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The Super Mario Bros. movie has now broken $1 billion in total global box office ticket sales, Variety reports.

The new Super Mario Bros. movie has now broken $1 billion in cumulative earnings and will lead to a significant spike in Nintendo's non-gaming revenues. The film has grossed $490 million in North America, and $532 million in other global markets, leading to a combined $1.022 billion in sales.

This performance is no small feat for the movie, which opened in theaters on April 5. In just 26 days, the fan-favorite 3D adventure has become a veritable cash crop, underlining the power of Nintendo's intellectual properties and the overall brand recognition of the Mario franchise.

PlayStation has achieved multiple records, including hardware, software, and total gaming revenues. In a somewhat rare occurrence, console hardware actually led Sony Corp's. triumphant charge in gaming.

Driven by new upticks in adoption, Sony's games division is achieving record success on all relevant consumer sales metrics. The company's full-year results show new all-time highs in PlayStation 5 shipments, with Sony shipping 19 million PS5s during the year while also breaking a new first-quarter calendar year record for most consoles shipped during Q1.

The significant PS5 sales surge has translated to record PlayStation console sales for any given year. Sony generated $8.297 billion from console sales during Fiscal Year 2022, which was over $3 billion more than last year and up nearly 57% year-over-year. The earnings were driven by two back-to-back record console sales quarters during Holiday 2022 ($3.11 billion) and the early January - March quarter ($2.909 billion).

The Google Pixel Fold is coming, that's absolutely something that we can take for granted at this point. The phone has already leaked over and over and now we're seeing even more images of the as-yet-unannounced foldable phone.

These latest images appear to be the closest thing to a press render that we've seen to date and they show a Pixel Fold in what appears to be a black color that we imagine will be called Charcoal. It isn't the most imaginative color, that's true. But it's probably the one that the majority of people will find themselves walking around with.

The images were shared to Twitter by the leaker Evan Blass and are behind a locked account, so you might not be able to see the tweets themselves. But they're there, and we've shared the images here so you can get a good eyeful of what's coming.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 hasn't been around all that long but the world has already turned its attention to what comes next. What comes next is the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and we've now been treated to the first real renders of the unannounced device.

Those renders come via leaker @OnLeaks and SmartPrix which published them today. And while the renders might not be anything close to outlandish, they do show us a phone that looks different from the current model in a couple of ways.

What the renders do appear to show is that the Galaxy Z Fold 5 will be quite a bit thinner than the phone that it will replace. When closed, the phone is expected to measure 154.9 x 67.1 x 13.5mm, a fair bit thinner than the 15.8mm of the Galaxy Z Fold 4.

WhatsApp users could soon have a new way to listen to voice messages. In fact, they might not need to listen to them at all.

That's because WhatsApp is now testing a feature that lets people have their voice messages transcribed for them on-the-fly, so they can still learn what was being said without having to listen to the message itself. That could be a huge deal for people who work somewhere they can't easily listen or simply wouldn't be able to hear for whatever reason.

The new feature isn't yet available to the public but the beta watchers at WABetaInfo say that it is now in the hands of beta testers who have the latest WhatsApp TestFlight version installed. However, it isn't yet available to everyone and it appears to be limited to specific accounts.

If you've been pondering picking up a 14 or 16-inch MacBook Pro or Apple's latest Mac mini but have been waiting for a great price, now might be the time to hold on a little bit longer.

That's because a new report claims that Apple is getting ready to start selling refurbished 2023 Macs, with those including updated 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro models as well as a revamped Mac mini that offered the most powerful chips ever used in that chassis.

Those chips include the latest that Apple silicon has to offer, with all of Apple's 2023 Macs sporting M2-series silicon. The 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros ship with either the M2 Pro or M2 Max chips inside, promising speed improvements of up to 20% CPU and 30% GPU performance. They also have support for up to 96GB of RAM which is a big jump over the previous 64GB limitation. Other improvements include an upgrade to HDMI 2.1 and Wi-Fi 6E support.

While PlayStation 5 hardware is on the rise with record-breaking console sales revenue, PlayStation users are actually buying far fewer games than they have before. Data from Sony and Activision offers a possible explanation on why this is happening.

Sony just reported its best-ever year for PlayStation earnings, raking in nearly $27 billion in revenues. PS5 console hardware sales were the main driver for this over-performance, with Sony generating a record-breaking $8.297 billion from PS4 and PS5 console sales during Fiscal Year 2022.

