News: Technology News

Google to court: we’ll change our Apple deal, but please let us keep Chrome

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 01:59:44 +0000

Google is offering a far more pared-down solution to the court’s ruling that it illegally monopolized search.

After its victory against Google in an antitrust trial earlier this year, the Department of Justice recently proposed a sweeping set of changes its search business. The DOJ put a lot on the table, demanding that Google sell its Chrome browser, syndicate its search results, and avoid exclusive deals with companies like Apple for default search placement. It even kept open the possibility of forcing an Android sale.

Now, Google has responded with a far simpler proposal: prohibit those default placement deals, and only for three years.

A court found Google liable for unlawfully monopolizing online search, and its remedies are supposed to reset the market, letting rivals fairly compete. Google (obviously) disagrees that it’s running a monopoly, but before it can appeal that underlying conclusion, it’s trying to limit the fallout if it loses.

Google’s justification is that search deals were at the heart of the case, so they’re what a court should target. Under the proposal, Google couldn’t enter deals with Android phone manufacturers that require adding mobile search in exchange for access to other Google apps. It couldn’t require phone makers to exclude rival search engines or third-party browsers. Browser companies like Mozilla would be given more flexibility in setting rival search engines as defaults.

Perhaps the biggest concession is that this agreement would specifically end Google’s long-running multibillion-dollar search deal with Apple. It would bar Google from entering agreements that make Google Search the default engine on any “proprietary Apple feature or functionality, including Siri and Spotlight” in the US — unless the deal lets Apple choose a different default search engine on its browser annually and “expressly permits” it to promote other search engines.

And in a nod to some DOJ concerns about Google locking out rival AI-powered search tools and chatbots, Google proposes it should be disallowed from requiring phone makers to add its Gemini Assistant mobile app in order to access other Google offerings.

The government has proposed ten years of restrictions, but Google’s counterproposal is only three — it argues nothing more is necessary because “the pace of innovation in search has been extraordinary” and regulating a “fast-changing industry” like search would slow innovation.

If the court accepts Google’s streamlined proposal over the DOJ’s, the company could lose out on some lucrative or strategically advantageous deals, but its business would remain intact. It wouldn’t have to spin out its Chrome browser or have the threat of an Android divestment order hanging over it. And it wouldn’t need to share many of the underlying signals that help it figure out how to serve useful search results, so that rivals could catch up and serve as a true competitive pressure, as the DOJ hopes.

Both Google and the DOJ’s proposals are essentially starting points from which the judge can work. But Google is betting it could have an easier time selling a simple proposal that addresses a major, specific problem raised in the trial. It’s positioning the government’s proposals as extreme and reaching beyond the scope of the judge’s earlier decision, perhaps — Google will likely tell the court — even in a way that could get overturned on appeal.

This hasn’t been received well by at least one of Google’s rivals, the search engine company DuckDuckGo. “Google’s proposal attempts to maintain the status quo and change as little as possible,” spokesperson Kamyl Bazbaz said in a statement. Both sides will argue their case in a federal court in Washington, DC beginning on April 22.

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X massively increases its Premium+ subscription prices globally

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:30:26 +0000

X has announced that it will increase the Premium+ subscription prices globally, with the new pricing structure taking effect on December 21, 2024. New subscribers will have to pay the revised rates immediately. However, if you are an existing X Premium+ subscriber and your next billing cycle starts before January 20, 2025, your prices will remain the same, and the new prices will be applicable on your next billing cycle.

Reportedly, the new X Premium+ pricing structure has come into effect after significant changes introduced by the platform for the Premium+ tier. Premium+ subscribers enjoy a completely ad-free experience, ensuring uninterrupted browsing. Additionally, on top of being ad-free, the Premium+ subscribers will also get access to some exclusive features such as "Radar," which will enjoy high-priority support from @Premium and access to advanced Grok AI capabilities.

Here's why X has hiked the Premium+ subscription prices:

Why the change?

Ads-free: X Premium+ is now completely ads-free, providing an uninterrupted browsing experience. This significant enhancement is reflected in the new pricing.

More features: As this update goes into effect today, Premium+ subscribers will enjoy higher priority support from @Premium, access to new features such as Radar, and higher limits on our most cutting-edge Grok AI models, ensuring you're always ahead of the curve. Increased pricing allows us to invest more into making Premium+ better and better over time.

Supporting creators: Your subscription now more directly fuels our evolving creator program. We’ve shifted our revenue share model to reward content quality and engagement rather than ad views alone. Your Premium+ subscription fee contributes to this new, more equitable system where creator earnings are tied to the overall value they bring to X, not impressions of ads.

With the new prices coming into effect, a Premium+ subscription in the US, which earlier cost $16/month, will now cost $22 a month (37.5% change). Also, the annual subscription cost has been hiked from $168 to $229. However, X hasn't tweaked the pricing structure of the basic subscription and it starts at $3. As noted by Tech Crunch, in some countries the price hike is pronounced. For instance, the Premium+ subscription in Nigeria has jumped from ₦7,300 to ₦34,000/month (365.75% change). Similarly, users in Turkey will have to pay ₺770/month for a Premium+ subscription up from ₺300/month (156.67% change).

For detailed pricing details, you can head over to the official X website.

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Following Stalker 2’s Success, Developer GSC Game World Contends With ‘This New Reality’

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:40:21 +0000

Following Stalker 2’s Success, Developer GSC Game World Contends With ‘This New Reality’

"We now have a really big audience."

By Wesley Yin-Poole Updated: Dec 23, 2024 9:05 am Posted: Dec 23, 2024 8:56 am

Stalker 2 is a hit. Officially, it’s sold one million copies across PC and Xbox Series X and S, with many more playing on Game Pass. Reports coming out of Ukraine, where developer GSC Game World was originally based before Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, indicate Stalker 2 is already profitable. There’s even talk of a Netflix series.

But what does this success mean for GSC Game World itself and the future of Stalker 2? IGN interviewed GSC CEO Ievgen Grygorovych and creative director Maria Grygorovych at BAFTA in Piccadilly, London following a screening of War Game: The Making of Stalker 2, to ask if Stalker 2’s big sales were a game-changer for the developer.

Discussing the impact of Stalker 2’s release in English, which is obviously not their first language, Ievgen and Maria talked about how the studio now faces “a new reality” and with it a bigger audience than it’s ever had to contend with. The first steps as part of this new reality will revolve around working to improve Stalker 2 itself, something GSC has already done with multiple patches, but also to expand its plans for continued support.

Ievgen and Maria Grygorovych, far right, discuss the making of Stalker 2 at BAFTA 195 Piccadilly. Photo by IGN.

“You need to think properly because we now have a really big audience and sometimes different parts of this audience want to see different things,” Maria cautioned.

“So we need to live now with this new reality, with a live community and talking with them and try to understand them maybe deeper because we really want to make our relationship good.”

Ievgen went into more detail, saying that while GSC’s plan for the development of future video games remains unchanged, it plans to invest even more in post-launch support of Stalker 2 than it had previously earmarked.

“Around five years ago or maybe six years ago, we had a plan of what we were going to do in the nearest 10, 15 years,” he revealed. “What projects we want to do, how we're going to look like. And all these years we are slightly updating this plan by just moving the dates forward until we release the game.

“And so six years passed and we still want to do the same games as we planned earlier and nothing changed. The only things that changed is that we didn't think that we would like to invest much more time in live updates of

Stalker 2 after game release, that we would want to add much more things in this game in live updates.”

What does this mean for Stalker 2 and its players, then? Ievgen confirmed that GSC is now in a position to add ideas it was forced to cut from the game before launch because they weren’t ready, and even add new ideas that have sprung up in the wake of Stalker 2’s release.

“We didn't expect that we would go back to improving Stalker 2 for a lot,” Ievgen explained. “And now we still have the same plan for 10, 15 years of development of other things we want. But also putting much more in development of Stalker 2.

“Because actually I love the world we built. I still find a lot of things that we can make better and we want to make better. And now we have players for whom we can do that, for whom we have to do that. And for me it's very driving.”

Those same reports coming out of Ukraine suggest Stalker 2 will get at least two expansions and even multiplayer, which may be one of the ideas Ievgen was talking about. The hope, it seems, is that Stalker 2’s success could help put Ukraine on the game development map, as CD Projekt’s The Witcher 2 had done for Poland.

In the shorter term, updates to fix issues with Stalker 2 continue, including a much-needed patch that improved the crucial A-Life 2.0 feature. Previously, GSC explained what went wrong with Stalker 2’s A-Life 2.0.

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Paul's Tech News - These Might Be The Last RTX 5090 Leaks… [Video]

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 19:02:59 +0000

Paul's Hardware (1.49M subscribers)

December 22, 2024

Video length: 10m 27s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - Dec 22, 2024

1:54 ZOTAC confirms GeForce RTX 5090 w/ 32GB GDDR7 memory, 5080 and 5070 listed

3:51 High demand for Intel's Arc B580 as retailers receive weekly restocks

4:56 Intel Arc B570 accidentally ships one month ahead of launch

5:42 AMD’s CEO Lisa Su Refutes “Wild” Intel-AMD Merger Rumors

6:30 AMD reportedly discontinues Radeon RX 7900 GRE

TECH BRIEFS

7:24 Lenovo next-gen Legion Go launch January 7, Valve’s SteamOS involved

8:12 Ridiculously Good Designs at the Case Mod World Series

8:49 Google debuts new AI video generator Veo 2

9:21 Steam Winter Sale is on!

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Microsoft Weekly: more bugs in Windows 11 24H2, final builds, and more

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:41:02 +0000

In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we recap a rather quiet week ahead of the holidays. We have a bunch of new Windows 11 version 24H2 bugs, some gaming news, Office updates, an overview of everything Microsoft deprecated in Windows 10 and 11 in 2024, and more.

Table of contents:

Windows 10 and 11 news
Windows Insider Program
Updates are available
Reviews are in
Gaming news

Windows 11 and 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 but still supported versions.

This week, Microsoft acknowledged more bugs in Windows 11 version 24H2. One affects gamers with the Auto HDR feature on Windows 11. If you use Auto HDR, version 24H2 will not be offered to you due to reported game crashes, display discolorations, and other annoyances. The second bug is not related to gaming, and it causes issues with audio output on systems with certain drivers.

If you do not like the limited set of features in Windows 11's built-in battery indicator, this small third-party app can help you. Battery Flyout is a new app that brings a proper flyout with a few extra features like a battery graph, a power mode slider, and a list of your Bluetooth accessories with their battery levels.

For those still sticking to Windows 10, Microsoft published an extensive list of various gaming features that Windows 11 brings to the table. If you play a lot of games on your PC, some of them might tempt you to pull the trigger and finally leave Windows 10 behind.

We are finishing this week's rather slim Windows 11 and 10 section with the annual list of deprecated and removed features. You can check out this article to learn more about what Microsoft removed or deprecated in its operating systems in 2024.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft Released this week for testing in the Windows Insider Program:

	Windows 11	Windows 10
Canary Channel	-	Not Applicable
Dev Channel	Build 26120.2705	Not Applicable
Beta Channel	-	Not Applicable
Release Preview Channel	-	-

With only one Windows 11 preview build released this week, Microsoft announced the end of 2024 for the Windows Insider Program. The next update is expected in January 2025, just like Windows 10's and 11's optional non-security update.

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.

PowerToys received two updates this week. One was a major release to version 0.87. It introduced a new tool for Windows 10 users and improved a lot of existing utilities. Shortly after, a minor update landed with some quick patches.

Despite the overall slowdown due to holidays, Microsoft continues shipping updates for its products, namely the Office suite. For one, the company released a new Python tool that lets you convert files and office documents to Markdown. The Microsoft 365 app is getting a new icon with a reworked user interface somewhere in 2025.

