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As the video games industry hurtles towards digital, Nintendo has proven to be uniquely resistant to the trend as it uses decades of retail expertise to champion physical game sales.

While physical game distribution is still an important part of the gaming market, most developers and platform-holders prefer digital's higher margins, controlled deployability, and consumer convenience factor. Xbox in particular has made significant strides towards all-digital with its decisions to pull down physical copies of games from store shelves. But Nintendo doesn't want to buck the status quo--there's still billions to be made from physical game sales, provided your operations are efficient enough to handle the costs and flexible enough to bend certain trends.

Nintendo's latest Q3 results show that physical gaming is still a very important part of the industry. The company made $2.036 billion from software in Holiday 2023, down nearly $300 million and reflected by a year-over-year game sales decline of about 10 million.

Nintendo generated $4.2 billion in net sales revenue during Holiday 2023, new earnings reports show.

Nintendo's holiday financials are here, and the results have come full circle to the start of the Switch generation. The company made $4.244 billion in Q3'FY24 (Oct - Dec 2023), down -12.8% year-over-year. These revenues represent the lowest holiday earnings period since the Switch launched in March 2017.

The year-over-year revenue drop is due to lower Switch hardware and software sales; in Q3'24, Nintendo sold about 66.87 million games, down -10 million games from last year. Switch console shipments are also down by 1.32 million units year-over-year (Nintendo shipped 6.9 million Switch consoles in Holiday 2023, as opposed to 8.22 million in Holiday 2022).

The latest PC gaming smash to come out of nowhere (in true Faith No More style) is Helldivers 2, which launched to take pole position on the rankings of top-sellers on Steam.

Helldivers 2, a third-person online co-op shooter, beat out the likes of Palworld, in fact, to grab the number one spot. And it's an especially interesting debut because the sequel - which wasn't a game we were familiar with, at all, until now - is a first for Sony in that it had a combined PS5 and PC launch.

However, as evidenced by the feedback on Steam, the PC version has had a rocky start, with a ton of reviews pouring forth, but a fair few are pretty barbed. Helldivers 2 has an overall 'mixed' rating so far on Valve's gaming platform.

This week on The TT Show, some big rumors in the console gaming space have gotten fans angry and excited. On the angry side, Xbox fans are in damage control, as several sources indicate that major first-party games like Gears of War, Starfield, and potentially Halo will make their way to the PlayStation 5. Everyone in the Sony camp is happy because, in addition to Xbox games, there are rumors of a brand new PlayStation handheld - a potential Sony PSP 2 with AMD hardware.

Jak and Kosta break it all down while also looking at the world of PC modding, where an RTX Remix remaster of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas with full path tracing requires at least a GeForce RTX 4080 to run well.

In tech and science news, KIOXIA sends over 130 TB of SSD storage into space, scientists say that proof of life on Mars could be here soon, Amazon boasts that its drones can deliver fresh cookies in just 15 minutes, and much more!

Intel has a new Arc graphics driver out and it provides some worthwhile improvements for frame rates, as well as support for new games.

Team Blue's new driver version 31.0.101.5194/31.0.101.5252 also does some good work with ironing out a few glitches to boot.

Let's start with the support for new games, with the Arc driver now catering for Helldivers 2, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, and Skull & Bones.

If you were in any doubt, Microsoft has confirmed that this year's major update for its desktop operating system will be Windows 11 24H2.

An official announcement puts paid to any belief that the software giant might instead bring out Windows 12 - or some other all-new Windows incarnation with a different name - later this year.

Rumors had already pretty firmly indicated that Microsoft was set to run with a 24H2 update, but now with the blog post for Windows 11 preview build 26052 (for the Canary and Dev channels), this has been confirmed.

To celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th, the famous retailer SCDKEY is organizing a special promotion throughout February with crazy prices on Windows 10 and 11 licenses starting from $17 or on Microsoft Office starting from $28! Whether you're in love or not, this is an offer you can't refuse!

We are now in February, with Valentine's Day, the famous lovers' holiday, just around the corner. Online offers are multiplying, even if the products are not strictly related to Valentine's Day. This is the case with the retailer SCDKEY.com, which is offering great discounts on original and lifetime licenses for the best Microsoft software.

Thanks to this promotion, you can buy a Windows 10 Pro license for only $17! And if you want Windows 11 right away, don't miss the dedicated offer for only $23! Finally, there are also plenty of offers on the Office suite, with the 2016 version available for only $28, which is very affordable considering the cost of purchasing a license directly from the Microsoft store.

