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!

Contrary to what you might've read, Ubisoft's new Assassin's Creed Shadows game can be played entirely offline.

Assassin's Creed fans rejoice: Ubisoft is finally making a game set in feudal Japan. It's called Assassin's Creed Shadows, and it'll take place in 16th century Japan during Oda Nobunaga's bloody quest to unify the country by force. Shadows also features two protagonists--a samurai and a ninja--and you'll be able to switch between them as you play.

Since the reveal, there's been two somewhat new tidbits of info to come out. The first is that AC Shadows won't be on Steam, and will instead be on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Store on PC. That's despite the fact that all 3 of the most recent mainline Assassin's Creed games are on Steam, including AC Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla.

Xbox is reportedly under pressure to increase margins, and breaking exclusivity on more first-party games might be the solution.

Like most games companies right now, Xbox has a problem. The industry just isn't growing despite Microsoft's best efforts. Game Pass subscribers have stalled, and Xbox hardware sales are down significantly. Excluding Activision's contribution, Xbox games division revenues are flat year-over-year.

Despite all of these burdens, Xbox is still expected to deliver not only profit, but some measure of growth. The current games industry debacle comes shortly after Microsoft bought Activision for $72 billion. After the buyout, Xbox is on the hook for the merger and Microsoft's executives and board of directors expect returns. This extra pressure, combined with Xbox's general flagging presence in the hardware market and sluggish topline growth, see the games-maker encumbered by the heavy weight of financial pressures.

Grand Theft Auto VI is now expected to launch in Fall 2025, surprising no one.

Today, Take-Two Interactive gave an update on its upcoming release slate, including GTA 6. The billion-dollar games giant is planning to launch GTA VI in the Fall 2025 season, which is typically from September - November. The game is so highly anticipated that it is expected to significantly uplift the entire video games industry through massive game sales, monetization, and engagement across all platforms.

This release would put GTA 6 in Take-Two's FY26 period. The company expects to make up to $5.65 billion in net bookings this year, in the FY25 period, and FY26 is forecasted to sequentially one-up and outperform FY25's numbers.

Activision today announced the formation of Elsewhere, a new studio focused on making a fresh franchise for Microsoft.

A bit ago, Bethesda and Xbox executives made the decision to shut down three studios, including Arkane Austin (Prey), Tango Gameworks (The Evil Within, Hi-Fi Rush), and Alpha Dog (Mighty Doom). Now another one of Microsoft's divisions, Activision, is opening up a new studio.

The new group is called Elsewhere Entertainment, and the studio is made up of "storytelling experts" that worked on some of the highest-profile games on the market including The Last of Us, Uncharted, The Witcher, Cyberpunk, Destiny, The Division, and Far Cry.

Microsoft has made a rather odd move in trying to promote Bing search in Windows 11 with a change to its PC Manager app.

If you're not familiar with PC Manager, well, we wouldn't be surprised, as it's not an app that all that many folks know about - partly because it's only available in certain regions for Windows 11 (and not the US, not officially yet - but that could well change).

At any rate, it's a PC performance boosting utility from Microsoft China, that takes a typical approach with file cleanup features to free up storage, memory, and so forth.

If everything goes the way that we expect it to Apple will announce a round of new iPhones this fall, likely in September. That'll bring the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max to the market and replace the outgoing iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max that were released in September of last year. We've been told to expect new features and faster chips, but it's the increase in display size of the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max that could catch some by surprise.

If the rumors are true the iPhone 16 Pro will have a 6.3-inch display rather than the familiar 6.1-inch one, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max will see its display grow from 6.7 inches to 6.9 inches. With those display size increases we also expect the overall size of the devices to increase, too. That might not make all that much difference on the iPhone 16 Pro, but when you're dealing with a phone as big as the existing iPhone 15 Pro Max, any extra size makes a difference, fast.

That's clear in the images shared to the X social network by ZONEofTECH which appear to show an iPhone 16 Pro Max dummy unit alongside an iPhone 15 Pro Max. The size difference between the two devices is clear and obvious, suggesting that people who own an iPhone 15 Pro Max but already find it to be a little on the large side might want to consider sticking to the standard iPhone 16 Pro this time around.

Apple's brand new M4 iPad Pro is now on sale in both 11-inch and 13-inch display sizes. They're both identical bar the size of the display and some measurements, one of which is the thickness. The 13-inch iPad Pro is the thinnest coming in at just 5.3mm and that, Apple says, makes it the thinnest device that it has ever shipped. But given the fact that previous iPad Pros have been shown to flex and bend because of their lack of girth, many obviously wondered what this new thinness would mean for rigidity.

That was something that Apple apparently set out to address. Apple executives confirmed that there is a new cowling used in the iPad Pro that covers the entire logic board and, as a result, makes the device more rigid than you might think given its lack of thickness. But does that cowing work, and if not, how easily does the iPad Pro bend? That's what two YouTubers set out to discover.

One was JerryRigEverything, a YouTuber with a history of taking new devices and then ripping them apart to see what makes them tick. So when we heard that the iPad Pro was incredibly thin we knew that there would be a video dedicated to it. And, sure enough, here it is.

When Apple announced its latest iPad Pro with the fancy OLED display and superfast M4 chip it did so by using a new ad. That ad showed musical instruments and art supplies, among other things, being destroyed by a giant industrial press. But while the ad was absolutely impressive, it definitely didn't seem to send the message that Apple thought it would. Instead, creatives the world over argued that it was disrespectful and that Apple had completely missed the mark. Apple subsequently agreed and apologized for the misstep, but that doesn't seem to have been the end of it.

As it has done before, Samsung has now picked up the baton and mocked Apple with a new ad of its own. It's based on Apple's ad and sees a woman using a Samsung tablet to read music while playing what appears to be a bruised and battered guitar. The scene is made up to look like the aftermath of Apple's own ad, giving the whole thing extra weight. It's a cool ad, and it carries the tagline "Creativity cannot be crushed."

Samsung definitely went for the jugular here and it seems to have hit the mark. The ad was posted to the X social network carrying the #UnCrush tag and you can check it out for yourself above.

Ubisoft has revealed Assassin's Creed Shadows, a new journey into 16th century feudal Japan.

Ubisoft has unwrapped its latest Assassin's Creed game, and it takes place during Oda Nobunaga's unification war during the latter Sengoku period. Gamers will be able to play as two protagonists: a samurai named Yasuke, and a ninja named Naoe. Each are complete with individual backstories and gear types, and players will be able to switch between either characters on-the-fly similar to GTA V.

The characters also have their own unique trade-offs and traits: Yasuke is more bulky and armored, adept in chaotic combat and is more powerful, whereas Naoe is faster, more agile, and even has a grappling hook.

Microsoft's Xbox division plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) in gaming, but how exactly will this work?

AI is all the buzz right now in the tech sector, and gaming is no different. Publishers like EA have touted what AI can do to help the games industry, and we've also seen Xbox make strategic partnerships as its parent drastically accelerates AI development through various initiatives.

Last November, Xbox signed a multi-year deal to use Inworld's generative AI tech to help power games development. Inworld AI would be used to help automate specific things like quest creation, game stories, and character dialog.