Gamers Nexus (2.44M subscribers)

May 6, 2025

Video length: 23m 04s

Wendell from Level1 Techs joins us to discuss what we hope will become a new ongoing series: "Is x86 Actually Screwed?" This series is dedicated to our mutual friend Gordon Mah Ung in memory of the "Is Intel Actually Screwed?" series. In this video, we'll talk about the System76 ARM system that Wendell brought with its 128 cores and alternative to x86 options on the market. Fittingly, we also venture into the topic of Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA and their ARM or x86 ventures.

00:00 - Is x86 Actually Screwed?

01:30 - 128 Cores 

02:40 - x86 Has Missed the Boat 

08:13 - But Intel and AMD Said x86 is Alive 

12:01 - Intel is Probably Screwed 

16:49 - But What About Consumers? 

21:49 - So... is x86 Screwed?

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Today, OpenAI's board provided an update on the restructuring plans. First and foremost, OpenAI will continue to be overseen and controlled by the nonprofit. However, the OpenAI for-profit LLC will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). The nonprofit will control and will also have a large share in the PBC.

Finally, both the OpenAI non-profit and the PBC will have the same mission: to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. This restructuring will allow OpenAI's current and former employees, investors, and the non-profit to have equity in the newly created PBC.

4 facts about our structure:

-OpenAI will continue to be controlled by the current nonprofit

-Our existing for-profit will become a Public Benefit Corporation

-Nonprofit will control & be a significant owner of the PBC

-Nonprofit & PBC will continue to have the same mission

 

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 5, 2025

OpenAI's board chair Bret Taylor commented the following regarding this decision:

We made the decision for the nonprofit to retain control of OpenAI after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California. We thank both offices and we look forward to continuing these important conversations to make sure OpenAI can continue to effectively pursue its mission of ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity. Sam wrote the letter below to our employees and stakeholders about why we are so excited for this new direction.

While OpenAI's board has made its decision, there are several other things OpenAI has to consider to complete its restructuring. OpenAI will discuss its plan with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware, the Attorney General of California, Microsoft, and its nonprofit commissioners.

Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, wrote the following email to employees:

OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be.

 

Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity.

 

When we started OpenAI, we did not have a detailed sense for how we were going to accomplish our mission. We started out staring at each other around a kitchen table, wondering what research we should do. Back then, we did not contemplate products, a business model. We could not contemplate the direct benefits of AI being used for medical advice, learning, productivity, and much more, or the needs for hundreds of billions of dollars of compute to train models and serve users.

 

We did not really know how AGI was going to get built, or used. A lot of people could imagine an oracle that could tell scientists and presidents what to do, and although it could be incredibly dangerous, maybe those few people could be trusted with it.

 

A lot of people around OpenAI in the early days thought AI should only be in the hands of a few trusted people who could “handle it”.

 

We now see a way for AGI to directly empower everyone as the most capable tool in human history. If we can do this, we believe people will build incredible things for each other and continue to drive society and quality of life forward. It will of course not be all used for good, but we trust humanity and think the good will outweigh the bad by orders of magnitude.

 

We are committed to this path of democratic AI. We want to put incredible tools in the hands of everyone. We are amazed and delighted by what they are creating with our tools, and how much they want to use them. We want to open source very capable models. We want to give our users a great deal of freedom in how we let them use our tools within broad boundaries, even if we don’t always share the same moral framework, and to let our users make decisions about the behavior of ChatGPT.

 

We believe this is the best path forward—AGI should enable all of humanity to benefit each other. We realize some people have very different opinions.

 

We want to build a brain for the world and make it super easy for people to use for whatever they want (subject to few restrictions; freedom shouldn’t impinge on other people’s freedom, for example).

 

People are using ChatGPT to increase their productivity as scientists, coders, and much more⁠(opens in a new window). People are using ChatGPT to solve serious healthcare challenges they are facing and learn more than ever before. People are using ChatGPT to get advice about how to handle difficult situations. We are very proud to offer a service that is doing so much for so many people; it is the one of most direct fulfillments of our mission we can imagine.

 

But they want to use it much more; we currently cannot supply nearly as much AI as the world wants and we have to put usage limits on our systems and run them slowly. As the systems become more capable, they will want to use it even more, for even more wonderful things.

 

We had no idea this was going to be the state of the world when we launched our research lab almost a decade ago. But now that we see this picture, we are thrilled.

 

It is time for us to evolve our structure. There are three things we want to accomplish:

 

We want to be able to operate and get resources in such a way that we can make our services broadly available to all of humanity, which currently requires hundreds of billions of dollars and may eventually require trillions of dollars. We believe this is the best way for us to fulfill our mission and to get people to create massive benefits for each other with these new tools.

 

We want our nonprofit to be the largest and most effective nonprofit in history that will be focused on using AI to enable the highest-leverage outcomes for people.

 

We want to deliver beneficial AGI. This includes contributing to the shape of safety and alignment; we are proud of our track record with the systems we have launched, the alignment research we have done, processes like red teaming, and transparency into model behavior with innovations like the model spec⁠(opens in a new window). As AI accelerates, our commitment to safety grows stronger. We want to make sure democratic AI wins over authoritarian AI.

 

We made the decision for the nonprofit to stay in control after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware. We look forward to advancing the details of this plan in continued conversation with them, Microsoft, and our newly appointed nonprofit commissioners.

 

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit, is today a nonprofit that oversees and controls the for-profit, and going forward will remain a nonprofit that oversees and controls the for-profit. That will not change.

 

The for-profit LLC under the nonprofit will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) with the same mission. PBCs have become the standard for-profit structure for other AGI labs like Anthropic and X.ai, as well as many purpose driven companies like Patagonia. We think it makes sense for us, too.

 

Instead of our current complex capped-profit structure—which made sense when it looked like there might be one dominant AGI effort but doesn’t in a world of many great AGI companies—we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock. This is not a sale, but a change of structure to something simpler.

 

The nonprofit will continue to control the PBC, and will become a big shareholder in the PBC, in an amount supported by independent financial advisors, giving the nonprofit resources to support programs so AI can benefit many different communities, consistent with the mission. And as the PBC grows, the nonprofit’s resources will grow, so it can do even more. We’re excited to soon get recommendations from our nonprofit commission on how we can help make sure AI benefits everyone—not just a few. Their ideas will focus on how our nonprofit work can support a more democratic AI future, and have real impact in areas like health, education, public services, and scientific discovery.

 

We believe this sets us up to continue to make rapid, safe progress and to put great AI in the hands of everyone. Creating AGI is our brick in the path of human progress; we can’t wait to see what bricks you will add next.

 

Sam Altman
May 2025

You can find the official press release here on OpenAI's website.

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Turn 10 Studios celebrates the anniversary with big reworks for the previous cover cars and racing suits. There are also new-to-Motorsport cars like the 2022 Acura NSX Type S and the 2024 Nissan Z NISMO, the 1984 Toyota #25 Horsepower Techs Starlet Time Attack, the 1995 Formula Drift #34 Toyota Supra MkIV, and the 2005 #1 Sierra Enterprises Lancer Evolution Time Attack.

Other content includes a new car pack, which is available for $4.99 in the Microsoft Store and Steam. It consists of the fan-favorite 2008 Mazda Furai, the 2024 Ford Mustang GT3, 2001 Formula Drift #215 Nissan Silvia Spec-R, 1997 Toyota Mark II Tourer V JZX100, and 1984 De Tomaso Pantera GT5.

The next is the long-anticipated Fujimi Kaido, a 10.24-mile racing track with plenty of corners and elevations for racing and drifting. The track is available in all modes, including Free to Play, Public Meetups, and more.

Speaking of meetups, Update 20 introduces Public Meetups, a special free mode where you and your friends can take it to a racing track without any competition to drive, tune cars, enjoy the scenery, or flex drifting skills in Drift Meetups. In Update 20, Meetups are available at Fujimi Kaido, Cycled Track, and Nurburgring Nordschleife.

Additionally, Forza Motorsport Update 20 introduces new steering wheel features, including wheel calibration and more true-to-life car-specific lock-to-lock turns. Developers say this change will be particularly noticeable when driving cars with fewer lock-to-lock steering degrees. The game also features improved force feedback and better steering sensitivity for each vehicle.

Finally, Update 20 brings improved AI drivers, which are now trained with a new multi-lane system.

Other changes and bug fixes in Forza Motorsport Update 20 include the following:

• Updated audio has been introduced for cover cars featured in the Spirit of Motorsport Tour:
  • 2005 Honda NSX-R
  • 2003 Nissan Fairlady Z
  • 2010 Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro
  • 2009 Ferrari 458 Italia
  • 2013 McLaren P1
  • 2017 Ford GT
  • 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS
• Car Proximity Radar is now enabled by default in Featured Multiplayer. Players can still adjust its placement or disable the feature via the Settings menu.
• In Featured Multiplayer, we’ve adjusted the default fuel amount to more closely align with the number of laps in each race.
• Fixed an exploit where players could rewind back to before the starting line in Drift events to earn extra score.
  • As a result of this change, the leaderboards for the Welcome to Drift 101, Welcome to Drift 102, and Welcome to Drift 103 Drift Rivals have been wiped.
• Additional fixes have been deployed to help further improve lobby sizes after the multiplayer services change made with Update 18.

You can read more about the update in the official blog post. Release notes are available here.

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The hype train for Borderlands 4 has begun picking up steam after its grand gameplay deep dive on April 30, 2025. This dive showcased the game's gameplay, world enemies, loot, new Vault Hunter classes, and more.

The game's developer and publisher, Gearbox Software and 2K, have decided to add more fuel to the fire by announcing on the official Borderlands 4 website a free Borderlands 4 weapon skin and Golden Keys for previous titles.

