Month: September 2024

30 years after cluttering up PC keyboards with the Windows key, the key responsible for booting you to desktop at the worst possible moment in your Dota 2 match, Microsoft is poised to once again transform our keyboards. 

The company today unveiled the Copilot key, a new button that will help usher in, as Microsoft executive vice president Yusuf Mehdi put it, “a significant shift toward a more personal and intelligent computing future where AI will be seamlessly woven into Windows from the system, to the silicon, to the hardware.” 

Based on promotional images, the Copilot key looks like it will replace the menu key that currently sits to the right of the spacebar. Mehdi said the button will start to appear on new Windows 11 PCs from Microsoft’s “ecosystem partners” in the days leading up to and at CES, which gets underway January 5—that’s tomorrow—with availability set to begin later in January.

“The introduction of the Copilot key marks the first significant change to the Windows PC keyboard in nearly three decades,” Mehdi wrote. “We believe it will empower people to participate in the AI transformation more easily. The Copilot key joins …

What do you do with yourself after creating a terrifying mutant spider train that haunts my dreams? Apparently, you do a complete 180 and go for some adorably strange mutant… koalas? Mice? Teddy bears? 

Whatever they are (“Jailiens”, according to the trailer at Summer Game Fest), solo developer Two Star Games is back with Cuffbust. It’s another addition to the ever-growing “chaotic psychics-based party game” pile, with the developer promising “destructible environments, proximity chats, a multitude of escape roots, and 20 player lobbies.” 

As the name suggests, Cuffbust is all about breaking out of jail with yer pals. Making use of tools like soap, dynamite, and spoons to carve your way out of prison all while avoiding guards and figuring out the best way to escape unscathed. The trailer shows some of the jailiens breaking boxes to squeeze through a vent, or jumping down a rather grimy looking sewer on their path to freedom.

The trailer ends with the freshly escaped jailiens celebrating their victory on the beach with what I can only assume to be a giant joint. Is it okay for mutant alien koala-mice-bear things to be smoking? I’m not sure, but they …

You don’t need ChatGPT to tell you that AI is big business. Nvidia is making an absolute killing. Yet, for all the buzz and talk about AI, and Nvidia’s understandable shift of attention to where the big money is, its gaming business continues to thrive.

Nvidia released its fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday, raking in $22.1 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 265% from a year ago. Its revenue from data centers, where the big AI bucks come from, was up by over 400% from the same period last year, reaching $18.4 billion.

Analyst expectations were for $20.55 billion, so these results were ahead of expectations. Still, Nvidia shares are down by over 7% over the last five days at the time of writing. However, those losses were reversed in after hours trade, surging by up to 10%, largely on the back of guidance for the next quarter. Nvidia is forecasting an even higher revenue of $24 billion for the first quarter of 2024.

The company released its full year results at the same time, reporting revenue of $60.9 billion and net income of $29.76 billion. What caught my eye was the gross margin of 72.7%. That’s, uhh, pretty astonishing! And, its forecast for the next …

In a surprise moment today, BioWare’s upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard has popped up as Steam Deck Verified. We don’t know what the system requirements, minimum or recommended,  are yet. But from that bit of information, at least, we know that Valve has tested it on Proton and says that it works well enough on their little handheld gaming PC.

“We’re making great progress towards our fall launch date and can confirm early that #DragonAge: The Veilguard is going all-in on @Steam features!,” posted BioWare on Steam. 

“We’re verified on Steam Deck,” they followed up, then saying that “We’ll be Steam native—meaning the EA App will not be required to play the game.”

The second statement will probably be of great interest to people who hate logging in to more than one thing at once, which given most game launches is either the majority or an extremely vocal subset who if I were a developer I would not want to anger—just look at what’s happening to poor Earth Defense Force 6 as we speak, which has a “Mostly Negative” rating on Steam due to its Epic account requirement.

How well Veilguard runs on Steam Deck is another thing en…

Everyone’s favourite boys, their vibrating eggs, and their computer-destroying hair will finally cast off their Epic Games Store exclusivity next month. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin will hit Steam on April 6, giving everyone who still stubbornly tries to keep their games library on a single digital shelf a shot at killing Chaos. You can see its new celebratory trailer here.

To celebrate its transition—and to coax you into spending money on it—the game is getting a permanent price cut. Its former price tag of $60/£50 is being reduced to $40/£35. Witnessing the destiny that awaits Jack when he has severed all binding ties of fate is easier on your wallet than ever.

If you’ve somehow avoided the memes, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a Final Fantasy game centred around Jack, a beefcake/lughead who really, really wants to defeat the evil overlord Chaos alongside his buddies Jed and Ash. Jack is dressed in an outfit he got on sale at The Gap and wields a greatsword, and somehow this all amounts to an alternate universe prequel to the original Final Fantasy on the NES.

It’s kind of wonderful? Don’t get me w…

Netflix has posted a trailer for Black Mirror season 6, so set a reminder on the smartphone app that’s secretly harvesting your personal data and selling it to an evil corporation: the Twilight Zone-style anthology series will once again attempt to scare us with the dark side of technology in June.

To which I say… good luck? We’re already pretty scared.

Look, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Black Mirror episodes since the series began airing in 2011, but a lot has changed since then. Frankly, a lot has changed since season 5 came out in 2019. These days, the idea of a bunch of satirical stories warning us about the horrors of technology just feels a bit… quaint. We’re already experiencing plenty of fear when it comes to new tech, especially with the recent and sudden advancements in AI which is already threatening to replace humans at their jobs and making us doubt every image, video, and soundbyte we see on the internet.

Not to mention the heartbreak caused when sexy AI chatbots abruptly get lobotomized. The tech-fuelled dystopia? We’re already soaking in it!

That said, I’m still definitely gonna watch the new Black Mirror. The series has prod…

Capcom has finally issued a warning to those who are getting a little too brazen with their cracked copies of Street Fighter 6, threatening to disqualify them from future tournaments.

It’s an open secret that a cracked version of Street Fighter 6’s closed beta test has existed since October 2022. Many have been chipping away at the game in private, labbing its small roster of characters and practising their execution in anticipation of June’s release. Some have been a little cheekier, bringing the cracked copy to local tournaments or casuals to play offline among friends.

However, it seems that as time has gone on, people have been getting a little too cocky with how openly they’re playing something they shouldn’t be. A select handful of streamers have been publicly playing the game on Twitch, leading professional players like Momochi to complain that Capcom was “being too soft” in its approach. “I feel like those playing on the cracked version should be permanently banned,” he said during a stream in April.

It seems Capcom has listened, as it’s now released a statement warning of potential tournament bans. “It has come to our attention that some users have bee…