At Gamescom 2023 in Cologne we had a booth for fans to play Path of Exile 2 and try out the new Druid class - a spellcaster who channels the fury of nature on the battlefield to become a walking natural disaster. Check out our Gamescom Druid gameplay walkthrough below! Thanks to everyone who has come to play Path of Exile 2 at Gamescom so far! It was great meeting you in person, and the fan meetup beforehand was fantastic. We'll be at PAX West next week. See you there! For more information about Path of Exile 2 and to see the other trailers, visit pathofexile2.com.

Path of Exile 2 is a next generation Action RPG created by Grinding Gear Games. Set years after the original Path of Exile, you will return to the dark world of Wraeclast and seek to end the corruption that is spreading. Path of Exile 2 is a free-to-play online multiplayer game with co-op for up to six players.

July 27th, 2023: Two weeks ago, Jagged Alliance 3 burst onto the gaming scene, captivating the hearts of thousands of players eager to embark on the mission to free Grand Chien. Haemimont Games and THQ Nordic are beaming with pride and relief as it seems we have struck the perfect chord. An impressive 86% of Steam-Reviews as of July 27th reflect the positive reception, and the game has garnered critical acclaim with an outstanding 81 on Metacritic.

We've been absolutely delighted to witness hundreds of content creators taking on the challenge of mastering the game and are overwhelmed by the positive feedback pouring in from players across various channels. We want to take a moment to express our sincere gratitude: Thank you to everyone who has already delved into the world of Jagged Alliance 3! For those who haven't yet, we're excited to announce the availability of a free playable demo. This demo will allow players to explore Ernie Island, the starting region of the game.

Calling all heroes, Saturday Morning Cartoons are back! Deep in the land of Eldryth, a kingdom of magic and power, there's more that lies in wait than simple quests for our brave heroes. Beyond the castle ruins in the old forest, a vampire of blackest heart calls upon his sorceress, Hexstar, to raise the dead armies and ready them for war. Who will stand and face these perils? Who will claim victory over their foes… through the power of teamwork?

As you might have seen in today's IGN x ID@Xbox Digital Showcase, we debuted a brand-new villain (Hexstar) and announced the inevitable release date of our upcoming title for September 12, 2023, for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Inspired by beloved Saturday morning cartoons, MythForce unites swords and sorcery with gripping first-person combat in a new roguelike adventure.

Dears Twinsunians, we [2.21] are thrilled to announce the opening of our pre-alpha of Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Remastered! The aim of this playtest is to gather your valuable insights and feedback on the game, helping us to fine-tune it and create a gaming experience that truly resonates with our player community. This is your chance to contribute directly to the game's development process and to help shape its future.

To participate, click on "Request access" on the Steam page and you will be granted access automatically. Once in, you'll be able to explore our game in its early stages, discover new features, and contribute to its improvement.

We're back! What's summer without new game demos to entertain you during those hot days and nights? Starting July 11 and running until July 17, you'll be able to experience over 40 game demos on your Xbox console.

A few things to keep in mind—these demos will only be up on the Xbox Dashboard for a week. Some might be re-published to the Demo channel later, but many will simply disappear at the end of the week, so check them out while you can! The developers would love to hear what you think. Hit them up on social media or through their websites. If you like the game - tell them! If you have constructive criticism, they would love to hear that too.

Inspired by beloved Saturday morning cartoons, MythForce unites swords & sorcery with gripping 1st-person combat in a new roguelike adventure. Brave the dungeon alone or join forces with friends to take on an ever-changing Castle of Evil! MythForce is stoked to be a part of Steam Next Fest! 🌟Check out the demo and wishlist here 👉 bit.ly/mythsteam

Meet the Heroes
These courageous champions are all that stand between Eldryth and the tyranny of the vampire lord, Deadalus. Will our heroes prevail against the many malevolent minions, tricks, and traps in his ever-changing dungeon? Tune into the adventure to find out! Scratch that nostalgic itch with wholesome fun that's easy to pick up and play (but tough to master). In true roguelike fashion, each time you're defeated, you'll have to start over at the beginning—but every playthrough makes you a little stronger. Level up as you explore the dungeon, uncovering magical artifacts and upgrades to make you say "I HAVE THE POWER!"

