A new 3D Shovel Knight game could be the next project in line for Yacht Club Games, assuming Mina The Hollower does well enough sales-wise.

Yacht Club Games just released their latest title, Mina The Hollower, a top-down indie with a distinct retro look and feel. Mina hearkens back to the classic days of gaming, combining sentiments and visuals from games like Link's Awakening on Game Boy and even Gremlins 2 on NES. The result is a nostalgic mash-up that innovates and evolves the formula, complete with boss battles and loot.

Now that their mouse precision-platformer is out, the indie studio is turning their attention on new things. One of these projects is a mysterious Shovel Knight game set in 3D. Sean Velasco, the head of Yacht Club, tells Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that this 3D game is more than halfway complete and could be showable soon.

A report from hardware insider, Moore's Law Is Dead, states that AMD's next-generation Zen 6 desktop silicon is much closer to mass production. The Zen 6 desktop Core Complex Die (CCD) and its X3D counterpart, codenamed "Powderhorn", have officially taped out in their B0 silicon stepping. This could mean a holiday 2026 launch or a formal debut at CES 2027.

AMD's next-generation Zen 6 desktop CPUs represent a massive design overhaul rather than a minor refresh. The new architecture is expected to deliver a 50% increase in both core counts and L3 cache per Core Complex Die (CCD).

Instead of the traditional 8 cores per CCD, Zen 6 increases this density to 12 standard cores per die. Simultaneously, the L3 cache pool per CCD grows from 32 MB to 48 MB. More importantly, Zen 6 CPUs are also expected to be compatible with existing AM5 motherboards.

Intel's "Bartlett Lake" CPUs have been in the news cycle recently, as the 12-core Core 9 273PQE was recently benchmarked, with some less-than-stellar results. Bartlett Lake is one of the more interesting Intel CPU lineups in recent memory, as it features solely P-cores. The Core 9 273PQE has 12 P-cores and 0 E-cores, a departure from Intel's hybrid architecture, which they have adopted for a few years now.

It looks like Bartlett Lake is getting more additions, even beyond regular Core CPUs. As spotted by Videocardz, Intel has recently expanded the Bartlett Lake lineup by officially listing the Xeon 6377P, an enterprise-grade processor built for server deployments. This means the P-core-only lineup extends beyond embedded and edge systems and now includes enterprise products as well.

Upholding the spirit of Bartlett Lake, the Intel Xeon 6377P is also a P-core-only SKU, hosting 12 performance cores just like the aforementioned Core 9 273PQE. Moreover, the CPU is compatible with the FCLGA1700 socket, which hosts the 12th, 13th, and 14th-Generation Core processors, as well as other Bartlett Lake entries.

G.Skill is back with another showcase of high-end DDR5 performance, and this time the company is turning heads ahead of Computex 2026. The memory maker has unveiled a Trident Z5 CK CUDIMM DDR5 kit running at a blistering 9200 MT/s, and the headline spec is not just the speed itself but how it gets there.

The kit is a 32GB (2x16GB) CU-DIMM configuration running at DDR5-9200 with CL74-74-74-148 timings, and it does all of that at just 1.1V DRAM voltage. That last part is what makes this announcement notable. Running at the standard JEDEC voltage figure of 1.1V at this speed is a serious engineering achievement. High-frequency DDR5 kits typically require higher voltages to remain stable, resulting in higher power draw and more heat. G.Skill is managing to sidestep both of those trade-offs at 9200 MT/s.

So how does CUDIMM factor into this? CU-DIMM is a newer DDR5 variant that integrates a built-in Clock Driver (CKD) chip directly into the memory module. The CKD chip strengthens the clock signal traveling from the memory controller to the DRAM chips, improving signal integrity and overall stability during high-frequency operation. Without the CKD on board, sustaining these kinds of speeds cleanly would be a much harder problem to solve.

ByteDance is developing its own CPUs to address growing AI infrastructure demands amid rising chip prices and supply shortages. Essentially, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has seen how much money hardware companies are making and now wants a slice of the AI pie, and/or it doesn't want to keep relying on third parties to provide it with the necessary hardware.

The company, best known for TikTok, is reportedly designing custom silicon to power expanding AI operations. Sources from Reuters state the chips will be used for AI inference tasks, with production potentially starting this year. The company is said to be in talks with Samsung and TSMC for manufacturing, with at least 100,000 units expected in 2026.