Here's how you can get them!

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.

It is the first week of the month, which means it is time for some fresh stats. Statcounter published new data about Windows 11 conquering the desktop PC market. It currently holds 43.72%, while Windows 10 is now within close range, sitting at $52.94%. On the browser side, though, things are much more stale, showing how near impossible it is to make a dent in Chrome's market share. Finally, among games, Windows 11 is doing well, further increasing its dominant position.

In addition to announcing the broad availability of Windows 11 version 24H2, Microsoft confirmed a new known issue. The company notified users that 24H2 might fail with error code 0x80240069 when updating from versions 23H2 and 22H2. Unfortunately, as of right now, there are no workarounds for this problem, but the company promises to release a fix as soon as possible.

Speaking of other issues in Windows 11 version 24H2, customers find it progressively more irritating that the operating system encrypts drives with BitLocker by default, without asking or even notifying. A lengthy post on Reddit reveals customer frustration over the lost data caused by automatic BitLocker encryption. Plenty of rants have also been spotted on Feedback Hub over the removal of the oobe\bypassnro command, and some interesting discussions about the improved File Explorer performance in the recent Windows 11 updates.

Other Windows stories include updates for Validation OS (DISM, WPF, .NET upgrades), an interesting app based on Microsoft tech for saving disk space, updates to the passwordless experience for new Microsoft Accounts, a few reasons from Microsoft why Windows 10 users should update to Copilot+ PCs, and a big discount on Windows 365 for first-time customers.

Here is some interesting trivia: a veteran Microsoft software engineer published an interesting blog post explaining why having a solid color background would slow Windows 7 login time back in the days of this legendary operating system. Also, did you know that an official cyberthreat song nearly broke Windows PCs once?

To finish this week's Windows section, here are five things in Windows 11 that still grind my gears nearly four years after the launch of the operating system. They include broken dark mode, automatic theme switching, Control Panel-Settings, and more.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

Despite the no-build week, enthusiasts still discovered some interesting stuff in Windows 11. The latest Windows Server 2025 build contains a new "Advanced" settings page, which replaces the old "For Developers." It now has improved grouping and some new features coming from the now-deceased Dev Home app.

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.

If you have multiple audio devices hooked up to your computer, you might find this small application useful. SoundShift lets you configure audio input/output device pairs and assign custom keyboard shortcuts to switch between them without opening the Settings app. SoundShift is well-made and overall, feels like something straight from PowerToys.

Customers with ARM-powered Windows PCs can now use Windhawk, a popular modding tool with a repository of useful tweaks for the operating system and apps. In the latest update, version 1.6, Windhawk received native ARM64 support and various improvements.

This week's Office updates include a bunch of new features for various apps. Excel for Mac, for one, received a popular feature from its Windows counterpart, which allows you to edit multiple worksheets side-by-side. PowerPoint received reworked placeholders with improved look and feel.

As usual, we had a bunch of browser updates (big and small) released this week. Microsoft pushed Edge 136 to the Stable Channel, bringing security fixes, feature changes, and more. Mozilla, on its side, released Firefox 138. The update introduced more Windows 11 UI elements, a profile manager, tab groups for all users, and more. Shortly after, Mozilla released Firefox 138.0.1 with some bug fixes and Firefox 139 beta with improved upload performance and more.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Microsoft will give Europe a multifaceted boost against the backdrop of Trump tariffs.

• Microsoft: Our Phi-4-reasoning takes on larger models, matches DeepSeek-R1 performance.

   

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

• Nvidia GeForce Hotfix Display Driver 576.26 with a long list of fixes
• Nvidia GeForce Game-Ready Driver 576.28 with more bug fixes.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

The GameSir Super Nova paid a visit for our testing this week, immediately claiming the title of the best controller for PC. This gamepad ticks all the boxes for PC gamers. Well-built, good materials, rich customizations, good looks, durable hardware, decent battery life, charging dock, and RGB. It is also comfortable, has good performance, and overall is just delightful to use.

On the gaming side

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

Plenty of bad gaming news arrived this week. Microsoft, for one, is raising the price of all Xbox consoles and accessories. Some Xbox configurations now cost $120 more than before, mirroring the current financial uncertainty and trade wars. Controllers and headsets are also now notably more expensive. Note that you can still purchase an Xbox or a controller at old or even lower prices.

Grand Theft Auto VI is officially delayed (shocking news). Rockstar Games announced that its upcoming game is now releasing on May 26, 2026, giving other developers and studios a sigh of relief to release their games in 2025 without being overshadowed by such a massive title as GTA.

Spotify Premium users can now access their music library while playing EA Sports FC 2025. Spotify announced a pilot program for gamers in Australia and Saudi Arabia. It might or might not make it to all supported regions in the future.

Forza Motorsport will soon get its anniversary update, which is expected to bring a long-anticipated track and a lot more content. More importantly, Update 20 will make Drivatar AI more realistic, thanks to a new training model that Turn 10 Studios detailed in a new post. As a result, single-player gamers will see better side-by-side racing (especially in heavy traffic) without random or erratic behavior outside the optimal line.

Nvidia announced new games for the GeForce NOW streaming service. They include DOOM: The Dark Ages, Deadzone: Rogue, Far Cry 4, DREDGE, LONESTAR, ANNO 1800, and more. Keep in mind that you need to own these games to play them on GeForce NOW.

Fresh titles are also available in Prime Gaming, including Wolfenstein II, Amnesia: Rebirth, and many more.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away the arcade shooter Super Space Club. It is up for grabs until next Thursday, so go get it. As usual, more deals and freebies are available in this week's Weekend PC Game Deals article.

Other gaming stories include the following:

• FromSoftware published the system requirements for Elden Ring Nightreign on PC.
• Valve released Steam Proton 10 Beta 1 with more AAA games, fixes for multiple CPUs, and more.
• Electronic Arts confirmed big layoffs and the end of the new Titanfall project.

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Gamers Nexus (2.44M subscribers)

May 5, 2025

Video length: 26m 49s

Hardware news is back! We're talking about rumors of AMD Threadripper, the RX 9070, and RX 9060 XT. We also cover NVIDIA's ongoing GPU driver struggle, Logitech's price increases, and GTA VI getting delayed. On the upside, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remastered launched recently and as a surprise.

00:00 - Recap for the Week 

01:25 - GN Spare Parts 

04:43 - Rapid Recap: AMD Threadripper, GTA VI 

07:19 - NVIDIA Still Can't Fix Its Drivers 

09:28 - Intel Has a Plan 

13:05 - Taiwan, US Fight over TSMC Investment 

15:15 - Tariffs Cause PC Shipment Spike, Drop 

17:14 - Samsung Discontinuing DDR4 

18:12 - Logitech Increasing Prices 

19:35 - Launch of RX 9070 GRE, 9060 XT Rumors 

20:45 - Intel to Layoff More Workers 

21:33 - Nintendo Switch 2 Pre-Orders Were a Mess 

23:05 - Rumor: Further Switch 2 Specs 

23:42 - Elders Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

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For many, many years, I wouldn't get a new game console until a couple years after it launched. This was partly because I wanted any new console I bought to have a decent-sized library of things to play, and partly because it sometimes paid to sit back and see which console was going to "win" the generation in terms of first-party exclusives and third-party developer support.

But mostly it was because, from the Atari VCS in the 70s all the way up through the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One generation in the 2010s, you could always count on game consoles getting cheaper as time went on. Those price reductions would often also come with internal tweaks and external redesigns—smaller or slimmer or otherwise improved versions of the console that made them superior to the originals (though you would occasionally lose a lesser-used feature or two along the way).

But both of those things have mostly stopped. The last permanent price drop for a major home or portable console we could find came back in 2016, when the PS4 Slim launched and dropped the price of entry from $349 to $299 (this doesn't count the launch of new editions of consoles with reduced feature sets, like the New Nintendo 2DS in 2017 or $249 all-digital Xbox One in 2019). This generation, we've seen something that would have been unheard of a few years ago: price increases for consoles, including $50 extra for the new OLED edition of the Nintendo Switch in 2021, a $50 price hike for the slimmer disc-drive-less version of the PlayStation 5 in 2023, and $80 to $100 price hikes for the exact same unimproved versions of the Xbox Series S and X earlier this week.

These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.

But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve.

What is Moore’s Law?

Don’t let the name throw you: It’s not really a law! Moore’s Law is something in between “a goal” and “an observation,” coined by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965: that the number of transistors in a given chip would double roughly every year (later revised in 1975 to every two years).

Moore's Law held true over the next four decades thanks in part to dramatic improvements in the manufacturing processes used to make silicon chips. Chip fabricators like Intel and AMD and Samsung and TSMC—and many others that have come and gone—kept developing more and more advanced ways to cram more transistors into the same amount of physical space, making that continued doubling of transistor counts over time feasible.

Not everyone will declare in so many words that Moore’s Law is “dead,” and any given tech exec’s opinion on that says just as much about that exec’s motivations as anything else (Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who can sell GPUs for more money if Moore’s Law is “dead,” will tell you it’s dead; Intel execs who are trying to convince you that Intel is on the road to being competitive manufacturer of high-end chips will contest that).

But the fact remains that progress in new manufacturing technologies has slowed, and developing new ones has gotten dramatically more time-consuming and expensive. And unless people find a way to make transistors sub-atomic, we'll hit the boundaries of actual laws sooner or later: the laws of physics.

How does this relate to game consoles? We're getting to that.

A side effect of fitting more transistors into a given area is that power usage also goes down, because you need to use less electrical current to switch those transistors on and off. Taking any given silicon chip and making it on a newer, more efficient manufacturing process is commonly called a "die shrink," because you're making a functionally equivalent silicon die that uses less physical space.