A FREE DEMO of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is playable now during Steam Next Fest! We're absolutely excited for you to experience a part of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew firsthand before its official release on August 17, 2023. It'd help us a lot if you could share your first impressions of the demo on all community and social media channels that you are active on with a link to the Steam page and the hashtag #playshadowgambit. Also, tell your friends and family about it and get them to play the demo, talk about Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew and mention it everywhere you can.

The demo is now playable for everyone during Steam Next Fest from June 19 to 26. Don't forget to add the game to your wishlist, too! Thank you for your support! It means a ton to us. Now, get ready to assemble your cursed pirate crew. Enjoy your first trip to the Lost Caribbean! 🏴‍☠️

The hottest heroes of 1991 return for a radical, radioactive romp for a new era, featuring awesome action, crushing combos and more toxic waste than you'll know what to do with! Developer and publisher Retroware has teamed up with Troma Entertainment to bring the Toxic Crusaders back, for an all-new, all-action beat 'em up for one to four players! Grab your mop, tutu and attitude, and get ready to clean up the mean streets of Tromaville, one radioactive goon at a time! The demo version is now available for download on Steam!

From Generic Default to…COLORS EVERYWHERE!
When we began development, we didn't even think about giving each character a unique color for their attacks. At the start, every character just had a generic, dull-looking impact effect that was shared with enemy sprites! But then we realized how much cooler everyone would look if we splashed some color into their punches, kicks, and every other attack! Thus…

Final Fantasy XVI fans, great news: while Final Fantasy XVI launches in just under two weeks, you'll be able to commence your journey to Valisthea tomorrow as the game's demo launches today (June 12). The demo will give PlayStation 5 players a taste of the game's vibrant world and fast-paced action combat with two lengthy sections showcasing what you can expect from FFXVI. The first is the game's opening prologue, approximately a two and half hour slice of gameplay giving players insight into Clive Rosfield's past and the events that set him on his present day journey. Save data from this portion can be carried over to the main game when it launches next week.

Completing the prologue then unlocks a special battle demo, approximately a two-hour, action-heavy segment. This features an infiltration of a fort at night, with Clive supported on his mission by his faithful wolf Torgal and Cidolfus Telamon. You'll encounter various enemies and epic bosses. While you won't be able to save your progress in this segment of the demo, it will let you test out the fuller range of combat options by way of numerous unlocked abilities and accessories. This can be replayed as many times as you'd like, giving players a head start on experiencing Clive's full-fledged action battles. Need a primer? Get an idea of what to expect here.

Try our spell-slinging survival adventure game—you can play the Wizard with a Gun DEMO right now! We're excited to share our game with all of you. In this new survival-adventure title, you'll play as a gun-toting wizard trying to prevent the end of the world. With the clock ticking down, you'll have just a few minutes to fight enemies, gather resources for upgrading, and, most importantly, find Ancient Gears for the Chronomancer's Wheel before chaos breaks loose.

You've found an Ancient Gear! But will you risk more time extracting loot from the dangerous overworld or return to the safety of the Tower? With the resources you've collected, you can level up your spells, design your space, and craft items to assist your next excursion. You can even customize your Wizard's clothes, eyes, and accessories! This Demo only includes a fraction of the cosmetics available in the upcoming full release.

Considering all the buzz around WiFi 7, there weren't many live demos at Computex, but Realtek had a demo running in its suite at the show. Realtek will offer both client and router/AP solutions, with their client product which goes under the RTL8922AE model name, coming in M.2 2230 and 1620 formats, where the latter is a solder down module. To simulate a real world scenario, Realtek was running a second radio to cause some additional interference, but the RTL8922AE test setup was still capable of delivering between 1,750 and 1,950 Mbps, which is almost twice as fast as WiFi 6, using a similar 2x2 antenna setup. This was obviously over a fairly short distance, so the question is how well WiFi 7 will work over longer distances.

The RTL8922AE has a claimed maximum sync speed of 2800 Mbps when connected to the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands simultaneously and combining the bandwidth of both bands. However, it is limited to a 160 MHz channel bandwidth, whereas WiFi 7 can go up to a 320 MHz wide channel, but it's unclear if competing first gen clients will support this. The RTL8922AE also incorporates support for Bluetooth 5.4 and is as far as we're aware one of the first WiFi chips to support the upcoming standard that mostly focuses on improving BLE Audio and Auracast support. The RTL8922AE should launch sometime in the fourth quarter this year to Realtek's customers, so it might not appear on the market until early 2024.

