News: Technology News

Google’s empire is under siege

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 16:44:56 +0000

Today, Google will have a final chance to prove to a federal judge that its advertising business isn’t a monopoly. The US Department of Justice spent several weeks earlier this year arguing that Google maintains too much control over web advertising and uses that power to lock in customers, leaving little room for competition. The trial wraps up this week. If it loses, Google could have to make sweeping changes to the core of its business.

Even if the tech behemoth emerges from this trial unscathed, a spreading legal fire still jeopardizes everything it has created. For many years, Google’s sprawling empire has faced little legal scrutiny, allowing the company to freely build up its search engine, browser, operating systems, and line of hardware products that all intersect to bolster one another. It’s the overlap of Google’s massive businesses that has attracted attention from government agencies and tech industry rivals, who are set on taking apart Google’s stronghold piece by piece.

Google now faces threats from all sides: the European Union is probing its compliance with regulations on Big Tech, the US is suing over its search and advertising monopolies, Epic is pressing Google to open the Play Store, and Yelp is targeting Google over local search results. As President-elect Trump enters office, it’s unclear what will happen next. But one thing is certain: this is the most high-stakes moment Google has found itself in yet.

The biggest threat to Google is the government’s antitrust lawsuit targeting Google’s search business, which could result in a major breakup. In August, a federal judge ruled that Google operates a monopoly in the online search market. When laying out its case, the DOJ pointed to several aspects of Google’s business, including its billion-dollar deals with companies like Apple and Mozilla to keep Google as their default search engine. This, the DOJ argues, disincentivizes rivals from launching search engines of their own. Judge Amit Mehta agreed, saying this dominance also allowed Google to hike up prices on search text advertising — or the sponsored links displayed within Google Search.

To bring balance back to the market, the DOJ has proposed that Google make a drastic change: it wants Google to sell its web browser, Chrome. The web browser has been an integral part of Google’s business since its launch in 2008, but the DOJ wants it put into the hands of a third party approved by the court. And the DOJ’s asks don’t end there, as it also wants to prevent Google from favoring its search engine or browser within its own products, such as Android, YouTube, and even its AI chatbot Gemini. Other remedies include opening access to Google’s search syndication system to competitors and letting websites opt out of AI Overviews. If Google doesn’t want to comply with these solutions — or if the remedies don’t do enough to crack open Google’s monopoly — the DOJ proposes that Google divest Android, too.

Yelp is also targeting Google’s search engine with an antitrust case of its own, alleging Google gives preferential treatment to its own local results. The EU has opened an investigation into Google’s compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the company recently lost an appeal that would’ve allowed it to get around paying a $2.7 billion antitrust fine stemming from claims that it gave its own shopping results an unfair advantage in Google Search.

The Google Play Store is under fire, too. In 2020, Epic Games sued Google over claims that it created an illegal monopoly by making it harder for developers and users to access other app stores, while also preventing them from using alternative payment processors inside apps. The jury ultimately sided with Epic Games, determining that its Play Store and billing system are illegal monopolies. Last month, Judge James Donato ordered Google to distribute third-party app stores through Google Play, while giving third-party app stores access to all of the apps on the Play Store (unless developers opt out) for the next three years. Though Judge Donato originally asked Google to comply with his order on November 1st, Google won a temporary stay that will put most of these changes on hold while Google appeals the decision.

In the meantime, Google is facing yet another lawsuit from Epic, which accuses the tech giant of colluding with Samsung to suppress third-party app stores by allowing users to download apps from “authorized sources” on new phones.

Google’s ad tech trial poses similarly monumental consequences that could break up its lucrative advertising business, which raked in $237.9 billion in 2023. If the DOJ gets its way, a judge could force Google to create tools that would let third-party companies use its ad tech and give them access to Google’s customers. Closing arguments will be held today, but a verdict isn’t expected for several more months — and by that time, Trump will be in office.

All of these cases will likely conclude under the new administration, and that might affect their outcomes. While President Joe Biden has taken a tougher stance on antitrust enforcement, Trump is expected to take a more hands-off approach to regulation that hasn’t gone unnoticed by company executives. But this still doesn’t mean Google is safe from the Trump administration. The DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit over Google’s search engine was filed in 2020, while Trump was still president. Trump has also long lambasted Google for supposedly surfacing negative search results about him, something he was particularly vocal about in the months leading up to the US presidential election.

Trump called Google search results “rigged” and threatened to pursue criminal charges over claims that the search engine favored his political opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Though Trump said he would “do something” when asked whether he would break up Google, he suggested the DOJ’s current antitrust lawsuit is “dangerous” because “we don’t want China to have” companies like Google.

Even if nothing comes out of these lawsuits, Google will have to change how it operates to ward off more ire and legal threats. Whether that means being more cautious about business acquisitions or thinking twice when preferencing results in one of its other products, that newfound reprehensiveness could result in damage. In 2019, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said the company missed beating Android as the “dominant mobile operating system” because it was “distracted” by the government’s antitrust trial in the early 2000s.

A change in tone has already begun to set in at Google. CEO Sundar Pichai appeared to allude to the search engine’s perceived “bias” against Trump and right-wing politicians in an Election Day memo obtained by The Verge. “Whomever the voters entrust, let’s remember the role we play at work, through the products we build and as a business: to be a trusted source of information to people of every background and belief,” he wrote. Trump has claimed multiple times that he spoke with Pichai on the phone, a possible sign the Google exec is looking to get on Trump’s good side before he assumes office.

Whatever the case, Google has a long fight ahead of it — and it might not get out of this legal web in one piece.

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Google to face massive UK class action lawsuit over search dominance

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 16:43:04 +0000

The tech giant is facing a growing number of legal issues.

Google must face a £7 billion (around $8.8 billion) class action lawsuit in the UK that accuses the company of harming consumers by abusing its dominance in search. On Friday, the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled that the case can move forward, adding to the growing number of legal conflicts Google has to confront worldwide.

The class action case was initially filed in September 2023 by consumer rights advocate Nikki Stopford. It alleges that Google’s anticompetitive practices made it more expensive for companies to advertise on the platform, leading to higher prices for millions of consumers across the UK.

The lawsuit argues that Google “forced” Android phone makers to ship their phones with Google Search and Google Chrome, something the European Union has already gone after Google for. It also says Google paid Apple “billions” to make Google the default search engine on Safari — an issue that figured prominently in a recent ruling against Google in the US.

“Google continues to rig the search-engine market to charge advertisers more, which raises the prices they charge consumers,” Stopford said in a statement. “This UK legal action seeks to promote healthier competition in digital markets, and to hold Google accountable.”

Google asked a London tribunal to toss out the lawsuit in September, but the CAT now unanimously agreed that it should proceed. “We still believe this case is speculative and opportunistic — we will argue against it vigorously,” Paul Colpitts, Google UK’s senior counsel, said in an emailed statement to The Verge. “People use Google because it is helpful; not because there are no alternatives.”

Google is currently the subject of several lawsuits, including one from the US Department of Justice that could force Google to sell Chrome. In addition to lawsuits from Epic Games and Yelp, the search giant is facing more legal trouble from the DOJ over its advertising technology. It also recently lost an appeal to get around a $2.7 billion antitrust fine in the EU.

Update, November 25th: Added a statement from Google.

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Build your next PC like it’s 1999

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 16:41:32 +0000

SilverStone’s new FLP01 PC case is a retro beige box you can fill with modern components.

Silverstone’s new FLP01 PC case looks like a relic from the late ‘90s.

Screenshot: X

SilverStone’s new FLP01 PC case looks it was created in a time when desktop computers had turbo buttons and bragging rights were earned by having a Pentium chip inside. In reality, the retro beige box is launching next year for all your modern PC-building needs, doubling as a stand for a monitor that’s probably not a 30-pound CRT.

The Japanese company SilverStone has been making PC components and cases since it launched in 2003, and last year, during its 20th anniversary, it shared the first details and images of the FLP01 on X timed to coincide with April Fools’ Day.

Over a year later, at an expo held by the company in Japan last week, SilverStone announced that the FLP01 case was more than just a prank and was actually being put into production. Shipping is expected to start as early as the first quarter of 2025, according to Impress, with pricing targeted at ¥19,800, or around $130.

The FLP01’s design is inspired by the NEC PC-9800 line of desktop PCs which were popular in Japan from the ‘80s to the early ‘00s. The 5.25-inch floppy drives on its front facade are sadly fake, but they flip down to reveal a DVD drive as well front-facing ports including a headphone jack, USB-A, and USB-C.

The box SilverStone had on display at its expo was configured with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU on a full-sized ATX motherboard with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GPU and three cooling fans, according to Tom’s Hardware. All it’s missing is a tiny pair of matching desktop speakers that start to click every time your cellphone rings.

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Raspberry Pi announces the Pico 2 W, a wireless-enabled microcontroller board

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 16:36:04 +0000

Raspberry Pi today announced the new Pico 2 W, a wireless-enabled variant of the Pico 2. The Pico 2 W features the tried and tested wireless modem from the original Pico W and the new RP2350 microcontroller. Even with wireless support, this new microcontroller is priced at just $7.

The RP2350 microcontroller comes with faster cores, double the memory, floating-point support, on-chip OTP, better power consumption, and an improved security model built around Arm's TrustZone for Cortex-M.

The RP2350 features a unique dual-core, dual-architecture design. Developers can choose between a pair of Arm Cortex-M33 cores and a pair of open-hardware Hazard3 cores, allowing them to explore the RISC-V architecture in a stable environment.

The onboard CYW43439 Infineon modem supports 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity. It also supports both C and MicroPython libraries.

Pico 2 W specifications:

Dual Arm Cortex-M33 or dual Hazard3 RISC-V processors @ 150MHz
520 KB on-chip SRAM
2.4GHz 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 5.2
Software- and hardware-compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico 1
Drag-and-drop programming using mass storage over USB
Castellated module allows soldering directly to carrier boards
2 × UART
2 × SPI controllers
2 × I2C controllers
24 × PWM channels
3 x ADC channels
1 × USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support
12 × PIO state machines
Operating temperature -20°C to +85°C
Supported input voltage 1.8–5.5V DC

Raspberry Pi confirmed that the Pico 2 series will remain in production until at least January 2040. With wireless support, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W will be an ideal microcontroller board for enthusiasts and professional developers. Its affordability and extensive features make it a compelling choice for a wide range of projects. You can order it here from Raspberry Pi for $7.

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Paul's Tech News - These RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti specs are unbelievable. [Video]

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 08:37:53 +0000

Paul's Hardware (1.49M subscribers)

November 24, 2024

Video length: 9m 53s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - Nov 24, 2024

1:47 RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti and 5070 - even more launch rumors

3:25 RTX 50-series GPU up for pre-order, RTX 40-series stock running out

4:19 9800X3D Update - no more fail reports, top CPU on Amazon but watch for fakes

TECH BRIEFS

5:51 Flight Simulator 2024 servers overwhelmed, Microsoft only planned for 200k users

6:55 Steam Controller 2 is apparently in mass production

7:38 April Fools’ joke results in Silverstone making a beige ’80s throwback PC case

8:20 Colorful's Colorfire MEOW series is a cat-themed motherboard with matching BIOS

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Microsoft Weekly: Recall is here, new Windows 11 features, Ignite, and more

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 03:17:22 +0000

In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we look at Recall finally arriving for testing in the Insider program, new Windows 11 updates with many changes and features, a lot of Ignite news, misfired gaming launches, and more.

