Latest News - Page 985

Apple Arcade has reportedly conquered the video games subscription charts, beating out other game services like PlayStation Plus, Xbox Game Pass, and Switch Online.

According to figures provided by Football Manager developer Sports Interactive Games, the subscriber numbers behind Apple Arcade dwarf other competing services. SIG's Miles Jaconbson tells website iMore that Apple Arcade could have at least 100 million subscribers: "I'm told nine-figure subscribers, I have no idea if those numbers are right or not."

If accurate, then Apple Arcade is far and away the leader in the video game subscription space. Some critical context is needed here though: Apple Arcade is available on a wide variety of iOS products, all of which have a much larger installed base than the PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

Razer has just opened orders for its new Wolverine V2 Pro PlayStation 5 controller that has premium features and a premium price tag to match.

Razer's new Wolverine V2 Pro controller is the latest in the line of enthusiast-grade console peripherals, and packs big upgrades over the stock $69.99 PS5 DualSense controller--and rightly so, given the Wolverine's price tag. Razer's new high-end PS5 controller will set you back a whopping $249.99, which is roughly half the price of the most expensive PlayStation 5 console, the disc-based SKU which retails for $499 in the United States.

So what do you get for that kind of price? The Wolverine V2 Pro is enhanced in practically every way, featuring an Xbox controller-style layout, an upgraded D-Pad that's also like an Xbox controller, remappable buttons, paddles on the bottom of the controller with four separate triggers, more tactile face buttons that allow you to press the buttons faster, and what Razer calls HyperSpeed Wireless that significantly reduces wireless controller latency. There's also magnetic analog sticks that can be swapped out and Chroma RGB lighting, alongside four modes; wireless, wired, PC, or PS5.

EA today announced that Battlefield 2042 is coming to Game Pass, hinting the game is one step closer to some sort of critical free-to-play component.

On top of the myriad of technical issues and missing features, Battlefield 2042's steep price tag is a big barrier to entry. EA is reducing this friction by adding the ailing online-only shooter to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with the release of the game's new season 3 timeline, which starts in a few weeks. It's also coming to EA Access.

EA is also offering another free play weekend for console and Steam gamers, and these events are known for considerably spiking player numbers.

KIOXIA has just showcased its next-gen CM7 Series SSDs with their brute-force PCIe 5.0 SSD speeds, alongside AMD's new EPYC 9004 series processors.

The new KIOXIA CM7 Series SSDs support EDSFF E3.S and 2.5-inch1 (15mm, z-height) form factors and are designed to the NVMe 2.0 and PCIe 5.0 specifications, and are available in two configurations: Read-intensive 1 DWPD2 with capacities up to 30.72TB, and mixed-use 3 DWPD with capacities up to 12.80TB.

Not only that, but KIOXIA includes features like a dual-port design for High Availability (HA) applications, flash die failure protection that maintains reliability in the cases of die failure, and a Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) that supports TCG Opal and TCG Ruby, as well as a SED option of FIPS 140-35.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang flew out to Taiwan last week to meet with AIB partners and fan the (hopefully not explosive) waves surrounding the 12VHPWR power connector on its new GeForce RTX 40 series "Ada Lovelace" GPUs... but he had other things on his mind.

The billionaire CEO and founder of NVIDIA were walking the streets of Taiwan, where he walked up and into the opening night of the Taiwan esports carnival "WirForce 2022" and right into the BYOC (bring your own cocktail, probably) and began talking, and joking around with gamers and live streamers.

The Commercial Times reports that Jensen Huang was definitely recognized by some people, but others (like the girls in the embedded video where he's singing Lady Gaga tunes) had no idea who they were singing with. Of course, esports players were getting out their boxes of NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards and getting Jensen to sign them, as well as the obligatory selfies with the NVIDIA founder and CEO.

We first heard whispers about Intel's upcoming codename "Panther Cove" CPU architecture over a year ago now, and just a couple of weeks after its first tease, we heard more leaks on Intel's upcoming "Royal Core Project" which is aiming to be an AMD Zen CPU killer.

Intel's upcoming Panther Cove CPU architecture is back in the news with rumors from Moore's Law is Dead, pegging Panther Cove for a 2025-2026 release and could still be on the LGA 1851 socket (with Tom noting that this hasn't been finalized yet). In the leaks, Tom goes into detail about the next-gen Meteor Lake desktop CPUs that will drop in the second half of 2023 on LGA 1851 and more.

We don't know much about Panther Cove, but Moore's Law is Dead says his sources tease Intel is aiming for "top to bottom leadership in all sectors" and that it will have "another massive" IPC improvement with Panther Cove comparable to Lion Cove. Rewinding that Intel CPU clock, we've just seen the new 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPU launch... after that, we'll have 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" in 2023, then 15th Gen Core "Arrow Lake" in 2024, 16th Gen Core "Lunar Lake" in very late 2024 or 2025, followed by 17th Gen Core "Panther Lake" in 2025-2026.

Twitter made its revised Twitter Blue subscription service available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zeal, and the UK on November 9, ushering in large swaths of companies having their accounts impersonated.

Twitter has rolled out the new Twitter Blue subscription service that allows users to pay $8 for a "verified" checkmark on their account, as Twitter owner Elon Musk believes pigging backing off payment systems such as Apple Pay authenticates the holder of that Twitter account, flushing out scammers, bot and spam accounts. Paying for Twitter Blue also gives the account prioritization in replies, messaging, search, and other customization features.

The rollout hasn't been without its hiccups, as companies are seeing their likely already-verified account being impersonated by random Twitter users that have purchased the verified check mark via Twitter Blue. An example of this is the above tweet from an account posing as Nintendo of America. Valve was also impersonated when a user falsely announced Ricochet: Neon Prime, which was described as the "next competitive platform". Twitch also fell victim to an account impersonating it and creating a viral post that falsely announced a new sub-split that would go into effect next month.

The bimonthly magazine owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has reported that Twitter has lost 1 million users since Elon Musk has taken over the company.

MIT Technology Review recently reported that Twitter has lost more than 1 million users since Elon Musk has taken the reins of the company, according to Bot Sentinel, which analyzed 3.1 million accounts on Twitter and that out of those accounts 877,000 accounts were deactivated with an additional 497,000 being suspended between the dates of October 27, a day after Elon Musk took over, to November 1. Notably, these numbers represent more than double the typical number.

Bot Sentinel's analysis on its dataset revealed that there was an increase of 208% lost account on Twitter during the aforementioned timeframe when compared to the week before Elon Musk took control of the platform. Christopher Bouzy, founder of Bot Sentinel said that analysts believe there was a sharp increase in suspended accounts from Twitter users testing Twitter's rules which Musk said he would be updating to allow for a wider variety of content on the platform.

Kanye West, now officially known as Ye, may have to prepare himself for Adidas selling his iconic Yeezy shoes in front of him but with new branding.

The rapper, who was partnered with Adidas since 2013, recently had his relationship dissolved by the company, which decided to separate itself from Ye after he began posting antisemitic comments on social media platforms. West's public comments against Jewish people broke terms of service on various social media platforms and resulted in massive public discussion on the severity of West's comments and their impact on Jewish people.

Throughout the mass public debate, West saw prominent brands such as Balenciaga, Adidas, Gap, and more sever ties with him. Perhaps the largest hit to West's bank accounts was the Adidas deal which was expected to be worth anywhere between $150 - $200 million, with Adidas backing that rough estimation up during its recent quarterly earnings call where it said the deal with Ye is expected to cost the company $247 million throughout 2022, causing its expected annual revenue to be reduced by about $502 million.

Only one day before the US midterms, which are currently being tallied up around the country, "Putin's chef" admits to being involved in election meddling.

That individual is Russian busi9nessman Yevgeny Prigozhin who said on Monday morning that he has previously interfered with US elections and will continue interfering in the future. CBC News reports that this is the "first such admission from a figure who has been formally implicated by Washington in efforts to influence American politics." Prigozhin gave his statements to his press service of his Concord catering firm that later posted the statement to Russia's version of Facebook called VKontakte.

The statement was made a day before the US midterms, and according to Prigozhin, who further elaborated, "During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once". Prigozhin is often called "the chef" as he's the owner of a catering company that undertakes a number of Russian government contracts and has previously been formerly accused of being behind Russian troll or bot farms that are designed to influence US politics.

Only a few days before the rollout of Twitter Blue's updated subscription service and only a few weeks after Elon Musk tweeted, "comedy is now legal on Twitter", previously verified accounts are being banned across the platform for an impersonation prank.

A few days before Twitter Blue went live, several prominent Twitter accounts, such as Kathy Griffin and host of the H3 podcast, Ethan Klein, changed their display name and profile picture to "Elon Musk" and began posting several tweets in an attempt to impersonate his account. A move that was done by both the individuals, and many others, as a way to prove that verified accounts will still be able to impersonate other accounts.

Klein and Griffin both already had verified blue check marks. "Yes, I could have ended world hunger instead of buying Twitter. But people don't understand the importance of having a free and open forum. If somebody dies of starvation in Sudan, it won't affect the world. But being able to say the N-word on Twitter is a right we all deserve," wrote Klein.

Elon Musk has posted an image of a shirt that pokes fun directly at people who believe the $8 fee for Twitter Blue is unreasonable.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO took to his personal Twitter account on November 8, a day before the rollout of Twitter Blue, to post an image of a t-shirt that featured the following text, "Your feedback is appreciated. Now pay $8". The t-shirt also featured the blue verification check mark that has become a matter of controversial opinion, with some people agreeing with Musk on the impact of the new Twitter Blue service being a net positive for the platform, and another group believing the opposite.

When asked if Musk would be paying for Twitter Blue himself, he replied with the "100" emoji, indicating that he would be paying for it. The $8 paywall for Twitter's verification also comes with a slew of new features such as access to uploading longer video and audio content, the ability of monetization on the platform, priority in search and replies, as well as half the amount of advertisements.

Its been around two weeks since Elon Musk went through with the acquisition to purchase Twitter, and now the SpaceX CEO is already announcing that the social media platform has reached a new milestone.

Musk took to his own Twitter account on November 8 to announce that "Twitter usage" has reached an all-time high. The Tesla CEO didn't specify what metric he was specifically referring to, but it can be assumed it would be real-time users on Twitter around the time he made the tweet.

This seeming increase in Twitter's users is part of Musk's plan to make Twitter the most attractive social media platform for users, with the billionaire even stating in his leaked pitch deck that he aims to create the "everything app" which will increase the users on the platform from 217 million to 600 million by 2025.

Global entry! We have teamed up with Netac to give away one of its awesome new NV7000 1TB SSDs to one lucky winner.

In our very own review of the NV7000 1TB SSD from back at the end of August, Jon Coulter, our in-house SSD guru, said: "Netac is bringing value like none other with its NV7000 SSD, making it TweakTown Elite and worthy of our highest award."

And in his bottom line, he simply said: "Best value for a hyper-class SSD."

NVIDIA has cut down its A100 Tensor Core GPU to meet the demands of US export controls to China, with the introduction of the new A800 Tensor Core GPU that is exclusive to the Chinese market.

The new NVIDIA A800 was revealed by Reuters and confirmed by an NVIDIA spokesperson who confirmed that the new NVIDIA A800 GPU went into production in Q3 2022, acting as "another alternative product" to the NVIDIA A100 GPU for customers in China.

The NVIDIA spokesperson told Reuters: "The NVIDIA A800 GPU, which went into production in Q3, is another alternative product to the NVIDIA A100 GPU for customers in China. The A800 meets the U.S. Government's clear test for reduced export control and cannot be programmed to exceed it".

NVIDIA is now not the only one that is using the new 12VHPWR power connector on its graphics cards, with Intel announcing its new Data Center GPU Max 1100 GPU series.

Intel's new Data Center GPU Max 1100 GPU series GPU packs the new 16-pin PCIe power connector, which will power its new Ponte Vecchio GPU architecture. The company will be offering up its new Data Center GPU Max 1000 series GPUs in multiple SKUs using the GPU architecture, either in OAM form factor, on in regular PCIe.

The company explains that its new Data Center GPU Max Series was formally codenamed Ponte Vecchio, which is now the industry's highest-density processor that packs over 100 billion transistors that are spread across 47 active tiles and feature up to 128 Xe-HPC cores.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced mass layoffs at Meta aka Facebook, with 11,000 jobs sliced away -- a significant number, considering the largest social networking site in the world had 87,314 employees at its peak earlier this year.

Meta has been bleeding on the stock market for a while now, and while the headlines are dominated by Twitter and Elon Musk, it seems no one really cares about the bigger issue: the largest social networking site in the world (which owns Instagram, Oculus, WhatsApp, and more) has just laid off 11,000+ people right before Christmas. Oh, and within hours of the 2022 midterm elections.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained: "Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I'd expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that".

AMD has just announced its latest Raise the Game promotion, where any purchase of an AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card will include free copies of The Callisto Protocol and Dead Island 2.

Anyone who purchases an AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, 6900 XT, 6800 XT, 6800, 6750 XT, 6700 XT, 6700, 6650 XT, 6600 XT, or 6600 will receive a free copy of The Callisto Protocol and Dead Island 2. AMD's last two graphics cards in the Radeon RX 6000 series in the Radeon RX 6500 XT or 6400 won't get a copy of The Callisto Protocol, and instead, only get a free copy of Dead Island 2 (because they're much cheaper cards).

In the US, retailers including the official AMD Store, Amazon, Newegg, and Micro Center will have AMD's new Raise the Game bundle for any new Radeon RX 6000 series GPU purchase. Across the pond, European retailers include the AMD Store, Infomax, Topachat, MediaMarkt, and others.

KLEVV has just introduced its new DDR5 standard U-DIMM and SO-DIMM memory at DDR5-5600 speeds, ready to rock and roll inside of your new Intel "Raptor Lake" or AMD "Zen 4" system.

The new KLEVV DDR5 standard memory is fully compliant with JEDEC standards at DDR5-5600 speeds in both its U-DIMM and SO-DIMM variants: U-DIMM for a desktop PC and SO-DIMM for a laptop. KLEVV is making its new DDR5-5600 memory available in a single 16GB DDR5-5600 as well as a 32GB kit with 2 x 16GB sticks.

KLEVV is aiming its new DDR5 RAM for multiple markets including business, learning, entertainment on desktop and laptops... no mention of gaming systems there in their press release, maybe a hot tip: add that in, because gamers (there would be at lease ONE) that would buy this memory. I mean, come on KLEVV... it doesn't need RGB to be aimed at gamers... I get the entertainment bit. Maybe it's just me.

Death Stranding is a big success for PlayStation and Kojima Productions, becoming a best-selling first-party game for Sony's banner.

It's been 3 years since Death Stranding released (yes, really), and Hideo Kojima and his team are currently celebrating by sharing a big sales milestone (there's also cake...and it looks delicious).

The game has sold 10 million copies on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC since releasing in November 2019, putting it up against some of the best-selling first-party PlayStation games including The Last of Us II (this was only available on PS4, though).