Wccftech News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

Xbox fans, and some of their employees, were blindsided earlier this month when Microsoft announced a number of their studios were being shuttered, including the “gut stab” closure of Arkane Austin, developer of the acclaimed Prey and the more troubled Redfall. Following the announcement Arkane Austin was shutting up shop, it was reported that the team had been working on additional updates for Redfall, including one that would deliver a long-promised offline mode. Unfortunately, at the time, it seemed unlikely any of these promised updates would come to fruition.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is still some time away from going official, but new information has surfaced claiming that the foldable phone will offer a better camera system than the one found in the Galaxy S24.

With two weeks left before the launch of F1 24, the latest installment in the licensed Formula 1 racing game series, we have sent a few questions to Codemasters to discuss some of the new features and improvements that fans will find in the game. The answers were provided by Senior Creative Director Lee Mather and Senior Producer Simon Lumb.

Is Call of Duty coming to Xbox Game Pass? When Microsoft first began pursuing it’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, many assumed using Call of Duty to bolster Game Pass was one of their goals, but things have changed since then. Game Pass growth has slowed, badly missing growth targets, and Xbox boss Phil Spencer has admitted there’s a ceiling to its success. While some Activision Blizzard games like Diablo IV have been added to Game Pass, recent reports suggested that Microsoft was still “evaluating” whether to do the same with the headliner that is Call of Duty.

AMD has announced mass production of its Alveo V80 compute accelerator, the firm's newest HPC product targeted at memory-intensive workloads.

Our automobiles may be getting electric and somewhat smart, but they are still not where we want them to be in terms of seamlessly connecting with our lives. Ottocast has introduced 3 versatile products that take your road life to the next level. These include the OttoAibox P3 CarPlay AI Box, the Car TV Mate Converter for Fire TV Stick, and the Ottocast Play2Video Pro. All three products require the car to support wired CarPlay.

Loongson has revealed that its next-gen CPUs will be able to match Intel's 12th Gen Core i7 & Core i5 CPUs, propelling the domestic Chinese PC market to new heights.

AMD's Strix Halo, the higher-end Ryzen APU, which will power enthusiast laptops with up to 16 Zen 5 cores & 40 RDNA 3+ GPU cores has been revealed in a render diagram published by @Olrak_29.

Grand Theft Auto VI is expected to be the biggest entertainment launch of all time, but the game could impact the industry as a whole if it performs below expectations.

Following the game's PC release yesterday, PlayStation's Ghost of Tsushima is off to a good start on PC.

New Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut comparisons were shared online, highlighting the differences between the PC and PlayStation 5 versions.

Sony may be gearing up to return to the handheld market with a new PlayStation Portable that will be capable of running PlayStation 4 games, according to rumors circulating online.

Intel's next-generation Lunar Lake "Core Ultra 200V" CPUs are coming to gaming handhelds as a new device is revealed by a Chinese maker.

GTA 6 sales likely won't be affected by the game's launch window, according to Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is available on PC as of today, and it offers the full suite of upscaling options, including DLSS 3, FSR 3, and XeSS (check out the game’s performance with DLSS 3 here). Interestingly, Ghost of Tsushima also offers something other games don’t – the ability to combine DLSS upscaling with FSR 3 frame generation.

Intel's next-generation Falcon Shores GPU is going to be a power-hungry beast as revealed to Computerbase during ISC 24.

We’ve known for a while that Grand Theft Auto VI is coming out sometime in 2025, but when specifically in the year it might arrive has remained an open question. Some have held out some despearate hope that an early-2025 might happen, but it seems that’s not in the cards. Today as part of their latest earnings report Take-Two Interactive clarified that GTA VI is coming out in fall of calendar year 2025.

One of the most impressive NVIDIA RTX Remix mods currently in development is certainly the Need for Speed Underground RTX remaster by alessandro893, which received another showcase video recently.

Starting today through next Thursday, the Epic Games Store is offering a free digital copy of Dragon Age: Inquisition Game of the Year Edition. This version of BioWare's RPG includes all the post-launch DLCs: Jaws of Hakkon, The Descent, and Trespasser. The last two, in particular, are absolutely vital to fully understanding the storyline, which is expected to continue in the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.

