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The South African Competition Tribunal has approved the Microsoft-Activision merger without conditions.

Earlier this year, South Africa's trade regulator (SAC) recommended full approval of the $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision on the grounds that it did not pose any significant threat to harm in the region's competition of the video games market. Today, the country's regulation tribunal, the SACT, has formally issued a decision to greenlight and approve the merger.

The regulatory tribunal has yet to publish a formal report on why it unconditionally approved the combination, but it could be similar to those published by other countries, including South Korea.

Windows 11 will get even tighter security in the future, according to recent comments from a Microsoft executive.

As you're likely aware, Windows 11 took a tougher line with security than Windows 10, focusing on security from the 'ground up' and notably bringing in the requirement for TPM (that means some PCs fail to qualify for the upgrade to the newer OS).

Microsoft intends to strengthen the defenses of future versions of Windows, though, as David Weston, vice president of Enterprise and OS Security at the company, made clear.

NASA's Perseverance rover has been roaming the surface of the Red Planet since February 2021, and it has recently discovered a strange rock that's causing scientists to scratch their heads.

NASA's Mars rover has been exploring the Jezero Crater since it landed on the Red Planet, with the primary mission of the rover being to obtain a multitude of Martian samples that will then be transported back to Earth for further analysis. NASA hopes that Perseverance will be able to discover evidence, or a presence of ancient microbial life, possibly within the dried-up deltas all around the 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater.

Perseverance secured several samples throughout its travels, while also snapping as many pictures as it can of the surrounding Martian landscape. One of the pictures that has attracted the attention of not only the general public but also scientists from around the world is the image of a rock that appears to have a vacant circle at its center, earning it its "doughnut" name. The picture was captured with Perseverance's SuperCam, which identified that the rock was 324 feet away from the rover.

Microsoft has been busy fixing a couple of problems with File Explorer in Windows 11, so it'll run more smoothly in general, and not eat CPU resources in the case of one of the bugs that's been fixed with a freshly released preview update.

This is the optional update for June, KB5027303, and as Windows Latest reports, it resolves an issue where high CPU usage could be caused in a particular scenario with File Explorer.

That spiked processor usage is encountered when using the 'View effective access' button (in the Advanced Security Settings dialog).

Twitter owner Elon Musk has appeared on the 'Real Talk with Zuby' podcast, where he discussed the running cost of having freedom of speech as one of the main priorities on Twitter.

Musk recently sat down for the podcast and was asked about his thoughts on the line between keeping people on a social media platform, selling those people advertising while also making the platform an enjoyable place people can spend time. Musk went on to say that the company took a hit with advertising after the platform opened up its rules and regulations to allow more freedom of speech.

Musk said that Twitter's advertising in North America dropped by more than 50%. Advertiser spending in Europe on Twitter is down about 40%, according to Musk. The Twitter owner said that if the company continued on the same path when he took over in October 2022, it would still have a lot more of that now-missing revenue. Musk goes on to say, "Freedom of speech is pretty expensive". Adding, "Freedom of speech is currently costing about $2 billion a year."

Before NASA puts humans on the surface of Mars, the space agency wants to test how humans would cope living in a simulated version of the Mars surface for a year.

Four individuals have been selected to undertake the adventure of being locked in a Mars simulation for 378 days, and throughout this time, the participants will be learning how to live, work together and cope with all of the issues that the Martian surface will present. The participants will be inducted into a strict workout routine, have numerous duties/responsibilities, perform simulated spacewalks to harvest crops, and have to endure random communication drops that will isolate them from the outside world.

The four volunteer participants are Kelly Haston, Ross Brockwell, Nathan Jones, and Anca Selariu. These individuals were chosen specifically for their qualifications which span biomedical science, biochemistry, research science, structural engineering, and more. So, how much will the participants be paid for their time? According to the Houston Chronicle, NASA is paying $10 per hour for all waking hours, but up to 16 hours per day, which works out to about $60,480 for the 378-day mission.

Reports indicate that the original source code for the first Far Cry game has leaked onto the website Internet Archive.

The file was uploaded to Internet Archive and titled "Far Cry 1.34 Complete", but according to reports, it's unclear if the source code contains updates or patches. However, the fact that the title contains .34, suggests that the files contain patches, but according to gamers who have downloaded the source code, it's "not complete, but close".

SpaceX is planning on launching Starship again before the end of the year, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who recently gave an update on the timeline for the company's biggest rocket yet on a podcast.

Musk sat down with Zuby, the host of the "Real Talk with Zuby" podcast, where he discussed various topics over the course of an hour and a half. Starting off, Musk said that he just flew in from Starbase, Texas, where SpaceX is constructing Starship, the company's biggest and most powerful rocket yet. If you aren't in the rocket development loop of news, you may remember seeing headlines of Elon Musk's rocket that exploded mid-air in April - that was Starship.

SpaceX conducted the first orbital test flight of Starship on April 20, and after the second stage of the rocket failed to separate from the first stage, the company was forced to detonate the rocket mid-air. However, the launch was deemed a success by SpaceX as many milestones were reached, and much was learned from what seemed like, on the surface - a failure.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey results for June 2023 are here, so let's look at the latest snapshot of GPUs out there powering everyone's PC gaming action. Per the headline, the most popular GPU looks to be the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, with a 5.5% share. The USD 150 entry-level card from 2019 was designed for 1080p performance but has since been superseded with entries like the GeForce RTX 3050.

