EA is set to release Battlefield 6 to the masses in just over a month. Now, it has finally revealed the system requirements that PC players will need to reach to have a smooth experience in the shooter. The new information was even accompanied by a dedicated trailer just to show off the PC version, seen above.

The requirements come in three flavors: Minimum, Recommended, and Ultra, starting from 1080p 30FPS low settings and going up to 4K 60FPS Ultra settings.

Check out the full requirements below:

Support for ultra-wide monitors, uncapped frame rates, and a large amount of graphics tweaks were confirmed today too. EA also announced that upscaling solutions like AMD FSR 4, Nvidia DLSS 4, and Intel XeSS 2 will be present too, alongside frame generation options.

Battlefield 6 releases on October 10 across PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. The PC version will be available across Steam, the EA App, and the Epic Games Store.

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Posted Friday 29 August 2025 at 5:24 am AEST (my time).

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Starting off with the biggest addition, players will gain access to the new Corvette-class starship who has progressed to at least the mid-game of the space experience. Unlike other crafts, this is a ship that can be assembled piece by piece, letting players add "every section of hull, every wing and peripheral, every internal corridor and bunk bed" manually.

"Visit the Corvette Workshop aboard Space Stations to design the silhouette, hull, and peripherals of a Corvette-class starship," explains the developer. "Pan and rotate the camera freely in a new ergonomic building mode to place and paint each individual hull plate and connector."

The interior spaces of these ships are also fully navigable on foot while they are in travel, letting players even invite their friends over for multicrew sessions across space. Its doors can be opened for some space walks and transfers to other ships for the first time too, finally letting players experience space from outside of a ship in their suits. Check out the new gameplay trailer below that showcases some of these new gameplay additions.

Instead of going through the campaign to gain access to the Corvette, players can also go through the brand-new Expedition, before it expires, to gain access to it directly.

Moreover, DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation is now available for latest-generation Nvidia RTX graphics card owners. PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) has also landed for PlayStation 5 players.

No Man's Sky Voyagers update is now available across PC (Steam and Xbox app), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and both Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 systems. Find the patch notes here.

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Posted Thursday 28 August 2025 at 5:08 pm AEST (my time).

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Bethesda today released a new developer spotlight video that focuses on studio veteran Tim Lamb, who currently serves as a senior producer at the company. In it, he revealed that outside of the next expansion release, the team has been working on some new features and updates.

"I think as it comes to Starfield, I'm really excited for players to see what the teams have been working on," said Lamb in the video log. "We have some cool stuff coming, including free updates and features the players have been asking for, as well as a new DLC story."

Earlier this year, Bethesda said it was planning "exciting things" for Starfield in 2025, with the team being hard at work on the project. However, Microsoft's biggest gaming showcases in June and at Gamescom did not mention anything regarding the RPG. Hopefully, this latest teaser is here due to plans finally progressing far enough for a new update soon.

Interestingly, in the same video, Lamb also mentioned upgrades being made to the space gameplay to make it more rewarding.

"I can't go into all the details just yet, but I will say part of the team has been focused on space gameplay to make the travels there more rewarding," added Lamb. We're also adding some new game systems and a few other smaller delights. There's also some really interesting stuff coming down the pipe from our verified creators. There's some fun stuff.

The confirmation arrives only a few weeks after Starfield fans on Reddit discovered mentions of advanced space encounters and, more importantly, an expanded interplanetary travel system via datamining. While a small patch had removed these mentions soon after, the latest teasers in the developer update do give some credence to these discoveries.

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Posted Thursday 28 August 2025 at 5:07 pm AEST (my time).

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Here are the segment-wise highlights:

• Data Center: Second-quarter revenue was $41.1 billion, up 5% from the previous quarter and up 56% from a year ago.
• Gaming and AI PC: Second-quarter Gaming revenue was $4.3 billion, up 14% from the previous quarter and up 49% from a year ago.
• Professional Visualization: Second-quarter revenue was $601 million, up 18% from the previous quarter and up 32% from a year ago.
• Automotive and Robotics: Second-quarter Automotive revenue was $586 million, up 3% from the previous quarter and up 69% from a year ago.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, mentioned that demand for the Blackwell data center AI platform is extraordinary and that production is also ramping up. He said:

“Blackwell is the AI platform the world has been waiting for, delivering an exceptional generational leap — production of Blackwell Ultra is ramping at full speed, and demand is extraordinary. NVIDIA NVLink rack-scale computing is revolutionary, arriving just in time as reasoning AI models drive orders-of-magnitude increases in training and inference performance. The AI race is on, and Blackwell is the platform at its center.”

NVIDIA's board has approved an additional $60.0 billion for the company’s share repurchase authorization. The next quarterly cash dividend will be $0.01 per share, which will be paid on October 2, 2025.

NVIDIA expects its revenue to be $54.0 billion, with a 2% deviation, in the upcoming quarter. This outlook does not include any H20 shipments to Chinese customers.

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Posted Thursday 28 August 2025 at 5:06 pm AEST (my time).

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I am a big fan of role-playing games. Whether in the form of first-person shooters, third-person action games, isometric turn-based experiences, or in tabletop form, I am there for any RPG that looks interesting. When Obsidian reached out to see if I wanted to play a section of its latest game prior to launch, I decided to jump in and see how it’s coming along.

While it seems much closer in my mind, The Outer Worlds 2 is coming five whole years after the original RPG. Like all good sequels, it aims to upgrade and overhaul many things while keeping what worked in the previous experience intact. From what I could see in my short time with the game, Obsidian has done everything according to plan.

Obsidian provided me with access to the prologue of the RPG. This meant I could go through the character creation process, select how many limbs I still had, choose my background and starting skills, select a weakness (I’ll get into that later), and go through the beginning of the game with no restrictions. It’s around an hour of gameplay from start to finish. Still, I did multiple playthroughs with new characters to see just how different the intro goes depending on the chosen skills, dialog options, and actions during gameplay.

The Outer Worlds 2 takes place in a whole different part of the universe compared to the previous adventures, and this time, the protagonist is a part of the Earth Directorate faction as a commander.
After I quickly created a dashing soldier fit for the job, I picked one of the six personal backgrounds that the world and NPCs would react to while playing. These included some fun ones like Ex-Convict, Gambler, and my personal favorite: Roustabout. This made my character someone who stumbled upon greatness completely accidentally and still doesn’t know what exactly is going on.

Next came the Traits, letting me choose up to two positive characteristics I could attach to my role-playing experience. These included the usual stars like Brawny, Lucky, Nimble, Suave, and Brilliant, affecting what skills I could utilize. However, choosing two positive Traits has the downside of coming down with a negative Trait, which could mess with skills, combat effectiveness, or conversations. It’s a fun little mechanic to make sure not everything goes to plan in every situation.

Without going into heavy spoiler territory, the Earth Directorate is investigating a string of disasters tied to the Skip Drives that this universe’s people use to travel faster than light, and this is where we come in to see how we can resolve or mess up the situation even further. As the actual game begins, I am introduced to the rest of my squad as we prepare for a special covert mission. Each member of the team has their own personal agenda and outlook on how they should serve the Earth Directorate, ranging from loyal subjects to those who only look after their own backs.