Microsoft also acknowledged that it did not fix the 0x80049dd3 sign-in Outlook bug. As for some positive Outlook news, Microsoft is working on improvements to the offline mode in the new Outlook app for Windows.

Finally, Microsoft fixed activation issues in Office 2024 and offered a workaround for users facing the "license deactivated soon" error in Microsoft 365.

For Microsoft Edge users, the company released a security update that patched four vulnerabilities. Microsoft also shared some interesting stats about Edge usage in 2024, revealing that the browser saved over 7 million megabytes of memory thanks to the Sleeping Tabs feature. You can check out more information here.

Other notable updates include the following:

And here are the newest drivers released this week:

Intel 32.0.101.6325 WHQL and 32.0.101.6253 Non-WHQL with fixes for Arc B-Series cards.
Intel Wi-Fi and Bluetooth driver 23.100.0

Reviews are in

Here is hardware and software we reviewed this week.

Robbie Khan conducted a head-to-head comparison of three controllers: GameSir Tarantula Pro, NYXI Master P1, and BEITONG Asura 2Pro+ NearLink. All three models have some nice features and quirks, but some of them are significantly worse than competitors. If you are in the market for a new controller, check out the review here.

If three controllers are not enough, here is a detailed review of the GameSir Cyclone 2, a gamepad with great specs, solid performance, and a decent price tag. There are only a few minor downsides, like a cheap USB cable and a quirky trigger mode switch.

Steven Parker reviewed the TerraMaster T12-500 Pro, an affordable network-attached storage for small and medium-sized businesses that can also work well in home environments. It has great build quality, solid hardware, dual 10Gbps ports, and is one of the latest low-powered Intel processors. The price is not cheap, but you get a lot for the money.

On the gaming side

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

Machine Games released an update for Indiana Jones and The Great Circle to address lighting issues on Xbox, DLSS bugs on PC, and various gameplay problems in the game.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl also received a big update. In fact, the changelog lists over 1,800 bug fixes and critical improvements for the simulation engine.

There are new signs that Microsoft is bringing more classic Call of Duty games to Game Pass. This week, users noticed that titles like Call of Duty: Ghosts, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: WWII, and Call of Duty: Black Ops III landed in the Microsoft Store.

If you play games on a PC with an Nvidia graphics card, pay attention to the new Nvidia app. Users noticed that it causes significant performance downgrades, with some titles losing up to 15% fps. As it later turned out, toggling one feature off in the app restores the lost performance.

PC gamers can also check out Steam Replay 2024, a yearly gaming recap with interesting stats and cool facts, such as the most popular game of the year, genre breakdown, overall gameplay time, and more. By the way, Microsoft launched a similar thing earlier this month.

Nvidia expanded the list of available games on GeForce NOW with four new titles: NieR:Automata, NieR Replicant, Replikant Chat, and Zenless Zone Zero.

Deals and freebies

Steam's Winter Sale is now in full swing, giving you a chance to purchase multiple games at big discounts from December 19 to January 2. Also, the Epic Games Store gives away a new game every day, so be sure to check the store for some new freebies.

As usual, more deals and specials are available in our weekly Weekend PC Game Deals series.

Other gaming news include the following:

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10 products and services Google killed in 2024

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:38:50 +0000

We will enter the year 2025 in a few days. It is that time of the year when we get to see tech recaps of various products and services. So far, we have seen recaps from services, including YouTube Music, YouTube on TV, Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay, and Google Photos.

You can also check out the top tech controversies of 2024 and what features Microsoft removed from Windows 10 and Windows 11 this year.

Google, being one of the major technology giants out there, has offered a lot throughout the year. While it launched new Gemini features for different products, it pulled the plug on others. Let's recap various products and services Google killed in 2024.

Chromecast (hardware)

2024 marks the end of Google's popular line of streaming dongles, Chromecast. The first Chromecast device came out in 2013 for $35, with the power to convert virtually any TV with an HDMI port into a smart TV.

A unique selling point of the Chromecast dongle was it allowed users to stream content without the hassle of installing and updating apps. It relied on a proprietary technology called Google Cast (which continues to exist) that allowed smartphone apps to display content on the big screen.

A cast button in compatible apps, such as YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, and others, allows them to connect to the big screen. The search giant has replaced Chromecast hardware with a new set-top box called Google TV Streamer.

Google Jamboard

Jamboard was a giant "collaborative, digital whiteboard" Google introduced in 2017 to rival Microsoft's Surface Hub. It had a 55-inch touchscreen display with support for 4K resolution, priced at $4,999 at the time (extra $1,199 for the stand). It was a collaborative device that ran a specialized version of Android and relied on Google G Suite apps.

The touchscreen device, weighing about 50 Kg, included a webcam, speakers, microphone, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, Type-C, HDMI, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and NFC. Google announced that Jamboard will stop getting automatic updates after September 30 and that the app will go out of service on December 31, 2024.

Google Podcasts

Google Podcasts began its journey in 2018 as a standalone app for Android. It was another attempt at reviving podcasts years after the demise of Google Listen and podcast support in the Google Play Music app.

Fast forward to 2023, the search giant realized users prefer YouTube over Google Podcasts. Hence, it decided to pull the plug on its app again and bring podcasting features to YouTube Music to make it the new "centralized podcast destination."

Users were denied access to the service in April this year and were offered tools to migrate their podcast subscriptions to YouTube Music. Those wanting to switch to a different podcast app could download an OPML file to migrate their data.

Original Pixel Fold, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro

2024 was also the year when Google discontinued the original Pixel Fold smartphone, along with the Pixel 7 and Pixel Pro. It wasn't seen as a surprising move because Google launched the Pixel 9 Pro Fold to fill the void.

Google's first foldable packed 7.6-inch 2208x1840p 120Hz OLED display as primary, Tensor G2 SoC, 12GB LPDDR5 RAM, up to 512GB UFS 3.1 storage, and a total of five cameras, among various features. The device will continue to receive five years of OS and security updates from the date it became available in the US.

Stack (PDF Scanner)

Google once had a PDF scanner app called Stack. It allowed users to turn documents into PDF files and keep things organized by putting the PDF files in categories called "stacks." The app could identify important information from documents, such as a bill's due date.

Launched in 2021, Stack was an experimental offering from Google's in-house incubator Area 120 and its DocAI team. The company announced in June this year that it will discontinue Stack and pull support for the legacy PDF scanner from the fourth week of September.

Play Movies & TV

Google Play Movies & TV was discontinued earlier this year to streamline the company's video content services and consolidate them into YouTube and Google TV. As of January 2024, Google is finally done and dusted with the service. Buying or renting titles through Google Play Movies & TV on Android TV or the Google Play website is not possible anymore.

It took a couple of years for Google to wrap up the service. The search giant previously removed Movies & TV from the Google Play app and migrated Android/iOS users to the Google TV app, where they can rent, buy, and stream movies and TV shows.

Gmail Basic HTML View

Google discontinued the Basic HTML View for Gmail earlier this year, automatically switching users to the Standard View. The feature that had existed for years was designed to offer backward compatibility when using legacy web browsers or slower connections.

Compared to Standard View, Basic HTML View lacked features such as rich formatting, chat support, contact import, and, lately, Gemini integration. However, it served as an accessibility feature for screen reader users; Google published some support documents to help with the transition.

VPN by Google One

VPN by Google One got tanked this year on June 20, 2024. The service offered as part of Google One subscriptions since 2020 was designed to provide "an extra layer of online protection for your Android phone" by masking its IP address and encrypting traffic.

One of the reasons behind the early demise of the service was the lack of enough traction. A Google spokesperson said at the time that their team "found people simply weren’t using it." The company will continue offering the built VPN in Pixel 7 later devices and via Google Fi Wireless.

Keen

Keen was another experimental project from Area 120 meant to rival Pinterest. The platform allowed users to create collections (called "keens") of online content based on their interests and share them. Google shut down Keen (via Killed by Google) on March 24, 2024, and deleted all the data, including posts, uploads, links, follows, and comments.

Dropcam

The year 2024 also ended the Dropcam line of Wi-Fi security cameras. Following rumors, Google acquired its parent company, Dropcam Inc., in 2014 and announced Nest Cam as the successor to the Dropcam Pro camera a year later.

Google dropped support for Dropcam and Dropcam Pro cameras on April 8, 2024, barring their users from using the Nest app to check the status of the cameras, view live streams, get notifications, or change settings.

If you think this list misses something, please drop your thoughts in the comments.

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Ars Technica’s top 20 video games of 2024

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:37:24 +0000

A relatively light year still had its fair share of interactive standouts.

When we introduced last year's annual list of the best games in this space, we focused on how COVID delays led to a 2023 packed with excellent big-name blockbusters and intriguing indies that seemed to come out of nowhere. The resulting flood of great titles made it difficult to winnow the year's best down to our traditional list of 20 titles.

In 2024 we had something close to the opposite problem. While there were definitely a few standout titles that were easy to include on this year's list (Balatro, UFO 50, and Astro Bot likely chief among them), rounding out the list to a full 20 proved more challenging than it has in perhaps any other year during my tenure at Ars Technica (way back in 2012!). The games that ended up on this year's list are all strong recommendations, for sure. But many of them might have had more trouble making a Top 20 list in a packed year like 2023.

We'll have to wait to see if the release calendar seesaws back to a quality-packed one in 2025, but the forecast for big games like Civilization 7, Avowed, Doom: The Dark Ages, Grand Theft Auto 6, and many, many more has us thinking that it might. In the meantime, here are our picks for the 20 best games that came out in 2024, in alphabetical order.

Animal Well

Billy Basso; Windows, PS5, Xbox X/S, Switch

The Metroidvania genre has started to feel a little played out of late. Go down this corridor, collect that item, go back to the wall that can only be destroyed by said item, explore a new corridor for the next item, etc. Repeat until you've seen the entire map or get too bored to continue.

Animal Well eschews this paint-by-numbers design and brings back the sense of mystery inherent to the best games in the genre. This is done in part by some masterful pixel-art graphics, which incorporate some wild 2D lighting effects and detailed, painterly sprite world. The animations—from subtle movements of the lowliest flower to terrifying, screen-filling actions from the game's titular giant animals—are handled with equal aplomb.

But Animal Well really shines in its often inscrutable map and item design. Many key items in the game have multiple uses that aren't fully explained in the game itself, requiring a good deal of guessing, checking, and observation to figure out how to exploit fully. Uncovering the arcane secrets of the game's multiple environmental blocks is often far from obvious and rewards players who like to experiment and explore.

Those arcane secrets can sometimes seem too obtuse for their own good—don't be surprised if you have to consult an outside walkthrough or work with someone to bust past some of the most inscrutable barriers put in your way. If you soldier through, though, you'll have been on one of the most memorable journeys of its type.

-Kyle Orland

Astro Bot

Team Asobi; PS5

Astro Bot is an unlikely success story. The team that made it, Studio Asobi, was for years dedicated to making small-scale projects that were essentially glorified tech demos for Sony's latest hardware. First there was The Playroom, which was just a collection of small experiences made to show off the features of the PlayStation 4's camera peripheral. Then there was Astro Bot Rescue Mission, which acted as a showcase for the first PlayStation VR headset.

But momentum really picked up with Astro's Playroom, the bite-size 2020 3D platformer that was bundled with every PlayStation 5—again to show off the hardware features. When I played it, my main thought was, "I really wish this team would make a full-blown game."

That's exactly what Astro Bot is: a 15-hourlong 3D platformer with AAA production values, with no goal other than just being an excellent game. Like its predecessors, it fully leverages all the hardware features of the PlayStation 5, and it's loaded with Easter eggs and fan service for players who've been playing PlayStation consoles for three decades.

