Things get political this week on The TT Show when Jak and Kosta dig into the recent controversy surrounding Elon Musk, X, and the Australian government's attempt to censor specific content. Then, it gets even more political when the topic switches to the US government deeming Microsoft a security risk because all agencies depend on its software.

Plus, Intel partners with the Pentagon to develop microchips for what we can only assume is stuff you'd consider "not good." But hey, that's just the show's second half, as the first half is full of in-depth impressions for No Rest From the Wicked. Thel attest game from the studio behind the excellent Ori series blends Diablo with Dark Souls to deliver something special.

Jak and Kosta also talk about the upcoming rumors surrounding Ubisoft's Far Cry 7, which will feature Mr. Oppenheimer himself, Cillian Murphy, as the villain. Plus, Sony has announced a new PlayStation overlay with PSN Friends and Trophies for its PC games.

Square Enix has cancelled $140 million worth of games, and multiple games could have been affected.

Today, Square Enix announced it'll be taking a ¥22.1 billion loss in its Fiscal Year 2023 financials as it cancels content that was in the production pipeline. Last quarter, Square Enix CEO Takashi Kiryu announced plans to prioritize quality over quantity--instead of releasing multiple products that may not do well, the team will try to focus on safe bets.

To put the losses into perspective, Square Enix spent about $792 million on games development throughout FY22 as part of its production budget account. The updated spending for FY23 will be published in May.

Blizzard has officially cancelled BlizzCon 2024, but Microsoft didn't make the decision.

BlizzCon 2024 isn't happening. Instead, the billion-dollar live service guru plans to hold several smaller-scale events throughout the year, including worldwide in-person affairs for the 30th anniversary of Warcraft. There's also digital celebrations being planned. Blizzard plans to focus primarily on The War Within expansion for WoW and Diablo IV's new Vessel of Hatred expansion.

Cancelling the event makes sense. Rising operational costs have forced mass layoffs, and Blizzard even cancelled one of its new games to reduce spending. Since Microsoft now owns Blizzard, some have assumed that the decision came from them, but it was actually Blizzard's choice. This tracks because Activision Blizzard King operates as a limited-integration company within Microsoft, which means they get to call their own shots.

There have long been strong rumors that Apple is working towards bringing some big new AI features to the iPhone and Mac via the iOS 18 and macOS 15 software updates, respectively. Now, a new report has detailed how the company has been going about setting itself up to make that happen.

According to a paywalled Financial Times report, picked up by MacRumors, Apple has shared dozens of AI engineers from Google and then set them up in a new lab in Zurich, Switzerland. The report claims that at least 36 engineers have made the switch from Google to Apple including John Giannandrea. He moved from Google to Apple in 2018 and was installed as its AI executive, while many others have followed suit since then.

The report claims that those working in the lab have been looking into the technology that powers OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot and other similar offerings that use Large Language Models to perform tasks. Apple is expected to use these learnings as part of the iOS 18 rollout that will handle some AI-based tasks on-device, increasing performance and privacy.

ASUS is jumping on the Snapdragon X Elite laptop bandwagon with the announcement that it has a notebook, or rather an AI PC, to reveal next month.

The unnamed laptop - presumably a Vivobook, or certainly that's the theory from VideoCardz (we'll come back to that), which spotted the press announcement from ASUS - will be unveiled at a virtual launch event online at 1pm CDT (11am PST) on May 20, 2024. So that's just a few short weeks away now.

If the date sounds familiar, that's because this is when Microsoft will reveal its new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 devices for consumers (business targeted models have already been launched - but they don't have the Snapdragon ARM-based chip inside).

Ubisoft has today confirmed that it will make the Assassin's Creed Mirage game available for download on the iPhone and iPad starting on June 6, although the game's App Store page continued to say June 10. In a press release, Ubisoft confirmed that gamers will need an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max to play the game, while those with iPad Air and iPad Pro tablets with the M1 chip or newer will also be able to get in on the act. With Apple expected to announce new M4 iPad Pros soon, we can expect those tablets to play the new game particularly well.

The game can be preordered from the App Store right now with the title available for all who want to play it for free - although only for the first 90 minutes. After that, unlocking the full version will cost $49.99. Thankfully, that's a one-time purchase that will make the game available for both the iPhone and iPad, so buyers won't have to buy the game twice to play on their phone and tablet.

The Assassin's Creed Mirage game is of course already available for PlayStation, Xbox, and Windows PCs and has been since October of last year. But with the title being such a recent one it's important to note just how impressive it is that Apple's iPhones, albeit its most expensive, are capable of playing these console-quality games. We've already seen games like Death Stranding and Resident Evil make an appearance in the App Store, but those were slightly older titles.