Niles is one of the soldiers under my command, and from the start, he is highly impressionable. Just a few conversations are enough for him to look at his job in a new light. Through my multiple playthroughs of the prologue, I saw that depending on how I responded to his questions or statements, his whole demeanor and later actions would change. Considering he is already confirmed as one of the companions we would have in the campaign, I can’t wait to see just how much the relationship evolves going forward.

Right from the start, my character’s movements and animations feel smooth, with movements like sliding, jumping, and sneaking all feeling solid to perform. Even actions like wrestling open a stuck door, lock picking, and turning engineering knobs inside wall panels (all depending on what skills are unlocked) have a certain spark thanks to the smoothness of the animations and gestures.

I should also mention that third-person perspective is now an option in the sequel, too, letting you play the title as an over-the-shoulder action experience instead of an FPS. There is even a third, more drawn-back, third-person camera option, but I found looting or paying attention to details more difficult with this. A simple keyboard shortcut switches between all three on the fly.

Heading into the secret science facility, the game begins throwing multiple options for solving issues. Once a random alarm goes off, I could talk down a security guard using my Speech skills and the information on a note I found, or sneak through a hidden grate after lockpicking, or simply blast through the entire section with my trusty sidearm. The game continued to offer solutions like these throughout the prologue, making it seem more like an immersive sim at times.

There was also a split-off point where I could choose to tackle a more combat-heavy section or a stealth-oriented part of the mission. Whatever option I choose, my squad will do the remaining objective. I found the stealth section to be much more enjoyable. It involved gaining a melee weapon, killing guards using silent takedowns (finally!), using ducts to move around, and even hacking giant robots to betray their masters.

When action would break out, I was fighting soldiers with firearms, melee weapon users that would rush me, and several types of robots. I only got to use the pistol and rifle during the prologue as long-range weapons, and they felt quite satisfying to use. While underwhelming compared to some of the energy weapons with crazy effects that will undoubtedly return later in the game, the smooth animations and sound design of the weapons made me a fan of combat quite quickly. My weapons made just the right amount of clicks and pops to satisfy me. The bullet-time ability is still here, too, letting me make quick work of any enemies out of position or rushing me with their batons. I could even shoot grenades out of the air while I slow-mo.

Much like the original, it’s clear that Obsidian isn’t going for an open-world sandbox RPG experience. Instead, it is focusing on offering interesting characters, quests with multiple solutions, and overall, a deeper narrative. Exploration is still deeply rewarding. Other than valuable loot, my unwarranted escapades around the science facility usually had me stumbling on new solutions to use with objectives and alternate paths, as well as collectibles.

Even guard patterns would change depending on previous choices made within the quest. Playing a certain propaganda broadcast on all displays within the facility at an earlier stage, as an optional decision, had a group of guards huddling around a large television later in the mission. Scouting around this area’s ventilation, I found a hidden panel that would trigger an electric discharge on the broken floor paneling near the display, instantly removing the room’s defenses. Next time I came around to the room without the video swap, the guards were patrolling the area like normal, making me find another way to pass through if I didn’t want to start a firefight.

Depending on the skills and background I chose during character creation, entire pathways or loot could be blocked off from use. This can sometimes make the head-on guns-blazing option the only solution. I once did not have hacking or lockpicking to go through a side door, and also didn’t have enough speech skills, or luck, to convince a guard to let me through quietly. This ended up being a large fight involving squads of human and robot enemies. If the rest of the game’s quests follow the same patterns, the number of variations players will have available for completing tasks will be impressive.

This was a pre-release preview build, and while I probably shouldn’t get into the nitty-gritty performance details, the game ran phenomenally on my PC. It is housing an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and a Ryzen 7 3700X, with the display being 1440p. The only hiccup I experienced and reported to the studio was a crash I could replicate when playing with ray tracing enabled. The game did look extra shiny with it enabled, though.

After this little taste, I am solidly in the ‘can’t wait’ group for The Outer Worlds 2. The above prologue delivered interesting characters and a sci-fi mystery that has a larger draw on me than the original’s overarching plotline. Obsidian’s iconic dark humor has returned in a good way, too. So far, the game doesn’t overdo it, as I found that not all characters are attempting to make a joke out of every conversation. It’s a hard balance to keep, but if a studio can nail it, it’s probably this one.
By the end of my preview access, I was itching to go beyond and try out the new skills system, the expanded world zones, meet the newly revealed companions, and find out where the story goes beyond the prologue’s flashy ending. I guess I will just have to wait and see like everyone else.

The Outer Worlds 2 is coming out on October 29, 2025, across PC (Steam and Microsoft Store), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. It will also be available via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscriptions.

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Posted Thursday 28 August 2025 at 4:42 am AEST (my time).

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Owlcat Games, the creator of the critically acclaimed and fan-beloved RPG, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, has uploaded a new developer diary for its next Warhammer 40,000 project, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy.

It is a short but sweet video that recaps what we've seen from its Warhammer Skull 2025 event, while providing new details on the game's story and unique gameplay features that will set it apart from its predecessor.

Here's everything you need to know from this upcoming PC title's trailer.

For starters, the trailer reveals that Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy will be a turn-based, tactical RPG like Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader but with a completely new setting, a new cast of characters, and a couple of original gameplay mechanics.

Unlike Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, which has you play as a space-faring privateer exploring uncharted worlds for the Imperium, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy has you play as an acolyte of the Inquisition.

The Inquisition is the Imperium of Man's secret police force, working in the shadows to root out heretics by any means necessary, no matter how much collateral damage is caused along the way.

The story takes place within the Calixis Sector, a region of Imperial space rife with abominable xenos aliens, Chaos God worshipping cultists, and bloodthirsty daemons seeking to destroy the Imperium of Man.

The Hive Worlds of the Terminids are the target this time around, specifically inside The Gloom. The developer says to prepare to explore and rain fire upon these fully terraformed planets of the Terminids, which are covered in a dense fog and towering fleshy structures.

However, the newest environments Helldiver squads will be fighting in will be underground caves of these planets. Infested with a type of biological matter called Hive Lung that's spewing out the Gloom fog, these maze-like cave networks will be tough to navigate while fighting. Adding another problem into the mix, players won't be able to call in support from orbiting destroyers, making even ammo gathering difficult unless squads find openings to the surface while exploring.

As for fresh enemies, everything from burrowing monsters to dragon-like flying Terminids are incoming.

"What little intelligence we have on the Gloom contains information about a new subterranean species of Terminid Warriors, Bile Spewers, and Chargers that, when they detect a threat, will burrow underground and begin moving toward prey. Once close enough, they erupt from the ground and attack," says the studio, describing the new threats. "It doesn’t stop there. The Gloom has mutated the Terminids even further, into grotesque monsters like the Dragonroach: a menace in the sky that dives unsuspecting Helldivers and rains down burning bile."

At the same time, the Dust Devils Premium Warbond will go live offering a new primary weapon, a new throwable, as well as three fresh strategems to use against the bugs on Hive Worlds.

Helldivers 2: Into the Unjust update lands on September 4 across PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. Don't forget that with the game's release on Xbox today, August 26, Halo: ODSTs have landed as part of an official crossover as well.

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Posted Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 2:56 am AEST (my time).