Like many 3D platformers, it's a collect-a-thon. In this case, you're gathering more than 300 little robot friends. All of them are modeled after characters from other games that defined the PlayStation platform, from Resident Evil to Ico to The Last of Us, from the obscure to the well-known.

Between those Easter eggs, the tightly designed gameplay, and the upbeat music, there's an ever-present air of joy and celebration in Astro Bot—especially for players who get the references. But even if you've never played any of the games it draws on, it's an excellent 3D platformer—perhaps the best released on any platform in the seven years since 2017's Super Mario Odyssey.

The PlayStation 5 will arguably be best remembered for beefy open-world games, serious narrative titles, and multiplayer shooters. Amid all that, I don't think anybody expected one of the best games ever released for the console to be a platformer that in some ways would feel more at home on the PlayStation 2—but that's what happened, and I'm grateful for the time I spent with it.

The only negative thing I have to say about it is that because of how it leverages the specific features of the DualSense controller, it's hard to imagine it'll ever be playable for anyone who doesn't own that device.

Is it worth buying a PS5 just to play Astro Bot? Probably not—as beefy as it is compared to Astro's Playroom, there's not enough here to justify that. But if you have one and you haven't played it yet, get on it, because you're missing out.

-Samuel Axon

Balatro

LocalThunk; Windows, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, Switch, MacOS, iOS, Android

At first glance, video poker probably seems a bit too random to serve as the basis of yet another rogue-like deck-builder experience. As anyone who's been to Atlantic City can tell you, video poker's hold-and-draw hand-building involves only the barest hint of strategy and is designed so the house always wins.

The genius of Balatro, then, is in the layers of strategy it adds to this simple, easy-to-grasp poker hand base. The wide variety of score or hand-modifying jokers that you purchase in between hands can be arranged in literally millions of combinations, each of which can change the way a particular run goes in ways both large and small. Even the most powerful jokers can become nearly useless if you run into the wrong debuffing Boss Blind, forcing you to modify your strategy mid-run to keep the high-scoring poker hands coming.

Then you add in a complex in-game economy, powerful deck-altering arcana cards, dozens of Deck and Stake difficulty options, and a Challenge Mode whose hardest options have continued to thwart me even after well over 100 hours of play. The result is a game that's instantly compelling and as addictive as a heater at a casino, only without the potential to lose your mortgage payment to a series of bad bets.

-Kyle Orland

The Crimson Diamond

Julia Minamata; Windows, Mac

Would you like to spend some time in a rural vacation town in Ontario, Canada, doing mineralogy fieldwork in the off-season? A better question, then: Would you like to go there in 16-color EGA, wandering through a classic adventure game, text parser and all?

The Crimson Diamond is one of the most intriguing gaming trips I took this year. It’s an achievement in creative constraints, a cozy mystery, and an ear-catching soundtrack. It was made by a solo Canadian developer, inside Adventure Game Studio, with some real work put into upgrading the text parser and (optional) mouse experience with reasonable quality-of-life concessions. The charming but mysterious plot gently pulls you along from one wonderfully realized 1980s-era IBM backdrop to the next. It feels like playing a game you forgot to unbox, except this one actually plays without a dozen compatibility tricks.

We are awash in game remasters and light remakes that toy with our memories of old systems and forgotten genres (and having a lot more time to play games). The Crimson Diamond does something much more interesting, finding just the right new story and distinct style to port backward to a bygone era. It’s worth the clicks for any fan of pointing, clicking, and investigating.

-Kevin Purdy

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

From Software; Windows, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series

Credit: Bandai Namco

You can tell downloadable content has come a long way when we deign to put a piece of DLC on our best-games-of-the-year list in 2024.

Released two years after the megaton zeitgeist hit that was the original Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree bucks just as many modern gaming conventions as its base game did. Yes, it's DLC because it's digitally distributed add-on content, but while most AAA games get DLC that adds about 5–10 hours of stuff to do, Shadow of the Erdtree's scope actually fell somewhere between a full sequel and the expansions you'd buy in separate retail boxes for PC games in the 1990s and 2000s. It adds a large new landmass to explore, with multiple additional "legacy dungeons" and tentpole bosses, plus new mechanics and weapons aplenty.

Additionally, the game's designers cleverly mapped a whole new system on top of the base game's player levels and equipment, ensuring that you could still get the same satisfying sense of power progression, regardless of how deeply you'd gotten into the Elden Ring base game previously. Shadow of the Erdtree attracted some criticism for its sharp difficulty—even more so than the base game—but the same satisfying progression from hopelessness to triumph through perseverance as we enjoyed in 2022 is in play here.

As such, everything that was great about Elden Ring is also great about Shadow of the Erdtree. You could cynically call it more of the same, but when what we're getting more of is so delicious, it's hard to complain—especially given that this expansion includes some of the most compelling and original bosses in From Software history.

It didn't convert anyone who didn't dig the original, but fortunately that still left it with an audience of millions of people who were excited for a new challenge. Its impressive polish and scope land it on this list.

-Samuel Axon

Frostpunk 2

11 bit studios; Windows, Mac (ARM-based); PlayStation, Xbox (coming in 2025)

Credit: 11 Bit Studios

The first Frostpunk asked if you could make the terrible decisions necessary for survival in a never-ending blizzard. Frostpunk 2 asks you to manage something different, but no less dire: helping these people who managed to hold on keep their nascent civilization together. You can go deep with the fascists, the mystics, the hard-nosed realists, or the science nerds or try to play them all off one another to keep the furnace going.

It’s stressful, and it’s not at all easy, and the developers may have done too good a job of recreating the insane demands and interplay of human factions. The interface and navigation, sore spots on launch, have received a lot of attention, and the roadmap for the game into 2025 looks intriguing. I’d probably recommend starting with the first game before diving into this, but Frostpunk 2 is an accomplished, confident game in its own right. Human failings amidst an unfeeling snowpocalypse make for some engaging scenes.

-Kevin Purdy

Halls of Torment

Chasing Carrots; Windows, Linux, iOS, Android

Credit: Chasing Carrots

The isometric demon-killing of the old-school Diablo games has endured over the decades, especially among those who remember playing in their youth. But the whole concept has been in need of a bit of an update now that we're in the age of Vampire Survivors and its "Bullet Heaven" auto-shooter ilk.

Enter Halls of Torment, a game that is probably as close as it comes to aping old-school Diablo's visual style without being legally actionable. Here, though, all the lore and story and exploration of the Diablo games has been replaced by a lot more enemies, all streaming toward your protagonist at the rate of up to 50,000 per hour. Much like Vampire Survivors, the name of the game here is dodging through those small holes in those swarms of enemies while your character automatically fills the screen with devastating attacks (that slowly level up as you play).

The wide variety of different playable classes—each with their own distinct strengths, weaknesses, and unique attack patterns—help each run feel distinct, even after you've smashed through the game's limited set of six environments. But there's plenty of cathartic replay value here for anyone who just wants to cause as much on-screen carnage as possible in a very short period of time.

-Kyle Orland

Helldivers 2

Arrowhead Game Studios; Windows, PS5

Credit: PlayStation/Arrowhead

Every so often, a multiplayer game releases to almost universal praise, and for a few months, seemingly everyone is talking about it. This year, that game was Helldivers 2. The game converted the 2015 original’s top-down shoot-em-up gameplay into third-person shooter action, and the switch-up was enough to bring in tons of players. Taking more than a few cues from Starship Troopers, the game asks you to "spread democracy" throughout the galaxy by mowing down hordes of alien bugs or robots during short-ish missions on various planets. Work together with your team, and the rest of the player base, to slowly liberate the galaxy.

I played Helldivers 2 mostly as a “hang out game,” something to do with my hands and eyes as I chatted with friends. You can play the game “seriously,” I guess, but that would be missing the point for me. My favorite part of Helldivers 2 is just blowing stuff up—bugs, buildings, and, yes, even teammates. Friendly fire is a core part of the experience, and whether by accident or on purpose, you will inevitably end up turning your munitions on your friends. My bad!

Some controversial balance patches put the game into a bit of an identity crisis for a while, but things seem to be back on track. I’ll admit the game didn’t have the staying power for me that it seemed to for others, but it was undeniably a highlight of the year.

-Aaron Zimmerman

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

MachineGames; Windows, PS5, Xbox Series X/S

Credit: Bethesda / MachineGames

A new game based on the Indiana Jones license has a lot to live up to, both in terms of the films and TV shows that inspired it and the well-remembered games that preceded it. The Great Circle manages to live up to those expectations, crafting the most enjoyable Indy adventure in years.

The best part of the game is contained in the main storyline, captured mainly in exquisitely madcap cut scenes featuring plenty of the pun-filled, devil-may-care quipiness that Indy is known for. Voice actor Troy Baker does a great job channeling Harrison Ford (by way of Jeff Goldblum) as Indy, while antagonist Emmerich Voss provides all the scenery-chewing Nazi shenanigans you could want from the ridiculous, magical-realist storyline.

The stealth-action gameplay is a little more pedestrian but still manages to distinguish itself with suitably crunchy melee combat and the enjoyable improvisation of attacking Nazis with everyday items, from wrenches to plungers. And while the puzzles and side-quests can feel a bit basic at times, there are enough hidden trinkets in out-of-the-way corners to encourage completionists to explore every inch of the game's intricately detailed open-world environments.

It's just the kind of light-hearted, escapist, exploratory fun we need in these troubled times. Welcome back, Indy! We missed you!

-Kyle Orland

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Nintendo; Switch

After decades and decades of Zelda games where you don't actually play as Zelda, there was a lot of pressure on a game where you finally get to control the princess herself as the protagonist (those CD-i monstrosities from the '90s are best forgotten). Fortunately, Zelda's turn in full control of her own series captures the franchise's old-school, light-hearted adventuring fun with a few modern twists.

The main draw here is the titular "echo" abilities, which let Zelda copy enemies and objects that can be summoned in multiple copies with a special wand. This eventually opens up to allow for a number of inventive ways to solve some intricate puzzles in what feels like a heavily simplified version of Tears of the Kingdom's more complex crafting tools.

My favorite bit in Echoes of Wisdom, though, might be summoning copies of defeated enemies to fight new enemies in a kind of battle royale. As much as I love Link's sword-swinging antics (which are partially captured here), just watching these magical minions do my combat for me is more than half of the fun in Echoes of Wisdom.

Even without those twists, though, Echoes of Wisdom provides all the old-school 2D Zelda dungeon exploring you could hope for, and the lighthearted storyline to match. Here's hoping this isn't the last time we'll see Zelda taking a starring role in her own legends.

-Kyle Orland

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story

Digital Eclipse; Windows, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, Switch

I went into this latest Digital Eclipse playable museum as someone who had only a passing familiarity with Jeff Minter. I knew him mainly as a revered game development elder with a penchant for psychedelic graphics and an association with Tempest 2000. Then I spent hours devouring The Jeff Minter Story on my Steam Deck during a long flight, soaking in the full history of a truly unique character in the annals of gaming history.

The emulated games on this collection are actually pretty hit or miss, from a modern game design perspective. But the collection of interviews and supporting material on offer here are top-notch, putting each game into the context of the time and of Minter's personal journey through an industry that was still in its infancy. I especially liked the scanned versions of Minter's newsletter, sent to his early fans, which included plenty of diatribes and petty dramas about his game design peers and the industry as a whole.

There are few other figures in the early history of games that would merit this kind of singular focus—even early games were too often the collaborative product of larger companies with a more corporate focus (as seen in Digital Eclipse's previous Atari 50. But I reveled in this opportunity to get to know Minter better for his unique and quixotic role in early gaming history.

-Kyle Orland

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Simogo; Windows, PS4/5, Switch

You'd be forgiven for finding Lorelei and the Laser Eyes at least a little pretentious. Everything from the black-and-white presentation—laced with only the occasional flash of red for emphasis —to the Twin Peaks-style absurdist writing to the grand pronouncements on the Importance and Beauty of Art make for a game that feels like it's trying a little too hard, at points.

