Wccftech News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

It's been over four years since we last covered the Gothic Remake. As you might remember, it all began with the so-called Playable Teaser that appeared suddenly on Steam in December 2019.

Sand Land, the new open-world action-adventure based on one of Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama’s lesser-known works is out now, and its surprisingly complex for an anime adaptation. Combat is a big part of Sand Land, with players taking on countless enemies in both hand-to-hand combat as main character Beelzebub or while piloting a variety of different vehicles. It might be slightly overwhelming at first, but don’t worry, we have some tips for dominating the dunes…

Excitement has been slowly building for Manor Lords, a unique Middle-Ages-set combination of city building and real-time-strategy, for some time now, and now it seems it’s the latest big indie success. Manor Lords launched into early access today, and peaked at just a hair shy of 160,000 concurrent players on Steam, good for a top 5 place on the charts, even displacing the suddenly-hot Fallout 4 at times. It’s also the top-seller on Steam right now. And these stats don’t capture the whole picture, as Manor Lords isn’t a Steam exclusive – it’s also available via Game Pass on PC and Xbox Series X/S. For those who haven’t been keeping up, here’s a look at Manor Lords in action.

Apple argues that 8GB of RAM is more than enough in the base variants of the new Macs, as users complain of stagnancy. However, Apple was not always this reluctant, especially under the leadership of Steve Jobs. However, when Tim Cook took over, Apple's regular upgrade cycle for base memory stopped, according to a post on Mastodon. While there are various reasons for Apple's approach, users have been demanding that the company should increase the base RAM on Macs for a long time.

Intel's upcoming Lunar Lake "Core Ultra 200V" CPU has been spotted in an HP Spectre x360 laptop, featuring strong Battlemage Arc iGPU performance.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

MSI seems to be focusing more on NVIDIA's RTX GPUs than AMD's Radeon GPUs as the company focuses on products with higher user interest.

When are we finally going to get a release date for the Silent Hill 2 remake? The game is widely expected to launch sometime in 2024, but PR from Konami has been spotty at best. We got a somewhat-questionable trailer back in February (that even developer Bloober Team criticized as not representative of the final game) and as we head deeper into the year, there’s still a lot to be nailed down. The game’s been rated by the ESRB and there are rumors it may pop up at a PlayStation Showcase next month, but Konami themselves have remained silent.

GSC Game World has published a new trailer for STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Titled 'Not a Paradise', the trailer shows off the game's gorgeous Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals as well as the Ukrainian voiceover, the only one available in the full game alongside English.

The Nintendo Switch 2 will be bigger than its predecessor, but it will be smaller than the Steam Deck, according to rumors circulating online.

Lost Soul Aside, the upcoming action RPG hack-n-slash from Chinese developer Ultizero Games, has been rated in China.

The latest free GT7 update introduces the Gran Turismo-exclusive ŠKODA Vision Gran Turismo all-electric car alongside two other vehicles, new World Circuit events, and more.

There's still a chance for the Nintendo Switch 2 to launch this year. Exactly two months ago, the Japanese publication Nikkei wrote that March 2025 was the most likely release window for the new console as it allowed Nintendo to produce enough consoles to sell to consumers.

F1 24 is set to introduce some of the biggest changes the racing series has ever seen. Following the reveal of the massive physics update earlier this week, Codemasters has now unveiled the changes coming to Career Mode. For the first time, the developers will allow players to pick one of the current Formula One superstars or even a legendary driver like Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher. Here's an overview provided by Codemasters:

Resident Evil 9, the next entry in the CAPCOM survival horror series rumored to sport open-world features, has apparently been delayed internally and may skip its 2025 release window.

Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, reaffirmed their commitment to the 18A process node with Panther Lake & Clearwater Forest headed for a mid-2025 launch.

A new Dragon's Dogma 2 mod published earlier this week on Nexus Mods by EXXXcellent allows users to activate path tracing and/or tweak ray tracing in various ways.

Earlier this month, as spotted by Twitter user MauroNL, Polish developer People Can Fly decided to cancel the new action/adventure IP codenamed Project Dagger.

Microsoft has reported their results for Q3 2024 (which ran from the beginning of January to the end of March of this year) and it throws into very stark relief two narratives unfolding for Team Green. On the one hand, Microsoft Gaming revenue is up significantly overall following the purchase of Activision Blizzard, but the rest of the Xbox business has continued to suffer with console sales down badly year-on-year.