Table of contents:

Windows 10 and 11 news
Windows Insider Program
Ignite 2024
Updates are available
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.

Let us start with new non-security updates for Windows 10 and 11. This month's C-updates are the final in 2024, as Microsoft is skipping December non-security updates due to the holiday season.

Windows 11 version 24H2 received KB5046740 with new features for jump lists, taskbar, File Explorer, Settings app, and more. Windows 11 version 23H2 also got a fair share of updates for the Start menu, File Explorer, etc, in KB5046732. As for Windows 10, it received KB5046714 with fixes for activation issues and a few more bugs.

Also, Microsoft released new dynamic updates for Windows 10 (beware of the Recovery Partition bug) and the first hotpatch for Windows 11 version 24H2 LTSC.

Hands down, the biggest announcement from this week is the return of Recall. Microsoft finally opened the gates to its controversial AI feature, allowing Windows Insiders to test Recall on eligible hardware. Just keep in mind that the initial version has some limitations, including Recall ignoring filtered-out websites in certain scenarios.

Microsoft also launched Click to Do, a new AI-powered feature to complement Recall. Click to Do provides various quick actions for snapshots so that you can continue using separate applications.

All these goodies are only available in the latest Windows 11 Dev build on Copilot+ PCs. If you want to buy one, there are some solid deals on existing models. However, Qualcomm plans to announce new Snapdragon X chips for even more affordable Windows computers. They will have fewer CPU cores, but the NPU will be the same across the lineup, ensuring each device is eligible for AI features.

If you do not care about Recall and all the AI stuff, you might like this change coming soon to Windows 11: its Game Bar now has a dedicated browser that lets you browse the web while playing without alt-tabbing from the game. Called Microsoft Edge Game Assist, the feature is now available in preview for those with Edge 132 Beta, which was released this week.

Moving on, we have a few known issues in the latest Windows 10 and 11 updates. If you are on Windows 11 version 24H2, you might have problems with adjusting certain time/date settings through the Settings app (there is a workaround), and on top of that, the OS might blast you with a 100% speaker volume in certain scenarios.

There's is more. The update to Windows 11 version 24H2 is now blocked on some systems due to compatibility issues with USB network modems, printers, scanners, and even certain Ubisoft games. Microsoft is investigating the problem and promises to release fixes soon.

Also, Microsoft took down some of Windows 11's widgets to improve the experience. As a result, you can no longer use Calendar, To Do, Photos, Microsoft 365 Feed, and Family widgets.

On Windows 10, where users are currently bombarded with new full-screen ads promoting Windows 11, Microsoft acknowledged a problem with updating packaged apps. Luckily, this one was quickly fixed.

Windows Insider Program

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

	Windows 11	Windows 10
Canary Channel	27754	Not Applicable
Dev Channel	26120.2415	Not Applicable
Beta Channel	22635.4515	No longer available
Release Preview Channel	-	-

Users also discovered that build 22635.4515 contains some much-needed improvements for File Explorer. At last, you can turn off OneDrive backup notifications in the address bar and make File Explorer open links in a new tab instead of a new window.

Also, note that Microsoft temporarily turned off optical character recognition in the Photos app to improve the experience. Expect it to return somewhere in the future.

Ignite 2024

Here are the most interesting stories from this year's Ignite conference.

Ignite is one of Microsoft's biggest events each year, and the company usually announces a lot of developer- and enterprise-focused stuff. This year is no exception. At Ignite 2024, Microsoft announced a new in-house security chip and a DPU for Azure, a new hybrid infrastructure to replace Azure Stack HCI, Azure AI Foundry (a unified AI application platform), SQL Server 2025 with native vector support, and more.

For its apps and services, the company announced meeting transcription for Microsoft Teams, out-of-the-box agents for Microsoft 365, major upgrades to Microsoft 365 Copilot, a scareware blocker and secure password deployment for Edge, and Universal Print updates.

Some hardware was announced as well. Meet the Windows 365 Link, a thin client in a mini-PC form factor for accessing Windows 365 in the cloud. This box does not run Windows 11 locally—you only get a bunch of ports, local video processing, and some other minor stuff. Everything else runs in the cloud (Windows, apps, data, settings, etc). The Windows 365 Link costs $349.

For Windows 11 developers and IT admins, Microsoft announced a new Imaging API to enable developers to build applications with more advanced image capabilities. Windows Resiliency Initiative was unveiled, a project aimed to improve the reliability of the Windows ecosystem with features like Quick Machine Recovery for remote fix deployments on PCs that cannot boot.

Finally, Windows Subsystem for Linux received Intune compliance and Entra ID integration.

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.

Tiny11 Builder, a third-party script for creating debloated Windows images, has been updated with fixes for Windows 11 version 24H2. It now packs a new version of the tiny11 core maker, which is a special version for ultra-light Windows images that are good for experimenting in virtual machines with no need to service them later (network drivers and a lot of other parts are not included).

Other tools developers might find useful are the latest version of the Dev Home app, which now has File Explorer source control integration and other features. Microsoft also released new Windows Terminal updates with improved glyph rendering.

This week, Microsoft released its Bing Wallpaper app in the Microsoft Store, offering Windows 10 and 11 users a quick and easy way to get fresh wallpapers from its search engine. However, users quickly discovered that the app behaves borderline like malware. Plenty of dark patterns and quite offensive behavior make it extremely hard to recommend.

Other notable updates include the following:

And here are the newest drivers and firmware updates released this week:

Intel 32.0.101.6299 non-WHQL with S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 support.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 31.0.82.0 GPU driver with optimizations for creative apps and several games like Baldur’s Gate, Strange Brigade, Ark Survival Ascended, and more.
Surface Laptop 5 and 6 received fixes for display flickering and audio failures.

On the gaming side

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

Microsoft is now testing a new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate perk. With the latest change, players can stream the games they own via Xbox Cloud Gaming even if those games are not in Xbox Game Pass. However, the number of available games is currently limited, with Microsoft promising to expand it in the future.

Microsoft announced new games for Xbox and PC Game Pass subscribers. The latest additions include Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, PlateUP!, Nine Sols, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and more.

Speaking of the first two...

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 finally launched, or should I say crashed on Xbox Series X|S and PC. On November 19, 2024, the game became available, but it met pilots with infinite loading screens and truly atrocious world rendering bugs due to the onslaught of gamers and miscalculated server capabilities. This forced the dev team to apologize and scramble to fix all problems. Shortly after that, the game received its first hotfix.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl had a much better launch on November 20, with over one million copies sold on day one. You can play this long-expected title from a Ukrainian studio on PC and Xbox consoles (also available in Game Pass). If your PC cannot run the game and you do not have a modern console, you can try S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl on GeForce NOW—support for the game arrived as part of this week's game updates for the service.

Starfield now has over 15 million players. Bethesda decided to celebrate the milestone with a new vehicle and a fresh November update that packs uncapped frame rates on consoles, lipsync support in Creation Kit, achievements improvements, and more.

Other gaming news from this week include the following:

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away Beholder, a dystopian indie game where you monitor tenants and report their behavior to the authoritarian government. If one game is not enough (it is available for grabs until next Thursday), check out this week's Weekend PC Game Deals, which are packed with sci-fi shooters and other games across different PC storefronts.

Microsoft Weekly banner image by rperucho on Pixabay.

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STALKER 2 is getting a patch next week to fix these crashes and issues

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 03:15:19 +0000

GSC Game World finally let players loose on the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone again earlier this week with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The game has seen a massive launch across PC and Xbox platforms, but there have been quite a few reports regarding buggy behavior and performance issues with the release. To remedy at least some of those problems, the studio today announced that the game's first update is coming next week.

The update will be focused on fixing critical crashes related to memory allocation failures. Fixes for main quest progression issues, balance, cutscene and graphics problems, UI quirks, and more are incoming with it too.

Here's what the developer detailed today as landing next week:

Crash Fixes, including:

Issues and memory allocation failures, which previously caused the game to exit unexpectedly, particularly around rendering, skeletal meshes, and quest-related cutscenes.

Main Quest Progression Fixes, including:

Several bugs blocking the main quest progression, NPCs getting stuck in objects, incorrect quest markers, and issues with quest cutscenes.

Revision of the main quests (like Visions of Truth or A Minor Incident) to ensure smooth transitions, avoiding rare cases of players not being able to proceed further.

Gameplay & Balance Adjustments, including:

Fixing the price of the weapons with upgrades installed compared to their value without attachments.

NPCs behavior, including the way they act when lacking a shelter during the Emissions.

Cutscenes & Visual Fixes, including:

Rarely missing facial animations, misplaced NPCs, and visual inconsistencies like detached heads and clothes clipping.

Quality and stability improvements of the visual effects.

Softlock Fixes, including:

Issue where players were unable to close the trade screen after putting ammo in a wrong slot while playing on a gamepad.

User Interface Improvements, including:

Quest notifications now showed correctly during dialogues.

Corrected texts and missing interaction prompts.

Looking towards the future, GSC Game World said it will be addressing the issues surrounding the A-Life simulation system, that seems to be quite broken at launch, in a later update. A prominent analog stick dead zone issue will also be fixed later.

For those looking towards what the studio has planned for 2025 in the new content side of things, a roadmap will be landing sometime in December.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is available on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store, and GOG) and Xbox Series X|S platforms as well as Game Pass. Nvidia GeForce NOW members can play the game via the cloud if they have the PC version it as well. The title has already passed one million copies sold just two days into launch.

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Twitter’s heir apparent isn’t X or Threads — it’s Bluesky

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 17:01:50 +0000

Bluesky seems to have a real shot at becoming the next big place to get the pulse of the internet.

Bluesky feels like the big winner right now.

I’ve been covering Bluesky ever since I got my invite in April 2023. I’ve felt the platform has always had promise, especially with features like feeds with custom algorithms and the ability to let users pick their own moderation filters. But for a long while, it didn’t have the critical mass of users that I could follow to make it the first social network I load up every day.

Over the course of this month, that’s changed. It added 700,000 new users in a week. Then, it crossed the 15 million-user mark. This week, CEO Jay Graber said it crossed more than 20 million users and had been adding more than a million users per day.

Part of the interest in Bluesky is that it looks and feels like a better version of Twitter. But with Bluesky, it also feels like you can control your experience in the app. That isn’t always the case with Threads, where Meta makes the rules about what shows up in the algorithmic feed that it constantly pushes at you.

Things haven’t been perfect for Bluesky; the platform has had some hiccups, seemingly due to the influx of people, and one major outage due to a cut fiber cable. But Meta has clearly been feeling the heat.

Last week, the day after Bluesky touted its 15 million total users, Threads boss Adam Mosseri shared that Threads had already surpassed 15 million signups for November alone. (CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently shared that the platform has 275 million monthly users.) And Meta has aggressively introduced some significant Threads changes, including its own version of custom feeds, a major change to make the For You feed show more from people you follow, and some big improvements to search.

