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The next round of flagship phones will likely be powered by a new chip, and that chip is shaping up to be one well worth getting excited about.

That new chip is of course the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 from Qualcomm, with the silicon set to replace the current Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that powers flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S23 lineup. Now, new details show the upcoming chip's expected performance when compared to the old one, and it makes for good reading.

The information comes via Twitter leaker Revegnus, with the stats suggesting that there will be up to a 30% speed improvement depending on the type of thing you're doing.

In a world where building a competitor for Twitter seems to be the thing everyone is trying to do, the idea of Meta and Instagram getting involved shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. Now, that Instagram project has leaked with screenshots shared online.

The leak comes after one of Meta's executives showed employees a preview of what the project looks like in its current state. Dubbed Project 92, the unnamed social network will be based on Instagram but integrate with ActivityPub, the social media protocol that's decentralized in a similar way to Mastodon. As a result, there is a possibility that accounts will work across both platforms which is something that traditional social networks like Twitter and Facebook simply don't allow.

The Verge reports that Meta chief product officer Chris Cox told those in attendance yesterday that the new project is the company's response to Twitter. He went on, saying that creators Meta has spoken to have said that they want a platform that "is sanely run," something that was a clear jibe at Twitter and current owner Elon Musk.

Like Proton for Linux, which makes Windows-based games playable on the OS within Steam, Apple is looking to make it just as easy for developers to make DirectX 12 games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Diablo IV playable on Mac computers with a new Game Porting Toolkit based on CodeWeaver's CrossOver source code.

The tool allows developers to quickly and easily fire up their games to see how they run on macOS, with Apple noting that it has been designed to make the whole Mac game port process as easy as possible. Powered by the source code from CrossOver, it can instantly translate Windows API calls so they can run on macOS - with Apple showcasing the technology by running the DirectX 12 survival horror game The Medium via the Game Porting Toolkit.

"The new Game Porting Toolkit provides an emulation environment to run your existing unmodified Windows game," Aiswariya Sreenivassan, an engineer at Apple, said during the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). "You can use it to quickly understand the graphics feature usage and performance potential of your game when running on a Mac."

Seagate is going all-in on the new HAMR technology for traditional drives and is planning to launch its first 32TB capacity model this year, with a 40TB model to follow in 2024. Yeah, that's a lot of storage.

Seagate views HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) as the next step for high-capacity drives built on magnetic recording technology. It's essentially a refinement of what we've seen for decades with magnetic technology by allowing all data bits to become smaller and more densely packed than ever before. The benefit, of course, comes with remaining magnetically and thermally stable.

How it achieves this is very cool, with the data bits heated and cooled in a nanosecond, so they're not adversely affected by the HAMR laser. Seagate notes that the laser doesn't affect the drive's temperature or reliability. It's expected to be one of the key enterprise hard drive technologies for the next decade, and no doubt personal Plex media server storage too.

Sales for discrete PC graphics cards or GPUs are in a dire state, with a new report from Jon Peddie Research stating that total AIB shipments decreased by 38.2% in Q1 2023 compared to the same quarter from last year. According to the report, this still equates to roughly 6.3 million units, down from the previous quarter's 7.16 million units.

But with new GPU releases from NVIDIA and AMD, in the form of cards like the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, the report indicates that the demand for new GPUs is historically low. Jon Peddie Research cites inflation worries, layoffs, and people buying up last-gen graphics cards sold at a discount to clear out inventory.

With the prices we've recently seen for cards in AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series, discounts in the hundreds of dollars compared to their original MSRPs, it's no wonder people are snapping up bargains. We'd wager that the overall price increases for new high-end GPUs like the GeForce RTX 4080, GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, and Radeon RX 7900 XTX have factored into lower volume.

NVIDIA's DLAA, or Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing, is an impressive bit of tech that draws on a lot of the same technology that sits at the heart of DLSS - that thing we all enable if it's an option to boost performance.

DLAA isn't about boosting performance; it doesn't take a lower-resolution image as the input. Instead, it's about leveraging AI to improve image quality at your native resolution as long as you've got the frames to spare. And in the process, it makes PC games look sharper and more detailed compared to standard anti-aliasing techniques like TAA and MSAA.

DLAA is a feature already available in several games, and like DLSS, requires GeForce RTX hardware and its AI Tensor Cores to enable - but currently, it is a separate option. Today we've got word that a DLSS update for Unreal Engine, the 3.1.13 SDK, has a new DLAA mode that will sit alongside the existing Ultra-Performance, Performance, Balanced, and Quality Modes. Apparently, it will be called 'Performance Quality Mode', which admittedly is a little confusing.