Software revenues were likewise at an all-time high. Data provided by Sony Corp. indicates that PlayStation gamers spent $6.367 billion in combined digital and physical software purchases. Hardware is pulling in record numbers, and so is software...but overall game unit sales were down quite a bit for FY22, dropping to 264.2 million games sold, which represents a substantial 39 million drop in unit sales from a year ago.

If you buy an Apple Watch today you pair it with an iPhone, sync it with an iPhone, and it's forever attached to that iPhone and no other. That could all be about to change when Apple releases watchOS 10 later this year.

That's according to a new report by Twitter leaker @analyst941 which suggests that there are big changes coming to the Apple Watch. In particular, the report claims that the Apple Watch will soon sync with multiple devices at once, removing the one-iPhone limit. And that's just the start.

According to the leaker, who rose to prominence last year when they shared details about the iPhone 14 Pro's Dynamic Island before it was announced, the Apple Watch will soon connect to iPads and Macs for the very first time. That would be quite the departure for Apple whose Apple Watches have long been linked to one, and only one, iPhone.

At this point it would be a huge surprise if Apple shipped the iPhone 15 lineup with anything other than a USB-C port, but the latest phones aren't the only Apple products that are getting the USB-C treatment. Apple's worst earbuds are as well.

The loss of Lightning is something that few iPhone owners are likely to shed any tears over, especially if they happen to have any other devices that already use USB-C. The iPad is already a USB-C device of course, as are the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. And every Android phone you buy today will have a USB-C port on its bottom edge. But Apple is only switching because the European Union made it, and now it's switching the wired EarPods as well.

That's right, the EarPods that used to come bundled in with iPhones will now also get their very own USB-C upgrade, although they still won't come in the box with your new iPhone.

The Apple Watch Ultra is already the best Apple Watch the company has ever made, but everything could be improved. The Apple Watch Ultra is no different and we'd been told to expect a big display upgrade as soon as next year. Now, a new report suggests that isn't the case at all. We'll have to wait a little bit longer.

The previous rumors had claimed that there was a chance we would see Apple move the Apple Watch Ultra to a new microLED display in 2024, but that's now been blown out of the water - and blown out of the water by the company tasked with making it, no less.

This new report comes via display analyst Ross Young who has a pretty solid track record when it comes to sharing details about upcoming Apple products based on the display technology that they will use. According to Young, the Apple Watch Ultra won't go microLED until 2025 with his source being the company that will make the displays. That company, called Osram, said in a recent report that it expects to start reporting revenues based on its microLED technology products in 2025.

Each year Apple is required by European law to share details about its online platforms including the App Store, its Podcasts app, and more. That includes how many people are using those platforms and the latest figures make for some interesting reading.

Apple made those figures available this week, with the company saying that the numbers are the monthly averages for the six months to 31 January 2023. We get to see how many people in Europe are using the App Store on a number of devices while some of Apple's lesser-known services are also detailed as well. Who remembered Apple Books was a thing, by the way?

Let's dive into what these numbers show. Because they're pretty interesting.

Sony's PlayStation games division has broken multiple yearly and quarterly performance records, most of which were primarily driven by staggeringly high PlayStation 5 console sales.

Sony managed to ship a record-breaking 6.3 million PS5 consoles in its Q4'22 period, setting a new all-time industry high for consoles shipped through the January - March quarter. As a result of diligent console production with the PS5's new 6nm SoC process and several revisions that helped streamline overseas shipping, Sony managed to ship 19 million PlayStation 5 consoles during Fiscal Year 2022. This yearly console shipment is second only to the PS4's 20 million shipments in Fiscal Year 2016.

PlayStation 5 console shipments have now reached 38.4 million units worldwide. On a launch-aligned basis, the PS5 still has yet to beat the PS4, however the gap is closing quickly. In its first 10 quarters on the market, the PlayStation 4 shipped 40.2 million consoles compared to the PlayStation 5's total 38.4 million units.

NVIDIA's theoretically incoming RTX 4060 Ti has been spotted again, and this time, we have a photo of the GPU shared on Twitter.

Take a look at the chip in the pic above - clearly marked as the AD-106-350-A1 die, as previously rumored to power the RTX 4060 Ti - which comes from a regular leaker on Twitter, MEGAsizeGPU.

We've just had a sighting of the RTX 4060 Ti in MSI gaming PCs at a Dutch online retailer, too, as you may have caught yesterday.

British antitrust regulators have determined that the games market is likely to develop in important ways even if the Microsoft-Activision merger doesn't go through, and believes Activision would help foster and be a part of this development by adding its valuable games and franchises to cloud gaming platforms.