Even if Bluesky is my preferred place right now, it’s still comparatively small to Threads and X. It’s unclear if people will stick with it over the long term, especially since Meta seems committed to making Threads its next billion-user social network. And X is still going to matter, given that many companies post updates on the platform and because owner Elon Musk is set to have enormous power in the Trump administration.

I don’t think any of the platforms will fully replicate what Twitter once was — people are just too scattered across different platforms now — but Bluesky seems to have a real shot at becoming the next big place to get the pulse of the internet. I look forward to the skeets.

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Flight Simulator 2024's first hotfix targets multiple crashing issues, missing cursor

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 07:32:09 +0000

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 landed, or more like crash landed, earlier this week on PC and Xbox consoles. This cloud streaming content-centered entry in the hit simulation series essentially buckled under the load of players on day one, with the studio saying it did not expect that much interest so quickly. As the title finally moves towards server stability, its first hotfix has now been pushed out.

"Good news," begins a message by Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann on social media. "We've made continued improvements that provide smoother access to the simulator … We will continue to investigate any issues and keep the community informed. Thank you again for your ongoing support and enjoy your time in the skies."

The update focuses mainly on fixing some critical crashing issues being faced by simmers. A minor but annoying bug that left the cursor missing on the sign-in window at the start of the title has also been resolved, finally letting PC players stop spamming tab or aiming blind for their profile.

Here are all the changes in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 1.1.9.0 hotfix:

Stability & Performance

Fixed a crash when you selected “As Arrival” in the EFB

Fixed a crash that could occur when closing and invoking the Camera menu after changing the Drone focus mode option to a value other than undefined

Fixed various crashes across the title

General Bug Fixes

Fixed missing cursor on Xbox Live sign-in popup

Fixed an issue where you could lose focus when creating a new input profile.

Aircraft selection is accessible via the control menu, but can only be changed from the home page.

Fixed an issue where you could get stuck when accessing the menu bar from any help page.

The studio adds that moving any existing Community Packages from the title's folder to another location on the PC can resolve "stability issues or long loading times" as well.

Feedback on the update and the overall game can be provided to the development team via the official Flight Simulator forums.

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The good, the bad, and the ugly behind the push for more smart displays

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 07:31:18 +0000

Opinion: Apple could really change the game here.

After a couple of years without much happening, smart displays are in the news again. Aside from smart TVs, consumer screens that connect to the Internet have never reached a mainstream audience. However, there seems to be a resurgence to make smart displays more popular. The approaches that some companies are taking are better than those of others, revealing a good, bad, and ugly side behind the push.

Note that for this article, we'll exclude smart TVs when discussing smart displays. Unlike the majority of smart displays, smart TVs are mainstream tech. So for this piece, we'll mostly focus on devices like the Google Next Hub Max or Amazon Echo Show (as pictured above).

The good

When it comes to emerging technology, a great gauge for whether innovation is happening is by measuring how much a product solves a real user problem. Products seeking a problem to solve or that are glorified vehicles for ads and tracking don't qualify.

If reports that Apple is working on its first smart display are true, there may be potential for it to solve the problem of managing multiple smart home devices from different companies.

Apple has declined to comment on reports from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman of an Apple smart display under development. But Gurman recently claimed that the display will be able to be mounted on walls and "use AI to navigate apps.” Gurman said that it would incorporate Apple's smart home framework HomeKit, which supports "hundreds of accessories" and can control third-party devices, like smart security cameras, thermostats, and lights. Per the November 12 report:

The product will be marketed as a way to control home appliances, chat with Siri, and hold intercom sessions via Apple’s FaceTime software. It will also be loaded with Apple apps, including ones for web browsing, listening to news updates and playing music. Users will be able to access their notes and calendar information, and the device can turn into a slideshow display for their photos.

If released, the device—said to be shaped like a 6-inch iPhone—would compete with the Nest Hub and Echo Show. Apple entering the smart display business could bring a heightened focus on privacy and push other companies to make privacy a bigger focus, too. Apple has already given us a peek at how it might handle smart home privacy with the HomePod. "All communication between HomePod and Apple servers is encrypted, and anonymous IDs protect your identity," Apple's HomePod privacy policy states.

Apple's supposed smart display would also likely, and hopefully, leverage HomeKit Secure Video, which has already been adopted by non-Apple smart products and "ensures that activity detected by your security cameras is analyzed and encrypted by your Apple devices at home before being securely stored in iCloud," per Apple. This could help address concerns around the security of things like managing footage from smart doorbells.

Looking further ahead, I'm curious how an Apple smart display could impact Google's efforts here. Google hasn't released a new smart home display since 2019's Nest Hub Max. And with voice assistants like Google Assistant losing popularity, Google has seemed more interested in Pixel Tablets lately than smart displays. Recent sleuthing, however, has spotted code pointing to a new Nest Hub Max amid suspicion that Google is canceling future Pixel Tablets.

If Apple put out its own smart home display, how might Google respond? And how might generative AI impact interest or final products from either side? Surely, the Nest Hub Max isn't where smart home hubs max out.

The bad

Over the past couple of years, we've seen more web-connected desktop monitors released. Some were driven by the growth of videoconferences boosted by the pandemic. Others are more about providing access to common consumer apps, like Netflix, without needing to connect to a personal system. Neither gives me enough reason to put another device on my network.

Smart monitors for videoconferencing could be useful for workplaces or for someone less technically inclined to see loved ones. But for most, a monitor dedicated to web calls isn't practical or necessary. The demise of devices like the Facebook Portal and Lenovo ThinkSmart View Plus (which Lenovo is no longer selling) support that view.

Meanwhile, smart monitors like Samsung's M-series or LG's MyView-series have the same ads and privacy concerns as smart TVs. As we've discussed at Ars before, smart TVs are increasingly used to push ads and track users, giving TV operating system (OS) owners, such as LG and Samsung, an alternative revenue stream from hardware sales.

LG has a whole lineup of smart monitors like this one. Credit: LG

Samsung and LG smart monitors use the same OSes as their respective smart TVs. LG and Samsung TVs are better at keeping ads to a respectable minimum than other, often cheaper, TVs. However, LG and Samsung have been seeking ways to grow their ad businesses.

For the most part, smart monitors don't seem to fill a gap in demand like a well-executed, privacy-focused smart home hub might.

Interest in tracking users and selling ads via TVs is what has caused dumb TVs to be exceptionally hard to find. I'd hate for dumb monitors to be elusive one day, too.

The ugly

Amazon markets its Echo Show displays as hubs for managing smart homes, calendars, and shopping lists. However, Amazon doesn't have a good reputation for maintaining user privacy. And with Amazon under pressure to make Alexa financially successful, it wouldn't surprise if more ads or subscription fees were eventually forced on Echo Show owners.

This week, Amazon announced the Echo Show 21, its biggest smart display yet. The bigger size makes the device more appropriate for watching stuff on platforms like Netflix and (as Amazon would love) Amazon Prime Video. Since Amazon owns the Echo Show OS, it could track user habits to fuel its ad business to generate insight for its businesses. Additionally, Echo Shows encourage tasks like researching and saving recipes and making shopping and to-do lists—all representing e-commerce opportunities for Amazon.

Amazon says it doesn't sell customer data, but it also says it may use user data for targeted ads, to inform its own business decisions, and to share non-user-specific trends with third parties.

Amazon has also been building a generative AI version of Alexa that is expected to require a subscription fee and seek more user information. However, Amazon hasn't done much to make Alexa easier to trust. As I wrote when Amazon first demoed gen AI Alexa:

The use of visual IDs to enable using Alexa without a wake word heightens the dependence on cameras and microphones, yet Amazon hasn't disclosed any revamped approaches to customer privacy. The company was previously caught keeping recordings, including children's, forever, and Amazon workers have been caught listening to Alexa audio and spying on Ring users. Alexa audio has even been used in criminal trials. Amazon says it doesn't send images or videos to the cloud and emphasizes Echo Show devices' microphone/camera off button and integrated physical camera shutter.

The free version of Alexa is expected to stay available when the generative AI alternative releases. But it remains possible that Amazon could eventually lock feature features behind a paywall or remove them.

Smart displays push

With smart home enthusiasts more excited than ever about Matter and with smart display talk already on the rise, I'm expecting more discussion around what makes a good, bad, or ugly smart display in 2025.

As tech companies push these devices out, Ars will focus on whether those devices are solving problems and if they're doing so with privacy and other user needs at the forefront. Smart displays built around company needs rather than users' will see limited interest from technologists.

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Star Citizen goes free-to-play for two weeks, offers over 150 ships and vehicles to try out

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 07:30:16 +0000

Cloud Imperium Games has kicked off another free fly event for Star Citizen, the upcoming sci-fi space MMORPG that's being developed using crowd-funded resources. Its multiplayer portion has gone completely free to try for the next 14 days, letting any PC players, with a decent enough rig, jump in and try out fresh ships almost every day without opening their wallets.

Named the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo of 2954 in-game, the yearly event runs until December 5. The developer will be rotating the available ships and vehicles for players every 48 hours, showcasing a different ship building company, from the in-universe lore, every time. For example, right now it's Crusader Industries and Tumbril Land Systems that are on the spotlight, featuring everything from cargo-hauling ships to advanced fighters.

As a grand finale, from December 2 through 5, all the previous ships and vehicles will return for a grand finale, letting players try out anything they missed out on from previous days.

Cloud Imperium is also offering every new player a free ship till the end of the event. The Drake Interplanetary starter ship, the Cutter, is what's available, an allrounder ship that also features some handy cargo space.

Like in previous years, the event is taking place inside the largest city of planet microTech: New Babbage. To get there, new players can wake up right inside the city and follow the signs towards the event stage, which involves a trip on the transit system. Head to the event's landing page here to see what ships and vehicles will be showcased on which day.

For those who haven't kept up, since the last Expo event, Star Citizen has received Alpha updates containing derelict settlements, a completely alien ship, wildlife for habitable planets, hauling missions, instanced hangers, and more features. A brand-new release window was also attached to the game's single-player campaign portion, while also showing off a huge chunk of its opening sequence.

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 sells a million copies on PC and Xbox as "much more" join with Game Pass

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 18:34:18 +0000

After a 15-year break, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. finally let fans of the post-apocalyptic survival series return to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone earlier this week. The game has been having a terrific launch week on Steam alone, with concurrent players reaching over 100,000 players on day one. It seems this popularity has been seen across Xbox consoles, too.

Just two days after launch, developer GSC Game World announced today, November 22, that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has already sold a whopping million copies. In addition to that, more than a million joined in to experience the game via Game Pass.

"No wonder it feels a bit crowdy in the Zone," the developer said on a social media post earlier today. "A million copies were sold, and much more stalkers joined the artifact hunt with Game Pass,"

It's unclear how the sales numbers split are across PC stores and Xbox Series X|S consoles and just how many players joined via Xbox Game Pass for that "much more" statement. "This is just the start of our unforgettable adventure. The Heart of Chornobyl emanates stronger with each of us," the studio adds.

The title was released following a range of delays, caused primarily by the Russian invasion of the studio's home country, Ukraine. While sales numbers and initial player reception have been very positive, as seen on Steam reviews, the game's performance issues and many glitches are the main points of concern among critics and owners.

