Software News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

The Samsung Galaxy S24 lineup might not have as many hardware changes as previous generations, but there are AI features that are supposed to make your experience better, all under the "Galaxy AI" umbrella. We weren't expecting Samsung to roll those features out to its older phones, at least for the time being, but that is now starting with the release of the One UI 6.1 update.

It's potentially fantastic — and arguably overdue — news for PSVR 2 owners, as Sony has confirmed the VR headset is being tested to support games available on PC.

Google is pausing its AI tool that creates images of people following inaccuracies in some historical depictions generated by the model, the latest hiccup in the Alphabet-owned company's efforts to catch up with rivals OpenAI and Microsoft.

A Chinese tech security firm was able to breach foreign governments, infiltrate social media accounts and hack personal computers, a massive data leak analysed by experts this week revealed.

One UI 6.1 debuted with a bunch of Galaxy AI features, although a lot of us thought that these features would be limited to just the Galaxy S24 series. Samsung jumped the gun and reminded us why they are among the best Android OEMs, as the company promised that the AI features will reach the older devices, as well.

As technology enthusiasts eagerly await the next major update to Microsoft's operating system, Windows 11, anticipation mounts for the array of innovative features and enhancements it promises to bring. Windows 11 update 2024 is scheduled for release in the second half of 2024. Dubbed as Windows 11 version 24H2, or the Microsoft Windows 11 2024 Update, it is widely expected to redefine the Windows experience with groundbreaking advancements across various aspects of the platform.

We have the solution to Wordle on February 21, as well as some helpful hints to help you figure out the answer yourself, right here. We’ve placed the answer at the bottom of the page, so we don’t ruin the surprise before you’ve had a chance to work through the clues. So let’s dive in, starting with a reminder of yesterday’s answer.

Jim Keller has shared a string of posts over at X where he has called out NVIDIA's CUDA for being a swamp and also said the same was true for x86.

More than 500 games on Steam made over $3 million in gross revenue in 2023.

The Galaxy Ring might officially take shape during the second half of 2024, assuming the latest report’s information turns out to be legit. Typically, Samsung hosts a second Galaxy Unpacked event in July or August, but the new rumor also says that the wearable will not just be unveiled early but also come in different sizes to accommodate a bigger customer base. In short, Samsung appears to be going ‘all in’ in this new category, with earlier reports stating that various health features will be integrated into this device to make it a more appealing purchase.

6G connectivity is far from commercialization, but that is not stopping nations from carrying out a series of tests to gain an edge against other competing regions. Samsung, for instance, has been conducting tests of a similar nature, but this standard is not expected to go mainstream until 2030. Similarly, China Mobile does not see a 6G launch anytime soon, but that has not stopped the carrier from performing its own benchmarks through a satellite launch.

We don’t know about you, but it feels like the PS5 has barely broken a sweat yet. Despite being over three years old, the system’s lifespan has been hugely impacted by the pandemic, which has seen its first-party software cadence slow to a crawl and its early years massively affected by hardware shortages. It’s a little odd to hear Sony talk about the system entering the “latter half” of its lifecycle, then.

Console sales are crucial, and Sony will be pleased it’s shipped almost 55 million PS5s to date – but monthly active users are also an important metric for organisations these days. Platform holders want customers to be logging in often, because when they’re engaged, there’s a good chance they’ll spend money on software and add-ons through the PS Store.

Chances are that you've used at least a few Microsoft Office programs before, even if you've never worked in an actual office. Tools like Word and PowerPoint have been a staple on home and work PCs for nearly 30 years, and more recent tools such as Microsoft Teams made the transition to remote work seamless for millions of people. It's hard to tell the importance of Office suites with just a few words.

Nintendo‘s shares have dropped in Japan following reports that the successor to the Switch will likely be released in the first quarter of 2025.

Apple is invested in bringing AI technology to its product line, with the iPhone being the prime candidate to receive many new additions. Apple's process to bring AI to the iPhone is two-fold. While some features may be part of iOS 18, others will be exclusive to the iPhone 16 lineup. Altogether, AI will make the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro models a worthy upgrade over the current models, considering the number of new features coming with iOS 18.

The wait for Nintendo’s next-gen console may have just gotten a little longer. According to multiple reports, Nintendo now plans to launch its Switch successor in the first quarter of 2025 — or about eight years after it launched the original Nintendo Switch.

Sam Altman seeks US approval for multibillion dollar AI chip venture;  Google unveils free AI cyber tools for enhanced online security; Apple set to launch AI code completion tool for developers; AI hiring tools risk filtering out top candidates, despite hopes of bias reduction- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

Samsung and TSMC have locked horns in the 2nm chip race, with both foundry giants earlier said to be preparing samples for Qualcomm on the next-generation lithography. However, when it comes to securing actual orders, the Korean giant obtains a win in that column by bringing a Japanese startup into the fold. It is said that this research firm decided to skip TSMC for its 2nm technology, and we have a few reasons why it would make this decision.

