Something for the Weekend – 07/10/23

The Exynos 2400 is expected to be found in several Galaxy S24 variants sold in several regions, and while Samsung did not divulge the details of its flagship SoC, a recent claim made by the Korean giant’s executives placed the silicon’s GPU ahead of its competitors. However, earlier benchmarks revealed that it still has some catching up to do, and we will discuss those details shortly.

Generative artificial intelligence has become a major discussion point in 2023, but we generally hear about its consumer-focused or business-focused applications. However, generative AI is not just limited to this space as it has made a strong impact in academics and research fields as well. A new report has highlighted that a group of researchers have developed an AI tool that can potentially predict deadly viruses before they can appear. This model can be crucial in predicting COVID-19-like pandemic situations ahead of time, and enable governments and the healthcare industry to be better prepared.

Long-time Bethesda Game Studios designer Bruce Nesmith is featured in the latest MinnMax interview, discussing topics from The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall to Starfield.

Bethesda's former design director thinks The Elder Scrolls 6 will keep The Elder Scroll 5: Skyrim's levelling up and progression system.

The Elder Scrolls 6, as nebulous as it might feel, is eventually coming, and Bethesda’s former design director has shared some tidbits on what could be carried over from previous games, including Skyrim’s progression and magic systems.

Respawn seems to be dropping bigger and bigger hints for something huge coming next for the Titanfall franchise.

The Apple Vision Pro launch is said to happen in early 2024, but it will not be easy for customers to acquire one as the device is said to be available through an appointment system only. Also, the company has been extremely mum on the product, which only means that the average person does not know what they will be getting for their hard-earned $3,499, and that may be why Apple has selected a few retail employees to undergo a secret training event prior to the release of the AR headset.

Big, bad Babet has been battering the British Isles this week with wind and rain, which has made the decision to stay indoors and play games or watch sports, movies or Deep Space 9 clips on YouTube this weekend quite easy. That, and there’s a bunch of fantastic games that have come out this week, including Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 and plenty more.

It’s been a busy week in the gaming industry, with big game releases, a new PS5 and, after months of to-ing and fro-ing, Microsoft finally completed their acquisition of Activision Blizzard to the tune of $68.7 billion!

The relaunch of Red Dead Online as a standalone title in late 2020 was something of a false dawn for its ever-optimistic community. Rockstar maintains the title but has been in a cycle for several years of repeating content, and it could fairly be said that this playerbase has been surviving on rations ever since 2020. This led to one of the best in-game protests I've ever seen, where a ton of RDO players gathered together in summer 2020 dressed up as clowns to protest the lack of substantial updates.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has explained that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick will remain with the publisher "through the end of 2023."

Microsoft’s revised deal to acquire Activision Blizzard has now been cleared by the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA).