Following Epic Games's recent victory over Apple, which effectively forced the iPhone maker to allow third-party apps on iOS in the EU, the game developer and distributor has won a similar case against Google, except in the US, this time. The ruling places several restrictions on what Google can and can't do when it comes to the Android operating system and how it positions its own apps and services on Android phones, including prohibiting Google from paying device manufacturers to include its Play software on their devices and forcing developers to use Google's payment platform.

The ruling (PDF) and its consequent restrictions will start on November 1, 2024, will last three years, and Google isn't particularly happy about the mandated changes, having already confirmed that it will appeal the decision, citing security concerns and arguing that the order would negatively affect developers: "these changes would put consumers' privacy and security at risk, make it harder for developers to promote their apps, and reduce competition on devices."

At the opening event of the Unreal Fest in Seattle, Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, addressed the recent commercial failures of ambitious, citing a "generational change" in the gaming landscape as part of the reason for their failures. Epic Games seemingly wants to address this shift in gamer priorities by relying more on in-game social features, although there was also a strong emphasis on getting indie game developers to sign on to use the Unreal Engine and the Epic Games Store.

In the same presentation, Epic Games announced a new collaboration between the Epic Games Store and Unreal Engine that should make it easier and more affordable for small development teams to market and publish their games to Epic Games and other storefronts. The new launch program, called Launch Everywhere with Epic, reduces Epic's revenue cut for any games developed with Unreal Engine and published on the Epic Games Store before or at the same time as any other platforms. Epic also announced new "indie spaces" for indie developers to share knowledge and make industry connections.

MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation, a subsidiary of MiTAC Holdings Corporation (hereinafter referred to as MiTAC; stock symbol: 3706), has announced that the server brand TYAN will be integrated with the MiTAC brand. Starting from October 1, 2024, all products will be branded under MiTAC, with the release of a new logo and updated official website. MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation website: http://www.mitaccomputing.com/

MiTAC entered the server ODM industry in 1999 as one of Taiwan's pioneers in the server market. In 2007, it expanded its presence by acquiring Tyan Computer, building a reputation for designing high-performance motherboards and barebone systems targeting the high-end server market. Following the spinoff of MiTAC's cloud computing business in 2014, MiTAC Computing Technology was established as a subsidiary of Mitac Holdings under the MiTAC-Synnex Group.

Intel's 5th generation Xeon Scalable processors codenamed Emerald Rapids, have been shipping since late 2023 and are installed at numerous servers today. However, Emerald Rapids appears to possess more performance and efficiency tricks than it initially revealed at launch. According to the report from Phoronix, reporting on a Linux kernel patch sent to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), there is a chance for up to 38% performance increase while using up to 18% less power on all Intel 5th generation Xeon machines. Thanks to Canonical (maker of Ubuntu Linux) engineer Pedro Henrique Kopper, who explained the patch on the LKML, we found out that changing a single line of code yielded this massive increase.

Ubuntu Linux, as well as many other distributions, ship with Energy Performance Preference (EPP) for Emerald Rapids with a "balance_performance" value of 128. However, changing the value to 32 now yields a massive performance improvement alongside using less power. The EPP "balance_performance" is the default out-of-the-box setting for many Linux distributions. Users manually setting the "performance" mode in the EPP are not expecting any increase from this patch, as the "balance_performance" mode had issues balancing power and efficiency. Introducing this new setting yields more performance for machines that run at default settings, and this is especially important for data centers where the need for lower power and increased performance is constantly surging. Especially at hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Meta, which may run tens of thousands of these CPUs at default settings to keep them stable and well-cooled, who can now enjoy a massive performance increase with less power consumed.Below, you can see the patch quote as well as more performance/power measurements.

Audio-Technica U.S. Incorporated, recently announced the formation of a new logistical operations company, Technica Logistics Inc. The announcement was made by Mr. Manabu Aoki, Audio-Technica Director and CEO/President of Audio-Technica U.S. Inc., and underscores A-T's long-term strategic business plan for ongoing growth and expansion in the coming years. "This new company is formed to supply enhanced service to our customers and consumers," stated Aoki. "This change will take advantage of Audio-Technica's past experience and success in warehouse and distribution operations, as well as its unprecedented dedication to customer support and service."

Technica Logistics Inc. will begin operation on April 1, 2024, and Mr. Michael Fuller, who has been with Audio-Technica for over 15 years, has been named as the Managing Director. The company plans to have approximately 40 employees throughout the U.S. and will have its headquarters at the Audio-Technica campus in Stow, Ohio, and the mailing address at 4701 Hudson Drive, Stow, OH.