During the Computex 2023 show, ASUS had some interesting designs to showcase. Specifically, ASUS has made a GeForce RTX 4070 GPU concept without an external power connector. With NVIDIA's reference 16-pin power connector melting due to an insufficient connection, ASUS has decided to experiment by removing the connector from its GPU and placing the power source as an extra bus connector on the motherboard. Called GeForce RTX 4070 Megalodon, ASUS has made a custom power connector that goes hand-in-hand with the ASUS TUF Gaming Z790 BTF motherboard that supports this connector, and the PSU cables go on the backside of the board.

Similarly to NVIDIA's 16-pin 12VHPWR connector, this custom design is also rated for up to 600 Watts of power delivery. This results in a design that facilities the user error of not correctly pushing the 16-pin connector and causing melting. For now, the connector is referred to as GC_HPWR, but there will be an official name at launch as the company plans mass production of this concept. You can see the design of the RTX 4070 Megalodon alongside the accompanying ASUS TUF Gaming Z790 BTF motherboard.

Two months ago French developer - 2:21 - announced plans for complete remasters of the quirky mid-to-late Nineties-era Little Big Adventure or Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure/Odyssey (titles were confusingly region dependent back then) games series. The team has paused work on a third entry/reboot, and development of spruced-up versions of the original games has since become the priority - both LBA Remasters are being rebuilt on the Unreal Engine 5 platform, and key members from the old Adeline Software outfit are involved in the remake process.

Ben Limare, the CEO at 2:21, has provided a small update this week - he mentions that a new teaser trailer was debuted at AG French Direct, and now the pre-alpha gameplay footage has been uploaded to YouTube and the company's social media accounts. The introduction states: "Discover the first video and images of the upcoming demo for Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Remastered! Built from the ground up, enjoy new breathtaking visuals, enhanced music and improved, deeper gameplay as Twinsen's Little Big Adventure - Remastered reignites the original TLBA game using the latest next-generation technology." The team reconfirms that a demo version of Twinsen's Little Big Adventure 1 Remastered will be playable in June.

Bloober Team has delivered on its promised and has released a PC demo for Layers of Fear, Unreal Engine 5-powered horror game. Layers of Fear is one of the first Unreal Engine 5 games. This is a limited time demo and will be available until May 22.

Acting as a showcase for the recently launched Unreal Engine 5, Layers of Fear will feature Temporal Super Resolution, ray tracing effects, UE5's Lumen and Nanite, as well as support for HDR, volumetric lighting and Niagara. Recently, Bloober Team released first official PC system requirements, which are pretty decent, showing promise that Unreal Engine 5 will finally bring some optimized games.

At VLSI Symposium 2023, scheduled to take place between June 11-16, Intel is set to demonstrate its PowerVia technology working efficiently on an E-Core chip built using the Intel 4 node. Conventional chips have power and signal interconnects distributed across multiple metal layers. PowerVia, on the other hand, dedicates specific layers for power delivery, effectively separating them from the signal routing layers. This approach allows for vertical power delivery through a set of power-specific Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) or PowerVias, which are essentially vertical connections between the top and bottom surfaces of the chip. By delivering power directly from the backside of the chip, PowerVia reduces power supply noise and resistive losses, optimizing power distribution and improving overall energy efficiency. PowerVia is set to make a debut in 2024 with Intel 20A node.

For VLSI Symposium 2023 talk, the company has prepared a paper that highlights a design made using Intel 4 technology and implements E-Cores only in a test chip. The document states: "PowerVia Technology is a novel innovation to extend Process Scaling by having Power Delivery on the backside. This paper presents the pre and post silicon findings from implementing an Intel E-Core in PowerVia Technology. PowerVia enabled standard cell utilization of greater than 90 percent in large areas of the core while showing greater than 5 percent frequency benefit in silicon due reduced IR drop. Successful Post silicon debug is demonstrated with slightly higher but acceptable throughput times. The thermal characteristics of the PowerVia testchip is inline with higher power densities expected from logic scaling."

Here comes Capcom's newest challenger! Street Fighter 6 launches worldwide on June 2nd, 2023 and represents the next evolution of the series. Powered by Capcom's proprietary RE ENGINE, the Street Fighter 6 experience spans across three distinct game modes featuring World Tour, Fighting Ground and Battle Hub. Street Fighter 6 has a diverse roster of 18 fighters - play legendary masters and new fan favorites like Ryu, Chun-Li, Luke, Jamie, Kimberly and more in this latest edition with each character featuring striking new redesigns and exhilarating cinematic specials.