In an earlier message, the GSC Game World said to expect "rough edges" in the game, considering this is the largest project it has ever launched. It said hotfixes for glitches and more major updates are already in the works, with a roadmap incoming in December.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is now available on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store, and GOG) and Xbox Series X|S platforms. Meanwhile, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass members can also jump in now for no extra cost.

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Welcome to Google’s nightmare: US reveals plan to destroy search monopoly

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 18:56:36 +0000

DOJ goes for Google's throat with "staggering" remedies to end search monopoly.

Welcome to Google's nightmare.

Late yesterday, the US Department of Justice filed its proposed final judgment, officially recommending a broad range of remedies to end Google's search monopoly.

Predictably, Google is not happy with the DOJ's plan, which requires the company to sell its Chrome browser. It also retains the option of forcing Google to divest Android if competition doesn't increase from behavioral remedies, including bans on exclusive default deals with other browsers and device makers. Additionally, Google is prohibited from building any new browsers and must fund an education campaign that shows people how to switch search engines and potentially even pays people to switch. Google may also be restricted from using its data scale advantage to benefit its AI products.

In a blog post, Google's chief legal officer, Kent Walker, railed against the DOJ's plan, calling it a "radical interventionist agenda." It allegedly "goes miles beyond" addressing concerns of US District Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled in August that Google had a monopoly in two markets.

It's hard to say which part of the DOJ's plan Google hates most. According to Walker, selling off Chrome would "endanger the security and privacy of millions of Americans" and "undermine" the quality of the world's favorite browser. Restricting default deals allegedly hurts businesses like Mozilla, which relies on Google's revenue-sharing to enhance products like Firefox, Walker alleged. (Mozilla has previously declined to comment on this often-repeated Google claim.) And threatening Google's AI business allegedly unfairly blocks Google from playing a "leading role" in "perhaps the most important innovation of our time," Walker wrote.

Walker also complained about a technical committee that the DOJ wants Google to fund to ensure the company doesn't circumvent remedies, claiming that the US wants to "mandate government micromanagement."

But ultimately, his blog furthers talking points that Google mostly failed to argue during the monopoly trial and generally reinforces that Google does not agree with Mehta's ruling. Even remedies that experts considered benign, like requiring choice screens instead of preloading Google search as the default on Google devices, appeared outrageous to Walker.

"DOJ’s proposal would literally require us to install not one but two separate choice screens before you could access Google Search on a Pixel phone you bought," Walker wrote. "And the design of those choice screens would have to be approved by the Technical Committee. And that’s just a small part of it. We wish we were making this up."

Google will have plenty of time to argue against the DOJ's proposed final judgment in the coming months. The DOJ is scheduled to file its final revisions by March 7, 2025. And as the DOJ noted in its filing yesterday, it may update its plan at any point during discovery in the remedies stage of litigation, which will be followed by Google's appeal.

Will Trump stop the Chrome sale?

It's possible that President-elect Donald Trump may intervene to stop the Chrome sale, as he signaled on the campaign trail that there could be "more fair" ways to end Google's monopoly without breaking up its business.

Lee Hepner, an antitrust attorney monitoring the trial for the American Economic Liberties Project, told Ars that "the Trump Administration will have plenty of time to take the wheel before an anticipated evidentiary hearing in April 2025." But it's too soon to predict what actions Trump may take.

While Walker claimed the DOJ's plan is "wildly overbroad," Hepner views the DOJ's filing as reflecting a "measured approach." He suggested that the DOJ's delay in deciding to force an Android sale without first trying less extreme remedies "dulls any argument that this is a radical proposal."

Hepner expects that the DOJ plan may be measured enough that the court may only "be interested in a nip-tuck, not a wholesale revision of what plaintiffs have put forward."

Kamyl Bazbaz, SVP of public affairs for Google's more privacy-focused rival DuckDuckGo, released a statement agreeing with Hepner.

"The government has put forward a proposal that would free the search market from Google's illegal grip and unleash a new era of innovation, investment, and competition," Bazbaz said. "There's nothing radical about this proposal: It's firmly based on the court's extensive finding of fact and proposes solutions in line with previous antitrust actions."

Bazbaz accused Google of "cynically" invoking privacy among chief concerns with a forced Chrome sale. That "is rich coming from the Internet’s biggest tracker," Bazbaz said.

Will Apple finally compete with Google in search?

The remedies the DOJ has proposed could potentially be game-changing, Bazbaz told Ars, not just for existing rivals but also new rivals and startups the court found were previously unable to enter the market while it was under Google's control.

If the DOJ gets its way, Google could be stuck complying with these proposed remedies for 10 years. But if the company can prove after five years that competition has substantially increased and it controls less than 50 percent of the market, the remedies could be terminated early, the DOJ's proposed final judgment order said.

That's likely cold comfort for Google as it prepares to fight the DOJ's plan to break up its search empire and potentially face major new competitors. The biggest risk to Google's dominance in AI search could even be its former partner, whom the court found was being paid handsomely to help prop up Google's search monopoly: Apple.

On X (formerly Twitter), Hepner said that cutting off Google's $20 billion payments to Apple for default placements in Safari alone could "have a huge effect and may finally kick Apple to enter the market itself."

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Obsidian’s Avowed is the cure for “Souls-like” action-RPG fatigue

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 18:54:34 +0000

Preview build shows a rich, colorful world with satisfying, zippy combat.

In the years since Dark Souls first hit the scene, the action RPG genre has been overrun with "Souls-like" games that emulate FromSoft's general vibe. That often applies not just to dark settings and punishing difficulty but also to the slow, deliberate management of every movement and attack to survive even simple encounters with your life and stamina intact.

While that approach definitely has its place, sometimes you want an action-RPG with a little more color, a little faster pacing, and a little more, well, action. After spending a few hours with Obsidian's Avowed, it already feels like just the thing for action-RPG fans who want something a little less Souls-like.

All politics is local

From the start, Avowed is layered with all of the vaguely medieval high fantasy tropes you'd expect from a game spun off from the Pillars of Eternity universe. Your protagonist is a "god-like," touched in the womb by mysterious immortal beings that gave you mysterious powers but also a disfigured face that led you to be bullied as a child. Eventually, you grow up to be an envoy to the King of Aedrys and are sent over the sea to the lightly civilized Living Lands to investigate a mysterious fungal plague that is turning animals and soldiers alike into unruly, rage-filled beasts.

While the exposition dump introduction is a bit tedious, the storytelling picks up quite a bit in well-voiced conversations with a wide variety of humans and multicolored humanoid species around the island kingdom of Paradis. Through the well-written dialogue, you get a pretty quick feel for the strained politics between Aedrys and Paradis. What the Aedryn people see as an important civilizing occupation, the Paradisans are more likely to see as a heavy-handed colonization. As such, you're treated more often with suspicion and reluctance by the local populace than as a fated hero saving the realm from destruction.

The early dialogue trees offer plenty of opportunities to explore the political lore and historical backstory of the world. You can also stumble on some interesting side stories, including one where you end up playing impromptu relationship counselor to a troubled human who has fallen into a forbidden relationship with one of the beasts bedeviling the town.

After taming a few of the more fearsome infected beasts troubling Paradis, you discover a mystical stone that lets you actually talk to the sentient fungus that's causing all of this trouble; it describes itself as "mycelia twining through the loam, taking and giving in equal measure." That first conversation with the reluctant infection itself is full of the kind of heavy-handed mysticism and flowery language that quickly had me tuning out of the story. I'm hopeful that the full game will stay more focused on the more interesting human interactions instead.

Daggers, bows, and spells

If you're used to games like Dark Souls or Elden Ring, you'll find the first-person melee-based combat in Avowed to be downright zippy. You start with a simple dagger that's great for multiple quick thrusts or for a slower, charged attack that lets you lunge in from a few paces out. Getting in close with the dagger can open you up to dangerous counterattacks, though, which are best avoided with a quick sideways or backward dodge. The window for those dodges can be pretty tight, though, and a few stray attacks is enough to leave you struggling to survive with a limited "second wind" recovery.

Pretty quickly, you'll stumble on a bow and a seemingly unlimited supply of arrows, which can be fired quickly or charged for a more powerful volley. This is the safest way to attack most early grunt enemies, as you can keep your distance from foes that can't do much from afar but throw rocks. But the safer option is also the duller one, as lobbing arrow after arrow from a relatively safe distance quickly starts to feel a bit tedious.

The bow is a bit too effective at taking out early enemies from afar Credit: Obsidian / Microsoft

The tedium of the bow doesn't really break until you stumble on your first spellbook, which you can hold in your off-hand while gripping the dagger in the other. Spouts of flame, freezing icicles, and blasts of lightning all come standard with the basic spellbook, alongside learnable spells like an enemy-tracking elemental blast and a powerful bull charge that can stun even lunging enemies.

Even early on, the wide variety of available spells—all on relatively quick cooldown timers—can make for some pretty dynamic fights. In one early boss battle with a large, infected bear, I was able to continually pepper the beast with each available spell while also lunging in for a few quick dagger hits when it was stunned or immobilized. By the time I was done with the last spell in my repertoire, my first spell was ready to use again, leading to a satisfying cycle of magical attacks that held out as long as my mana did. Though you do have to manage a prominent stamina meter during these battles, the game seems to be generous enough to make it not much of a pressing issue (at least for my combat-heavy character build).

Avowed's allies are surprisingly helpful in combat. Credit: Obsidian / Microsoft

Through it all, there's usually one or two computer-controlled partners fighting alongside you as well. In many games like this, these kinds of partners feel like more of a chore to manage than an ally to aid you. In Avowed, though, your partners do a good job of distracting large groups of enemies from ganging up on you while also doing significant damage themselves—one actually landed the killing blow on a boss while I was off healing from a stray attack. While you can issue commands and get specific upgrades to fine-tune how your allies work, I've been perfectly satisfied with letting their default assistance round out my battles.

The small preview slice of Avowed we were given access to only touches on a deep, multi-branched ability tree suited for both melee combat and more ranged magic users. We're eager to explore more when the game hits Windows and Xbox consoles on February 18.

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"This is not the launch experience we want for our players and want to apologize to the community": Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launches to 'mostly negative' reviews

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 18:46:57 +0000

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launch has been marred by player frustration on Steam and social media.

What you need to know

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launched on November 19, 2024, for Xbox Series X|S and PC, with day-one availability on Xbox Game Pass.
While the game promised substantial improvements over its predecessor, launch issues have marred the experience, resulting in a 'mostly negative' rating on Steam.
Due to these technical problems, our review remains unrated as the game receives further updates.
In response to community feedback, Microsoft has apologized on social media and is working to address the issues by increasing server capacity.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 debuted two days ago, poised for a landmark launch with its day-one availability on Xbox Game Pass, and promised substantial improvements, including enhanced terrain detail and a comprehensive career system. The build-up prepared many to don their pilot uniforms for the first time, attracting a broader audience beyond the franchise's usual niche.

However, Microsoft's apparent underestimation of this appeal has hampered what could have been. As revealed during a developer launch stream, the game was stress-tested with only 200,000 simulated users, a figure far below the actual demand. The result? It was a disastrous launch, with plenty of angry customers pushing 'mostly negative' ratings on Steam.

