Latest News - Page 617

Taipower made an important call to TSMC on Monday to help generate electricity to avoid blackouts, while Taoyuen had a two-hour power outage on Tuesday.

After the earthquake in Taiwan a couple of weeks ago and with recent temperature rises as the country heads into summer, annual maintenance and the failure of air conditioners across Taiwan saw Taipower's power supply pressure immediately increase. On Monday night, Taipower called TSMC to help them generate enough electricity, which saw them close to power outages.

Taipower spokesperson Cai Zhimeng said on Tuesday that the power supply was very tight on Monday night, and that TSMC helped out greatly by turning on its own diesel generators and providing 200,000 kilowatts of electricity. Taipower quickly pointed out that TSMC was helping increase its power supply and not cause a reduction in electricity consumption or have any negative effects on TSMC's operations.

Shortly after Take-Two Interactive bought Borderlands developer Gearbox for $460 million, the publisher has announced a big cost-cutting plan that will eliminate hundreds of jobs.

Take-Two's new 8-K SEC filing confirms the company will lay off 5% of its workforce in a bid to save money. As of March 2023, Take-Two employed 11,580 full-time employees--assuming this is still accurate, a 5% elimination would affect 579 Take-Two employees. Layoffs had already been expected post-Gearbox acquisition.

Multiple undisclosed games have been cancelled because of the cost-reduction strategy. "As part of these efforts, the Company is rationalizing its pipeline and eliminating several projects in development and streamlining its organizational structure, which will eliminate headcount and reduce future hiring needs," reads the SEC filing.

Intel is now talking about its new augmented intelligence tool developed in-house by Intel engineers, system-on-chip (SoC) designers now aren't waiting 6 weeks to see if they hit the sensor sweet spot, thanks to AI they're getting these answers in just a few minutes.

The new AI-powered tool developed by the Augmented Intelligence team led by Dr. Olena Zhu, senior principal engineer and AI solution artitect inside of Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG), helped Intel's system architecture factor thousands of variables into future silicon designs, with it being just one of many where Intel teams are using AI to optimize various workloads.

Engineers are required to analyze complex, concurrent workloads that activate the CPU core, input/output (I/O), and other system functions precisely to determine the location of thermal hotspots on a processor. The engineers also have to decide where to place very tiny sensors-each is barely larger than the tip of your average pin, says Intel-which makes things more complicated again.

Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro is coming later this year, and developers are already familiarizing themselves with the upgraded hardware so they can have games ready when the beefed-up console launches.

Inside, the new PlayStation 5 Pro console has an upgraded "Trinity" SoC made by AMD and fabbed by TSMC. It features a heavily upgraded GPU -- up to 45% faster than the standard PS5 -- and slightly faster CPU. We've heard that a new "PS5 Pro Enhanced" label for games will see 4K resolution, 60FPS, and improved ray tracing abilities.

PlayStation 5 Pro is said to have 2-3x the ray tracing performance of the standard PS5, so we're in for a true delight with PS5 Pro Enhanced games on a PlayStation 5 Pro console. I can definitely see, and I've been saying it for a while in my PS5 Pro and GTA 6 news, that GTA 6 will be a gigantic system seller for the PS5 Pro, so we can almost guarantee Grand Theft Auto 6 will be a PS5 Pro Enhanced title when the game launches in 2025.

Intel is under continued pressure from US restrictions -- and could reportedly, like NVIDIA -- that would see Team Blue gimping their AI processors for the Chinese market.

This isn't a new move, with NVIDIA modifying its AI GPUs to meet US restrictions into China, and now it seems Intel could do it soon with "special edition" versions of its new Gaudi 3 AI accelerators. These two new gimped AI accelerators from Intel are rumored to be launched at the end of June, and the end of September, reports TrendForce.

Intel announced its new Gaudi 3 AI accelerator recently, and in the Gaudi 3 white paper it was discovered that Intel said it would be launching two special edition versions of Gaudi 3 that will be specifically for the Chinese market. There will be two hardware variants launched later this year: the HL-328 OAM-compatible Mezzanine card, and the HL-388 PCIe Accelerator Card. TrendForce reports that the HL-328 will launch on June 24, and the HL-388 on September 24.

NVIDIA has been making cut-down AI GPUs to circumvent US export restrictions in China for months now, but it appears modified Ampere A100 AI GPUs are also making the rounds there.

A new NVIDIA A100 7936SP -- not the real name; this name is based on its CUDA core count -- has the same GA100 GPU as the regular A100 -- but with 15% more CUDA cores. The regular A100 has 124 SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors), while the new A100 7936SP has 128 SMs in total.

There's also more HBM2e memory on the new A100 7936SP, with 96GB of HBM2e memory, compared to just 80GB of HBM2e on the standard A100 AI GPU. With the additional 4 SMs, the new A100 7936P has a 15% increase in SM, CUDA, and Tensor Core counts, which should relate to at least 15% more AI performance across the board.

