Latest News - Page 767

Alan Wake 2 has been a hit of a sequel without a doubt, scoring well with critics and players alike going by Metacritic ratings - and a big new patch applies some polish to further make the horror game shine.

The patch is here for PC, Xbox and PS5 (all of them '08' version updates) and it contains in excess of 200 tweaks and bug fixes for Alan Wake 2.

Some of the highlights on all platforms are a better implementation for auto-aim in parts of the game, and a few fixes for gremlins in the works that would stop the player's progress stone cold (like conversations failing to trigger, or not being able to select a dialogue choice that you want).

Ausom has announced that it will be launching the "Gallop", an electric scooter that's capable of reaching a top speed of 41 mph.

Ausom has taken to its website to showcase the Gallop, which it has outfitted with an incredible amount of technology that pushes the electric scooter to new levels of capability. The company has whacked a dual 1200W powerful motor onto the Gallop that's able to climb an angle of 35%, along with an impressive maximum distance of 55 miles off a single charge thanks to its 23.2Ah removable battery pack.

Furthermore, Ausom has placed dual hydraulic disc brakes on the Gallop that bring the e-scooter to a smooth, safe stop. Additionally, Ausom has included a slick LCD display, shock absorption springs for going over rough terrain, two charging ports, an all-round lighting system, and effortless folding capabilities. As for charging, Ausom writes on its website that its dual charging port design allows the Gallop to reach its maximum charge in just 6 hours.

After announcing it back on October 17, Apple has today finally made the Apple Pencil (USB-C) available to buy. The cheapest Apple Pencil ever, you can now get your hands on this new stylus for just $79.

The lower price makes this an interesting option considering the original Apple Pencil as well as the second generation model remain on sale alongside it. In fact, this Apple Pencil borrows some of the features from both of those options while being compatible with every iPad that has a USB-C port.

The USB-C aspect is an important one, of course. While the original Apple Pencil has a Lightning connector and the second-generation model charges wirelessly, the new USB-C model has a USB-C port for plugging a cable into. That port lives beneath a sliding cover.

Apple finally announced the M3 series of chips during its big 'Scary Fast' Mac event earlier this week and with three chips coming in two different MacBook Pros, there is no shortage of options. But at the very top of the lineup is the new M3 Max and early benchmarks show that it's going to be a bit of a beast.

While Apple chose to compare the new M3 series of chips to their M1 counterparts or the even older Intel silicon, it turns out that the M3 Max is going to be able to more than compete with the very best that Apple had to offer previously. That chip, the M2 Ultra, is currently sold in the Mac Studio and Mac Pro and will surely be replaced by an M3 Ultra eventually. But given the figures the M3 Max is posting, that M3 Ultra is sure to be quite the performance boss when it does finally arrive.

The early benchmarks were first reported by AppleInsider and appear to show a machine running through Benchmark's tests under the identifier of Mac15,3. That's the 15-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 Max inside, so it sits right at the top of Apple's laptop lineup. And the scores are mightily impressive. The single-core score for the M3 Max is 2,971 and the multi-core score is 20,785 which doesn't mean all that much in isolation. So what about that M2 Ultra?

Hot on the heels of announcing new, more powerful Macs, and then discontinuing the 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple has now canceled something else. In this case, the canceled product isn't hardware but rather a service.

That service is the Apple Music Voice tier which previously allowed people to pay a reduced price for their music streaming so long as they only wanted to access it using Siri. That was particularly useful for owners of HomePods, for example, because they wouldn't need to access their music using the desktop or mobile apps. However, the Apple Music Voice tier is no longer available after Apple canceled it.

The Apple Music Voice tier was previously available for just $4.99 per month and was originally launched back in 2021. Before its cancelation, Apple Music Voice was available in the U.S., Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, and the U.K.

NASA's Juno spacecraft has gathered new data that leads researchers to believe there are organic compounds located on the surface of the moon Ganymede.

