This week on the TT Show, Lord of the Rings superfan (and also superfan) Jak and Kosta discuss Peter Jackson returning to The Lord of the Rings franchise with the new movie 'The Hunt for Gollum.' They discuss the potential story, timeline, and their hopes for a return to the magic of the original trilogy. And not, you know, The Hobbit.

Another big story this week is Apple's apologizing for its seemingly tone-deaf iPad Pro advertisement that quickly caused a massive wave of negative backlash. Is it as bad as some of the comments? As a fan of retro hardware who doesn't like seeing it get destroyed, Kosta thinks so, while Jak is more on the fence and 'meh.'

And it wouldn't be an episode of The TT Show without GPU news, with all of the latest GeForce RTX 50 Series, Radeon, and Intel graphics talk bundled into a new section of the podcast called 'GPU Corner.' Speaking of new sections, Jak and Kosta play a round of Guess the Headline for some fun.

Take-Two Interactive, the publisher behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, is concentrating on over-delivering with the next installment in the series, Grand Theft Auto VI.

The CEO of the publisher, Strauss Zelnick, was asked during a recent earnings call about pricing for the publisher's catalog of games, particularly the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Zelnick responded by saying Take-Two aims at delivering "great value at any given time" and that its rubric for any new game it plans on releasing will provide more value to a gamer than the price tag on a game.

Zelnick said when Take-Two lands on a price for a new game, it makes sure it's "good news" for gamers, and the game's "experience vastly over-delivers". All of this alludes to the mystery surrounding the price tag for Grand Theft Auto VI, and unfortunately, Zelnick dodged direct questions regarding the highly anticipated title's price tag. However, we do know Take-Two is more than comfortable charging $70 for a new game, with Zelnick saying last year that players seem to be happy paying $70 for games.

Google has released a new white paper that outlines everything that is "wrong" with Microsoft security, particularly highlighting its recent failings.

The new white paper is titled "A more secure alternative," and Google explains across 14 pages all of the problems with Microsoft's approach to security while also recommending better alternatives, Gmail and Google Drive. The paper is mostly based on the recent discoveries by the US government's Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), which stated last month that Microsoft's approach to the June 2023 attack on its Exchange Online service was lackluster.

The CSRB reprimanded Microsoft for its lack of knowledge on when attackers were able to infiltrate its Exchange Online service that resulted in the hackers being able to sift through email inboxes. Additionally, the CSRB criticized the Windows owner for having a seven-year-old security key still be valid, which was used by the hackers to gain access to the Exchange email service.

Samsung has unveiled a variety of new products at Display Week 2024, one of which could be the next pixel technology that replaces the gorgeous OLED panels.

QD-OLED panels are making their way into gaming monitors of various sizes and some TVs, but what if OLED isn't necessarily the future of display technology? Introducing, QD-LED, or NanoLED, a new display technology currently being worked on by Samsung. According to the company the new display technology incoporates applying electricity directly to the quantum dots, removing the need for LED or OLED. The technology has several names, such as QD-LED, NanoLED, QDEL, QD-EL, or electroluminescent quantum dots.

Samsung displayed a QD-LED prototype at Display Week 2024, and according to reports its the largest display using the new panel technology, measuring 18 inches with a 3200 x 1800 resolution (202ppi) at 250 nits brightness. According to Samsung, QD-LED offers a wide color gamut and color accuracy, and doesn't require any organic material, meaning it won't be suffer from the same degrading fate as some OLED panels.

Microsoft has just wrapped up its Build conference where it gave many details on the company overall pushing into adopting artificial intelligence.

The company revealed its new AI-powered tool called Copilot+, and part of this new feature is a sub-feature called "Recall," which enables Windows users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. Microsoft writes in its blogpost that with Recall, users will be able to access "what you have seen or done on your PC in a way that feels like having photographic memory", which is certainly going to be the case as for Recall to work it needs to take a screenshot of what is displayed on your PC every few seconds.

Microsoft's blogpost explained that Recall leverages "your personal semantic index" that is built and stored "entirely on your device". Presumably, a users semantic index will consist of individual snapshots of what is displayed on their desktop at any given time. Users are able to access specific periods in time with these snapshots, with Copilot+ also being able to provide context for the event.

Scarlett Johansson has accused OpenAI of stealing her voice to its latest ChatGPT AI product called "Sky", with the actress saying she was "shocked, angered in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine."

The actress has spoken to publications regarding her concerns about OpenAI's ChatGPT AI voice called "Sky" following its launch last week. Johansson says that OpenAI has used a voice similar to hers for its artificial intelligence voice software despite saying no to Altman's request to use her voice. Notably, the response from Johansson comes after OpenAI said it was going to pull amid the controversy around the Johansson resemblance.

According to Johansson, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman approached her last September and again two days before the announcement of ChatGPT-4o on May 13. Notably, Johansson played the voice character in the film "Her" which is about a man who developers a relationship with an AI virtual assistant.

It's one of the most highly anticipated video game releases of all time, with Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI set to launch sometime in Fall 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S - covering September, October, and November. Is there a chance the game's release will push beyond this window? Sure, nothing is set in stone this far out for a game - but Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says the publisher is 'highly confident' GTA 6 will arrive on time.

In a new interview with CNBC, Zelnick said, "There is slippage in the industry, and we're not immune from that. However, we narrowed the timing because we are highly confident in that timing." Take-Two only recently put a release window on Grand Theft Auto 6, so it sounds like development is progressing as planned.

Still, he adds that instead of bugs (which it can plan for), Rockstar is seeking 'perfection' in GTA 6. And with that, "there are extraordinary expectations, [so] it's not really about bugs."

With the release and success of Baldur's Gate 3, developer Larian Studios is now one of the world's most esteemed RPG creators. Although we won't be getting an expansion, and Larian is officially moving on from the Baldur's Gate franchise (Hasbro is looking to pick up the pieces), the studio is hard at work on "two very ambitious RPGs."

With that, Larian Studios is expanding, with Larian Studios Warsaw opening in Poland to help work on its upcoming games. Larian calls Warsaw "one of the greatest RPG development hubs in the world," and it's no secret why - the city is home to CD Projekt Red, who created The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077.

Interestingly, this isn't the only news surrounding a high-profile developer opening a Polish-based studio. Activision announced that its new Elsewhere Entertainment studio in the region is being set up to create a new "narrative-based, genre-defining AAA franchise."

Microsoft will integrate Copilot AI into Xbox and PC games like Minecraft. The company showcased how it will work with the latter at its big Surface and AI event earlier today, and the results are pretty wild. In a demonstration, Microsoft showed how Copilot can act as a digital assistant that you can verbally interact with to provide in-game information, help, and tips.

In Minecraft, it could be as simple as asking for a crafting recipe. Copilot can then step you through the process and even assess your inventory to provide answers on what you might need and where to find it. The whole presentation included a scenario where Copilot acted as an interactive guide for a player looking to craft a sword. It's filled with rich, naturalistic conversational delivery and is impressive, to say the least - watch a short clip of it above.

It's reminiscent of some AI tutors and educational tools that OpenAI has demonstrated - except this time, it's for gaming. This feature will undoubtedly make its way to Xbox consoles and hardware, but as it will require NPU hardware to run, it probably won't arrive for televisions until Microsoft launches its next-gen Xbox console.

Ubisoft has just unveiled its next instalment in the Assassin's Creed franchise in a new cinematic trailer, which appears to have caused quite a stir in the gaming community.

The new Assassin's Creed game is called Assassin's Creed Shadows and it takes place in 16th century feudal Japan, where players will take control of two main characters in an open-world setting that is similar in scope to previous Assassin's Creed titles Valhalla and Odyssey.

The new trailer hasn't been well received by viewers as at the time of writing it has 250,000 likes and 600,000 dislikes, along with countless negative comments. Why is this happening you ask? Without mentioning the character choices and the setting of the game, which many gamers seem to be upset with, I believe the main issues for Shadows are Ubisoft's decisions when it comes to pricing.

Microsoft has announced a new lineup of Windows laptops and portable devices called Copilot+ AI PCs. These new bits of hardware feature built-in NPUs that will power a suite of AI features in Windows 11, running natively on local hardware. With a long list of partners, including Dell, Lenovo, Samsung, HP, Acer, and ASUS, Microsoft has also lifted the lid on its own Copilot+ AI PCs, the 11th edition Surface Pro and Surface Laptop.

These new devices are set to compete with Apple's new M4-powered iPad devices and current M3 Macbook offerings. The new Surface Copilot+ AI PCs sport the latest Qualcomm Arm-based Snapdragon X chips. The flagship Surface Pro ships with an OLED display, the Snapdragon X Elite processor, up to 32GB of LPDDR5x memory, and, in a very welcome move, a removable PCIe Gen 4 SSD.

With AI at the heart of Microsoft's vision for Windows, the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices include the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU with 45 TOPS of AI performance. Microsoft classifies an AI PC as featuring at least 40 TOPS of AI performance. This makes the new Snapdragon X-powered Copilot+ AI PCs and Surface devices some of the first single-chip Windows 11 devices to run Copilot locally.