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Content Warning: This piece contains some descriptions of sexual assault.

Microsoft's decision to cut 1900 staff members has reportedly seen the company's games retail teams reduced, prompting fresh questions over Xbox's future in the physical games business.

Microsoft has reportedly shut down its division for physical game releases as part of yesterday's mass layoffs. This comes as an increasing number of new releases opt to release digitally, skipping a physical launch entirely.

Microsoft is laying off around 1,900 members of staff from its games division.

The president of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Ybarra, is departing the firm.

Earlier this morning, Microsoft dropped a bomb, announcing the cutting of 1900 jobs from their Xbox and Activision Blizzard teams – nearly a 10th of their gaming division. It seems Blizzard was hit particularly hard by these layoffs, with president Mike Ybarra resigning and their upcoming survival game “Odyssey” being canceled. Well, we may now know a bit more about who was on the chopping block, and it’s not good news for those still holding onto the dream of physically owning their games.

There’s been a few notable headlines today based around Microsoft. If you caught the news earlier this morning, you discovered that Microsoft cut an astonishing 1,900 jobs in their gaming division. This came shortly after the finalization of Microsoft’s acquisitions. For nearly $70 billion, Microsoft managed to pull in Activision Blizzard. After a long battle with regulators, Microsoft was able to finalize the deal, and it left some wondering what these teams might be working on. However, it looks like quite a few individuals are now finding themselves without their jobs under the Xbox banner.

The president of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Ybarra, has announced that he’s departing the company today (January 25). 

Microsoft is reportedly laying off 1,900 of its 22,000 video game staff following the $69 billion Activision Blizzard King acquisition.

Away from the media spotlight, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is silently steering his latest project, White Stork, towards the production of AI attack drones in the United States and Ukraine. The startup, shrouded in secrecy through a network of LLCs, is actively working on mass-producing drones with advanced AI capabilities for target identification.

Infinix Smart 8 review: Time and again, Infinix has rolled out competitive smartphones in the mid-range and budget segments with the promise of delivering on users' basic requirements and then some. So, even as we talk about its smartphone's capabilities, know that Infinix has gained its reputation for bringing high-performing gaming smartphones. Now, with latest handset, Infinix Smart 8, the company has brought new features and a special design and still managed to keep it in the budget segment. So, although it is a smartphone that falls under the Rs.10000 segment, it features a Dynamic Island-like feature called Magic Ring that provides as many as four functionalities. Additionally, the LED ring light and its textured plastic design will be a standout feature that should put it ahead in the budget phone market.

Amazon.com Inc.'s Ring home doorbell unit says it will stop letting police departments request footage from users' video doorbells and surveillance cameras, retreating from a practice that was criticized by civil liberties groups and some elected officials.

Apple has been constantly making improvements to its camera sensor with each generation of iPhone it rolls out. Recently, with the iPhone 15 series, we saw massive improvements and the latest iPhone 15 Pro Max stays one of the best cameras in the market for professional photography. The new year has begun and talk about the iPhone 16 series has already started. Now a new rumor is circulating that states that the iPhone 16 Pro Max may get a bigger and advanced camera sensor for its primary camera. Check what the leaks say about the upcoming Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max camera.

Following a lengthy investigation, the United States Justice Department is set to file a lawsuit against Apple for potentially breaching antitrust laws. The department alleges Apple is using hardware and software limitations that make it harder for rival companies to compete with iPhones and iPads. If the filing goes ahead, it will mean each of the “big four” tech companies – Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple – will have been sued by the US federal government within the past five years for monopolistic business practices.

To the casting department of Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender, I would like to lodge a formal complaint: Why did you make Fire Lord Ozai so damn hot by casting Daniel Dae Kim?

The iPhone 15 Pro Max might have retained the same 48MP primary sensor as the iPhone 14 Pro Max, but it made it up considerably by touting an exclusive 5x tetraprism camera. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is rumored to raise the bar yet again in the optics department, and though a tipster notes that Apple will stick with the same 48-megapixel count for the primary unit, it is said to employ a brand new sensor from Sony, along with other upgrades.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio reset its flagship series with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, an aptly named title that saw newcomer Ichiban Kasuga take the lead in RPG hero fashion. With Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, RGG returns to the role-playing formula, with one foot in the future and the other in the past.