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If you remember the original already receiving a remaster, you’d be correct. The 2015-released Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was made to match the Xbox One era of gaming, and 10 years later, we have another remaster that builds upon that version. Aside from visual upgrades and higher frame rates, this release is also touting things like full crossplay and cross-progression across any platform, applying Microsoft’s latest design philosophies.

The Reloaded release marks a special occasion for the franchise. This will be the first time that Gears of War is hopping over to the Sony camp and unleashing PlayStation fans on the Locust Horde. Even after all these years, the series has a platform problem. Let me break it down. With this remaster, the first entry in the series is out on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, but the rest of the trilogy is still stuck on the Xbox 360 version, alongside the Judgment spin-off. Meanwhile, Gears 4 and 5 are on Xbox and PC. So far, the E-Day prequel is coming to PC and Xbox, though a PlayStation version is likely. Where are my complete trilogy remasters, Microsoft?

For this review, I was unfortunately unable to get into any multiplayer matches due to my matchmaking region and the number of players available during the pre-release stage. I have gone through the entirety of the campaign solo, enduring more than a few hiccups in the stability and NPC AI side of things. It was still a good nostalgia trip through the ruined streets of Sera.

With all that out of the way, here are the thoughts I gathered on the experience as I played Gears of War: Reloaded on PC.

Gears of War: Reloaded

Gears of War served as a tremendous introduction to the fictional world of Sera and its horrors. Heavy on the gore and light on retrospectives, the campaign simply dumps you into the shoes of Marcus Fenix and expects you to go along with the ride, and somehow, it just works. The world is ending, let’s go save it.

For those who’ve yet to experience it, the story begins over a decade after a horde of monsters (simply dubbed the Locust Horde) comes out of the deepest caverns to attack the human civilization on the surface, and our newly pardoned protagonist walks out of prison to join the war once again. There’s not much explaining going on other than the directive to kill everything that looks like a monster, and for an action game, that’s all I need.

From the start, it's a non-stop push to the finish line with no breaks, showcasing a final push by humanity to stop the threat. There are little hints and dialog lines here and there about what these characters have gone through or what exactly is at stake, but we never linger on those moments to break the constant march forward. I have missed this kind of tight pacing in games, and I think it’s something that’s missing in the post-trilogy games in the series.

Fenix is joined by a few memorable characters throughout the entire campaign, with the remaining members of the Delta squad being the most iconic. Dom with his no-nonsense but good-hearted attitude, Cole and his over-the-top personality, and Baird’s non-stop sarcasm, mesh together for an entertaining stream of dialogue that never comes off as awkward.

Being a remaster, the story, gameplay, gunplay, and the innovative (for the time) cover shooter systems are all the same in Reloaded. I had a blast ripping apart Locusts with my Chainsaw Bayonets, caving in newly created ground breaches using trusty grenades before enemies poured out of them, avoiding Berserker charges, and picking off heads with my trusty sniper rifle.

The visuals are crisp thanks to the updated 4K assets and textures, as well as the overhauled lighting and visual effects. While in my mind the original game already looked this good when I played it all those years ago, just one look at some comparisons makes me realize just how far we have come. Somehow, the remaster has managed to make things look even moodier, but there are actual colors I could see instead of everything being drowned in a blurry brown filter. Always a plus in my book.

Gears of War was the first Xbox Live-enabled PC game I played well over a decade ago. Games for Windows Live being a pain is still a core memory for me, but also things like the Shrieker fight, General Raam, Delta Squad antics, and the literal chainsaw attached to a machine gun made me an instant fan of the series. Unfortunately, the rest of the trilogy escaped me due to console exclusivity. I’m definitely on some strong nostalgia as I’m praising the classic campaign, but I have no reason not to commend good gameplay and pacing.

Returning annoyances and fresh crashes

While the visuals are rich, and the systems that made the original such a beloved classic have been kept intact, the remaster has also kept the annoyances alive. NPC AI is one of the worst offenders here.

Dom got stuck on random terrain or pieces of debris multiple times. While the AI teammates usually teleport near Marcus when he gets far enough away, in some instances, they actually need to walk into a location for the next stage of the mission or interactable element to start. This is where getting stuck ‘under the map’ or ‘random pieces of barrel’ had me at least doubling back to retrieve my stuck companion or restarting from a checkpoint a few times. The same also happens with enemies and bosses, though this technically helps with fights, my immersion gets killed off.

I get it, this is an amazing two-player cooperative game to jump into with a friend. However, I would have liked to see some overhauls to how my squad or the major bosses pathfind themselves through the terrain or stop getting stuck on random pieces of garbage.

Another issue I faced was some audio crackling in missions during heavy gunfights as the music blared in the background. This only happened in a few missions, so it wasn’t a massive issue, though it’s one that quickly took me out of the moment. Other annoyances included music completely going missing during a certain underground boss fight and not being able to sprint through doors, as the automatic kick animation did not do anything.

Now for the most extreme problem I faced: crashes. I managed to crash to the desktop while loading up the game, while running the built-in benchmark tool, while loading into a mission, while watching cutscenes, while playing missions, and at more random places. In the eight or so hours I have played Gears of War: Reloaded for this review, I have crashed at least 10 times. It didn’t seem to matter what graphics options I used or if I was in a specific area; the title would randomly crash without any error codes, but the next time I ran it, I could simply go through that area or menu with no issues. Since the game runs on a checkpoint system, having to redo entire sections of missions because of a crash near the end wasn’t a very fun or engaging experience.

An update already came through for the pre-release version as I was reviewing the game. While I don’t have a changelog to go through, I was told it had some bug fixes. It’s clear that the development team is still working on the title. I am hoping for more of these updates and quick rollouts, for at least resolving the crashes I experienced on PC.

Performance

While Gears of War: Reloaded can be unstable at points, performance seems to be spectacular. My machine has an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB paired with an eight-core Ryzen 7 3700X and 16GB of RAM, with the game running at 1440p resolution. The game is also installed on an NVMe SSD.
With everything maxed out and all upscaling disabled, my frame rates were easily staying well over a hundred at all stages. You can check out the benchmark results I received from the in-game tool below.

I have no trouble believing that this remaster will run great even on decade-old hardware. For those that require a bump in performance, upscaling options like AMD FSR and Nvidia DLSS are here as well. It’s even Steam Deck Verified if you’re going the handheld route.

Conclusion

Despite the original game shining through with a fresh coat of paint and sharper visuals, I had to suffer through numerous crashes while reviewing the PC version. Age-old issues like horrible NPC pathing and bosses getting stuck on debris, as well as new ones involving audio and music, weren’t great experiences.

I am expecting Gears of War: Reloaded to be much more stable on the console side, like it has always been with earlier releases. Having this release on PlayStation 5 also gives a brand-new audience a chance to see what exactly all this hype is about. If you’re looking to get a nice nostalgia hit, I don’t see why you should skip out on a fresh campaign run-through. Maybe call up an old friend or two.

If you’re here for nostalgia and don’t mind a few rough edges, Reloaded delivers. If you’re on PC and allergic to crashes, wait for a patch.

Like I said before, I couldn’t try out the multiplayer during the pre-release review period. Though from what I saw during the multiplayer beta weekends, the fast-paced action is back without many changes, which may be exactly what veterans are looking for. Benefits like crossplay for an aged title like this cannot be overlooked either.

If you’ve yet to jump into the franchise, the $40 price tag is a rather enticing one, especially with the Gears of War: E-Day prequel looming. Don’t forget that if you bought The Ultimate Edition prior to the Reloaded announcement, you’re also getting the new version for free, too. After going through this remaster, I’m just hoping that at least the complete original trilogy gets the same treatment after all these years, especially considering they are still regarded as the best in the series.

Gears of War: Reloaded launches on August 26, 2025, on PC via Steam and Microsoft Store, as well as Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, with a $39.99 price tag. It will also be available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (with cloud play) and PC Game Pass on the same day.

This review was conducted on a pre-release PC version of the game provided by Microsoft.

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Posted Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 2:44 am AEST (my time).

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Last month's Ikea's announcement of more than 20 new Matter-over-Thread devices felt like a much-needed breakthrough moment for the high-profile smart home standard. If Ikea—a brand with a broad, not necessarily tech-savvy customer base—is all-in on Matter, have we finally arrived at the smart home utopia that was first promised back in late 2019?

It was then, amid growing frustrations from users around smart home compatibility, that tech giants including Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung formed the Project Connected Home over IP (Project CHIP) working group, and laid out their plans to fix the chaos.

By mid-2021, Project CHIP had blossomed into Matter. The big idea was that Matter would work as your smart home’s universal translator; a common language designed to get all your connected devices talking locally and securely. If it was a Matter-certified device, it should work with any Matter-compatible platform or app, whatever the brand.

Devices with that Matter mark started arriving in late 2022, in the weeks after the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) officially released Matter 1.0 specification and opened the certification program for brands to get on board.

The trouble in those early days was that the Matter mark didn’t take the guesswork out of the equation for consumers. In fact, it added an extra layer of confusion. Amazon actually muddied the waters during its keynote presentation at the Matter 1.0 launch event when it was revealed that neither iOS nor wireless mesh network Thread would be part of its initial Alexa and Matter integration.

That was a major setback, as Thread, alongside Wi-Fi and Ethernet, was touted as a major part of Matter, offering a fast, reliable, secure, and energy-saving network protocol.

“We felt confident in Matter when it launched with version 1.0,” Tobin Richardson, president and CEO of the CSA, explained to me. “But nothing provides the real-life feedback that we needed until devices and ecosystems were in the market and being used by consumers. That first year was critical, and we began to see some immediate areas where improvement was needed.”

In that first year, if you bought a Nanoleaf Essential lightbulb, with that Matter mark on the box, and you lived in an Alexa household, you couldn’t actually add it to your Matter system.

“When the different ecosystems were deploying their Thread border routers”—the gateway that links the devices in your Thread mesh to your home’s IP network and the internet—“everyone was on a different commit, so you have all these different code bases all in production, all trying to work together,” Nanoleaf’s CEO Gimmy Chu explained to me. “And different ecosystems had a bunch of different bugs.”

Chu told me that Nanoleaf paid the price for being an early champion of Matter-over-Thread, and the smart lighting specialist ultimately ditched Thread in favor of Matter-over-Wi-Fi after that first wave of products.

“We're doing some outdoor products, and now we use Wi-Fi,” he explained. “But in an ideal world, these should be Thread products, because it has much better range, and also it's low power.”

Chu hasn’t given up on Thread, though, and said testing version 1.4 is going well. The latest version has made it simpler for devices to work in a unified, brand-agnostic, mesh network, regardless of the software or hardware ecosystem being used. It has also streamlined cloud access and simplified device setup, ultimately helping to make Matter more robust, scalable, and user-friendly.

“I think that Matter and Thread has had a lot of negativity in the past few years, but it's time for the consumers to give it another try,” says Chu. “It's gotten much better. A lot of people in the industry have been working very, very hard to get it to the point that it's at today.”

It’s an area of improvement that Richardson is also keen to highlight. “Thread is an important, foundational technology of Matter,” he said. “We are closely aligned with the Thread Group and continue to look for ways to improve the Thread experience within Matter and the use cases that it enables.”

Growing Pains

Thread took most of the early heat when Matter started stumbling, but it wasn’t the only problem. Dev headaches, slow rollout, and a lack of compatible devices have all played a part.

For an emerging standard, this is not unusual. But when the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung team up, it becomes a much bigger story.

“We started this with a lot of fanfare, and usually standards don’t. They sort of start off in a corner, with maybe a couple of super nerdy articles about it, and then, two years later, something shows up when companies start rolling it out.”

That’s the take of Daniel Moneta, chair of the Matter Marketing and Product Subgroup at the CSA. Moneta has also spent the past few years working with Samsung SmartThings in a product and marketing role, giving him plenty of irons in the Matter fire.

“I do think there were a lot of expectations, that maybe we set, but maybe people just had, in terms of things like how quickly it was going to be done, how fast products were going to come out, which problems Matter was going to solve and which ones it wasn’t,” he said.

Moneta believes many criticisms of Matter stem from its tech-fluent early adopters already being obsessive about the details. Speaking as a self-titled “nerdy enthusiast,” he understands.

“We're very interested in the technical nuance … in looking at things like compatibility matrices. The smart home has historically been for that enthusiast in the home and, almost by definition, a group of people who have greater expectations, want more flexibility, and also maybe want it to do things beyond necessarily what it was built for.

“I’m not saying Matter wasn't made for that audience, because I think it's fantastic for that audience,” he continues. “But Matter was also designed for the Ikea buyer or the Samsung TV buyer. The one that goes, ‘I have a Matter hub in this TV I just bought. Maybe I should buy some light bulbs.’”

A lot of Matter criticism stems from the fact that, when the CSA announces a new Matter specification, which happens twice a year (it just recently announced version 1.4.2), and more device support, it takes time for each ecosystem to become compatible.

It took almost a year for the major platforms to support the new device types included in the 2023 Matter 1.2 spec, like air purifiers and robot vacuum cleaners, and even then support rolled out gradually. This meant that supposedly Matter-compatible devices were being sold, but users couldn't actually add them to their Matter controller.

It's not a situation that's going away, either. Take that exciting Ikea news—the brand's Dirigera hub will now support Matter 1.4 but only for device types that Ikea sells; think sensors, lights, plugs, and remotes. More devices will be added as Ikea launches products in those categories, but we’re unlikely to see Ikea bankrolling dev work to be compatible with device types it doesn’t sell.

“I don't see them supporting every device under the sun,” Daniel Moneta explained. “And then there's Home Assistant, where their goal is to support everything. But you also might have a Matter controller or ecosystem that's 100 percent lawn care, and all it supports are sprinklers and soil sensors. Maybe it doesn't need to support ovens. That's fine, it's why we don't mandate what controllers support, because we want there to be flexibility.”

Moving Forward

The good news is that Matter is now in a much better place both for the consumer and for the companies building products. As those companies push forward with their idea of what the smart home should be with the help of AI—as Google puts Gemini in all the places Assistant used to live, as Amazon ramps up Echo's capabilities with Alexa+ and Apple works out what exactly next-gen Siri looks like ahead of expected new smart home hardware releases—Matter is working to ensure it can finally make the experience of linking that all together much smoother.

Take the recently launched 1.4.2 release; it’s light on new categories but heavy on things that could quietly improve everyday reliability for the average user.

“We began to see some immediate areas where improvement was needed in areas like setup, multi-admin, border router capabilities, and overall reliability,” Tobin Richardson of the CSA explained. “We’ve been able to make improvements to all of these subsequent Matter software updates and continue to make enhancements ongoing to make the experience ever better.”

The CSA is also doing a lot of work on the admin side to make Matter certification more streamlined, while also getting ecosystem compatibility from the major platforms at the same time. Earlier this year, it announced that Apple, Google, and Samsung would begin accepting test results from its Interop Lab in Oregon as sufficient for their respective Works With programs and badges. Amazon joined the party a bit late but has since stated it will be getting involved too.

“I think that came heavily from some of the feedback that companies like us gave,” explained the Nanoleaf boss Gimmy Chu. “We, as the small product companies, were having to do a lot of product certifications because the standard kept evolving and changing, and it was getting really costly to roll out products.”

So while that Matter mark on the box still can’t tell you for sure that it will definitely work on your chosen ecosystem, a combination of that plus a “Works With” badge can. It's questionable as to whether it's the ultimate simplicity the CSA is striving for, but Richardson feels it's well on its way.

“We’ve made tremendous progress in a short period of time, compared to other high-profile standards like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth,” Richardson says. “What our members, collectively, have built is more than just a paper standard.”

He adds that the proof of Matter’s progress is in the standard's adoption by brands like Ikea. “It’s tremendously important when big, well-known global brands commit to the standard,” he says. “It shows it works, brings momentum, and reassures—and it motivates others to jump on board. The list of companies supporting this is growing, not holding steady, not retreating. That's an important data point.”

It’s a sentiment that Daniel Moneta shares: “To go from launching [in 2022] to a company like Ikea to be using it—one that moves very cautiously and slowly and is dedicated to a good, problem-free experience, usually for absolute beginner smart home user— it’s a stunning milestone.”

Chu, who admits to still being cautious after Nanoleaf was burned by being a Matter front-runner, agrees the standard has come a long way and says that brands dragging their heels should consider jumping on board.

“I think the CSA have a different challenge on their hands, which is, their reputation was kind of damaged from the very beginning. But I have confidence that more and more companies will continue to build Matter products,” he tells WIRED. “I think any product company thinking about making a non-Matter smart home product now, they’re kind of silly.

“Was Matter designed in the optimal way? Absolutely not. Are there things that it could have done better? Yes. But it is still a much better solution than every product speaking a different proprietary language. The vision for all the ecosystems to speak the same language is still a great vision, and everyone's working toward it.”

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Posted Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 2:39 am AEST (my time).

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AMD's X3D-series Ryzen chips have become popular with PC gamers because games in particular happen to benefit disproportionately from the chips' extra 64MB of L3 cache memory. But that extra memory occasionally comes with extra headaches. Not long after they were released earlier this year, some early adopters started having problems with their CPUs, ranging from failure to boot to actual physical scorching and burnout—the problems were particularly common for users of the 9800X3D processor in ASRock motherboards, and one Reddit thread currently records 157 incidents of failure for that CPU model across various ASRock boards.

In an interview with the Korean language website Quasar Zone (via Tom's Hardware), AMD executives David McAfee and Travis Kirsch acknowledged the problems and pointed to the most likely culprit: motherboard makers who don't follow AMD's recommended specifications. Some manufacturers have historically shipped their AMD and Intel motherboards with elevated default power settings in the interest of squeezing a bit more performance out of the chips—but those adjustments can also cause problems in some cases, especially for higher-end CPUs.

The AM5 socket has already been through a saga like this one before. Shortly after their release in early 2023, some Ryzen 7000-series X3D chips were becoming physically deformed, developing bulges on the bottom that could permanently damage the CPU and bend the pins in the CPU socket. AMD blamed some motherboards' incorrect voltage settings for the problem and put out BIOS updates with more limitations on voltage to fix the problem.

It's also reminiscent of a monthslong process that Intel went through to track down problems with some 13th- and 14th-generation Core CPUs whose performance and stability were degrading over time. Intel had to release multiple waves of fixes to completely iron out the problems—but one major contributing factor, the company said, was motherboard makers whose products strayed too far from Intel's recommended default settings. In the end, Intel ended up extending the warranties of all 13th- and 14th-generation Core CPUs to help cover the damage.

McAfee and Kirsch recommend installing your motherboard maker's latest BIOS updates as they're released, to pick up new default settings as AMD and its partners change them. These BIOS updates also add support for new processors, improve memory compatibility, and patch security flaws, among other things.

McAfee and Kirsch also pointed out that AMD can have slightly more trouble testing and tracking down issues because the long lives of its chipsets and CPU sockets (and AMD's various tools for adjusting power limits and overclocking) create a much wider range of possible system configurations to test. That's especially true for socket AM4 motherboards, where an X370 motherboard from 2017 could theoretically be paired with a current CPU release like the Ryzen 5 5500X3D. But even for AM5, users could be sticking brand-new Ryzen X3D chips into 3-year-old motherboards, an upgrade path with no real equivalent in Intel's ecosystem.

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Posted Tuesday 26 August 2025 at 6:38 pm AEST (my time).

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World of Warcraft is now two decades old and has remained at the apex of its genre right from its launch.

The video game industry has changed in weird and (not-always) wonderful ways, but despite evolving player habits, costs, and competition from other mediums, World of Warcraft has remained strong throughout.

Since being acquired by Microsoft and Xbox, World of Warcraft has entered a new epoch in its lifecycle, prioritizing player expression while doubling down on enhancing the experience for players of all skill levels and time commitments. World of Warcraft and Blizzard are continuing that tradition in World of Warcraft: Midnight, the next big expansion slated for early 2026.

We caught up with World of Warcraft leads Ion Hazzikostas and Holly Longdale to discuss what fans can expect of one of the industry's most legendary franchises, as it enters decade number three.

After 20 years, why are we getting Player Housing?

I first wanted to see if we could get some insights into why Blizzard has decided that now is the time to invest in World of Warcraft "Player Housing," which will, for the first time, allow players to decorate and even structure their own homes within neighbourhoods made up of real players. It's a feature players have asked for literally since the game launched, so what changed to make it a reality now?

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas described how housing was such a significant undertaking that it its development wouldn't fit in a typical expansion cycle. This is something that required development across multiple expansions, which isn't something Blizzard had typically targeted. "It's something that has obviously come up in conversation countless times," Hazzikostas explained, "I think every time we looked at what it would take to make housing real, it didn't quite fit the development cycle of an expansion. This time, we committed to a longer development cycle that could span multiple traditional expansion cycles. The idea to make housing a reality, to have it land at Midnight, really was set in motion even before Shadowlands came out. We knew that's how long it would take to get it right, to give a version that stood 20 years into WoW's lifespan, giving players what they wanted and what they deserved."

"The other piece is building on a lot of the technological frameworks that we've built up over the years, including everything from the seamless instancing of Delves, to the modularity of things like Torghast. All of these things made it easier for us to set the stage for housing, to build out that environmental scale to support millions of players."

Hard to imagine Linux gaming without Proton now isn't it? Unless games use some funky video codecs or kernel-level anti-cheat, a lot of the time they do just work with the click of a button. We went from getting a handful of indie games and some AAA scraps from porting companies, to multiple tens of thousands of games — we're spoilt for choice on what to actually play. Going by ProtonDB there's at least 15,855 games rated playable by at least two reports, and Valve's Deck Verified system shows 21,694 games rated at least playable for SteamOS / Steam Deck. Incredible numbers and that's only what have actually seen some checks.

I still vividly remember the original announcement, shaking with excitement on what it would mean for the future. It has opened up a world of possibilities, where you (for the most part) don't need to be attached to Windows to play some of the best games around.

Valve's commitment to Linux and open source is very much self-serving of course, they are a company with goals. All of this was progress towards creating their own ecosystem with the likes of the Steam Deck / SteamOS and other potential hardware to come. Linux desktop users are mostly just along for the ride and reap all the benefits.

Thanks to all the work with Proton and the Steam Deck, the Linux user share on Steam is also on the cusp of breaking through 3% which is impressive considering the massive mountain that is Windows. You don't beat or even get remotely close to such an entrenched system overnight, movement like this just takes time. Slow and steady wins the race right? Valve continue playing the long game here.

What's truly incredible about Proton though is how it gives Valve a set platform to continue building on. So when we hopefully see a Steam Deck 2, or a Steam Machine TV console, it will be plug and play with all the existing games. Linking into why I love the whole idea of Valve using Linux with Proton, SteamOS / Steam Deck over traditional consoles is just having access to all the same games - no need to buy them again.

And with more publishers like Microsoft and Sony pushing their games on Steam too, we all win.

Here's to Valve and Proton, 7 years on. Cheers!

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Posted Monday 25 August 2025 at 6:17 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

Quick links:

1. Windows 10 and 11
2. Windows Insider Program
3. Updates are available
4. Reviews are in
5. Gaming news

Windows 11 and Windows 10

Here, we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And, of course, you may find a word or two about older versions.

Windows 10 and 11 had quite a lot of screw ups this week. For one, Microsoft confirmed that KB5063878 cannot be installed with the 0x80240069 error. Next, the company acknowledged broken reset and recovery options on older Windows versions. Next, a new report emerged about Windows 11's latest cumulative update breaking solid-state and hard drives. Finally, Microsoft confirmed major streaming issues in the same KB5063878 update for Windows 11.

On the bright side, Microsoft fixed the bug that broke upgrade paths on Windows 10 and Windows Server and another one in SQL Server impacting Japanese customers.

Finally, check out this Windows 12.2 concept that imagines a better operating system for PC users.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

In addition to new builds, Microsoft released a new version of the Copilot app, which now lets you search for files and enjoy a redesigned home page with more features.

Also, Microsoft published a helpful support article explaining every kind of update Windows Insiders receive these days.

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

Mozilla released a big Firefox update under version 142. This week's release introduced link previews, a useful productivity feature that lets you peek at what is behind a link without opening it in a new tab. Also, there are improvements for tab groups, article recommendations on the new tab page, and more. Additionally, Firefox is finally getting Progressive Web App support.

SharePoint is also getting some love from developers. Microsoft is finally modernizing SharePoint sites, adding a pinch of AI as a new tool to create content for you, updating the document library experience, and offering the new SharePoint Template Gallery for commercial users. For Excel, Microsoft announced a feature that was introduced in Google Sheets months ago. As for OneNote, Microsoft issued a reminder that the Windows 10 app will soon go read-only.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Latest updates for Skype for Business Server include breaking changes.
• Microsoft brought Ubuntu 24.04 and TLS 1.3 support to SQL Server 2025 Preview.

• NFL and Microsoft expanded partnership to bring AI to the sidelines.

• Unofficial Windows 11 hardware requirement bypass app, Flyoobe received new default browser options.

• Microsoft announced SQL Server 2025 RC0.

   

Here are the latest drivers and firmware updates released this week:

• Nvidia 581.08 WHQL with global DLSS Override and multiple fixes for various games.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

This week, I reviewed 70mai's new 4K T800, a three-channel dash cam that records what is in front, what is behind, and what is inside your car. This high-quality dash cam packs a lot of features to make up for its pretty hefty price tag.

Steven Parker reviewed the 6-bay DXP6800 Pro NAS, a fantastic network attached storage with dual Thunderbolt 4, dual 10 GbE, PCIe Gen 5, and DDR5, and more.

On the gaming side

Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts, and more.

At Gamescom in Germany, Microsoft revealed the launch date of the ROG Ally and ROG Ally X, two Xbox-branded handhelds with a special Windows 11 version optimized for handheld gaming. In addition, the company announced a new compatibility program that will help gamers understand whether their games can run on the ROG Ally or not. Also, Microsoft announced a new update for the Xbox app, allowing users to install other gaming marketplaces through it.

Speaking of handhelds, we now have Microsoft's first game for the Nintendo Switch 2. That game is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. No release date yet, though.

Microsoft Flight Simulator has received a new City Update. Update 12 landed with updates for seven German cities and their points-of-interest.

Microsoft announced new additions to the Game Pass catalog. They include Gears of War: Reloaded, Persona 4 Golden, Dragon Age Veilguard, Herding, Blacksmith Master, and more.

If you want to try Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming but the price is too steep, you are in luck because there is a new report about Microsoft working on a cheaper Xbox Cloud Gaming plan.

Nvidia's cloud streaming service, GeForce NOW, has received some upgraded hardware. Later next month, GeFore NOW will offer subscribers new RTX 5080 servers, thus unlocking more horsepower for modern games with better performance and visuals.

Finally, check out this week's Weekend PC Game deals with the latest discounts and freebies across various stores.

Other gaming news includes the following:

• Battlefield 2042's surprise update adds Iwo Jima as a new map.

• Euro Truck Simulator 2 is finally coming to Xbox and PlayStation.

• Paradox announced Surviving Mars Relaunched, a remaster of the sci-fi colony sim.

• Mudrunner studio goes after truck sim crown with 'next-gen' game Road Kings.

• Two years after launch, Assassin's Creed Mirage is getting new story DLC for free.

   

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Posted Monday 25 August 2025 at 5:56 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

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ExplainingComputers (1.12M subscribers)

Video length:19m 13s

Fitting an AIO water cooler in a desktop PC, specifically a GAMDIAS AURA GL120 V2. Video also compares noise levels and temperatures with the stock Intel cooler that’s removed.

00:00 Titles & Intro

00:47 Water Cooling Basics 

05:41 Stock Cooler Removal

08:31 Fitting AIO Water Cooler 1

4:32 Noise & Temperatures 

18:10 Wrap

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Posted Monday 25 August 2025 at 5:53 am AEST (my time).

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Forza Horizon 5 is rapidly approaching its fourth birthday, and the open-world racing game has already enjoyed quite the journey... but Playground Games and Xbox Game Studios are surely working on what comes next, right?

Fans have been waiting for news of Forza Horizon 6 for ages now, and we even got a tease from Xbox's Phil Spencer that we may see the hotly anticipated sequel in 2026. Now, we have reason to believe we may actually see FH6 even sooner than that.

By "we," I mean Windows Central; here's the scoop.

Forza Horizon 6 could be announced this year

Paul's Hardware (1.53M subscribers)

Video length: 10m 51s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - Aug 24, 2025

1:31 Intel gets $2b from Softbank, 10% buyout from Uncle Sam

3:19 GamersNexus 3.5 Hour GPU Smuggling Video DMCA’d by Bloomberg

6:11 NVIDIA cuts GeForce RTX 50 prices, halts H20 AI chip production 

TECH BRIEFS

8:07 ASUS GeForce RTX 5090 ROG Matrix revealed

8:57 Melted 12v2x6 Power Cable on a Radeon RX 9070 XT

9:43 Sony Raises PS5 Price by $50 in US

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Posted Sunday 24 August 2025 at 6:27 pm AEST (my time).

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Announced on stage at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this new story chapter will take our protagonist, Basim Ibn Ishaq, out of the game's Baghdad setting and into 9th-century AlUla. This ancient Arabian oasis city is located near Saudi Arabia.

While it's a surprising development for a seemingly 'content completed' game, in an unconfirmed report from LesEchoes earlier this year, it was hinted that the Savvy Games Group investor that's based in Saudi Arabia had made a deal with Ubisoft. This would reportedly involve commissioning new content for the two-year-old title.

According to Ubisoft, the DLC content will include a brand-new story chapter and missions set in the aforementioned AlUla region, letting Basim parkour and assassinate through a fresh group of foes. Available free for all owners of the game, the major update will also carry gameplay improvements per the studio. Unfortunately, no specifics were mentioned today regarding these changes.

The unnamed free DLC release will be happening sometime in 2025. Don't forget that Ubisoft Bordeaux is also working on the Claws of Awaji expansion for Assassin's Creed Shadows, which launches in September.

Developed by Ubisoft Bordeaux as its primary developer, Mirage was touted as taking the series back to its stealth action roots. This meant it was offering much higher focus on city gameplay, with parkour returning as a major factor alongside stealth and assassinations. The title was also first formed as an expansion for Valhalla but was later expanded into a standalone experience with a larger scope.

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Posted Sunday 24 August 2025 at 4:52 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

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NVIDIA is the world's largest AI GPU supplier with roughly 90% of the market, but its AI efforts are not limited to data centers.

NVIDIA's gaming hardware, including RTX graphics cards, includes built-in AI tools that help with upscaling, overall performance, and even game development.

Announced today at Gamescom, NVIDIA's Project G-Assist — an on-device AI helper — has now expanded to all RTX GPUs with 6GB or more VRAM, including laptop graphics cards.

The lower system requirements arrive thanks to "a new, significantly more efficient AI model that's faster and uses 40% less memory while maintaining response accuracy," according to NVIDIA's press release.

NVIDIA says that the updated AI assistant will be available through a Game Ready Driver update within the NVIDIA App on August 19. Just download the G-Assist update on the NVIDIA App's home screen.

With this new update, NVIDIA has also added a collaboration with mod.io that will help discover and deliver G-Assist plugins built by regular users. Anyone can build plugins for G-Assist, just as long as you have an understanding of JSON and Python scripts. A specialized plugin builder is available to download from NVIDIA.

Beyond that, NVIDIA says that another update is expected in September 2025, containing laptop-specific tools to help with NVIDIA BatteryBoost and Battery OPS.

It actually happened: Silksong, the standalone sequel to Hollow Knight, has a release date. After seven years in development, and almost as many shrouded in silence, the game is coming out on September 4th. It’s welcome news for the millions of Hollow Knight fans who have been impatiently waiting. But it’s also part of a welcome trend: 2025 is shaping up to be the year that several long-in-development games finally see the light of day.

Joining Silksong later this year will be Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. While it doesn’t have a specific release date, the shooter is part of Nintendo’s steady stream of releases for the first year of the Switch 2. The game has been in development so long it’s releasing on both versions of the Switch. It was first announced in 2017, but in 2019, Nintendo said that it was rebooting development of the game, with original Prime studio Retro taking over the project. Five years went by before the game appeared again, with the new subtitle Beyond, and earlier this year, it was confirmed as a Switch 2 title.

The development of Routine from Lunar Software has been similarly protracted. I originally wrote about this ’80s-style indie horror game in 2012, and at one point it had been planned for a 2016 launch. That obviously didn’t happen, and six years later the game was “re-revealed” with a new trailer and the news that Swedish label Raw Fury would be publishing it. Then, earlier this week, slightly hidden among all of the trailers and reveals during Gamescom’s Opening Night Live keynote, was confirmation that barring any more delays, Routine would be launching later in 2025.

While both Routine and Metroid Prime 4 seem to have suffered from the technical and design difficulties that can plague the development of big, complex games — at one point Nintendo’s senior managing executive officer Shinya Takahashi called Metroid’s development “very challenged” — that hasn’t been the case for Silksong. It’s just a game being built by a small team who were able to take a slow and steady approach. “It was never stuck or anything,” Team Cherry co-founder Ari Gibson told Bloomberg. “It was always progressing. It’s just the case that we’re a small team, and games take a lot of time. There wasn’t any big controversial moment behind it.”

Of course, there’s another long-in-the-works game that was originally slated to launch in 2025 but has since been pushed back: Grand Theft Auto VI. Rockstar released the first trailer for the game at the end of 2023, a decade after the launch of GTAV, and initially planned to release VI in the fall of this year. It’s now supposed to come out on May 26th, 2026, so fans will have to continue to wait for that one.

But even without the blockbuster behemoth that is Grand Theft Auto, this year will be one that satiates many fans who have been eagerly awaiting a specific game. You could even throw the latest chapters of Deltarune onto that list. The real question is, with all of these games finally coming out, what’s next to obsess over? Is the sequel to Beyond Good & Evil really still alive? When will Stardew Valley’s creator launch his next game, Haunted Chocolatier? Will Knights of the Old Republic get its announced remake — or will Bloodborne get one at all? What’s up with the next Elder Scrolls and Half-Life 3? Let’s hope for more good news in 2026.

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Posted Friday 22 August 2025 at 2:02 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

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Starting off, the gunplay is being touched up to improve the unique feel of each weapon and reward players that fire in controlled bursts or taps. Moreover, the M87A1 shotgun and its one-shot kill rampages that were seen in the beta are being nerfed, with it needing more pellet hits to secure kills going forward. Battlefield 6's Time-to-Kill mechanics are being explored for changes according to the developer as well, though no specifics were given today.

Fans of the series will also be happy to hear that the glitchy or unintended movement mechanics seen in the beta are being taken out. This includes nerfing the slide jump and building momentum from consecutive jumps. Firing weapons when jumping or sliding will also correctly reduce accuracy.

"These changes are designed to make sliding and jumping more situational, so they are no longer ideal options for engaging in gunfights, and will contribute to a gameplay pace that rewards skillful movement without becoming too fast or unpredictable," explains the developer.

The rooftops and mountains that are supposed to be unreachable, but weresn’t in the beta, are being corrected too. Speaking of maps, the developer reassured fans that despite the beta only having smaller-scale battlefields, the launch version will have much larger arenas to fight in.

Unfortunately, it looks like 24-player Rush seems to be staying intact, with the developer saying that it wants to have a Bad Company-style, smaller-scale experience with fast-paced action for the mode.