If accurate, the move signals a major pivot into hardware, positioning ByteDance alongside other tech firms like Google and Meta, which have also begun developing in-house AI accelerators intended to assist the demand for as many AI-capable chips as possible.

Something very interesting is happening in Forza Horizon 6 right now. The game has only been out for a couple of weeks at this point, and we have a boogeyman situation on our hands. A mysterious Drivatar by the name of Bowie Knife99 has been wreaking havoc across the map, disrupting the races of many players and generally acting as an agent of chaos.

So basically, this infamous gamertag gained notoriety when a series of tweets (or X posts) went viral, showing random players being forced off the road, hit from the side, or even ambushed from above by a Drivatar named Bowie Knife99. Gamers all across the platform started sharing their encounters with the infamous Drivatar, and they all had something in common: Bowie Knife99 being an absolute menace to society.

If you're not familiar with Forza Horizon's "Drivatars", they are AI-controlled opponents that are essentially copies of real players. These automated foes mimic the driving style and habits of the real-life players that they are named after. One can only imagine that the real Bowie Knife99 would be both extremely skilled and supremely mischievous.

Samsung has begun shipping samples of its HBM4E high-bandwidth memory to major global customers, making it the first company to deliver the next-generation AI memory product. The announcement sent Samsung shares surging as much as 6.51% before settling at a 3.67% gain, closing at 310,500 won.

The new 12-layer HBM4E delivers a stable pin speed of 14 Gbps, with performance that scales up to 16 Gbps, representing more than a 20% increase over HBM4. Memory bandwidth reaches up to 3.6 TB/s per stack, which, for context, is roughly equivalent to the combined memory bandwidth of two GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs in a single stack. The 12-layer configuration ships with a 48GB capacity, a more than 30% increase over the previous generation, with 32GB eight-layer and 64GB sixteen-layer variants also in the works, depending on customer requirements.

Beyond raw speed and capacity, Samsung has also made meaningful efficiency gains. Advanced low-power design techniques and an optimized packaging architecture improve energy efficiency by 16% and reduce thermal resistance by more than 14% compared to HBM4, translating into better heat dissipation and longer-term reliability in demanding data center environments.

MediaTek has announced the Dimensity 8550, a targeted revision to its existing flagship-killer chipset. It is not much different in terms of raw specs, but it now supports Google's new Gemini Nano V3 AI. But before you get too excited, having this chip in your phone does not automatically unlock Gemini Nano V3 features. There is more to it than that.

On paper, the core computing foundation of the Dimensity 8550 remains largely identical to that of the Dimensity 8500, which itself arrived in January 2026. It retains a 4nm manufacturing process and uses an all-big-core octa-core CPU configuration with eight Cortex-A725 cores alongside a Mali-G720 MC8 GPU. Because the core CPU and GPU performance metrics match those of its predecessor, users can expect the same reliable performance for gaming and daily multitasking.

The main change is Gemini Nano V3 compatibility, enabled by an upgraded NPU 880 and LLM Booster, which allows on-device AI processing even without an internet connection, provided the device meets RAM requirements. With that one upgrade, MediaTek is bringing capability that has been reserved for ultra-premium silicon, think Samsung Galaxy S26, Google Pixel 10, and OnePlus 15, down to sub-flagship price tiers.

Microsoft's plan has tentatively worked, for now: Game Pass numbers have improved since the recent price discount.

Back in 2025, Microsoft raised the price of Xbox consoles and its Game Pass Ultimate service. This move hurt the brand, deflecting gamers during the critical holiday season and leading to the worst-ever hardware revenues of the entire Xbox Series generation. Game Pass subscribers also fled from the service, opting not to renew.

While we don't know the exact impact--how many subscribers canceled, for instance--Xbox CEO Asha Sharma acknowledged the problem by fixing it with a substantial price decrease. Game Pass dropped from $29.99 to $22.99, and in exchange, players gave up day one Call of Duty launches (Modern Warfare 4 will be the first post-acquisition COD not released onto the service).

The "rising memory and storage costs" that companies keep citing as the reason for price hikes have pushed some of our favorite gaming handhelds, like the Lenovo Legion Go S and Steam Deck, to nearly 50% more than they were a year ago. In times like this, Acer is making an interesting proposition with a streaming-first handheld built specifically for PC gaming.

Meet the Acer Nitro Blaze Link, a new handheld device for local PC game streaming. While the device runs Linux with Sunshine and Moonlight software, it is not a Steam Deck or anything like it. Acer is billing it as a streaming-first device, akin to Sony's PlayStation Portal but built with PC gaming in mind rather than console streaming.

