Latest News - Page 782

Cities: Skylines II, the highly anticipated city builder sequel from developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive, recently saw its PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S launch delayed to Spring 2024. Delaying a game in 2023 is not uncommon, with developers often using extra time to iron out lingering bugs and improve overall performance.

This doesn't seem to be the case for the Cities: Skylines II on PC, which is still on track for an October 24 launch. Ahead of the game's debut, Colossal Order and Paradox released a statement addressing community concerns relating to the recommended hardware to play the game, asking for a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU and a modern Intel Core i5-12600K or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU. And increase over the initial requirements.

According to the team, performance will be an issue on PC, and it wants to "manage expectations on performance" after not achieving the "benchmark we targeted." And yet, the game won't be delayed.

Storing up to 7TB of data on something the size of a DVD might not sound all that groundbreaking in a time where SSD storage with that sort of capacity is notably smaller in physical stature.

Microsoft's Project Silica is genuinely fascinating because it's offering precisely that, with the something being glass - with the company describing glass storage as a sustainable cloud storage solution with data integrity that could last up to 10,000 years. According to Microsoft, a small sheet of glass can store up to 1.75 million songs or 3,500 movies.

The Global Music Vault in Svalbard, Norway, is already collaborating with Microsoft Research's Project Silica team to use silica-based glass plates to house its music archive. Microsoft's Project Silica has been in development for some time now, with recent advances improving the overall speed and durability of the medium - paving the way for it to become a cloud storage solution.

Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro console has been teased in a recent video and tweet by RedGamingTech, and it's teasing a fairly beefed-up PS5 Pro that would offer some decent performance bumps to both the CPU and GPU inside of the console.

According to the rumor, the upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro console would maintain its 8-core, 16-thread Zen 2-based CPU but bring the clock speeds up a little over the APU inside of the PlayStation 5, which is CPU clocks at up to 3.5GHz, up and into the low 4GHz range. Not bad.

The current PlayStation 5 console has an RDNA 2-based GPU with 36 CUs at up to 2.23GHz, while RedGamingTech is teasing a heavily beefed-up RDNA 3 hybrid GPU with 60 CUs at between 2.5GHz to 2.8GHz.

Netflix is interested in securing the Grand Theft Auto license and releasing a new GTA game for Netflix subscribers, but the billion-dollar streamer may have a difficult time convincing Take-Two Interactive to bite.

Despite the rising costs of games development and fierce competition, Netflix is committed to living out its video game ambitions. Netflix has started to add mobile games to its service as a free bonus for subscribers, and has even purchased game development studios to help fuel new content.

Now it looks like Netflix is doubling-down on its gaming plans. Sources have told The Wall Street Journal that Netflix is looking to release a number of new games based on franchises and properties included in its catalog, with discussions circling around game adaptations of Black Mirror, and new games based on Addams family spin-off Wednesday and Squid Game are being made. But Netflix wants to make a big splash and is seeking some of the biggest IPs to make it happen, including the mega-selling Grand Theft Auto franchise.

Epic has kicked off a new scheme whereby game developers are having a huge carrot dangled in front of them in order to encourage them to bring older titles to the Epic Games Store.

It's called 'Now On Epic' and is described as a back catalog incentive program. The incentive is that the developer keeps all revenue made from any eligible previously released game, with Epic taking no cut, for the first six months of sales on the store.

After that, the contract reverts to the normal deal whereby Epic takes a 12% slice of the pie (with the dev getting 88%).

Pete Hines is leaving Bethesda after 24 years of gaming.

There's few public faces in gaming that are more influential than Pete Hines. Known affectionately as Uncle Pete, Hines has been a pivotal figurehead for the games industry. Throughout the decades we have seen Uncle Pete take the stage at E3 and beyond, offering quips and showcasing some of the most influential games of our era.

Now just weeks after Starfield's launch, Hines is retiring and leaving the studio on a high note. Across his tenure at Bethesda, Pete Hines has influenced so many facets of the company's releases--he is credited on 89 games, and even went so far as to edit the guidebook for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (which happens to be my favorite guide of all time).

There are a number of reasons why a graphics card might give up the ghost, if you're unlucky, but this is a new one, with an NVIDIA RTX 4090 appearing to have died thanks to an insect introduced on the assembly line.

As highlighted by Ghost_motley on X (formerly Twitter), the discovery of the very literal hardware bug was made by NorthWestRepair and shared in a YouTube clip (see above).

The RTX 4090 in question would spin up its fans, but was producing no video output, with the monitor remaining blank.

With the release of Coutner-Strike 2, Valve has officially closed the door on CS:GO, with the new version of the game bringing a much-needed visual and server-side overhaul to one of the most popular games currently out there.

Intel Extreme Masters Sydney 2023 kicks off this week, with the finals set to take place this weekend - where the top six teams (including Aussie locals Grayhound.Rivalry and VERTEX Esports Club) will battle it out for their share of the USD 250,000 prize pool. The winning team will also have the honor of being the Counter-Strike 2 champions in addition to getting one step closer to Intel Grand Slam V.

