Welcome to the halfway point of 2025 and it's the slowest week of new releases we've had in a while, with this week's major release being a JPRG from SEGA. This is followed by another Asian game, but in a very different style, some zombie killing, but in a cute Asian way, another RPG, but about teenagers, a 25th anniversary remaster of a classic and finally a 2.5D platformer.

Persona5: The Phantom X / This week's major release / Thursday 26 June
The Persona series, which has sold over 23.5 million copies worldwide, welcomes its first mobile/PC release with its newest entry. Featuring a brand-new story and a cast of captivating new characters, the world of P5X offers an experience that both Persona5 fans and newcomers alike can enjoy. Steam link

The news we've been waiting to share with you all is here! Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement is coming in 2026. Helmed by Creative Director SHUTARO and produced by IGA. Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement is an entirely new 2.5D side-scrolling RPG that will introduce exciting new lore, characters, gameplay and features to the Bloodstained franchise.

THE STORY
16th-century England drowns in the shadow of the Ethereal Castle and its deadly inhabitants. All attempts to fight this evil have been met with failure and death. In a desperate, final attempt, two heroes rise together against the Demon Lord Elias' reign of terror: Leonard Brandon and Alexander Kyteler. Leo is a young fighter with the Church's Black Wolves clan. Alex is a knight of the kingdom's White Stags and the lone survivor of an earlier expedition to fight Elias.

Ra Ra Boom is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC this summer, as part of what we consider the summer of beat 'em ups. As beat 'em up fans, we can't wait to play some of the great titles that will make this probably the biggest year for beat 'em ups since Castle Crashers launched forever ago. If you're a fan of beat 'em ups, you're in for a great summer. And we hope you consider adding Ra Ra Boom to your list of must plays. In Ra Ra Boom, you and up to three friends play as one of four ninja space cheerleaders. There's Aris (the leader), Ren (the blade), Vee (the shield), and Saida (the cyborg). Zoi, an AI gone rogue, has overtaken earth and our four heroines are the only ones who can stop it.

Beat 'em Up/Shoot 'em Up Mash Up
As the saying goes, you don't bring pom poms to a boss fight. So, we had to ensure our heroines were armed for the AI menace they were facing. Where most beat 'em ups focus on melee with limited-use ranged options, we did things a little different. Ra Ra Boom can be played as a pure beat 'em up. Each character has their own melee attack and you can be effective with them. Or you can play it as a pure shoot 'em up, because you also have an effective ranged attack with unlimited ammo. But it's best to mix the two, getting into your flow and finding the attack combos that suit the moment. We think that after you play Ra Ra Boom, with its speed and fluid mix of melee and ranged combat, it will be hard to go back to the standard we've all gotten used to.

The wait is over. Today marks the official release of Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree, the dark fantasy action RPG developed by Primal Game Studio and published by Knights Peak. The game is available now on PC (without 3rd-Party-DRM), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Set in the bleak and enchanting world of Faelduum, Mandragora invites players to take on the role of an Inquisitor in a land where magic is forbidden and the tyrannical King Priest and his agents rule from the shadows. Will you follow the law—or break it? The fate of the realm lies in your hands.

Global Unichip Corp. (GUC), the Advanced ASIC Leader, today announced the successful launch of industry's first Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) PHY silicon, achieving a data rate of 32 Gbps per lane, the highest speed defined in the UCIe specification. The 32G UCIe IP, supporting UCIe 2.0, delivers an impressive bandwidth density of 10 Tbps per 1 mm of die edge (5 Tbps/mm full-duplex). This milestone was achieved using TSMC's advanced N3P process and CoWoS packaging technologies, targeting AI, high-performance computing (HPC), xPU, and networking applications.

In this test chip, several dies with North-South and East-West IP orientations are interconnected through CoWoS interposer. The silicon measurements show robust 32 Gbps operation with wide horizontal and vertical eye openings. GUC is working aggressively on the full-corner qualification, and the complete silicon report is expected to be available in the coming quarter.

Welcome to the first full week of the new year and the month of January. This week's major release involves building pointy buildings in the desert, just south of the Mediterranean. The rest of this week's new releases involves getting imprisoned by aliens, making steampunk chocolate, work as a robot assassin, purging the land and doing hard time in a futuristic version of Japan.

