This week, on a more focused episode of The TT Show, Jak and Kosta break down and go through the crazy Helldivers 2 controversy on PC. If you were offline for a few days (and this all played out throughout a single weekend), the decision to force the Helddivers 2's PC players to link their Steam Account to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account caused a veritable backlash storm.

From the review bombing to developers being grilled to Sony and developer Arrowhead's damage control to the surprisingly swift happy ending, Jak and Kosta discuss the implications and consider what might happen in the aftermath.

This week's other big story comes from the world of Apple, with the company lifting the lid on its new iPad Pro lineup powered by the new AI-powered 3 nanometer M4 chip. The big thing here is that it represents Apple's first dip into the world of OLED displays, with a groundbreaking 1000-nit SDR and HDR screen that has two OLED panels in one!

On the heels of reports that Microsoft is unsure whether or not launching new Call of Duty titles on Game Pass is a good idea, Xbox president Sarah Bond reiterates the company's day-one policy for the subscription service.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg Tech, Xbox president Sarah Bond brought up the day-and-date Xbox Game Pass policy as one of the touchstones of Microsoft's core gaming business. Bond says that a plethora of high-profile games are coming to Game Pass later this year. Games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Starfield's Shattered Space expansion, and new Fallout 76/Elder Scrolls Online will be among the releases, but what about Call of Duty: Black Ops Gulf War?

New reports say that Xbox management is conflicted on launching new Call of Duty games on the service. After all, COD titles sell many millions of copies a year--offering new COD games day one would undoubtedly affect these sales. But that seems to be waived by the Xbox president, who hints that Call of Duty 2024 could be among the titles included on Game Pass this year.

Electronic Arts is currently working on new ways to integrate ads into its games, and it's possible the ads could extend outside of sports.

EA is no stranger to advertising. The company's EA Sports label makes multi-million deals with top brands like Nike, Pepsi, and even teamed up with Uber Eats to make an FC24 tournament. Advertising is a big part of sports sims.

But what about EA's other titles? Games like Battlefield, or even Dragon Age and Mass Effect? Could advertisements show up there in some way? In a recent Q4 earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson says that there are teams currently looking at ways to place more ads into games, but the extent of this remains unclear.

Xbox president Sarah Bond says 'new options' are coming to Microsoft's game streaming offerings.

Microsoft's foray into cloud gaming is far from over. The company is still gung-ho on the nascent technology and hopes to use cloud to accelerate its multi-faceted games business. In a recent interview with Bloomberg Tech's Dina Bass, Xbox president Sarah Bond says that cloud gaming is seeing tremendous growth.

This growth is likely driven by a sharp uptick in Xbox game availability on services like GeForce Now. In an effort to assuage regulatory concerns, Microsoft signed a 10-year agreement to bring Xbox and Activision games to competing cloud services like GeForce Now and Boosteroid. In return, NVIDIA would get a lower Windows license fee. The partnership has born lots of fruit; in 2022, there were exactly 0 licenses for Xbox games that could be streamed on GFN, and as of today, there are 234 Xbox games that can be streamed over GFN.

Xbox's top brass are reportedly conflicted on whether or not new Call of Duty titles should launch on Game Pass.

Something as big as Call of Duty on Game Pass could skew things quite a bit, and in ways that Microsoft can't fully predict. The megaton shooter franchise is worth over $31 billion, but all of those earnings started with one thing: Premium game sales. Including Call of Duty on Xbox Game Pass will lead to fewer game sales--a replacive effect referred to as "cannibalization." Who's going to spend $70 on Call of Duty when they can play it for $17, or maybe even $25?

This is the exact reason that Activision Blizzard never included its games on Game Pass in the first place. Microsoft would have to pay quite a bit to make up for the potential impact on sales, and other publishers have reportedly referred to Game Pass as 'value destructive'. Consumers typically enter ABK's biggest games through a point of sale, especially Call of Duty.

Xbox's new mobile storefront will start on the web and "extend from there," Xbox president Sarah Bond says.

Xbox's Universal Store is starting to take shape. Microsoft plans to lay the early frameworks for its new unified digital commerce ecosystem with a so-called 'mobile store experience.' Xbox already has a game store on consoles and PC, but the mobile version won't be a dedicated shop.

Instead of a native app, Microsoft is launching its Xbox mobile store on the web. This way, Microsoft can completely circumvent paying the 30% commission fee on the Google Play and App Store. The Xbox mobile store experience is set to launch sometime in July--the same month that Microsoft will shut down the Xbox 360 store.

Sonos released an updated version of its mobile app back on May 7th, and while most similar app updates would just pass without too much interest among the masses, this one has very much gone in another direction. The app has been almost universally derided, with some accusing it of breaking accessibility and others simply lambasting the decision to remove features. But whatever reason people don't like it, they can all generally agree that it isn't great.

Sonos, on the other hand. would argue differently. The company says that it's aware that people don't seem to like the new update and that it's working to address the functionality that it has removed as part of this latest change. But in a statement provided to The Verge, Sonos says that it stands by its decision to roll the app out.

The Verge reports that Sonos believes that the changes it has made will ultimately result in a better app further down the line.

When the European Union allowed third-party app stores onto the iPhone as a result of the Digital Markets Act earlier this year it meant that Apple would be forced to allow people to install apps from somewhere other than the App Store for the first time/. While the EU's DMA only applies in the European Union, it's a change that brings real opportunity for companies that want to compete with Apple. And Microsoft is one of those.

Microsoft had already confirmed that it intended to launch a store that would allow users to download content onto their iPhone and now we know when it will arrive. According to a Bloomberg report, Microsoft says that it intends to launch its new mobile game store in July, and it's being run by the Xbox portion of the business. And notably, it won't be an app as such but rather a website instead.

Xbox President Sarah Bond confirmed the news and the company intends to make its own games available for download initially. However, the company also apparently intends to open the doors to other publishers who want to distribute their wars via the Xbox store as well, and that could be pretty huge.

In the build-up to the announcement of the new OLED iPad Pro earlier this week, we started to see some rumors that the company was planning to not give the device an M3 chip as was previously expected. Instead, there was a suggestion that Apple would move to something all-new, giving us our first glimpse at the M4. That ultimately happened of course, and early benchmark results suggest that buyers of the new tablet can expect something that will be very capable indeed.

Those benchmarks have started to appear online as people start to put the tablet through its paces ahead of the review embargo that will likely drop early next week. The figures produced by the M4 chip show scores of around 3,700 for its single-core CPU score and around 14,500 in the multi-core test.

To put that into perspective, the M3 MacBook Air wasn't released all that long ago and it managed to score around 3,100 in the single-core test and 12,000 in the multi-core tests. With that in mind, it's clear that the M4 is notably faster than the M4, making the new iPad Pro not only the fastest iPad Pro ever but also one of the fastest devices that Apple currently offers for sale.

2024 marks the tenth year of the Apple Watch, a wearable that first launched in 2014 and has become a huge global hit. Just as it did with the iPhone X in 2017, it's thought that Apple may choose to release an Apple Watch X to celebrate the decade of Apple wearables, and if it does, we could be in for something interesting.

Details for what the Apple Watch X will actually offer customers are hard to come by but Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has previously suggested that it will be the wearable's biggest overhaul to date. With that in mind, we think we would be pretty happy if Apple released this concept.

Designer Lukas Gehrer from the German design agency Wordsmattr shared details of his concept with 9to5Mac and it definitely has plenty for us to get excited about. The concept looks similar to the Apple Watch Ultra in some ways but it's thinner with curved edges that aren't quite flat but are much less bulbous than the Apple Watch Series 9 and previous non-Ultra models.

Apple announced the M4 iPad Pro alongside the refreshed M2 iPad AIr earlier this week and the high-end tablet immediately went up for preorder, giving people the chance to place an order ready to receive their new computer on May 15. But as we get closer to the big day of release, it's going to prove more difficult for people to buy the iPad Pro for the big day.

While those who placed an order quickly were able to guarantee that they would be among the first to receive a new iPad Pro, a check of the Apple Store online right now suggests that people placing an order today are going to have to wait a good while before their tablet will be delivered.

Right now buying an iPad Pro in many configurations, including the cheapest one, will see buyers wait for either three or four weeks before taking delivery. Apple could well be able to get your tablet to you sooner than that, but its online delivery indicator right now suggests that might not be the case. Thankfully, it wouldn't be the first time that Apple has shipped devices sooner than the expected window suggested.