The competition is underway, and you can watch all the action on the ESL Counter-Strike YouTube and Twitch channels.

We're all expected to find peace with the fact that high-end enthusiast-class GPUs are massive units. Triple slot thickness, three fans, chunky heatsinks, and 'pipes everywhere' are required to keep the high-end 2023 graphics card from getting so hot that it melts into a pool of lava. At least, that's the idea for a traditional air-cooled card.

But maybe not. Over on Reddit, a GPU enthusiast named TechTaxi took it upon themselves to reduce the physical footprint of a powerful GeForce RTX 4080 and get its size down to a more case-friendly two-slot thickness with two fans for cooling. They took the 3-slot triple fan action of the Gainward GeForce RTX 4080 Phoenix "GS" and put the GPU and RTX 4080 hardware inside the smaller, sleeker GeForce RTX 4070 Ghost.

Regarding physical real estate, the mod takes the GeForce RTX 4080 dimensions of 328.9 x 131.1 x 63.6mm down to an impressive 269.1 x 131.8 x 40.1 mm. Yean, amazing stuff - but what about performance, temps, and overall thermals?

Qualcomm has been continuously improving on its Snapdragon SoCs for a while now, with some stellar mobile PC solutions powered by 5G connectivity. Still, now the company is better positioning itself in the PC chip business with the introduction of the new Snapdragon X Series.

The new Snapdragon X Series is an important step for Qualcomm, after its $1.4 billion acquisition of Nuvia in early 2021. Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon X processor will feature their in-house Oryon CPU, which is the important part: that is the first in-house chip that the ex-Nuvia team has had an influence on and baked into the new Snapdragon X Series.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X chips will be an "infection point for the PC industry, all thanks to enhanced performance capabilities," explains the company, as well as enhanced efficiency. This means next-gen Windows laptops powered by Snapdragon X, will have even better battery life... maybe stepping towards the gigantic life of the M2-powered Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops.

Intel's next-gen 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs are so close we can practically smell the silicon, and now we have some important details regarding pricing.

14th Gen won't cost more than 13th Gen: This is what we know, the leaked pricing shows that the lowest member of the Raptor Lake Refresh family -- the Core i5-14600KF -- will cost $294. This applies up to the Core i9-14900K, which will cost $589, or the Core i9-14900KF ("F" variant without integrated GPU) will be $25 less again, down to $564.

How many cores, threads, and max CPU clocks? Intel is cranking its flagship Core i9-14900K processor up to a whopping 6.0GHz using its Thermal Velocity Boost technology, with 24 cores (8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores) and 32 threads in total. The Core i7-14700K has 20 cores (8 P-Cores and 12 E-Cores) and 28 threads in total, clocking up to 5.6GHz using Turbo Boox Max Technology 3.0. The slowest member in the Core i5-14600K has 14 cores (6 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores) and 20 threads, boosting up to 5.3GHz max.

When NVIDIA announced and launched the GeForce RTX 40 Series last year, it also introduced the ground-breaking new DLSS 3 - which offered AI-powered Frame Generation technology to boost performance. The only catch is that the new tech is exclusive to the latest GPU generation because it uses new and updated AI hardware as part of the architecture.

And with that, there has been a long-standing belief in some corners of the tech community that DLSS 3 and Frame Generation are artificially locked to the new GPUs and that there's no reason why it shouldn't also be able to run on GeForce RTX 20 and 30 Series hardware. These, too, feature AI-based Tensor Cores, so why not?

Recently, the discussion surrounding DLSS 3 Frame Generation and older GeForce RTX hardware reignited because it was found that in Portal Prelude RTX - an RTX Remix community mod - GeForce RTX 20 and 30 Series owners could enable Frame Generation. And see their FPS effectively double.

AMD has updated the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition Technical Preview Driver for AMD Fluid Motion Frames, with Version 23.30.01.02 adding a new and notable update over the weekend. Per the release notes, AMD Fluid Motion Frames, the company's frame generation technology, is similar in functionality to NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation and can now be "globally enabled on all DirectX 11 and 12 titles."

This is a pretty major update as it allows the driver-level implementation of AMD's frame generation tech to be enabled across all major PC games - with the option to turn AMD Fluid Motion Frames on or off per app. The other major update related to the quality of Fluid Motion Frames, with improvements made to frame pacing "resulting in an overall smoother gameplay experience and improved image quality." Finally, the update also adds HDR support to AMD Fluid Motion Frames.

Frame pacing has been one of the issues for those testing Fluid Motion Frames, alongside having to enable v-sync for the best results. As with NVIDIA DLSS 3, the technology generates frames - a process that adds latency - so AMD recommends using AMD Radeon Anti-Lag and the newer Anti-Lag+. But based on recent reports, you should hold off on enabling the technologies in online multiplayer games like Counter-Strike 2.

Intel might be on the eve of releasing its new Core i9-14900K flagship processor, but that doesn't mean that's the only option you've got to buy as a gamer looking for a new CPU... there's also the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D; which is priced so well right now, down to just $329 at Microcenter.

