Discord today announced new age-restriction protocols in a bid to keep teen users more safe on the platform, including requiring some users to prove their age via ID or facial scan in order to get access to certain areas.

Discord is one of the most influential communication platforms on the planet, and has become the de-facto place to talk about--and promote--the billion-dollar video games industry, among many others. It's also where communities thrive, allowing users to engage in a forum-like environment with the added bonus of real-time chatting. With swelling engagement and adoption, Discord is eyeing a public offering, and making some transformations.

One of the biggest changes is that users may now have to prove their age in order to access Discord in its totality: "Beginning with a phased global rollout to new and existing users in early March, users may be required to engage in an age-verification process to change certain settings or access sensitive content. This includes age-restricted channels, servers, or commands and select message requests."

Intel's next-generation Core Ultra 400 series "Nova Lake-S" desktop CPUs are gearing for release later this year, with more details on the new 900-series chipset platforms and its different motherboard offerings on the way.

In a new post on X by leaker @Jaykhin, we're hearing that there will be 5 different PCH variants: Z990, Z970, W980, Q970, and the mid-range B960 chipsets. The new 900-series chipsets are crafted for the next-gen Nova Lake-S desktop CPUs which will arrive on a totally new LGA1954 socket, meaning new motherboards for all -- and they're DDR5 only this time around.

The new Z990 and Z970 chipsets will be used on OC-ready motherboards with higher-end features and hardware than the rest of the 900 series boards, with the flagship Z990 chipset expected to feature 48 PCIe lanes, 2 x USB4/TB4 ports, 12 PCIe 5.0 lanes, 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes, 8 x SATA 3.0 ports, up to 5 x USB 3.2 20Gbps ports, and will include IA OC, BCLK, and Memory OC support.

Microsoft's next-generation Xbox will reportedly run a full version of Windows 11 alongside its Xbox "mode" with a console-like UI, be found in different shapes, sizes, and power, and run the likes of both Steam and the Epic Games Store... all rumored for 2027.

In a new report from Windows Central, the next-gen Xbox will come in all shapes and sizes, and its 2027 rumored launch is the "best case scenario". The outlet reports: "Turn your next-gen Xbox into a streaming PC, coding station, music production studio, or whatever else. The difference here is that the Gen-10 Xbox "PC" will also run all of your current Xbox games, in addition to games from Windows 11 PC stores like Steam".

Windows Central also reports that Microsoft is working with OEMs like ASUS and others to build a "variety of options for next-gen Xbox gamers across a range of price points, like the two Xbox Ally models". The outlet was also told that Microsoft is still forging ahead with its first-party Xbox handheld, even "if the traditional Xbox console is the focus for now".

Intel is reportedly set to launch its new Core Ultra 200S Plus "Arrow Lake Refresh" desktop CPUs next month, with the flagship Core Ultra 9 290K Plus cancelled, and the new Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus reviews going live on March 23.

We'll also see the KF variants of these two Arrow Lake Refresh processors, sans their integrated graphics, while the K series models keep the integrated GPU. Intel hasn't announced its Core Ultra 200S Plus processors to the public just yet, but the latest leaks suggest a March 23 embargo for Intel and its board partners for its new Arrow Lake Refresh processors.

Rumors from the last couple of weeks have suggested that Intel has nixed its upcoming Core Ultra 9 290K Plus processor, which would've featured the same 24-core CPU with 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores as the current Core Ultra 9 285K processor, but with higher CPU clocks and a higher Intel Thermal Velocity Boost peak.

Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro and Gen 6 mobile processors to support LPDDR6 + UFS 5.0 storage for the flagship SoC, the Gen 6 non-Pro to offer LPDDR5, to save partners on costs to the consumer.

The latest rumor on the next-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chip is that it will be compatible with new, and older memory and storage standards, which will help reduce costs for Qualcomm's vast family of partners... some somewhat good news to hear in the midst of the ongoing DRAM crisis.

Qualcomm is expected to charge even more for its next-gen flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro processor, with Weibo's Fixed-focus digital cameras claiming that phone makers will have multiple options when it comes to integrating LPDDR6, LPDDR5X, or LPDDR5 memory as well as UFS 5.0 storage. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 (non-Pro) chip is expected to only feature LPDDR5.