Push past that surface, though, and you'll find one of the most intricately designed interactive puzzle boxes ever committed to bits and bytes. Lorelei goes well beyond the simple tile-pushing and lock-picking tasks that are laughably called "puzzles" in most other adventure games. The mind-teasers here require real out-of-the-box thinking, careful observation of the smallest environmental details, and multi-step deciphering of arcane codes.

This is a game that's not afraid to cut you off from massive chunks of its content if you're not able to get past a single near-inscrutable locked door puzzle—don't feel bad if you need to consult a walkthrough at some point to move on. It's also a game that practically requires a pen and paper notes to keep track of all the moving pieces—your notebook will look like the scribblings of a madman by the time you're done.

And you may actually feel a little mad as you try to unravel the meaning of the game's multiple labyrinthine layers and self-aware, time-bending, magical-realist storyline. When it all comes together at the end, you may just find yourself surprisingly moved not just by the intricate design, but by that oft-pretentious plot as well.

-Kyle Orland

Metal Slug Tactics

Leikir Studio; Windows, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, Switch

Credit: Dotemu

Good tactics games are all about how the game plays in your mind. How many ways can you overcome this obstacle, maximize this turn, and synergize your squad’s abilities? So it’s a very nice bonus when such a well-made pile of engaging decisions also happens to look absolutely wonderful and capture the incredibly detailed sense of motion of a legendary run-and-gun franchise.

That’s Metal Slug Tactics, and it’s one of the most surprising successes of 2024. It delivers the look and feel of a franchise that isn’t easy to get right, and it translates those games’ feeling of continuous motion into turn-based tactics. The more you move, shoot, and team up each turn, the better you’ll do. You can do a level or two on a subway ride, crank out a rogue-ish run on a lunch break, and keep getting rewarded with new characters, unlocks, and skill tree branches.

If you’re always contemplating a replay of Final Fantasy Tactics, but might like a new challenge, consider giving this unlikely combination of goofy arcade revival and deep strategy a go.

-Kevin Purdy

Parking Garage Rally Circuit

Walaber Entertainment; Windows

The rise of popular, ultra-detailed racing sims like Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport has coincided with a general decline in the drift-heavy, arcadey side of the genre. Titles like Ridge Racer Sega Rally or even Crazy Taxi now belong more in the industry's nostalgic memories than its present top-sellers.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit is doing its best to bring the arcade racer genre back single-handedly. The game's perfectly tuned drifting controls make every turn a joyful sliding experience, complete with chainable post-drift boosts for those who want to tune that perfect speedy line. It captures that great feeling of being just on the edge of losing control, while still holding onto the edge of that perfect drift.

It all takes place, as the name implies, winding up, down, over, and through some well-designed parking garages. Each track's short laps (which take a minute or less) ensure you can practically memorize the best paths after just a little bit of play. But the stopped cars and large traffic dividers provide for some hilarious physics-based crashes when your racing line does go wrong.

The game earns extra nostalgia points for a variety of visual effects and graphics options that accurately mimic Dreamcast-era consoles and/or emulation-era PC hardware. But the game's extensive online leaderboards and ghost-racers help it feel like a decidedly modern take on a classic genre.

-Kyle Orland

Pepper Grinder

Ahr Ech; Windows, MacOS, Linux, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, Switch

It's amazing how far a platform game can get on nothing more than a novel control scheme. Pepper Grinder is a case in point here, based around a tiny, blue-haired protagonist who uses an oversized drill to tunnel through soft ground like some kind of human-machine-snake hybrid.

Navigating through the dirt in large, undulating curves is fun enough, but the game really shines when Pepper bursts out through the top layer of dirt in large, arcing jumps. Chaining these together, from dirt clump to dirt clump, is the most instantly compelling new 2D navigation scheme we've seen in years and creates some beautiful, almost balletic curves through the levels once you've mastered it.

The biggest problem with Pepper Grinder is that the game is over practically before it really gets going. And while some compelling time-attack and item-collection challenges help to extend the experience a bit, we really hope some new DLC or a proper sequel is coming soon to give us a new excuse to wind our way through the dirt.

-Kyle Orland

The Rise of the Golden Idol

Color Gray Games; Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, Switch

In 2022, The Case of the Golden Idol proved that details like a controllable protagonist or elaborate cut scenes are unnecessary for a good murder mystery-solving puzzle adventure. All you need is a series of lightly animated vignettes, a way to uncover the smallest hidden details in those vignettes, and a fill-in-the-blanks interface to let you piece together the disparate clues.

As a follow-up, Rise moves the 18th-century setting of the original into the 20th century, bringing the mysterious, powerful idol to the attention of both academic scientists and mass media executives who seek to exploit its mind-altering powers. From your semi-omniscient perspective, you have to figure out not just the names and motivations of those pulled into the idol's orbit, but the somewhat inscrutable powers of the idol itself.

Rise adds a few interesting new twists, like the ability to scrub through occasional video animations for visual clues and the ability to track certain scenes throughout multiple times of day. At its core, though, this is an extension of the best-in-class, pure deductive reasoning gameplay we saw in the original game, with a slightly more modern twist. This is yet another 2024 favorite that requires strong attention to detail and logical inference from very small hints.

It all comes together in a satisfying conclusion that leaves the door wide open for a sequel that we can't wait for.

-Kyle Orland

Satisfactory

Coffee Stain Studios; Windows

Danish publisher Coffee Stain makes gaming success seem so simple. Put a game with a goofy feel, a corporate dystopia, and complex systems into early access. Iterate, cultivate feedback and a sense of ownership with the community. Take your time, refine, and then release the game, without any revenue-grabbing transactions or add-ons, beyond fun cosmetics. They did it with Deep Rock Galactic, and they’ve done it again with Satisfactory. By the time the game hit 1.0, the only thing left to add was “Premium plumbing.”

It’s remarkably fun to live on the bad-guy side of The Lorax, exploiting a planet’s natural resources to create a giant factory system producing widgets for corporate wellbeing. The first-person perspective might seem odd for game with such complex systems, but it heightens your sense of accomplishment. You didn’t just choose to put a conveyor belt between that ore extractor and that fabricator; you personally staked out that deposit, and your ran the track yourself.

The systems are incredibly deep, but it can be quite relaxing to wander around your planet-sized industrial park, thinking up ways that things might run better, faster, with no interruptions. It’s the kind of second job you’re happy to buy into, giving you a deep sense of accomplishment for learning the ins and outs of this system, even as it gently mocks you for engaging with it. Satisfactory has itself worked for years to refine the most efficient gameplay for its bravest fans, and now it’s ready to employ the rest of us.

-Kevin Purdy

Sixty Four

Oleg Danilov; Windows, Mac

I try not to think about, or write about, games in the manner of “dollars to enjoyment ratio.” Games often get cheaper over time, everybody enjoys them differently, and they’re art, too, as well as commerce. But, folks, come on: $6 for Sixty Four? If you play it for one hour and just smile a few times at its oddities and tiny cubes, that was less than a big-city latte or beer.

But you will almost certainly play Sixty Four for more than one hour, and maybe many more hours than that if you enjoy games with systems, building, and resources. You build and place machines to extract resources, use those resources to fund new and better machines, rearrange your machines, and eventually create beautiful workflows that are largely automated. Why do you do this? It’s a fun, dark mystery.

The game looks wonderful in its SimCity 2000/3000-esque style. It can be mentally taxing, but you can’t really lose; you can even leave the game window open in the background while you convince your boss or remote work software that you’re otherwise productive. It’s a fever dream I’d recommend to most anybody, unless they dread a repeat of the many lost days to games like Factorio, Satisfactory, or even Universal Paperclips. Just wishlist it, in that case; what could go wrong?

-Kevin Purdy

Tactical Breach Wizards

Suspicious Developments; Windows

Credit: Suspicious Developments

What can you do to spice up turn-based tactics, a rather mature genre?

Tactical Breach Wizards adds future-seeing, time-bending, hex-placing wizards, for one thing. It refines the heck out of grid combat, for another, adding window-tossing and door-sealing into the mix, and giving enemies a much wider array of attacks than area-of-effect variations. Finally, it wraps this all up in an inventive sci-fi narrative, one with an engaging plot, characters that reveal themselves one quip at a time, and an overall sense of wonderment at a charming, bizarre world of militarized magic.

In other words, you could put some joy into your turn-based combat, while still offering intricate challenges and clever levels.

Tom Francis’ unique sense of humor, seen previously in Gunpoint and Heat Signature, is given space here to shine, and it’s a wonderful wrapper for all the missions and upgrade decisions. It’s pretty ridiculous to be a wizard, wielding a laser-scoped rifle that fires crystal energy, plotting how to hit three guards at once with your next blast. Tactical Breach Wizards knows this, jokes about it, and then celebrates with you when you pull it off. It’s both a hoot, and a very good shoot.

-Kevin Purdy

UFO 50

Mossmouth; Windows

In recent years, modern games have started evoking the blocky polygons and smeary textures of early 3D games to appeal to nostalgic 20- and 30-somethings. UFO 50 has its nostalgic foot placed firmly in an earlier generation of '80s and '90s console gaming, with a bit of early '00s Flash game design thrown in for good measure.

Flipping your way through the extremely wide variety of games on offer here is like an eminently enjoyable trip through random titles in an emulator's (legally obtained) classic ROMs folder—just set in an alternate universe. There are plenty of shmups and platform games befitting the ostensible gaming era being recreated—but you also get full-fledged strategy, puzzle, arcade, racing, adventure, and RPG titles, on top of a few so unique that I can't find any real historical genre analog for. These well-designed titles evoke the classics—everything from Bad Dudes and Bubble Bobble to Super Dodge Ball and Smash TV—without ever feeling like a simple rehash of games you remember from your youth.

While there's the usual spread of quality you'd expect from such a wide-ranging collection, even the worst-made title in UFO 50 shows a level of care and attention to detail that will delight anyone with even a passing interest in game design and/or history. Not every game in UFO 50 will be one of your all-time favorites, but I'd be willing to wager that any gamer of a certain age will find quite a few that will eat away plenty of pleasant, nostalgic hours.

-Kyle Orland

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The US finalizes CHIPS Act funding for Samsung and Texas Instruments

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 08:22:45 +0000

Samsung and Texas Instruments will receive over $6 billion combined for US chip manufacturing.

The US Commerce Department has awarded Samsung and Texas Instruments with a combined over $6 billion in “direct funding under the CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication,” according to a pair of announcements published on Friday.

Samsung will get the larger of the two awards at $4.745 billion. The Commerce Department says the company will use this as part of its planned $37 billion investment in Texas chip facilities that include two new “leading-edge logic fabs and an R&D fab” in Taylor, Texas, and the expansion of its plant in Austin.

The company was originally slated to receive $6.4 billion. In a statement reported by Bloomberg, the company said that its “mid-to-long-term investment plan has been partially revised to optimize overall investment efficiency,” which suggests the company has dialed back its plans, according to the outlet.

Texas Instruments will receive $1.61 billion to bolster the $18 billion it plans to spend on projects like constructing two wafer fabs in Texas and a third in Utah. The Commerce Department announced smaller awards this week too, including $407 million in funding for Amkor Technology, a US-based company that tests and packages chips for companies like Apple.

All three awards were announced earlier this year, with Samsung first in April, and they join other CHIPS Act funding grants given to companies like Micron, Intel, and TSMC. And their finalizations come with just under a month to go before Donald Trump, who has criticized the CHIPS Act, assumes the US Presidency on January 20th.

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Microsoft introduces Radar the Elf for this year's NORAD Santa Tracker

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 02:14:40 +0000

The official Santa Tracker from American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been refreshed for 2024. The tracker has existed for over two decades and has received several contributions from Microsoft.