"We knew the excitement was high for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, but frankly we completely underestimated how high."

Our own Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 review remains unrated for now, as the game's current state has made meaningful testing nearly impossible. Senior Editor Ben Wilson is among many who are still encountering issues days after launch, refraining from scoring the game at all. Microsoft has apologized on social media for the widespread access problems and pledged to increase server capacity. However, a quick look at player responses reveals that these issues persist for a significant portion of the community.

What is actually wrong with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?

Aside from overwhelmed servers preventing many from logging into the game, the game currently crashes at regular intervals with long wait times for logging back in. Additionally, as seen in several Reddit posts, those lucky enough to play for more than a few minutes are having issues with textures refusing to load.

Hmmm… Expectation vs. Reality 🥴 from r/MicrosoftFlightSim

Stunning graphics, right? from r/MicrosoftFlightSim

Some users are even having difficulty loading entire planes, with some meme-worthy shots of cockpits flying around in what looks more like a Starfield expansion than anything resembling Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Steam 'review bombing' at launch

Steam screenshot showing Microsoft Flight Simulator with mostly negative reviews.

(Image credit: Steam)

It's common for gamers to express dissatisfaction through Steam review bombing as a form of protest, but is this truly fair when many games encounter temporary launch hiccups? Should a game's rating suffer permanently due to issues that are ultimately fixable?While it's true that Microsoft is actively addressing the problems and striving to improve the experience, and we're confident the game will shine once these initial bumps are smoothed out, the frustration of players is understandable. Whether they've paid full price or are accessing the game through Xbox Game Pass, consumers have every right to expect a polished product on launch day.This situation is particularly frustrating for everyone involved, given the significant marketing push behind Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 alongside Xbox Game Pass, which aimed to attract a broader audience, and the fact that Microsoft — a server tech giant — should excel in managing server capacity. These make the launch issues all the more disappointing and raise questions about preparation. Did they really anticipate only 200,000 users?Getting review bombed can also drown out constructive criticism, and It's for this reason that we've left our own review unrated for now, as the game's current state prevents us from providing thorough feedback. We remain hopeful that everyone, including our reviewer, will soon be able to enjoy smooth skies.

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STALKER 2 is flying up the Steam charts as Microsoft Flight Simulator nosedives

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 18:43:30 +0000

STALKER 2 is off to a great start. Microsoft Flight Simulator is...not.

What you need to know

This week, two of Xbox's biggest 2024 exclusives launched: STALKER 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The two games released within 24 hours of one another, but their launches couldn't be more different.
STALKER 2 is off to a roaring start, with over 110,000+ concurrent players and counting on Steam as well as a #1 placement on the platform's Top Sellers chart. So far, it's got "Mostly Positive" reviews.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, meanwhile, is a complete disaster so far, with most players not even able to get into the game or play for long without countless bugs and crashes. It's also a Top Seller at #5, though it's quickly accrued a very negative review rating.
Notably, both games are available to play on both Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC with Xbox Game Pass, which is Microsoft's buffet-style gaming subscription service.

This week brought the release of two of Xbox's biggest 2024 Xbox exclusives within 24 hours of one another, but the contrast between their launches couldn't be sharper.

One is STALKER 2, the long-awaited, highly anticipated open-world survival shooter from GSC Game World that's finally out after several years of delays caused by the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I'm writing this just a few short hours after its launch on Wednesday morning, and its concurrent player count on Steam is already 110,000+ and climbing according to SteamDB data — a very impressive feat for a single player title that's also available to play through Xbox Game Pass. That number is sure to skyrocket even higher going into this weekend, and it will be interesting to see the heights the shooter can reach.

The other is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which is, as my colleague Ben Wilson puts it in his review, "an unplayable mess after a disastrous and disgraceful launch on Xbox and PC." The follow-up to Microsoft and Asobo Studio's hit 2020 sim garnered quite a bit of hype before its release on Tuesday, but quickly nosedived post-launch as players couldn't (and still can't) get into the game or play it for long without freezes or crashes. It's so bad that we didn't even give it a review score, as "there's nothing to evaluate."

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is...not looking good, to say the least.

(Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

The stark difference between the launch of STALKER 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is apparent in their Steam review scores. The former has achieved a "Mostly Positive" rating so far with 76% of its 2,035 user reviews giving it the blue thumbs up, while the latter has a crimson "Mostly Negative" rating, as only 20% of its 3,645 reviews are positive. And while it's true that many STALKER 2 players have experienced a variety of performance problems with the sequel, none of them even come close to the ridiculous instability of Flight Simulator.

It's worth noting that both games are performing well on Steam in terms of revenue, with STALKER 2 at the #1 spot on Steam's Top Sellers chart and Microsoft Flight Simulator in fifth place behind Disney Dreamlight Valley, its new "The Storybook Vale" DLC, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Both were also pretty high on the platform's most-wishlisted games list before they came out, with STALKER 2 holding the fourth place spot for many months. It was only surpassed by Monster Hunter Wilds, Deadlock, and Hollow Knight: Silksong (maybe one day it'll come out...).

I published my review of STALKER 2 a few hours before its release on Wednesday, giving the game a score of 4/5 stars after playing well over 40+ hours of the open-world FPS. In it, I wrote that it "stands tall as one of the most captivating open-world shooters I've ever played, with palpable atmosphere and deeply rewarding exploration that kept me glued to my seat along with addictively intense and dynamic action that kept me on the edge of it."

The Poppy Field area in STALKER 2's first region. Supposedly, the beautiful flowers here make you feel very, very drowsy...

(Image credit: Windows Central)

As someone who's been playing the STALKER games for many years now, it's awesome to see STALKER 2 performing so well, especially knowing the working conditions that GSC Game World has had to contend with amid Russia's ongoing war of aggression. It's definitely not perfect — I've experienced a fair number of noteworthy bugs in my playthrough, and I have some issues with the balance of the game as well — but nevertheless, it's a great game that will only get better over time as the developers tweak it and patch it up. Notably, in an email sent to Windows Central, it was confirmed that 1125 bugs and issues have been resolved with recent patches already, with more fixes on the way.

On the flip side of things, there's Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which has proven to be a huge disappointment so far. It's a shame to see the sim launch in this disastrous of a state, but hopefully Microsoft and Asobo Studio are able to get the game in a stable, playable state sooner rather than later. Until that happens, though, definitely avoid paying full price for it.

The nice thing is that both games are available on both Xbox and PC with Xbox Game Pass, so you can try them out without making a big purchase if you're a subscriber. You'll need Xbox Game Pass Standard to access them on console, PC Game Pass to do so on PC, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate if you want to play on both and have the option of using Xbox Cloud Gaming as well.

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RTX 5070 Ti specifications may have leaked, revealing a 300W GPU

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 18:22:16 +0000

Nvidia is yet to make the next generation of RTX GPUs that it's making an official product, but leaks continue to roll out. The latest report has information on the RTX 5070 Ti that's seemingly in development at the hardware giant. The latest round of leaks joins the ones that already have come out regarding the highest-end RTX 5090, as well as its smaller brothers: the RTX 5080 and 5070.

The latest RTX 5000 series report once again lands from a well-known hardware leaker, Kopite7kimi, via VideoCardz.

Per the report, the RTX 5070 Ti will tout 8960 CUDA Cores, which translate to 70 Streaming Multiprocessors. Using the leaker's new information that reports Nvidia is calling the card "PG147 and "SKU 60" internally, the site alleges that this lineup will be using the same reference boards as the RTX 5080, that being a cut-down GB203 GPU.

The leaker had gone on to say that the RTX 5070 Ti will have a 300W power requirement. However, as VideoCardz notes, it's unclear if this is measuring the maximum (TGP) or the thermal design power (TDP) of the graphics card. Previous leaks of the unannounced RTX 5070 had said the relatively lower-end GPU would draw 250W of power. Based on that data, the more powerful Ti version drawing 50W of extra power makes some sense.

With so many rumors swirling about the unannounced line of RTX graphics cards, even if the specifications turn out to be correct, keep in mind that their names may not be what appears out of Nvidia in the end.

With the production of RTX 40 series GPUs now winding down and a CES 2025 keynote ready to happen in January, Nvidia is looking quite eager to announce its new consumer graphics card lineup. As usual, take rumors with a grain of salt until official announcements come through from the company.

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Nvidia Says Its Blackwell Chip Is Fine, Nothing to See Here

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 18:18:40 +0000

Chip production delays and a rumored overheating issue haven’t slowed down Nvidia, which reported another quarter of blockbuster earnings and said Blackwells are now in the hands of Microsoft and OpenAI.

Chip giant Nvidia reported its third-quarter earnings earlier today, and all ears—and presumably some watch parties—were tuned in to try to determine what the company’s performance might mean for the near future of the artificial intelligence industry as a whole.

The fate of the company’s newest AI chip, Blackwell, was a major focus after production issues caused shipments to be delayed for several months earlier this year. On Sunday, The Information also reported that Blackwell chips were overheating when connected together in Nvidia’s customized server racks, prompting the company to make design changes.

But Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang told analysts and investors on its earnings call today that Blackwell production now “is in full steam.”

“We will deliver this quarter more Blackwells than we had previously estimated,” Huang said. Some of Nvidia’s most important customers, like Microsoft and OpenAI, have already received the new chips, and Blackwell sales could end up generating several billion dollars in revenue for the company next quarter, executives said.

Some industry analysts reported earlier that problems with the new chips had been fixed. Dylan Patel, chief analyst at the research firm SemiAnalysis, told Business insider that the Blackwell overheating issues “have been present for months and have largely been addressed.”

Patrick Moorhead, founder and chief analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy, told WIRED that his manufacturing contacts were unaware of any major overheating issues. But it's not unusual, he said, for there to be tension between design, engineering, and production when bringing a new chip design to market.

“It’s a debate as old as semiconductors: Is it a design issue? Is it a production issue?” Moorhead said. “People are going to look for any type of smoke that can get in the way of the thesis of [Nvidia’s] dramatic growth.”

Nvidia generated $35.1 billion in revenue for the quarter, beating estimates of $33.2 billion. Its revenue rose 94 percent compared to last year. That’s a relatively small increase compared to a few of its recent quarters, when revenue rose as much as 265 percent on an annual basis—but Nvidia isn’t going out of business anytime soon. The results indicate that the AI market is continuing to boom as companies pour billions of dollars into buying advanced chips and other equipment, albeit at a slightly slower pace.

A large portion of Nvidia’s growth this quarter was driven by data center revenue, totaling $30.8 billion for the quarter, which was up 112 percent from last year. The company’s gross profit margin was 74.5 percent, essentially flat from a year ago. But analysts expect that Nvidia’s margins could shrink as the company shifts to producing more Blackwell chips, which cost more to make than their less advanced predecessors.

Nvidia’s earnings reports are seen as an important bellwether for the AI industry. The chip architect’s advanced GPUs, which power complex neural network processing, are what made the current generative AI boom possible. As Silicon Valley giants raced to build new chatbots and image-generation tools over the past few years, Nvidia’s revenue exploded, allowing it to surpass Apple as the most valuable public company in the world. Since the launch of ChatGPT in November of 2022, Nvidia’s stock price has increased nearly tenfold.

