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Nintendo's next-gen Switch 2 handheld is in the news today with some new leaks from Moore's Law is Dead, teasing Xbox Series S console levels of performance, better raytracing, and console-optimized DLSS technology.

The next-gen Nintendo Switch 2 handheld will feature a custom "T239" SoC from NVIDIA, which features 8 x Arm A78C cores, an Ampere GPU with 1536 CUDA cores, 128-bit LPDDR5 memory support with up to 102GB/sec of memory bandwidth in total. There are "extra little bonuses" inside of this chip, too.

MLID says that with this new hardware, the Nintendo Switch 2 would have the raw performance of the Xbox Series S console, but with better ray tracing, console-optimized DLSS technology, and enough VRAM to actually run modern games than what the Xbox Series S is capable of pumping out. MLID adds that's the "pie in the sky" outcome of the Switch 2, of what Nintendo can choose what they can go with based on the SoC that NVIDIA designed for them.

Nintendo will launch its next-gen Switch 2 in the future, with some new leaks from insiders at NVIDIA leaking that it will use a Samsung 8nm process node and up to 16GB of LPDDR5 memory.

In a new video from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, we're to expect the next-gen Nintendo Switch 2 will reportedly use a new SoC from NVIDIA on Samsung's older 8nm process node, which makes sense. Why? Because NVIDIA has a tight relationship with Samsung for its 8nm process node, making GeForce RTX 30 series "Ampere" GPUs, it's very economical for Nintendo for its new Switch 2 handheld.

Sure, NVIDIA could walk up to TSMC and ask to make its next-gen SoC for the Nintendo Switch 2 on a smaller 6nm process node, but that isn't as economical as using Samsung's older 8nm process node. TSMC's fresh 6nm process node is being used heavily by AMD for multiple products: CPUs, APUs, consoles, and more.

PlayStation leads the Big 3's earnings with $30 billion revenues generated through calendar year 2023, but Xbox isn't so far behind with $18 billion.

Now that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have all published their holiday earnings reports, we can compile the data and get a total sum for the entire year. According to data provided by the companies and analyzed by TweakTown, gaming's Big 3 generated over $60 billion in combined annual revenues.

PlayStation leads the charge with a staggering $30.12 billion made during the year. Compare that with PlayStation's $24.410 billion revenues for 2022, and we see a significant 23% spike in earnings on a year-over-year basis, or an increase of $5.71 billion. Sony's revenues are high, but profits are slipping as the company faces steep costs.

Ubisoft's experimental never-ending Assassin's Creed game is taking shape.

Assassin's Creed Infinity is part of what I call Games-as-a-Platform. It's a lot like Games-as-a-Service, but there's extra steps. Whereas GaaS games are typically elongated in a continuous stream of content, GaaP titles would have a distinct level of separation between the games. This would create a kind of episodic approach that fits the Assassin's Creed series quite well, what with each game taking place during a different historical era.

Ubisoft has loosely outlined what Assassin's Creed Infinity will be, confirming it'll act as a kind of one-stop hub for all future games in the series. Infinity is kind of like a combination of a store, social hub, and game launcher, all within the main app client. So think of AC Infinity as the main menu, and each game as a different mode of sorts.

How much money does Magic: The Gathering make? Hasbro's latest financials offer some eye-opening numbers.

Hasbro's latest earnings report shows a breakdown of its key segment earnings for the entire 2023 year. While revenues are down to $5 billion from $5.8 billion a year ago, gaming earnings are up, and a lot of that is owed to an iconic early 90's card game.

According to the financials, the Magic: The Gathering franchise generated $1.085 billion in 2023, accounting for over half of Hasbro's total gaming earnings.

PlayStation's peripherals revenue surged during the holiday 2023 season, and the new PS Portal remote player may have had a lot to do with it.