Netac's NV7000-t is a new PCIe Gen4 M.2 SSD that can deliver read speeds of up to 7300MB/s and write speeds of up to 6700MB/s, and it will remain cool thanks to a metal heat spreader that will be included for self-installation.

With this, Neta is positioning the NV7000-t, available in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, as an excellent storage expansion option for both PC and PlayStation 5 gamers.

The single-sided PCB and 3D NAND Flash SSD also support SLC caching for improved efficiency and stability when loading or copying files and "advanced intelligent temperature control technology." The 7300MB/s read speeds, in particular, put this one on the high-end of the PCIe Gen4 list, so it'll be great for tech like DirectStorage on PC while being notably faster than the PS5's already impressive internal M.2 SSD storage.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is coming early 2024, and it will ship on two discs, Square Enix today announced.

The Summer Game Fest showcase ended with an explosive reveal of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth gameplay that injected straight hype and nostalgia right into gamers' veins. The footage highlighted action-packed combat, impressive CGI sequences, and hints that Sephiroth is far more sinister and manipulative in Rebirth than we've ever seen him before.

Areas from the old-school 1997 classic were shown in splendid detail, including the Mythril Mines, the Chocobo Farm, Cosmo Canyon, and a look at Jenova.

NetherRealm's Ed Boon excitedly shares how Jean-Claude van Damme will be a part of Mortal Kombat 1, says that the team wanted him in the first game and had been trying to get the famed martial arts actor for many years.

Jean-Claude van Damme is finally coming to Mortal Kombat, and will be playing Johnny Cage in this year's Mortal Kombat 1 reboot. This is a monumental occasion for NetherRealm--the devs have been trying to get van Damme into the brutal beat-em-up since the first game launched in the early 1990s.

On stage at Geoff Keighley's Summer Games Fest, NetherRealm's Ed Boon shared his excitement on van Damme coming to Mortal Kombat 1, and said that the team basically wanted the first MK to be based around van Damme's bloody exploits on the big screen. The martial arts action-movie influences are quite obvious in Mortal Kombat, and remains at the core of the franchise a whole with practically every fictional macho star showing up in MK in some form, from Terminator and TMNT to Spawn and Robocop.

Epic Games made nearly $6 billion from digital in-game purchases made in Fortnite throughout 2021, handily beating all previous years of mTX sales.

The latest newsletter from games industry expert Joost van Dreunen contains some interesting and unexpected info on fashion. It turns out that Fortnite is the second best-earning seller of apparel when compared up against the likes of mega-brands Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Prada, and Hugo Boss.

According to data compiled by Dreunen, Epic Games' free-to-play sensation Fortnite managed to generate an incredible $5.8 billion from in-game digital cosmetics throughout 2021. This would make 2021 the best year for Fortnite earnings based on our recorded data, and would help push total Fortnite earnings past the $18.6 billion mark.

Sony and Insomniac Games today announced that Spider-Man 2 will launch on October 20, 2023 exclusively on PlayStation 5.

Insomniac Games' Bryan Intihar showed up at Summer Game Fest today to reveal Spider-Man 2's launch date on PS5, and dropped key details about the symbiote suit and Venom's involvement in the game. Intihar says that Insomnaic is "very confident" in the October launch date.

While on stage, Intihar says that Venom won't be Eddie Brock. Instead, Venom's identity will be separated from the comics and films--the team wanted to do something completely original.

The current Friday the 13th multiplayer game will officially be removed from all stores at the end of 2023, and will be taken permanently offline in 2024.

Today, Gun Media announced an unfortunate reality to all licensing deals made for big intellectual properties--they expire over time. That's the case with Friday the 13th: The Game. Gun's license rights will be withdrawn on December 31, 2023, and the game will be delisted from digital and physical stores worldwide. The live service game won't be pulled offline until a full year later on December 2024, however.

Much more content had been planned for Friday the 13th: The Game, but rights issues had stalled development of new DLC. In 2018, Illfonic and Gun Media announced that they could no longer provide new cosmetics and updates for the game.

Capcom continues its success streak as Resident Evil Village breaks a new sales milestone.

Just a bit ago we reported on the top 5 best-selling Capcom franchises and how each series grew over the past year. Resident Evil is by far and away Capcom's top franchise with over 142 million copies sold to date, and now it's been revealed that RE Village has surpassed 8 million sales since its release in May 2021.

"Resident Evil Village has just surpassed 8 million units sold! We owe this to all of our amazing fans. Thank you so much!" Capcom Tweeted late last night.

If you're an Apple Watch Ultra wearer you're going to get one very specific new feature when watchOS 10 ships to the public later this year. And it's one that none of your other non-Ultra Apple Watch owners will get.

That's because this new feature is specific to the Apple Watch Ultra's Night Mode. And you're going to love it if you're someone who has ever been blinded by their Apple Watch Ultra at night.