The new research has been published in the paper Nature Astronomy and details an observation made by Juno on June 7, 2021, where the small spacecraft imaged the surface of the planet in infrared. Juno conducted this fly-by at an altitude of 650 miles, and according to the paper, it yielded results that indicated the abundant presence of salts and organics in both dark and bright terrains that are protected by the moon's magnetic field.

So, what does this mean? According to Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, these results indicate the remnants of a deep ocean that made its way to the surface. Notably, Ganymede is the largest of Jupiter's 79 moons, with a diameter of 3,273 miles. It's the ninth-largest object in the solar system - even bigger than the planet Mercury and dwarf planet Pluto. NASA's Galileo spacecraft detected the presence of a liquid ocean deep beneath its icy shell in the 1990s.

Released over a decade ago, Kepler-based GeForce GTX graphics cards are what you'd consider pretty old when stacked up against the Ampere and Ada Lovelace generation of today. NVIDIA's Kepler architecture for graphics cards debuted in 2012, with the successor to Fermi all about improving energy efficiency alongside performance.

The new Streaming Multiprocessor Architecture, or SMX, was a major milestone in developing GeForce hardware for PC gaming. Kepler GPUs were also the first to introduce a dynamic GPU Boost.

Found inside the GeForce GTX 600 and GTX 700 Series of GPUs, the GK110-400-A1 variant of the high-end 28nm Kepler chip was also inside the very first GeForce GTX TITAN that launched in 2013.

The new XPG Invader X is the latest mid-tower PC chassis from XPG, the gaming performance brand from ADATA. One look at the frameless tempered glass front and side panels, and you can tell this is a case all about highlighting and showcasing your build's components, from the CPU cooler to the GPU, fans, and RGB lighting.

As part of the announcement for the XPG Invader X, the company describes it as a case you'd put on a desk instead of underneath one. Of course, it's not all about style, as cooling is always a big part of XPG's case design - and with the Invader X, you've got a pre-installed 120mm ARGB fan plus 4 x 120mm ARGB reverse-blade fans to play with.

Radiator-wise, the Invader X supports up to 360mm in both side and top orientation - which means there's support for GPUs up to 400mm in length. Not only a looker, XPG boasts that with multiple fans, radiator support, and optimal airflow, it's a case tailor-made for overclocking.

Netflix has been playing around with its ad-supported plan for 12 months now, taking in a considerable amount of feedback from users and its partnership with Microsoft Advertising, and its continuing to evolve the ad-supported tier with downloads in the coming days.

The streaming giant published a new article explaining its last year in Netflix ads, where it's pointed out that it's enhanced the member experience with upgraded features within their ads plans to include 1080p versus 720p video quality, two concurrent streams, and now downloads will be available "by the end of this week".

Netflix says that every member of their ad-supported plan will be able to download their favorite TV shows and movies, which will make Netflix the first -- and only -- ad-supported streamer to offer downloads. On top of that, the streaming company explained that starting in Q1 2024, their advertisers across the planet will be using their new binge ad (wt) format that has been analyzing the behavior of watching multiple episodes in a row. We'll see streamers enjoying 4 episodes in a row without ads versus the 3 in a row after which you're presented with an ad. That changes in the coming months.

Bethesda Game Studios has finally given us some info on the first major patch for Starfield, the development team's massive sci-fi RPG that has been one of the most talked about and played games of 2023. And for those with NVIDIA GPUs (especially from the GeForce RTX 40 Series), you'll be pleased to know that official DLSS support is coming, including DLSS 2 Super Resolution and even DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

Of course, DLSS and Frame Generation support for Starfield has been available via community-created mods since the game first debuted in September. Still, it's great to see official support coming. Bethesda took to social media to confirm that the update will arrive in Steam Beta form next week before rolling out to all PC and Xbox players.

Interestingly, the studio notes that AMD FSR3 support is coming later - which is strange for what is an AMD-sponsored release. For those without NVIDIA GPUs, there's much to look forward to, including proper display and HDR controls.

The rise in popularity of PC gaming handhelds has been one of the most interesting things in recent years, with devices like the Steam Deck from Valve and ROG Ally from ASUS leading the pack. AMD's mobile processor technology with integrated graphics powers the latter, specifically the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme. An impressive gaming chip that's also found in the new Lenovo Legion Go - which is now available starting from USD 699.99.

With a price point higher than the competition, the Lenovo Legion Go might be the most impressive PC gaming handheld to date, thanks to its cutting-edge design and other notable features. The standout is the 8.8-inch QHD (2560 x 1600) IPS Touchscreen display, which is not only large for a gaming handheld but comes packed with specs like 500 nits of brightness, 144Hz refresh rate, and 97% DCI-P3 color accuracy.

Throw in 16 GB of LPDDR5X-7500MHz, 1TB of internal M.2 SSD storage, and Wi-Fi 6E, and the Lenovo Legion Go doesn't cut any corners. Outside of the impressive specs, one of the big design features is a detachable controller system similar to the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons - except optimized for PC gaming.

The UK government has just announced it's working on the most powerful supercomputer it's ever built, which will be known as Isambard-AI, which, when it's built, will be one of the most powerful AI supercomputers in the world.

Isambard-AI will be capable of over 200 quadrillion calculations per second once it's powered on in summer 2024, where it will be housed at the University of Bristol. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is building the new AI supercomputer, which will be powered by 5448 x NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, capable of over 21 exaflops of AI performance and over 21 quintillion floating point operations per second for AI applications like large language models (LLMs).

The University of Bristol says that the new Isambard-AI supercomputer will be 10x faster than the fastest AI supercomputer that's available in the UK today. Isambard-AI will also get connected to other supercomputers that are based in the UK, which will see performance increase even more. Simon McIntosh-Smith from the Univesity of Bristol said that Isambard-AI "will be one of the most powerful AI systems for open science anywhere".

We already heard about MSI's new family of QD-OLED gaming monitors over a month ago now, with MSI announcing some of those monitors in question before their launch on January 6, 2024.

MSI's new models of gaming monitors all have the latest generation of QD-OLED panels, with the company making new monitors in both curved and flat models. The company claims to have done "extensive research and design" to make sure gamers are getting precise pixel lighting control and true black scenes, image quality... tick. QD-OLED is a huge, huge leap over TN and IPS... I'm an OLED addict.

MSI's new QD-OLED gaming monitors are getting some other tweaks, with MSI updating its OLED Care 2.0 technology, enhancing screen protection optimization to reduce the risk of possible OLED panel damage after countless hours of use. MSI uses a passive, fan-less design thanks to graphene's fantastic thermal conductivity, which allows for efficient and silent heat dissipation meaning that MSI's new QD-OLED gaming monitors will have longer lifespans without damage to the panel.

ASUS has just dropped the price of its ROG Ally gaming handheld at one of the official stores, with the more powerful AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme version of the system dropping from $699 to $619 during the annual Black Friday sales.

There's no official reason for the price drop, but with Lenovo Legion GO just announced -- a new gaming handheld with similar specifications, but it's a little lower-end than the ROG Ally -- with ASUS quickly slicing some of the price from its ROG Ally as Best Buy kicks off its Black Friday sales.

You can't buy the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld everywhere in the US, where just a select few partners offer the ROG Ally on the US, while you easily buy it from the official ASUS website, and BestBuy. BestBuy has now dropped the price of the faster Z1 Exteme-powered ASUS ROG Ally from $699 to just $619, a savings of $80. The regular Z1 non-Extreme ROG Ally is still priced at $599. I don't know why you wouldn't spend the extra $20 on the higher-end Z1 Extreme ROG Ally, so be careful.

The Biden administration has been putting its foot down on countries building up their presence in the AI hardware world; sanctions on China will effectively cut the country out of the "AI race," and now companies are going around that... so around, they're taking to the seas as a sovereign nation-state.

Del Complex has just announced its new Blue Sea Fronter Compute Cluster (BSFCC) which is a massive AI platform that floats on international waters, acting as a sovereign nation-state with its own security forces to protect the investment: 10,000 x NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs. They're like GPU gold these days, so this is a heavily protected facility that floats in the ocean using GPUs to act as an AI platform.

The company explains on its website that the "rapid pace of artificial intelligence has led to hastily drafted government regulation" -- directly calling out the Biden administration's recent AI Executive Order and the European Union's AI act -- forced its hand to engineer a solution ready to set sail, which turned into the BlueSea Frontier Compute Cluster. Del Complex calls it a groundbreaking venture in international waters, blending cutting-edge technology with unparalleled autonomy.

Nintendo has filed a very interesting new patent that could lead to unique hardware designs.

Note: It's important to remember that a patent does not indicate a finalized design. There's a possibility that Nintendo could make something like this, but there's no guarantee. A patent does not confirm (or deny) a finalized product, so keep that in mind.

Nintendo is well-known for its innovative--if not strange--hardware. Oftentimes, Nintendo's devices are so forward-thinking that they can significantly disrupt the video games market (the Wii, DS, and Switch are all prime examples). We don't know exactly what the next system will be like but a recent Nintendo patent gives us an idea of the kinds of things the company is researching.

SEGA has reiterated its plans to create a brand new video game genre by March 2026.

SEGA has an ambitious plan: The Sonic developer wants to adapt its popular franchises into a new type of genre called "Super Games." This is essentially a term that describes online-driven experiences that scale across multiple platforms; a Super Game seems to be a fancy term to describe live service titles. Based on SEGA's own words, there seems to be a lot of overlap between the so-called Super Game and a GaaS (Games-as-a-Service) business model.

Despite the volatility of the current challenging video games market, SEGA isn't giving up on its Super Game plan. The company's latest 2023 annual report reiterates its strategy to create, and potentially release, its first Super Game by March 2026. It's unknown which franchise that SEGA will use for its first Super Game, but reports indicate that new Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi games are potentially in development, complete with online play. It's also possible that SEGA will make a Sonic Super Game.

Bungie has scaled back its workforce in an effort to counterbalance missed revenue targets, sources have told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

2023 has been hailed as one of the best years for gaming, and more hit games means significant competition. This higher level of competition has stressed developers and publishers across the board, simultaneously leading to record-breaking sales for some and calls for cost-saving measures for others. The gaming sector has stemmed rising costs by enacting mass layoffs of some 6,000+ games workers, including Bungie, a company who had scaled up its workforce for new projects.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Bungie has laid off around 8% of its staff, or about 100 people. There's multiple reasons for this decision, including the current inflation-driven economic environment, but the chief reason may be related to Destiny 2's performance. The badly-received Destiny 2 Lightfall expansion has had a cascading effect on Bungie's business, especially as more hit games released throughout 2023, and the negative sentiment around Lightfall has led to a drop in Destiny 2's player count. Revenues are also on track to miss Bungie's internal projections by 45%. That's a big problem for Bungie, who relies on Destiny 2's recurring microtransaction revenues to maintain course as it develops new expansions for the live game.

Del Complex believes it can better direct the future of AI - avoiding progress in this field being obstructed by 'hastily drafted' legislation from governments around the world - using its BlueSea Frontier Compute Cluster (or BSFCC).

The what-now? BSFCC is essentially a huge platform on the waves, an ocean-based data center if you will, bristling with over 10,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs.

The benefits of being in the ocean revolving around the theoretical ability to avoid said regulation, as it'd be in international waters as its own 'sovereign state' (an assertion we feel won't hold up, but there you go - what do we know).

Atari's latest acquisition sees the French company consolidating yet another large portion of the retro/remaster video games market.

Atari has announced that it has made an offer to acquire Digital Eclipse, the developer of a multitude of re-releases, collections, and remasters. Know for its emulation tech, a press release confirms that Digital Eclipse has produced over 250 games. The latest buyout comes shortly after Atari also acquired Nightdive Studios, the team behind enhanced re-release of System Shock, Turok, Quake, and many more.

As per the agreement, Atari's consideration terms offer $6.5 million for Digital Eclipse, which is split up into $4 million in cash and $2.5 million worth of Atari company shares. Digital Eclipse can also earn up to $13.5 million in a payout contingent on the group's performance across a ten-year period.