Sony released the PlayStation Portal handheld in November 2023 for $199, and at first glance, the Portal looked to be a valid PS Vita successor. The reality is that the PS Portal is a niche product that, like the more recent PlayStation accessories, is specifically designed to maximize profits (Sony has said that accessories are "highly profitable"). Unlike the Vita, the Portal cannot play games on its own and entirely relies on a PlayStation 5 in order to operate. It's a remote play-only device, seen as a receiver of sorts.

Despite its limitations, it appears the PlayStation Portal was a big win for Sony. In a recent interview with Game File, a Sony tech whiz said the consumer reception has been quite strong.

Sony's gaming division is delivering record revenues, but profits have tanked. We take a look at the reasons behind the substantial drops.

Holiday 2023 was a big quarter for PlayStation. The platform made $9.766 billion revenue from Oct - Dec, a new historic high for a Q3 period. PlayStation's operating profit, on the other hand, was only $582 million. This represents a 6% profit margin, which is quite low, and is the seventh quarter in a row where Sony's Game & Network Services segment made sub double-digit margins.

Sony is the market leader when it comes to overall revenue, but Nintendo enjoys better operating margins because of its success in a more concentrated market with heavy emphasis on exclusive content, games, and hardware features. Nintendo often sees operating margins above 30%, and sometimes as high as 40% throughout the Switch's lifecycle; across that same aligned timeline, PlayStation's highest operating margin was 21% during mid-2022.

Costs are rising and platform-holders are scrambling to find new ways to monetize users. On-screen advertisements may present one such opportunity to the console market.

Advertisements may be coming to the dedicated gaming environment in some shape or form. Experts have speculated that subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus could get lower-cost ad-supported tiers, not unlike Netflix, with users being able to watch an on-screen ad in exchange for playtime.

Xbox President Sarah Bond has also discussed something similar in public interviews, suggesting that Xbox would offer "slices of gameplay" to users. In December, Xbox chief financial officer Tim Stuart also suggested ads could come to xCloud game streaming.

It's time to put your skeptical hat on - and your coat of caution as well, for good measure - as we dive into the latest rumor drop for AMD's next-gen graphics cards.

This is from RedGamingTech (RGT) on YouTube who has new details about RDNA 4 GPUs, namely Navi 48 and 44, which will be aimed at the mid-range market. (AMD isn't doing high-end products this time around, as you're likely aware).

RGT has an update from sources which changes the predicted specs for these GPUs, with both of them now said to run with GDDR6 RAM (rather than GDDR7 as previously stated by the YouTuber).

Tekken fighting game guru Katsuhiro Harada delivers an eye-opening look at the inner workings of video games development.

Gaming is a very costly and risky venture. Even in the best of times, there's no guarantee that your game will break even, let alone sell millions of copies. 2024's mass layoffs prove that now is far from the best of games in the games industry, and publishers/developers are monetizing nearly all facets of their projects in an attempt to not only recoup rising development budgets but also make profit along the way.

Tekken 8 is one such game with a high budget and an in-game microtransaction store to help make more money. The Tekken Store rolled out today in Tekken 8, and days ago franchise director/producer Katsuhiro Harada gave a frank explanation on why the cosmetic storefront is essential for the game. According to Harada, Tekken 8's budget was more than double that of Tekken 7.

Tekken 8's new in-game microtransaction storefront is now live, and the prices of the new Tekken Coins currency has also been revealed.

Tekken 8's latest update brought a new optional spending option for Iron Fist enthusiasts. It's called the Tekken Store, and it has its own premium currency that gamers can buy with real money. The content is entirely cosmetic and allows users to buy costumes and bundles with greater customization options.

The shop can be accessed via the main menu, but it also has an interactive presence in the Tekken Fight Lounge. This is a very metaverse-like approach to multiplayer and customization, with a kind of online hub where players can mingle, befriend one another, and fight battles--a setup that's reminiscent of other Bandai Namco games like Dragonball Xenoverse.

A team of astronomers has detected more objects around two of the most interesting planets in the solar system.