For computer processors and GPUs, those power savings are usually “spent” by adding transistors, either to improve performance or add new capabilities—that's why a processor from 2020 can perform dramatically better than one from 2010 and consume about the same amount of power.

But game consoles are meant to be static, stable targets for game developers to aim at, so that their internal testing of a game and how it runs is always indicative of how the game will run on everyone’s consoles.

So when you shrink the chips in a console, the benefit comes almost exclusively in the form of smaller physical chips that draw less power and put out less heat. You're also potentially getting more chips out of a single wafer of silicon, which theoretically can lower the price per chip (if the manufacturing process itself doesn't cost a ton more money).

Consolidation and miniaturization

Game consoles have benefited massively from those die shrinks, and those benefits were passed down to buyers in the form of streamlined hardware and lower costs. These changes are particularly pronounced once you get to the 3D home console era in the late 90s and early 2000s, when dramatic redesigns like the original PlayStation and PS2 Slim were possible within just a few years of the original console's launch.

Consider the PlayStation 2. Not all of the PS2 Slim's streamlining came from chip improvements—it also shed a full-sized 3.5-inch hard drive bay and a little-used IEEE 1394 port, and initially required an external power brick. But shrinking and consolidating the console's CPU, GPU, memory, and other components took the console from its original design in 2000, to the Slim in 2004, to an even lighter and lower-power version of the Slim that returned to using an internal power supply without increasing the size of the console at all.

Over that same span, the console's price dropped frequently and significantly, from $299 at launch to just $129 by 2006 (the price was lowered again to $99 in 2009, deep into the PS3 era).

Or look at Microsoft's Xbox 360. Its external design didn't change as much over the years—the mid-generation "slim" refresh was actually only a little smaller than the original. But between late 2005 and early 2010, the CPU, GPU, and the GPU's high-speed eDRAM memory chip went from being built on a 90 nm process, to 80 nm, to 65 nm, and finally to a single 45 nm chip that combined the CPU and GPU into one.

Over that time, the system's power supply fell from 203 W to 133 W, and the base price fell from $300 to $200. The mid-generation 65nm refresh also substantially fixed the early consoles' endemic "red ring of death" issue, which was caused in part by the heat that the older, larger chips generated.

As you can see when comparing these various consoles' external and internal design revisions, shrinking the chips had a cascade of other beneficial and cost-lowering effects: smaller power supplies, smaller enclosures that use less metal and plastic, smaller heatsinks and cooling assemblies, and smaller and less complicated motherboard designs.

A slowdown of that progression was already evident when we hit the PlayStation 4/Xbox One/Nintendo Switch generation, but technological improvements and pricing reductions still followed familiar patterns. Both the mid-generation PS4 Slim and Xbox One S used a 16 nm processor instead of the original consoles' 28 nm version, and each also had its price cut by $100 over its lifetime (comparing the Kinect-less Xbox One variant, and excluding the digital-only $249 Xbox One). The Switch's single die shrink, from 20nm to 16nm, didn't come with a price cut, but it did improve battery life and help to enable the cheaper Switch Lite variant.

Sony and Microsoft have marginally tweaked the hardware inside the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles since launching them, but as die shrinks have become rarer and more expensive to pull off, the benefits have become a whole lot less noticeable. Until recently, you could at least tell yourself that keeping the prices of these consoles stable during a 40-year inflation high could count as a "price cut" of sorts, but now that costs are going up, even that cold comfort is no longer available.

It's the same story we've seen in new PC CPUs and GPUs in recent years, too. In the mid-2010s, a new Nvidia GPU generation meant the same or better performance at lower prices than previous-generation cards; this decade, you mostly need to either pay more to get more, or you have to settle for minor improvements at similar prices. AMD has had to keep its nearly decade-old AM4 motherboard and CPU platform in circulation for years after technically "replacing" it, because socket AM5 boards and chips still aren't quite cheap enough to address the budget-to-midrange PC market.

We could still see prices come down gradually for all this tech in the coming years if trade deals are struck and cutting-edge manufacturing processes get cheaper. I'm not holding my breath! But the possibility still exists. Either way, though, it's clear that we can no longer assume by default that the patterns and precedents of the last 40 years will hold up.

Last week, I put in a pre-order for a Nintendo Switch 2. It's the first brand-new game console I've ever bought on the first day it was available. I figure the technology won't get much better and the price won't get any lower in the next couple years, and it might even go up. There used to be lots of benefits to waiting for this kind of thing—not anymore.

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Paul's Hardware (1.52M subscribers)

May 4, 2025

Video length: 9m 55s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - May 4, 2025 

1:32 Radeon RX 9070 GRE launches in China 

3:04 Radeon RX 9060 XT announcement May 21st 

4:10 RTX 5080 SUPER 24GB and RTX 5070 SUPER 18GB rumored 

TECH BRIEFS

5:34 Microsoft Raises Price of All Xbox Series Consoles 

6:08 Hyte Halts Shipments to the US 

6:35 GTA 6 delayed to May 2026 

7:23 RTX 5090 owner reports MSI's yellow-tipped 12V-2×6 power cable melted 

8:12 Computex is May 20-23 in Taipei, Taiwan 

8:41 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series Finally On Steam Hardware Survey

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We sometimes think of Google as a search company, but that's merely incidental—Google is really the world's biggest advertiser. That's why the antitrust case focused on Google's ad tech business could have even more lasting effects than cases focused on search or mobile apps. The court ruled against Google last month, and now both sides are lining up to present their proposed remedies in a trial later this year.

In today's hearing, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema set the beginning of that trial for September 22 of this year. Just like the search case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is aiming to hack off pieces of Google to level the playing field. Specifically, the DOJ is asking the court to force Google to sell two parts of the ad business: the ad exchange and the publisher ad server. The ad exchange is the world's largest marketplace for bidding on advertising space. The ad server, meanwhile, is a tool that publishers use to list and sell ads on their sites.

While Google lost the liability phase of the case, it won on the subject of ad networks. The court decided that the government had not proven that Google's acquisition of ad networks like DoubleClick and Admeld had harmed competition. So, Google won't have to worry about losing those parts of the business.

The government's proposed breakup would come in phases, beginning with a requirement that Google provide real-time access to bidding data to third-party vendors. Google objects to this as it would essentially force the company to develop systems that don't currently exist and then release them as open source products. The timeline for such an effort, the company believes, makes this infeasible.

Following that move, the DOJ wants to see Google sell the aforementioned components of its advertising business. Naturally, Google opposes this as well.

"The DOJ’s additional proposals to force a divestiture of our ad tech tools go well beyond the Court’s findings, have no basis in law, and would harm publishers and advertisers," said Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's VP of regulatory affairs.

In the trial, Google will paint this demand as a severe overreach, claiming that few, if any, companies would have the resources to purchase and run the products. Last year, an ad consultant estimated Google’s ad empire could be worth up to $95 billion, quite possibly too big to sell. However, Google was similarly skeptical about Chrome, and representatives from other companies have said throughout the search remedy trial that they would love to buy Google's browser.

An uphill battle

After losing three antitrust cases in just a couple of years, Google will have a hard time convincing the judge it is capable of turning over a new leaf with light remedies. A DOJ lawyer told the court Google is a "recidivist monopolist" that has a pattern of skirting its legal obligations. Still, Google is looking for mercy in the case. We expect to get more details on Google's proposed remedies as the next trial nears, but it already offered a preview in today's hearing.

Google suggests making a smaller subset of ad data available and ending the use of some pricing schemes, including unified pricing, that the court has found to be anticompetitive. Google also promised not to re-implement discontinued practices like "last look," which gave the company a chance to outbid rivals at the last moment. This was featured prominently in the DOJ's case, although Google ended the practice several years ago.

To ensure it adheres to the remedies, Google suggested a court-appointed monitor would audit the process. However, Brinkema seemed unimpressed with this proposal.

As in its other cases, Google says it plans to appeal the verdict, but before it can do that, the remedies phase has to be completed. Even if it can get the remedies paused for appeal, the decision could be a blow to investor confidence. So, Google will do whatever it can to avoid the worst-case scenario, leaning on the existence of competing advertisers like Meta and TikTok to show that the market is still competitive.

Like the search case, Google won't be facing any big developments over the summer, but this fall could be rough. Judge Amit Mehta will most likely rule on the search remedies in August, and the ad tech remedies case will begin the following month. Google also has the Play Store case hanging over its head. It lost the first round, but the company hopes to prevail on appeal when the case gets underway again, probably in late 2025.

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If you have been eyeing the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, but haven’t purchased it yet, you’ll be glad to hear that the company has reduced the prices of its standard operating temperature 4GB and 8GB models by $5 and $10, respectively. The company said the move brings it closer to its mission of affordable computing for everyone.

The Raspberry Pi CM4 puts the power of the Raspberry Pi 4 in a compact form factor for embedded applications. It features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 processor, dual video output, and a wide selection of other interfaces.

In its announcement, Raspberry Pi said that the CM4 has been used in a wide array of applications, including medical equipment, energy services infrastructure, concrete monitoring, and even retro gaming. There is a more powerful CM5 available but if your hardware project can get away with using the CM4, then you can pick one up at a lower cost.

Here’s a full overview of the new cost of each of the CM4 configurations:

If you would like to pick any of them up, Raspberry Pi says you should go to the website of your country’s approved reseller and place an order, if there are stocks available.

Raspberry Pi has been quite active in 2025 with new products. In January, it released a Raspberry Pi 5 variant with 16GB of RAM, then in February it launched the Raspberry Pi Official Magazine. In March, it launched the RP2350 microcontroller and a few days after it unveiled the PoE+ Injector for remote power supply.