Yeah, AMD's kick-ass Ryzen 7 7800X3D -- which is one of the best CPUs on the market for gaming, I might add -- is just $329. When paired with a cheap AM5 motherboard, a decent cooler, and some DDR5 RAM, you've got a killer combo. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D doesn't get hot under gaming loads like other competing processors -- especially the new Core i9-14900K -- meaning a high-end air cooler or lower-end AIO liquid cooler will easily do the job.

We've seen the Ryzen 7 7800X3D priced down to $349 recently, but another $20 off, with Microcenter bringing the CPU down to $329. But, if you're buying a new "eligible motherboard" with your new 7800X3D processor, you'll get a $30 coupon... depending on which AM5 motherboard you buy. If you're upgrading your entire platform, then you'll need a new AM5 motherboard, and then you can save a further $30, bringing down the price of the 7800X3D to just $299.

ASUS has officially taken over developing and distributing Intel's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) lineup of mini-PCs. ASUS Senior Vice President Jackie Hsu recently spoke with news outlet The Register to discuss the transition, outlining that the company will continue to sell NUCs to consumers and commercial customers in addition to the industrial sector.

ASUS plans to offer custom NUC machines that can change up the I/O configuration to meet the demands of clients, with the company leaning into its history of creating mini-PCs. The report also confirms that when it comes to ASUS taking over the NUC business, it has licensed the NUC IP, which includes the small form-factor motherboard - potentially leading the way for the company to create custom designs for a range of customers.

In a general sense, this means being able to put the hardware in a chassis or setup that isn't a tiny cube-like shape, with ASUS potentially creating custom-made NUC solutions for self-service kiosks, point-of-sale systems, and warehouse operations. And all with ASUS as the single point of contact, as part of its PC business. However, when I think about a mini-PC or a NUC system, I think about how small we can get a viable gaming PC.

We are just hours away from the unleashing of Intel's new 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs, and now we've got the full specifications and pricing details on all of the next-gen desktop CPUs ranging from the Core i5-14600K up to the Core i9-14900K.

Starting out with Intel's new flagship Core i9-14900K processor, we now know it will indeed have 24 cores -- with 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores -- with 36MB of cache in total. We're going to see the Core i9-14900K run with a base CPU clock of 3.2GHz, while it will boost at up to 6.0GHz on its P-Cores, with support for up to both DDR5-5600 and down to DDR4-3200 memory.

Intel will have its flagship Core i9-19400K selling for $589, while if you want the Core i9-14900KF -- the "F" there means it has no integrated GPU -- then you can save $25, with the Core i9-14900KF processor costing $564.

ASUS is working on a wide range of new ROG Z790 motherboards, ready for Intel's upcoming 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors that are right around the corner, led by the new flagship Core i9-14900K processor.

We already knew of the new ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 motherboards in recent leaks. Still, now we're getting some new photos of the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Formula, ROG Maximus Z790 APEX Encore, and the new ROG Strix Z790 motherboards that will work with the new Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs from Intel.

ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Formula motherboard: we have an interesting "ROG Water-Cooling Zone" that lets you hook a liquid cooling loop directly into the motherboard. This will water-cool the super-hot VRMs that are being pushed to the max when you're overclocking your Core i9-14900K processor on this board.

Although the Microsoft-Activision merger has been greenlit by European and UK regulators, and despite the fact that Microsoft has already welcomed Activision into its business, the Federal Trade Commission is still committed to challenging the business combination.

The FTC may have lost its preliminary injunction trial, but the agency shows no signs in giving up on its quest to disrupt the Microsoft-Activision merger. The FTC re-opened its administrative trial back in September, meaning the Microsoft-Activision merger will be scrutinized in the agency's own internal courts.

This process is overseen by an Administrative Law Judge--in this case, Judge D. Michael Chappell--who will deliver a final verdict on whether or not that Microsoft-Activision merger violates or breaks any antitrust laws. The FTC's Commissioners can, however, vote to overrule the ALJ's determination, and potentially order a divestiture to unwind the meger.

The video games industry is bigger than most people realize, commanding revenues of several hundred billion dollars.

Every quarter, video games publishers make one thing very clear: Gaming is by far the largest entertainment medium on the planet. But how big is gaming really? Concrete figures are hard to come by, and the total sum of yearly earnings can vary depending on which analyst firm is reporting figures. That being said, executive-level management at the top gaming publishers have the most up-to-date information available.

According to EA Entertainment President Laura Miele, gaming is expected to be a nearly $350 billion revenue business.

Minecraft has sold over 300 million copies worldwide across all platforms, making it the second best-selling game of all time behind Tetris.

Xbox's most-profitable and best-selling game has achieved a new milestone. We're talking about Minecraft, of course; the voxel-based mega-hit has now sold over 300 million copies on all platforms, from multiple generations of consoles across PlayStation and Xbox to PC and mobile.

"As we approach the 15th anniversary, Minecraft remains one of the best-selling games of all time, with over 300 million copies sold, a milestone no one could have dreamed of when we were all placing our first blocks," Mojang has announced. And yes, Minecraft will turn 15 years old next year.