Latest News - Page 893

OK, so we all know that having a longer PIN is a good way to make sure that our phones are safe and secure. But really, who wants to go about entering a PIN that's multiple digits long? That's why we have biometric security with face and fingerprint unlocks, right?

Well, sure. But sometimes entering a PIN is the only way to get in, and now Google is working on a way to make entering longer PINs less annoying.

With Android today you have to enter a long PIN and then confirm that you're done so that the phone will unlock. But the latest Android 14 beta does away with that final step, automatically signing you in when you successfully enter a PIN that's at least six digits in length. You can see it in action in the tweet embedded above.

NetherRealm is manipulating time once again, and has rewinded the clock back to the early days of Mortal Kombat.

New leaks indicate that Mortal Kombat 12 will actually be a series reboot called Mortal Kombat 1. Now we know exactly what Ed Boon's recent tease was referring to when it showed a clock whose second hand skipped 12 and wouldn't move past 1.

The info was leaked by Twitter insider @billbil-kun, who has a great track record with pre-emptive reveals and unreleased info. Mortal Kombat 1 is to be exclusive to current-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and it will be priced at the new $70 MSRP of these systems. Mortal Kombat 1 is also coming to the Nintendo Switch at a $59.99 price point.

This year's Call of Duty game will be called Modern Warfare III, sources tell Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson.

Reports indicate that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is the next premium COD release, and the game is set to launch in November 10, 2023. MW3 is expected to have all the content that players expect from a mainline Call of Duty title, including a gripping campaign that leverages the franchise's new IW 9.0 games engine, a full suite of multiplayer modes, a PvE zombies survival mode, and new Warzone 2 seasonal content.

Sledgehammer Games, the devs behind Advanced Warfare and Call of Duty WWII, is leading principal development of Modern Warfare 3, with the full suite of Activision's other studios also assisting development.

ASUS has just launched its ROG Ally gaming handheld, and we've found out that the rumor mill has been pretty much spot-on in terms of spec leaks and the pricing of the devices.

ASUS confirmed that the Steam Deck rival will cost $599 for the base ROG Ally with AMD's Z1 processor, and the higher-tier model - with the Z1 Extreme CPU - is going to carry a price of $699.

You can now pre-order the ROG Ally of your choice, and we're told that shipping will start next month, on June 13, for the Ryzen Z1 Extreme model. The vanilla spin of the handheld will be out later, in Q3 of 2023 (so technically, that could be July).

World of Warcraft has a whole range of merch - shocker, we know - associated with the MMOG, and Blizzard has just introduced something new to its gear store, in the form of a stand for the premium replica Frostmourne sword.

Yes, that's a real-life Frostmourne - some 49-inches in length - and the sword costs $1,500, with the new stand accessory running an additional $600 (both are still on pre-order, mind).

We say stand, but we're underselling it here, because this is actually an ice pedestal, which, as Blizzard puts it, is "designed to showcase your prized possession in a unique and immersive way".

Nintendo's president comments on next-gen hardware, and says that it's incredibly important for Nintendo to ensure a smooth transition between the two system generations.

Nintendo is reportedly gearing up for its next-gen Switch, which is believed to be a next-gen handheld-console hybrid capable of delivering 4K gaming using NVIDIA's DLSS upscaling tech. With new hardware comes one incredibly important question: Will the new Switch be backwards compatible and play all games currently available on the Tegra X1-powered Switch family?

Considering the Switch recently broke 1 billion game sales, backwards compatibility is seems like a critical part of any future hardware plans. In a recent Q&A with investors, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa hints that the next-gen Switch model could indeed play current-gen titles.

AMD's Radeon RX 7600 graphics card has again been spotted in leaked pics of a model from Sapphire, which among other things shows the VRAM loadout on the box - which, as previously rumored, is 8GB.

Those photos also show that the RX 7600 has 32 Compute Units, meaning 2048 Stream Processors (cores), again as speculation has contended in the past.

The images were shared by VideoCardz, and they're of the Sapphire Pulse version of the RX 7600, which some of you may recall has already been the subject of a leak from a Chinese retailer. The Pulse is one of Sapphire's more affordable products slotting under its Nitro models.

AI tools and technology being integrated into the everyday apps and digital things we use every day is going to be the norm for the foreseeable future, with the latest being Google's new Magic Editor feature in Google Photos-the go-to app for many of Android users and Pixel smartphone owners.

