Latest News - Page 798

Capcom is among the last publishers to avoid the new $70 price hike for video games, but that may change soon.

Every new console generation comes with change--updated features, tech innovations, new tools, etc. But the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S also introduced higher costs for gaming's most profitable product: Software. From the get-go, publishers like Sony Interactive Entertainment, Take-Two Interactive, Activision-Blizzard, and Electronic Arts priced their new Gen9 games at $70. It took a little while for others to catch up.

Now after years of holding out, it looks like Capcom could be the latest publisher to raise its game prices to $70. At Tokyo Game Show 2023, Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto shares a sentiment that most publishers will agree with: "Game prices are too low."

Chris Metzen, the original creative director of the mega-popular World of Warcraft MMORPG, has officially returned to Blizzard Entertainment.

Today Blizzard announced some big news: Chris Metzen is back in a leadership role and will now oversee the entire Warcraft franchise. Metzen's current duty is to help shape the future of World of Warcraft as the game moves closer to its 10th anniversary.

"We are excited to share that Chris Metzen has taken on a full-time role as Executive Creative Director of the Warcraft universe. Right now, his main focus is supporting our World of Warcraft leadership in crafting the next generation of adventures," reads the announcement.

Respawn and EA are currently working on a third chapter of the popular Jedi video game franchise, actor Cameron Monaghan has confirmed.

Given the success of the first two games--Fallen Order and Survivor--it seemed inevitable that EA would greenlight a third chapter in the Jedi series. After all, the Jedi games were originally envisioned as a trilogy. Now it look like a third game is indeed happening.

At the Ocala Comic-Con 2023 show in Florida, Cameron Monaghan, who plays the lead hero Cal Kestis in the Jedi games, said that teams are currently "in the process" of making a third game. Neither EA nor Respawn have made announcements on a third game.

Apple has today released macOS Sonoma to the world, allowing people to download it onto their Macs for the first time.

The macOS Sonoma update was previewed during the WWDC 2023 event on June 5 and it's been in beta ever since. That beta included both private developer and public beta programs and there have been many releases across the last few months. Now that the update is ready, everyone who has a compatible Mac can download macOS Sonoma for free and enjoy all of the new features that it brings to the table.

There are plenty of new improvements as part of this update including support for placing widgets on the Desktop for the very first time. Those widgets are also live, which means that they won't open their corresponding apps just to update data. Users can also install iPhone widgets on their Mac for the first time, too.

Starfield has a new patch out, but despite the patch notes promising a resolution for issues with upscaling, these are still present we're told.

Update 1.7.33 is out on Steam and Xbox for Starfield, and the following important graphics fix was applied according to the release notes:

However, Wccftech reports that an upscaling fix is still required for Starfield.

Buying a new Apple Vision Pro headset might not get more affordable quite as quickly as we had hoped if a new report by a well-connected display analyst turns out to be accurate.

The Vision Pro headset was announced in June and was immediately slapped with a price that makes it out of reach for many. The starting price of $3,499 is a lot, but there were rumors that Apple already had plans for a cheaper version that would give more people an opportunity to get a headset of their own. However, a new report now claims that might not be happening after all.

Writing in a Medium post analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple may have canceled the low-cost version of its Vision Pro. If that's the case, it will mean that Vision Pro headset growth will be affected with anticipated 2025 growth simply not happening at all.

Apple's new FineWoven material was supposed to be a high-quality alternative to the leather options that it is no longer making. Instead, they're turning into something of a laughing stock with early buyers reporting that they stain and mark easily while also feeling low quality given their premium $59 price. Now, Apple appears to be trying to coach retail employees with any blowback that they might receive from disgruntled case buyers.

in a new memo sent to retail employees, Apple tells them that they might get questions about the appearance of the new FineWoven material. Those questions might include how it will wear over time, the memo says, while also touching on how the material should be maintained.

The memo, which was reported by 9to5Mac, explains that employees should tell customers that the FineWoven material is made from a "luxurious microtwill" and that it has a soft yet durable suede-like texture.

Apple's watchOS 10 update has been around for a few days now and it comes preinstalled on the new Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2. And while it brings with it some cool new features, it isn't without its problems. Like the one that basically stops the Weather app's complication from working.

Complications are the little bits of information that you can place on your Apple Watch's watch face, and they're great ways of seeing that information at all times. The weather is a great example of something you might want to do that with but as some are finding out, watchOS 10 has other ideas.

9to5Mac was the first to highlight the issue that appears to happen on both watchOS 10 and watchOS 10.0.1, which means that you won't find a currently available software update to fix it.

The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max have both been on sale for less than a week but some people are already reporting an issue that only affects those two specific models - the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus aren't affected.

That issue is that the new best iPhones are reportedly getting a bit warm during use, although not everyone appears to be experiencing the issue. The fact that it's only impacting the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max has led some people to point the finger at the new A17 Pro chip that powers them, especially considering the iPhones heat up when placed under heavy load. However, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that the issue isn't specifically the chip or its 3nm fabrication by TSMC.

Instead, Kuo believes that the real issue is that Apple made compromises when designing the new titanium iPhones to make them as light as possible. With that in mind, Kuo believes that these changes will have negatively impacted the thermal properties of the device itself, making it get too warm during heavy usage like playing games.

The latest big-name personality to chip in on the artificial intelligence front is John Carmack, the dev who brought us Doom (and Quake) way back when.

Carmack reckons that an artificial general intelligence or AGI is likely to be realized around the year 2030.

AGI is a somewhat controversial idea, and even its definition can be argued over, and very much is. But the broad idea is that this is a 'real' AI - one that can reason and understand in a human way, as opposed to what we have now with AI (large language models, or essentially very fancy data scraping tools capable of doing a convincing impression of AI).

Recently, we reported that PCI-SIG was set to replace the 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector with a new 12V-2x6 power connector as part of the revised ATX 3.1 standard. The new 12V-2x6 power connector is backward compatible with the 12VHPWR connector, so it's more of a revision than a complete redesign and one that will help alleviate issues relating to overheating.

It's no secret that the move to the ATX 3.0 12VHPWR standard for the GeForce RTX 40 Series resulted in some serious issues for a small group of customers - cables melting and GPUs needing to be replaced. Ultimately, the problem was related to cables not being seated properly, leading to extreme heat.

The good news is that the new 12V-2x6 power connector is being used with new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs being sold and is supported on the latest power supplies. And now, with some fresh data from Linewell - a company that supplies cables to brands like ASUS - it looks like the new connector works extremely well, even when deliberately not seated properly.

LG is mass-producing foldable 17-inch OLED panels for laptops as part of its commitment to extend its OLED reach to the business sector. At least for now, the aim is to deliver OLED's unmatched contrast and excellent color accuracy to the business space, where one half of the seamless foldable device could be used as a touchpad while the top half acts as the main display.

That means these won't be for gaming laptops that you can unfold for a two-screen gaming experience but for work-related productivity devices. LG is calling it Tandem OLED because it features two-stack OLED technology, which delivers an additional organic emitting later for increased brightness. Something that is definitely required for devices used outdoors or in bright environments like an office space.

LG also notes that the two-stack design offers improved stability and a longer lifespan, which it believes is "well-suited to IT devices which typically have longer usage times such as laptops, monitors, and tablets."

Scott Herkelman, AMD's Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Graphics Business unit and the face of the Radeon brand, is leaving the company after seven years.

"After seven years at AMD and launching three increasingly competitive generations of RDNA graphics architectures, I have decided to leave AMD at the end of this year," Scott writes in a heartfelt statement posted online. His departure in a few months should give AMD enough time to find a replacement.

If AMD is looking, the company's site lists Jack Huynh as the current head of the Graphics Business Unit, which includes Radeon products. It's no secret that in the competitive GPU market, Radeon has always been the underdog, which continues to be the case with the latest RDNA 3-powered Radeon RX 7000 Series.

MSI's new 'Limited Series' products will see the company stealth drop a limited quantity of custom hardware that will only be produced once and made available for a limited time. With only 6,000 units produced, the first drop is the new GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X NV Edition, sporting a stylish green design with RGB accents.

MSI notes that the green colorway on this custom Gaming X graphics card represents the company's "enduring partnership" with NVIDIA and is a testament to their "friendship and collaboration through the years."

It's not simply a green GeForce RTX 4060, as the aesthetic also means that the limited edition GPU sports Eco packaging that is 100% paper-based and plastic-free. Per MSI's announcement, the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X NV Edition is available at select retailers across Europe, with the United States and Asia to follow.

The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro might only have been on sale for a few days but the rumors mill has already turned its attention to what comes next. And what comes next is the iPhone 16.

While the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max both have the new Action button in place of the familiar mute switch, it seems that Apple isn't yet done with the idea of moving buttons around. In fact, it's going to add an entirely new button and move another component to the other side of the iPhone to make space according to a new report.

That report comes out of MacRumors which claims that the iPhone 16 will include a new capacitive 'Capture Button," something that is currently being developed under the codename Project Nova. The report goes on to say that it is likely that the new Capture Button will be a main selling point of the new iPhone, although it then goes on to say that it isn't currently known what the button will actually be used for.

When Apple announced the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max earlier this month it was confirmed that only the latter model would feature the new tetraprism lens that allows for an improved 5x optical zoom feature. But that will all change in 2024 with the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.

That's according to a new report by the well-connected supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who says that the next Pro iPhone will benefit from the same tetraprism lens despite the fact that it wasn't part of the iPhone 15 Pro setup this year.

Writing in a lengthy Medium post discussing Apple and its supplier plans moving forward, Kup said that the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will both feature a tetraprism telephoto camera lens. He expects the current specifications to remain to ensure camera performance, with the number of tetraprism-enabled iPhone shipments expected to increase by around 100% as a result.

Xbox Game Pass will likely see another price increase as time goes by, Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer says.

Microsoft recently raised the prices of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and console--a meager $2 and $1 respective increase as compared to Sony's 35% price jump on PS Plus--but this hike might not be the last.

In an interview with Japanese gaming outlet Game Watch, Xbox chief Phil Spencer candidly says that another increase is "inevitable". As inflation increases, games are becoming much more expensive to make, and companies are spending more to develop titles (Horizon Forbidden West, for example, cost over $200 million to bring to market).

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro it made a very big deal about the fact that it intended to ditch leather for good, making the move to a more environmentally friendly material instead. The new FineWoven cases are joined by Apple Watch bands, but it's the cases that are capturing the most attention right now. And none of that attention is positive.

If there's one complaint that has so far been repeatedly leveled at the micro twill FineWoven iPhone cases, it's that they easily mark and scratch. And a new photo of an iPhone 15 case display in an Apple Store just drives the point home. And it makes for poor viewing if you're planning on picking one of these new cases up.

The photo shows a number of FineWoven cases on display, many of which have what appear to be permanent scratches caused by fingernails. People have have already taken delivery of such cases have said that they easily mark and cannot be repaired or buffed to make them look better. Apple Stores have only had their cases on display for a limited time and they're already starting to look pretty grim indeed.

Apple might be ready to announce a new iPad mini before the end of the year, according to a new report. That's despite a report by a well-connected supply chain analyst who claimed that there would be no new tablets before 2024.

This latest report comes via the supply chain watchers at DigiTimes and claims that there have been orders for a new small-size iPad for the fourth quarter of this year. That would presumably be the seventh-generation iPad mini, with the last model having been released way back in 2021.

Little is known about the new tablet and it wasn't even expected to be in the cards for a 2023 unveiling. While Bloomberg's Mark Gurman had suggested that it wasn't out of the question that there would be a new iPad mini this year, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo poured cold water on that idea by saying that there would be no new iPad mini until 2024. In fact, Kuo said that he didn't believe that there would be any new iPad models at all this year.

Elon Musk's X social network is already hard at work on bringing video and audio calling to the platform and now it appears that it is closer than ever to fruition. Musk confirmed that he wanted to bring calls to X last month, and code suggesting the feature is on the way is already being found in the iPhone app.

That code was spotted in an iPhone version of the X app and appears to suggest that audio and video calls are closer than ever. The feature will bring calling support to anyone who has the iPhone app installed and also happens to pay for X Premium, the subscription offering previously known as Twitter Blue.

Musk believes that X is in a unique position to handle voice and video-based calling because he sees it as the world's address book, adding that the feature will be available on iPhone, Android, and the web. The cross-platform support could be a big deal, although X won't be the first to offer such a thing.