AMD partnered with Vindral to show off some incredible 8K 10-bit HDR live streaming technologies on its Alveo hardware, with ultra-low latencies and all viewers in sync at the NAB Show 2024 in Las Vegas.

The companies noted that the AV1-powered 8K 10-bit HDR quality live streaming tier, with ultra-low latency and all viewers in sync. The demo at the NAB Show 2024 was running as a full on-premise setup of the Vindral CDN, located locally at NAB in Las Vegas, powered by an Alveo MA35D from AMD.

The two companies have been "working closely" to make a viable implementation, quality-secured, and scalable. Daniel Alinder, CEO at Vindral, said: "After our AV1 initiative, the next obvious step was to look to the next frontier. And that's 8K. Not many devices can display it yet, nor can they decode the video, but as a brand aimed to be ahead of the curve it is an important step for us".

Star Wars Outlaws is doing a good job upselling Ubisoft's own game subscription service.

Ubisoft's new Star Wars Outlaws game looks like one of the most authentic adventures in the sci-fi franchise, but it's still a product that's very much bound by business decisions. Like all of Ubisoft's new releases, Outlaws will release day one on the $18/month Ubisoft+ Premium subscription service.

The value proposition is pretty high. As a consumer, would you rather pay $18 to play a game for a month, or pay $70 to buy it? Sure you don't get to own the game with the sub option, and whether or not this is a good fit totally depends on your habits, but that value is what makes subscriptions so enticing. The choice between full game and subscription gets even harder to make when you bump up the game's price to $130; the Star Wars Outlaws Ultimate Edition bundle with its season pass and variety of extras retails for $130, but you can get access for $18 with Ubisoft+ Premium.

Roblox has opened up its creator economy to the public...but you'll have to pay a fee in order to peddle your digital goods.

Roblox Corp. has found a new way to monetize its userbase, more specifically, those that want to sell their custom creations to Roblox's 70 million daily active players. Yesterday, the company announced that its User-Generated Content (UGC) store was going public. Now every Roblox player has the opportunity to make their own 3D items and sell them to the community.

There's just one fly in the ointment: It's not free. You'll have to pay a 'publishing advance' fee in order to list your items on the store. You pay the fee, and then each time that your item sells, a portion of the sale is then credited to your account. Different types of items have different advance fees and full body assets are the most costly at 4,000 Robux. Check the fee structure here.

A bunch of Final Fantasy games are leaving PlayStation Plus next month. Could these games find a new home under a direct subscription from Square Enix?

New reports indicate that the majority of Final Fantasy games will be removed from PS Plus Extra sometime next month. The news is from a PlayStation catalog tracker on Twitter who notes that 24 games are rotating out of PlayStation Plus by May 21. The departing lineup includes 7 Final Fantasy titles.

There are currently 11 Final Fantasy games available on PS Plus:

NVIDIA is rumored to be cooking up a new scheme whereby it'll offer small form-factor (SFF) PCs with its partners, and naturally they'll have compact GeForce graphics cards inside.

Apparently, Team Green wants to get in on the act and help those looking to build a compact PC, as while this may be a niche market, it's seemingly a rich enough vein for NVIDIA to tap.

Wccftech informs us that NVIDIA's plans for SFF PC builds don't just incorporate GPU makers, but a range of component manufacturers - including the chassis, power supply, and so on.

It was only earlier today that a bunch of PS5 Pro specifications were confirmed by The Verge, and now the publication has put out more details regarding Sony's internal plans for tackling the "Enhanced" games.

For those that don't know, Sony is planning on releasing the PS5 Pro alongside a new label that will be slapped onto PS5 games that meet certain graphical and performance improvements, with the idea that gamers will see the label and immediately know the game has met the graphical and performance standards set by Sony.

The Verge reports it has been told by sources familiar with Sony's plans that developers are being informed by the company to create a new PS5 Pro-exclusive graphics mode in games that combines Sony's new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling to 4K resolution with a 60fps frame rate and ray-tracing effects.

Call of Duty Vanguard, the one that didn't live up to Activision's expectations, has apparently sold 30 million copies across a two-year span.

There's no other video game franchise quite like Call of Duty. No other game series are able to consistently sell tens of millions of full-priced premium games per year while also making billions of dollars in microtransactions along the way. Official numbers are sparse--we know that the shooter series has made over $31 billion as of Modern Warfare II's release in October 2022, for instance--even doubly so now that Microsoft owns Activision, but it looks like there's an inadvertent sales update from a surprising source.

We don't have official updates for total Call of Duty game sales and/or lifetime revenue. We did get an interesting snippet at Vanguard's overall performance, which is at over 30 million sales. That's according to Brian Hong, who worked as a social media strategist on Call of Duty Vanguard's marketing campaign.

It has been a day for PS5 Pro news as The Verge has posted yet another article revealing more details about the upcoming console.

As I have previously outlined, Sony's upcoming console slated to be launched in the 2024 holiday period, will come with significant performance hikes compared to the standard PS5, and with these performances jumps will be a bump in visual fidelity for games, as indicated by the PS5 Pro "Enhanced" label Sony will be putting on games that meet specific criteria. But what about old game that don't get the new label? Will they run better on the PS5 Pro?

Sony has thought of that and has provided developers with an "ultra-boost" mode that will help Variable Refresh Rate modes run at a higher framerate, and games with a variable resolution may render at higher resolutions. Furthermore, framerates are believed to be more stable on the PS5 Pro.

NVIDIA has pushed out a new GeForce Game Ready Driver and it comes toting support for a couple of imminent high-profile PC games.

Those are Manor Lords and No Rest for the Wicked, both of which are now supported with driver version 552.22.

Manor Lords recently had its release date announced, and the city builder that takes place in a medieval setting - featuring social and economic intrigue mixed with Total War-style tactical battles - is out on April 26.

A lost piece of videogame history has been discovered and preserved: a canceled game for the Nintendo 64 called Riqa, a 3D action adventure in the style of Tomb Raider. The first Lara Croft games were exclusive to the PlayStation console, so the N64 getting its own Tomb Raider clone was a big deal.

Nintendo first announced the game in its official magazine in 1999. Riqa was described as a "sci-fi adventure featuring action and puzzle elements" and has been developing for some time. The title, Riqa, gets its name from the female protagonist. However, the art style was more anime than the realistic look of Tomb Raider.

The now-defunct UK developer Bits Studios led the game's development, with Nintendo set to publish. Originally shown off at E3 1999, the game disappeared, only to surface 25 years later with one of the original developers sharing a few different prototype builds online.

GIGABYTE recently deployed a new beta firmware release for its AORUS Z790 motherboards, but it suffers from a serious bug - so you should avoid it for now if possible.

Of course, all beta software needs to be regarded somewhat warily as it can always be bugged, and that's especially true when it comes to motherboard BIOS updates for obvious reasons. When things go awry with your BIOS, the results can be devastating, and the reported glitch in the AORUS Z790 beta is a pretty nasty one.

That said, you won't notice anything - or you won't see this bug anyway - if you don't go into the BIOS after updating. However, those who have the new beta firmware have found that the BIOS freezes up when they go into it, or shortly after. Which obviously means making any further changes to BIOS settings is quite tricky.

The Fallout TV show has sparked a debate among viewers: Is it better to binge the entire season on day one or take your time with weekly episodes?

The new Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime is an example of incredible execution. The entire transmedia campaign was clearly planned out from the get-go by people who A) know their audience, B) care about the franchise, and C) have a bunch of products at the ready. The Fallout show is a huge success, but it only works because of the engagement firestorm that is binge culture.

I've seen a few articles criticizing the Fallout show's binge format. This thinking is a bit myopic and loses sight of why the Fallout show actually exists in the first place: To shine a lighthouse beacon on the Fallout games. The Amazon show brought Fallout front and center, exposing the post-apocalyptic franchise to Prime's 200 million subscribers.

The PC version of Horizon Forbidden West has been well received, not only as an expansive sequel to a great open-world action-adventure but also as one of those rare PC ports that does justice to the source material while leveraging all of the additional goodies that come with the platform, from improved visual fidelity to uncapped frame rates to ultrawide monitor support to upscaling and even Frame Generation.

Horizon Forbidden West's impressive PC port was developed by sony studio Nixxes, image credit: PlayStation Studios.

For its upscaler support, Horizon Forbidden West includes support for AMD's FSR, Intel's XeSS, and NVIDIA's DLSS. However, when it comes to frame generation, this is limited to NVIDIA's DLSS 3.5 version of Frame Generation, which works great. Still, it is limited to the GeForce RTX 40 Series because it requires specialized AI hardware - so there's room for AMD's frame gen.

It appears AMD is gearing up to release its next-generation Zen 5 desktop processors as another motherboard vendor has integrated support for what looks like Ryzen 9000 series CPUs.

The update was discovered by leaker HXL and was posted to X, formerly Twitter, with the screenshot showing MSI has released a new firmware update for its AM5 chipset motherboards that feature AGESA 1.1.7.0. The image showcases the release date for the BIOS update was the April 12, 2024 and according to its description it will be for "next-gen CPU," presumably AMD's Ryzen 9000.

To add some more credit to this discovery is the fact that ASUS rolled out the same BIOS update a few weeks ago that introduced AGESA version 1.1.7.0 to its boards. It now appears two motherboard manufacturers have prepped their boards for the release of a next-gen CPU, which indicates that AMD is only just around the corner from releasing them. When could we see an unveiling?