Builders of Egypt / This week's major release / Wednesday 8 January
In Builders of Egypt, you can explore the land of the pharaohs through the ages, from the Nile Delta to Nubia. Build cities, manage trade, economy, and resources, make strategic decisions, control armies and engage in battles, foster religious development, and ensure the well-being of your citizens. Play through a complete campaign or unleash your creativity in Sandbox mode. Steam link

Marvell Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRVL), a leader in data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, today announced that it has pioneered a new custom HBM compute architecture that enables XPUs to achieve greater compute and memory density. The new technology is available to all of its custom silicon customers to improve the performance, efficiency and TCO of their custom XPUs. Marvell is collaborating with its cloud customers and leading HBM manufacturers, Micron, Samsung Electronics, and SK hynix to define and develop custom HBM solutions for next-generation XPUs.

HBM is a critical component integrated within the XPU using advanced 2.5D packaging technology and high-speed industry-standard interfaces. However, the scaling of XPUs is limited by the current standard interface-based architecture. The new Marvell custom HBM compute architecture introduces tailored interfaces to optimize performance, power, die size, and cost for specific XPU designs. This approach considers the compute silicon, HBM stacks, and packaging. By customizing the HBM memory subsystem, including the stack itself, Marvell is advancing customization in cloud data center infrastructure. Marvell is collaborating with major HBM makers to implement this new architecture and meet cloud data center operators' needs.

Stacy—David's beloved daughter—is lost amidst the city, crumbling under the weight of the Titans' showdown. Utilize the surrounding technology, to manipulate the Titans' movements and use their destructive force to your advantage. Navigate through this metroidvania-inspired world swarmed with collapsing buildings, toxic leaks, raging fires, and pure chaos.

Face off against both iconic and brand-new Titan species, including the awaited and teased Abaddon—created by the 7LEVELS team in conjunction with Legendary Entertainment. Reunite with the mighty Kong and confront other ferocious Titans together. Use the innovative Monarch ORCA Σ device being your only hope to influence the beasts and survive.

During the Semicon Taiwan 2024 summit event, TSMC VP of Advanced Packaging Technology, Jun He, spoke about the importance of merging AI chip memory and logic chips using 3D IC technology. He predicted that by 2030 the worldwide semiconductor industry would hit the $1 trillion milestone with HPC and AI leading 40 percent of the market share. In 2027, TSMC will introduce the 2.5D CoWoS technology that includes eight A16 process chipsets and 12 HBM4. AI processors that use this technology will not only be much cheaper to produce but will also provide engineers with a greater level of convenience. Engineers will have the option to write new codes into them instead. Manufacturers are cutting the SoC and HBM architectural conversion and mass production costs down to nearly one-fourth.

Nevertheless, the increasing production capacities of 3D IC technology remain the main challenge, as the size of chips and the complexity of manufacturing are decisive factors. However, the higher the size of the chips, the more chiplets are added, and thus the performance is improved, but this now makes the process even more complicated and is associated with more risks of misalignment, breakage, and extraction failure.

Welcome to the first week of August and for those of you living in the Nordics, welcome back to work after a month of holiday. This week's major release is based on a manga that became an anime hit on Netflix that involves bouncy things. This is followed by retro fields, a Scottish game that has neither kilts nor bagpipes, a rather different take on Warhammer 40K, a creature centric game, a steamy heist sequel, pirate cats and a kingdom of rats. No huge releases this week either, but still a pretty solid line-up of new games.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI Chronicles / This week's major release / Thursday 8 August
Spin a new tale of the Jura Tempest Federation together with all your favorite characters from the animated series! Players can enjoy thrilling action battles that combine flashy special moves and powerful combos. Through leveling up bonds with friends, Rimuru will learn Special Attacks, and even have allies join in to back up Rimuru's attack. Finish off formidable enemies that are coming to destroy Tempest with Secret Skills animated in retro 8-bit style! Steam link

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that it will provide turnkey semiconductor solutions using the 2-nanometer (nm) foundry process and the advanced 2.5D packaging technology Interposer-Cube S (I-Cube S) to Preferred Networks, a leading Japanese AI company.

By leveraging Samsung's leading-edge foundry and advanced packaging products, Preferred Networks aims to develop powerful AI accelerators that meet the ever-growing demand for computing power driven by generative AI.

Dr. Larry Zu, Founder and CEO of Sarcina Technology, the Application Specific Advanced Packaging (ASAP) Design Service and Production leader, predicted that recent Bump Pitch Transformer (BPT) designs will speed 2.5D IC advanced packaging adoption to meet the red-hot demand for AI innovation. In remarks made in the Keysight Theater at the 61st Design Automation Conference, he envisioned new BPT technology paving the way for new artificial intelligence computing opportunities.