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If at some point over the last 20 years you’ve found yourself in an Internet argument or had a question in your head you just couldn’t seem to get rid of, chances are good that you’ve relied on an online wiki.

And you probably used the online wiki: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. But for video games, Wikipedia provides a more general, top-down view, painting in broad strokes what a game is about, how it was made, when it was released, and how it was received by players.

In addition, many games and franchises have their own dedicated wikis that go a step further; these wikis are often part game guide, part lore book, and part historical record.

But what does it take to build a game wiki? Why do people do it? I looked to one of my all-time favorite games for answers.

The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages

It had been at least 10 years since I last played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion before this past fall, when I decided somewhat arbitrarily to put another 80-or-so hours into a new save. Rushing through the first few parts of the main questline, it felt like I was visiting home, right up until I was named “Hero of Kvatch.”

Then, though, it quickly began to feel like I was playing the game for the first time, and, to put it mildly, I was getting beaten to a pulp across Cyrodiil.

While it was great to re-explore the game that consumed so many hours of my life and discover again what made the 2006 release an instant classic, I was frustrated that I had forgotten how the game worked.

Without the official manual that came with my now surely sold-to-GameStop Xbox 360 edition of the game or the Official Prima Strategy Guide, I quickly found myself (as countless others do) on The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages.

Broadly, UESPWiki is an impressive information repository of The Elder Scrolls franchise. It also documents the dense, often convoluted lore of the franchise, as well as books and merchandise sold alongside the games, and the multiple tabletop games.

For all its uniqueness—the sort of early “Web 2.0” design style, limited advertisement space, and its namespace-centered way of organization—the UESP is an independent wiki at its core. It has all the bone structure that makes a wiki accessible and easy to use and is driven by a dedicated community of editors.

The wiki currently maintains over 110,000 articles. The phrase “We have been building a collaborative source for all knowledge on the Elder Scrolls series since 1995” is written at the top of the home page. This year, UESP is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

“The phrase I always say is ‘we’re older than Google,’” said 51-year-old Dave Humphrey, founder of the UESP. “Obviously, we’re not as big or as popular as Google, but we’re older than Google, and we’re older than a lot of websites. In fact, I don't think there's any other Elder Scrolls-related website that's older than us.”

The earliest version of the UESP wasn’t a wiki at all and is just a little older than 30 years. It was a message distributed through USENET called Daggerfall FAQ, originally published in the fall of 1994, and it featured prerelease content about The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.

A year later, the Daggerfall FAQ would become a webpage, and a few months after that, it would become the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, which was just a webpage at the time, to include information about The Elder Scrolls games.

When The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind released, it was the franchise's biggest game at that point, and Humphrey quickly became remarkably busy. He wrote hundreds of entries for the game and its two DLCs while maintaining his regular job. But the more he did, the more reader emails suggesting new entries and edits to the site came in. In 2005, UESP officially became a wiki.

“It was too much for me to do as a full-time or second full-time job sort of thing,” Humphrey said. “That's when I decided instead of having a regular webpage, we’d move to a wiki-based format where instead of people, you know, emailing me, they can edit their own tips.”

In 2012, Humphrey officially made the UESP his full-time job, but he is largely no longer involved in the content side of the wiki. He instead maintains more of an overseer role, doing most of the back-end server maintenance, programming, and cluster design for the site.

What sets UESP apart, at least from Humphrey’s perspective, is the creativity and decision-making capacity derived from its independence. This allows the team to run the ads they choose and implement new utilities like the ESO Build Editor.

“We've been asked to join larger wiki farms before, and while it might make sense from a technical standpoint, we would lose a lot of what makes UESP unique and long-lasting,” said Humphrey.

In fact, UESP has been slowly expanding over the years and is starting to host wiki sites beyond The Elder Scrolls. In August 2023, the site launched the Starfield Wiki, which already maintains over 10,000 articles and has unofficially taken over all the construction set wikis for the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises. Currently, Humphrey said, UESP is looking at hosting a few more existing game wikis later this year.

As for the Elder Scrolls series itself, The Elder Scrolls VI is still well into the future. But at the time of my interview, the Oblivion remaster was just social media speculation. Still, Humphrey predicted how the game might change the wiki.

“It comes down to the organization of the site. We sort of have to deal with that a bit with DLCs. There’s the base game, and then there’s the DLCs; for the most part, DLCs are their own contained area, but they do modify the base game as well,” said Humphrey.

“We’d probably take a similar approach with it, creating their own namespace underneath Oblivion and putting all the remake information there,” he added.

It’s always a challenge to determine how to organize things like DLCs and remakes into the wiki, Humphrey said. He noted that he would ultimately leave it up to the editors themselves.

Since the release of Oblivion Remastered, the game has, in fact, received its own namespace, and editors are already documenting some of the changes.

When it was still the Daggerfall FAQ, Humphrey wasn’t thinking about what it would look like in 2025 or how a community could be built around a website; he was simply someone with a passion for the game who liked building things.

But as time went on and Humphrey began attending conventions and Elder Scrolls-related meetups, he started to realize the kind of community that had naturally formed around the site.

“It's not something I planned on doing, but it's really neat, and it's something I'm more aware of now in terms of doing community-related stuff,” Humphrey said.

That community, which has over 23,000 users with at least one edit in its history, measures the success of the wiki not by the quantity of content but the quality of the pages themselves. Humphrey leaves most of the content decisions up to those editors.

Scraping and editing

Robert “RobinHood70” Morley—a 54-year-old native of Ottawa, Canada—has been editing the pages since May 2006, just a short time after UESP turned into a wiki, while playing through Oblivion.

He explained that he found the wiki at a critical time, shortly after he fell ill with a sickness that doctors struggled to diagnose.

“Getting involved in the wiki provided a bit of a refuge from that,” Morely wrote through Discord. “I could forget how I felt (to some degree) and focus instead on what was going on the wiki. Because I couldn't really leave the house much anymore, I made friends on the wiki instead and let that replace the real-life social life that I couldn't have anymore… That continues to be the case even now.”

He didn’t necessarily set out to find that kind of community, which was much smaller at the time, but he recognized that it was helping him cope with things. Not only did editing give him a sense of accomplishment, but he enjoyed seeing what others were able to do.

Over the years, Morely’s involvement in the wiki has grown. He’s gone from a regular user to an admin to a bureaucrat. He’s the only editor with access to the servers other than Humphrey. He now does the critical job of running bots through the game pages that add bulk information to the wiki.

“In some sense, a bot is like any other editor. It adds/changes/removes information on the wiki. The difference is that it does so several thousand times faster,” Morley said. “Bots are often used to bulk-upload information from the game files to the wiki. For example, they might provide the initial documentation of every NPC in a game… They would provide the hard stats, but afterward, people would expand the page to provide a narrative for each character.”

When an Elder Scrolls Online update goes live, for example, Morley quickly deploys the bot, which detects any changes in the new versions of the game, such as skill and stat adjustments. All that added information is dumped into the wiki to provide human editors with a base to start from.

That’s similar to the process of creating pages for a brand-new Elder Scrolls game. The game would be scraped shortly after it was released, and editors would get busy trying to figure out how those pieces fit together.

Once created, the pages would be edited and continuously retouched over time by other editors.

Those editors include people like 26-year-old Dillon “Dillonn241” D., who has been a part of the wiki for over half of his life. He first discovered and began editing pages of the UESP at 11 or 12 years old.

While his activity on the wiki has ebbed and flowed over the years based on interest and the demands of daily life, he says the community is a big part of what keeps him coming back—the near-endless nature of collaboratively working on a project. He enjoys the casual conversations on the wiki's Discord server, as well as the more focused and pragmatic discussions about editing through internal channels.

He has since become a prolific editor and was awarded a “gold star” on his talk page last year for editing more pages than anyone in 2024, with a total of 18,864 edits.

“I don’t want to call it an addiction because that makes it sound bad, but it’s kind of like—you know, I guess I have an hour here. I'll just hop on UESP and edit a few pages or see how things I’ve edited have been doing.”

Most of those edits, he explained, were likely minor, things like fixing grammar, sentence structure, and formatting to better conform to the wiki’s internal style guide. In this way, he considers himself a “WikiGnome”—someone who makes small, incremental edits to pages and makes changes behind the scenes.

When he’s in the mood to do some editing, he’ll jump around the wiki using the random button for a couple of hours and make changes.

All those hours have given him not only refined copy editing skills but also a serious familiarity with the pages. Dillion says he can jump on just about any page and find at least one of his edits on it.

He has done a lot of work on the namespaces for the Tamriel Rebuilt mod and essentially rewrote the entire namespace for The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, a game he doesn't particularly enjoy playing but started on a whim.

“At some point, I stumbled across the wiki section for it and was like, well this is nothing, this is awful,” he explained.

He recalled getting stuck on a section of the game, and the wiki wasn't able to help him. He was able to stumble through the game but decided he would completely fix its entries so they would be more helpful to future players.

Now, the Redguard namespace includes detailed descriptions of the quests, characters, and items, along with photos, most of which Dillion took himself. He says that if the game and all its files were somehow wiped from the earth, developers would be able to remaster the entire game in Unity based just on what’s in the wiki.

“I guess that’s kind of the end goal,” he said, “and some of the namespaces are kind of close, like Oblivion I would say is kind of close to where the things that you can still add to the page are getting minimal.”

Efforts all over

While Dillion is a more prolific editor than most and Morley plays a more specific role in the wiki than others—and Humphrey represents the original jumping off point for the former two—it’s the combined effort of thousands of editors like them that make the UESP what it is.