Denuvo by Irdeto, the leading provider of security solutions for the gaming industry, is excited to announce the launch of its groundbreaking product, TraceMark for Gaming, during the prestigious Game Developers Conference (GDC). This pioneering watermarking solution, part of the Irdeto anti-piracy suite and the first of its kind to be tailored specifically for the gaming industry, leverages the core invisible watermark technology trusted by Hollywood studios, sports leagues, and pay-TV operators.

TraceMark for Gaming uniquely addresses the challenge of content leakage, especially during the sensitive pre-release phase of game development. It introduces a deterrent effect by enabling the precise tracing of leaked content back to its source. This capability makes potential leakers think twice, knowing that any unauthorized distribution can be directly linked to them. As a platform-agnostic tool, TraceMark effortlessly integrates into various stages of the game's lifecycle, providing a consistent layer of protection. Its adaptability ensures that, irrespective of the development phase or platform, TraceMark serves as an effective measure to discourage leaks by holding individuals accountable, thereby contributing to the overall integrity of the content distribution process.

Yesterday, Remedy Entertainment Plc ("Remedy") and 505 Games S.p.A. ("505 Games") announce a transaction upon which all publishing, distribution, marketing and other rights to Control, codename Condor, Control 2, and all future Control products will revert to Remedy. The Control franchise is in the core of Remedy. Having acquired the full rights to Control, Condor and Control 2, Remedy is now in a position to make the right product and business decisions focusing on long-term franchise growth.

The transaction has no immediate effect on the income statement, while we see attractive growth opportunities arising in the mid-to-long term. This transaction will enable us to negotiate better deals for current and future Control games. We can now weigh up the options between self-publishing and a new publishing partner for Condor and Control 2. At the same time, we are in a better negotiating position than before as Control is an established brand and Alan Wake 2 has been successful. We are confident that these factors combined will enable us to get the right partner, deal structure and risk-reward profile that benefit Remedy and are the best fit for the Control franchise. We will evaluate and negotiate with potential future partners over the coming months.

Game File reporter, Stephen Totilo, has discovered a new Nintendo-filed legal document—the Japanese multinational video game company's North American office is ready to do battle (in court) with Tropic Haze. The latter's Yuzu Switch Emulator is the focus of Nintendo's legal case—initiated on February 26, at the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Totilo's social media summary of goings-on stated: "Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy. Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator." The Dolphin Emulator—a Gamecube and Wii emulation platform—was removed from Valve's Steam store last year, following the sending of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown order, but its development team was not pursued in US courts. The House of Mario is reportedly fiercely protective of its intellectual properties and technologies—gaining a hard-nosed reputation for engaging in plenty of legal action over decades past.

Nintendo's federal-level lawsuit alleges that Tropic Haze's Yuzu Switch Emulator played a large part in widespread illegal distribution of a 2023 flagship game title. They believe that "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" was pirated over one million times in a time period prior to its official launch on Switch consoles, while Yuzu's Patreon funding almost doubled within the same cycle. Nintendo stated (through filed documentation): "With Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch, all without paying a dime to Nintendo or to any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch...In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others' copyrighted works." They argue that Yuzu is capable of circumventing the Switch console's many layers of encryption—Tropic Haze's software, in their opinion, is "primarily designed" to break Switch software protections.

The MSI Afterburner 4.6.6 Beta update was released three days ago—available to download through Guru3D's distribution section—its patch notes tease the exciting addition of "some future NVIDIA GPU PCI DeviceIDs to (our) hardware database." The forward facing nature of this software upgrade brings some unfortunate news for Windows XP operating system users—Beta version 4.6.6's top bullet point provides some reasoning: "Ported to VC++ 2022 compiler. Please take a note that due to this change MSI Afterburner will no longer be able to start under Windows XP. Please stay on the previous versions of the product if you need this OS support." Unwinder's software engineering team has traditionally stuck with the 2008 Visual C++ compiler, hence Afterburner's long history of supporting Windows XP.

The adoption of a more modern compiler has signaled the end for MSI's overclocking and hardware monitoring program on a legacy operating system. Developers largely moved on from XP-supporting endeavors around the mid-2010s—as pointed out by Tom's Hardware: "To get an idea on how late Afterburner is on dropping Windows XP, the last time we reported on any app ending support for the OS was in 2019, when Steam ended support on New Year's Day." Returning to the modern day—4.6.6 Beta's best-of-list mentions that RivaTuner Statistics Server is host to "more than 90 compatibility enhancements and changes"—v7.3.5 rolls out with NVIDIA Reflex and PresentMon integration, as well as programmable conditional layers support. The other headlining feature addition within Afterburner's latest pre-release guise is voltage control for AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPUs.