Activision-Blizzard currently does not offer its games on cloud streaming platforms or multi-game subscriptions, but that would all change if the $68.7 billion merger with Microsoft were to go through. Not only would Activision-Blizzard games release on Xbox Game Pass day-and-date, but they would also be offered via Xbox's cloud streaming platform, as well as other partners like Boosteriod and NVIDIA's GeForce Now service.

Interestingly enough, the CMA has determined that Activision is likely to offer its games on streaming platforms even if the merger fails. This determination actually weighs into the CMA's decision to block the merger on the grounds of anti-competitive effects arising in the cloud gaming and multi-game subscription segments.

The Federal Trade Commission says it has not colluded with any worldwide regulator to stop the Microsoft-Activision merger, including the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK.

British regulators at the CMA recently blocked the $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision merger on the grounds of anti-competitive effects in the cloud gaming and multi-game subscription segments, leading both Microsoft and Activision executives to respond in specific ways. Activision, in particular, has delivered eye-opening comments on the decision, going so far as to say that the "UK is clearly closed for business."

Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick recently went on air with CNBC to talk about the merger decision, and made comments about a recent meeting with FTC Chair Lina Khan and CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell. Kotick inferred the possibility that both regulators somehow worked together to block the deal, and even said that the CMA is "being used as a tool" by the FTC.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti has been spotted in some MSI gaming systems, adding fuel to the fire that this GPU is imminent - and also again showing that, as previously rumored, it'll have 8GB of VRAM.

The MSI MAG Infinite S3 PCs are shown at a Dutch online retailer - presumably by mistake, of course, though the product listings are still available as we write this - and show the RTX 4060 Ti as the graphics card inside the rig. (The PCs are marked as not in stock, of course).

VideoCardz, which spotted this, observes that the Infinite S3 range is a middling offering and typically focuses on xx60 or xx70 Series GPUs from NVIDIA (indeed, new S3 models are just out with the RTX 4070 on board).

FromSoftware and Bandai Namco just dropped the first Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon gameplay footage...and it looks absolutely incredible.

It's been a long time since gamers have played a new Armored Core, but the sci-fi mech series is back with a bang. Today the devs at FromSoftware released new details, footage, and confirmed an August 25 release date for the game, outlining the central industrial-tech world of Rubicon that's been destroyed in a fiery cascade and showing off some decidedly next-gen combat.

The devs also reveal new details like Armored Core VI's new assault boost feature, which allows you to rapidly close the distance and strike enemies with close-ranged attacks. There's also a stagger element that will knock enemies off guard and stun them for a short period.

AMD's Zen 4 processors have recently been under the spotlight because of reported cases of the CPUs dying due to overheating, but there's good news in that a fix has been implemented, and BIOS updates carrying it should soon be available.

The burnout issue was related to SoC voltages being cranked up above safe limits, a theory previously proposed by multiple sources in the industry that turned out to be correct.

AMD had already issued a statement on this matter, but a second message clarifies the exact cause and outlines the fix.

Activision Blizzard King just reported a record-setting Q1, but the milestone has been largely overshadowed by the CMA's decision to block its merger with Microsoft as ATVI share prices fall after the regulator's announcement.

Activision-Blizzard's Q1 results show that the company remains a powerhouse in the games industry. From January - March 2023, Activision delivered its best-ever Q1 in the last 14 years, setting new records for net revenues ($2.83 billion), operating income ($800 million), and net income ($740 million).

In fact, Activision's Q1 earnings were the second-highest net revenues across all quarters in the last 14 years, the third-highest operating income in the same timeframe, and the second-highest quarterly net income across the aforementioned time period.

Sony wasn't the only video games company opposed to Microsoft buying Activision and snapping up multiple billion-dollar franchises.

Sony has been the loudest opponent of Microsoft's proposed buyout of Activision-Blizzard, but new reports from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) show that Sony wasn't the only group to have concerns. We've documented the power of Activision's size in both earnings and reach and how big Xbox would grow overnight through the combination, and while our data is compelling, it's a small fraction of what competitors and regulators have seen. The CMA, for example, says they've analyzed over 3 million documents relating to both businesses.

According to the CMA's recent decision to block the Microsoft-Activision merger, multiple anonymous games companies believed that Xbox and Activision teaming up could "seriously harm competition." It's public knowledge that Sony is against the merger and it is believed that Google may have raised questions around Xbox's cloud gaming plans, but there's no concrete source information as to who the other naysayers were.