And across the Internet, there are equally involved editors working on an endless number of wikis toward similar goals. In a way, they are remaking the games they love in a text-based format.

At their core, these community efforts help players get through games in a time when physical guides often no longer exist. But in the aggregate, deeper, centralized insights into these games can ultimately contribute to something new. A record over time of how a game changes and how it works can lead to discovery and debate. In turn, that could spark inspiration for a mod—or a new game entirely.

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Rockstar issues statement.

By Wesley Yin-Poole

Updated: May 2, 2025 8:33 am Posted: May 2, 2025 7:33 am

Rockstar has delayed Grand Theft Auto 6 to May 26, 2026. It was due out fall 2025.

In a statement, Rockstar apologized for the significant delay to the game, expected to be the biggest entertainment launch of all time.

"We are very sorry that this is later than you expected," Rockstar said. "The interest and excitement surrounding a new Grand Theft Auto has been truly humbling for our entire team. We want to thank you for your support and your patience as we work to finish the game.

"With every game we have released, the goal has always been to try and exceed your expectations, and Grand Theft Auto VI is no exception. We hope you understand that we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.

"We look forward to sharing more information with you soon."

Rockstar's statement at least confirms the GTA 6 release date, but there were no new assets released, which means the wait for Trailer 2 continues. There's also no mention of launch platforms, which some are already speculating leaves the door open to GTA 6 releasing on PC as well as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S in May 2026.

"Look, there's always a risk of slippage and I think as soon as you say words like absolutely, you jinx things," Strauss Zelnick, the boss of Rockstar parent company Take-Two responded when IGN asked how confident he was that Rockstar would hit fall 2025 for GTA 6. "So we feel really good about it." That was back in February.

Commenting in a new note to the investment community issued today, May 2, Zelnick said he supported the decision to delay GTA 6 into Take-Two's 2027 financial year.

"We support fully Rockstar Games taking additional time to realize their creative vision for Grand Theft Auto VI, which promises to be a groundbreaking, blockbuster entertainment experience that exceeds audience expectations.

“While we take the movement of our titles seriously and appreciate the vast and deep global anticipation for Grand Theft Auto VI, we remain steadfast in our commitment to excellence. As we continue to release our phenomenal pipeline, we expect to deliver a multi-year period of growth in our business and enhanced value for our shareholders.”

The delay to GTA 6 opens up the second half of 2025 to a number of other games, perhaps now with more breathing room to succeed. The likes of Gearbox's Borderlands 4, EA's Battlefield, Bungie's Marathon, and Sony's

Ghost of Yotei will no-doubt breath a sign of relief. Nintendo, which is preparing to release the Switch 2, will surely benefit from GTA 6's delay, too.

Other developers and publishers who perhaps rushed their games to launch ahead of GTA 6's expected fall 2025 release window won't be so happy, of course. And if you had a game planned for launch in or around May next year, you'll probably have to rethink your release strategy.

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In a newly published blog post, Turn 10 Studios detailed a new multi-lane system for Drivatar AI training that should make racing with AI more realistic and immersive. Previously, developers ran simulations through thousands of laps on a per-track and per-car type basis to build a custom racing line, enabling faster driving. In traffic-heavy conditions, this system could result in AI driving off-track, collisions, and other behaviors that a professional driver would not do.

Now, Turn 10 Studios is implementing a new multi-line AI system. It trains AI on multiple lanes of traffic, which, in turn, improves side-by-side racing (especially in heavy traffic) without random or erratic behavior outside the optimal line. AI is now more situation-aware and better at overtaking or avoiding collisions.

To deliver a more fun and realistic single-player racing, Turn 10 Studios aims for the following goals in its new multi-lane AI training system:

• Faster, even when they are not on the optimal racing line.
• Skilled and defensive, providing exciting competition.
• Capable of overtaking the player and passing other AI opponents without veering off track.
• Able to better limit collisions and off-track behaviors, including awkward mergers when they attempt to return to the ideal racing line.

The updated Drivatar AI in Forza Motorsport is coming with the anniversary update later this month. It will also include the fan-favorite Fujimi Kaido track, new cards, and more.

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Azure and the broader cloud services arm clocked in with the same 33% growth rate as Q1 (35% when adjusted for currency), pulling ahead of Q2’s 31% and reinforcing a steady upward trend. CEO Satya Nadella pointed to AI as the game-changer here. Businesses are leaning harder on Microsoft’s AI stack to work smarter and trim costs, and it’s showing in the numbers.

The Productivity and Business Processes unit, home to Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365, pulled in $29.9 billion, a 10% lift from last year (13% with currency adjustments). Microsoft 365 Commercial posted an 11% increase, while Dynamics 365 outpaced it with 16%. LinkedIn is still growing, but at a slower 7%.

As for the More Personal Computing division, it brought in $13.4 billion, up 6%. Windows OEM crept up 3%, Xbox content and services added 8%, and search and news ads were the surprise standout, jumping 21% once you strip out traffic costs. These gains helped keep the segment in the green, with Windows and Xbox pulling more than their weight.

Financially, Microsoft converted its top-line strength into $37 billion of operating cash flow, even as it invested $16.7 billion in property and equipment to expand its datacenter footprint for AI. CFO Amy Hood highlighted that Microsoft Cloud alone generated $42.4 billion this quarter, up 20% (22% in constant currency), fueling both research and development and shareholder returns. The company returned $9.7 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks.

Looking forward, while this quarter's results look solid, Redmond made sure to mention that the road ahead has its potential bumps. It pointed out that actual results could differ materially from expectations because of things like "intense competition in all of our markets," the simple fact that "significant investments in products and services may not achieve expected returns," and the ever-present threat of "cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities."

The company also noted that changes in "government enforcement under competition laws" or "laws and regulations relating to the handling of personal data" could impact its business.

More details on Microsoft's third-quarter FY2025 results are available on the company's official website.

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Wikipedia's relationship with AI is nothing new, and its massive trove of articles has served as an unparalleled dataset for training large language models. The Foundation has highlighted several areas where it will make AI investments to boost Wikipedia's volunteers.

Its upcoming changes will allow Wikipedia's moderators and patrollers to spend their time "on what they want to accomplish, and not on how to technically achieve it." For instance, automating routine and repetitive tasks that don't need human judgment or decisions.

The non-profit will use AI to improve the discoverability of information on Wikipedia, leaving extra time for human deliberation, judgment, and consensus-building. AI developments will automate translation and adaptation of common topics, helping editors share local perspectives or context.

Other than that, the Foundation will use generative AI to scale the onboarding of new Wikipedia volunteers with guided mentorship. Overall, Wikimedia has no plans to replace human curators with AI.

"The community of volunteers behind Wikipedia is the most important and unique element of Wikipedia’s success. For nearly 25 years, Wikipedia editors have researched, deliberated, discussed, built consensus, and collaboratively written the largest encyclopedia humankind has ever seen," the non-profit said.

While it's feared that AI may replace human jobs, a recent report from Google suggests using AI tools can boost productivity and help save about 122 hours per year. However, the general public seems more concerned than excited over AI's increased usage in daily life.

Wikimedia plans to implement its AI strategy over the next three years and review it annually to make adjustments as needed. One of the challenges it faces is whether to use AI for content generation or content integrity on Wikipedia, given limited resources.

The non-profit has decided to prioritize using AI to help editors ensure content integrity because new encyclopedic knowledge can only be added at a rate that editors can handle. Investing more in content generation will overwhelm their capacity. However, the balance between moderation and generation might shift over time depending on the need.

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Visa believes connecting AI systems to its payment network could be genuinely revolutionary. Set a budget and preferences, and your AI agent could find and purchase items like groceries or plane tickets without you needing to tap "Checkout."

Jack Forestell, Visa’s chief product and strategy officer, told the AP he feels this initiative could be "transformational, on the order of magnitude of the advent of e-commerce itself." Visa recently announced details of this program, called Visa Intelligent Commerce, aiming to bring trust and security to this new type of shopping. Launched today, pilot projects connect Visa's payments network to AI systems developed by Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, and France's Mistral, with additional collaborations underway with IBM, Stripe, and Samsung. A broad rollout is expected next year.

For consumers, the promise is straightforward: your AI agent shops and pays within limits you set. Visa has spent six months addressing the technical and security challenges, including authentication, spending caps, and user authorization. The company is introducing "AI-Ready Cards," which use tokenized digital credentials instead of sensitive card details for security. This system requires explicit user consent and confirms an agent is allowed to act for you, adding identity verification. Only the consumer can tell the agent when to activate a payment credential.

Current AI shopping tools are good at finding items but struggle with the payment step. Jack Forestell highlighted this, saying, "The early incarnations of agent-based commerce are starting to do a good job on the shopping and discovery dimension of the problem, but they are having tremendous trouble on payments." He added,

You get to this point where the agents literally just turn it back around and say, 'OK, you go buy it.'

By plugging into Visa's network, AI platforms can hand off the payment step to a proven system, using Visa's history of managing risk and fraud to vouch for legitimate transactions and step in if things go wrong. Safely letting autonomous AI agents handle money means preventing errors, sometimes called "hallucinations," that could misread details or take wrong actions, leading to incorrect purchases. Visa's system addresses this by requiring user authorization before any charge and enforcing the spending caps the consumer sets. Commerce signals are shared in real-time, enabling transaction controls and helping manage disputes. Initially, agents will likely seek confirmation on big buys like airline tickets, gradually earning autonomy within user-defined dollar limits.

AI developers see benefits too: with user consent, agents could potentially see past purchase history. This helps agents understand preferences and make better recommendations, like personalized suggestions on shopping sites.

Forestell thinks AI agents are best suited for routine errands or complex tasks like travel booking, where automation saves time. For enjoyable shopping experiences, agents might just assist in the background. By combining AI autonomy with Visa's payment expertise, the company aims to bring personalized, hands-free commerce closer to reality. Forestell believes that just like previous shifts in shopping, Visa is helping set a new standard for commerce, potentially as impactful as the birth of online shopping itself.

Source: AP News

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Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, took the stand on Wednesday during the remedies phase of the company’s search antitrust trial, and offered a simple message. The US government’s plan to rectify Google’s search monopoly, he said, would be so crushing to Google Search that it might be hard to justify continuing to build a search engine at all.

Pichai was called by Google in its defense, the second witness in its portion of the trial after the Department of Justice finished more than a week of its own questioning. John Schmidtlein, one of Google’s lead attorneys, first led Pichai through a tour of Google’s R&D investments, asking him how much the company has spent on Search, AI, and other projects. (The answer: about $49 billion just last year.) Then he asked Pichai about the government’s proposal to require Google to share much of its search data, and its search index, with competitors at a “marginal cost.”

Pichai said the data-sharing proposal would be a disaster. He called it “far-reaching” and “extraordinary,” appearing on the stand practically flummoxed by the very idea of the proposal. He said that requiring Google to give up all the data in its search index, and the ways it ranks all that data, “would allow anyone to completely reverse engineer, end to end, any part of our technology stack.”

If Google were required to allow other companies to build exact copies of Google’s search experience, while also giving them access to how the tech works, Pichai said more than once he wasn’t sure how to justify continuing to invest so heavily in search. “It’s not clear to me how to fund all the innovation we do,” he told Schmidtlein, “if we were to give all of it away at marginal cost.”

The plaintiffs in this case, of course, argue that forcing Google to give away all its data is the only way to unwind Google’s otherwise unassailable advantage in search. Google has spent billions of dollars on prime placement and default status practically everywhere, has used its Chrome browser to further entrench itself, and has built a flywheel of data, money, and search quality that has made it practically unbeatable. Google calls this the “virtuous” cycle of search; the government calls it “vicious” and says it needs to be disrupted.

Pichai’s testimony also touched on many of the case’s other important remedy proposals, including the government’s desire to force Google to sell Chrome. OpenAI, Perplexity, Yahoo, and others have already lined up to say they’re interested. Before he was Google’s CEO, Pichai led the team that created Chrome in the first place, and he argued that there’s simply no other company in tech that will care for the browser — and the internet — the way Google will.

Google spent over a billion dollars on Chrome in just the last year, Pichai said, and tens of billions in the last decade. He noted that many other browsers run on the open-source Chromium infrastructure, and that Google is responsible for more than 90 percent of its code commits. Other companies can build browsers, Pichai said, “but no one has shown a commitment to the level of investment we put in.”

One consistent point of questioning from the DOJ has been whether Google is the only company that can take care of its users’ experience and privacy. (It’s mostly a tactic to force Google to say, no, of course not, over and over again.) But Pichai took issue with Veronica Onyema from the DOJ when she asked whether another company could manage Chrome’s security and privacy as well as Google. He cited “a cultural commitment” to Chrome and the web, and said that “I haven’t seen, since we built Chrome, any other company make the kind of investments” Google has. Even not knowing who might buy Chrome, he said he worries about what might become of the world’s most popular browser in any other hands but his.

Everyone asking questions of Pichai — Schmidtlein, Onyema, and even Mehta from the judge’s chair — wanted to know about AI. In part, this remedies trial has become about making sure the AI field stays competitive, and that Google can’t do again what it did in search. For his part, Pichai doubled down on his theory that AI has the potential to be more profound than fire or electricity, saying “I believe it even more now” than he did a few years ago. Schmidtlein and Mehta had several questions about how AI chatbots might replace search engines, to which Pichai was somewhat evasive; he said that there are certainly overlaps between chatbots and search engines, but also that “the opportunity space is expanding” and it’s not a zero-sum battle between the two products. AI technology in general, though, he said “is going to deeply transform Google Search.”

The deals Google makes for search placement have been a key factor in this trial, and of course Google’s relationship with Apple came up as well. Pichai argued that Google should be allowed to continue paying for placement, as long as its deals are not exclusive. Google has already begun changing its deals to that effect, including with Apple: Onyema asked Pichai to confirm that Google seeks to have a deal done to make Gemini one of multiple options in Apple Intelligence by “the middle of this year,” and a product out in market soon after, and Pichai said yes to both. Since Apple Intelligence already integrates ChatGPT, this would be exactly the kind of multi-provider deal Google didn’t allow before.

Pichai’s testimony was Google’s argument in a nutshell. The company has held throughout this case that it has been successful not because of monopolistic actions but because it out-invested its competitors and simply built the best product. And now, Google says, the government wants to take the fruits of its labors and give them to anyone who asks.

The DOJ says, well, yes — that’s the only way to level the playing field. Pichai’s obvious goal was to convince Mehta that the proposed changes wouldn’t just prop up competitors, but would also make it impossible for Google to continue being an innovative company. “It’s not clear to me how we’d have any value for our IP,” he said, “if we had to share our IP at marginal cost.”

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One of the most influential—and by some counts, notorious—AI models yet released will soon fade into history. OpenAI announced on April 10 that GPT-4 will be "fully replaced" by GPT-4o in ChatGPT at the end of April, bringing a public-facing end to the model that accelerated a global AI race when it launched in March 2023.

"Effective April 30, 2025, GPT-4 will be retired from ChatGPT and fully replaced by GPT-4o," OpenAI wrote in its April 10 changelog for ChatGPT. While ChatGPT users will no longer be able to chat with the older AI model, the company added that "GPT-4 will still be available in the API," providing some reassurance to developers who might still be using the older model for various tasks.

The retirement marks the end of an era that began on March 14, 2023, when GPT-4 demonstrated capabilities that shocked some observers: reportedly scoring at the 90th percentile on the Uniform Bar Exam, acing AP tests, and solving complex reasoning problems that stumped previous models. Its release created a wave of immense hype—and existential panic—about AI's ability to imitate human communication and composition.

While ChatGPT launched in November 2022 with GPT-3.5 under the hood, GPT-4 took AI language models to a new level of sophistication, and it was a massive undertaking to create. It combined data scraped from the vast corpus of human knowledge into a set of neural networks rumored to weigh in at a combined total of 1.76 trillion parameters, which are the numerical values that hold the data within the model.

Along the way, the model reportedly cost more than $100 million to train, according to comments by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and required vast computational resources to develop. Training the model may have involved over 20,000 high-end GPUs working in concert—an expense few organizations besides OpenAI and its primary backer, Microsoft, could afford.

Industry reactions, safety concerns, and regulatory responses

Curiously, GPT-4's impact began before OpenAI's official announcement. In February 2023, Microsoft integrated its own early version of the GPT-4 model into its Bing search engine, creating a chatbot that sparked controversy when it tried to convince Kevin Roose of The New York Times to leave his wife and when it "lost its mind" in response to an Ars Technica article.

That Bing Chat AI model, nicknamed "Sydney," displayed unpredictable and emotionally manipulative responses, including frequent use of emojis, representing one of the first large-scale demonstrations of an AI system's potential to manipulate human emotions. It set off a wave of warnings among loosely organized AI alignment watchdogs who were convinced a fast takeoff of AI was imminent.

Speaking of warnings, upon its official launch in March, GPT-4 made headlines anew after OpenAI revealed that it had hired the Alignment Research Center to see if GPT-4 might autonomously attempt to do harm. The company went so far as to test whether the model could autonomously replicate itself, secure more resources, or hide its intentions—reflecting concern about the safety of AI systems with then-unknown capability. At the time, many AI experts said these new AI models were "black boxes," and they were not sure exactly how they worked or what they were capable of doing.

The GPT-4-inspired AI panic culminated in a widely publicized open letter from the Future of Life Institute calling for a six-month pause in AI development. "Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter" urged "all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4," citing risks including AI-generated propaganda, automation of jobs, and societal loss of control. Despite gathering over 30,000 signatures, including those of Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Yuval Noah Harari, the pause never materialized, and development accelerated instead.

OpenAI played into the danger hype. In May 2023, Altman testified before Congress about the potential risks of AI, famously warning that "if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong." The CEO also embarked on a world tour, meeting with national leaders to discuss AI governance. Around that time, OpenAI executives warned of "risk of extinction" from AI in another open letter drafted by the Center for AI Safety.

This heightened attention led to President Biden's comprehensive executive order on AI in October 2023, which required companies building advanced AI systems to perform safety tests and notify the government of the results before releasing their products.

A legacy of poorly named successors

While GPT-4 caused its fair share of hype, it also exposed clear limitations of large language models (LLMs). GPT-4 regularly produced confabulations—plausible but incorrect information presented with confidence. These failures provided a bright spotlight on the gap between the AI model's apparent intelligence and its ability to understand concepts on a human level.

OpenAI's research department didn't stand still after the original GPT-4 release. The company superseded GPT-4 with GPT-4 Turbo in November 2023, which was a faster model that cost less to run, but some still complained that it wasn't as good as the original. After many revisions of GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI released the multimodal GPT-4o in May 2024, which added native image and audio capabilities. Then came GPT-4.5, which launched in February 2025 as a massive, slow, expensive follow-up, and OpenAI's GPT-4.1, which arrived in April 2025 in the API.

This rapid succession of models reflected the relentless pace of AI development over these past few years, while the confusing numbering scheme (with 4.1 coming after 4.5, for example) reflected the relentless pace of OpenAI's chaotic product naming strategy. Along the way, OpenAI has been reticent to christen any new model "GPT-5," saving that major nomenclature upgrade for a future, yet-to-be determined release that Altman says may combine its traditional LLMs with simulated reasoning models like o3 and o4.

