Latest News - Page 843

The Nintendo Switch is the most popular gaming console on the planet, even though its hardware is starting to show its age. Powered by the NVIDIA Tegra X1 processor that features ARM CPU cores alongside an NVIDIA Maxwell-based GPU with 256 CUDA Cores - we've seen impressive results in recent games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which presents a massive open-world Hyrule to explore.

But we all know that in terms of visual fidelity, it's a generation or two behind something like the PS5 or Xbox Series X. And on paper, it's nowhere near as powerful as Valve's Steam Deck or the new ROG Ally from ASUS. What if you could mod a Nintendo Switch and use it to play PC games?

That's exactly what the team at Geekerwan has done, with a new video showcasing a hacked Nintendo Switch running Steam via Android and Ubuntu. It gets interesting with the sizable overclock applied to both the Nintendo Switch's CPU and GPU - using the OLED model as a basis. The native CPU clock speed of 1 GHz is pushed all the up to 2.3 GHz, with the GPU boat clock speed of 768 MHz pushed to 1267 MHz.

ENERMAX has announced that its AQUAFUSION ADV CPU AIO cooler series is now available in white and is built for 13th Gen Intel Core CPUs and AMD Ryzen too. The white 360mm model joins the line-up, so you now have black and white models with 120mm, 240mm, and 360mm sized radiators. The white edition looks slick and stylish with AQUAFUSION ADV's angular and curved design for the fans and pump head.

ENERMAX described the look of the pump head as a square-shaped "infinity mirror design" that pairs well with the square frame ENERMAXs SquA RGB ADV fans, giving off a futuristic look when the RGB lighting is doing its thing.

Supporting both AMD and Intel processors, the 360mm model is tailor-made for high-end CPUs and can cool up to 380W TDP to maximize performance. UPDATE: Since posting, ENERMAX has clarified the press release to state that the ENERMAX AQUAFUSION ADV CPU AIO cooler series is a 13th Gen Intel Core Processor Cooling Solution, with the original release stating that it was the "Officially Verified Cooling Partner for Intel 13th Gen Core CPUs."

Diablo IV has helped Blizzard break $1 billion in quarterly revenues for the first time in its 32-year history, but how does the game's launch compare to its predecessor?

With $666 million revenue earned from game sales in just 5 days' time, Diablo IV is a fiery success. The sequel has done so well that it helped propel Blizzard to a new all-time revenue record that saw the segment making up the lion's share of ABK's quarterly earnings, which is something that doesn't happen very often.

The question remains, though: How did Diablo IV's launch compare to Diablo III's? To answer that, we have to look at Blizzard's past quarterly performance, and analysis shows that there is no easy clear-cut answer to this question.

Music fans who use Spotify to listen to their favorite artists are about to start paying more if they also happen to live in the United States, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Spotify intends to increase the price of its monthly subscription in the United States by $1, following similar price hikes by other companies in the music-streaming space.

The move will mean that people who currently pay $9.99 per month for Spotify will see their bills increase to $10.99 instead. It isn't clear when the change will happen but the Wall Street Journal suggests that it might happen as soon as next month. As for the rest of the world, Spotify is thought to be ready to increase the price of its plans in the coming months.

Samsung is very much expected to announce the Galaxy Z Flip 5 alongside the Galaxy Fold 5 during its Unpacked event on July 26. Rumors had suggested a new hinge design that would allow the phone to close flat, unlike previous models. Now, it appears that Samsung has confirmed that.

That apparent confirmation comes via the Samsung India Twitter account, with a new tweet sharing a promotional video of the phone. And sure enough, that video appears to show the phone closing flat.

That's excellent news for people who have always been bothered by the fact that their high-end foldable simply refused to fold flat previously.

Meta-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp is testing a new change that will prove to be a big improvement for people of regularly start a new coup call with multiple participants.

According to a new report by the WhatsApp beta watchers at WABetaInfo, WhatsApp's latest iOS beta includes support for starting group calls with more people than ever.

Currently, group calls can have up to 32 people involved at once but they can only be started with seven or fewer at the beginning. From there, additional participants can be added as required. However, with the latest version of WhatsApp made available to iOS-using beta testers, that's changed.

Telegram is a hugely popular and encrypted instant messaging service used the world over and it's now rolling out a new feature that brings stories to the platform for the first time.

Telegram said that it was working on stories a while ago and CEO Pavel Durov said that users would e able to use the new feature in July. Now that we're getting towards the end of the month the feature is now finally available, but not for everyone.