The idea is not entirely new. Logitech launched a similar device a few years ago with the G Cloud, a $350 Android handheld with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The Nitro Blaze Link takes the same approach, rendering games on a separate gaming PC and streaming them to the handheld over a local network, and the specifications make that use case immediately obvious.

NVIDIA has teased a new era of PC ahead of Computex, fueling speculation about the imminent launch of its own ARM-based PC chips. On Friday morning, both NVIDIA's and Microsoft's Windows accounts posted the phrase "A new era of PC" on X, along with cryptic numbers "25.0528, 121.5990," which appear to be latitude and longitude coordinates.

If you plug those numbers into Google Maps, they will point directly to Taiwan, specifically the Taipei Music Center, where NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will host his GTC Taipei keynote during Computex. There is no official confirmation about the announcements, but simultaneous posts from both companies make it clear that the clues were intentional.

Back in October 2023, Reuters reported that NVIDIA had been developing Arm-based CPUs capable of running Windows. Since then, rumors and alleged sightings of the mysterious N1 chip have surfaced regularly. That is where our money is. Microsoft's Pavan Davuluri, who leads Windows and Surface, has already ruled out a new OS version, so Windows 12 is off the table.

Xbox has delayed its big Fable reboot outside of 2026, and the game will now release on PS5, Xbox, and PC in February 2027 instead.

With this year being quite crowded, and perhaps wanting to avoid the gigantic looming shadow of GTA 6's impending November release, Xbox has made the decision to push back the new Fable RPG a few months. Originally announced in 2020, Microsoft has settled on a finalized February 2027 window for the game on all platforms.

"In order to plan our game launches through the holidays, in a way that works best for players, we're moving Fable to February 2027 so it can have the dedicated moment it deserves," Xbox wrote on Twitter.

Intel has officially introduced the Arc G-Series processor family, its first lineup of chips designed from the ground up specifically for gaming handheld PCs. The series launched on May 28 with two SKUs: the Arc G3 and the Arc G3 Extreme, both built on the Panther Lake architecture (Intel Core Ultra Series 3) and manufactured on Intel's 18A process node.

Both chips share the same 14-core CPU layout, with 2 Cougar Cove P-Cores, 8 Darkmont E-Cores, and 4 Darkmont LP E-Cores. The Arc G3 boosts up to 4.6 GHz on the P-Cores with a configurable TDP of 8W to 30W, while the Arc G3 Extreme tops out at 4.7 GHz with a slightly wider 8W to 35W envelope. Both share base frequencies of 1.9 GHz on P-Cores and 1.5 GHz on E-Cores and LP E-Cores, and support LPDDR5X-8533 memory.

The main differentiator between the two SKUs is the integrated graphics. The Arc G3 comes with the Arc B370 iGPU, a 10-core Xe3 configuration clocked at 2.2 GHz. The Arc G3 Extreme steps it up with the Arc B390 iGPU, a 12-core Xe3 design running at 2.3 GHz. For connectivity, both chips pack integrated Wi-Fi 7 R2, dual Bluetooth 6, and Thunderbolt 4 with up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth.

Legendary Japanese game developer Hideki Kamiya recently let gamers in on an interesting story on Devil May Cry's development, and how it was originally envisioned as a sequel to Capcom's mega-hit horror series.

Hideki Kamiya is a well-known figure in gaming, and was originally most praised for directing the original Resident Evil 2 on the first PlayStation console. After RE2's success, Capcom wanted another game, and Kamiya was once again conscripted to come up with ideas for a fresh project for the PlayStation 2.

According to Kamiya, who tells his story in a blog post on his dev studio Clovers' website, the popular Devil May Cry series was born out of his explorations for this Resident Evil game.

Dell's new XPS 13 (DX13260) debuts as the company's thinnest and lightest XPS model to date. Targeting the mainstream market, the ultra-lightweight chassis is configured with Intel's new Wildcat Lake or Panther Lake CPUs, lowering the entry barrier for students.

The XPS family has been Dell's flagship ultrabook brand, strictly targeted at the $1,000+ premium prosumer market with CNC-machined metal, high-fidelity displays, and bleeding-edge silicon. The recent Panther Lake-powered XPS 14 and 16 refreshes pushed that premium envelope even further, commanding prices north of $2,000. While this flagship tier delivers unmatched build quality, buyers pay a massive premium for the experience.

The new XPS 13 breaks this trend by bringing the same premium laptop design to the mainstream market. Under the hood, Dell offers entry-level configurations with Intel's latest Wildcat Lake chips alongside higher-tier Panther Lake options.

007 First Light launched a few days ago with a newly improved Glacier engine that comes with a number of graphical enhancements over the Hitman games, including software-based ray tracing that's enabled even at the game's low settings. YouTuber RandomGaminginHD tested the GTX 1650 4GB in the game and discovered the entry-level 16 series card can technically play the game at a playable frame rate despite being under the game's minimum GPU requirements.

The YouTuber tested the GPU at 1080p resolution using low settings. Running the game at native resolution proved to be overwhelming for the card, with frame rates running well under 30. However, using FSR upscaling catapulted frame rates above 30 FPS, with the GTX 1650 achieving around 35-40 FPS using FSR balanced mode. Performance mode failed to boost frame rates consistently above 40 FPS, but the YouTuber noted that FSR performance mode provided a more consistent experience.

The results are impressive considering the GTX 1650 falls short of the game's hardware requirements. IO Interactive states the minimum required GPU to run the game is the GTX 1660 or RX 5700, targeting 30 FPS at low settings using 1080p. As a reminder, the GTX 1650 is a significantly weaker card, featuring nearly 60% fewer cores, and a much narrower memory bus with just 4GB of GDDR5.

The Witcher series has sold over 90 million copies worldwide, CD Projekt has announced in its latest Q1 report.

CD Projekt's Q1 2026 results show consistent earnings with strong 56% profit margins, driven by a multitude of game sales across its two major brands: Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher.

The devs confirmed that The Witcher 3 has now sold 65 million copies, up 5 million from the figure disclosed in the FY25 results. At the time, CD Projekt also attached a 85 million figure to the entire series, so the Q1 results would seem to also bump that franchise total by 5 million up to 90 million.

In what seems like a major step for Windows 11 users, but is truly a feature that should have been available for quite some time, Microsoft is now testing a feature that allows audio to be shared simultaneously with two Bluetooth audio devices.

However, there is a catch. The new feature is exclusive to Copilot+ PCs with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and is not available on the average Windows 11 desktop. While not fully implemented across Windows 11, the test marks a shift in Windows finally adopting multi-device audio streaming.

According to Microsoft's blog post, shared audio enables a PC to transmit its audio output to two Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices simultaneously. For those wondering, this means Bluetooth devices such as headphones, speakers, or even hearing aids can be used simultaneously. Microsoft notes that the feature is still in testing and may not be widely available or stable for all users.

YouTube is now automatically labeling AI-generated videos, even when creators don't manually disclose their use of artificial intelligence. This marks a significant shift in how the platform handles synthetic content, particularly AI-generated content intended to fool viewers.

The new system will flag videos with "significant photorealistic AI use" and apply an "altered or synthetic content" label. Creators are still required to manually disclose AI use, but YouTube will now step in if they don't.

The label appears just below the video player for long-form content and as a small, subtle overlay on Shorts. For unrealistic or animated videos, which means content that isn't obviously attempting to fool anyone, AI disclosures are in the description of the video.

Acer's new Swift Spin 14 AI (SFSP14-Q51T) lives up to its name thanks to its convertible design, featuring 360-degree hinges that let it transform from a powerful productivity laptop to a tablet-like device for note-taking, presenting, and other tasks. With a 14-inch WUXGA IPS touch-enabled glass display, it responds to fingertip strokes and is fully compatible with the Acer Active Pen 420, which supports 4,096 pressure levels and tilt detection for artists and creators, and is included as standard.

This premium, versatile, AI-ready laptop is powered by the new Snapdragon X2 Elite or Snapdragon X2 Plus processor, delivering up to 80 TOPS of performance. The device is built for performance and efficiency, with multi-day battery life offering up to 20 hours of pure video playback or 16.5 hours of web browsing. As a Snapdragon X2 Series laptop, it uses the integrated next-gen Adreno GPU, which supports the latest DirectX 12 games with hardware ray-tracing.

Configurations of the new Swift Spin 14 AI will be available with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X memory and up to 512GB of internal SSD storage. It's also portable, measuring 15.9-16.5 mm thin, in a lightweight 1.34 kg build. It's also built to last, with a stylish cobalt-blue aluminum chassis that's MIL-STD-810H-certified. Basically, it's military-grade. And port-wise, it's stacked with dual USB Type-C, dual USB Type-A, and HDMI 2.1.