Intel has begun rolling out software binaries compiled with support for upcoming Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) and Advanced Vector Extensions 10 (AVX10) instruction set extensions in their Clear Linux distribution, ahead of any processors officially supporting these capabilities launching. Clear Linux is focusing first on optimized APX and AVX10 versions of foundational software libraries like glibc and Python. This builds on Clear Linux's existing support for optimized x86-64-v2, v3, and v4 code paths, leveraging the latest microarchitectural features of each Intel CPU generation. The rationale is to prepare Clear Linux to fully leverage the performance potential of next-generation Intel Xeon server processors, code-named Granite Rapids, expected to launch later this year.

Granite Rapids will introduce AVX10.1/512 instructions as well as the new APX capabilities, which are currently not well documented implementation wise. By rolling out APX/AVX10 support in software now, Clear Linux aims to have an optimized ecosystem ready when the new processors officially ship. Initially, APX and AVX10 support is being added using the existing GCC compiler. Still, Clear Linux notes they will transition to using the upcoming GCC 14 release with more mature support for these instruction sets. The goal is to eventually have many Clear Linux packages compiled with APX/AVX10 code paths to maximize performance on future Intel CPUs. This continues Clear Linux's strategy of leveraging Intel's latest hardware capabilities in software.

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Commerce publicly announced two new notices of intent—as reported by Tom's Hardware, this involves the latest distributions from the CHIPS Act's $11 billion R&D budget: "$300 million is to be made available across multiple awards of up to $100 million (not including voluntary co-investment) for research on advanced packaging, while another $200 million (or more) is set aside to create the CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute. Companies will have to compete for the funds by filing an application." The Act's primary $39 billion tranche is designated to new construction endeavors, e.g. the founding of manufacturing facilities.

A grand total of $52 billion was set aside for the CHIPS Act in 2022, which immediately attracted the attention of several semiconductor industry giants. Companies with headquarters outside of North America were allowed to send in applications. Last year, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, made some controversial statements regarding his company's worthiness of government funding. In his opinion, Team Blue is due the "lion's share" due to his operation being a USA firm—the likes of TSMC and Samsung are far less deserving of subsidies.

Hello, Dom here, Studio Head at Ninja Theory. As I write this, we are now in the final few months of development on Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, preparing for our launch Day One on Xbox Game Pass and across Xbox Series X|S, Windows and Steam on May 21. It was a pleasure to give you all a deeper insight into Senua's next journey, our studio and our talented team in Developer Direct.

Since the release of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Ninja Theory has transitioned from being an independent team to one that sits within Xbox Game Studios. Although this has seen change for Ninja Theory, particularly in terms of the support now available to us for striving towards our ambitions, what has not changed is our passion and commitment to our studio mission - to craft life-changing art with game changing tech.

Bitspower brought a large bag of new toys at the 2024 International CES. The first thing that caught our attention was a familiar-looking case with infinity reflection lighting. On a closer look, it turned out to be a Lian Li PC-O11D Evo XL that's been given a neat aesthetic uplift thanks to the new Enigma Light Panel kit by Bitspower. You arrange these along the edges of your side- and front panels, and the provide an impressive, infinity reflection effect. It works with standard 3-pin ARGB, so you can mix it with your regular lighting setup. Next up, are a slew of CR Slim series reservoirs that are designed in the distribution plate format, which they line up with one of your glass panels, providing a better view of your coolant. There are various sizes, ranging from 120 mm x 120 mm, going all the way up to 803 mm. x 140 mm, with fitting ports at strategic locations to align with your CPU and VGA blocks, and radiators. The reservoirs come with preparation for a standard D5 pump, and feature a side cover that has the ARGB LED lighting, the diodes aren't studded into the acrylic as such. Bitspower released a mounting brackets of various sizes to help you correctly mount the reservoirs and accessories in place.

EK, the premium water-cooling gear manufacturer, is launching a new universal distribution plate - EK-QuantumX Loophole Distroplate D5 PWM. The distro features an entire wall filled with ports, allowing users to pick the ones that fit their unique build perfectly. As the waterway has no prebuilt inner channels but rather an "open space" internal structure, the user can custom-route tubes from one port to another within the distro itself using micro 90-degree angled adapters and micro HDP or HDC fittings. This unprecedented flexibility and customizability is also reflected in the universal mounting on 140 mm fan mounting holes, enabling compatibility with almost any modern PC case. This product does not feature any LED illumination.