Almost every major tech company working on AI, even those building their own processing units, rely heavily on Nvidia GPUs to train their AI models. Meta, for example, has said that it is building its latest AI technology on a cluster of more than 100,000 Nvidia H100s. Smaller AI startups, meanwhile, have been left without enough AI compute power as Nvidia struggled to keep up with demand.

Blackwell, Nvidia’s newest GPU, is made up of two pieces of silicon each equivalent to the size of its previous chip, Hopper, which are combined together into a single component. This design has resulted in a chip that’s supposedly four times faster and with more than double the number of transistors as its predecessor.

But the launch of Blackwell hasn’t been all smooth sailing. Originally slated to ship in the second quarter, the new chip hit a production snag, reportedly delaying the rollout by a few months. Huang took responsibility for the problem, calling it a “design flaw” that “caused the yield to be low.” Huang told Reuters in August that Nvidia’s longtime chipmaking partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, helped Nvidia correct the issue.

Moorhead told WIRED he remains bullish on Nvidia and is confident that the generative AI market will continue to grow for at least the next 12 to 18 months, despite some recent reports suggesting AI progress is starting to plateau.

“I think the only way shareholders would have a mutiny is if they were concerned about the capital expenditures or the profitability of the hyperscalers,” Moorhead said, referring to big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta that are heavily invested in AI cloud services. “But I think they’re just going to keep buying up Nvidia until that day actually comes.” Enterprise AI is still an area of growth for Nvidia as well, he added.

On today’s earnings call, Nvidia chief financial officer Colette Kress said Nvidia’s enterprise AI tools are in “full throttle,” including an operating platform that lets other businesses build their own copilots and AI agents. Customers include Salesforce, SAP, and ServiceNow, she said.

Huang echoed the same thing later in the call: “We’re starting to see enterprise adoption of agentic AI,” he said. “It’s really the latest rage.”

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Microsoft Flight Sim 2024 is a legit pile of dog CR*P! NEVER BUY THIS!!! [Video]

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 03:09:02 +0000

JayzTwoCents (4.12M subscribers)

November 21, 2024

Video length: 23m 53s

It is now 4 years after the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024 has just launched... and its a complete pile of CR*P!!!!!!!!!!

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The Best CPUs for your Gaming or Production PC! [Video]

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 03:07:05 +0000

Paul's Hardware (1.49M subscribers)

November 21, 2024

Video length: 17m 13s

0:00 Intro - Welcome to Paul’s Tech Deals!

1:11 Planning - $1250 Gaming PC for rest of parts, AMD/Intel Platform Choices

4:12 Best Gaming and Production CPUs under $100

6:00 Best Gaming CPUs under $200

7:53 Best Production CPUs under $200

8:51 Best Gaming CPUs under $300

10:07 Best Production CPUs under $300

11:50 Best Gaming CPUs under $400

12:36 Best Production CPUs under $400

13:32 Best Gaming CPUs under $500

14:09 Best Production / All-Around CPUs $400-$600

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Gamers Nexus - HW News - Intel Battlemage Imminent, AI Rant, Arrow Lake "Fix," Xbox Handheld, 'Floppy' Case [Video]

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 03:04:29 +0000

Gamers Nexus (2.3M subscribers)

November 20, 2024

Video length: 28m 00s

00:00 - Recapping the Week

01:07 - GN Update: Cat Angels Donation Drive

03:24 - Multiple Intel Battlemage Rumors for December

05:54 - Intel Says Arrow Lake Needs to be "Fixed"

12:55 - AMD CPUs Gain Market Share

14:27 - AI Makes Steve Worried About Humanity

19:19 - GeForce Now Introduces 100-Hour Monthly Limit

20:57 - NVIDIA Officially Launches NVIDIA App

23:05 - Silverstone Retro Case FLP-01

23:56 - Handhelds: New Deck, Xbox Handheld, & AYANEO 3

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STALKER 2 reviews and Metacritic score roundup: Does GSC's open-world sequel live up to the hype?

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:06:15 +0000

STALKER 2 has finally arrived, but is it getting good reviews?

At last, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is finally upon us. First announced 14 years ago, brought back to life in 2018, and then delayed from 2022 into late this year due to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the release of the hardcore open-world FPS has been a long-time coming. And as I write this on launch day — mere minutes from the release of the Xbox and Windows PC exclusive — its review embargo has passed, resulting in dozens of critic opinions being published across the web.

At the time of writing, STALKER 2 has a "Generally Favorable" overall review score of about 77/100 on the aggregation site Metacritic, with an average of 76/100 based on 44 Windows PC reviews and an average of 79/100 taken from 12 Xbox Series X|S reviews. Most evaluations give it a rating that falls somewhere in the 80-90 range, but there are quite a few reviews in the 70s and even the 60s as well. Here's a roundup of quotes and scores that shows the range of opinions:

Hardcore Gamer (100/100): "Stalker 2 is nothing short of a miracle. Developed by Ukrainian studio GSC Game World over the course of seven years amid a pandemic and a war -- among many other challenges -- Stalker 2 is a labor of love and the best type of sequel one could hope for. While many long-running franchises have strayed from their roots in an (often misguided) attempt to appeal to as many players as possible, Stalker 2 knows its core audience well and delivers exactly the type of game we were hoping for."
Game Rant (90/100): "Overall, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is truly something special. It's not perfect, but it manages to succeed in some major areas that many other games fall short in. Its open world is one of the best I've been in for quite some time, but its morally gray choice-driven narrative is also something worth writing home about, with the immense amount of player power it offers. Stalker 2's combat is challenging and exciting, and there is almost never a dull moment as players explore the Zone. So long as players can look past some of its blemishes that are arguably overshadowed by its best features, they'll find a memorable and worthwhile experience in Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl."
PC Gamer (83/100): "Just like in the old days, performance issues and bugs don't stop Stalker's mad, wonderful heart from shining through."
VG247 (80/100): "Making games is hard, regardless, and the fact that the team was able to put together a package like this that's so earnest, so passionate in its revisit of a world enshrined in PC gaming's history, is more than impressive. It's an admirable feat that I hope isn't lost on the general gaming crowd who don't know too much about the games outside of their time playing them. I would recommend Stalker 2 to fans of the Stalker series, obviously, and as anyone with a love of open world FPS games and distinct sci-fi. The good thing is it's available on Game Pass, so you can pay less than full price and try it out."
TheGamer (60/100): "All in all, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a perfectly average open world survival shooter. It’s an interesting setting with well-realized characters, but it’s held back by less-satisfying gunplay and a run-of-the-mill ‘good enough’ sense of exploration. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. But if you’re a fan of games like Fallout: New Vegas, or you enjoyed past Stalker games, then this one is worth following up on."
VGC (40/100): "Stalker 2 could be a great game in a few years, but what's presented at launch is a technical mess that doesn't capitalize on its best ideas. Compelling side stories and a brilliant setting do a lot of the heavy lifting, but at launch Stalker 2 isn't an adventure we'd fully recommend embarking on."

After reading through many of these reviews, it seems like most critics agree that STALKER 2's open-world exploration, action, and survival systems are well done. With that said, the game — much like the original STALKER titles — has garnered a reputation for being a bit on the buggy side, though it's worth noting that developer GSC Game World was regularly patching the review build ahead of the shooter's release, with a day one patch coming at launch today as well. Some also lament certain problems with the combat and open-world design, though these generally seem to be fairly minor.

Windows Central has a STALKER 2 review penned by yours truly, by the way. I gave the game a rating of 4/5 stars (or 80/100), stating that it "stands tall as one of the most captivating open-world shooters I've ever played, with palpable atmosphere and deeply rewarding exploration that kept me glued to my seat along with addictively intense and dynamic action that kept me on the edge of it." Like other reviewers, I feel that there are some glaring issues with aspects of the combat balancing and the game's performance and stability, though I ultimately still love it and can't wait to dive back in soon. Despite its flaws, it's exactly the kind of sequel I've longed for as a longtime STALKER fan.

A stalker stares out at the landscape of the Garbage, one of STALKER 2's early game zones. (Image credit: Windows Central)

As I wrote in my review, that STALKER 2 is actually here at all is a testament to GSC's tenacity; the developer has had to build the game amid working conditions none of us can scarcely imagine, with many of its employees fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine or working from its new headquarters in Prague after evacuating from their homes when Russia's war began. I'm glad to see that it's reviewing well overall, and sincerely hope it's a big success for the beleaguered studio.

It will be interesting to see how the game performs in its opening days, with it just minutes away from releasing as I type this. Ahead of its launch, though, it's already proven that it has the potential to be the next big hit; it's been the fourth most-wishlisted game on Steam for many months, and right now, it's also at the top of the platform's top sellers list.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has arrived on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC, and is one of this year's best Xbox games and best PC games. It has a $59.99 MSRP, but notably, you can get it for a discount at CDKeys right now. You can also play it through Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

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STALKER 2 is hardly a perfect game, but The Zone still captivates me like no other open world can

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:03:59 +0000

Windows Central Verdict 4 / 5

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl stands tall as one of the most captivating open-world shooters I've ever played, with palpable atmosphere and deeply rewarding exploration that kept me glued to my seat along with addictively intense and dynamic action that kept me on the edge of it. Some major issues with certain mutant encounters and noteworthy bugs and performance snags take away from the experience, but even so, The Zone will engross you with its haunting wonders. There's truly nothing else like it.

Pros

+ Hauntingly beautiful atmosphere that pulls you in like nothing else
+ Intense and dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay, reactive open world full of secrets to find
+ Enjoyable story with interesting choices, branching paths
+ Amazing audio/visual presentation, solid overall performance

Cons

- Enemies are a little spongey, and several scripted encounters with mutants feel cheap
- Some strange bugs with enemy spawns can cause frustration
-Notable performance issues that are relatively uncommon, but nevertheless grating

14 years after its original announcement in 2010, six after the news of its revival in 2018, and two after its original 2022 release date, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is finally arriving on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass. This review has gone live just a few hours before the game's official launch, at which time droves of players will pour into the open-world single player shooter and begin their journey through its take on the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (referred to simply as "The Zone" in-game).

Playing over 40 hours of this title in the past week and writing this review feels surreal, given that STALKER 2 itself has been cancelled, brought back to life, and then subsequently delayed multiple times as a result of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Developer GSC Game World has toiled away at the project resiliently under conditions a comfy work from home writer like myself can hardly fathom, with many of its employees volunteering for frontline service, working to aid their local communities, or evacuating to the studio's new Prague headquarters with their families.

To see this project reach the finish line is a testament to GSC's tenacity — and unsurprisingly, excitement for the hardcore FPS ramped up sharply this year once it was clear that it was coming out at long last. As I write this, STALKER 2 remains the fourth most-wishlisted game on Steam, and is the platform's top-selling title as well. But does it actually live up to the hype? Is this the fulfilling sequel that fans of the series' original cult classic trilogy have waited 15 years for?

Speaking as someone who's put countless hours into the first three games, I'm happy to say that STALKER 2 is the modern follow-up I've longed for for years — though it's far from perfect, with combat balancing issues as well as irksome bugs and some performance problems that detract from the experience. Even so, it's one of the most captivating open-world shooters I've ever played, with gripping atmosphere, nerve-wracking tension, and a gameplay loop so addictive that it's consistently kept me engrossed for hours into the early morning every day I play. Make no mistake: STALKER 2, despite its flaws, is something truly special.

Disclaimer

This review was conducted with the Windows PC version of STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and made possible thanks to a Steam review code provided by GSC Game World. The company did not see the contents of this review before publication.

What is STALKER 2?

Longtime STALKER fans will have a good understanding of what type of game STALKER 2 is, but newcomers — of which there are many — are likely to be unsure of what to expect from the sequel. If you're one of them, make sure to read on for an overview.

STALKER 2 is a single player open-world survival horror shooter set in "The Zone," a fictional version of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone that was set up in the wake of the ill-famed 1986 nuclear power plant disaster that severely irradiated nearby regions and affected significant portions of Europe. In the STALKER universe, a bewildering second incident occurred at Chornobyl in 2006, leading to the creation of horrifically mutated creatures, bizarre supernatural phenomena called anomalies, and special trinket-like "artifacts" with science-defying capabilities like rapid wound healing, radiation cleansing, and resistances to the elements.

Despite efforts from military forces to quarantine the area, determined explorers called stalkers regularly find ways into The Zone, aiming to collect and sell its treasures, find ways to combat its dangers, study its fascinating wonders, or simply escape their past lives and start a new one. Factions with differing goals often compete for key territory and resources within The Zone, though most stalkers are neutral and have their own agendas independent of a larger group.

It's amid this context that the game puts you into the boots of a stalker and lets you loose, giving you the freedom to adventure through The Zone as you see fit and interact with its different groups while fighting for survival. Hunger, fatigue, radiation levels, ammo, medical supplies, carry weight, and gear durability are all things you'll have to constantly work to manage as you explore, with an AI simulation system dubbed A-Life 2.0 always at work ensuring that you'll come across dynamic encounters with and between hostile bandits, predatory mutants, and other threats. STALKER 2's open world is vast and full of dangers like lethal anomalies, pockets of radiation, and mutant lairs, but those willing to brave these hazards will be rewarded with some of the best loot The Zone has to offer.

STALKER 2 review: Gameplay and open world

STALKER 2's various NPCs wander The Zone just like you do, making the moment-to-moment gameplay feel very dynamic.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

The defining pillars of STALKER 2 are its gameplay systems and its colossal 60 square kilometer open world, with the narrative and overarching plot ultimately taking a backseat to your own story — a tale comprised of the scenarios and situations you'll inevitably get yourself into as you travel across The Zone and investigate its wealth of abandoned facilities, villages, and other structures that dot the landscape. Squads of neutral stalkers, bandits, and other faction members wander around the map just like you do, with packs of mutants hunting and migrating all the while. As a result, no two expeditions from secure NPC-controlled bases out into their surrounding areas ever play out the same way, regardless of whether you're retreading familiar ground or heading into uncharted territory.

During one trip to check out a large warehouse, I stumbled across a group of thugs and ended up getting into a fierce firefight, only for a herd of mutated boar to stampede through the area after hearing the battle and gore them, forcing me to hoof it to a ladder and climb to a rooftop before they came after me next. In another encounter, I found myself heavily outnumbered by a group of military soldiers, but then bandits opportunistically attacked them while they were distracted, leading to a vicious three-way battle I barely survived.

These behaviors aren't always seamlessly woven into moment-to-moment gameplay, as I've had to deal with enemies and other stalkers spawning bizarrely close to me on several occasions. As frustrating as this can be, though, it's ultimately outweighed by how engaging and dynamic STALKER 2's AI simulation systems make every step through The Zone feel, as well as how reactive it is to your actions. I've seen stalkers I've helped out with a first-aid kit before come to my aid when I got into an engagement near their position, and I suspect allies of anyone neutral that you choose to kill will come after you for revenge. Similarly, factions seem to help you out frequently if you do their side quests, while you can potentially make the entire group hostile if you shoot their men one too many times.

You'll often find stashes in hard-to-reach locations with valuable loot like food, ammo, weapons, armor, and more.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

That thrilling tension of never knowing what The Zone has in store for you next has always been a part of STALKER, but in STALKER 2, it's more prevalent than ever and is supported firmly by the grounded, vulnerable nature of the gameplay. The sequel eschews typical zippy FPS mobility and low-recoil gunplay even more than the original games did, emphasizing slow, careful movement, intelligent use of cover and high ground, and steady, controlled shooting. Even with good armor, you'll die quickly to sustained gunfire out in the open, and keeping on top of bleeding, hunger, sleep, radiation, and carry weight is crucial for any stalker trying to remain healthy and energized enough to sprint when the situation calls for repositioning or retreating. You'll also need to routinely visit technicians to repair your gear, as it gradually wears out over time and can be damaged by nearby explosions and the elements.

These survival mechanics intersect heavily with exploration of STALKER 2's handcrafted open world, with boxes of ammo and foodstuffs often found in many of the locations you can visit across The Zone's 20 seamlessly connected regions (there's not a loading screen in sight). Determined and attentive stalkers are also likely to find ways to climb to hard-to-reach spots at these points of interest (POIs); these nooks and crannies tend to harbor stashes full of useful supplies placed there by other stalkers, and if you're lucky, you might even find rare items like special guns, armor suits, weapon attachments, and gear upgrade blueprints in them.

That thrilling tension of never knowing what The Zone has in store for you next has always been a part of STALKER, but in STALKER 2, it's more prevalent than ever.

Clusters of anomalies, meanwhile, tend to have useful artifacts you can collect using a detector...provided you move between them with caution. Deadlier anomaly fields generally yield rarer, more potent artifacts, and depending on which artifacts you choose to use, it's possible to give yourself a number of different stat buffs. Just be careful when picking artifacts to combo together, as many of them also have drawbacks that can stack and cause serious problems.

Getting your hands on caches, artifacts, and other secrets like these is immensely rewarding, in large part due to the fact you're not given much guidance to find them. Beyond question marks that appear on your map as you near a POI and the occasional stash marker you'll get when looting a slain enemy, figuring out what a location is, what's there, and how to get it is all up to you — and even if you're not interested in using what you find, you can always sell it for funding to spend on supplies, repairs, or upgrades to your current equipment.

One of STALKER 2's new mutants is a powerful deer that can summon groups of smaller beasts to swarm stalkers fighting it.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

But how is the gunplay and combat? A big criticism of the first STALKER games was that many of their firearms were sometimes annoyingly inaccurate to shoot, so going into STALKER 2, I was hopeful that the sequel would address this. Luckily, it has; everything from the earliest pistols and SMGs to top-tier rifles you'll only start seeing late into the game all have reliable accuracy, with better weapons typically giving you better damage, armor penetration, and a tighter spread when fired automatically. One issue with the original trilogy that's come back, though, is that enemies are a bit bullet spongey unless you land headshots. This has become less and less of a problem for me over time as I've gotten better at going for them, but regardless, seeing basic bandits wearing nothing other than a jacket still return fire after I put 10 rifle rounds through their chest is irritating (for context, I've been playing on the hardest difficulty, but turning it down doesn't seem to affect enemy health).

That sponginess extends to some of the more difficult mutant encounters you'll run into in The Zone, a number of which are scripted to happen during main story or side quest missions. Bloodsuckers (aggressive rush-down enemies with invisibility cloaking) and controllers (lumbering humanoids that make you see hallucinations and assault your mind) in particular take ridiculous amounts of gunfire to bring down, as do poltergeists (mutants that look like a ball of electricity and fling objects in the environment at you) if you're not able to get close to them due to overtuned damage falloff. Another creature that seems unreasonably tanky is STALKER 2's new deer mutant that can command a small army of lesser beasts like dogs and boars, though it's more of a "boss" than the previously mentioned fiends.

Thankfully, fights with these creatures aren't terribly common, and most of the mutant battles I've found myself in are against weaker, more numerous ones that challenge your positioning more than your ammo reserves — something I find far more enjoyable. The best fights, though, are against stalkers, as their attempts to flank, sneak up on you, and flush you out of cover with grenades make them consistently engaging to contend with. Clever players can also take advantage of their tendency to converge on your last known position, silently sneaking to an off-angle and ambushing them when they move to where they think they are. This tactic is especially effective at night or during inclement weather when visibility is reduced and player-made sounds are drowned out by booming thunderstorms.

STALKER 2 review: Story (no spoilers)

A screenshot from one of STALKER 2's early cinematic cutscenes. In total, there are three hours of cutscenes in the game.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

While the story of STALKER 2 plays second fiddle to its open-world gameplay, I don't want to give the impression that it's bad or a chore to get through. To be clear, it's not mind-blowing either, but it's perfectly enjoyable and features a likable cast, genuinely surprising twists (no spoilers here), and plenty of narrative beats that flesh out The Zone and its factions while directly connecting to some of the game's most climactic gameplay segments. Veteran fans will also be pleased to know that many memorable characters from previous titles return in this sequel, with the game showing how they've changed and where they've gone in the years between the trilogy and STALKER 2.

It puts you in control of Skif, a rookie stalker who's ventured into The Zone after anomalous energy from it burned down his home and livelihood. Much of the plot is centered around advanced scanner machines capable of creating anomalies in their immediate vicinity, with Skif often driven to contact various groups and work with them in some way to get the information about them or support to deal with them that he needs. Throughout the adventure, you'll have the opportunity to influence the politics of The Zone by working for or taking out key figures and kingpins, with the ultimate outcome of many quests dependent on your choices.

Indeed, roleplaying plays a noticeably bigger role in STALKER 2 than it did in its predecessors, as there are lots of branching paths in both main story missions and side content that affect how the events of the game unfold. Some of it is just there for flavor, but a sizable portion of it isn't and actually has a noticeable impact that ripples out into other parts of the experience. Sure, you can choose to fork over that bandit your money so he and his five friends don't fill you with lead on the spot, but that might set back plans to upgrade gear and delay your progress. Fighting them is far riskier, but hey, one of them is carrying a snazzy rifle — you can steal it for yourself or sell it for useful funds if you're quick and accurate on the draw.

STALKER 2 review: Visuals and audio

Aside from looking incredible, violent storms like this one also make it harder for enemies to see and hear you.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

One of STALKER's core aspects has always been its atmosphere — the haunting beauty of a grim, melancholy setting permanently frozen in the dying stages of autumn, with the sound of rustling vegetation and howling wind broken only by sharp mutant yelps, distant cracks of gunfire, and the occasional tune stalkers play on their guitars while huddled around a campfire. Built on Unreal Engine 5, STALKER 2 elevates The Zone to new heights, bringing it to life with cutting-edge graphics, excellent sound design, and a score that's full of eerie dark ambience.

Concrete husks of Soviet-era towns and dense fields of wild foliage as far as the eye can see convey just how utterly cut off The Zone is from the rest of humanity, with much of the map built using photogrammetry and rendered in gorgeous next-gen detail. Some of the individual textures and models may not be the most detailed I've seen, but the depth of what's on-screen paired with the game's unbelievably long draw distances make for jaw-dropping vistas everywhere you look. During intense tempests and lethal blood-red storms called emissions, all that flora then violently sways in currents of wind, creating visual spectacles I'd happily stop and stare at if I didn't have to worry about sprinting to the nearest enclosed structure for shelter.