"We believe that the Bump Pitch Transformer architecture will accelerate the growth rate of 2.5D semiconductor packages that are key to meeting the explosive demand for AI-driven computing capabilities," Dr. Zu said during his address in the Keysight Theater.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today unveiled its latest foundry innovations and outlined its vision for the AI era during Samsung Foundry Forum (SFF) U.S., an annual event held at the company's Device Solutions America headquarters in San Jose, California. Under the theme "Empowering the AI Revolution," Samsung announced its reinforced process technology roadmap, including two new cutting-edge nodes—SF2Z and SF4U—as well as its integrated Samsung AI Solutions platform harnessing the unique strengths of its Foundry, Memory and Advanced Package (AVP) businesses.

"At a time when numerous technologies are evolving around AI, the key to its implementation lies in high-performance, low-power semiconductors," said Dr. Siyoung Choi, President and Head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. "Alongside our proven GAA process optimized for AI chips, we plan to introduce integrated, co-packaged optics (CPO) technology for high-speed, low-power data processing, providing our customers with the one-stop AI solutions they need to thrive in this transformative era."

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is beckoning players back to Mount Qaf starting on March 20, when a free content update will bring new modes and other content to the critically acclaimed, Metroidvania-inspired action-adventure. More updates will follow in spring, summer, and beyond, introducing more modes, challenges, and paid story-driven DLC.

The March 20 update, titled Warrior's Path, will add speedrun and permadeath modes, as well as four new outfits for Sargon. Later this spring, it'll be followed by the Boss Attack update, which adds a boss rush challenge in addition to more outfits. The Divine Trials update will follow this summer, adding new combat, platform, and puzzle challenges, along with new Amulets, outfits, and more. The new storyline will debut later this year as paid DLC, and will introduce new environments and enemies for Sargon to confront.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is out now on Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation 4|5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC (via Epic Games Store & the Ubisoft Store), and Amazon Luna. An all-new adventure set in a milieu of Persian mythology and history, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a 2.5D action-adventure that casts players as Sargon, youngest member of the elite, superhero-like Immortals. Armed with acrobatic combat skills and an ever-growing arsenal of time powers, Sargon explores the mythical Mount Qaf in search of the kidnapped Prince Ghassan, and gradually unravels the dark secret at the heart of the mountain's time curse.

Inspired by Metroidvanias, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown invites players to explore a vast citadel complex and its outlying biomes, including forests, caves, snowy peaks, and much more. Developed by Ubisoft Montpellier - the studio that also produced Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends - the game builds on the ultra-responsive, highly varied platforming action that the Rayman games established - as well as their tradition of spike- and trap-filled pathways that sometimes leave little room for error. Demanding quick reflexes, it delivers performance to match, with all platforms targeting at least 60 frames per second.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launches tomorrow, January 18, for modern consoles and PC, and is available now with a Ubisoft+ subscription or for purchasers of the Digital Deluxe Edition. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is an adventure inspired by Persian mythology and the Metroidvania genre, in which players step into the boots of Sargon - the youngest member of Persia's most elite warriors, the Immortals - and brave the dangers of the mysterious Mount Qaf on a journey to save the kidnapped Prince Ghassan. Wielding acrobatic parkour abilities, mystical time powers, and fluid, combo-driven sword skills, Sargon discovers a world shattered by a time curse, where he'll battle sand zombies, screen-filling monsters, and even alternate versions of himself.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, the studio behind Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends - and some of those games' DNA persists in Sargon's adventure, particularly when it comes to platforming. Like Rayman and crew, Sargon has a certain rhythm and bounce to his movements that helps make exploration a blast, and a lot of his time is spent navigating deviously designed platforming sequences that dare players to thread their way through gauntlets of spikes and traps with increasingly less room for error. To find out more about this connection, and how Ubisoft Montpellier's experience on the Rayman games helped shape Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, we spoke with Game Director Mounir Radi.

According to the report from a journal called Fundamental Research, researchers from the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a 256-core multi-chiplet processor called Zhejiang Big Chip, with plans to scale up to 1,600 cores by utilizing an entire wafer. As transistor density gains slow, alternatives like multi-chiplet architectures become crucial for continued performance growth. The Zhejiang chip combines 16 chiplets, each holding 16 RISC-V cores, interconnected via network-on-chip. This design can theoretically expand to 100 chiplets and 1,600 cores on an advanced 2.5D packaging interposer. While multi-chiplet is common today, using the whole wafer for one system would match Cerebras' breakthrough approach. Built on 22 nm process technology, the researchers cite exascale supercomputing as an ideal application for massively parallel multi-chiplet architectures.