The EK-QuantumX Loophole Distroplate D5 PWM is a custom water-cooling reservoir, routing, and pump solution that can be mounted on 140 mm fan patterns inside the chassis (provided there's enough room for it in the case). It is unique in the sense that there are no pre-made channels for coolant routing. Instead, the channels are built by the user. The distro can be mounted on practically any 280 mm (2x140mm) mounting point, and with angled brackets (sold separately), users can mount it 90° to a 120 mm or 140 mm fan mount. It is part of the QuantumX Line aimed at enthusiasts who wish to stand out. The product comes in two finishes: Silver and Black.

The PC market is dominated by the Windows operating system. There are alternatives, but most commercial applications run Windows OS, and the usage for the average user makes sense. However, Linux users often dream of the "year of Linux on desktop," where Linux starts dominating the PC market and mass adoption starts. In reality, this isn't the case as most people use the default or install the Windows OS. Today, we learn that Linux broke the 3% market share number after 30 years of presence. Being the highest market share it ever recorded, the OSes based on the Linux kernel now represent 3.07% of the entire market.

The survey data conducted by StatCounter shows that Windows holds 68.23%, OS X for macOS holds 21.32, ChromeOS has a 4.13% share, while unknown OSes hold 3.24%. This includes BSD-based alternatives and others. It is worth noting that Linux adoption could be a part of Steam Deck, which runs on a SteamOS 3.0 distribution based on Arch Linux. It also includes a Proton compatibility layer, which helps Windows games run on Linux, so users have an easier time running their favorite applications.

Listings for two custom AMD Radeon RX 7600 GPUs have appeared on PC Canada's webstore, according to VideoCardz - who were notified by keen-eyed locals from the Great White North. The online electronics seller has likely created these page entries by mistake - the information on hand is not exactly refined, indicating that the temporary text has come straight from hardware distributors - Althon Micro is Sapphire's chosen distribution and support partner for North American territories.

The prematurely published pages show that the Sapphire Pulse and MSI Mech 2X Classic models are both overclocked and specced with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. The custom graphics cards are not ready to purchase, as expected, with an indication of zero units being in-stock. At the time of writing, PC Canada has the Sapphire RX 7600 PULSE OC listed at $335.80 (451.99 CAD), and the MSI Mech 2X RX 7600 at $329.85 (443.99 CAD). These prices are subject to change, given that the information presented seems to have originated from placeholder sources.

IBM today unveiled new single frame and rack mount configurations of IBM z16 and IBM LinuxONE 4, expanding their capabilities to a broader range of data center environments. Based on IBM's Telum processor, the new options are designed with sustainability in mind for highly efficient data centers, helping clients adapt to a digitized economy and ongoing global uncertainty.

Introduced in April 2022, the IBM z16 multi frame has helped transform industries with real-time AI inferencing at scale and quantum-safe cryptography. IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4, launched in September 2022, features capabilities that can reduce both energy consumption and data center floor space while delivering the scale, performance and security that clients need. The new single frame and rack mount configurations expand client infrastructure choices and help bring these benefits to data center environments where space, sustainability and standardization are paramount.

NVIDIA is stepping up to manufacturers of counterfeit graphics card in China according to an article published by MyDrivers - the hardware giant is partnering up with a number of the nation's major e-commerce companies in order to eliminate inventories of bogus GPUs. It is claimed that these online retail platforms, including JD.com and Douyin, are partway into removing a swathe of dodgy stock from their listings. NVIDIA is seeking to disassociate itself from the pool of unlicensed hardware and the brands responsible for flooding the domestic and foreign markets with so-called fake graphics cards. The company is reputed to be puzzled about the murky origins of this bootlegging of their patented designs.

The market became saturated with fake hardware during the Ethereum mining boom - little known cottage companies such as 51RSIC, Corn, Bingying and JieShuoMllse were pushing rebadged cheap OEM cards to domestic e-tail sites. The knock-off GPUs also crept outside of that sector, and import listings started to appear on international platforms including Ebay, AliExpress, Amazon and Newegg. NVIDIA is also fighting to stop the sale of refurbished cards - these are very likely to have been utilized in intensive cryptocurrency mining activities. A flood of these hit the market following an extreme downturn in crypto mining efforts, and many enthusiast communities have warned against acquiring pre-owned cards due to the high risk of component failure.