Gaming - Page 7

The specifications for the highly anticipated successor console to the original Nintendo Switch have now been confirmed by the tech experts over at Digital Foundry.

For about the last four years, we have been hearing rumors and rumblings about the hardware that Nintendo selected to power the Nintendo Switch 2. After leaks of the motherboard within the console, Digital Foundry is able to confirm exactly what gamers will be getting and, more importantly, what developers will have available to them with the Nintendo Switch 2.

The original Switch featured an NVIDIA Tegra X1, a 4x ARM Cortex A57 chip, and by comparison, Nintendo and NVIDIA have agreed upon the ARM Cortex A78C, an eight-core CPU running the ARMv8 64-bit instruction set with cryptography extensions enabled. Notably, 32-bit is not supported by the SDK.

CyberMP, the mod aiming to bring multiplayer to Cyberpunk 2077, has received a video showcase and a major development update.

As detailed on the project's Discord page, CyberMP has received a recent beta patch, detailing advancements in syncing player appearances, vehicles, and in-game assets throughout the world. The full changelog is available online, detailing how these improvements move the mod closer to a fully-fledged online experience. The project's lead, S1nger, highlights that multiplayer is currently being refined as it moves from beta to a full release.

Calling back to a time when Ubisoft was determined to reinvent the formula for the Splinter Cell series, storyboard art has surfaced on Reddit calling back to the game's original vision.

When first showcased in 2007, Splinter Cell: Conviction was a significant departure from anything we'd seen in the series prior. It featured a rugged, unkempt version of Sam Fisher, a stronger emphasis on hand-to-hand combat, and leaned into the theme of "hidden in plain sight" rather than the high-tech stealth operative we'd been accustomed to.

Approximately thirty minutes of footage is available online, and the game more closely resembles a rugged Watch Dogs than it does the John-Wick-style 2010 release. Early gameplay, which leaned into hand-to-hand combat, environmental interaction, and blending into crowds, also reflected that 'fugitive' style theme.

There has been a flurry of reports of leaked older text messages that were previously sent to Steam users, with Valve writing a news post explaining that the company has examined the leak sample and determined "this was NOT a breach of Steam systems".

Valve says it is still digging into the source of the leak, which was "compounded by the fact that any SMS messages are unencrypted in transit, and routed through multiple providers on the way to your phone". The Half-Life developer says that the leak included old text messages that included one-time codes that were only valid for 15-minute time frames, and the exact phone numbers they were sent to.

Valve says that the leaked data "did not associate the phone numbers with a Steam account, password information, payment information or other personal data". Old text messages can't be used to breach the security of your Steam account, and whenever a code is used to change your Steam email or password using SMS, you'll receive a confirmation through e-mail and/or Steam secure messages, says Valve.

DOOM: The Dark Ages has officially entered early access and to go along with the release NVIDIA has dropped it's latest drivers, enabling DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation for spectacular performance increase.

If you are diving into the blood-soaked action of The Dark Ages, be sure to update your GeForce drivers to the latest version, as you will get a considerable performance jump after enabling Multi Frame Generation. As for The Dark Ages, developers id Software purpose-built the title for the new idTech8 engine, which runs The Dark Ages in a ray traced mode natively, meaning players will get to experience incredible lighting effects, intense detail, and naturally illuminated and darkened regions while carving their way through hordes of seemingly endless demons from hell.

Additionally, The Dark Ages has ray-traced reflections, which enhance the detail of reflective surfaces by enabling them to mirror their surroundings, adding to the overall immersion felt by the player. Notably, NVIDIA writes in an update DOOM: The Dark Ages will be receiving an update that will add Path Tracing and DLSS Ray Reconstruction for even further graphical improvements. As for how The Dark Ages plays, check out the link below for our thoughts on the gameplay itself and how it compares to the previous game in the franchise, DOOM Eternal.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey has been out for almost two months now, and while Ubisoft has celebrated sales milestones for the title, it appears to be consistently losing players, with metrics now indicating it has less players than Assassin's Creed Odyssey over a 24-hour period.

The statistics are sourced from SteamDB, a website that tracks all of the games played on Steam, and according to the source, Assassin's Creed Shadows had a 24-hour peak of 4,654 players, while Assassin's Creed Odyssey, released in 2018, has 5,642 players. It should be noted that Odyssey was three Assassin's Creed games ago, with the last two before Shadows being Mirage and Valhalla, both of which have less than 3,000 players over a 24-hour period.

These metrics suggest that Shadows is failing to maintain a consistent player base. The data indicates that approximately 16,000 people were concurrently playing Shadows on April 20, but this number has now dropped to 4,654 as of May 14. Why is this happening? One could argue the difference between the two titles is the content on offer, with Odyssey having a very fleshed-out and substantial amount of content to offer gamers, while Shadows is still quite new and slated to receive its first DLC, The Claws of Awaji expansion, later this year.

Extremely well-established industry insider and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has suggested Grand Theft Auto 6 could be delayed again, as nothing is set in stone.

It's been well known that developers and publishers other than Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive are concerned about the release date of Grand Theft Auto 6, as many of these publishers/developers are having to make sure their titles don't release alongside Rockstar's behemoth title to avoid being swallowed up in what will be a monsoon of attention directly solely at GTA 6. Publishers don't want the release of their titles to be overshadowed by the release of GTA 6, which means they have to time the release of their game accordingly.

Schreier has commented on this problem developers and publishers are currently facing, with the Bloomberg reporter writing that the delay of GTA 6 was enough cause for some of these companies to panic. Schreier said that he spoke to one developer of a big multiplayer game, and they said they previously delayed the release of the title from Fall 2025 to Spring 2026 in order to allow developers more time to work on the game, but also to get as far away as possible from the release of GTA 6. But now GTA 6 is releasing in Spring 2026.

One of the fastest ways to kill a battery is to overcharge it, which, unfortunately, many people tend to do with their smartphones and other devices. It's common practice to put your phone, or any other necessary device you need, on charge before you go to sleep, so when you wake up, they are fully charged and ready to go for the day.

Unfortunately, this isn't the way to maintain battery health, as overcharging a battery causes cells within the battery to slowly deteriorate and eventually die off, resulting in the total capacity for the battery to reduce and the user to experience the device losing charge a lot faster.

Judging by the lifespan of the original Switch, Nintendo wants owners to have the Switch 2 for many years to come, and to keep users happy with the amount of use time with the console, the company is implementing a new feature to reduce the inevitable deterioration rate of the battery.

It was recently we got confirmation on when Nintendo began working on the Switch 2, and now we are starting to hear about when the company finalized the hardware chip that's within the upcoming console.

Findings by Geekerwan and Kurnal, who managed to get their hands on a Switch 2 motherboard, sourced from an online retailer in China, put the board and the chip under the microscope, revealing that the hardware Nintendo decided on was finalized at least four years ago. The chip powering the incredible performance of the Switch 2 is the T239, which closely resembles NVIDIA's T234 but comes with a number of changes. Analysis by the tech experts over at Digital Foundry indicates the chip is running on an 8nm processor, which features that stretch up to a 10nm.

As for comparisons, the Switch 2 chip measures 40mm2 larger than the Steam Deck's. The size of the chip is the main factor as to why the Switch 2 has increased in size so significantly compared to the original Switch, with the Switch 2 being 75% bigger than the current-gen console. So, if the hardware was finalized four years ago, does that mean Nintendo could have revealed the console four years ago? Well, technically it could have, but simply it didn't need to.

Nintendo announced GameChat when it officially unveiled the Switch 2 in a dedicated Nintendo Direct. GameChat is one of the many features coming with the new console, enabling players to speak to each other over Nintendo's Switch Online service.

GameChat is such a prominent feature on the Switch 2 that it has received its own dedicated button on the face of the console, located under the home button and labeled "C." Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa recently spoke to investors about the new feature and said that it will "inspire consumers to play games in new ways that we never imagined."

While we can't say for certain if gamers will be playing games in ways that Nintendo has "never imagined" until the Switch 2 launches on June 5th, what we can say is that Discord has been around for many years now, and has become such a prominent piece of software that the company behind it has been valued at an estimated $15 billion.