The solar system is now home to some new lunar members, and they are orbiting Neptune and Uranus. According to an announcement from Carnegie Science, astronomers have discovered the first new moon of Uranus in 20 years, which researchers believe is the smallest orbiting the planet. Two new moons were also discovered orbiting Neptune, and according to the press release, one is one of the faintest moons to ever be detected by ground-based telescopes.

According to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which announced the discovery of the trio of moons, the total count of moons now orbiting Uranus has increased to 28 and has been officially named S/2023 U1, which will later be changed to the name of a character from a Shakespeare play to fall in line with the other satellites orbiting Uranus. The Magellan Telescope was used to detect the new Uranian moon and also one of the new Neptune moons, with the other being discovered with the Subaru Telescope.

An event in Scotland that was marketed as a "Willy Wonka Experience" resulted in pandemonium after parents who arrived at the location were more than disappointed, even to the point where they called the local authorities.

This real-life "Willy Wonka Experience" was hosted by a company called House of Illuminati, which used AI-generated images to market the event to families for a price of $44 a ticket. The experience was described as "immersive" by the company and was meant to be based on "Wonka", the newly released Willy Wonka movie starring Timothee Chalamet. When ticket buyers arrived at the location, they quickly began to understand that they were scammed as the event didn't even get close to what the marketing materials were portraying.

Instead of a seemingly mystical landscape, families were inside a warehouse that was filled with what only appeared to be cheap props, foldable chairs/tables, and weak actors. 19-year-old Eva Stewart, who attended the event, spoke to the BBC and said the House of Illuminati marketed the Willy Wonka Experience as an event filled with "optical illusions and big chocolate fountains and sweets," but what was there was "practically an abandoned, empty warehouse, with hardly anything in it."

A group of researchers have created a new type of optical storage device that is the same shape as a DVD or Blu-Ray disc but is capable of storing an incredible amount of data.

With the rise of streaming services, Blu-Ray and DVD purchases have fallen off a cliff, with purchases for both primarily being done by collectors or hard-core fans of that specific media. However, that may change if researchers from the University of Shanghai have anything to say about it as they have created a new optical disc that is capable of holding 1.6 petabits, or around 200,000 gigabytes, which is enough capacity to store more than 40,000 DVD movies or just over 200,000 Blu-Ray movies.

IEEE Spectrum reports the new disc has a capacity that is around 4,000 times the data density of a Blu-Ray, which is approximately 24 times the capacity of a typical hard drive. Typical optical disc drives, while being relatively cheap to manufacture, are limited by their low data capacity, which can be traced by to the technique manufacturers use to make data storage possible. IEEE Spectrum explains data on optical discs is usually stored in a single layer, but now scientists have cracked the code with a new technique that allows data encoding on 100 layers.

Intel's Core i9-14900KS, the 'special edition' (limited run) of the Raptor Lake Refresh flagship rumored to be in the pipeline, has just shown up in a leaked photo.

I_Leak_VN, a leaker (you'd never guess) on X (formerly Twitter), shared an image of the packaging for the Core i9-14900KS.

It looks authentic, but as ever, we must regard any leak with a suitable degree of caution.

Reports indicate that Apple's next iPad Pro will be the biggest change the company has made to the line-up design since 2018, as new renders seemingly show a much thinner device and the adoption of OLED.

Rumors have been circulating for quite some time that Apple is working on new iPad tablets that will feature the new 3nm M3 chip, an adoption of OLED display technology for both the 11 and 12.9-inch models, and seemingly much thinner form factor, according to newly discovered renders by MacRumors. The adoption of OLED technology ushers in better color, contrast, deeper blacks, and much more. The CAD renders indicate the new iPad Pro line-up will be much thinner than current generation iPad Pros.

Notably, these CAD renders are typically leaked out of factories receiving these dimensions to create accessories for Apple's products. An example of this would be factories dedicated to manufacturing cases for phones and tablets. The reasoning behind giving these renders to factories making accessories for Apple's products is so they can prepare for the upcoming launch, as most buyers will want to wrap their new Apple product in some kind of protective casing.

The galactic war is being fought by hundreds of thousands of gamers from around the world, each trying to do their part to protect specific planets across the galaxy.

Helldivers 2 has quickly become one of the most popular games being enjoyed right now as hundreds of thousands of gamers dive down into planets, defeating seamlessly never-ending hoards of various enemies. Players are all on the same and are attempting to prevent the galaxy from being taken over by foreign invaders, and progress made by any team adds to the total foothold players have on that specific planet.

However, Helldivers 2 developers fight back players by taking back regions, sometimes viciously, and according to Arrowhead Studios CEO Johan Pilestedt, the developers behind the hit title, there is one man pulling all the strings, similar to a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master. PCGamer interviewed Pilestedt who said one developer named Joel has been appointed to the role of "Game Master" and he is equipped with multiple tools that give him "a lot of control over the player experience".

CES 2024 was littered with announcements from various companies unveiling their upcoming QD-OLED gaming monitors, with GIGABYTE AORUS showcasing five individual displays at the show.

While the full specifications for the five monitors unveiled by AORUS aren't available yet, we do have two full specifications sheets to dig into, and they are arguably the most important monitors in the stack AORUS announced. The AORUS FO27Q3 and AORUS FO32U2 have had their full specifications sheets uploaded to the AORUS website, and if you don't know by now, typically, model names reveal the size of the display. In this case, the AORUS FO27Q3 is a 27-inch display, and the FO32U2 is a 32-inch display.

So, what has AORUS got in store for us with the FO32U2? This latest offering features a QD-OLED panel from Samsung Display that features Anti-Reflection technology, 99% DCI-P3 color coverage, a resolution of 3840 x 2160 (UHD), a typical brightness of 250 nits, a response time of 0.03ms (GTG), VES Display True Black 400, two 5W speakers, and various connectivity options. The spec sheet states the FO32U2 has 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x USB Type-C with power delivery up to 18W, 2x USB 3.0 downstream ports, 1x USB 3.0 upstream port, 1x 3.5mm headphone jack, and 1x microphone jack.

Electronic Arts' next Battlefield game is expected to be released with a dedicated battle royale mode that will be free-to-play, according to a new report from Insider Gaming.

The recently released exclusive report outlines what we can expect from the next installment in Electronic Arts' Battlefield franchise. The next Battlefield game is being developed by Ripple Effect, who is being headed by Christian Grass, a former DICE LA member. Insider Gaming reports it has been informed the next mainline Battlefield game will be taking a "back to its roots approach" that will include classic 64-player matches, a return to its four-class system, and a complete overhaul of its in-game destruction systems.

Notably, the publication states it's learned the next Battlefield will be set in modern times, specifically between the dates of 2025 and 2030. As for the story, it will be focussed on modern technology used in war. Furthermore, Insider Gaming learned Ripple Effect is working on a "new experience" for the coming Battlefield game - a Battle Royale title that's going to be free-to-play and follow in the footsteps of Call of Duty: Warzone, which was released as free-to-play but included in next installment in the franchise.

A group of international researchers discovered a 240-million-year-old fossil that strongly resembles a mythical creature from China.

The team of scientists discovered a new fossil of the Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, which is a 16-foot-long aquatic reptile that lived during the Triassic period and was home to modern-day China. The fossil dates back approximately 240 million years, and according to a recent press release from the National Museums of Scotland, the new fossil was discovered in the Guizhou Province of southern China.

Notably, the remains of Dinocephalosaurus orientalis were first discovered in 2003 with the recovery of a skull, but now this new fossil has enabled researchers to quite literally piece together the rest of the strange creature. Dinocephalosaurus orientalis are long-necked creatures with 32 separate neck vertebrae and a skull and jaw designed to trap fish. Furthermore, the neck vertebrae gave Dinocephalosaurus orientalis a snake-like appearance, leading to the striking resemblance to the mythical Chinese dragon.