With the arrival of the Radeon RX 9000 Series of desktop graphics cards in 2025, AMD's RDNA 4-powered GPUs also launched with the company's new AI-powered FSR 4 rendering technology that has recently expanded to include Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction as part of the company's FSR Redstone initiative.

Requiring the more advanced FP8-capable AI hardware found in RDNA 4 GPUs, FSR 4 quickly became a highlight of the Radeon RX 9070 XT's launch, as the new and improved FSR Super Resolution finally caught up, or closed the gap, in image quality to NVIDIA's DLSS.

However, being exclusive to three desktop GPUs bucks the historical trend of AMD's FSR being open-source and platform agnostic, giving RDNA 3 gamers the sense that they've been left behind. Not only on desktops but also on AMD's gaming handhelds, which still run RDNA 3.5 Radeon technology, FSR 4 has yet to reach a platform where it could make the most significant impact.

Apple is about to unleash its new products for the quarter, led by the new iPhone 17e which is said to launch "imminently" as well as new M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro laptops.

In his latest PowerOn! newsletter, Mark Gurman from Bloomberg reports that the new iPhone 17e will replace the iPhone 16e from last year, with the new A19 processor and its in-house 5G and Wi-Fi chips, all at the same $599 starting price. Apple will provide more features, all at the same cost.

Gurman explains: "Apple will market the 17e heavily to users in emerging economies and enterprises - two areas the company plans to target aggressively this year with both devices and software. Apple also could benefit from weaker competition. Though Alphabet Inc.'s Google is set to release a new version of its low-end model, the Pixel 10a, that upgrade isn't expected to add much. And Samsung Electronics Co. is focusing more on the high end".

Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass has evolved since its inception, delivering day-one access to first-party releases and major third-party titles across consoles and PC. However, the surprise, seemingly sudden 50% price increase for the premium Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier in October 2025 caused significant backlash, diminishing Game Pass's overall value proposition in gamers' eyes.

As far as Xbox's first-party lineup is concerned, 2026 is going to be a banner year thanks to Forza Horizon 6, Fable, Gears of War E-Day, Halo: Campaign Evolved, the next Call of Duty, and more. According to a new report from The Verge's Tom Warren, Microsoft is planning further changes to the Xbox Game Pass tier structure in 2026, though there probably won't be another significant price increase.

That said, it's probably not great news for those with a PC Game Pass subscription. Citing sources familiar with Microsoft's plans, the company appears to be looking to merge the Xbox Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass Tiers, which would presumably remove access to the biggest day-one game releases for PC gamers in favor of a more streamlined set of offerings.

OLED displays have come a long way in recent years and are now widely considered the best option for PC gaming and entertainment. From the near infinite contrast to the vibrant colors and per-pixel lighting, the "upgrade" over a traditional LCD panel is such that once you go OLED, it's hard to look back. However, burn-in, or image retention, has been a primary concern since the display technology was introduced and persists to this day.

Which is why it's always good to look at in-depth burn-in reporting for more modern OLED panels. YouTube channel and creator Optimum has put their LG UltraGear 32GS95UE-B dual-mode 32-inch OLED monitor to the test, reporting on the state of image quality with respect to burn-in after over 3,000 hours of use.

And even though there is some burn-in after this amount of time, with static objects on the screen as the culprits, the "damage" is barely visible. Optimum notes that they primarily used this display for three apps: Blizzard's Overwatch, and using DaVinci Resolve and Fusion 360 for creating video content.

The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, also known as Strix Halo, is a beast of an APU. It combines a 16-core, 32-thread Zen 5 CPU with a max boost clock speed of 5.1 GHz, Radeon 8060S Graphics, a powerful NPU, and up to 128GB of unified memory. The upcoming AYANEO NEXT 2, which is the company's impressive next-gen PC gaming handheld, is set to include a flagship Strix Halo model with an MSRP of $4299.