Microsoft has added a new AI-powered chatbot called "Radar The Elf" this year, which takes questions and answers to enhance your Santa tracking experience. Christmas elves are often depicted as diminutive creatures with pointed ears and colorful attire. They live with Santa at the North Pole and act as his helpers.

To start using the chatbot, click on the radar button at the bottom left corner of the tracker webpage. A chatbox will appear where you can ask questions in natural language, and the chatbot will respond accordingly. For instance, you can ask questions like "Where is Santa now?" or "Does Santa get cold?" or "Do reindeer eat cookies?"

Microsoft's Radar the Elf can answer questions about Santa and NORAD in 133 languages. It also supports real-time language translation, allowing you to have multilingual interactions. The chatbot will adjust automatically if you ask the same question in multiple languages.

You can set your preferred language and allow cookies on the website; Radar will remember the language preferences for future interactions. "Even without cookies, Radar will use the first language chosen as the preferred language with each new session," Microsoft said in a blog post.

You can also click on any of the houses on the tracker webpage to access the library, play games, find Santa music, watch videos about Santa, and more. NORAD Santa Tracker will go live in about three and a half days when Santa will start his journey from the North Pole to travel around the world and deliver presents to children along the way.

If you're wondering how Santa will pull off the feat in a single night, "NORAD intelligence reports indicate that Santa does not experience time the way we do. It seems that Santa has this way of transcending time. We’ve estimated that he travels at the speed of starlight!" the chatbot responded.

The Santa Tracker is also available as an app for Android and iOS.

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Qualcomm scores BIG win against Arm, can continue to sell Snapdragon X chips for PCs

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 02:13:07 +0000

Qualcomm had properly licensed its central processor chips from Arm, though the jury delivered a mistrial.

The fate of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X processors got some good news tonight, as a jury found that the company properly licensed its chips from Arm Holdings, according to Reuters. Although the actual court case resulted in a mistrial, this fight between Arm and Qualcomm may not be over yet.

Because of today's result, the case could go to trial again, but Judge Maryellen Noreika, who presided over the case in the U.S. federal court in Delaware, had a better suggestion for both companies: Work it out in mediation. Noreika made this assertion under the belief that if the case went to trial again, there would be, once again, no clear victory.

From Reuters reporting on the verdict:

After more than nine hours of deliberations over two days, the eight-person jury in U.S. federal court could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether Nuvia, a startup that Qualcomm purchased for $1.4 billion in 2021, breached the terms of its license with Arm. But the jury found that Qualcomm did not breach Nuvia's license with Arm. The jury also found that Qualcomm's chips created using Nuvia technology, which have been central to Qualcomm's push into the personal computer market, are properly licensed under its own agreement with Arm, clearing the way for Qualcomm to continue selling them.

Just earlier today, we reported that Qualcomm expected to save up to $1.4 billion by reducing its reliance on Arm. Those numbers are in question, but today's verdict favors Qualcomm CEO Christiano Amon's bet on buying Nuvia in 2021.

Nuvia was started by ex-Apple and ex-Arm employees who originally sought to design all-new Arm-based chips for servers. However, Qualcomm swooped in with $1.4 billion to change their mind (and direction), instead making high-end processors for Windows PCs that could compete against Apple.

During the trial, Qualcomm claimed that 1% or less of its Oryon CPU core designs are based on Armv8 technology.

We also learned that only 720,000 PCs with Qualcomm chips were sold in Q3 2024, which appeared to be purely negative news. Qualcomm aims to capture 50% of the market within five years, but holding just a 0.8% share of sales in Q3 2024 is a weak beginning. Reportedly, Qualcomm chips power only 1.5% of all Windows PCs.

Following the verdict, Arm Holdings is down 1.75%, and Qualcomm is up 2% and climbing in after-hours trading.

The fate of Snapdragon X (Nuvia cores) was on the table

The new Surface Pro 11, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor (right), held its own against

Apple's famed MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3 processor.

(Image credit: Daniel Rubino)

Had Qualcomm been found liable for not properly licensing the tech from Arm, it could have been forced to cease selling its Snapdragon X processors, resulting in companies like ASUS, Acer, Microsoft, Dell, HP, and Lenovo pulling their products from their shelves. Moreover, it couldn’t release further iterations of the chip, whether scaled up or down, for future products.

Now that the jury found Qualcomm innocent, Arm loses much bargaining power in hopes of reaching a big financial payout from Qualcomm.

Of course, Arm could appeal and ask for a new trial, kicking the whole escapade down the road into 2025, but it seems more likely that the companies will come to a mediated agreement in which Arm gets more money, and Qualcomm gets a promise of no more lawsuits.

Interestingly, Qualcomm is expected to kick off Gen 2 of its Snapdragon X processors in mid-2025, although that chip is expected to deviate even further from Arm’s designs, making Arm’s case even weaker.

As I wrote in May 2024, right when the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors were launching, ARM64 and AI are driving a 'Great Reset' in the Windows PC industry, a transformation unlike any witnessed in the past three decades. That is still the case going into 2025 when I expect even more shakeups from the top Windows OEMs.

Windows laptop makers don’t seem too concerned with Arm and Qualcomm's ongoing rivalry. Over 20 laptops launched with Qualcomm’s new processors in 2024, and Windows Central expects to hear of even more Qualcomm-based PCs at CES 2025 in early January in Las Vegas.

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Horizon: Zero Dawn gets the graphical remaster a modern classic deserves

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 02:11:56 +0000

This is how to do a remaster.

At their best, "remastered" video games keep terrific older titles viable on new generations of hardware and for new generations of fans. At their worst, they can feel like a cash-in.

So it was with some trepidation that I recently fired up the "remastered" Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game which won me over years ago with its PS4 version due to the simple fact that it was ONE OF THE BEST VIDEO GAMES OF ALL TIME and featured ONE OF THE BEST PROTAGONISTS OF ALL TIME in one of the BEST STORIES OF ALL TIME. (Yes, I like superlatives, which are some of the BEST WORDS OF ALL TIME. But the game world really was terrific.) Even my kids were won over, playing through the game and its sequel multiple times.

The game tells the story of a future Earth long after catastrophe—in the form of an autonomous robotic swarm—has ruined the planet. But it's not mere dystopia, though one does come across many wrecked and overgrown spaces from that earlier age. Horizon instead focuses on how humans, having lost most of their past knowledge, rebuilt a world in tribal fashion, a world populated by animal-inspired machines. The game's story operates ambitiously in two timelines and features massive killer robots, cults, and mad Sun Kings, all set against the gorgeous background of the American West.

If the original Horizon had a flaw, it was long load times. As one redditor succinctly put it, "These load times are butt, huh?" Indeed they were. Extremely butt, in fact.

The payoff was a gorgeous open world with such distinctive art direction that the developer put out a hardcover book showcasing the design work that went into the game. (Yes, I bought it, because it was about ONE OF THE BEST GAMES OF ALL—well, you get it.)

But that amazing graphic design, as good as it looked when it appeared on the PS4, was a tiny bit dated as the years passed, especially when its just-as-gorgeous sequel came out on the PS5. The story and gameplay in the first title were still amazing, but it was disappointing not to be able to play both parts of ONE OF THE BEST GAMES..., etc, in identical visual glory.

So when Sony put out the recent "remaster" of Zero Dawn, I was cautiously optimistic. Any sort of non-half-assed PS5 reworking ought to reduce load times, right?

I meant to dip into the world of Zero Dawn only for a few hours, but I ended up playing through the whole game and its expansion, The Frozen Wilds, over the last few weeks. The arrow-based gameplay, complex story, and voice acting were still terrific, and the remastered elements were far more than a simple cash-in. Even little things, like the way the adaptive triggers on the PS5 controllers mimic the tension of a bowstring, felt perfect.

I didn't expect to get sucked back into the game's world for so many hours, but I had a great time doing it and wanted to spread the good word for those who might be looking for an engaging single-player experience over the holidays.

Big changes

When it comes to major changes, the remaster has three.

First, the game loads fast. It feels like a ground-up PS5 title. Death—and its attendant reloads—no longer makes me want to throw my controller across the room during difficult battles. It's great.

Second, the game looks unbelievable. This is not a case of just upping the resolution to 4K and calling it a day. Sony claims that the game features "over 10 hours of re-recorded conversation, mocap and countless graphical improvements that bring the game to the same visual fidelity as its critically acclaimed sequel." Also, the game's characters have "been upgraded, bringing them in line with current generation advances in character models and rendering."

This is not just marketing fluff. The faces look incredible, even in close-up cinematic interludes, but what really caught my eye was the lighting. From the moment a young Aloy spelunks into a cave and finds an electronic gadget attached to a skeleton lying peacefully in a sunbeam, the revamped lighting engine makes its presence clear. No, it's not "realistic"—everything looks like a postcard shot. But I found myself pausing the game just to look at the sunlight scattered by a snowstorm or dawn breaking over a mountain range. The lighting interacts with a volumetric set of effects that bring fog and dust devils to life like few other games I've seen. When Aloy tramps through a winter squall, leaving footsteps in the mountain snow as she walks, the effect is magical. (Until a Glinthawk swoops in, screaming, and attacks.)

The populated areas, especially the major town of Meridian, also feel vastly improved. The game engine appears to have far more power available to it now, and that power has been devoted to populating towns and villages with double or triple the number of non-player characters. This goes some way toward making the world feel more alive, and I found the effect immediately noticeable.

In other words, this is not just some "upscaled" PS4 title; this thing looks like a modern PS5 game, and a good one at that. The incredible art design of the world and its inhabitants are more immersive than ever before. (And you really need to see the game in motion; screenshots look good, but it's the way facial expressions move or how light plays through trees or hit a dust bowl that are truly stunning.)

Third, the game improved its audio. According to Sony, audio "has been significantly enhanced. We’ve completely revamped the sound mix, now supporting PS5 Tempest 3D Audio Tech2 for higher-order ambisonics and Atmos rendering for an immersive soundscape. Our sound design has also seen major improvements, with hundreds of improvements both in-game and in the cinematics." I take their word for it, but I didn't personally notice a major difference. I don't have an Atmos system, but the audio (still) sounded great.

If you love the Horizon series, this is the best way to experience the first title on console. (I haven't tried the PC versions. Also, the less said about the new LEGO version of the game, called LEGO Horizon Adventures, the better.)

And if you previously bought the game, you can upgrade for ten bucks (though note that if you bought a PS4 disc version, you'll need to have the game disc inserted both to upgrade and to run the game; and if you have a disc-less PS5, you're out of luck on that front.)

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Windows Central Game Awards 2024 — Showcasing the best Xbox and PC games of the year

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 17:39:30 +0000

Our picks for this year's greatest games.

2024 is a wrap, and 2025 is upon us. It's time to recap another year of amazing games across Xbox and PC.

It has, once again, been a strange year in the gaming calendar. Layoffs dampened what was otherwise an absolute bumper year for high-quality games across Xbox and Windows systems. Spectacular indie games cut through the zeitgeist on sheer creativity alone, while mega franchises found new footing despite showing their age.

It was the first full year of Activision-Blizzard under the Xbox banner, as Microsoft shifted its strategies to target gamers outside of the Xbox console ecosystem, potentially risking it all in the process. PlayStation revived the platforming genre with its Astrobot win at The Game Awards, and rumors of the Nintendo Switch 2's imminent reveal keep fans on their toes.

Valve's Steam platform continues to find new ground with its hardware offerings, and cloud gaming from Xbox and NVIDIA brings AAA games to people who simply don't want to buy a more expensive system. Generative AI also lurks in the rafters and will likely rear its head more definitively in 2025, both for game development and in-game features.

