBOX, reducing Game Pass pricing, and potentially returning to exclusive titles. With Project Helix on the horizon, the changes could shape the next generation of Xbox hardware and software.

Valve has updated Steam, adding 17 new genre tags for games to better organize the different types of experiences. This includes a brand-new genre tag for the popular Vampire Survivors and similar action-packed roguelite experiences called 'Bullet Heaven.' Valve's description of this new genre says it's the opposite of Bullet Hell, with gameplay and mechanics focused on "upgrades while automatically attacking hordes of enemies."

The new Bullet Heaven genre and style tag is now live, with the official store page for the tab showcasing Vampire Survivors and all the games inspired by its unique take on gaming. This includes Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Megabonk, BALL x PIT, and many more.

Valve giving this new style of game a name is important because, up until now, most gamers have been referring to these titles as Vampire Survivors clones or Survivors-like games in much the same way we referred to FPS games as DOOM clones in the 1990s or, more recently, hard-as-nails third-person action-RPGs with a focus on combat as Souls-likes. Whether or not Bullet Heaven catches on remains to be seen, but here is a look at the full list of new Steam game tags and genres with links to their store pages.

Back in 2024, Microsoft almost started forcing laptop manufacturers to replace the Right Ctrl key on new Windows 11 PCs with a dedicated Copilot key, similar to the two Start keys. A few OEMs replaced the right-hand Ctrl or Context Menu key outright, while others made space for it. In all cases, the key has been practically useless to anyone uninterested in Microsoft's AI assistant.

Microsoft has finally acknowledged the obvious. In a recently published support document, the company stated that customers who rely on the Right Ctrl key or Context Menu key for keyboard shortcuts or assistive technologies experienced workflow challenges on these devices.

As a result, Microsoft has confirmed that a Windows 11 update coming in 2026 will add a setting to remap the Copilot key to either the Context Menu key or the Right Ctrl key. The new setting will be available under Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Keyboard. Some PC manufacturers already offer Copilot key remapping in their own software, but Microsoft's solution will be distinct in that it will apply across all Windows 11 PCs with a Copilot key, regardless of manufacturer.

Intel's new Core 300 "Wildcat Lake" platform has been making waves since its official launch, and laptops powered by the new chips are already starting to appear. Several OEMs, including Honor, ASUS, and HP, have launched Wildcat Lake models in China. The cheapest of the bunch is the CHUWI UniBook, which is priced at an estimated $449 US.

The UniBook is powered by the Intel Core 3 304, which is the entry-level chip in the Wildcat Lake lineup. Keep in mind that this is a 5-core, 5-thread CPU with 1 "Cougar Cove" P-core and 4 "Darkmont" LPE-cores, boosting up to 4.3 GHz. Importantly, the Core 3 304 is built on Intel's cutting-edge 18A process node, the same node used for the higher-end "Panther Lake" chips. The chip is not meant for heavy workloads, but it should have no trouble handling everyday tasks like web browsing, office applications, and video calls.

For the rest of the spec sheet, the UniBook sports a 14-inch IPS display with a 1920x1200 resolution and 100% sRGB coverage, paired with 8GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 256GB PCIe 3.0 SSD. Connectivity is a notable strong suit, with two full-function USB-C ports, three USB-A ports, HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and a TF card slot, all running Windows 11 Pro. CHUWI also claims up to 20 hours of battery life from the 53Wh cell inside.

In a new collaboration between ASUS and AK Studio, a Taiwanese modding team, the ROG Xbox Ally X is getting a one-off Cyberpunk 2077 rebrand. ASUS calls it a one-of-a-kind professional mod, not a new retail model, featuring a vibrant colorway and details throughout the chassis that Cyberpunk chooms will instantly recognize.

For starters, this is a case mod for the ROG Xbox Ally X, not an entirely new console. The handheld is wrapped in signature Cyberpunk yellow, with decals throughout, including matching typography and weathered accents inspired by Keanu Reeves' Johnny Silverhand and the game's grimy Night City setting. It's safe to say this isn't just a simple skin.

ASUS says this handheld is one of a kind, which means it won't be a retail product. At best, one of these may be given away as a prize in a competition. There are only three of these bad boys in existence right now, so while not strictly one-of-a-kind, it's still impossibly rare according to the folks over at ASUS.