With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Affliction Warlock Writer, Kalamazi, offers a retrospective highlighting Affliction's journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec's next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.

Beijing has quietly pulled the proposed curbs on the video game industry from the official website, weeks after the draft guidelines wiped tens of billions of dollars off the market value of local titans.

Developer Rocksteady Studios has pulled back the curtains on the free seasonal content coming to Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League after the game's launch on February 2. Season 1 will kick off in March and includes the most famous villain in the DC roster: The Joker. Not only is The Joker joining the game, but he'll be a new playable member of the Suicide Squad. 

Satya Nadella-led Microsoft Corp. said a Russian-linked hacking group attacked its corporate systems, getting into a “small number” of email accounts, including those of senior leadership and employees who work in cybersecurity and legal. 

Payday 3 was one of those games that was briefly hyped up, but then sank back down once it had been released. Much of that came from the issues that plagued the heist FPS threequel, but it seems developer Starbreeze is determined to make things right.

Another developer has joined the increasingly long list of companies in the games industry that have companies that have initiated layoffs in the early weeks of 2024, continuing the brutal waves of job cuts that devastated the industry the entirety of last year.

Canadian developer Behaviour Interactive has joined the ranks of games industry companies cutting their employee numbers.

Behaviour Interactive is the latest notable game developer to lay off workers. The Dead by Daylight studio confirmed to Game Developer that the cuts affected less than three percent of the total workforce. Kotaku first reported on the layoffs, stating that they took place earlier this month and affected around 45 people across several departments. It initially appeared that the layoffs were limited to Behaviour's Montreal headquarters, but the publisher hasn't confirmed whether that's the case.

Polish developer and publisher CI Games has announced plans to cut approximately 10% of its workforce.

Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive has reportedly laid off 45 people, Kotaku has learned. The publication says those with knowledge of the situation at the studio said the layoffs only affected people at Behaviour's Montreal, Canada studio, with those 45 affected let go last week, between January 9 and 11. 

Dead by Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive has reportedly made a round of layoffs.

Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker, the duo that co-founded acclaimed Batman Arkham studio Rocksteady before departing to «start a new adventure together in games» in 2022, have set up a new AAA London development studio, Hundred Star Games.

The time is finally here; Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S24 series, with the Ultra variant being the crown jewel of the series. The phones have been in the rumor mill for as long as we can remember, and they are finally here. We have a complete breakdown of everything that you need to know.

Staff at services outfit PTW (Pole to Win) are the latest to be impacted by layoffs in the games industry.

PTW, a support studio that's worked with some of the industry's biggest companies like Blizzard, Capcom, and Sega, has laid off about 45 people, as first reported by Kotaku. PTW was previously called Pole To Win and its services include quality assurance, studio support, and localization. Last week, on January 11, someone with knowledge of the studio told Kotaku about the layoffs, noting that roughly 45 people lost their jobs. 

Staff at services outfit Pole to Win (PTW) are the latest to be impacted by layoffs in the games industry.

Build a Rocket Boy, a Scotland-headquartered game development company founded by one of the former lead developers behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, today announced it has raised $110 million in a Series D round of funding.

Amazon-owned Twitch is preparing to lay off 35 percent of its employees or a little over 500 people. The news was first reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday and confirmed a day later by Twitchin a blog post signed by CEO Dan Clancy. Employees will learn today via email whether they are or aren't losing their jobs.

11bit Studios confirmed that Frostpunk 2 will be released on PC sometime during the first half of 2024 and will be on Game Pass from day one alongside the first full gameplay reveal for the highly anticipated survival city-builder.

In October 2023, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and by the end of the year, the latter company’s CEO had departed. Now, this will be the year where we’ll see how Activision Blizzard functions when fully integrated into Microsoft. The most immediate change for those who play games will likely be Activision Blizzard titles coming to Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s subscription service.