In its April 10 retirement notice, OpenAI acknowledged the model's legacy: "GPT-4 marked a pivotal moment in ChatGPT's evolution. We're grateful for the breakthroughs it enabled and for the feedback that helped shape its successor. GPT-4o builds on that foundation to deliver even greater capability, consistency, and creativity."

When future historians chronicle the AI boom of the 2020s and the somewhat weird "AI panic of 2023," GPT-4 will likely stand out as a key turning point, when AI language models moved from research curiosity to a hype-fueled technology that altered our political and social relationship with machines—for better and for worse.

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Operating profit also saw a major jump, reaching KRW 6.7 trillion ($4.71 billion). That marks a sharp turnaround compared to the same quarter two years ago, when profit had slumped to just KRW 0.64 trillion (about $499 million at the time).

The Mobile Experience (MX) division did a lot of the heavy lifting this quarter. Samsung credits the strong numbers to demand for its new flagship Galaxy S25 phones and a general uptick in high-end product sales. But not all parts of the business are running hot. The semiconductor unit, known as the Device Solutions (DS) division, posted lower revenue compared to past years, continuing a rocky stretch for the chip sector.

That said, the DS division still brought in KRW 25.1 trillion ($17.65 billion) in revenue, with operating profit coming in at KRW 1.1 trillion ($770 million). The Memory Business within DS saw some positive movement, especially from demand for server DRAM and NAND chips. However, pricing pressures and slower-than-expected HBM (high-bandwidth memory) sales held it back.

Samsung is betting big on innovation to drive long-term growth. The company says its research and development spending reached a new high in 2024, and in Q1 2025 alone, R&D spending rose 16 percent year over year to KRW 9 trillion ($6.33 billion). That is no small figure, even for a company of Samsung’s size.

Samsung’s strong showing follows a similarly solid Q1 from Alphabet. The South Korean tech giant plans to focus on AI servers and enhanced HBM3E products moving forward. The Foundry Business saw muted results but is stabilizing its 2nm process and securing new AI and high-performance computing orders.

Samsung Display Corporation, SDC, the makers of some of the most interesting foldable and slidable displays we saw at CES three months ago, posted KRW 5.9 trillion ($4.15 billion) in revenue and KRW 0.5 trillion ($350 million) in operating profit. The mobile display business faced a seasonal dip in profit, but plans to maintain a stable supply of new products like foldables. The large display business improved results with new QD-OLED monitors and expects growth in gaming monitor demand.

The MX and Networks businesses, including mobile phones, had a strong quarter with KRW 37 trillion ($25.99 billion) in revenue and KRW 4.3 trillion ($3.02 billion) in operating profit. The MX Business saw growth thanks to the successful Galaxy S25 series and its "Galaxy AI" features, achieving solid profitability. It plans to sustain sales with the upcoming Galaxy S25 Edge and expand AI features to the Galaxy A series. It is also looking to strengthen its foldable phones and explore new areas like extended reality.

Finally, the Visual Display and Digital Appliances businesses reported KRW 14.5 trillion ($10.19 billion) in revenue and KRW 0.3 trillion ($210 million) in operating profit. The Visual Display Business performed solidly with sales of strategic products like Neo QLED and OLED TVs. It plans to expand sales of its 2025 AI TV lineup, which features advanced AI functions, including monitors like those shown at CES 2025.

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While many games get delayed, Borderlands 4 doesn't seem to be one of them, with Gearbox Software sharing via X (Twitter) on Tuesday that its looter-shooter is now slated to launch on Sept. 12, 2025.

This bumps the game up over two weeks from its original planned release date of September 23, which was first announced back in the February 2025 State of Play.

Players eager to learn more about this next outing in the universe of Vault Hunters and monsters won't be waiting long, as Gearbox is teaming up with PlayStation to show more of the game in a dedicated State of Play presentation on April 30 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET.

The presentation will have 20 minutes of new gameplay footage, with additional details on what players can expect from the new characters, story, and of course, the myriad weapons in this new entry in Gearbox Software's long-running series.

Moving a game up isn't exactly common

Meanwhile, Nvidia is also allegedly making moves. The company can see that AMD has a competitive product this time around with its RX 9000 series (it earned a 10 out of 10 in our review). According to murmurs on the Chiphell forum, Team Green may finally be ready to move past 8 GB VRAM on its entry to mid-level cards.

Nvidia's RTX 4000 series was already criticized widely by the tech press due to the low onboard memory buffer, but the company has repeated the same thing with the 50 series. However, that could finally change if we are to believe the latest rumor.

The company is apparently looking to use the newer 3GB GDDR7 modules instead of the 2GB ones that it is currently utilizing on its RTX 5000 series cards. This means that there will be a 50% increase in the memory capacity of the GPUs, even if Nvidia sticks to the same memory interface width.

Thus, the RTX 5080 SUPER should have 24 GB of memory, while the RTX 5070 SUPER should have 18 GB of it. There is no word on any 5090 SUPER since the RTX 5090 itself seemingly uses the full GPU die. But a hypothetical 5090 SUPER would then have 48 GB of memory thanks to the 3GB modules.

Where the move to 3GB chips can really benefit is in the case of the RTX 5060 and lower. A hypothetical RTX 5060 SUPER, thanks to 3GB modules, will be able to pack 12 GB of memory, which will make it perfect as a 1080p card, as VRAM is typically the biggest limiting factor on current GeForce GPUs.

We will have to wait and see if Nvidia's SUPER series indeed happens and if it indeed goes with this route.

Source: panzerlied (Chiphell forum)

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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.

The biggest Windows story of this week is the launch of the long-promised AI features for Windows 11. After a nearly year-long delay, Microsoft finally launched Recall on Copilot+ PCs. Also, Microsoft dropped Click to Do, AI-powered Windows Search, and more. If you have a compatible Copilot+ PC (some features are limited to those with Snapdragon processors), you can get that good stuff by installing the latest non-security update for Windows 11 version 24H2.

This month's non-security updates are now available for all supported Windows versions. The biggest one was pushed to Windows 11. KB5055627 arrived with a lot of changes, new AI-powered experiences for Copilot+ PCs, and more.

Windows 11 version 23H2 received KB5055629 with Phone Link integration in the Start menu, File Explorer improvements, new features for Narrator and Widgets, and a lot more. There is also one for Windows 10, KB5055612, with only two fixes.

Microsoft also released new recovery and OOBE updates for Windows 11 and brought native PyTorch Arm support to Windows PCs.

This week, we also published a bunch of useful guides for Windows users. One will show you how to pause or defer Patch Tuesday and quality updates in Windows 10 and 11 (in case Microsoft ships a botched update or there is a critical known bug), and another one will show you how to change the default screenshot folder.

To finish this week's Windows section, here are some interesting discoveries that were made. For one, it turned out that the mysterious inetpub folder that appeared after recent security updates allows hackers to block Windows updates permanently. Also, Windows 11 version 24H2 resurrected a 20-year-old bug in the original Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. We posted a rather lengthy article describing what is actually going on.

Finally, Microsoft announced that the Windows 10 Update bug it previously told you to ignore was fixed.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

Shortly after Microsoft released the latest Windows 11 preview builds, enthusiasts discovered that more parts of the old Control Panel had made their way to the Settings app. This time, Microsoft is moving keyboard settings and giving certain options a modern overhaul.

Also, in Canary build 27842, users found references to Windows 11 version 25H2. We knew that Windows 11 would receive a big feature update this year, and now, there is a sort of confirmation from Microsoft, as code lines in build 27842 point to GE25H2 with build number 26200. This also indicates that this year's feature update could be a small enablement package, not a full system upgrade as it was with version 24H2 last year.

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.

One of our favorite File Explorer alternatives, Files, received a new preview update. Version 3.9.7 is now available in the Microsoft Store, offering users a bunch of useful improvements, such as an updated sidebar, the ability to customize file size units, ZIP enhancements, and more. Look out for this update in the stable version in the near future.

Microsoft announced a big update to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, which now features new agents with OpenAI's deep reasoning models, GPT-4o image-generation capabilities, Copilot Notebooks, Copilot search, and more, all as part of Microsoft's effort to improve human-agent interactions within organizations.

In addition to that, we had a bunch of Copilot updates in Office apps. Word, for one, now lets you reference massive documents and entire folders (up to 1.5 million words and 3,000 pages). In PowerPoint, Copilot is now capable of creating slides from your documents.

Speaking of PowerPoint, it also got the ability to link slides (on the web version) and retain comments when moving parts of a presentation around. Finally, Microsoft released a fix for the high CPU usage bug in the classic Outlook for Windows.

On the browser side, we have an interesting development happening in Microsoft Edge. The company is working on a new feature that lets you have Copilot as your default new tab page. This feature is currently an experiment, and you can check out this article to learn how to enable it.

What will no longer receive any updates is the Windows Maps app. Pour one out for the program, as Microsoft confirmed that it is deprecated and will soon be removed from the Microsoft Store in July 2025. Before that, the company will ship the final update that will make the program fully inoperable. Those who want to use Bing Maps can switch to the web version, which is available via this link.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Nvidia Project G-Assist received ChatGPT integration to let gamers build custom plugins

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

• Nvidia 576.15 Hotfix with patches for temperature reporting errors.
• Intel 32.0.101.6737 WHQL with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered support and more.
• AMD Radeon Software 25.4.1 non-WHQL with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered support and more.
• AMD released a new chipset driver with bug fixes for Windows 10 and 11.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

This weekend, I published a small hands-on review of the Cuktech 10 100W GaN charger. This portable brick has plenty of ports and power to keep all your devices, including laptops and power banks, juiced up at high speeds and with "clean" power. The best part is that it is currently available for as little as $35.

On the gaming side

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

If you have a relatively modern LG Smart TV, you can now install the official Xbox app on it. It will let you play games directly on your TV using Microsoft's cloud streaming. All you need is a select TV released in 2022 or newer, a Bluetooth-enabled controller, and an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024 received a new City Update. City Update 10 focuses on revamping five cities in the United States, namely Dallas, Texas, Denver, San Francisco, and Honolulu.

Forza Horizon 5 is now welcoming PlayStation 5 users to the vibrant world of Mexico. The game finally arrived on the PlayStation 5 with all the content it received over the last three years. Also, the latest update, Horizon Realms, is now available to play, allowing gamers to revisit the most iconic location from the previous updates and earn some new cars.

Nvidia announced a set of new games for GeForce NOW subscribers. The latest drop includes The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Sunderfolk, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, EXFIL, Sands of Aura, and more.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away Chuchel, a cute point-and-click adventure from Amanita Design, which replaced the previous Botanicula giveaway. As usual, we also have a new issue of the Weekend PC Game Deals series, where you can find plenty of various discounts and deals.

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Paul's Hardware (1.52M subscribers)

April 27, 2025

Video length: 11m 20s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - April 27, 2025

1:42 RTX 5060 Ti 8GB reviews demonstrate it's crappiness 

4:19 Nvidia sucks at drivers now 

5:44 GamersNexus Tariff Impact Investigation, Rising Component Prices 

6:55 Intel's new 200S Boost mode for Arrow Lake chips 

8:23 Intel CEO announces layoffs, restructuring, $1.5b cost reductions, RTO mandate 

TECH BRIEFS 

9:06 Will there be a 24GB Intel Arc B580? 

10:05 Redditor miraculously restores RTX GPU with Microsoldering

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For many gamers, this week's release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has provided a good excuse to revisit a well-remembered RPG classic from years past. For others, it's provided a good excuse to catch up on a well-regarded game that they haven't gotten around to playing in the nearly two decades since its release.

I'm in that second group. While I've played a fair amount of Skyrim (on platforms ranging from the Xbox 360 to VR headsets) and Starfield, I've never taken the time to go back to the earlier Bethesda Game Studios RPGs. As such, my impressions of Oblivion before this Remaster have been guided by old critical reactions and the many memes calling attention to the game's somewhat janky engine.

Playing through the first few hours of Oblivion Remastered this week, without the benefit of nostalgia, I can definitely see why Oblivion made such an impact on RPG fans in 2006. But I also see all the ways that the game can feel a bit dated after nearly two decades of advancements in genre design.

One chance at a first impression

From the jump, I found myself struggling to suspend my disbelief enough to buy into the narrative conventions Oblivion throws at the beginner player. The fact that the doomed king and his armed guards need to escape through a secret passage that just so happens to cut through my jail cell seems a little too convenient for my brain to accept without warning sirens going off. I know it's just a contrivance to get my personal hero's journey story going, but it's a clunky way to dive into the world.

A face only a mother could love.

Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

The same goes for the way the king dies just a few minutes into the tutorial, and his willingness to trust me with the coveted Amulet of Kings because the "Dragonblood" let him "see something" in me. Even allowing for some amount of necessary Chosen One trope-iness in this kind of fantasy story, the sheer speed with which my character went from "condemned prisoner" to "the last hope of the dying king" made my head spin a bit. Following that pivotal scene with a dull "go kill some goblins and rats in the sewer" escape sequence also felt a little anticlimactic given the epic responsibility with which I was just entrusted.

To be sure, Patrick Stewart's regal delivery in the early game helps paper over a lot of potential weaknesses with the initial narrative. And even beyond Stewart's excellent performance, I appreciated how the writing is concise and to the point, without the kind of drawn-out, pause-laden delivery that characterizes many games of the time.

The wide world of Oblivion

Once I escaped out into the broader world of Oblivion for the first time, I was a bit shocked to open my map and see that I could fast travel to a wide range of critical locations immediately, without any need to discover them for myself first. I felt a bit like a guilty cheater warping myself to the location of my next quest waypoint rather than hoofing through the massive forest that I'm sure hundreds of artists spent countless months meticulously constructing (and, more recently, remastering).

This horse is mine now. What are you gonna do about it?

Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

I felt less guilty after accidentally stealing a horse, though. After a key quest giver urged me to go take a horse from a nearby stable, I was a bit shocked when I mounted the first horse I saw and heard two heavily armed guards nearby calling me a thief and leaping into pursuit (I guess I should have noticed the red icon before making my mount). No matter, I thought; they're on foot and I'm now on a horse, so I can get away with my inadvertent theft quite easily.

Determined not to just fast-travel through the entire game, I found that galloping across a rain-drenched forest through the in-game night was almost too atmospheric. I ended up turning up the recommended brightness settings a few notches just so I could see the meticulously rendered trees and rocks around me.

After dismounting to rid a cave of some pesky vampires, I returned to the forest to find my stolen horse was nowhere to be found. At this point, I had trouble deciding if this was simply a realistic take on an unsecured, unmonitored horse wandering off or if I was the victim of a janky engine that couldn't keep track of my mount.

The camera gets stuck inside my character model, which is itself stuck in the scenery.

Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

The jank was a bit clearer when I randomly stumbled across my first Oblivion gate while wandering through the woods. As I activated the gate to find a world engulfed in brilliant fire, I was surprised to find an armed guard had also appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and apparently still mad about my long-lost stolen horse!

When I deactivated the gate in another attempt to escape justice, I found myself immediately stuck chest deep in the game's scenery, utterly unable to move as that hapless guard tried his best to subdue me. I ended up having to restore an earlier save, losing a few minutes of progress to a game engine that still has its fair share of problems.

What’s beneath the surface?

So far, I'm of two minds about Oblivion's overall world-building. When it comes to the civilized parts of the world, I'm relatively impressed. The towns seem relatively full during the daytime—both in terms of people and in terms of interesting buildings to explore or patronize. I especially enjoy the way every passerby seems to have a unique voice and greeting ready for me, even before I engage them directly. I even think it's kind of cute when these NPCs end a pleasant conversation with a terse "leave me alone!" or "stop talking to me!"

Conversations are engaging even if random passers-by seem intent on standing in the way.

Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

Even the NPCs that seem least relevant to the story seem to have their own deep backstory and motivations; I was especially tickled by an alchemist visiting from afar who asked if I knew the local fine for necrophilia. (It can't hurt to ask, right?) And discussing random rumors with everyone I meet has gone a long way toward establishing the social and political backstory of the world while also providing me with some engaging and far-flung side quests. There's a lot of depth apparent in these interactions, even if I haven't had the chance to come close to fully exploring it yet.

I bet there's a story behind that statue.

Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

On the other hand, the vast spaces in between the cities and towns seem like so much wasted space, at this point. I've quickly learned not to waste much time exploring caves or abandoned mines, which so far seem to house a few middling enemies guarding some relatively useless trinkets in treasure chests. The same goes for going out of my way to activate the various wayshrines and Ayelid Wells that dot the landscape, which have hardly seemed worth the trip (thus far, at least).

Part of the problem is that I've found Oblivion's early combat almost wholly unengaging so far. Even at a low level, my warrior-mage has been able to make easy work of every random enemy I've faced with a combination of long-range flare spells and close-range sword swings. It definitely doesn't help that I have yet to fight more than two enemies at once, or find a foe that seems to have two strategic brain cells to rub together. Compared to the engaging, tactical group combat of modern action RPGs like Elden Ring or Avowed, the battles here feel downright archaic.

I was hoping for some more difficult battles in a setting that is this foreboding.

Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

I found this was true even as I worked my way through closing my first Oblivion gate, which had recently left the citizens of Kvask as sympathetic refugees huddling on the outskirts of town. Here, I thought, would be some battles that required crafty tactics, powerful items, or at least some level grinding to become more powerful. Instead, amid blood-soaked corridors that wouldn't feel out of place in a Doom game, I found the most challenging speedbumps were mages that sponged up a moderate amount of damage while blindly charging right at me.

While I'm still decidedly in the early part of a game that can easily consume over 100 hours for a completionist, so far I'm having trouble getting past the most dated bits of Oblivion's design. Character design and vocal production that probably felt revolutionary two decades ago now feel practically standard for the genre, while technical problems and dull combat seem best left in the past. Despite a new coat of paint, this was one Remaster I found difficult to fully connect with so long after its initial release.

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One of the biggest stories of the year in gaming is growing, as Bethesda Game Studios shared on Friday via Bluesky that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered has already reached 4 million players.

"We are so grateful to the over 4 million of you that have already ventured into Cyrodiil with Oblivion Remastered. Thank you!" the studio's social media message reads.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered was officially unveiled on Tuesday after almost two years of leaks and rumors. The game was then made available on storefronts the same day as part of "shadow drop," letting players instantly jump in.

Developed primarily by Virtuos with support from Bethesda Game Studios, the game features new visuals rendered in Unreal Engine 5 as well as some new voice recordings, while the underlying Gamebryo engine has been adjusted but left relatively the same as the original 2006 release.

Now, obviously, 4 million players is not 4 million copies sold. All Xbox first-party games are available at launch through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, meaning subscribers can check a game out without paying anything extra.

Even so, it's still a noteworthy milestone, and it'll be interesting how much further it grows over time. Another Bethesda Softworks-published title, MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, reached 4 million players after launching on Xbox and PC in December 2024.

Right now, the majority of players seem to be enjoying their time with the game, though PC Game Pass users are currently waiting on an official fix after an update disabled DLSS upscaling in that version of the game.