Brazilian tech enthusiast Paulo Gomes, in association with Jefferson Silva, and Ygor Mota, successfully modded an EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 "Turing" graphics card to 16 GB. This was done by replacing each of its 8 Gbit GDDR6 memory chips with ones that have double the density, at 16 Gbit. Over the GPU's 256-bit wide memory bus, eight of these chips add up to 16 GB. The memory speed was unchanged at 14 Gbps reference, as were the GPU clocks.

The process of modding involves de-soldering each of the eight 8 Gbit chips, clearing out the memory pads of any shorted pins, using a GDDR6 stencil to place replacement solder balls, and then soldering the new 16 Gbit chips onto the pad under heat. Besides replacing the memory chips, a series of SMD jumpers need to be adjusted near the BIOS ROM chip, which lets the GPU correctly recognize the 16 GB memory size. The TU104 silicon by default supports higher density memory, as NVIDIA uses this chip on some of its professional graphics cards with 16 GB memory, such as the Quadro RTX 5000.

Murmurings of a delayed Nintendo "Switch 2" release schedule appeared online earlier this week—Brazilian games journalist, Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe, made claims during an "OX do Controle" videocast—based on insider information. Additionally, he broke the bad news on social media: "Nobody wants to hear this, but this one is pretty intense. After consulting five sources from three different continents, all echoing basically the same thing, we can reveal (that) the launch of the Switch's successor should only happen in 2025." Several global news outlets have performed their own investigations, following up on OX do Controle's declaration.

Eurogamer reached out to its network of "trusty" insiders—their Friday evening update stated that: "(we) can now corroborate the earlier reports/whispers that the Switch 2, once destined for release later in 2024, is now set for Q1 2025...The console's launch moving into early next year—but still within the coming financial year—is designed to ensure Switch 2's launch line-up features as many titles as possible, Eurogamer understands." Video Games Chronicle's Andy Robinson has similarly checked in with his pool of industry spies: "VGC has heard from multiple sources who said Nintendo has told publishers its next console will now launch in Q1 2025. According to the sources, third-party game companies were recently briefed on an internal delay in Nintendo's next-gen launch timing, from late 2024 to early the following year. One publishing source suggested the delay was so that Nintendo could prepare stronger first-party software for the console. It's possible the next-gen Nintendo console will now follow a similar timeline to the Switch, which was released in March but announced the previous year."

Microsoft has normally kept its Xbox console sales figures out of public view—many industry experts reckon that this is due to the One and Series generations consistently lagging behind Sony's equivalent PlayStation offerings—but attendees of the BIG Festival in Brazil last week were surprised by "player count" data appearing during an official presentation. An interesting slide was put on display as part of an ID@Xbox Developer Accelerator Program segment—it revealed that the Series X|S consoles have an accumulated userbase of around 21 million, since launching back in November of 2020. Microsoft also emphasized that 48% of its Series S customers are new to the ecosystem.

The older generation also got a mention—with some subtraction (from their grand total of One + Series) the technology giant has divulged that its entire Xbox One lineup (consisting of the original model and S plus X variants) has sold roughly 58 million units since the late 2013. Microsoft has been fairly transparent about its Xbox One generation losing out to Sony's PlayStation 4—the latter has done business in the region of 117.2 million units, and the latest data (again) reaffirms that the PS4 outsold Xbox One by a 2:1 margin. Sales figures for Series X|S seem to be quite healthy—so far—when compared to the predecessor, but PlayStation 5 is still ahead (38.4 million units sold as of March 2023) and Sony is confident that it will sell close to 20 million consoles this fiscal year. Shortages are said to be a thing of the past—production and distribution issues have been resolved and the PS5 can be pumped out at an admirable rate.