Gigabyte has released its "Intel Baseline" BIOS option for Intel 14th & 13th Gen CPUs to improve gaming stability but it leads to severe performance degradation.

The Snapdragon X Elite was previously reported to operate on two power limits; 23W and 80W. However, according to the latest findings, Qualcomm’s newest ARM chipset can touch almost 100W, and that is for the CPU alone, making it a power guzzler compared to its closest competition, Apple’s M3 Pro. However, there are several variables to keep in mind before criticizing the massive power draw of the chipset, and we will be talking about those details here.

Today, Berlin-based developer Tarock Interactive announced Lost Legions as its debut title. This is another entry in the increasingly crowded open world survival crafting genre, but at least it has a decidedly different setting: the Roman Empire.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

The Snapdragon X Elite performance numbers that nearly everyone has seen would likely present an impression that Qualcomm has finally developed a capable ARM-based SoC that delivers some much-needed competition to Apple Silicon. Unfortunately, that would have been the case if the San Diego chip giant had not allegedly manipulated benchmarks. One report says that the benchmark claims are impossible to recreate for Qualcomm’s partners that will eventually use the Snapdragon X Elite in various notebook models.

Nintendo and its fans usually get a long pretty well, with the Paper Mario franchise being an unusual bone of contention. For many years Nintendo has stubbornly attempted to dial down the quirky stories, unique characters, and RPG elements that defined early entries in the series, much to the chagrin of a particular cadre of fans. As perhaps the last true RPG in the series, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has taken on a certain symbolic importance to those spurned fans even though it was never a particularly big hit, selling fewer than 2 million copies on Gamecube.

This GeForce NOW Thursday brings several major additions to NVIDIA's cloud gaming platform. Arguably the most important one is Manor Lords, currently the top wishlisted game on Steam by over three million users. To quell the hype, the solo developer behind Slavic Magic recently wrote a blog post to explain what the game is not:

The Fallout craze continues to pay dividends for Bethesda. Earlier this week, the studio announced that Fallout 76 surpassed one million daily players across all platforms for the first time since its launch in late 2018. The multiplayer game is one of the top sellers on Steam (and elsewhere), largely thanks to various promotions and offers that have, however, since ended. On Valve's PC platform, the game reached 73.3K concurrent players last Sunday.

Publisher Capcom has announced that it's raising its yearly earnings forecast following better-than-expected game sales.

It's that time of the year! Summer is almost here, and like every year, Roborock is here to make life more fun and less chaotic with its automated vacuum cleaners. Time to head out, have fun, and worry less about the messes left behind. Roborock has just introduced its latest Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra, initially unveiled at CES this year, where it received tons of accolades.

In recent years, it’s become common for AAA games to hold back their New Game+ modes, often rolling them out as part of a “big update” weeks or months after launch. Well, apparently, that won’t be the case with the upcoming PS5 exclusive Stellar Blade, which will have New Game+ available from launch, and it sounds pretty meaty. In addition to tackling the game at a higher difficulty, players can look forward to learning new skills and earning a bunch of NG+ exclusive outfits for Eve (a hefty 34 all!) We have more details about NG+ below, but first, check out Stellar Blade’s stylish launch trailer.

An alleged "official" AMD document with information regarding AMD's Zen 5-powered Strix & Strix Halo APU has leaked out, spilling the beans on the full platform details for the red team's next-gen mobility lineup.

While the long-standing curse of gaming adaptations has been broken for quite a while, the Fallout TV adaptation (just renewed for a second season) stands out from many others not only because of its sheer quality but also because it dared to progress the story further, taking place after the latest games instead of merely adapting existing storylines.

Qualcomm officially took the wraps off the Snapdragon X Elite, revealing that there was not one but three SKUs that will be found in various premium notebooks, with the fourth one being the less powerful Snapdragon X Plus. The SoC was recently benchmarked in the upcoming Microsoft Surface Laptop 6, operating at 4.00GHz, suggesting that it is one of the two versions that supports boost clock technology. The scores show that Qualcomm’s latest and greatest silicon continues to outpace Apple’s M3, but it has yet to overtake the higher-end chipsets.

TSMC has announced that the firm has finally entered the "Angstrom 14 Era" as they initiate development on their cutting-edge A14 process.