According to Google, the idea behind Magic Editor and AI is to make "complex edits easy" and open up new photo editing skills and abilities for non-photography-minded folks. AI has been a part of Google Photos since its debut in 2015, with automated organizing and things like Magic Eraser and Photo Unblur, all based on AI algorithms.

Magic Editor is different in that it uses generative AI to help reimagine photos and assist with editing. As of writing, Google is calling the new tool "a new experimental editing experience" that allows for edits to specific parts of an image, ranging from a background object to the subject. In fact, it'll allow for repositioning the subject to "the best spot" to add a dose of pro-level shot framing and composition.

Google Cloud's new Compute Engine A3 supercomputers are built for the most demanding artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models, combining NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs with Google's networking advancements.

Compared to the company's A2 VMs, Google claims up to 10x more network bandwidth with low latencies and improved stability. How did it achieve this? The new A3 supercomputers using NVIDIA H100 GPUs are the first to use Google's custom-designed 200 Gbps IPUs with GPU data bypassing the CPU host on a separate interface compared to other VM network and data traffic.

As with all things supercomputing and cutting-edge AI-based, scalability allows tens of thousands of interconnected GPUs to operate with a "workload bandwidth that is indistinguishable from more expensive off-the-shelf non-blocking network fabrics."

ASUS is launching a pair of new GeForce RTX 4090 models, both designed for extreme gaming performance (the RTX 4090 is still an absolute monster of a GPU) and for those with smaller cases. When the GeForce RTX 4090 launched last year, the ROG Strix and TUF Gaming models from ASUS were chunky, to say the least, with robust builds and plenty of room to keep the RTX 4090 from breaking a sweat.

The new ROG Strix LC GeForce RTX 4090 and TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 OG are two new cards from ASUS designed for smaller form factor builds. The former and its overclocked variant, the ROG Strix LC GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition, represent the pinnacle of ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090 action, which uses liquid cooling that spans both the GPU die and memory.

Adding a blower-style fan keeps the 2.6 slot thickness down to a more manageable level for smaller systems, though there's the additional requirement of installing the 240mm radiator. Having a blower fan on an AIO water-cooled GPU might seem strange, but it makes sense as an additional cooling for overclocking. Regarding looks, it's ROG Strix through and through, with bold use of lines, RGB, and ASUS branding.

COLORFUL is launching a new range of DDR5 memory kits designed for overclockers and enthusiasts with its new COLORFUL CVN ICICLE DDR5 memory. With support for Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 3.0 technology alongside using high-quality Hynix A-die memory chips, the new memory kits are set to launch Q2 2023 with a high-speed configuration of DDR5-6600MHz with CL34 timing.

And with the kits using a 10-layer PCB for greater stability and integrity when overclocking, COLORFUL has also managed to push these new DDR5 kits to speeds beyond DDR5-10000.

With COLORFUL's internal iGame LAB team of professional overclockers, the team achieved this with the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX motherboard, and you can check out the fully validated results here.

Redditors with Xbox Series S consoles have reported interesting errors when playing Borderlands 3. The message states that the console has "run out of video memory" after a crash back to the console's dashboard. What makes the error message strange is the PC-like addition of "try lowering the resolution or closing other applications that are running."

And it highlights an issue not present for gamers with the more powerful Xbox Series X console-the limited memory capacity of the Xbox Series S.

With 8GB of VRAM currently in the spotlight in PC gaming, especially when playing titles at resolutions higher than 1080p, this error report inserts the Xbox Series S console into the debate. The Xbox Series S is designed as an entry-level digital console for modern gaming, but it targets 1440p as its baseline resolution.

Regulators like the Federal Trade Commission and the Competition and Markets Authority have excluded Nintendo from the Big 3. Here's why these agencies are ignoring one of the biggest video games companies on the planet.

In an effort to better understand the world's largest entertainment market and to better frame the $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision merger, worldwide antitrust regulators have sifted through millions of documents from video games companies like Microsoft, Activision, Sony, and even Nintendo. This long, arduous process has led to regulators like the FTC in the United States and the CMA in the United Kingdom to simplify things wherever possible. One of the most controversial ways these agencies have done so is to effectively ignore Nintendo's presence in the Big 3 triumvirate of the console market.

The FTC in particular went above and beyond by creating a High-Performance Console market designation that notably excludes Nintendo.

Diablo IV looks to be the ultimate evolution of Blizzard's engagement mechanics, and players should expect a near never-ending experience.

Today Blizzard released new updates on what to expect from Diablo IV's post-launch content, and also underlines the intensely-synergized game mechanics in this particular live game. The studio also detailed Diablo IV's three separate battle passes and how the seasons offer rewards that actually tangibly affect gameplay, possibly to such a degree where the participation in specific seasonal content may not be entirely optional.

Diablo IV has 3 separate battle passes: a Free Battle Pass, a Premium Battle Pass, and an Accelerated Battle Pass. That's on top of a cosmetic shop that allows players to buy skins for real money, and a $69.99 price tag for the game. Things get a little tricky from here.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 and its Ti version are supposedly nearing launch, as well as AMD's RX 7600 graphics card, and a YouTube leaker has been discussing what he's heard regarding the potential pricing for these GPUs.

Of course, if the rumor mill is right, as we've just seen courtesy of VideoCardz, the theory is that the RTX 4060 Ti and the RX 7600 will be launching almost simultaneously - a day apart, in a couple of weeks' time - with the RTX 4060 following in two months (early July).

Price-wise, though, according to RedGamingTech (RGT) on YouTube, it's the RTX 4060 that'll be pitched at about the same price as AMD's RX 7600, with the RTX 4060 Ti getting a price tag of around $100 more expensive in the US.

Capcom lays out ambitious long-term plans to sell 100 million games per year, and it's almost halfway there. Increasing game prices to $69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S could dramatically impact sales potential, however.

Capcom is on fire right now. In its latest Fiscal Year 2022 report, Japanese games publisher recorded its 10th consecutive year of record operating profits, and also sold a record-breaking 41.7 million video games throughout the year. Capcom is on the up-and-up, and the company wants to keep this growth trajectory going and challenge itself to eventually achieve 100 million game sales per year.

It's a lofty goal, one that will push Capcom to new heights in content creation but also careful marketing, distribution deals, and pricing of its products. We've seen that the new $69.99 price hike has detrimentally impacted game sales--PlayStation sales data indicates gamers are buying fewer products, but spending more money on the games that they do buy.

EU regulators at the European Commission are expected to give a final decision on the Microsoft-Activision merger on Monday, May 15, with approval being likely, sources have told Reuters.

While regulatory agencies like the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seek to block the $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision merger on the grounds of anti-competitive effects, the combination is expected to be approved in Europe.

New reports from Reuters' Foo Yun Chee indicate that the European Commission could deliver an early merger decision on May 15, a full week ahead of the Commission's May 22 deadline. The deal is expected to be approved in the EU as it's believed that Microsoft's 10-year licensing deals are enough to counter potential theories of harm that may arise in the console gaming and cloud streaming market segments. Sources have also told Bloomberg similar information regarding the timing and likelihood of approval.

NVIDIA's Lovelace flagship GPU has been spotted with a massive overclock applied, and not for the first time - however, it is the first time that such a significant ramping up of boost speed has been seen while running a 3D application.

The RTX 4090 in question was a Colorful model, its iGame LAB flagship card, which was overclocked to 3.825GHz by expert overclocker 'CENS' using liquid nitrogen cooling.

The RTX 4090 was run at that speed in the Unigine Superposition benchmark, which may not be a gaming test, but it is a full 3D test that pushes the GPU as a result. When running with such high clocks, that's obviously going to add quite some strain. What's more, the benchmark was undertaken at 8K resolution to make for a steep hill to climb.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti graphics card could turn up earlier than expected, with the rumor mill now floating a release date that might be designed to beat AMD to the mid-range GPU punch.

Previously - and actually for a while now - we've been hearing that NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti will be launched at Computex, which is at the very end of May.

However, the latest chatter from the GPU grapevine insists that this date has been moved forward for the launch of the first version of the RTX 4060 Ti (which will have 8GB of VRAM).

Hopewell Township, New Jersey, Police are reporting that a resident reported a metallic object, possibly a meteorite, plummeting through their roof on Monday.

The family lives on Old Washington Crossing Pennington Road and reported just after 1 pm, a metallic object crashed right through their roof. The object measures 4 inches by 6 inches and has an oblong shape, according to local authorities. According to the report, the family called the non-emergency line and attempted to convey their story to the authorities, which would have seemed bizarre.

The family reported no injuries and said that they initially believed that someone threw a rock onto their roof, but after they saw the object, they realized it could be a meteorite. Suzie Kop, the daughter of the homeowner, said she discovered the hole in her father's bedroom and noticed that the floor beneath the hole was also damaged. Additionally, Kopf directs CBS news reporters to another hole in the ceiling, saying, "It ricocheted up to this part of the ceiling and then finally rested on the floor there".