Apple is expected to announce the new iOS 18 software update for the iPhone during WWDC in June, and now a new report has detailed some of the features that we can expect that software update to bring to the table including AI-based browsing options.

The new 18 software has long been rumored to have big new AI-powered features in the works, but details on what those features would be have so far been difficult to come by. Now, AppleInsider has detailed the features that iPhone owners can expect to use when the new software arrives, including an AI-enhanced browsing and test summarization feature.

Dubbed Intelligent Search, the new feature will apparently live within Safari's address bar and will use Apple's on-device Ajax machine learning model to identify the topics and key phrases within a web page to then summarize the information for users. It's suggested that Apple intends to give users a way to visit a webpage and then have the information distilled into a shorter, more easily digested chunk of information. However, the feature isn't currently enabled by default according to unnamed engineers evaluating the latest builds of Safari 18.

Fortnite is coming back to Apple devices in Europe in 2024, starting first with iPhone and then iPad later in the year.

The European Union's new Digital Markets Act (DMA) has pried open the App Store and forced Apple to allow third-party stores on iPhones. The process isn't perfect, and there's still some compliance issues, but Apple will be forced to comply with the EU's new digital laws if it wants to sell products and services in Europe. Fortnite will come back to iPhone via a new Epic Games storefront that exists outside the App Store.

The European Commission has also found iPadOS to be a gatekeeper, so the DMA also applies to iPads. This means that Apple will need to allow and facilitate outside stores on their line of tablets as well. Thus, Fortnite will return to both iPhones (sometime soon) and iPads (sometime this year).

If you woke up this morning and found that you were late for school or work, or missed that important appointment that you had planned, you aren't alone. It seems that a bug has prevented some people's iPhone alarms from making any sound, and people have been taking to social media to complain ever since.

The issue seems to have started affecting some people a few days ago, and although it isn't impacting everyone who sets an iPhone alarm, it definitely seems to be enough of an issue for Apple to act soon - an NBC report notes that Apple is already aware of an issue causing some iPhone alarms not to play a sound when required and that it's already working on a fix.

Unfortunately, Apple hasn't yet said what the issue is or when the fix will be rolled out, so we also don't know whether there is a workaround that people can use in the interim. The result is that people who would normally rely on their iPhone's alarm to make sure they get up in the morning might want to consider taking another route for the foreseeable future.

Apple is strongly expected to announce the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro families of devices at an event likely to take place this coming September, and we're hearing more and more about the unconfirmed devices as time rolls on and that launch gets closer. We heard recently that it was possible Apple could bring the iPhone 15's color-infused back glass to the iPhone 16 Pro, and now a new report has said that the finish will come to the iPhone 16.

While it isn't yet clear whether this report leaves the iPhone 16 Pro out of the equation because it isn't expected to get the same finish, or if it is just a case of the leaker believing they covered all bases by iPhone 16, time will no doubt tell. However, it does look increasingly likely that at least one of the new models will take the same finish as last year's non-Pro models.

This latest report comes via Weibo-based leaker 'Fixed focus digital' in a post picked up by MacRumors. According to the report the leaker claims to have seen an iPhone 16 color scheme, adding that the same process used on the iPhone 15 will also be used for the back glass of the new models. It's already been suggested that new colors will be added to the mix this year, with a potential for seven colors being offered to iPhone 16 buyers.

Over the last few months, there have been almost never-ending rumors that Apple is getting ready to launch an all-new OLED iPad Pro with both 11-inch and 12.9-inch screen sizes expected. We'd been told to expect the tablets to upgrade the current M2 chips to the latest M3 silicon, as would make the most sense. But a report over the weekend suggested that Apple had chosen to skip the M3 entirely and usher in a new wave of chips with the arrival of the new 2024 iPad Pro.

That was according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman with the chip in question being the unconfirmed M4. We already knew that Apple was working on Macs that would use the M4 series of chips and that it intended to launch them towards the end of this year and the beginning of next. But now it appears that Apple could give the new chip to the iPad Pro first.

Following Gurman's claims 9to5Mac now reports that code found in the iPadOS 17.5 beta suggests that the M4 chip might actually be used despite reservations among those following along with Gurman's report. The code was found to reference new display firmware for the OLED iPad Pros, as expected, but it's the model identifiers that are most notable; iPad16,3, iPad16,4, iPad16,5, and iPad16,6.