Your Moment. Your Demo
The free demo for Street Fighter 6 is available now! Learn basic battle mechanics from the Tutorial, practice Luke and Ryu's moves in the Character Guide, and dip a toe into the first few moments of World Tour where you can create your customized avatar. The demo will give a small peek at the gargantuan experience that is the full game, but your custom avatar appearance can be transferred to the full game of the same platform once it releases.

At the turn of the 1980s, most PC adventure games were played using only the keyboard. In those days, adventure games didn't use action menus like more modern games, but simply presented the player with a command line where they could freely input text to decide the actions that characters would take and proceed through the story. Free text input systems like these allowed players to feel a great deal of freedom. However, they did come with one common source of frustration: players knowing what action they wanted to perform but being unable to do so because they could not find the right wording. This problem was caused by the limitations of PC performance and NLP technology of the time.

40 years have passed since then, and PC performance has drastically improved, as have the capabilities of NLP technology. Using "The Portopia Serial Murder Case" as a test case, we'd like to show you the capabilities of modern NLP and the impact it can have on adventure games, as well as deepen your understanding of NLP technologies.

LIVE A LIVE, originally only released for the Super Famicom in Japan, is being revived on Steam and PlayStation consoles! Experience this legendary RPG, brought to life in the same HD-2D visual style as OCTOPATH TRAVELER. Meet seven heroes, each with their own unique abilities and lives to live across different time periods. Experience their stories in any order you choose, uncovering shocking developments along the way

Featuring remastered music from original composer Yoko Shimomura and produced by Takashi Tokita (the director of the original game), this remake retains everything that players loved about the original while also being accessible to newcomers.

ASUS today announced the opening of its first AI-enabled smart factory. The facility is powered by a variety of AIoT technologies, including a 3D Digital Twin system, an augmented reality (AR) platform, autonomous mobile robots (AMR) for in-factory logistics, as well as an AI-driven defect inspection system. All of this will help achieve ASUS Industry 4.0 goals, increasing manufacturing efficiency and improving ESG outcomes.

Albert Chang, ASUS Corporate Vice President and Co-Head of the AIoT Business Group, explained the importance of the new factory:
"In 2018, our Chairman Jonney Shih started ASUS on a new journey to become a company that transforms and evolves, trusts in radical truth and transparency, embraces idea meritocracy, and fosters collective wisdom. The opening of our first AI-enabled smart factory is a significant milestone in our company transformation and showcases our solid integrated capabilities, from software to hardware, that we offer to our clients and suppliers."

The recent 80 Gbps USB4 Version 2.0 standard looks set to get company from Thunderbolt at 80 Gbps in the not too distant future, as Intel has demoed its next generation Thunderbolt hardware to the media during its Technology Tour 2022 in Israel. It doesn't appear that Intel showed too much of the upcoming technology, but the company did apparently show it running at 80 Gbps, or if you want to be picky, two times 40 Gbps in dual link mode, much in the same way USB4 Version 2.0 will operate.

According to Tom's Hardware, Intel hasn't set the marketing name in stone quite yet, so it's not clear what Intel will be calling its next generation of Thunderbolt. What is clear is that Intel will continue to deliver on its own Thunderbolt products, despite USB4 having almost feature parity with Thunderbolt, apart from some Intel platform specific features. What is also unknown, is a potential availability date for Intel's next generation of Thunderbolt, but an educated guess will be before USB4 Version 2.0 launches.

When Intel announced the company's first hybrid design, codenamed Alder Lake, we expected to see more of such design philosophies in future products. During Intel's 2022 investor meeting day, the company provided insights into future developments, and a successor to Alder Lake is no different. Codenamed "Raptor Lake," it features a novel Raptor Cove P-core design that is supposed to bring significant IPC uplift from the previous generation of processors. Using Intel 7 processor node, Raptor Lake brings a similar ecosystem of features to Alder Lake, however, with improved performance across the board.