Discord is the latest gaming-centric tech company to lay off a large number off its employees, with 170 people from across various departments being cut.

Adding to a painful week in gaming and tech layoffs, Discord is the latest company to announce downsizing, with a 17% cut to its staff.

Why not start as you mean to go on, yeah? Discord is probably one of the most popular chat services in the world, but even this monolithic communication tool is not immune to the dreaded “L” word. It turns out it, too, is about to lay a chunk of its workforce off.

Community chat application company, Discord, has laid off 170 employees, or 17 percent of its staff, according to a new report from The Verge. Discord CEO Jason Citron cites overhiring, which has led to the company becoming «less efficient» in how it operates. The layoffs affected people across various departments. 

Discord is the latest gaming-centric tech company to lay off a large number off its employees, with 170 people from across various departments being cut.

Gamer-focused chat platform Discord is the latest company to make job cuts.

When Final Fantasy VII launched on PlayStation in 1997, it revolutionized the RPG genre and gaming as a whole. The transition from pixel art to fully animated computer graphics was a massive enough leap ahead, but the beauty of this classic title was much more than skin deep. Final Fantasy VII features an incredible cast of characters, an outstanding battle system, and a story that evokes joy, awe, anger, and grief. Final Fantasy VII is well-established as one of the most iconic and beloved video games of all time, but for Square Enix, the legacy is somewhat more important. 

What is it? A roguelike city builder about making the best of a doomed world.

There's officially a new Sentry on the block as of January 10's The Sentry #2, but how long will the new incarnation of the troubled Marvel hero last? 

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We're not even two weeks into 2024 and the tech and gaming layoffs are already reaching catastrophic numbers. Now Discord is adding to the count by cutting 17% of its staff.

By Alex Heath, a deputy editor and author of the Command Line newsletter. He’s covered the tech industry for over a decade at The Information and other outlets.

Google is in the news again. This time it has announced yet another round of layoffs that is happening and this time it is all about those working on the voice-activated Google Assistant software and other departments. The number of lay offs is quite large and runs into hundreds. 

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Video game engine creator Unity is laying off 1800 employees, or 25% of its workforce, according to a report from Yahoo! Finance. The company announced these layoffs in an internal memo sent out on Monday, January 8. These job cuts follow a turbulent 2023 for the company after it attempted to introduce per-install fees to developers using its game engine before later walking it back. 

Shuji Utsumi has been appointed as President/COO and CEO of Sega America and Europe.

Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch is set to lay off approximately 500 employees this week, or 35% of its total workforce, Bloomberg broke in a report on Tuesday.

QD-OLED gaming monitors have picked up some serious traction over the last few years, with Alienware and Samsung leading the pack. Both brands have stepped up the game at CES, though, unveiling new 4K panels with HP in tow as well. Previous QD-OLED gaming monitors have tapped out at QHD resolutions (or various versions of them), and while it'll take some serious grunt to run each panel at its highest possible refresh rate, those after a high-end setup are well served here. 

New footage of the Tomb Raider remastered trilogy is currently MIA, but the developer is promising to share "plenty more" on the highly anticipated collection soon.

A former Activision Blizzard executive is suing the company for age discrimination, according to lawsuit filed on Jan. 2. James Reid Venable, a 57-year-old former senior director of business operations, said Activision Blizzard “retaliated and discriminated” against him after he made a discrimination complaint to the company’s human resources department — specifically, Venable believes he was laid off for being old and white.

Activision-Blizzard has been the centre of a lot of controversy over these past few years. After a lawsuit went public, detailing «numerous complaints about unlawful harassment, discrimination, and retaliation» and a «frat boy» culture, plus claims from former CEO Bobby Kotick that the whole thing was just an «aggressive labour movement,»  the company finally settled last year.