This morning, Finnish game developer Remedy Entertainment announced a couple of key changes to its core management team. First and foremost, Chief Operations Officer Christopher Schmitz has resigned and will leave the company on May 31.

A new Dragon's Dogma 2 patch is now live on PC and consoles, introducing some gameplay tweaks and fixes.

Samsung has witnessed the signing of a massive contract for its HBM3E memory, securing $3 billion worth of supply to none other than AMD.

MSI's Claw handheld has seen some big performance uplifts with the latest BIOS updates accompanied by the latest Intel GPU driver.

The actor behind JD Fenix might have teased upcoming Gears of War news for the scheduled Xbox Showcase this June.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Warzone recently dropped their Season 3 update, which introduced a half-dozen MP maps, brought back Rebirth Island, let you play as Cheech and Chong (yes, really) and more. Of course, as usual, Activision is rolling out even more content, with Season 3 Reloaded coming in early May. This refresh will include a couple more MP maps, modes, another Zombies story missions, NBA star Devin Booker as a operator, and more. You can get more details, below.

Two new leaks of AMD's next-generation Strix Point APU family have emerged and they cover both 55W "Halo" & 28W "Standard" Ryzen chips.

Prior to release, all indications were that Stellar Blade would be an unusually technically polished current-gen launch, with the game’s demo leaving many impressed. But, of course, demos aren’t always indicative of the final game, with devs sometimes taking a thin slice of gameplay and give it more polish than the rest of the game. Well, the review embargo for Stellar Blade has arrived, and it seems it’s not only a good time in terms of action (check out Wccftech’s positive review here) but according to the tech heads at Digital Foundry, the full game is every bit as technically sound as the demo. You can check out Digital Foundry’s full video analysis below, provided you have around 20 minutes to spare, or you can scroll down for our rundown of the salient points.

A new Unreal Engine 5.4 comparison video was shared online today, highlighting the differences in reflections quality over the previous version of the engine.

The Chinese domestic x86 chip, Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU, has been benchmarked in a wide range of tests at stock & overclocked settings, showcasing a huge performance increase versus the previous generation while also offering the domestic marketplace a new option for their PC needs.

Gunfire Games has released a new Remnant 2 update, adding support for NVIDIA DLSS 3.7, and Intel XeSS 1.3 alongside support for the Forgotten Kingdom DLC and more.

On paper, the PlayStation 5 Pro's 45% faster GPU should be enough to fix issues in GPU-limited scenarios, such as in games aggressively using dynamic resolution scaling.

Cyberpunk 2077 is among the most demanding open-world games available on PC and consoles, but it seems like we have come to a point where some Android devices can run the game with playable performance.

A new Lords of the Fallen update is now live on PC and consoles, introducing new features, improvements, and fixes to the game.

AMD is expected to introduce its mainstream server family in the form of EPYC 4004 CPUs which will be compatible with the AM5 platform.

PS5 System Update 24.03-09.20.00 has been deployed by Sony and we've got you covered with the official release notes.

Gigabyte has officially spilled the beans on the next-gen AMD Zen 5 Desktop CPU family which is now confirmed as Ryzen 9000 series.

An engineering sample of AMD's Zen 5-based Strix Point "Ryzen 9" APU with 12 cores, 24 threads, and 24 MB of L3 cache has been spotted at Geekbench.

Apple is expected to rely on China for a reliable supply chain for the foreseeable future, and though the company has successfully established manufacturing plants outside of the country, it will take years before the technology giant can claim complete independence from the region. Now, according to its 2023 supplier list, Apple has added eight new supply chain members from China while removing four of them due to undisclosed reasons.

We have recently covered that the hype surrounding the Vision Pro has cooled down and demand for the headset is far lower than when it launched. The Apple Vision Pro did not pan out to be a hot seller as it was originally anticipated by the company which is why shipment orders have been cut down. Potentially, the lower-than-expected demand is due to the hefty price tag of the Vision Pro, as it is one of the most expensive mixed reality headsets on the market right now.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

For some time now, we’ve known Ubisoft has two big Assassin’s Creed projects in the works – the more traditional Japanese ninja and samurai epic Codename Red, and the more experimental Codename Hexe. In development at Ubisoft Montreal, we know Assassin’s Creed Hexe will be a “different type of game” with a dark witchcraft-focused storyline and perhaps a more linear structure, but beyond that, we haven’t heard much about what’s cooking.