The Windows Central Game Awards are hardly scientific but are instead a simple homage from our small team to all the great games we loved this year. We pool together our own nominations and then vote for the games we love the most as we complete another journey around the big glowing orb in the sky. Let's get right into it.

Best Xbox Game of 2024

We do love a bit of hyperviolence.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Best Windows PC Game

The best horror shooter in years.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Best Indie Game of 2024

It'll take over your life.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Most Anticipated Game of 2024

Time to polish those hunting horns.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Best Expansion / DLC of 2024

Did you expect anything else?

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Best Ongoing Game of 2024

It's time to admit Fallout 76 is good.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Best Story Direction of 2024

ATLUS can't stop winning.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Best Game Pass Addition of 2024

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 boosts Game Pass.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Best Art and Visuals of 2024

Hellblade 2 is state of the art.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Best Sound and Music of 2024

An audio experience like few games can offer.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Editor's Choice Award 2024

An honorary mention, for the Emperor.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Game Developer Excellence Award 2024

Another addictive masterpiece.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

And that's a wrap!

With 2024 fading into memory, 2025 is looking ready to be another hyper-packed year for gaming. We have Civilization 7, Monster Hunter Wilds, Avowed, and various other games dropping in Q1 already, and then the hype train for the Xbox Showcase 2025 and Summer Game Fest will begin in earnest. We should also be getting an Xbox Developer_Direct showcase in January or February that could give a glimpse at some of Xbox's games for 2025. Fable, DOOM: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, The Outer Worlds 2, Avowed, and perhaps other surprises are on the horizon, giving Xbox a strong line-up for the next calendar year.

Xbox's strategy of putting games on PlayStation and Nintendo threatens to cannibalize their console business potentially, which right now owns the lion's share of Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. PC and cloud are growing, though, heaping reasons to remain optimistic about the future of the Xbox ecosystem. Xbox's ability to deliver high-quality exclusives seems to be hitting its stride, but it might be too late for its console business as users establish their digital presence across PlayStation and PC. It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft and Xbox react to this in 2025, particularly as rumors of new Xbox hardware continue to mount. An Xbox handheld sure sounds cool to me, at least.

As for games and their developers, from artists to marketing to PR to technicians and everyone in between: Thank you on behalf of everyone here at Windows Central for your art and passion, and we can't wait to see what you're bringing to us in 2025.

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Intel kills 64-bit only x86S designed around modern Windows and other OS

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 17:36:39 +0000

Back in May of 2023, Intel proposed a new 64-bit only "x86S" specification to streamline modern CPUs. The company wanted something to align with how most modern operating systems and apps including the likes of Windows 11 (which is 64-bit only) work. Intel reasoned that virtualization performance is currently strong enough to handle 16-bit or 32-bit scenarios.

However, after feedback and discussions with the recently formed x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, Intel has announced that it is killing off its x86S initiative. Intel confirmed it in a statement to Tom's Hardware. Intel however did not disclose any specific reason behind it.

It says that it is committed to x86 development and improvements regardless of the death of x86S citing the recent creation of the Advisory Group. The company stated:

We remain deeply committed to the x86 architecture, as demonstrated by the creation of the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group in collaboration with AMD and other industry leaders. This initiative reinforces our dedication to securing a strong future for x86, building on decades of software compatibility. While we have pivoted away from the x86S initiative, our focus remains on driving innovation and collaboration within the x86 ecosystem.

For those who may not have followed, the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group was created earlier this year in October "to shape the future of x86 and foster developer innovation through a more unified set of instructions and architectural interfaces". The consortium consists of Intel, AMD, as well as Microsoft, Google, HPE, Red Hat, and more.

Linus Torvalds is one of the luminaries of the group and interestingly, a few days back, he expressed concern, or rather annoyance, about the various x86-64 architecture levels which may be complicating things further rather than helping.

Source: Tom's Hardware

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Google Search will reportedly have a dedicated ‘AI Mode’ soon

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 17:35:56 +0000

The new option will open an interface similar to Google’s Gemini chatbot, The Information reports.

Google is planning to add a new “AI Mode” to its search engine, according to a report from The Information. The company will reportedly display an option to switch to AI Mode from the top of the results page, allowing you to access an interface similar to its Gemini AI chatbot.

The new AI Mode tab would live on the left side of the “All,” “Images,” “Videos,” and “Shopping” tabs, The Information reports. When you receive a response in AI Mode, The Information says Google will display links to related webpages and “a search bar below the conversational answer that prompts users to ‘Ask a follow-up...’”

This tracks with Android Authority’s report from earlier this month, which spotted an AI Mode in a beta version of the Google app. 9to5Google also dug up code suggesting you can use AI Mode to ask questions using your voice. The Verge reached out to Google with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

With OpenAI rolling out search in ChatGPT for all users, Google is likely under increased pressure to consolidate search and AI. The company already displays AI search summaries for some queries and recently expanded the feature to dozens of more countries in October.

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Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 launches, adds Pyro star system with five new planets

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 17:35:10 +0000

It was 2019 when Cloud Imperium Games showed off the Pyro system, the next solar system it was building inside the crowd-funded sci-fi RPG Star Citizen. After years of development, the Pyro system is now available for any backer to jump into, offering fresh planets to explore, unique resources to mine, a new herd animal, and much more.

To get to the new star system, players will have to use the game's first ever Jump Point that connects Stanton and Pyro systems together. As seen in the trailer above, this even involves maneuvering through a two-minute long space tunnel with obstacles in the way before players pass through to the other side of the universe.

Once at Pyro, players will find the following planets waiting for them:

Pyro I - The first planet from the sun of the Pyro system. Its thick, high-pressure atmosphere hides a strange landscape beset by powerful winds and lightning strikes. Under the clouds, there is an ecosystem of plants and animals that endure its extremely high temperatures, even during powerful stellar flares.

Pyro II - Monox: Monox is the second planet from the sun of the Pyro system. Nicknamed "Monox" for the deadly carbon monoxide in its atmosphere, it has a temperate climate, and was seen as a viable candidate for terraforming shortly after its discovery. However, its proximity to the system's volatile sun made it dangerous for Human habitation, and the United Nations of Earth (UNE) refused to clear it for terraformation, instead allowing corporations to harvest its natural resources. Undeterred by the potential risk, outlaws eventually took up residence on the planet when the last corporations pulled out of Pyro in the 26th century.

Pyro III - Bloom: Bloom is the third planet from the sun of the Pyro system. Cold but naturally habitable, it became the epicenter of mining endeavors in Pyro. Pyrotechnic Amalgamated and other corporations constructed multiple staging sites, employees barracks, and processing centers that were in use until the cost of their maintenance could no longer be offset by mining profits. Abandoned when the last active corporations in Pyro ceased operations there in the late 26th century, they were claimed by squatters, outlaws, and former miners who lacked the means to return to the United Empire of Earth.

Pyro V: Pyro V is the fourth planet from the sun of the Pyro system. It was given the classification of "Pyro V" when researchers came across strong evidence that its outermost moon once maintained a stable orbit around the system's star between Pyro III and Pyro V. When it was struck by an unknown celestial body, it was knocked into Pyro V's gravitational sphere of influence. Residents of and travelers through the Pyro system are known to harvest hydrogen from Pyro V's green and yellow atmosphere.

Pyro VI - Terminus: Terminus (Pyro VI) is the outermost world of the Pyro system. Its nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere is technically breathable, but contains high enough amounts of methane and carbon dioxide that it has a negative effect on one's health after extended exposure. Pyrotechnic Amalgamated placed their main hub of operations in orbit around Terminus, later abandoning the station when they left the system.

Another massive advancement of this release is the inclusion of Server Meshing V1. This hugely-anticipated feature enables clusters of servers to work together to populate a stable universe in the title, and it currently supports 500 players on a "shard".

"This means that server performance, playability, and overall health are now local to each of the nodes in the server mesh," says Cloud Imperium Games founder and CEO Chris Roberts. "Even dreaded server crashes are now localized to those regions, with players in other areas of space or on planets unaffected. It also means improved performance, as each server is simulating fewer entities, resulting in more responsiveness and allowing the game we are striving to create to finally shine through its content."

The complete change log for this long-awaited Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 update can be found here, which also details an economy overhaul, instanced hangers, an Advanced Flight HUD for highly-skilled pilots, and other features. The game has gone through a full wipe as well, resetting all accounts to 20,000 aUEC (before bonuses) and no earned ships.

This release of the alpha build of Pyro is a unique one though. The studio is keeping the previous release, Alpha 3.24.3, available for play via the launcher, letting players finish missions and gameplay loops with their remaining money and ships. On the plus side, the studio plans to have no more wipes like this following the 4.0 launch.

The Star Citizen Launcher now offers both the 4.0 Preview — containing Pyro system, server meshing and other features — as well as the older version for download as options.

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Stalker 2 has been enjoyable jank, but it’s also getting rapidly fixed

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 06:23:13 +0000

"A-Life" fixes will ensure even more randomness in an already odd fallout zone.

When the impossibly punctuated S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl released on November 20, after many delays (that included the Russian invasion of the developer's native Ukraine), it seemed like it could have used even more delays.

Stalker 2 had big performance issues and game-breaking bugs, along with balance and difficulty spike issues. Some things that seem "wrong" in the game are just going to stay that way. The first-person survival/shooter series has always had a certain wobbly, wild feel to it. This expresses itself in both the game world, where a major villain can off themselves by walking through a window, and in the tech stack, where broken save games, DIY optimization, and other unmet needs have created thriving mod scenes.

Developer GSC Game World has been steadfastly patching the game since its release, and the latest one should nudge the needle a bit from "busted" to "charmingly wonky." Amid the "Over 1,800 fixes and adjustments" in Patch 1.1, the big changes are to "A-Life." In porting Stalker 2 to Unreal Engine 5, the developer faced a challenge in getting this global AI management system working, but it's showing its weird self again.

A-Life, as detailed by Destructoid, is the idea that "the characters in the game live their own lives and exist all the time, not only when they are in the player's field of view." In a certain radius around the player, events happen "online," in real time, such that you could stumble upon them. Farther out, things are still happening, and non-player characters (NPCs) are trekking about, but on an "offline," almost turn-based, less resource-intensive schedule. Modders have had quite a bit of fun tweaking A-life in prior versions of Stalker 2.

With the latest patch, the weirdly engaging feel that the world goes on without you returns. There will be more NPCs visible, NPCs out of range will pursue their "goals," and a more diverse range of human factions, mutants, and weirdos will exist. Perhaps most intriguingly, an issue where "Human NPCs didn't satisfy their communication needs and talks" is fixed. If only that could be patched for most of us player characters here in the real world.

It's patched, but is it fun?

I have been playing Stalker 2 on and off since its launch, checking in after most of the big patches so far. Not nearly enough to merit any kind of proper review, and it's my first time with the series. Early on, the performance was quite bad, devolving sometimes to a stuttering "I can't even press escape to save and quit" mess on a system with an RTX 3070 GPU, a 12-core AMD 5900X CPU, and 16GB memory. Since then, it has improved considerably. I no longer avoid walking up to NPCs talking to one another for fear of triggering the slight stutter that once made my teeth clench.

When I'm not noticing hitches or worrying about settings, I'm very much enjoying Stalker 2. It is unforgiving, it triggers the save-scumming response, and it makes you realize that getting shot five or six times would, indeed, kill most people. Maybe it's the winter or a reaction to the highly polished AAA titles or charming indie games I've been playing lately, but I appreciate the feeling of being overmatched and submerged in oddities. It's one of the rare games where I feel good for running away from a three-on-one firefight because I know I'll be better off saving ammo and item condition so I can go off and barely survive something else. It's a bit more active and game-like than a strict survival game, but it actively discourages the ridiculous bravado emphasized in most first-person shooters.