That's because the implementation of stories that Telegram has added to its instant messaging service requires that users be subscribed to Telegram Premium in order to use it. That means that users will have to pay around $4.99 per month to get in on stories, although you'll obviously also get all of the other Premium features rolled in as well.

At the behest of Microsoft, the Federal Trade Commission has paused its administrative lawsuit against the Microsoft-Activision merger...but this is temporary, and the agency could still continue its litigation in attempt to block the merger if it so chooses.

Following the FTC"s double loss in federal and appeals courts, Microsoft filed a motion to stay, or pause, the agency's planned administrative lawsuit against the merger. The FTC seeks to block the merger FTC by trying the case in its own internal courts before an administrative law judge. Microsoft is eager to get the merger passed, but it still has some time: Microsoft and Activision have agreed to extend the merger deadline to as late as October.

As a formality, secretary April Tabor, who had discretion to make this particular decision, has granted Microsoft's motion and has paused the Commission's administrative lawsuit against the merger.

Mobile gaming is huge for Activision Blizzard King, and revenues continue to grow across a trio of titles: Candy Crush, Call of Duty Mobile, and Diablo Immortal.

A bit ago, I delved into how mobile gaming has transformed Activision's video games business. In that coverage, I looked at the ways that Activision and Blizzard revenues have changed over time thanks to games like COD Mobile and Diablo Immortal. The data really speaks for itself--mobile gaming has significantly buffered these segments thanks to Activision's successful launches.

The company's latest Q2 2023 filing gives more opportunity to chart the effects that mobile has had on Activision's platform earnings split. The results are just as interesting. According to the filing, Activision Blizzard King has made over $900 million from mobile for four consecutive quarters over the last rolling 12-month period.

Sony is about to drop the price of the PS5 console in the US and Europe, or that's the latest chatter from the grapevine.

If this is true, the reasoning that springs to mind for some folks - and it's an obvious enough line of speculation - is that Sony wants to shift some more stock before the next incarnation of the PS5 turns up. And this long-rumored refreshed model is something a second piece of speculation has just popped up around.

The first rumor comes from billbil_kun on Twitter, and as you can see above, it's a slightly cryptic tweet, translating to 'watch out for a PS5 price drop in the US and UK/Germany [Europe] soon.'

BREAKING: Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro may release in 2024 with some heavy mid-gen hardware upgrades.

New reports from gaming insider Tom Henderson indicate that Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro console will be a hefty hardware upgrade over the existing PS5 model. Sources have told Henderson that the PS5 Pro may deliver a new performance mode capable of 8K gaming output, complete with more robust and optimized ray tracing effects.

The console is codenamed Project Trinity, and 4K gaming is likely to be main target for the PS5 Pro. We could see the console enable more consistent 4K 60FPS gaming experiences due to new advanced SoC tech. Reports say that Sony has been developing the PS5 Pro model since 2022 and that most studios will receive devkits by late 2023.

Call of Duty Mobile continues delivering powerhouse earnings with the game passing over $3 billion in spending since its launch in October 2019.

Call of Duty's mobile version has been incredibly successful for Activision's games segment. In its recent Q2 2023 earnings brief, Activision Blizzard King announced that COD Mobile has broken $3 billion in total worldwide consumer spending, doubling the previous $1.5 billion figure that Activision shared in February 2022.

We recently heard that Intel is no longer going to make its NUCs, and that Team Blue is passing the baton for this product line to ASUS - and apparently this means a ROG branded NUC is in the cards.

This comes from Italian tech site Bits and Chips, so as ever with rumors - particularly from lesser-known sources - be careful about accepting it as the truth. But the gossip is that ASUS is developing a high-end ROG NUC to take over from the Intel NUC 13 Extreme.

We're told this will use an Intel Meteor Lake processor paired with an RTX 4000 GPU (likely an RTX 4070), and it'll be a typically flashy ROG design which is heavy on the RGB.

Diablo IV's massive success helped Blizzard become the jewel in Activision's crown.

Activision Blizzard King just announced its Q2 2023 earnings, and the results are incredibly strong. Blizzard overperformed during the quarter thanks to the monumental sales revenue generated from Diablo IV. The demon-slaying ARPG helped Blizzard break $1 billion in quarterly earnings for the first time in the publisher's 32-year history.

During the second quarter, Blizzard made $1.049 billion in revenues, most of which was from the release of Diablo IV. The last figures pinpoint Diablo IV sales making $666 million in just 5 days across consoles and PC. This doesn't account for the remaining weeks of sales through the end of the month (Activision's Q2 period ends on June 30).