Built on Unreal Engine 5, STALKER 2 elevates The Zone to new heights, bringing it to life with cutting-edge graphics, excellent sound design, and a score that's full of eerie dark ambience.

STALKER 2 also goes out of its way to make most of its menus a physical, tangible part of the game's world, with Skif pulling out his handheld PDA when you look at your map or journal and his backpack during inventory management. There are also nice little animations for using consumables and putting weapon attachments on or taking them off on the go on top of the highly detailed reloads and scope-ins players have come to expect from modern FPS titles. Not everyone will care about details like these, but for me, they do a lot to immerse me in the setting; their presence was one of my favorite things about 4A Games' Metro Exodus, and I'm very happy to see GSC do something similar with its new STALKER.

The audio is great, too, with strong Ukrainian voice acting (I've mostly used subtitles and haven't played much with the English dub, but a colleague that's also had access says it's fairly cheesy), tons of distinct high-quality sound effects that help to make combat readable, realistic audio reverberation, and a dark soundtrack that enhances and enriches The Zone's atmosphere. Ultimately, the audio/visual presentation is simply immaculate.

STALKER 2 review: Performance and stability

A stalker at the Garbage, one of STALKER 2's early game regions.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

STALKER 2's overall performance has been solid for me, with the game running at a pretty consistent ~80 FPS at ultrawide (3440x1440) resolution with maxed out "Epic" settings on my i5-12600K, NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and 32GB RAM gaming PC. However, I have run into a few problems during my review period, including choppy framerates after leaving the game paused for a few minutes, freezes during Alt+Tab attempts that forced me to use Task Manager to close the game, and some rare, but nevertheless annoying crashes. One colleague of mine has also experienced some nasty stuttering, while another reports poor Steam Deck performance (though the game's been much smoother on Windows handhelds like ASUS ROG Ally). On Xbox, meanwhile, I've heard aiming is extremely difficult due to the lack of a dead zone for controller thumbsticks.

In The Zone itself, I've also seen T-posing corpses in places with a large number of bodies, a couple building textures rapidly flickering and "Z-fighting," and some bugged side quest steps in the early game. The first two glitches are pretty inconsequential, but that last one was frustrating since it stopped me from finishing a mission and getting some extra money for a head start on progression.

These bugs weren't happening constantly or anything, and they've become less and less common as GSC has patched my review build throughout this past week. Still, the little things add up, and they've taken a bit away from my enjoyment of STALKER 2. The good news is that the shooter is getting a large day one patch, so hopefully it takes care of these issues entirely.

STALKER 2 review: Conclusion

The Zone's vast landscapes can be as beautiful as they are eerie.

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Without a doubt, STALKER 2 stands as one of this year's best Xbox games and best PC games, and is a must-play if you're an Xbox Game Pass subscriber. Few open worlds in gaming are as thoroughly captivating and intensely atmospheric as The Zone, with dynamic and reactive NPC behaviors, satisfying hardcore FPS combat, rewarding exploration, and stellar presentation all coalescing into one special experience that's unlike anything else out there. The closest thing I can compare it to other than STALKER itself is Metro Exodus, though its moment-to-moment gameplay isn't as dynamic as what GSC Game World has built here (even if it's a "cleaner" game as a result).

Despite some glaring issues with enemy spawns, aspects of its combat balancing, and performance mishaps, STALKER 2 remains a triumph for the Ukrainian studio, and is largely everything I wanted from a new entry in this underappreciated franchise. And now that this review is finished, I'm headed back into my playthrough for more.

I'll see you in The Zone, stalkers.

STALKER 2 releases today, November 20, 2024, for $59.99 on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC via Steam, the Microsoft Store, the Epic Games Store, and GOG.

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a glorious and beautiful pain in the ass

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 16:59:17 +0000

GSC Game World’s long-awaited survival epic delivers the ultimate stalker fantasy — if you can look beyond the plethora of glitches.

There’s a particular feeling when you’re wandering alone in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Perhaps you’re squelching through wet, misty marshland, flanked by gigantic reeds. A dark purple sky of unbroken cloud takes up half of the screen; gigantic rusty machinery creates an odd and unnerving silhouette. You hear gunfire in the distance. The sound moves closer, followed by the unmistakable groans of a mutated beast. The sensation sharpens of being pitted against a wilderness that doesn’t care whether you live or die. This is not an unpleasant type of survival. To call the Zone home is to feel an almost elemental sense of freedom: a fantasy of existing purely in the moment, putting one foot in front of the other.

You had better like walking because in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the absorbing and currently buggy sequel to the trailblazing trilogy of shooters from the 2000s, you do a lot of it. The map, based on the real-world exclusion zone created in the wake of the 1986 nuclear disaster, is 64 kilometers squared. Objectives tend to be found in derelict buildings dotted about the hostile terrain. You set out on another long trek (hopefully with a functioning gas mask), clasping a metal bolt alongside your rifle. It’s wise to toss the bolt in front of you regularly to test for anomalies: some cause the air itself to warp and bend; others make tiny shards of skin-shredding glass to hover in the atmosphere. Coming into contact with any of them can prove swiftly fatal.

This version of the Zone is a glorious and beautiful pain in the ass, able to hold its own with other Zones littered throughout pop culture: the restricted site found in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 movie Stalker or Area X in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach novels. It’s thrilling to see Ukrainian studio GSC Game World depict its native landscape so evocatively and in a way that runs counter to much of the prevailing wisdom about how an open-world video game should look and function.

Image: GSC Game World

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the Zone is conspicuously horizontal. Forget about “see that mountain”; when you do get a good view, all you see is a shimmering expanse of bog and grassland. The color palette is notably muted: a smudge of murky browns, queasy greens, and charcoal blues — rich, earthy, sometimes squalid. The Zone’s inhabitants are almost all depressed men swilling energy drinks. Have they come to this extreme environment because they are in flight from something at home? Or because the environment mirrors some hidden part of their own psychological makeup?

For Skif, our spiky protagonist, the answer turns out to be both. His home outside the Zone is set ablaze by a rogue anomaly. He enters looking for answers before getting embroiled in a plot to seize a valuable piece of tech. From there, the narrative branches. You’re free to chum up with various factions like a professionalized military group called the Ward or a band of metaphysical dreamers led by a guy called Scar. But I quickly lost track of who I was in cahoots with and who I wronged. The tangled web of motivations, grudges, and backstories was often inscrutable. Like Tarkovsky’s Stalker or Annihilation, the quest here felt slippery and ever-changing, so I simply stalked toward my quest marker with the score of evocatively discordant synths swirling in my ears.

The first few hours are punishing. Without much cash, you scavenge damaged weapons prone to jamming. In time, and with a gradually expanding arsenal of exactingly rendered weaponry, the game softens. The kind of emergent, AI-driven moments that made the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise a cult classic also begin to materialize from the metaphysical ether. At one point, I agreed to flush out some mutants from a building for a pair of fellow stalkers. As I was doing so, a rival group opened fire on us, all while a pack of rabid dogs ravaged both parties. The ensuing three minutes were bloody, chaotic, and quite brilliant. At another moment, I led a group of enemy stalkers back to the base of a faction that lives on a gigantic, irradiated trash heap. As my enemies neared the perimeter, guards assumed their defensive positions and unleashed fire in one seamless, dazzlingly orchestrated concert.

But S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 doesn’t just replicate the achievements of its forebears. The open world furthers the moody, proto-walking sim elements of the originals. Because this Zone is so large, preparation is even more key than in previous games. This occurs alongside a tapestry of navigation, combat, resource management, and crucially, rest, all set against a day-night cycle that genuinely affects gameplay. During especially long stretches of walking, there is much space to contemplate your own actions. In my own case, why did I feel compelled to ruthlessly murder nearly every major NPC despite being on otherwise good terms with them? The Zone has a habit of remaking anything that comes into contact with it, and I fast transformed into another of its monsters.

Image: GSC Game World

When S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 works as intended, it’s an emergent sandbox capable of producing simultaneously bleak and hilarious moments, all while giving the illusion of a world functioning independently of the player’s inputs. But perhaps inevitably because of the game’s troubled development — which saw over half of the development team move to Prague from Kyiv because of the Russia-Ukraine war — there is some unevenness.

The biggest issue is combat. While gunplay is crisp and responsive, enemies frequently look in the wrong direction to the threat that they should be facing. Stranger is the way that some human foes (not the mutants that actually possess the ability to become invisible) miraculously appear out of thin air. Another odd glitch saw a character’s head become detached from their body during a cutscene. The following gunfight had a farcical quality. Should I be aiming where the head is hovering or where it should be? These moments, which appear too frequently to be waved away, dispel the Zone’s otherwise convincing illusion.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has arrived in a manner that feels tantalizing close to greatness. About 10 hours into the game, the wide-eyed poetic outsider, Scar, lays out his take on the Zone. There is a “dark” side, which has the capacity to strip humans of their free will, and there is the “shining” side — the wondrous, miraculous aspect of this changed place that casts the very essence of life in a new light. “We want the shining Zone to reveal itself,” says Scar longingly.

With a few patches, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 may yet become this “shining” version of itself. As it stands, the game requires you to submit to the spell that is being cast. The rewards for those who can overlook the wonky combat, bodies that glitch through scenery, and other audio-visual quirks are considerable. That core feeling of raw survival in an uncaring environment — lightning cracking in the distance, rain lashing down, and the disquieting noise of far-off gunfire — never wanes.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl launches on November 20th on Xbox and PC.

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Flight Simulator 2024 team apologizes for server issues as game sputters to life

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 16:57:35 +0000

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 hasn't been having the best launch day experience. The online servers decided to buckle under the sheer load of Xbox, PC, and Game Pass players trying to log in and stay down for many hours across all platforms. Finally, though, it seems the development team has managed to keep the back end steady.

The studio has released a statement explaining what exactly went wrong with the servers on launch day:

We have worked hard with our partners, including Asobo and others, to bring you an amazing sim experience. The excitement for the sim today has been overwhelming, but we encountered an issue with one of our services handling the new systems in the game like career mode and various missions. The server responsible for handling data requests got overloaded, causing delays and errors.

In a launch day developer video update from the studio, Asobo CEO and Co-founder Sebastian Wloch added more context to the issue.

"The issue this causes is pretty much that when the service fails, it keeps retrying, which leads to extremely long initial loading times that are not supposed to be that long," he explains. "After a while, if the missing data is critical, the loading will fail at 97%, and you'll get a message prompting a restart. If the missing content is not blocking, you might enter the sim but experience some missing planes or other content. This is all due to the same problem with the server and the cache."

According to the developer, now that the initial crunch of people has eased and server issues have been corrected, players should now be able to log in as expected. "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience," adds the studio.

The launch day woes have affected the Steam user reviews heavily, too, which currently stands at a 17% Overwhelmingly Negative score with almost 3000 reviews. The all-time peak of concurrent players hit 24,863 on launch day before dropping off. We may see this number rise as the weekend approaches if the servers decide to stay happy.

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