We have previously covered that the OLED iPad Pro is one of the best tablets on the market, possibly the best as far as the hardware is concerned. However, the device still can not compete against a real computer, something that Apple really wants the iPad to be. While the hardware and internals are ideal, iPadOS is holding it back from achieving its true potential as a computer replacement. The former president of Microsoft has now stated that the idea of a dual-boot iPad, which switches between iPadOS and macOS, is not desirable.

Guerrilla Games' Horizon series is about to get an unexpected new entry called LEGO Horizon Adventures, according to rumors circulating online.

A brand new benchmark of the upcoming AMD Ryzen "Strix Point" APU with 12 Zen 5 cores has leaked out & is on par with the 7700X.

The Lies of P DLC expansion is going to be released before the end of the year, developer NEOWIZ confirmed.

The 12 GB LPDDR5X RAM the Nintendo Switch 2 is rumored to feature could deliver better texture quality than the Xbox Series S, and address many of the visual quality issues of the current Nintendo consoles.

More former Xbox exclusives could be coming to PS5 during this holiday season, according to a well-known insider.

The 13-inch M4 iPad Pro measures just 5.1mm in thickness and is marketed as Apple’s thinnest product yet. However, the obvious concern that potential buyers would have is how durable it would be over long-term use, and while Apple’s executives have attempted to put people’s worries to rest by stating that a protective cowling provides structural rigidity to the latest tablet, a new bend test reveals a different story. However, what is interesting to note is that the larger iPad Pro breaks from the charging position, not from the center, as Apple added the ‘central spine’ there to increase the slate’s durability.

The Italian Soulslike game Enotria: The Last Song has had its release date moved again. Originally slated to launch on June 21, it was first delayed to August 21 because of the nearby launch of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.

Following a brief testing phase via the Steam beta branch, Bethesda Game Studios has now released the Starfield May update on both PC and Xbox Series S|X.

The Kirin 9000S enabled Huawei to regain its lost market in China, staging a comeback that is making rivals like Apple nervous and probably frustrating the Biden administration as their continued efforts to stifle the competition overseas have been fruitless. However, as Huawei shifts towards mass production of advanced chipsets for smartphones and PCs, it will have to take away production resources from all Kirin 9000 variants, as mentioned by one tipster.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

After the Let Loose event, Apple is now focusing its attention on its more budget-friendly iPad mini and entry-level options. The latest report suggests that Apple will launch the iPad mini 7 by the end of the year.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

Apple has maintained its iron grip in the ARM chipset space, particularly in the single-core department, when it was reported that the M4 completely dominated the Geekbench 6 charts. Unfortunately, some individuals are just not satisfied with these results and have gone to great lengths to ensure that the latest iPad Pro models attain a record that will take a while to be broken, and that is achieving 4,000 points in the benchmarking application. As for how Apple’s latest flagship tablet achieved this figure, all it took was a little help from liquid nitrogen.

Sony has announced the latest lineup of games coming to their PS Plus Extra and Premium tiers this May. The headliner is definitely Rockstar’s blockbuster Red Dead Redemption 2, but some other solid additions, including Deceive Inc. and Stranded: Alien Dawn are also on the way. Meanwhile, Premium subscribers have some deep cuts coming, including snowboarding game 2Xtreme and a Worms pinball game I’ve never heard of.

Today, in the middle of its full-year financial report, Ubisoft announced that the free-to-play game Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland has been canceled. The publisher will reinvest in XDefiant and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six instead. Here's the full quote:

More of Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake-S "Desktop" & Arrow Lake-HX "Laptop" CPUs have been exposed in recent shipping manifestos.

Intel has introduced a new PC-to-PC connectivity software called Thunderbolt Share which will let users connect two PCs for increased productivity.

Earlier this week Ubisoft finally shone a light on Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the new Feudal Japan-set RPG-style adventure from the team at Ubisoft Quebec, that was originally known by the codename Assassin’s Creed Red. Since then, a few other tidbits have leaked, including a release date and some details about the game’s DLC and pricing plans. That said, fans were understandably still hungry for more.

The Xbox multiplatform plans reportedly have no "red line" regarding which games could be released on PlayStation consoles, as they revolve around a simple, short-term mandate.

Today, Microsoft announced that Xbox Cloud Gaming (available as part of Game Pass Ultimate) has received initial mouse and keyboard support for the following twenty-six games:

Google has showcased its new "sixth-generation" Trillium TPUs, and also announced NVIDIA Blackwell AI server availability in early 2025.

AMD is ending its HS, H & U branding which helped distinguish between Ryzen Mobile CPUs & adopting the "Ryzen AI" naming convention across all next-gen SKUs starting Strix Point.

Many are the things that have been done on modded Nintendo Switch consoles, but getting Windows 11 to run on it has got to be the most disastrous among them.

WWE 2K24 has been on the market for a couple of months now and developer Visual Concepts is expanding the experience with the game’s first DLC pack. CM Punk made his surprise return to WWE this past November at Survivor Series, and in years past, fans would likely have had to wait over a year to see him in a WWE game, as the deadline for setting the roster for the next game would have passed. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case, as Visual Concepts got to work and managed to get him into the ECW Punk Pack, which also includes Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley, Sandman, and Terry Funk.

China’s largest semiconductor manufacturing firm, SMIC, has reportedly achieved a new milestone and too, without the use of advanced EUV machinery that gives companies like Samsung and TSMC an edge in the cutting-edge chipmaking space. The latest information claims that using DUV equipment, the 5nm process has been completed, and SMIC is ready to mass produce the first batch of wafers. Huawei was previously said to be working closely with its local foundry partner to introduce a new Kirin SoC that will be found in the upcoming Mate 70 series for October later this year.

Today, Austin-based studio Airship Syndicate (Battle Chasers: Night War, Darksiders Genesis, Ruined King: A League of Legends Story) announced a major shift for its online action RPG Wayfinder. The upcoming Echoes update will change the once free-to-play, online-only game to a premium game with a full-fledged offline option.

Around three weeks after the beginning of public testing, indie developer Iron Gate released the long-awaited Valheim Ashlands update on live servers. However, the Microsoft Store and Xbox versions have been delayed due to unforeseen issues:

The M4 running in Apple’s latest 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models is available in a 9-core and 10-core CPU option. We did report about the top-end version’s performance, and we were thoroughly impressed as it ran circles around the M2 and M3 and maintained a solid lead against the M3 Pro and Snapdragon X Elite. However, how well does the base variant perform, which has one performance core less than the top-tier version? In the latest benchmark, we find that there is little difference between them, but there will always be consumers who want the latest and greatest.

Visionary game director and writer Yoko Taro is working on a game with Yosuke Saito and composer Keiichi Okabe, as revealed in the latest issue of the Japanese magazine Famitsu (via Gematsu).

Sony expects PS5 sales to gradually decline as the console has entered the second half of its console cycle.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO was rated in Singapore, and the rating suggests the game is not going to take much longer to release.

Yesterday, Sony Interactive Entertainment revealed that its PS5 console had sold 59.2 million units as of March 31, slightly below Sony's own forecast.

NVIDIA's Blackwell GPUs are going to be the fastest AI chips the world has ever seen when they become available and also the most expensive yet.

NVIDIA and MediaTek might be working on a brand new SOC that will be powering gaming handhelds and consoles.

Diablo IV just received its biggest update to date in the form of Diablo 4 Season 4 Loot Reborn, and we already know how long this season will run.

The latest 11-inch and 13-inch M4 iPad Pro models measure 5.3mm and 5.1mm, respectively, making them the thinnest Apple products ever. The company likely attained this by switching over to Tandem OLED technology, which does not need its own backlighting and has individual pixels, allowing Apple to reduce the overall thickness. However, while there is no question that the latest iPad Pro models are design marvels, their extra sleekness can result in another ‘bendgate’ controversy, but a company executive has assured potential buyers that they have little to worry about.

The recently released Pixel 8a is one of the best phones on the market for those who are looking for a device that is affordable but also packs a punch. There are several reasons to choose this device, like the fact that it is more affordable than its elder siblings while maintaining most of what makes the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro so good. However, benchmarks of the newly released budget Pixel tell a slightly different story.

Intel has ended the deployment of its Ponte Vecchio GPU, marking the end of the road for a chip that is considered to be a technical marvel.

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut arrives on PC this week, and port developer Nixxes has laid out a few additional details about the launch. As we’ve reported, Ghost of Tsushima is the latest Sony-published title to generate controversy for requiring a PlayStation Network sign-in on PC. Granted, GoT only requires PSN on PC for the Legends multiplayer mode, you can play the single-player campaign without it, but the game has still been delisted from Steam in a long list of countries without access to PSN.

Lenovo has unveiled its LEGION Blade 7000K PC configurations, which adopt Intel's 14th & 13th Gen HX CPUs at much lower prices.

In late January 2023, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Amazon was developing an interconnected Tomb Raider universe made of games, film, and TV.

Today, former XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns designer Jake Solomon announced the foundation of Midsummer Studios, a small indie company established with the help of several industry veterans who worked on games like Civilization (Will Miller) and The Sims (Grant Rodiek). This startup has already raised $6 million from investors like Transcend Fund, Tirta Ventures, Betaworks Ventures, 1Up Ventures, F4 Ventures, Krafton, and Day Zero Productions.

While the generative AI technology for NPCs (non-player characters) demonstrated at GDC 2024 by Inworld is very exciting for its potential applications in games, one of the main drawbacks is the cost associated with it. The simulation currently has to run on Inworld's servers, which comes at a price.

Star Citizen has received one of its most extensive updates yet, Alpha 3.23, featuring many additions such as NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, and a custom implementation of TSR (Temporal Super Resolution).

Dead by Daylight is turning eight years old, and Montreal-based series creators Behaviour Interactive had certainly a lot to announce during their big anniversary broadcast. Plenty of new detail was provided about the new Dungeons & Dragons update, although we also learned that a Castlevania chapter is on the way later this year. Players can also look forward to the introduction of a mode with two killers instead of the usual one.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

A new Assassin's Creed Valhalla NVIDIA DLSS 3 mod was released online today, bringing massive performance improvements to the latest main entry in the series developed by Ubisoft.

The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has fined Fortnite maker Epic Games for pressuring youngsters.

Microsoft has announced the new Xbox Game Pass games coming to the service in the coming weeks.

AMD's flagship and the fastest multi-threaded Zen 4 CPU, the Ryzen 9 7950X, & its 3D V-Cache boosted brother, the 7950X3D, are now available at their lowest-ever price points.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is among the few games whose visuals were not downgraded over its original reveal. On the contrary, they have been improved considerably.

The latest 11-inch and 13-inch M4 iPad Pro models are equipped with Tandem OLED technology, making them the first consumer products to be equipped with such panels. The obvious benefits include higher brightness and richer colors, and perhaps the biggest perk of using an OLED apart from the battery life improvements is the longer lifespan of the displays. However, users may not appreciate that the addition of Tandem OLED actually results in worse battery life compared to the M1 version with mini-LED, at least according to the latest tests.

Crimson Desert might be nearing its release window at long last. The game was originally announced by Pearl Abyss (the South Korean developer behind Black Desert) at G-Star 2019 alongside DokeV and PLAN 8.

Industry reports now suggest that Samsung has failed to pass specific stages of HBM3E memory verification set by NVIDIA, potentially creating a roadblock for the Korean giant.

Today, alongside its financial report, Sony announced a new leadership structure for its PlayStation division (Sony Interactive Entertainment). Following the departure of Jim Ryan, they had been looking for a new Chief Executive Officer; as it turns out, they found two.

Following the release date leak, Assassin's Creed Shadows also got its pricing and season pass/DLC plan leaked, although through another source.

AMD has officially launched its Ryzen 7 8700F & Ryzen 5 8400F APUs for DIY which target the Intel Core i5 mainstream CPU lineup.

Google is expected to unveil the Tensor G4 later this year for the Pixel 9 lineup, and just like its previous releases, the company is likely sticking with Samsung as its foundry partner. However, next year, the advertising giant is said to take a different direction, with its Pixel 10 range apparently featuring a 3nm SoC from TSMC. To help with the transition, Google is rumored to have expanded its Taiwanese R&D center, where it is expected to collaborate closely with the semiconductor giant to produce its best silicon to date.

Red Dead Redemption may finally launch on PC 14 years after its original release, judging from some recent findings.

PS5 sales have surpassed 59.2 million units worldwide, Sony has revealed.