Perhaps one of the most exciting things to note about Raptor Lake is the advancement in core count, specifically the increase in E-cores. Instead of eight P-cores and eight E-cores like Alder Lake, the Raptor Lake design will retain eight P-cores and double the E-core count to 16. It was a weird decision on Intel's end; however, it surely isn't anything terrible. The total number of cores now jumps to 24, and the total number of threads reaches 32. Additionally, Raptor Lake will bring some additional overclocking improvement features and retain socket compatibility with Alder Lake motherboards. That means that, at worst, you would need to perform a BIOS update to get your previous system ready for new hardware. We assume that Intel has been working with software vendors and its engineering team to optimize core utilization for this next-generation processor, even though they have more E-cores present. Below, we can see Intel's demonstration of Raptor Lake running Blender and Adobe Premiere and the CPU core utilization.

Tachyum Inc. today announced that it has successfully executed the Linux boot process on the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) prototype of its Prodigy Universal Processor, in 2 months after taking delivery of the IO motherboard from manufacturing. This achievement proves the stability of the Prodigy emulation system and allows the company to move forward with additional testing before advancing to tape out.

Tachyum engineers were able to perform the Linux boot, execute a short user-mode program and shutdown the system on the fully functional FPGA emulation system. Not only does this successful test prove that the basic processor is stable, but interrupts, exceptions, timing, and system-mode transitions are, as well. This is a key milestone, which dramatically reduces risk, as booting and running large and complex pieces of software like Linux reliably on the Tachyum FPGA processor prototype shows that verification and hardware stability are past the most difficult turning point, and it is now obvious that verification and testing should successfully complete in the coming months. Designers are now shifting their attention to debug and verification processes, running hundreds of trillions of test cycles over the next few months, and running large scale user mode applications with compatibility testing to get the processor to production quality.

We are hosting the NVIDIA "Attic" RTX + DLSS interactive tech-demo in our Downloads section. Developed on Unreal Engine 4, the demo puts you in the bunny-slippers of a little girl playing around in her attic. This is no normal attic, it's her kingdom, complete with stuff to build a pillow fort, an old CRT TV playing retro NVIDIA commercials, a full-length mirror, really cool old stuff, and decorations. You can explore the place in a first-person perspective.

The interactive demo is brought to life with on-the-fly controls for RTX real-time raytracing and its various features, DLSS performance enhancement, a frame-rate counter, and controls for time-of-day, which alters lighting in the room. The demo shows off raytraced reflections, translucency, global-illumination, direct-illumination, and DLSS. You also get cool gadgets such as the "light cannon" or a reflective orb, that let you play around with dynamic lighting some more. To use this demo, you'll need a machine with an RTX 20-series "Turing" or RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics card, and Windows 10. The demo also works on Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs. Grab it from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA Unreal Engine 4 RTX & DLSS Demo

During the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Samsung Foundry has presented a new step towards smaller and more efficient nodes. The new chip that was presented is a 256 Gb memory chip, based on SRAM technology. However, all of that doesn't sound interesting, until we mention the technology that is behind it. Samsung has for the first time manufactured a chip using the company's gate-all-around field-effect transistor (GAAFET) technology on the 3 nm semiconductor node. Formally, there are two types of GAAFET technology: the regular GAAFET that uses nanowires as fins of the transistor, and MBCFET (multi-bridge channel FET) that uses thicker fins that come in a form of a nanosheet.

Samsung has demonstrated the first SRAM chip that uses MBCFET technology today. The chip in question is a 256 Gb chip with an area of 56 mm². The achievement Samsung is proud of is that the chip uses 230 mV less power for writes, compared to the standard approach, as the MBCFET transistors allow the company to have many different power-saving techniques. The new 3 nm MBCFET process is expected to get into high-volume production sometime in 2022, however, we are yet to see demos of logic chips besides SRAM like we see today. Nonetheless, even the demonstration of SRAM is big progress, and we are eager to see what the company manages to build with the new technology.

AMD is launching their next-generation RX 6800 series of graphics cards on November 18th, these will be the first cards from AMD featuring the new RDNA 2 architecture. To coincide with the launch of RDNA 2 in consumer graphics cards AMD is launching a new tech demo titled "Hangar 21", the new demonstration will highlight the power of RDNA 2 with real-time raytracing effects enabled by AMD FidelityFX and Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate. The "Hangar 21" tech demo will be launching on November 19th and you can view a short trailer of the tech demo down below.

AMDComing November 19, the "Hangar 21" Technology Demo Video will let you see the breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture in action, the foundation of the AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards that power the next generation of gaming with mind-blowing visuals featuring realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections enabled by AMD FidelityFX and Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate.