Latest News - Page 647

Steam users have been on a steady climb since the platform's inception, with only a few dips in user numbers across the years it has been active, and now the PC-based platform has reached a new milestone.

Prior to 2020, Steam hadn't broken through the 20 million user mark, but presumably, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and everyone being locked in their homes, the platform's numbers began to skyrocket, only taking a few dips here and there. Overall, Steam has been growing exponentially, breaking through the 30 million user mark in October 2022, and now it's on its way to cracking the 40 million mark as the platform has reached a new all-time peak of 36,354,393 concurrent users.

Notably, it was only a couple of weeks ago that Steam recorded a new concurrent user record of 34 million players online at once, and then on March 2, the platform hit another new milestone with 35.3 million concurrent users. Now Steam has pushed through the 36 million mark for the first time, with the average concurrent player count being 25 million over 30 days. Judging by these trends it won't be long at all before Steam hits 40 million.

The previously leaked PlayStation 5 Pro hardware specification may just give a clue as to whether Sony will decide to add backward compatibility to its next-generation console.

A well-known leaker that goes by the name Kepler has commented on a recent X thread discussing the recent PS5 Pro hardware leak, specifically the 10% CPU speed increase. Kepler explained that they have a "theory" as to why the CPU speed increase is so little. The leaker speculated that the backward compatibility is more complicated than you might think and that the way Sony handles it is "very complex".

Notably, Kepler writes that backward compatibility requires new hardware to "run at the same or higher clock speed, even if the new HW is faster at lower clock speeds." Kepler goes on to explain that if Sony decides to use Zen 6 dense cores for the PS6, they won't be able to target 4GHz and above for the PS5 Pro as that could "break backward compatibility".

Apple is rumored to release new OLED iPads very soon, according to a Chinese leaker and separate reports from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

It should be noted that Apple has officially said nothing regarding its new iPads and that these rumors are simply that - rumors. However, there is some separate information that can be connected together that points to an approximate release date.

Firstly, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a known Apple insider who has consistently been right about internal movements at the company in the past, wrote in his Power On newsletter that Apple is planning on releasing new iPad Pro and iPad Air models around the end of March/start of April.

A new report has revealed Apple won't be able to get out of a class-action lawsuit that accuses the company of negligence over the potential dangers of AirTags.

Bloomberg reported last week that a San Francisco judge ruled that Apple must face a lawsuit accusing the company of negligence over the potential stalking risks created by its AirTags device. Notably, the majority of the three dozen claims were dismissed by the court, but US District Judge Vince Chhabria has denied Apple's push to have the court throw out the case entirely. The suit alleges that Apple was warned of the potential dangers of its tracking device being misused by individuals and would be held liable for damages under California law.

However, Apple disagrees, as after its AirTags were released, it rolled out new safety features designed to prevent them from being used by bad actors. One of these safety features was AirTags beginning to emit a loud noise when they were moved too far away from the connected device, as well as notifications being sent to devices. Despite Apple's push back, the lawsuit argues that AirTags have "become the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers," per Bloomberg.

It was only a few hours ago that the Apex Legends North American finals had to be shut down due to hackers infiltrating at least two professional players' PCs mid-game.

The hackers gave the two professional players cheats such as aimbot and wallhacks, resulting in the game being postponed and the security of Apex Legends being thrown into question. Notably, this story is still developing at the time of reporting as it is only a few hours old, so details are subject to change. Volunteers at the Anti-Cheat Police Department took to X to warn the public that "There is currently an RCE exploit being abused in Apex Legends. It's unsure whether it comes from the game of the actual anti-cheat (Easy Anti-Cheat)."

The anti-cheat account goes on to recommend gamers not to play any games protected by Easy Anti-Cheat, or any Electronic Arts titles until they have fixed the issue or have publicly commented on the security of their games. The RCE (Remote Code Execution) exploit is currently being used to inject cheats into streamers' machines, but it means the hackers are able to execute codes on the target machine remotely. This could mean anything from installing ransomware and malware to anything else the hackers want.

Seemingly, two individuals named "Destroyer2009" and "R4ndom" were responsible for hacking professional Apex Legends players during the North American Finals of Apex Legends.

The hack isn't one that you would typically expect as it didn't appear to be harvesting data or coming from within the professional players that were participating in the tournament. Instead, professional players were being given hacks from presumably two outside sources, and these hacks included classic cheats such as aimbot, wallhacks, and more. The hacks were given to specific pro players while they were in-game competing, raising massive concerns for the security of all accounts and the safety of the game.

The hackers targeted specific professional players mid-tournament, such as ImperialHal and Genburten, forcibly giving cheats, resulting in the players having to leave the game. In one instance, a professional player was given cheats and then immediately banned by Apex Legends' cheat-detection system.

By all accounts, the Meta Quest 3 is an excellent VR headset. Adding RGB video pass-through for an immersive mixed-reality experience adds a new layer to the virtual experience. The only real problem is that the Meta Quest 2, with its recent official price cut, looks to be the more popular option for those picking up a Quest.

$249 USD for the 128GB Meta Quest 2 compared to $499 USD for the 128GB Meta Quest 3 represents a 66% increase for the newer model, so Meta is looking to launch the Meta Quest 3 Lite in 2024. The new 'Lite' model is expected to retain all the improvements made to the displays and additional processing power of the Meta Quest 3.

The big difference and reason for lowering the price from the current $499 USD is the removal of the two RGB cameras - one of Quest 3's biggest draw cards.

The CEO of NVIDIA, a chip manufacturing company valued at approximately $2 trillion, has sat down for an interview at Stanford University, where he gave some wise words to students regarding being a successful entrepreneur.

Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, was asked what advice he would give to students to improve their chances of success, to which he answered that one of his strengths is that he has very low expectations and that many Stanford students have very high expectations of themselves due to the school and peers around them.

Huang then explained that when you have high expectations, you have very low resilience, "and unfortunately, resilience matters in success. I don't know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you". The NVIDIA CEO goes on to explain that he uses the terms "pain and suffering" within his company in a very "happy way" because you want to "refine the character of your company," and character comes from "people who suffered".

Like others, we had high hopes for the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake project until it seemingly ran into one development issue after another. Announced back in 2021, with Sony's full backing, the PC and PlayStation 5 exclusive would remake and rebuild one of the greatest BioWare RPGs in a modern engine with modern cinematic visuals.

Our original concerns stemmed from the fact that the ambitious project fell under the umbrella of the Embracer Group, with one of its smaller studios - Aspyr - leading development. Aspyr, best known for porting older Star Wars games to platforms like the Nintendo Switch, hadn't tackled a project of this size and scope before.

In 2022, Embracer announced that development had shifted to Sabre Interactive, a studio with a fairly consistent track record. Since then, the industry has been tumultuous, with layoffs and cancellations. Embracer Group recently sold Saber Interactive, "one of its best-earning games divisions," for $247 million.

The Department of Defense's National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has signed a $1.8 billion contract with SpaceX for the creation of hundreds of spy satellites that will be used for US intelligence, according to a report from Reuters.

The new report states the NRO has signed a $1.8 billion contract with Elon Musk's SpaceX for the development of hundreds of spy satellites that will be designed to continuously take photographs of the Earth. These satellites will be a mixture of large imaging satellites designed to collect data and relay satellites designed to transmit the collected data.

According to one source who spoke to Reuters, the new web of spy satellites, which is reportedly called Starshield, will be so vast in its capabilities that "no one can hide". Notably, neither SpaceX nor the NRO directly confirmed the $1.8 billion contract or the development of the purported satellites, but an NRO spokesperson responded to the publication, "The National Reconnaissance Office is developing the most capable, diverse, and resilient space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system the world has ever seen."

ZOTAC has just announced its expanded GPU Server Series systems. The first of the series is the Enterprise lineup, which offers companies affordable, high-performance computing solutions for countless applications, including AI.

These new ZOTAC systems are aimed at core-to-core inferencing, data visualization, model training, HPC modeling, simulation, and AI workloads. ZOTAC's new family of GPU servers comes in varying form factors and configurations, with the Tower Workstation and Rack Mount Servers both offered in either AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon CPU form.

There's support for a huge 10 x GPUs, with a modular design that makes it easier to get in and configure the system, with a high space-to-performance ratio, industry-standard features like redundant power supplies and various cooling options, ZOTAC has your back with its new GPU Server Series.

The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12GB is currently end-of-life, with the recent launch of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16GB effectively replacing the GPU at the same $799 MSRP. With a notable increase to 4K gaming performance and 33% more VRAM capacity, the remaining non-SUPER GeForce RTX 4070 Ti stock is being sold at a discount, getting rid of the old to make way for the new.

This is great news for PC gamers as the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is still a very powerful GPU that excels at 1440p gaming - with one of the best RTX 4070 Ti deals going around at the moment being for the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12GB GDDR6X Ventus 2X OC edition in White. Amazon and Newegg are currently listing this GPU for $699.99 USD, with Newegg offering an additional $20 off with a promo code.

This represents a 14.6% discount compared to the original $819 USD price for this GPU and an additional 8% discount compared to its price cut as soon as the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER hit the scene.

The new ASUS ROG NUC compact gaming PC is nearly ready, with the new system hitting retailers in Germany for around 2500 euros, or $2700 USD or so.

Inside, the ASUS ROG NUC system will feature up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" CPU that features 16 cores and 22 threads, part of Intel's Meteor Lake-H series high-end processors. We have a CPU boost speed of up to 5.1GHz, with a default TDP of 45W.

The CPU itself comes with Arc Xe-LPG graphics on-board, with a full 8 x Xe-Core configuration, but there's also a discrete GPU inside of the ASUS ROG NUC compact gaming PC in the form of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 memory and a locked 115W TGP with optional Dynamic Boost of up to 140W.

Acer has announced two new AMD Radeon GPUs joining its line-up, based on the recent global launch of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. The Acer Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7900 GRE OC graphics card and the Acer Nitro AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE OC graphics card feature an out-of-the-box 2395 MHz Boost Clock, a notable increase over the AMD's 2245 MHz reference spec.

The Acer Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7900 GRE OC is the premium model, thanks to its three FrostBlade 3.0 fans, vapor chamber cooling, and dedicated software for tweaking and customizing GPU settings. The Acer Nitro AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE OC is no slouch, with its dual axial fans and robust cooling - however, both GPUs look triple-slot in size.

Although Acer hasn't announced pricing or provided a full breakdown of specs in its product listing, we're assuming these two new Radeon GPUs will feature the same overall cooling and physical make-up as Acer's Radeon RX 7800 XT 'Predator' and 'Nitro' models - as the Radeon RX 7900 GRE features a similar 260W power rating.

Helldivers 2 is an incredible success for developer Arrowhead, and now a TD Cowen analyst estimates that 8 million copies of the game have been sold so far, and things aren't slowing down.

Helldivers 2 launched without huge fanfare, but the game has been a runaway success with some in the industry comparing the game to the likes of Guitar Hero with its virality. In a new report from Bloomberg, the outlet reports that TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz estimates that over 8 million copies of Helldivers 2 have sold so far, and those numbers are growing weekly. Creutz said: "We believe the game has performed well ahead of expectations" in a note on Thursday.

The game is only out on Sony's current-gen PlayStation 5 console and on the PC... leaving Xbox gamers unable to spread Democracy. I can only imagine those numbers going up by a couple of million if Helldivers 2 was unleashed onto the Xbox Series X/S consoles.

If you've been waiting for the new flagship ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 HERO BTF motherboard, your time is nearly here to enjoy some backside power connectors.

The new ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 HERO BTF motherboard has appeared at a French retailer for 799 euros, which works out to around $870 USD, featuring an Intel LGA 1700 socket, 20+1+2 phase power delivery, and powered by dual 8-pin EPS power connectors. You've got 4 x DIMMs that support up to 256GB of DDR5 memory through ASUS' latest BIOS updates. You'll get yourself a single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, and 5 x M.2 slots (1 x Gen5 and 4 x Gen4) for super-fast SSD storage.

The big selling point of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 HERO BTF motherboard is that it supports a dedicated graphics card high-power connector that's capable of feeding a huge 600W of power into the graphics card. This gives you a sleek-looking system, but enough power delivery for even the most beast GPU you can buy.

Star Citizen used to be one giant leap from release, but now, according to Roberts Space Industries boss Chris Roberts, we're seemingly one small step from the game hitting version 1.0.

In a new "Letter from the Chairman" on the official Star Citizen website, Roberts said that the commercial launch of Star Citizen "twinkles on the horizon". This is the point the developer wants to reach when the game is polished enough and ready to leave the alpha or early access stages.

Cloud Imperium Games has been spending a lot of time on getting Star Citizen to v1.0, which Rich Tyrer is leading in his new position as Senior Game Director of both Star Citizen and the single-player Squadron 42 release alongside Roberts himself. Tryer was one of the team's key members in getting Squadron 42 to feature-complete status, something CIG announced in late October 2023.

Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro consoles continue to ramp up with rumors, solidifying what we've heard over the last few months... but there's one very interesting tidbit here: RDNA 4 is being used.

AMD's current-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture is found both inside the Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards as well as inside the PlayStation 5 console. But, the new PlayStation 5 Pro console will reportedly feature an integrated graphics processor that uses BVH8 traversal shaders, and while that might not sound like much, it's huge news.

This confirms that the PlayStation 5 Pro is using AMD's next-gen RDNA 4 RT (ray tracing) engine, also confirming that RDNA 4 doubles the throughput per cycle, something that hasn't been mentioned in any open-source patch yet, says leaker Kepler. The BVH8 traversal shaders are an 8-level bounding volume hierarchy for ray tracing, compared to the 4-level hierarchy on the RDNA 2-based GPU inside of the APU in the PS5.

Intel has survived pressure from hundreds of millions of dollars of lost chip sales to Huawei, after Joe Biden put pressure on the company to revoke a license issued by the Trump administration that allows Intel to ship advanced CPUs to Huawei for use inside of their laptops.

In a new report from Reuters, the outlet says that Biden "has long been under pressure to revoke a license, issued by the Trump administration, that allows Intel to ship advanced central processors to Huawei for use in laptops". The push came from competitor AMD, which said it was unfair that the Ryzen CPU giant couldn't get a license to sell similar chips to Huawei.

Intel retaining its license is a huge deal, as it can continue to sell hundreds of millions of processors to the Chinese giant amid sanctions that stop GPU sales from NVIDIA and AMD. AMD can't sell its Ryzen CPUs to Huawei, but Intel can... I can understand why AMD wouldn't be happy with that, and rightfully so.

Last week, the internet was blessed with some specifications for Sony's upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro, revealing a significant performance uplift compared to the standard PlayStation 5.

The original specifications leak began from Moore's Law is Dead, which was later backed up by Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, a notable insider within the industry. Henderson wrote that the leaks were real and that Insider Gaming had seen leaked PS5 Pro documents sourced from a verifiable PlayStation developer portal. Now, Henderson has posted a new report revealing even more PS5 Pro specifications, such as System Memory, CPU, and Audio specs.

Insider Gaming has claimed to have learned more specifications of the upcoming console, and for comparison sake, the publication has included the specs of the standard PlayStation 5. The PS5 Pro system memory is rumored to have 576 GB/s (18GT/s), which is a 28% increase over the standard console. As for CPU, the PS5 Pro is rumored to have an identical CPU to the PS5 but includes a "High CPU Frequency Mode" that bumps the CPU to 3.85GHz, which is a 10% increase over the standard console.