NVIDIA once again dominates the list, with 76.05% of all Steam users rocking an NVIDIA GPU, followed by 15.04% from AMD and 8.66% from Intel. That said, the only GPUs released last year that appear on the list are from NVIDIA.

The GeForce GTX 1650 is the first of many entry-level, mainstream, and mid-range GeForce graphics cards from the last couple of generations that make up the top ten GPUs, according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey results. Plus, old faithful - the GeForce GTX 1060 - is sitting at number three. Not far behind the GTX 1650 sits the GeForce RTX 3060 with a 4.6% share, though it's interesting to see the GeForce RTX 3070 in the top ten too.

NASA has taken to its blog to reveal some new photographs snapped by the world's most powerful space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The space agency explains in a new blog post that astronomers pointed Webb and its extremely powerful instruments at one of the most iconic planets in the solar system - Saturn. The observations took place on June 25, 2023, and for the first time, Saturn was observed by Webb's near-infrared instruments, which were eventually converted into incredible images you can see above and below.

NASA explains that Saturn appears dark in the image as its abundance of methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling onto its atmosphere. However, Saturn's iconic rings don't suffer from the same fate as Webb's image showcases them in a sufficient level of brightness, revealing details within the rings and even the planet's fainter rings, which cannot be seen in this image.

GIGABYTE has announced it will be releasing three brand new gaming monitors that will be arriving in a variety of sizes and resolutions.

Up first from GIGABYTE is the GS32QC, the successor of the G-series from 2020, which were also high-refresh-rate VA panels. The GS32QC is a 31.5-inch SuperSpeed VA panel that sports a 1500R curvature, 1ms Moving Picture Response Time (MPRT), 2560 x 1440p (QHD) resolution, 109% coverage of the sRGB, 8-bit color depth, 300 nits typical brightness and a static contrast ratio of 3500:1.

As for refresh rate, the GS32QC has a native refresh rate of 165Hz but can be overlocked to 170Hz. Other features include - Adaptivce-Sync technology, AMD FreeSync Premium, Eyesafe 2.0 certification, two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4, and a headphone jack. Next up is the GS27QC, which is a 27-inch panel with a 1500R curvature, QHD resolution, 8-bit color depth, 1ms MPRT, 250 nits brightness, and a static contrast ratio of 4000:1. Much like the GS32QC, the GS27QC has a native refresh rate of 165Hz and can be overclocked to 170Hz.

A stealthy GPU release from MSI, with a brand-new GeForce RTX 4090 GPU from the popular brand, is not getting anything in the way of an official announcement or reveal. However, it's not hard to see why, as the new MSI GeForce RTX 4090 AERO S looks to be exclusive to the Chinese market and features a traditional blower-fan cooling design.

It's not something we expected to see, but there looks to be some interest in GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs using this cooler design to keep the overall thickness down to a more manageable two-slot size. We reported on the new AFOX RTX 4090, another GPU with a blower-fan design, a week ago.

Without recognizable branding on the MSI GeForce RTX 4090 AERO S, odds are this GPU is positioned as a workstation RTX GPU for the Chinese market. Although less capable than high-end Ada-powered workstation GPUs, it could present a more affordable alternative for intensive workloads. Especially when crowded workstation PCs are designed for GPUs not to be at most two slots thick.

"We cannot ship games for which the developer does not have all the necessary rights," writes Valve in response to a game developer whose game was rejected from the Steam platform due to issues with AI-generated art. This info comes from Reddit user 'potterharry97', who made their written rejection public on the popular discussion forum.

The validity of AI-generated art has been a controversial subject of late due to AI models being trained using existing art, some of which is copyrighted, making the whole idea of the originality of AI-generated art a question of plagiarism in some extreme cases. And it's this idea that sits at the center of Valve's stance on AI art.

In its response to the developer, Valve notes that unless "you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game," it cannot sanction the use of AI-generated art. Or, at least, it's making it the developer's responsibility to ensure all artwork has been legally created - though one assumes small indie studios looking at AI-generated art wouldn't have access to data sets used to train AI models.

ASUS has showcased an interesting concept GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, adding a PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD slot onto the back of the GPU to use unused PCIe lanes. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti uses x8 lanes, so the full PCIe x16 slot has extra room for a Gen4 M.2 SSD to utilize a PCIe x4 interface. Although strange, the M.2 SSD-equipped GeForce RTX 4060 Ti that features storage on the same PCB begins to make sense.

Tony Yu, ASUS's General Manager,gave a close look at the concept showcasing that the placement of a Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD on the back of the GPU means that the heatsink and cooling for the efficient GeForce RTX 4060 Ti eliminate any concerns around the SSD overheating. We saw temperatures remain low during a benchmark, so the excessive cooling on the GPU helps keep the SSD storage cooler than the traditional install-it-on-the-motherboard route.

Due to the small size of M.2 drives, the cutout on the concept GeForce RTX 4060 Ti blends in with the backplate of what looks to be a customized version of the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti - and it looks very cool.

Bethesda's Starfield is a PC and Xbox exclusive and one of the most anticipated RPG releases in years, a brand-new sci-fi epic from the team behind Skyrim and Fallout. Recently, the studio announced its partnership with AMD for the PC release, where we learned that the game would support AMD's FSR 2.0 upscaling technology across PC and console alongside multi-threaded CPU optimizations.

This news arrived last week and was criticized due to recent reports indicating that AMD is actively blocking developers from adding NVIDIA DLSS support to its sponsored games. To the point where modders have confirmed that they'll add unofficial DLSS 3 and Frame Generation support to the game within weeks of its launch.

Although that controversy is limited to the Radeon and GPU side of the equation, it looks like the partnership is as much about CPU performance - which is great. And according to this placeholder page over at US retailer Newegg, Starfield is set to be bundled with all new Ryzen 7000 CPUs.

AMD's new HYPR-RX technology was announced before the launch of the new Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX late last year, created as a means to boost performance in games with no tweaking required on the user's side. HYPR-RX isn't a new technology per se, but a one-click solution within AMD's Adrenaline software that enables AMD Anti-Lag, Radeon Boost, and Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) in supported titles.

The combination of technologies is designed to deliver fast frame rates and lower latency instead of separating these options. This would be an excellent tool for competitive games where smooth and reliable performance is the goal.

According to AMD's roadmap, HYPR-RX was on track for the first half of the 2023 release, but that window has now come and gone, with no word from the company on when we can expect to see the technology.

It's no surprise that Starfield will have mod support, but now we're hearing Todd Howard share his thoughts about Starfield mods.

Bethesda's new game Starfield is a perfect fit for mods. The space sim has a massive array of 1,000 planets, and most of these will be devoid of life. To faithful Bethesda RPG players, this sounds like a blank canvas for mods to unleash boundless creativity. Only 100 of Starfield's vanilla worlds will have life on them, but that will certainly change with mods.

There's few things more enjoyable than playing a Bethesda RPG on PC at launch. You get to see the game evolve in real-time thanks to the skills and imagination of the gaming community and we could see some very interesting things roll out with Starfield mods. Let's just hope the Creation Club is at least optimized enough not to break script extenders with new game updates this time (Bethesda has had a history of "breaking" Fallout and Skyrim mods with game updates, forcing modders to re-adjust their "script extenders" to ensure specific game-changing mods are supported in the new update).

You've heard about Games-as-a-Service...well get ready for Games-as-a-Platform.

Ubisoft has an interesting plan to sell an Assassin's Creed product that will serve as a hub for new games in the series. It's called Assassin's Creed Infinity, and it could end up being a new entry in the video games industry's new nascent Games-as-a-Platform (GaaP) concept. Halo Infinite was the first example of this--343 Industries said that future Halo games would no longer be numbered--but so far the plan has somewhat fizzled. Then EA CEO Andrew Wilson mentioned the Games-as-a-Platform concept in the company's Fiscal Year 2023 earnings call.

But it could be Ubisoft who executes on this idea first, and the company is currently working on what appears Infinity's content pipeline. Ubisoft has referred to the game as the "Infinity Hub," and we could conceptualize it as a full-game client or storefront that's contained in a specific piece of software. Imagine going to the store and buying a disc, but instead of just one game, you're also buying an access point to other games as well as DLC and in-game purchases.

New infographs from an Xbox presentation at Brazil's BIG Festival reveal Xbox console sales figures for both Gen 8 and Gen 9 cycles.

At the Big Festival 2023 event, Leonardo Barros Barreto. Director of Partner Production Management at Xbox delivered a presentation entitled Xbox - Opportunities for Developers ranging from ID@Xbox to Game Pass. In this presentation, Barreto showed a slide deck with interesting figures on Xbox hardware sales across last-gen and the current Xbox Series generation. This presentation was not livestreamed as part of the BIG Festival videos.

According to the figures, the Xbox Series X/S have sold a combined 21 million units. No specificity regarding timing was given--we don't know if that's current numbers, or if it's as of a certain date, and we don't know whether or not this is shipments, installed base, or sell-through figures. Despite the ambiguity around the number, it does still give us an idea of how well the new-gen Xbox duo are performing.

Data revealed in the FTC v Microsoft federal case gives a closer look at Nintendo's dominant lead in the console publishing segment.

Most gamers already know just how big Nintendo is. Microsoft really drove this point home in key witness testimony in the federal case with the intent to undermine the FTC's high-performance relevant market, which omitted Nintendo from the picture. Not only does the Switch have substitution effects with PlayStation and Xbox, but the device is the best-selling console across both Gen 8 and Gen 9 systems.

Testimony from economist Dr. Liz Bailey outlines just how big Nintendo is compared to PlayStation, Xbox, and other third-party publishers in the console gaming market. According to data provided by her in the courtroom, and relayed by mLex reporter Michael Achton, Nintendo has a $3.8 billion lead over Sony's publishing revenues, and a significant $3.8 billion lead over Xbox.