The company is expecting to launch its Indiegogo campaign for the AYANEO NEXT 2 next week, and with pricing and specs for the various models confirmed, the AYANEO NEXT 2 flagship model sports the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory, and 2TB of PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD storage. Although the retail price is listed at $4299, the 'Early Bird Price' for this model will be $3499.

For those wanting an AYANEO NEXT 2 with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, the more sensible option appears to be the version with 64GB of memory and 1TB of storage, which has an 'Early Bird Price' of $2299 and an MSRP of $2699. Either way, you're looking at a lot of money for a PC gaming handheld with RTX 4060-level performance, with the inflated pricing most likely due to the current DRAM crisis.

AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX processor is a 96-core, 192-thread Zen 5-based workstation beast CPU launching at $12,000... with a new OC mod applied that keeps the chip at under 50C under load at 1550W power.

Geekerwan has uploaded a new build video using the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX processor, where he attempted to reduce the thermal bottleneck of the cold plate by modding the CPU's integrated heat spreader (IHS) into the cold plate itself, with coolant channels machined directly into the IHS.

After some tests and prototypes the team purchased chips and machined channels into spare heat spreaders in order to compare against conventional high-end blocks, after iterating on water routing to improve the match on chiplet layouts, as the uneven flow can see one CCD running hotter than another when heat sources are spread out across the package.

The latest PlayStation 6, codenamed 'Orion,' and the upcoming next-generation PlayStation handheld, codenamed 'Canis,' have more hardware details revealed by renowned leaker KeplerL2. Posting on the NeoGAF discussion boards, KeplerL2 notes that the PlayStation 6's current spec should include 30GB of GDDR7 memory in a clamshell configuration, with 3GB modules.

In addition to its capacity, assuming a memory speed of 32 Gbps, the PlayStation 6's 30GB of memory could use a 160-bit bus for a total memory bandwidth of 640 GB/s. Compared to the baseline PlayStation 5's 16GB of GDDR6 at 448.0 GB/s, that's a 42% increase in bandwidth. Compared to the PlayStation 5 Pro, it's a more modest 11% increase in bandwidth; however, the capacity increase to 30GB is sizeable compared to current-gen hardware.

And with several leaks and rumors pointing to Sony also releasing a new portable PlayStation gaming handheld with custom hardware, KeplerL2 notes that the handheld will ship with 24GB of memory, reportedly utilizing LPDDR5X modules.

NVIDIA is rumored to be working on an even higher-end RTX 50 series graphics card, with new rumors that it's gearing for a Q3 2026 release, and could be a long-rumored GeForce RTX 5090 Ti or TITAN Blackwell GPU.

Overclocking.com reports: "A very high-end RTX 50 series card is reportedly in development, with its release even scheduled for the Back to School period (early Q3 of this year). The manufacturing process has apparently already begun (design and other aspects). The arrival of this card is said to be unrelated to the "SUPER" series (which are no longer on the 2026 release schedule)".

The new reports suggest a Q3 2026 release, and would act as an ultra-high-end RTX 5090 Ti or TITAN-class Blackwell GPU, scheduled for the Back to School period. Overclocking.com reports that they've been told that manufacturing is underway with board-level work on the table now.

Intel has reportedly added next-gen Z990 and Z970 chipsets to its recently updated roadmap, ready for next-gen Core Ultra 400 series "Nova Lake-S" desktop CPUs and the new LGA1954 socket.

In a new report from VideoCardz, the outlet says that their sources told them that Intel has added the Z990 and Z970 chipsets to its roadmap, without any detailed specifications like PCIe lane counts, new features, I/O, etc. We do know from previous rumors that Intel will be introducing a new LGA1954 socket, so we're looking at totally new motherboards required, and DDR5 as standard.

VideoCardz reports that the Z970 chiplet should use the same "underlying chipset as B960, with no further details shared at this time". The site added that this "points to segmentation through firmware and board features rather than a separate silicon design, but Intel has not outlined any positioning. This may be related to overclocking options".

Sony doesn't believe that AI, generative or otherwise, will replace actual creatives in animation or games production.

Sony executive management once again comments about the use of artificial intelligence in content production, saying that AI is another utility or tool that a professional creator would have in their toolbelt--so to speak. In a recent Q&A with investors as part of Sony's Q3'25 earnings report, company CFO Lin Tao delves further into how Sony sees AI and how the group is using the tech to possibly help streamline and innovate things like game development.