Careful software optimization is required to balance workloads across the system hierarchy. Integrating near-memory processing and 3D stacking could further optimize efficiency. The paper explores lithography and packaging limits, proposing hierarchical chiplet systems as a flexible path to future computing scale. While yield and cooling challenges need further work, the 256-core foundation demonstrates the potential of modular designs as an alternative to monolithic integration. China's focus mirrors multiple initiatives from American giants like AMD and Intel for data center CPUs. But national semiconductor ambitions add urgency to prove domestically designed solutions can rival foreign innovation. Although performance details are unclear, the rapid progress shows promise in mastering modular chip integration. Combined with improving domestic nodes like the 7 nm one from SMIC, China could easily create a viable Exascale system in-house.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a fast-paced action-adventure that challenges players with a wide variety of lethal monsters and traps, most of which take speed and precision to conquer—which means that smooth, responsive performance is especially important. To that end, Sargon's adventure through Mount Qaf will target at least 60 frames per second on all platforms when it launches on January 18 (or on January 15 for Ubisoft+ subscribers and owners of the Digital Deluxe Edition), whether you're playing on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, or Amazon Luna. First, let's take a look at the PC specs below.

The Story of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Sargon, trained as a weapon to serve Persia, is on a mission to save its heir to the throne, Prince Ghassan. This perilous journey is sending him to Mount Qaf, where time no longer flows swift and sure in one direction. Sargon along with the other Immortals head to Mount Qaf to save the Prince, but it doesn't take long before he finds himself splitting paths, with some of the Immortals on a conflicting trajectory. Maybe that's because time seems to be mysteriously intertwined here and sometimes the past can happen after the present. No matter the cost, Sargon continues to strive when all odds are against him, gaining strength along the way.

Rambus Inc., a premier chip and silicon IP provider making data faster and safer, today announced that the Rambus HBM3 Memory Controller IP now delivers up to 9.6 Gigabits per second (Gbps) performance supporting the continued evolution of the HBM3 standard. With a 50% increase over the HBM3 Gen 1 data rate of 6.4 Gbps, the Rambus HBM3 Memory Controller can enable a total memory throughput of over 1.2 Terabytes per second (TB/s) for training of recommender systems, generative AI and other demanding data center workloads.

"HBM3 is the memory of choice for AI/ML training, with large language models requiring the constant advancement of high-performance memory technologies," said Neeraj Paliwal, general manager of Silicon IP at Rambus. "Thanks to Rambus innovation and engineering excellence, we're delivering the industry's leading-edge performance of 9.6 Gbps in our HBM3 Memory Controller IP."

Zero ASIC, a semiconductor startup, came out of stealth today to announce early access to its one-of-a-kind ChipMaker platform, demonstrating a number of world firsts:

• 3D chiplet composability enabling billions of new silicon products
• Fully automated no-code chiplet-based chip design
• Zero install interactive RTL-based chip emulation
• Roadmap to 100X reduction in chip development costs

"Custom Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) offer 10-100X cost and energy advantage over commercial off the shelf (COTS) devices, but the enormous development cost makes ASICs non-viable for most applications," said Andreas Olofsson, CEO and founder of Zero ASIC. "To build the next wave of world changing silicon devices, we need to reduce the barrier to ASICs by orders of magnitude. Our mission at Zero ASIC is to make ordering an ASIC as easy as ordering catalog parts from an electronics distributor."

Hotel Barcelona is the long-awaited collaboration between game design legends Swery65 and Suda51, and our Xbox Digital Broadcast brought us a never-before-seen gameplay trailer from the self-styled "2.5D slasher film parodic action" game. Drawing influences from across horror's history, you'll be pitted against everything from alien entities to AI-enhanced sharks, all while stuck in an endless time loop filled with serial killers - and only your deceased past selves to help you.

Both Swery and Suda appeared in the show to discuss the game. Swery discussed the game's unusual beginnings - with Suda asking him to announce a collaboration on the fly, with no prior discussion - and his inspirations from Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'. Suda explained that he and Swery worked on the initial concept together - "Then, all of a sudden, Swery completed tons of work on the development, and Hotel Barcelona materialized. Most of the time, when someone does lip service like that, the project never materializes… But Swery made this project a reality in order to deliver something to the fans."

We know a lot of you are pretty excited to play Star Ocean: The Second Story R. After all, the original game is a true classic of the RPG genre and this new remake improves it even further! It adds a beautiful new 2.5D art style, a revamped combat system, a rearranged soundtrack, new illustrations and a galaxy's-worth of quality of life improvements. To cut a long story short, this crown jewel of the Star Ocean series now sparkles even brighter than before! The game releases on November 2, 2023 for Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4 and PC via Steam… but what if you want to play it earlier? Good news then because a free demo is available right now! Read on and we'll tell you all about it:

What's in the STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R demo?
The free demo lets you experience this interstellar adventure for three hours or until you make your way to the exit of Krosse Cave - whichever comes first. In that time, you'll get to see how the story gets underway as Pangalactic Federation officer Claude C. Kenny is transported to a mysterious location by an equally mysterious mechanism. Around that time, a local named Rena, is attacked by a monster in the Sacred Forest. Claude jumps into action and saves her, but his advanced technology means Rena mistakes him for a hero of myths from her homeland. She hopes he can save her nation, while he wants to find a way back home. Together, they set off for the village of Arlia… and an epic adventure begins.

Micron Technology, Inc. today announced it has begun sampling the industry's first 8-high 24 GB HBM3 Gen2 memory with bandwidth greater than 1.2 TB/s and pin speed over 9.2 Gb/s, which is up to a 50% improvement over currently shipping HBM3 solutions. With a 2.5 times performance per watt improvement over previous generations, Micron's HBM3 Gen2 offering sets new records for the critical artificial intelligence (AI) data center metrics of performance, capacity and power efficiency. These Micron improvements reduce training times of large language models like GPT-4 and beyond, deliver efficient infrastructure use for AI inference and provide superior total cost of ownership (TCO).

The foundation of Micron's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) solution is Micron's industry-leading 1β (1-beta) DRAM process node, which allows a 24Gb DRAM die to be assembled into an 8-high cube within an industry-standard package dimension. Moreover, Micron's 12-high stack with 36 GB capacity will begin sampling in the first quarter of calendar 2024. Micron provides 50% more capacity for a given stack height compared to existing competitive solutions. Micron's HBM3 Gen2 performance-to-power ratio and pin speed improvements are critical for managing the extreme power demands of today's AI data centers. The improved power efficiency is possible because of Micron advancements such as doubling of the through-silicon vias (TSVs) over competitive HBM3 offerings, thermal impedance reduction through a five-time increase in metal density, and an energy-efficient data path design.

Glorious battles, shining armor, a sharp sword, and a trusty shield: That's the stuff that heroes are made of! Become a hero yourself when Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy releases on August 31st, 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and Nintendo Switch! For now, meet Pontius the Knight, Protector of the Realm and also the biggest pie lover the land has ever seen! A real frontline hero who is always going head first into battle to protect his friends. Watch the new trailer for magical co-op adventure Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy below.

Your sword and shield will aid you on your journey - if you know how to use them! As a skilled knight and professional pie eater, Pontius can use his sword to fight off enemies, get rid of obstacles, and even use it as a platform to help him reach higher areas. The shield, not only made to protect, will come in handy to reflect light, skate across water, and even use as a glider! Charge, smash, fight, and puzzle-solve your way through the dangers that await with your fellow adventurers. And should you need further help, the Prismatic Talisman will be your best friend - literally. Clones can be useful!

According to news out of Korea, NVIDIA is considering Samsung as a partner not only for HBM3 memory, but also as a potential partner when it comes to 2.5D chip packaging. The latter is due to TSMC having limited capacity when it comes to handling all of its customers advanced chip packaging needs, although Samsung is apparently not the only potential partner NVIDIA is looking at. Taiwan based SPIL and US based Amkor Technology are two alternative candidates for the 2.5D chip packaging according to the Elec.

As far as HBM3 memory goes, NVIDIA doesn't have as many potential options, with SK Hynix being its current partner, who NVIDIA will continue to work with when it comes to HBM memory for its high-end AI accelerators and GPUs. It's likely that Samsung is trying to win NVIDIA back as a foundry customer, by proving that it's capable of handling the chip packaging for NVIDIA. Samsung will likely use its I-Cube 2.5D packaging technology and the Elec suggests that Samsung would still be using TSMC made GPU wafers which will be mated with Samsung HMB3 memory. Samsung has as yet not started its mass production of HMB3 memory, but have sampled customers with evaluation samples that are said to have received very positive feedback. For now, nothing has been agreed and TSMC is, as we know, looking to expand its 2.5D packaging business by over 40 percent, but the question is how quickly TSMC can move before its customers consider other competitors.