The studio encouraged players to use the Battlefield Portal mode in the full game to create custom modes to enable these larger-scale experiences using the editing tools.

Check out the complete blog post regarding what is remaining the same and what elements are being changed for launch over here. While it looks like there won't be any more beta sessions for the title, Battlefield Labs will continue to let some community members try out upcoming content and changes.

Battlefield 6 releases on October 10 across PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. The PC version will be available across Steam, the EA App, and the Epic Games Store.

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Posted Friday 22 August 2025 at 2:00 pm AEST (my time).

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Gamers Nexus (2.48M subscribers)

Hardware news this week has been busy: Der8auer came into possession of a dual-12VHPWR adapter from NVIDIA for an unreleased GPU, Valve is rumored to be working on a console, the next Xbox chips promise... “AI,” ASUs has an 800W GPU, and the US Government wants to buy 10% of Intel.

00:00 - Recapping the Week 

01:15 - GN Update: Movie Recap 

06:30 - Prototype TITAN ADA Features Two 12VHPWR Cables 

08:20 - Rumor: Valve Working on a Console 

11:05 - Next Xbox Chips Will Have Neural Rendering 

12:45 - ASUS Announces 800W RTX 5090 

15:02 - Microsoft Claimed to Kill SSDs Just Ahead of Window 10 EOL Date 

16:34 - AMD Low-End RX 7400 Doesn’t Need Power Connectors 

18:05 - SoftBank Puts $2B in Intel; US Eyes 10% Stake 

22:39 - NVIDIA Working on B30A AI Chip for China

August 21, 2025

Video length: 24m 42s

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Posted Thursday 21 August 2025 at 4:59 pm AEST (my time).

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Act 4 has players descending into the Karui Shores, an eight-island archipelago filled with horrors. It's a non-linear experience too, meaning any island can be visited and completed in any order that players desire.

"Far from an idyllic paradise, the Ngamakanui archipelago is home to eight islands where gauntlets of horrors await," describes the developer. "Set sail from Kingsmarch to the serene sands of Whakapanu Island, where the tides whisper with the voices of the drowned, to the smoldering hellscape of the Isle of Kin, where the earth itself bleeds fire, danger, and new bosses."

Next, Cruel difficulty is no more. As a temporary replacement, the developer has brought a three-act Interlude section to play after completing the campaign so that players do not need to replay it. This consists of 19 new areas and nine new bosses to go through, letting players transition from campaign to endgame more smoothly, per the studio:

• Interlude I: Return to Ogham to aid Renly in rebuilding the village. Purge the corruption plaguing the denizens.
• Interlude II: Cross Vastiri’s sands and help Asala fulfill a sacred vow, and seek out the ones responsible for disrupting the Gifting.
• Interlude III: Scale the great heights of the mountain to find the lost Vaal descendants. Venture into the caves of ice and unearth the secrets lying within the vault.

Sprint has also been added as a new ability, which can be used by holding the dodge roll button. This will make it easier for players to navigate zones and go through empty areas faster, but with a higher chance of being knocked down when being hit. Moreover, the studio has added a Path of Exile 2-exclusive League with new monsters, a new crafting system, and three new bosses.

A new support gem system is here too, offering multiple levels of upgrades and removing restrictions for creating better and more customizable builds. Lastly, Asynchronous Trade is a part of the update, finally letting players purchase items from sellers who are offline.

"Act Four and the Interlude will bring in 25 new Endgame Maps featuring fresh monsters and bosses," adds the developer. "Unearth unique locales like Rockpools with its Siren-filled shores and Goblin King, Cliffside’s haunted town with a divine axe-wielding brute, and Holten’s storm-wielding reaper. Disrupt a wild Sandstorm to face a time-slicing Faridun Swordmaster, clear a Maelstrom’s beacons to reveal its hidden boss map, or gather keys to breach a Vaal Vault and battle elite foes."

Find the complete patch notes over here to see the massive amount of balance and crafting changes that are incoming too.

Path of Exile 2: Third Edict content expansion launches on August 29 across PC, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms. For players who have yet to jump into the game, a free-to-play weekend is also incoming this month. From August 29 to September 1, the game will be fully playable without having to pay for early access across all platforms

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Posted Thursday 21 August 2025 at 1:30 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

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Business Insider has come across a Microsoft document where employees have self-reported their salaries internally. The spreadsheet currently contains 850 entries and while we don't have access to it ourselves, it is likely anonymous because matters of wages are typically confidential across most organizations. The outlet analyzed data from 350 entries from software engineers based in the U.S., and here are some of its findings:

Below, you'll also find attached the wages broken down by team:

As can be seen in both the tables above, there is a large variance in salaries both across ranks / levels and teams. This is somewhat expected considering that the data is sourced only from 350 entries, and can't really be verified. It is likely that as time passes, more people will add their wages in the spreadsheet, but regardless, it will always be a minuscule sample size considering that the company currently employs over 228,000 people worldwide.

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Posted Thursday 21 August 2025 at 1:15 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

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Microsoft Flight Simulator City Update 12 improves the following seven German cities: Augsburg in the state of Bavaria, Bremen in the state of Bremen, Dresden and its borough, Leuben, along with Leipzig in the state of Saxony, Kiel in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, and Münster in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is famous for allowing users to visit any part of the world, but most places are auto-generated, which sometimes results in odd spots like plane-shaped buildings, dams instead of bridges, and more. However, with City Updates, developers bring more human touch to popular areas and countries, giving them hand-made models, points of interest, airports, and more.

With Update 12, the game lets users enjoy spotting castles, botanical gardens, bridges, skyscrapers, and more parts of Germany in extra detail. Those include Augsburg Town Hall, the Fuggerei, the oldest social housing area in the world, St. Peter’s Cathedral and Bremen City Hall, Zwinger Palace and Frauenkirche in Dresden, Kiel City Hall, the Schleswig-Holstein State Theater, Monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig, Münster Cathedral, and more.

In case you missed it, the previous City Update reworked parts of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Also, a third party developer prepared a new premium DLC that will let you explore a massive Jurassic Park.

You can play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on PC (Steam and the Microsoft Store) and Xbox Series X|S. If you have none of that, Microsoft lets you stream the game using Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is soon expected to receive a more affordable tier (currently available only to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers).

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Posted Thursday 21 August 2025 at 1:14 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

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Back in 2023, Blizzard Entertainment announced an epic new storyline for its popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. titled the Worldsoul Saga.

This Saga would tell an epic tale over the course of three expansions, where players would fight to protect the Worldsoul of Azeroth from the evil machinations of the new major villain Xal'atath.

In 2024, we got the first chapter of this saga, World of Warcraft: The War Within, which had us explore the depths of Azeroth while fighting hordes of Nerubians, Goblins, and Ethereals.

Now, we're approaching the second chapter of the Worldsoul Saga and World of Warcraft's eleventh expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, which is currently scheduled to be released in 2026, as revealed from its Gamescom 2025 trailer.

This action-packed expansion will feature new Zones to explore, a revamp of classic locales, a Class Specialization for Demon Hunters, a new playable race, new outdoor content, the long-awaited Player Housing system, and more.

Here is everything you need to know about World of Warcraft: Midnight.

When is the release date for World of Warcraft: Midnight and what platform will it be on?