RPG Maker XP is currently free to claim on Steam for a limited time.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has confirmed that it expects PS5 hardware and software sales to decline this upcoming financial year.

According to Sony Group president Hiroki Totoki, there are no plans "to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year." I.e., between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025.

The first half of the PS5’s life has seen Sony continuing to release major first-party exclusives with the same impressive momentum that defined much of the PS4’s life, but it looks like things have certainly slowed down. In 2023, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was the only major flagship first-party title to release for the PlayStation 5, and as some have expected, Sony has now confirmed that it won’t be releasing any games on that scale until the end of the next fiscal year (i.e. until at least April 1, 2025).

In its fiscal report for Q3 (October-December) of FY 2023/24 (which ends March 31, 2024), Sony has revealed that the PS5 has shipped 54.8 million units worldwide as of December 31. Previously, the company announced the console had sold 50 million units worldwide as of December 9.

Looking for something to scratch that retro role-playing game itch, but don’t want to purchase a brand-new game? Well, if you’d rather make your own, you can always check out the expansive list of RPG Maker toolkits, which are currently on sale.

Expanding its AI ecosystem, NVIDIA has introduced "Chat with RTX", a chatbot for Windows PCs that is powered by TensorRT-LLM & available for free on the latest RTX GPUs.

The Apple Vision Pro can turn into your best friend onboard a boring flight, as demonstrated by a Microsoft executive. During an excruciatingly long journey lasting 16 hours from Seattle to Dubai, the AR headset owner revealed that you can transform your entire cabin into an entertainment hub. However, the software giant’s executive does point out some caveats of using the bulky contraption for extended periods, with additional details discussed here.

Over half of the consumers surveyed have experienced subscription traps, hidden charges and other dark patterns on purchasing apps or other software through their mobile application stores, online research firm LocalCircles said on Monday.

Sony has just announced a new PS5 firmware update that's going into public beta testing today. A selection of PS5 users will be invited via email to try out the firmware's new features before it's rolled out to everybody. Time to check those inboxes!

January seems to have been a strong month for Sony, at least in Europe. According to data pulled together by GamesIndustry, last month saw successes for the platform holder in terms of both software and hardware — not a bad way to kick off 2024.

Well this is a rare sight indeed. The latest sales charts for Japan are in, and for the first time in a long while, the software rankings are dominated by PlayStation titles. Persona 3 Reload enters at number one on PS5, and number three on PS4, while another new release, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, takes second on PS5, and fifth on PS4. Needless to say, it's been a big week for Sony's systems.

Going online for the Best Microsoft Office Deals can be a daunting task. To help you out in figuring out how to get a cheap Microsoft Office license without breaking the law (and possibly your wallet), we want to share Godeal24 Valentine's Day Sale with you. Let’s say you’re looking for the best deal on Microsoft Office 2021 Professional for your home office. But the Official price in MS is $439.99. Now take a look at Godeal24’s catalog for Microsoft Office 2021 Professional Plus: at this moment, the price is $27.78, meaning you’re going to save over 90% over the official price list. The key is 100% genuine and guaranteed, plus you’ll be covered with a full money-back warranty. Let’s check some other deals, and maybe you want to save even more cash. You just need to pay only $54.18 from Godeal24 for a genuine Office 2021 Home and Business for Mac license. Perhaps you want to save a little extra cash because you don’t need the latest version of Office, so what about Microsoft Office 2019? Here, Microsoft Office 2019 Professional Plus is priced at $24.48 instead of $179.99, so you’ll save over 80%. More favorable are key packages and Business Wholesale. Get the best deals from Godeal24 and buy it for your lover! Happy Valentine's Day!

When people fret about artificial intelligence, it's not just due to what they see in the future but what they remember from the past -- notably the toxic effects of social media. For years, misinformation and hate speech evaded Facebook and Twitter's policing systems and spread around the globe. Now deepfakes are infiltrating those same platforms, and while Facebook is still responsible for how bad stuff gets distributed, the AI companies making them have a clean-up role too. Unfortunately, just like the social media firms before them, they're carrying out that work behind closed doors.

Apple has been talking about the Apple Vision Pro headset for more than a year, and it has finally been made available to the public recently. The product has created a lot of hype in this niche market and it has started to gain immense popularity, something not seen since when the iPhone debuted. However, even though Vision Pro headset is an amazing new advanced mixed reality tech, it still lacks some features and functionalities, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In his latest newsletter, he said that Apple Vision Pro would require as many as four generations of improvements to reach its full potential.

It's been a year since Avalanche Software released Hogwarts Legacy, the first open world action RPG set in the Harry Potter universe. The game went on to become the biggest commercial success of 2023, having now surpassed over 24 million units sold to date, according to publisher Warner Bros. games. It has outsold the likes of Call of Duty and FIFA (now EA Sports FC), not to mention rising to the top in an incredibly packed year of great game releases.

The studio behind Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler 2, Acquire, has been acquired by none other than Kadokawa Corporation. In effect, this means that Octopath Traveler and Dark Souls are now under the same umbrella, as Kadokawa also owns From Software, for one.

Currently, only Samsung and Google offer the longest software support for their flagships, which is seven years. OnePlus might receive praise for the clean UI it brings to its handsets, but it will likely be questioned as to why it does not follow the same approach as the two other companies, to which the Chinese firm’s President has an adequate reply. He believes rolling out software updates for seven years is pointless if the hardware cannot deliver the same experience.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has raised a high-severity warning regarding vulnerabilities present in Google Chrome OS, urging users to update their browsers immediately. Released on February 8, 2024, under the designation CIVN-2024-0031, the security note highlights significant risks associated with Google Chrome OS versions preceding 114.0.5735.350 (Platform Version: 15437.90.0) on the LTS channel. Govt wants you to download the latest Google Chrome update as that will remove all current vulnerabilities that are there.

From Software owner Kadokawa has purchased Japanese development studio Acquire for an undisclosed sum.

PlayStation rolled out a lot of new hardware during the last two months of 2023. A slimmer model of its PS5, the PlayStation Portal which allows you to play PS5 games remotely, and its first set of earbuds. The Portal and the Pulse Explore Earbuds have been notoriously hard to find since their respective release dates, but there's good news on that front when it comes to the latter.

Before Doom became the lean, mean murdermachine we know and love, Id Software had far bigger plans for their seminal satanic FPS. Ideas dropped during development include a big focus on story, four playable characters, elemental shields, demonic weapons, and more. The mod Doom Delta brings to life many such ideas from sources including an old design document and leaked alpha builds, which I think makes it fanfic? A new version of Doom Delta launched last week, offering a curious vision of the many Dooms Id didn't make.

The Nintendo Wii U and 3DS online services will be terminated this April, but users will still be able to download purchased software and updates for their games.

A new PlayStation 5 system software update is now live, introducing improvements for the PULSE Elite wireless headset and Explore wireless earbuds, and more.

Nintendo will discontinue online services for 3DS and Wii U software on April 8 at 4:00 p.m. PT / 7:00 p.m. ET., the company announced. Update data and purchased software and downloadable content from Nintendo eShop will remain downloadable “for the foreseeable future.”

Call of Duty Warzone developer Raven Software has apologised for «the disruption» caused by Warzone's Season 1 Reloaded launch.

We’re more than three and a half years past the launch of the PS5, but it seems its predecessor is still posting stronger numbers than most would have expected at this stage. In fact, software sales for Sony’s last-gen console were actually higher than software sales for Microsoft’s current gen duo of Xbox Series X and S in Europe.

Hey! How would you like to contribute to the downfall of society? I do so by regularly tuning into Love Island and/or Married At First Sight. For those of you who'd like to do your part in videogame form, dev_hell looks to be the answer. It's a first-person deckbuilding roguelike where you play as a software developer employed by a shady corporation to "reshape the future", and it's giving off strong whiffs of Inscryption. As much as I know dev_hell will be incredibly unsettling… I'm in.

Raven Software was once working on a live service Call of Duty: Zombies game, according to a former lead designer at the studio.

It’s now come to light that Raven Software was making a live service Call of Duty Zombies game.

Raven Software was at one time working on a standalone live-service version of Call of Duty's popular Zombies mode, ex-Raven Software lead designer Michael Gummelt has revealed, but it was cancelled after its IP originator — presumably Treyarch — «wanted it back».

According to a recently published patent, Electronic Arts is working on a new game creation and marketplace software. The patent shows that this software would function similarly to Unreal Engine, GameMaker, and even the building games in Roblox. While there is no official confirmation on what EA is planning to do with this software, it does reveal what the company has been working on.

UK retailer Game is reportedly planning to end its video game trade-in service next month.

First reported by MP1st, Raven Software lead designer Michael Gummelt mentioned a couple of cancelled projects on his Linkedin page. One was a live service version of Call Of Duty's zombies mode, and the other, a revival of a classic Raven IP. I'm not sad about one and I'm mildly sad over the other, with the mystery not being too hard to solve.

A new update for Resident Evil Revelations has added some additional software intended to prevent modding, and this action has proven to be a tipping point for the community as Capcom's months-long push against mods continues.

Famitsu has released its combined two-week sales data for hardware and physical software sales in Japan for the period from December 18 to December 31, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder has taken the top spot in the final charts for the year. The 2D platformer sold over 221,000 units over the course of the two-week period, and is followed in second place by Konami’s Momotaro Dentetsu World: Chikyuu wa Kibou de Mawatteru!, which sold over 192,000 units.

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. 

Intel has confirmed that its engineering teams have moved to the next-generation Arc Battlemage Xe2 and Celestial Xe3 GPUs with more good news on the way.

Do you want to get the latest gaming industry news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our daily and weekly newsletters here .

If you're rocking a handheld gaming PC that isn't the Steam Deck, then I've got some good news for you to start the new year: AMD has released a new preview driver enabling its software-based frame generation tech on any system running an RDNA 3-based integrated graphics chip. 

Intel's performance-enhancing Application Optimizer software is set to be supported on some 12th and 13th Gen processors, in a complete reverse of the company's previous position on the matter.

Vanguard, the initially controversial anti-cheat software attached to Valorant, is coming to League of Legends.

 Intel on Wednesday said it was forming a new independent company around its artificial intelligence software efforts with backing from digital-focused asset manager DigitalBridge Group and other investors. Intel executives would not comment on the value of the deal or whether it would retain a majority stake in the new venture, other than to say the firm would have an independent board of directors and the chipmaker would remain a shareholder.

There’s a new rumor that Microsoft has scored another Disney owned IP, to make an Xbox exclusive.

Apple Inc., facing a ban on imports of its watches that generate billions in annual sales, is seeking alternate paths to overcome the patent-infringement loss that forced the most popular Apple Watch models off shelves over the holidays. The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant won a temporary reprieve from a federal appeals court Wednesday, two months after the US International Trade Commission ruled the smartwatches infringed patents held by medical-device maker Masimo Corp.—and one day after the device's US sales halted. The Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 returned to Apple's US retail stores, and will be available online by noon Pacific Time on Thursday, the company said.

Embark Studios has released a new patch for The Finals, adding improvements to its anti-cheat detection.

An Apple Watch sales ban was recently announced by the company as it is believed that certain models were violating patent infringements. Even though Apple is said to halt the sales of its smartwatches starting later this month, a new report states that a software update can help the company operate in the U.S. market once more. Unfortunately, Masimo, the firm that helped push the sales ban as it argues that its patents were infringed upon, brings another problem in Apple’s path.

AMD has responded to NVIDIA's H100 TensorRT-LLM figures with the MI300X once again leading in the AI benchmarks when running optimized software.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the soon-to-be-released new open-world game by Ubisoft Massive, is going to show how good AMD FSR 3 frame generation can be, as its implementation in the game is the best yet.

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more.

It is well known that OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT is capable of assisting people in drafting emails, writing generic stories and essays, and even answering basic queries. However, that is not all it can do. The ChatGPT chatbot is also capable of undertaking technical tasks such as analyzing large chunks of data, coding and testing codes, and even debugging codes by identifying the root cause of errors. This sets it up to be the perfect assistant for software developers in saving their time and making them more productive. Here are 5 ways the ChatGPT chatbot can assist software developers.

Delve into the lore of Lordan, Yarnham, and The Lands Between.

The winners of the Game Republic 20th Anniversary Awards have been announced, with Revolution Software taking home two accolades.

Nippon Ichi Software has announced roguelike strategy RPG Bar Stella Abyss for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch. It will launch on February 29, 2024 in Japan.

Nippon Ichi Software will announce a new title on November 20 at 22:00 JST, the company teased. You will be able to watch the announcement on YouTube. (Update 10:13 p.m.: The YouTube link went private minutes after press time.)

In its latest earnings announcement, which concerns the second quarter of the 2023 financial year, Sony has revealed some significant new insight into the current trajectory of PlayStation 5 hardware and software sales.

Gaming hardware specialist Razer has expanded the portfolio of its mice that can utilise its HyperPolling technology. With a simple firmware update, you'll be able to set the polling rate to anywhere between 125 and 8,000Hz, and enjoy ultra smooth mouse motion in Windows and games.

Singles' Day, also known as "11.11" or "Double 11," is a unique and popular shopping festival in China and several other countries that takes place on November 11th each year. What began as an informal celebration for single people has evolved into one of the world's largest online shopping events, surpassing Black Friday and Cyber Monday in terms of sales.

In all the furore over Microsoft's record-breaking acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it's almost been possible to forget that Sony recently had a major acquisition of its own – a far cry from the scale of the Activision deal, certainly, and not even a match for the price tag of Microsoft's earlier Zenimax acquisition, but Sony's $3.6 billion buyout of Bungie was a big step for the company nonetheless.

Last week, Apple released iOS 17.2 beta to developers for testing purposes. The update could be available for all compatible iPhone models by the end of this month with many forward-facing features. However, it is now being reported that the company is working on iOS 17.1.1 internally, and based on the software version, it could arrive before the release of iOS 17.2 later this month.