The first season of Diablo 4 is now live, and Blizzard has already removed one of the less well-received changes made in its unpopular preseason patch (v1.1.0).

Sadly, this doesn't involve letting up on the nerfs made to the sorcerer class, which have been the most complained about element of patch 1.1.

However, as Wccftech spotted, with the release of Season of the Malignant, Blizzard has performed a U-turn on a change whereby level requirements were implemented for tackling Capstone Dungeons to level up to World Tier III or IV.

Democrats and Republicans hardly ever agree, but there is one topic that both sides of the fence can get behind, and that's the unveiling of secret alien technologies and evidence of "non-human intelligence".

Early this month Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced an amendment to the National Defence Authorization Act, which would mandate and publicly disclose government records related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), more commonly known as UFOs. Schumer said in a press release that the American public has a right to learn about "technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena".

Additionally, the Senate Majority leader said that lawmakers are not working on declassifying information pertaining to extraterrestrial existence but also the creation of a pipeline for future research to be made public. The amendment would require the National Archies and Records Administration (NARA) to create a collection of records that will be called the UAP Records Collection, along with a UAP Records Review Board.

Reports from the Russian state-run news agency TASS reveal that individuals infected with a rare bacteria have escaped hospitalization.

The reports state that individuals contracted the rare and deadly bacteria known as anthrax, and after being hospitalized, escaped their beds, resulting in a public health alert from authorities. The individuals are located in Russia's southern Siberian region, and reportedly escaped in late June. Where did the anthrax come from? Scientists theorize the uptick in anthrax cases can be traced back to increasing temperatures that thawed permafrost within the region.

Reports indicate that the most recently recorded anthrax case happened in a town called Bizhiktig-Khaya, Russia, where a herd of unvaccinated animals contracted anthrax. The shepherds were then sent to hospital after becoming infected with the bacteria. TASS reports that on June 30, a local resident of the area was sent to hospital for an anthrax infection after they visited the area. Notably, the area of the outbreak is known for horse meat consumption.

In late 2022 Tesla showcased a prototype of Optimus, a humanoid robot that the company says will be able to relieve humans of monotonous jobs, such as those in a factory line.

During the showcase of the Optimus bot Musk said that Tesla's robot program is the most important project that the company is working on and that its anticipated to bring in as much, if not more revenue than the company's electric vehicles. During the most recent Tesla earnings call Musk was asked about the progress of the Optimus project, and more specifically, how many robots has Tesla developed since the showcase in 2022.

Musk didn't give a specific number of developed Optimus bots, but did go on to say that there was potential for robotic limbs to be developed and controlled through a brain implant. This brain implant would developed by Neuralink, one of Musk's other business ventures, and through the combination of robotic limbs and Neuralink implants amputees could receive full control of robotic arms and legs.

A UK-based aerospace company called Pulsar Fusion has taken Elon Musk's request for a nuclear-powered rocket very seriously, as the new company continues development on what could be the next generation of space travel.

In July 2019, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that NASA should begin researching a nuclear thermal rocket for fast transit around the solar system, and now Pulsar Fusion is working on just that. The new aerospace company is developing a rocket that's powered by nuclear fusion and would be able to reach speeds of up to 500,000 mph, cutting the travel time between Earth and Mars by half.

If such a rocket was developed successfully, humans could reach the Red Planet in just a matter of weeks instead of the current estimated travel time of months. NASA estimates with current rocket technology that a trip to Mars would take seven months, and the humans that land on the Red Planet's surface would only be able to stay there for four years due to unsafe radiation levels.

An asteroid that's estimated to be worth an astounding $10 quintillion is making it's way closer to Earth ahead of NASA and SpaceX's joint rocket launch that will send a spacecraft to inspect the massive space rock.

The asteroid is officially called 16 Psyche and is estimated to be 176 miles wide, containing $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 worth of metals such as gold, iron, and nickel. In 2020, NASA announced it was partnering with Elon Musk's SpaceX to inspect the asteroid, and now we are less than 100 days away from the highly anticipated launch. Notably, NASA doesn't plan on mining the asteroid, or at least not yet, as the space agency's intentions are purely scientific.

NASA's spacecraft will launch on the back of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket sometime in October and take approximately six years to reach the Main Asteroid Belt located between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft, or more accurately, a satellite, will enter the asteroid's orbit and begin to perform scientific analysis. Researchers have equipped the satellite with various cameras to image 16 Psyche.