LG Display is all set to mass-produce its cutting-edge gaming OLED panels, featuring adjustable refresh rates and resolutions.

The PlayStation 5 port of Obsidian Entertainment's Grounded comes with worse performance and lower image quality than Xbox Series X, a new technical analysis revealed today.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

Unreal Engine 5 is increasingly the go-to option for current-gen development, and now, the latest version of Epic’s software is here. We got a taste of Unreal Engine 5.4 during last month’s State of Unreal GDC 2024 showcase, but now the software is in developers’ hands.

Today, CCP Games announced EVE Online: Equinox, the next expansion of the sci-fi sandbox MMO, slated for release on June 11.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

Developer Moon Studios has rolled out the biggest No Rest for the Wicked patch to date, packing improvements to visuals, performance, loot, and much more.

Nixxes and Guerrilla Games have deployed Horizon Forbidden West Patch 1.3 for PC, packing new features, optimizations, fixes, and visual improvements.

Nintendo has rolled out Nintendo Switch update 18.0.1, which fixes an annoying Wi-Fi connection issue that has been plaguing players.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is unlikely to be more powerful than the Steam Deck, let alone the weakest current-generation console, the Xbox Series S, but it won't matter much for a few reasons.

Today, NVIDIA announced that the upcoming tactical first-person shooter game Gray Zone Warfare will support DLSS 3 (Frame Generation) from day one, accelerating performance on GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards. As with any game with built-in DLSS 3 support, Gray Zone Warfare will also feature Reflex, which any owner of GeForce GTX 900 Series GPUs and newer will be able to activate for up to 50% reduction in system latency. Last but not least, the Unreal Engine 5 powered game will support the hardware accelerated ray-traced version of Lumen lighting to deliver cutting-edge visuals.

In a surprising move, Meta has announced the opening of the operating system behind its Quest mixed-reality headset. This means third-party hardware makers will be able to create their own mixed reality headsets; in fact, ASUS has already announced it is developing a high-performance gaming headset. S.Y. Hsu, Co-CEO of ASUS, said in a statement:

A new Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora update is now live on PC and consoles, introducing new improvements and features to the game developed by Ubisoft Massive.

The next project from the Final Fantasy XVI developer, Square Enix's CBU 3, will likely be more lighthearted, as Yoshi-P seems to be done with dark fantasy for the time being.

A few hours ago, Private Division and Wētā Workshop finally shared the first trailer and gameplay details for Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings game.

7 Days to Die, the survival open world first-person shooter zombie-themed game, will finally leave early access after over ten years. Developer The Fun Pimps announced the unexpected news during the weekend. The goal is to release version 1.0 in June for PC, while the console version will ship in July. Later, cross-play will be added to the game, probably with the first major post-launch update.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

AMD has made huge strides on Linux with its latest patch release, bringing in the fundamental firmware files for its anticipated RDNA 3+ GPUs.

The highly anticipated Splinter Cell remake may feature one of the best ray-tracing implementations to date, according to some online rumors circulating today.

TCL China has decided to go one step ahead with its Mini-LED TV series, unveiling its flagship Q10K lineup, designed for the high-end segment.

NVIDIA's monopoly over the AI markets is now being questioned by several analysts, who claim that increasing GPU power consumption won't be sustainable in the future.

AMD might be sticking to the good old-fashioned 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory solution for its next-gen RDNA 4 "Radeon RX 8000" GPUs, alleges @Kepler_L2.

A few hours have passed since Huawei officially announced the Pura 70 series of flagships, which boast the upgraded Kirin 9010 chipset, along with improvements in various areas. As you would expect, in the blink of an eye, the premium Pura 70 Pro and the Pura 70 Ultra sold out in just one minute when sales went live on the Chinese phone maker’s online store. This might showcase evidence that the latest models will ship in droves and that Huawei’s competition has much to worry about.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra improves upon its predecessor, the Galaxy S23 Ultra, in every possible way, and for those looking for a premium flagship on Amazon, the 512GB storage version can be yours for $200 less. Yes, you read that correctly; the current retail price for the unlocked variant of Samsung’s top-end offering is available for $1,219.99. Bear in mind that the cost of a base model that ships with 256GB of onboard memory launched for $1,299.99, so this is practically a steal if you want one of the best Android handsets at a lower price.