Even before this A-Life fix, the game's towns and landscapes gave off a sense of being inhabited (as much as a nuclear fallout zone can be), of your protagonist's path moving past a world that had its own rhythm. The developers seem to have had enough success (1 million copies within 48 hours of release) and real-world feedback to keep plugging away on fixes, up until the point the game has moved from "damaged" to "cracked in interesting ways." I intend to follow along, however many times my character must die on the way.

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Capcom has revealed new framerate and resolution improvements coming to Monster Hunter Wilds's launch, along with weapon gameplay changes and more

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 06:21:20 +0000

Capcom has listened to fan feedback from the Monster Hunter Wilds open beta and has already showcased vast improvements from today's Community Update video

It's been over a month and a half since the general public had a sneak peek at Monster Hunter Wilds and began implementing it through its Open Beta Test, and in that time, Capcom has been busy. It has taken all the player feedback from the beta and has begun implementing it in the final version, as demonstrated through the recently uploaded Monster Hunter Wilds Pre-Launch Community Update Stream.

The first of these many changes is that Capcom has improved the game's framerate performance and resolution considerably compared to the Open Beta Test. The game will now properly run consistently at 60fps and 1080p when playing in Prioritise Framerate Mode and 30fps and 4K Resolutions (specifically Output Resolution - 3840x2180 / Rendering Resolution - 3072x1728) in Prioritise Graphics Mode at launch.

In addition, they even fixed a bug from the Open Beta Test that prevented the game from rendering graphics in Prioritise Framerate Mode.

Target Performance values for the PlayStation 5 version of Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

Target Performance values for the Xbox and PC versions Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

However, not every platform will get these privileges. According to Capcom's performance targets, the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions of Monster Hunter Wilds are set to run at 60fps and 1080p in Prioritise Framerate Mode and 30fps and 4K Resolutions in Prioritise Graphics Mode. Yet the Xbox Series S version will only be able to run with a performance of 30 FPS (frames per second)and 1080p resolution.

Capcom has stated that Monster Hunter Wilds will receive enhanced PlayStation 5 Pro support when it goes live on release day, along with its day one patch.

For the PC version, performance and graphics will largely depend on the player's hardware to meet the game's PC spec requirements. However, the developers have confirmed that they are working on lowering the minimum graphics for the PC versions. In addition, they are considering releasing a PC benchmark tool to help players determine if their rigs have what it takes to play the game.

Miscellaneous gameplay changes for Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

Miscellaneous gameplay changes for Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

Based on player feedback, Capcom then showcased several gameplay changes it will make to Monster Hunter Wilds. For starters, monsters will not constantly flee from battling to different locations as frequently anymore because this was a bug in the beta, and players will be able to fully use Pop-Up camps and the fast travel system in the full game.

Other miscellaneous changes include adding more animation hitstop to weapon attacks to give them more impact and mitigating friendly fire among teammates in co-op, so they can't send each other flying off the ground anymore. In addition, the Shockproof Jewel Decoration from Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak will be returning to allow the players to disable friendly fire altogether.

The biggest gameplay changes, however, are the weapon type balance adjustments, particularly for the Lance, Switch Axe, Insect Glaive, and Sword & Shield.

Lance gameplay changes for Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

Switch Axe gameplay changes for Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

Other weapon gameplay changes for Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

Insect Glaive gameplay changes for Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

Sword & Shield gameplay changes for Monster Hunter Wilds

(Image credit: Capcom)

The Lance's guard and counter capabilities have been improved, as the Charge Counter can now block attacks while charging and be chained into any of its other moves. The Power Guard can now charge faster to higher levels after blocking a monster's strongest attacks, and the Perfect Guard and Power Guard can now lead into a brand new attack.

Switch Axe's gameplay changes include adjustments to the switching mechanic to make transforming into Sword Mode from Axe Mode feel more satisfying. Several moves' attack powers have been improved, and the Full Release Slash can now grant the player Knockback negation when being executed.

The Sword & Shield's Rising Slash can now be used while guarding. Several of its moves, like the Perfect Rush, have been strengthened, and the evasiveness of the Backstep and Sliding Swipe has been improved. Additionally, the responsiveness of the Chop & Side Slash combo, Guard Slash, and Perfect Rush has been enhanced.

Insect Glaive's aerial capabilities have been significantly improved compared to the Vaulting Dance move is back. Also, you can combo into different moves after vaulting, and the Vaulting Dance's attack power increases by two levels each time you vault. Other changes for Insect Glaive include adding an Offset effect at the beginning of Descending Slash so you can use it to counter monster attacks, gaining Knockback Negation while obtaining an Orange Extract, and gaining mitigation for wind pressure, tremors, and roars when you have all three Extracts.

The Bow also has some changes planned, such as buffing its normal and Arc Shot attacks, nerfing the attack power of Tracer Shots, and delaying the lock-on time for Focus Strike so it targets wounds one by one instead of all of them at once.

Finally, all weapons will receive skill and elemental value adjustments for the full game's content while also rebalancing each weapon type's hit detention and certain moves that had low damage output in previous Monster Hunter Games.

All these gameplay changes has made me want Monster Hunter Wilds even more than ever before

February 2025, cannot come fast enough because these upcoming gameplay changes that Capcom's shown off has now made Monster Hunter Wilds my most anticipated upcoming Xbox game/upcoming PC title of 2025 without a shadow of a doubt.

The framerate and performances are being fixed, Insect Glaive's aerial attacks have been fixed back to how they were in Monster Hunter Rise, and the Lance is aiming to reclaim its crown as the king of counterattack weapon types. On top of that, the Shockproof Jewel is coming back, which means I can use Cluster Bomb Heavy Bowgun builds without messing up my teammates in co-op.

I can't wait to test these new changes as well as 16 other awesome gameplay details I discovered from Monster Hunter Wild's Open Beta Test when Monster Hunter Wilds launches on February 28, 2025.

Monster Hunter Wilds, the next-gen successor to one of Capcom's best Xbox games and best PC games, Monster Hunter World, is scheduled to launch on February 28, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.

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STALKER 2 1.1 update brings over 1800 bug fixes and critical A-Life sim improvements

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 16:29:58 +0000

GSC Game World released S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl to PC and Xbox Series X|S a month ago, and it quickly became a massive hit among survival shooter fans. However, one of the main criticisms pointed at the game was its bugginess. While a few post-launch hotfixes have landed aiming to resolve some of them, today, the studio pushed out its first major patch for the game.

Patch 1.1 is now live on PC and Xbox platforms, and it ships with over 1800 fixes and adjustments for the game's various systems like AI, cutscenes, interactable objects, quests, exploration elements, gear, saves, and much more. As previously promised, the studio has also made important improvements to the A-Life simulation this time too.

Some critical fixes include RTX 3000 series performance drops with FSR frame gen, NPC's detecting crouched players to break stealth, and a multitude of crash issues. NPCs should also stop spawning behind players, and they will also carry on their usual activities when the player isn't around.

Here are the A-Life specific improvements the developer is making with today's update, which should improve the simulation and immersion of the game drastically:

Fixed the issue with spawning NPCs behind the player's back.

Players can now encounter roaming NPCs across the Zone more often.

Greatly extended the distance at which A-Life NPCs are visible to the player.

Fixed the aggressive optimization issue that prevented A-Life NPCs to exist in Offline (out of player's visualization range).

In Offline mode, A-Life will continue to advance towards their goals over time.

Players may now have opportunities to encounter A-Life NPCs they've previously met by following in the same direction as the NPCs.

Improved A-Life NPCs navigation in Offline using GameGraph (global AI navigation map):

Fixed multiple issues where NPCs would fail to follow or find a path to their designated goals.

Fixed several issues with NPC being stuck in Online-Offline transition state,

Enhanced A-Life NPCs' motivation to expand territory and actively attack enemies and mutants.

Fixed issues that could result in fewer A-life NPCs encountered than intended.

Further contextual actions improvement to ensure seamless transitions between Offline and Online states for NPCs engaged in these actions.

The groups exploring the Zone are now more diverse regarding possible factions and group sizes.

Fixed issue that while roaming over the Zone, Human NPCs didn't satisfy their communication needs and talks.

The changelog for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Patch 1.1 can be found here. Though considering its size, even the studio isn't detailing each and every change the update has brought to the game.

"We understand that the size of the patch is huge and the process of downloading will take some time," added the studio. "We would like to thank you for your understanding, and we will work on this aspect as well."

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl fans on Steam may find that this update will be essentially be a complete re-download of the game, coming with a size of about 110GB. However, on Xbox Series X|S consoles, this patch seems to be only about 12GB in size.

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Intel outlines five major issues affecting its latest desktop CPUs — could Arrow Lake be better for gaming than we thought?

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 03:22:19 +0000

Intel's Core Ultra 200S desktop CPUs didn't impress many with gaming performance at launch, but that wasn't by design.

Intel's "Arrow Lake" desktop AI processors were officially announced on October 10, 2024, following a lengthy delay. They arrive in five flavors, ranging from Core Ultra 5 through Core Ultra 9. We got our hands on CPUs from both ends of the performance spectrum, and following plenty of testing, it became clear that power efficiency was the target with these new chips.

As it turns out—revealed in a new blog post on Intel's website—raw gaming performance did not shape up as intended when the chips arrived in reviewers' hands. Intel has now concluded an investigation into the issue that began on October 26. Five major performance issues were discovered, and four fixes have already been pushed out via Windows 11 and BIOS updates.

Intel's five primary Core Ultra Series 200S fixes

Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K isn't performing as well as it should in gaming, but Intel has a few fixes. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

Intel points out in its blog post that "editorial conclusions on gaming performance were more polarized, with noteworthy statistical variation from one article to the next." That aligns with what Windows Central Senior Editor Ben Wilson had to say in his Core Ultra 5 245K review:

"Intel's new Core Ultra Series 2 might seem unusual to some enthusiasts, with gamers expecting a generational leap that was never actually promised. Instead, we get a productivity breakthrough with a dedicated NPU finally making its way to desktops as power efficiency becomes the overall target in this generation."

Intel started investigating why gaming performance quoted by reviewers wasn't the same as what was seen in its own testing, and it's now wrapped up after discovering five primary issues.

Here are the five root causes with quotes pulled from Intel:

Missing PPM Package: "Intel incorrectly scheduled this Windows Update package for user/retail availability, not reviewer availability." — Resolved in Windows 11 build 26100.2161
Intel APO Could Not Take Effect: "The missing Intel PPM placed the processor into an aberrant state where APO could not take effect." — Resolved in Windows 11 build 26100.2161
BSOD When Launching Easy Anti-Cheat Titles: "A known issue between Windows 11 24H2 and the April 2024 (or older) Easy Anti-Cheat driver bundled with PC games." — Resolved via an updated Epic Games Easy Anti-Cheat driver.
Select Performance Settings Misconfigured in Reviewer BIOSes: "Consistency of VIP settings not sufficiently re-validated or enforced by Intel." — Resolved in BIOS updates for Z890 motherboards.
New BIOS Performance Optimizations: "Intel has additionally identified a small selection of performance optimizations that are recently developed, or were not ready for the motherboard BIOS images released thus far." — Unresolved but expected to be fixed via BIOS update in January 2025.

The Core Ultra 200S lineup includes the Core Ultra 5 245KF, Core Ultra 5 245K, Core Ultra 7 265KF, Core Ultra 7 265K, and Core Ultra 9 285K, and it looks like these root causes can affect all chips.

Intel strongly suggests going through the crucial updates as soon as possible to negate the performance issues. Windows 11 version 26100.2314 (or newer) is where you should be, and your motherboard BIOS should also have the latest drivers. These can usually be sourced from your motherboard manufacturer's official website.

How much of a performance boost can you expect with these updates?

Unfortunately, a mix of any of these five issues could be plaguing your Arrow Lake desktop CPU, so it's hard to say exactly how much of a performance increase you'll see once the bugs are gone.

Intel states that it will deliver a more comprehensive update on the situation at CES 2025, with a closer look at performance improvements. With AMD's Ryzen X3D CPUs cornering the PC gaming market, Intel had better hope that it will have some overly positive news to share in a few weeks at CES.

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This may be your last TP-Link router as they could be banned in the US soon

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 03:20:25 +0000

It is no secret that the USA and China do not share much of a friendly relationship and it has been such for a while. Donald Trump, the 47th President of the country, has been especially unfriendly to the Far East nation. A new development is purportedly brewing which is likely something Trump won't oppose to.

According to a new report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) (paywalled) the USA is planning to put a ban on the sale of TP-Link routers. The Office of the US Department of Commerce is making this move to stop the Chinese company from getting any more foothold than what it already has as it is under investigation over monopolistic concerns.

According to market data by two different research firms, TP-Link has managed to hold on to its lead for routers as it had the highest share in 2022 as well as in 2024. Taiwan-based D-Link also maintained its position as the runner-up. A Gartner poll shows that both the companies are quite popular and trusted among users.

The USA apparently thinks that TP-Link has often been especially slow to implement patches upon discovery of a security vulnerability. One such recent security pitfall, discovered by Microsoft, was carried out by Chinese threat actor "Storm-0940". The company wrote:

Microsoft tracks a network of compromised small office and home office (SOHO) routers as CovertNetwork-1658. SOHO routers manufactured by TP-Link make up most of this network.

A TP-Link spokeswoman gave he following statement to the WSJ regarding the matter:

We welcome any opportunities to engage with the US government to demonstrate that our security practices are fully in line with industry security standards, and to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the US market, US consumers, and addressing US national security risks.

We will have to wait and watch what happens but if a ban goes through, TP-Link owners will have to switch to something else like D-Link, Tenda, Netgear, or alike.

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Microsoft reportedly acquired the most NVIDIA GPUs compared to its rivals, including Google and Meta, for its AI projects — translating to 485,000 chips and $31 billion in expenditure

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 03:19:42 +0000

Microsoft bought 485,000 NVIDIA chips for its AI advances, almost twice as many as its closest competitors.

Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Google are seemingly in a fierce arms race to dominate AI. A new report by Omdia details that Microsoft bought the most NVIDIA AI chips compared to its competitors (via Financial Times). To put this into perspective, the tech giant bought 485,000 NVIDIA Hopper chips, translating to 20% of NVIDIA’s revenue over the past year.

Meta stacks miles behind Microsoft as NVIDIA's second-largest buyer, only buying (224,000 chips) less than half the GPUs Microsoft acquired last year. NVIDIA is arguably the best GPU manufacturer, potentially explaining Microsoft's dependency on its components for its AI efforts. Contextually, NVIDIA GPUs contributed to 43% of the global spending in 2024. Microsoft heavily contributed to this by spending approximately $31 billion on data centers.

The generative AI landscape has rapidly developed this year, with top tech corporations, including Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and more, trying to assert their dominance in the space. Recently, a report emerged suggesting the development of advanced AI models has hit a brick wall due to a lack of high-quality data for training.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and erstwhile Google CEO Eric Schmidt disputed the claim, highlighting no evidence shows scaling laws have begun to stop the progression of AI. As you may know, advanced chips are an important ingredient in the development of AI as they provide the computational power, efficiency, and scalability to scale greater heights.

This has prompted the demand for AI chips to reach an all-time high, mounting immense pressure on NVIDIA. As such, the AI boom propelled the chipmaker to become the world's most valuable company, ahead of Microsoft and Apple with over $3 trillion in market capitalization.

Microsoft is all in on AI

Microsoft HQ

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Earlier this year, we learned Microsoft was partnering with OpenAI to invest up to $100 billion in a new project called Stargate. The sophisticated project could help emancipate the companies from the shackles and overreliance on the world's most profitable semiconductor chip brand for AI chips. Interestingly, the tech giant is also developing its chips called Maia, rolling out and installing 200,000 units.

The Stargate project could also help bolster Microsoft's AI efforts across its gaming division. With enough computing power, Microsoft could leverage AI's advanced capabilities to improve graphics rendering, super-resolution, cloud gaming, and in-game features.

NVIDIA's next-gen GPUs are expected to ship with neural rendering capabilities, which could play a crucial role in generating better graphics in real-time. Similarly, AI can help bolster super-resolution advances, making it possible to upscale low-quality images and videos without losing quality.

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The Game Awards 2024 show had a record breaking 154 million livestreams

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 03:18:47 +0000

Last week, Geoff Keighley kicked off The Game Awards ceremony for the tenth year running. While it's a widely-watched awards ceremony for highlighting the biggest and most impressive video games of the year, it's also how many publishers show off their games that are landing in the coming years. The 2024 edition was no different, and continuing an impressive tradition, it had once again secured record-breaking viewership.

In a social media post, host and event producer Keighley shared that this year's show had 154 million global livestreams. This makes it the most popular The Game Awards ever, beating out last year's 118 million livestreams.

"Today we are humbled and thrilled to share that The Game Awards 10th Anniversary show delivered a historic 154 million global livestreams, our most watched show ever," says Keighley. "Thanks to our incredible team, the industry and the fans for giving us your time and believing in TGA."

Keighley also said that in the fan poll he took regarding the show that rated this year's reveals and performances, the community had rated it an "A". Moreover, these livestream, social media, and viewer voting stats were revealed:

The show this year had massive announcements and fresh trailers from publishers. This included CD Projekt's next RPG The Witcher IV, the 2K-published Mafia: The Old Country and Borderlands 4, Obsidian's The Outer Worlds 2, Elden Ring Nightreign from FromSoftware, Naughty Dog's next game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Hazelight's Split Fiction co-op game, and more.

As for the biggest award of the year, Sony's PlayStation 5 exclusive platformer Astro Bot clinched the Game of the Year category win while battling against Black Myth: Wukong, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Balatro, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.

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YouTube declares war against "egregious clickbait" thumbnails and titles in India

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 03:17:51 +0000

YouTube is going after accounts that try to deceive users into viewing their videos by adding clickbait titles and thumbnails. The company announced that it is strengthening its efforts to fight against "egregious clickbait" on the platform in India.

The Google-owned company said it will take action against videos where the thumbnail or title can't deliver the promises made to the user, more importantly, when the video focuses on current events or breaking news.

For example, an egregious clickbait might sound like “the president resigned!” but the video doesn't discuss the president's resignation. Similarly, if a thumbnail has the text "top political news" but the video doesn't include any news coverage, it can be labelled as clickbait.

Landing on a clickbait video might make the viewers feel tricked, frustrated, or misled, especially when they want to find some important or timely information. YouTube will slowly start the crackdown against such videos by rolling out the enforcement in India over the coming months.

"To ensure creators have time to adjust to these enforcement updates, we’ll start by removing content that violates this policy without issuing a strike. And as we continue to educate creators, our enforcement efforts will prioritize new video uploads moving forward," YouTube said in a blog post.

The company didn't say when these changes will go live in other countries, given that misinformation and clickbait titles are a global concern. It also didn't discuss what topics would be the focus and precisely how YouTube would identify the difference between clickbait titles, thumbnails, and the actual content in the video before flagging.

YouTube has previously removed videos containing false information, such as those with misleading 2020 US election results and about one million videos containing coronavirus misinformation. The Google-owned video streaming giant also raged a war against fan accounts trying to impersonate actual creators and popular figures.

Over the years, YouTube has added several features to combat misinformation. For instance, creators can use the Corrections feature to report any inaccuracies in their content. This year, it added a crowd-sourcing feature that allows users to add notes to provide context and information about the video.

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Hear how it's been developing on Windows 11 on ARM for a whole year from an actual developer who's been using it

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 17:36:39 +0000

Admittedly this tale was using Windows 11 virtualized on a MacBook Pro, but mostly, it sounds like a good experience.

Windows 11 on ARM has been supercharged in 2024 with the arrival of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite series of chips. Where Windows on a Snapdragon-powered laptop was once OK at best, the new generation made it a truly viable alternative to buying something powered by Intel or AMD.

But what about for tasks such as software development? How is Windows on ARM faring in that regard? Who better to talk about the experience than an actual developer. Michael Niehaus has detailed on his blog his use of Windows 11 on ARM over the course of a year for such work.

The caveat, though, is that this isn't talking about a native experience, instead virtualizing Windows 11 on ARM on macOS. But many probably still have questions over whether it's up to the task, or about compatibility, and for the most part, it seems positive.

But how well does Windows 11 work on ARM64, especially when developing software that most likely won’t be running on ARM64? Overall, it works really well: Visual Studio running on ARM64 is flawless, .NET is naturally architecture-neutral, and cross-compiling for x64, MacOS, and Linux is easy. Running Windows x64 binaries is easy because the x64 emulation is very good.

Michael Niehaus - Out of Office Hours

In fact, it seems, one of the bigger issues was having to upgrade the virtualization software to allow more RAM use. There are other troubles, too, such as macOS not supporting nested virtualization, so WSL2 can't be used inside the Windows 11 VM.

Otherwise, it seems this particular developer's biggest hurdle was something Microsoft itself needs to fix.

There was one bigger issue though: SQL Server 2022 doesn’t support ARM64. That’s a really weird omission from Microsoft that one of these days they’ll actually fix (I hope). Fortunately, you can use some third-party scripts to install it, working around issues in the SQL Server installer that would otherwise get in the way.

Michael Niehaus - Out of Office Hours

As much as we like Windows 11 on the new generation of Snapdragon laptops, the wider world has requirements that we'd never even touch. It's encouraging to hear from someone who's been in the trenches first hand, though, that using a Windows 11 on ARM machine for this type of intensive work is entirely doable.

On a native machine, too, you would have the ability also to spin up WSL2, which I've found first hand, works flawlessly on a Snapdragon X Elite laptop, so long as you're using a Linux distro with an ARM64 build.

If you're at all interested in this topic, I definitely recommend reading the whole post. Windows might have taken a while to catch up in the ARM space, but the future is definitely here.

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Supreme Court will hear TikTok ban arguments in January

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 17:35:39 +0000

TikTok’s fighting a law that could ban the social network in the US next month, or force parent company ByteDance to sell.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on whether a bill that could ban TikTok violates the First Amendment. The arguments will take place on January 10th, just over a week before a potential ban could take effect.

While the outcome is far from guaranteed, SCOTUS’ decision to take up the case is a small win for TikTok, which is barreling toward expulsion from the US unless the court throws out or pauses the law, or its China-based parent company ByteDance agrees to sell it in time. The law at the center of the case, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, seeks to prohibit apps like TikTok from being owned by companies in a set list of foreign adversary countries.

The Department of Justice successfully defended the law as constitutional before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by arguing the government had a compelling interest in protecting US national security from foreign influence. Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass the bill after classified briefings in which intelligence officials shared concerns over how China could potentially use the app to exert influence over the kinds of content US users see, and potentially access sensitive data — though publicly, the government has not come forward with declassified information showing such dangers are already happening.

The arguments before the Supreme Court will consolidate two cases against the law, from both TikTok and a group of creators on the platform. The parties will get a total of two hours to make their cases. The court said it would defer a decision on whether to halt the law until after the oral arguments. The lower court had declined to stop the law from taking effect pending the Supreme Court’s review.

TikTok filed for an emergency injunction to the Supreme Court just two days ago. That same day, CEO Shou Zi Chew was set to meet with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, who has noted his success on TikTok in the campaign, at one point seemingly promised to save the app, although his more recent comments post-election make it less clear how exactly he’d plan to do that. The deadline for the ban — unless the court stops it — is the day before Trump’s inauguration. The president has discretion to extend the deadline 90 days, though one big remaining question is whether China would even agree to let ByteDance sell the app.

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