Rumors are pointing to AMD launching its next-generation RDNA 4 GPUs later this year, with the new flagship Radeon RX 8000 Series card set to be a mid-range offering that will deliver Radeon RX 7900 XTX performance for a fraction of the cost. A potential game-changer that could leave the high-end enthusiast market to NVIDIA alone with the arrival of the GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 coming at some point.

Today comes a new article from the Linux-focused publication Phoronix and Michael Larabel, who spotted some interesting new updates for AMD Graphics on Linux. As Radeon drivers on Linux are open-source, these "updated IP (intellectual property) blocks within the open-source AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver" are tailor-made for RDNA 4.

Additionally, the amount of work being carried out for these new "blocks" covering GPU tasks points to AMD's engineers going all in on RDNA 4 (or GFX12) and moving on from iterating and optimizing RDNA 3.

NVIDIA is arguably the leader in creating GPU hardware for AI, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that it's using AI to accelerate chip design and production. Staying ahead of the game is a part of the picture; NVIDIA is now the world's sixth-largest company thanks to the rise of AI.

NVIDIA's custom LLM (Large Language Model) is called ChipNeMo, adapted from Meta's Llama 2, and is trained on the company's vast amounts of architectural data, documentation, and source code. ChipNeMo was first unveiled in late 2023 and is also used as a tool for training engineers via its chatbot functionality.

According to Bryan Catanzaro, NVIDIA's vice president of applied deep learning research, designing a new GPU takes close to 1,000 people working together. Access to an AI chatbot with all that data is an invaluable tool. The question now becomes, how much - if any - of the design for upcoming GPUs is being designed by ChipNeMo?

Robocallers have been a problem for many years now, with some individuals receiving more calls than others. But with the power of artificial intelligence (AI), the frequency of these calls has increased and seemingly reached its boiling point when an AI-powered robocaller imitated President Joe Biden.

These robocalls are likely familiar to everyone who owns a phone, and with the exponentially increasing power of AI-powered tools, scammers are becoming more and more creative in devising ways to scam individuals out of their hard-earned dollars.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is aware of this issue and was pushed to action when an AI-generated robocall imitating President Joe Biden made headlines as the voice on the end of the line was telling New Hampshire Democrats not to vote for Biden in the upcoming presidential primary.

Sony-owned streaming service Funimation will be merged with Crunchyroll, which Sony bought back in 2021, and while Funimation stated that digital copy purchases of its content would be available "forever," that doesn't seem to be the case due to terms of condition stipulations.

Subscribers of Funimation were informed by the streaming service for many years that digital copy purchases of content on its website would be available to the buyer "forever." However, a new announcement from Funimation that it's ending its service and merging with Crunchyroll has brought to light that "forever" means something different in the eyes of the streaming service.

Firstly, Funimation provided users with the option of purchasing strictly digital copies of content, or physical media that contained a digital code that would enable the user to stream that content "forever". However, Funimation's announcement reads that Crunchyroll "does not currently support Funimation Digital copies, which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported."

GeForce NOW is NVIDIA's cloud streaming service that allows subscribers and users to play a range of titles, free-to-play and in various PC libraries, across multiple devices on hardware with the power of a GeForce RTX 4080. The service is celebrating its fourth anniversary this month, coming off a big year that included adding support for Xbox Game Pass titles on PC.

Also, in recent weeks, support for Blizzard games like Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 was added with the ability to enable RTX technologies like DLSS over the cloud. NVIDIA notes that depending on the title, GeForce NOW's powerful hardware can stream up to 240 FPS, supporting ultrawide resolutions, and as announced at CES - full VRR or G-Sync support for buttery smooth visuals.

GeForce NOW is not only supported on PC but there are native apps for 4K gaming on Samsung and LG TVs and gaming up to 1440p and 120FPS on Android devices. As part of the anniversary celebration, the first 500 Ultimate and Priority GeForce NOW members can get a 20% discount on the Logitech G Cloud ($349.99) handheld device.

If you've been experiencing random stutters when gaming or scrolling through websites, it could be due to an issue with the latest GeForce Game Ready Driver 551.23. This was one of many driver updates from NVIDIA in January 2024, adding support for the new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. The good news is that a new GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 551.46 addresses these stuttering issues.

NVIDIA's Hotfix driver releases are not part of the official branch; they serve as targeted releases, providing fixes and updates to issues ahead of the next official driver release.

NVIDIA considers these sorts of updates as "beta" releases, even though they are released as soon as possible to resolve issues. If you aren't experiencing any of the mentioned issues, it's probably not worth downloading and installing. All the fixes in the GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 551.46 release notes will make their way into the next official GeForce Game Ready Driver release.

The other day, we reported on an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT price drop to $699 for the SAPPHIRE PULSE model - the first of its kind. Following AMD's official temporary price cut for the high-end GPU to $749 in the wake of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER launch, the second-most powerful RDNA 2 GPU is currently being sold for a lot less than its original $899 launch price.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER replaces the non-SUPER variant with the same $799 MSRP - and with a performance boost, it has ignited some real competition. This also means these older GeForce RTX 4070 Ti cards, like Radeon RX 7900 XT GPUs, are being sold at a discount - but in this case, it's because they're end-of-life.

So, it's been great to see powerful GPUs made more affordable. This is true of the MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, available for $699 over at Newegg (after taking $50 off with a promo code).

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), which is one of the highest academic distinctions awarded to engineers. The NAE credits NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang "for or high-powered graphics processing units, fueling the artificial intelligence revolution".

It wasn't too long ago that Jensen won the "Best CEO of 2023" by The Economist, but now his "outstanding contributions" to the world of engineering were for both the GPU and AI GPU industries. The NAE takes in a bunch of new members each year after they spend multiple months selecting them.

There are specific qualities, achievements and contributions that potential NAE members are judged by, with the academy only honoring people who have made outstanding contributions in the following fields:

Overwatch 2 is about get pretty much overhauled with its new Season 9 update, with the biggest change being that all heroes will have passive healing... yeah. Check out the Overwatch 2 Season 9 trailer below:

Blizzard posted a new blog post on its Overwatch 2 website, where it teases us that the latest season of the game is right around the corner with the philosophy guiding the team were many of the system changes coming this year. This included making PvP gameplay more rewarding and fun and providing greater transparency for players in-game.

Overwatch 2 is getting massive changes to Competitive this season, with a new progression system and all-new skill tier that sites above Grand Master. There are also major gameplay changes to combat and hero survivability, including the fact that all heroes will now have passive healing. This means tanks and DPS will heal when they're out of the action, not just healers with passive healing abilities.

I think by now we all know that the "AI PC" and AI in general is the future of technology, but we haven't been able to run generative AI tasks locally -- as the likes of ChatGPT is run in the cloud -- but that is slowly changing. The entire PC industry is being dragged into AI whether they like it, or not.

AMD and Intel both have processors on the market with NPUs (Neural Processing Units) that are dedicated parts of the chip that are built for AI workloads, but you can also use your CPU or GPU to run generative AI tasks, or a combination of them. CPUs and GPUs aren't exactly optimized for AI workloads, which is where the NPU comes in... the faster it gets, the better AI experiences we'll have on future-gen hardware.

Analyst firm IDC is making some predictions to the AI PC market, now that AI processors are here with NPUs inside of them from AMD and Intel.

Well, I didn't think I'd be writing this story at this stage of the AI game, but here we are: a Russian man has used ChatGPT-4 with a custom AI bot he wrote to scour Tinder for the best date... and he ended up getting engaged to one of the women, all thanks to AI.

Aleksandr Zhadan had a bad breakup with his then-girlfriend in 2021, shortly after he started dating women around Moscow and St. Petersburg in his native country of Russia. He said the dates ended in disaster each time, but that all changed in 2022 when he got access to OpenAI's then-new GPT-3 API.

He then developed an AI bot that would automatically swipe right on profiles that featured two pictures, later integrating GPT-3 into his bot and allowing the LLM to chat with women that met his parameters, all without him touching a keyboard or smartphone. Zhadan used the prompt, "You're a guy talking to a girl for the first time. Your task, not immediately but to invite the girl on a date".

Xiaomi has just introduced its latest Redmi G Pro gaming monitor, with the latest member of its monitor family featuring a 27-inch Mini-LED panel, 1440p resolution, 180Hz refresh, and even the latest DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity.

The new Xiaomi Redmi G Pro gaming monitor features a 27-inch Mini-LED panel with a native 2560 x 1440 resolution, 1152 partitions, and 4608 lamp beats, which means you're going to get some beautiful image quality out of Xiaomi's latest monitor. You've got four different light control modes, allowing users to tweak panel settings without going through every single option in the UI.

Xiaomi promises up to 1000 nits of brightness with HDR1000 support; you've got some great IQ on the Redmi G Pro gaming monitor. Xiaomi's new Redmi G Pro gaming monitor also has 100% sRGB, 99% DCI-P3, and 97% Adobe RGB color gamut ratings, so the company is really pushing this new monitor for quality and not just gaming.

Windows 11 has a new 'Moment' update inbound, which will be the fifth such package of new features for the desktop operating system, and it'll be arriving later this month.

That's the skinny from Zac Bowden over at Windows Central, one of the more reliable leakers when it comes to Microsoft gossip.

Bowden believes that Moment 5 will debut late in February, but it'll be a much more modest set of extra features compared to previous Moments.