An unnamed former Activision executive is taking the Call of Duty publisher to court in California, accusing the company of age discrimination and violating the state's whistleblower protection law. Said executive is a 57-year-old who worked at the company from 2014; apparently, he and six other men aged 47 or older were cut from a team of 200, as part of broader Activision Blizzard restructuring efforts last August.

The AMD-powered Frontier Supercomputer with Instinct MI250X GPUs has achieved a 1 Trillion Parameter LLM run, rivaling ChatGPT-4.

Publisher Activision Blizzard has been accused of discriminating against “old white guys,” by a former executive.

A former Activision executive has sued the publisher in California state court accusing the company of age discrimination and violating the state's whistleblower protection law, as reported by Law360.

In a recent announcement from Microsoft, it has been officially disclosed that Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5) will be bidding farewell to the Xbox Game Pass on Friday, January 5. The renowned game, which made its Game Pass debut on July 5, 2023, will conclude its six-month stint as an available title for subscribers. Unlike typical Game Pass additions, GTA 5's inclusion had lacked the customary forewarning, surprising subscribers with its unannounced arrival. Furthermore, Rockstar titles, including GTA 5, have consistently departed on dates divergent from the usual 15th or last days of the month, setting them apart from the customary removal schedule of other Game Pass offerings.

AMD Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" APUs will deliver additional I/O capabilities on a few AM5 boards such as the AORUS B650E series such as USB4.

The VR gaming realm appears to be struggling to gain its footing as yet another studio experiences problems. This time around it’s Archiact which has announced it is going through layoffs.

Emma Stone has an update on Cruella 2, the long-awaited sequel to her Cruella de Vil origin story – but don't get your hopes up. 

The marketing team behind Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is taking credit for a green comet that passed Earth last year. 

UK games studio Bossa has made a third of its staff redundant.

Korean games giant Nexon has been fined ₩11.6 billion ($8.9 million) by the country's Fair Trade Commission following allegations of misleading players of the MMO MapleStory.

The Chinese Communist Party—who had taken aim at free-to-play monetisation schemes just before the holidays—softened its stance. This was after "nearly $80 billion in market value" bled from Tencent (League of Legends) and NetEase (Diablo: Immortal). 

XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns director would love to do a life simulation game because they feel "original" and "authentic."

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The AMD Ryzen 5 8600G "Hawk Point" APU has appeared within Geekbench, sporting 6 cores and a Radeon 5 iGPU with 8 compute units.

Echo is kicking off the New Year the right way – with a clip from a no-holds-barred fight scene with Daredevil that has us excited for Marvel’s first 2024 release.

A Chinese exchange student who fell victim to a "cyber kidnapping" scam in which his parents were extorted for $80,000, was found alive but "cold and scared" in a tent in the Utah wilderness, police said. Kai Zhuang, age 17, was reported missing on Thursday after his parents in China told officials at his host high school in Riverdale, Utah that he appeared to have been kidnapped and a ransom had been requested.

SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket lofted a secretive space plane for the US Space Force on Thursday evening from Florida, the first time the rocket was used to send the Boeing Co.-built experimental spacecraft to orbit.

The Asus ROG Ally is perfectly capable of running the latest and greatest games all by itself, but where's the fun in that. The USB-C port opens you up to a whole host of additional accessories and docking opportunities which means a full desktop style setup is just a few cables away. Of course, the perfect Asus ROG Ally setup is always going to be subjective - you might not even need a keyboard and mouse if you're going for a console style arrangement, and the full suite will be dependent on how often you take your PC on the road. However, if you're building a top of the range rig for one of the best gaming handhelds on the market, you're going to be splashing some cash. 

NVIDIA has spent big money on HBM3E memory as it tries to secure enough stock for its next-gen Hopper H200 & Blackwell B100 AI GPUs.

Apple suffered a major blow in its executive headcount, as the technology giant’s chief iPhone designer, Tang Tan, is reported to have joined Jony Ive’s LoveFrom and work with OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman to work on a brand new device focused on AI. Tan was also responsible for being one of the individuals responsible for designing the Apple Watch, and for the time being, no one has been named as his replacement at Apple.