Currently, using the Apple Watch Ultra's Night Mode required manually enabling it by rotating the Digital Crown. But 9to5Mac reports that this will change when watchOS 10 ships this fall, with the Apple Watch Ultra then able to automatically enable Night Mode once it gets dark enough.

WhatsApp has today announced a new feature called Channels, something that the company says will offer people a reliable and private way to receive updates from people and companies.

The feature puts a direct line to those people and companies into the WhatsApp app, but the conversation is only one way. That means that people who follow a WhatsApp channel from a company won't be able to reply to anything they post, but that might not necessarily be a bad thing.

Channels could have the potential to fill in for the way a lot of people use Twitter - to keep up on updates from their favorite companies or celebrities. A WhatsApp Channel could possibly provide that while making it easier for people to avoid the content they don't want to see. That's something that has become increasingly difficult to do on Twitter since Elon Musk's $44 billion buyout, of course.

GameStop's board of directors has decided to fire CEO Matthew Furlong and establish Ryan Cohen as the executive chairman of the company.

Following years of operational losses, GameStop has shaken up its leadership team in an effort to further pivot towards transformation. GameStop's board of directors has fired former CEO Matthew Furlong without cause, as allowed in Furlong's employment contract, and has moved Ryan Cohen as the executive chairman. The announcement was made alongside GameStop's Q1 operational performance report which confirmed the company would not be holding a conference call for shareholders.

Following the announcement, GameStop ($GME) stock fell by over 19% from $26.11 to $21.09 in after-hours trading.

Microsoft or Activision may have revoked a confidentiality waiver from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which restricted the amount of information the UK agency could share with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States.

In an effort to preserve transparency, the Competition and Markets Authority has published an email between agency CEO Sarah Cardell and Business and Trade Select Committee Chair Darren Jones in relation to a recent trade hearing. At the hearing, Cardell was asked to provide more information on how many times the CMA had shared information with the FTC in the United States. The hearing aimed to address concerns of potential influence between the two international merger control agencies, especially after allegations of collusion between the CMA and the FTC to block the Microsoft-Activision merger.

In the email, Cardell confirmed that the CMA had met with the FTC in 26 oral and written meetings, including video calls and emails. Cardell also says that the CMA had secured key confidentiality waivers from Microsoft, Activision, and third parties that allowed the agency to exchange certain information with the European Commission in the EU and the Federal Trade Commission in the United States. These waivers are common practice for worldwide mergers, and both the FTC and CMA have their own waiver templates.

Following Apple's announcement of the Vision Pro on Monday, the internet, or at least a portion of it, has unsurprisingly begun making fun of the strange animated eyeballs, turning them into a meme.

The bold decision by Apple to animate the eyeballs of the Vision Pro user and place them on an outwards-facing display in an attempt to make conversation with the outside world more comfortable has been laughed at by many users online. Some Apple fans have even gone as far as to say that company executives aren't happy with the design choice, with Bloomberg correspondent Mark Gurman simply asking why Apple CEO Tim Cook has never been seen using the Vision Pro.

Gurman asked why there aren't even any photographs of Cook using the 1st generation product, or any other Apple executives. During the presentation, the company only showcased models using the Vision Pro. According to Gurman, if it is true that Cook hasn't been spotted using Vision Pro, then that was an intentional decision by Apple for a currently unknown reason.

The newest viral story to do with aliens comes from whistleblower David Charles Grusch, a 36-year-old decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, and a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as well as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

As reported yesterday, Grusch told The Debrief that the US government has recovered an alien spacecraft that contained pilots, withheld this information from Congress, and is actively covering up the program. According to Grusch and other intelligence officials, both retired and active, who vouch for his story, these events are still ongoing, with The Guardian even reporting the story with additional information that wasn't included in The Debrief story.

The first addition was that NASA has gone on record in response to Grusch's story, that's making waves.

The first thing you'll notice when looking at the new Razer Kitsune arcade controller designed for fighting games like the recently released Street Fighter 6 is that it doesn't have a traditional joystick. Instead, you get four buttons to represent up, down, left, and right - which Razer notes "eliminates joystick mishaps, heralding a new era of precise, unambiguous gameplay."

Designed alongside the competitive fighting game community, with input from Capcom, too, odds are it works as intended - though it's still a little word to see and an arcade stick controller without an arcade stick. Either way, this premium arcade controller with each button uses Razer's Low-profile Linear Optical Switches with shorter actuation heights and fast response times.

Razer notes that the design abides by all Capcom Pro Tour standards and rules for hardware, making the Kitsune a great choice for tournaments alongside those simply looking to rekindle some of that arcade magic in the living room.