Latest News - Page 728

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has confirmed it has successfully received a transmission from deep space that contains a 4K video of a cat.

The space agency took to its website to announce that its Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment that was conducted on December 11 was a success, marking a milestone achievement in deep space communications and a step forward in how humans relay information around the galaxy. The experiment consisted of streaming ultra-high-definition (4K) video from 19 million miles away.

The video was 15 seconds long and transmitted using a "cutting-edge" instrument called a "flight laser transceiver," which is integrated into NASA's Psyche spacecraft, currently located 20+ million miles away. The video was then fired at Earth from the Psyche spacecraft, taking 101 seconds to reach the planet. The 4K video of a cat was transmitted at the maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second (Mbps).

Before it became a first-party Xbox studio delivering critically acclaimed titles like The Outer Worlds, Grounded, and Pentiment, Obsidian Entertainment was known as a 'gun for hire' studio entrusted with some of the most beloved RPG franchises in gaming: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Neverwinter Nights 2, and most notably, Fallout: New Vegas.

Partnering with Bethesda Game Studios, Fallout: New Vegas would see franchise veterans who worked on the original top-down games return to the series for the first time to develop an original story using the technology and tools established for Fallout 3. To this day, it's widely considered the high-water mark for the franchise.

It turns out that the team behind Fallout: New Vegas also pitched Bethesda many different Elder Scrolls projects and games that would also serve as 'New Vegas' style spin-offs as fans waited for mainline releases like Skyrim. According to industry veteran and ex-Obsidian writer Chris Avellone, Bethesda turned him and the team down continuously.

The new Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra Wireless Smart Game Controller for Xbox and PC is available now in the U.S. (other regions like Australia are getting this in January 2024). As a premium gaming controller, it does something we haven't seen before - it features a full-color Connected Command Display. Yeah, a small LCD screen on your Xbox controller is very cool.

Not simply a gimmick, the Connected Command Display offers gamers a new way to customize RGB lighting, make adjustments to game and chat audio settings, thumbstick sensitivity, remap buttons, and more. And that includes getting chat notifications from apps on your phone.

The Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra Wireless Smart Game Controller, admittedly a mouthful of a name, is the company's premium controller. So, the fancy display is backed by premium materials, ergonomic grips, and tactile switches for all buttons, and the D-Pad is rated with a five-million-click lifecycle. The sticks also use contactless Hall Effect sensors for accuracy, durability, and to avoid stick drift.

AMD's FSR 3 and Frame Generation technology works similarly to its upscaling FSR 2 tech - it supports GeForce RTX and Radeon RX GPUs. It took a while from announcement to becoming a thing, especially as DLSS 3 and Frame Generation became a hot topic.

Last week's update and full open-source source code release of FSR 3, alongside its improved implementation in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, felt like the 1.0 launch we've been waiting for. And now, as we close out 2023, there's a new mod style that replaces DLSS 3 with FSR 3 in any game that features NVIDIA's tech.

Why would you replace DLSS 3 Frame Generation with AMD's FSR 3? That comes down to NVIDIA's tech being exclusive to the latest GeForce RTX 40 Series of graphics cards - using new specialized AI hardware. AI doesn't power FSR 3, so modding FSR 3 into Cyberpunk 2077 allows the millions of GeForce RTX 20 Series and GeForce RTX 30 Series gamers out there to enable Frame Generation and get a sizable boost to in-game performance.

Another day, another Chinese manufacturer announces a new gaming handheld... today, AOKZOE has announced its new A2 gaming handheld. Check it out:

The new AOKZOE A2 gaming handheld features a 7-inch 1920 x 1200 display at 120Hz, a slightly smaller panel than the 8-inch display used on the A1 PRO gaming handheld. AOKZOE says that the new bezel-less design on the A2 is something to point out, but I don't know about that.

Inside, we have the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U or the Ryzen 7 7840U. The Ryzen 7 6800U has a Zen 3+ CPU and RDNA 2 GPU, while the Ryzen 7 7840U features a Zen 4 CPU and RDNA 3 GPU. We should expect an upgraded Ryzen 8040 series "Hawk Point" APU inside of a future gaming handheld from AOKZOE, and probably soon.

Halo Infinite's new holiday-themed update is now live, brings a new free 20-tier battle pass.

It's Christmas time, and that means snow is falling, millions of people are wrapping presents, and Winter Contingency is back in Halo Infinite.

The new seasonal event features a 20-tier free battle pass with a multitude of rewards, including the Winterknight legendary helmet and the Frost Glaze epic visor effect. Other rewards include 4x XP boosters, 3x color effects, and various Mark VII armor pieces (except for the endcap level 20 unlocks, which are multi-core).

Intel has had a lot to talk about lately; at its recent AI Everywhere event, the company unveiled its new 5th Gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" CPU platform, the new Core Ultra branding and their Meteor Lake CPUs, as well as its next-gen AI accelerator: Gaudi 3.

But now we've got reports from Korean media that Intel's upcoming Gaudi 3 AI accelerator could compete with NVIDIA's current-gen H100 AI GPU and AMD's just-announced Instinct MI300X AI accelerator. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said: "Our Gaudi roadmap remains on track with Gaudi3 out of the fab, now in packaging and expected to launch next year. In 2025, Falcon Shores brings our GPU and Gaudi capabilities into a single product".

We know that the new Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerator will have 1.5x more performance than the previous-gen Gaudi 2, as well as 4x more BFloat16 performance, twice the compute power, and a 50% bump in memory capacity from 96GB on Gaudi 2 to a much better 144GB on Gaudi 3. We should expect Intel to be using HBM3 or the faster HBM3e memory standard, but that still needs to be confirmed.

BenQ has just unveiled one of the fastest gaming monitors ever, with the introduction of the new ZOWIE XL2586X and its huge 540Hz refresh rate. Check it out:

The new BenQ ZOWIE XL2586X features a 24.1-inch panel and native 1080p resolution, joined by its 540Hz refresh rate. We're looking at a "Fast TN" panel that is perfect for twitchy gamers who feel every single hertz.

BenQ notes that the use of the Fast TN panel has improvements for esports, where compared to a regular IPS panel, a Fast TN panel provides clearer and sharper outlines of overall moving images... this helps you focus and have less distraction from an unwanted afterimage of the motions in the middle of your game.

Insomniac Games' 2018 release of Spider-Man is by far the best-earning first-party PlayStation 4 game, new leaked data indicates.

New information unearthed from the recent Insomniac Games data breach reveals key information about Sony's video games business, include sales volume and revenue figures. We won't be directly publishing the tables and data that were leaked as part of this illegal ransomware hack, nor will we be linking to the information. For the purposes of this article, we'll be publishing metrics in a second-hand capacity.

According to the records, Insomniac's Spider-Man game from 2018 stands as the best-earning first-party PlayStation 4 game to date with $827 million net sales revenue generated from 22 million game sales. This information is outdated though. It was accurate as of February-ish 2022, which takes place during Sony's Q4 Fiscal Year 2021 period. It's likely that the values are higher now.

UL has just announced that its new 3DMark Steel Nomad cross-platform benchmark will be a FREE upgrade to 3DMark owners, when it releases in Q1 2024.

The new Steel Nomad benchmark will replace the current Time Spy benchmark, with the new benchmark split into two: Steel Nomad and Steel Nomad Light. Steel Nomad is their recommended benchmark for measuring non-raytraced gaming performance for high-end computers running Windows, macOS, and Linux.

On the other hand, Steel Nomad Light has been built for testing the performance of lightweight devices like Windows laptops with integrated graphics, Windows-on-Arm devices, Apple M-series silicon, iOS, and Android-powered devices across the planet.

Moore Threads has just announced its new MTT S4000 AI GPU that will work "seamlessly" with NVIDIA's CUDA framework, thanks to an in-house MUSIFY translation tool.

The new Moore Threads MTT S4000 AI GPU features MTLink 1.0, which is a new multi-GPU connector that we don't have photos of, but it sounds similar to NVIDIA's in-house NVLink connector. The new MTT S4000 AI GPU has 48GB of GDDR6 memory with up to 768GB/sec of memory bandwidth, compared to the 48GB of memory on NVIDIA's RTX 6000 GPU with 960GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

Moore Threads is passively cooling its new MTT S4000 AI GPU, with 25 TFLOPs of FP32 single-precision compute performance, 100 TFLOPs of FP16/BF16, and 200 TOPS in INT8. This is all found on a PCIe Gen5 x16 connector, too.

2023 was a banger year for gaming, no matter if you spent most of that time playing on a PC or a console like the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, or Nintendo Switch. With heavy hitter releases like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, Diablo IV, Starfield, and Marvel's Spider-Man 2, it has been a great year for new releases.

If new games aren't your thing, perhaps you spent most of 2023 firing up Counter-Strike: GO and then Counter-Strike 2, or maybe, like me, you played an alarming amount of a co-op rogue-like cooking game called Plate Up! on PC.

And if you want to see where you've spent your 2023 gaming time, there's a bunch of annual summaries from the major platforms presenting your annual gaming habits in fun holiday-themed presentations. So check out your Year in Review on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo.

MSI has unleashed its new Spatium M750 Pro PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 FROZR SSD, packing up to 12.4GB/sec (12,400MB/sec) reads and up to 11.8GB/sec (11,800MB/sec) writes. Our storage editor, Jon Coulter, writes a detailed review you can read here.

MSI's new Spatium 570 Pro SSD is a new Gen5 SSD that has incredible reads and writes, powered by the Phison E26 SSD controller and MSI's in-house towered FROZR heatsink. It's an enthusiast-grade heatsink that features Core Pipes that silently reduce temperatures of the Gen5 SSD by up to 20C under a stylish cover that ensures you're getting those wicked high reads and writes all day and night long.

You can install the new MSI Spatium 570 Pro SSD into your Gen4 M.2 slot and still enjoy 7.3GB/sec (7300MB/sec) reads, meaning that no matter what M.2 SSD slot it goes into, it'll give you huge speeds. Gen5 board owners in particular, with up to 12.4GB/sec is pretty tasty, if you ask me.

New first-party PlayStation games sales data has leaked as part of the Insomniac Games data breach.

Sony's Insomniac Games development studio recently suffered a ransomware attack that has exposed over 1TB of confidential information, including employee records, the terms and license deals of upcoming games, budgets, costs, and ROI info, and a goldmine of sales data.

The sales data provides an interesting snapshot of how well certain games have sold, including Days Gone, which moved 7.3 million copies as of early-ish 2022. Bloodborne is one of the older games on the list, and Sony is famous for not providing updated sales figures for the game. The leak finally reveals that Bloodborne has sold nearly 7.5 million copies as of early 2022.

It appears that Sony has secured multi-year exclusivity for X-Men games as part of its contract with Marvel.

It's no secret that Sony Interactive Entertainment has exclusive rights to make Spider-Man games and films, but the Japanese entertainment giant has also negotiated game exclusivity on the X-Men franchise as well.

New details exposed in the recent Insomniac Games leak reveals sensitive and confidential details of the studio's deal with Marvel, specifically for the X-Men license. According to Powerpoint slide, which we cannot show, Sony will acquire and retain exclusivity for X-Men games for the next 12 years, until 2035. Other studios can release games with X-Men characters in them, but it appears that no one can make games principally set around the X-Men besides Insomniac Games.

One of Sony's premiere video game studios has suffered a big data breach, and lots of info has been leaked out into the wild.

A bit ago, Insomniac Games was hacked by Rhysida ransomware and the studio's stolen data was put up for auction. Now Insomniac's data has been released, revealing practically everything about the studio past or present via 1.3 million stolen files.

The data includes information about new games like Wolverine, as well as extremely sensitive financial information that offers dollar value on budgets, returns on investment, profit margins, and the general cost of operations. Insomniac's full game slate has also been leaked, confirming some interesting titles that had been (and are) in development. The leaks highlight the games that Insomniac is currently working on, and plans to work on, from now until 2030 or thereabouts.

Apple has today released a new macOS software update that is designed to fix a particularly nasty bug that had the potential to really embarrass a Mac user when they shared their screen.

The bug, which was reported online, caused random windows in other macOS Spaces to appear on-screen when a Mac's screen-sharing feature was enabled. While the Space on-screen may be clear, it was possible for screen sharing to accidentally make another Space available to those watching along. The potential consequences there are obvious, ranging from showing others embarrassing things like a browser window that was believed to be hidden. But there was also a potential privacy issue that could have seen data accidentally shared with a third party.

Thankfully, Apple says that this macOS 14.2.1 update fixes this issue, adding that it fixed a session rendering issue to improve session tracking. The result? It appears that the bug has been fixed and that those who share their screen should now have a better understanding of exactly what is being shown to others.

Apple has today released iOS 17.2.1 to the public, a release that was made just eight days after the iOS 17.2 update was released to the public. That update brought with it a number of new features including spatial video recording on the iPhone 15 Pro and a new Journal app for more mindful journaling. But this new update is nothing like the iOS 17.2 release, and it instead focuses on bug fixes.

Despite the focus on bugs, Apple says that this is a release that is recommended for all users and as such we'd also suggest that those who don't yet have this update installed should probably rectify that sooner rather than later. Apple hasn't specifically said what bug fixes this update addresses, but the fact that Apple saw fit to release it just a matter of days after the last update suggests that the bugs were pretty big ones - Apple didn't want to go into the Christmas holiday period without releasing this update.

Those who have compatible iPhones can now download the new update via the Settings app, with iOS 16.7.4 also released for those who don't want to, or can't, update to the iOS 17 releases.

Microsoft could push out its next-generation console considerably earlier than expected, with another rumor emerging with the claim that the next Xbox could be released in 2026 - something we heard at the end of last week.

That's a lot sooner than the previously rumored launch timeframe of around 2028, as you may recall, and this latest theorizing comes from RedGamingTech (RGT) on YouTube.

RGT tells us that this much sooner launch would mean that theoretically the next-gen Xbox will run with Zen 5 silicon, rather than Zen 6, which Microsoft was supposed to be considering as the engine for the console.

Sony has recently published a new patent that reveals the company is working on a new technology that changes the difficulty of a game in real-time.

The new patent outlines a new technology that will be designed to adjust the overall difficulty of the situation the player is facing by analyzing how a player interacts with in-game mechanics and elements. This technology is officially called "Adaptive Difficult Calibration For Skills-Based Activities In Virtual Environments", and it involves the use of algorithms designed to asses the aforementioned player interactions with the virtual world.

The idea behind this technology is increasing player engagement time with a game, as titles that include this technology will dynamically alter the difficulty to make sure a player is gaming at the perfect sweet spot of difficult, but not too difficult where they would want to give up and revisit it another time. Players' competency levels will differ depending on the challenges ahead of them, and with this technology, players will essentially be able to have a tailored difficulty experience in-game.