Jonathan Blow and his studio, Thekla, just dropped a trailer for Order of the Sinking Star at The Game Awards, and the indie dev behind Braid and The Witness says this puzzle game absolutely dwarfs anything he has shipped before. The PC release hits sometime next year with over a thousand puzzles that let players smash different worlds together, and Blow brought in heavy hitters like Alan Hazelden, Sean Barrett, and Patrick Traynor to help build what he calls a design supercollider.
Arc Games is publishing this thing, and their CEO, Yoon Im, hyped it up as the generation's top puzzle adventure. Console versions will probably happen later since the press release teased additional platforms down the line, but PC gets first dibs when it...
Samsung gave Elon Musk his personal workspace at the Taylor factory, where he can babysit Tesla's chip production lines directly. The Korean chairman met with the Tesla boss to hash out details on AI5 and AI6 silicon, and both companies locked in a massive $16.5 billion partnership that puts Samsung as the automaker's biggest US foundry partner.
Musk wants tighter control over the feedback loop for custom chip development and thinks his current foundry partners, like TSMC and Samsung, still cannot keep up with demand projections of 100 billion to 200 billion units yearly. He keeps talking about building a TeraFab and creating an independent semiconductor supply chain from scratch because geopolitical stuff makes Taiwan-based partners...
Framework just announced they're jacking up DDR5 memory costs by 50% for their Laptop DIY Edition because DRAM supply went to hell. The modular laptop company posted on X that supplier prices got brutal, and they had to pass some pain along, even though their new rates still undercut regular retail.
The desktop DIY kits are safe for the moment, but Framework basically said more hikes are coming for anything using DDR5, LPDDR5X, or GDDR chips. Anyone who already pre-ordered a laptop gets grandfathered into old pricing, and the pre-built models aren't getting touched yet either.
The company blamed the whole mess on Micron's bailing from consumer markets, which made the supply crunch even worse. They promised to update people on future...
An Indian retailer just leaked Intel's Arrow Lake refresh lineup with specs for the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus chips. Prime abgb posted full details showing the 290K Plus keeps the same 24-core layout as the current 285K but bumps max clock speeds by 100 MHz to 5.6 GHz, plus it gets Thermal Velocity Boost up to 5.8 GHz and DDR5-7200 support.
The 270K Plus pulls a move similar to what Intel did with the 13700K to 14700K jump by adding four extra efficiency cores for 24 total threads while maintaining the same clock speeds as the 265K. Both chips show up as in stock, but the retailer wants people to call for pricing instead of listing actual numbers.
Intel apparently plans to drop these at CES 2026 in a few weeks...
Switzerland just launched an antitrust probe into Apple Pay after the iPhone maker started letting third-party payment apps access NFC tech there. The Swiss Competition Commission wants to know if rival mobile wallet providers can actually compete with Apple Pay on iOS devices and whether the access terms comply with local antitrust rules, which differ from what applies across the EU.
Apple caught a partial win in the Epic Games lawsuit when an appeals court said a lower judge went overboard by banning all commissions on external App Store purchases. The Ninth Circuit kept most of the original ruling but told both companies to negotiate a fair commission rate for outside payments, and Apple still can't collect fees until that gets...
Epic Games just kicked off another holiday giveaway, and this time it's Hogwarts Legacy for free until mid-December. Avalanche Software's 2023 open-world adventure game hit 35 million copies sold and crushed Call of Duty that year. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment teamed up with Epic to cross-promote the wizard stuff across Fortnite and Rocket League.
Anyone who grinds at least two hours in Hogwarts Legacy through the Epic launcher gets a Chocolate Frog cosmetic for Fortnite. Later this month, Fortnite's shop will stock Wizarding World outfits that players can customize with house colors from Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff.
Rocket League is running a house rivalry event during Frosty Fest, where players rack up...
HKC just dropped the M10 Ultra gaming monitor with RGB Mini LED backlighting that supposedly makes colors pop way harder than regular displays. The panel rocks a 27-inch 4K screen running at 160Hz with quantum dot tech for better color accuracy.
Mini LED backlighting means the screen has hundreds of dimming zones instead of basic edge lighting, which helps with contrast and HDR performance. The RGB part refers to using red, green blue LEDs instead of white ones with color filters, giving more saturated colors.
HKC says the monitor hits DisplayHDR 1000 certification and covers 99% of Adobe RGB color space. Gamers get variable refresh rate support and low input lag for competitive play.
Everstone Studio's free-to-play action RPG just hit 9 million downloads across PC and PS5, and the mobile version dropped on iOS and Android. Dame Tech ran performance tests comparing the iPhone 17 Pro Max with its A19 Pro chip to the REDMAGIC 11 Pro with its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Both devices handled 60fps gameplay, but Apple's flagship rendered at a higher resolution and maintained better frame stability during boss fights with 57fps 1% lows versus 48fps on the Android device.
The Android phone struggled with consistency despite having liquid cooling and a dedicated fan. Even a laptop RTX 4090 running maxed settings with DLSS Quality and Frame Generation showed occasional stuttering when cutting bamboo. Future patches will...
Bandai Namco Aces dropped the trailer for ACE COMBAT 8: WINGS OF THEVE at The Game Awards after an actor accidentally leaked it over a year back. The studio is launching the game for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles after keeping fans waiting seven years since the last mainline entry.
The campaign mode puts players behind the controls of an ace pilot fighting to save the Federation of Central Usea after enemy forces wipe out the navy and occupy their homeland. Players fly alongside three new squadron members as the legendary Wings of Theve, and the story centers on taking back territory while carrying the weight of every citizen's hope. The dev team built everything on Unreal Engine 5 with promises of realistic weather...