We've already reported on the Sony CFO's first comments on AI, about how Sony wants its workers to use AI and how the group is prepared to disrupt how it makes games if it can help the PlayStation business. Tao says that Sony intends to use AI to accelerate and enable creators rather than replace them.

Arc Raiders has been a hugely profitable game for Embark Studios, but we can't be sure just how much the developer's take actually is.

With over 12 million sales across all platforms, PvPvE extraction shooter Arc Raiders is one of the most popular games on the market right now. The game sells for $40 per copy, and direct math says Arc Raiders could have made up to $496 million, or half a billion, from launch until January 2026 (this doesn't account for returns, charge-backs, and key resellers).

It's also recently been confirmed that Arc Raiders is a highly profitable game. There's reports that Arc Raiders had a budget of $75 million, and Embark won't confirm this number, but studio CEO Patrick Soderlund tells IGN that it's "not far off" and is a "ballpark" figure. In that same interview, Soderlund comments on the game's profitability and what it means for the people who made Arc Raiders.

Sony CFO Lin Tao indicates that the company is prepared to disrupt how its first-party developers make video games if it means being able to innovate and streamline content production while keeping costs managed.

Sony is going all-in on artificial intelligence, at least when it comes to game dev. In a recent Q&A with investors, Sony executives were asked about the use of AI in game development, a query that was likely spurred on by Google's new Genie AI tool. Sony Chief Financial Officer Lin Tao assures investors that AI is being used for game dev at PlayStation, yet the tech is still early and experimental.

"There is high affinity between AI and game and animation. In the long-term, I think, it's a very positive thing and there will be more content. But many areas will be impacted, especially how we develop and produce. So I think that this process, from idea to game, will be changing. But it's still too early to say what the impact will be, and how that will impact costs," Tao said in Sony's Q3'25 webcast.

Apple's new entry-level MacBook isn't far away, with a new report suggesting that RAM prices skyrocketing won't affect the company's plans to launch its new cheap MacBook.

In a new post on X from analyst @Jukan, we're hearing that the new report suggests Apple's new entry-level MacBook will be priced between $699 and $799, and it'll feature just 8GB of RAM, and Apple's in-house A18 Pro processor, which is used inside of its iPhones.

Apple is reportedly preparing for annual sales of between 5-8 million units for its upcoming entry-level MacBook, but seeing a new laptop being sold in 2026 with 8GB of RAM is just... peak Apple, really. Considering that previous reports from August 2025 had the new MacBook being priced at as low as $599... the price hike from there, and the fact it only has 8GB of RAM is a really hard pill to swallow.

Valve has recently updated Deadlock with some mentions of "HLX" inside of it, with HLX rumored as the codename of Half-Life 3, providing us with some more hopium fuel that it's on its way this year.

One of the biggest sources of Valve projects -- Gabe Follower -- confirmed on X that Valve's latest update for Deadlock includes mentions of the HLX project, who added that "HLX survived Valve's winter break".

One of the replies on the post said: "Gabe, i think that its getting to a point that HLX isnt half life X or 3. I think its just a new addition onto games that could be for moderation, making the games better, or something else completley. Stop giving us hopium that eventually turns into despairium. Thanks".

ASUS has its new ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 5090D V2 graphics card up for pre-order in China, with a price of 29,999 RMB (which works out to around $4300 USD).

The new ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 5090D V2 features a cut-down 24GB of GDDR7 memory on a 384-bit memory bus with the VRAM clocked at 28Gbps, with it being virtually identical to the full ROG Matrix RTX 5090 (which has 32GB GDDR7). It retains its full 21,760 CUDA cores and GPU boost clocks of up to 2760MHz in OC mode, with dual HDMI 2.1b outputs, and 3 x DisplayPort 2.1b ports.

ASUS has crafted its ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 5090D V2 graphics card with a dual 16-pin power connector design that works with its in-house BTF ecosystem, with ASUS stating it can use up to 800W of power when used with a BTF motherboard and 12V-2x6 power cable.