Throughout the Spring season, Electronics Arts (EA) has reduced development team numbers across several of its international first-party game development studios. According to a fairly fresh IGN news report, another North American operation has been shutdown. Cliffhanger Games was working on a triple-A Black Panther intellectual property, with Marvel's full approval—as teased back in mid-2023. IGN's inside sources have leaked an email—allegedly authored by Laura Miele, EA Entertainment's president—that was addressed the latest round of layoffs at Cliffhanger Games, and unspecified "mobile and central teams." Apparently these adjustments are necessary; Miele (reportedly) believes that these changes will: "sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities...These decisions are hard. They affect people we've worked with, learned from, and shared real moments with. We're doing everything we can to support them—including finding opportunities within EA, where we've had success helping people land in new roles." In recent times, company leadership had openly discussed a move away from licensed IP projects. Supposedly, Miele's email mentions a focus on core EA franchises going forward: The Sims, Skate, Battlefield, and Apex Legends.

eXtas1s, a somewhat unreliable source of inside track info has weighed in with related news. The Spanish leaker shared an offbeat claim: "I have learned that around 400 more layoffs are coming at EA, the total closure of Codemasters HQ, and that those developers will be integrated into EA Sports (F1), and a new Need For Speed that is already in development." Going back to late April, EA declared that an unspecified number of layoffs were underway at Codemasters. Earlier this month, the long-running British racing game specialist had stopped working on the popular WRC franchise. Since then, NACON—a French publication house—has picked up the FIA World Rally Championship license. Within the same time period, an official announcement outlined the cancelation of two unannounced projects at Respawn Entertainment. Prior to cessations, the Los Angeles, California-based outfit was working on two "early stage" titles—insider reports suggested that one of these mystery IPs was some sort of nascent Titanfall title. Interestingly, Respawn's leader—Vince Zampella—is steering the next Battlefield game. Several EA studios have been roped into a multipronged production approach.

Yesterday, members of the Bobantang discussion board disclosed intriguing insider knowledge. According to recent industry murmurs, AMD has informed motherboard manufacturing partners about the discontinuation of B650 chipset production. Chinese media outlets have jumped on this alleged revelation, with Western counterparts quickly joining in on the fun (hours later). ITHome and Unika's Hardware were the first channels to parse info from the Bobantang forum. Since a 2022 launch, Team Red's mid-range B650 board design has remained a firm favorite for many budget-conscious owners of Ryzen 7000 (plus 8000G and 9000) series desktop processors. A "direct" successor—B850—reached retail at the start of this year, but higher price points combined with relatively minor feature set advantages have discouraged a lot of buyers. The likes of ASUS, ASRock, Colorful and Sapphire have released (or previewed) new B650 chipset-based mainboard products in 2025—mostly in microATX form factors.

A Bobantang member has prophesized two major trends—the first being: "after AMD's B650 chip production line is shut down, its inventory is expected to be large. According to Team Red, the B650M series inventory sales plan will probably end in the third quarter (of 2025)." A second claim was outlined: "it is expected that the digestion time of the tail end stock of AMD's B650 series motherboard will be longer, at least there will be inventory to sell in the second quarter (of this year), but the inventory of B650M chips will become more and more scarce as time goes by." PC hardware watchdogs propose a fall in B850 pricing; likely expertly timed to occur shortly after the complete depletion of predecessor stock—by the fourth quarter of this year.

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 could be the last of its kind; according to Tom Warren's latest theories. Yesterday, The Verge's senior editor envisioned a streamlined future lineup of Microsoft's portable PC devices. According to inside track information, the tech giant is expected to announce the end-of-life (EOL) status for this relatively young branch of Surface products (debuted back in 2021). The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is advertised as being "a laptop like no other"—courtesy of a unique/versatile setup that features a "dynamic woven hinge." Three hybrid configurations are officially outlined as: "laptop mode for productivity, stage mode for streaming, and studio mode for creativity." Current generation models are powered by Intel's 13th Gen Core i7-13700H processor (aka the "Evo" platform), and can be configured with discrete NVIDIA mobile graphics solutions (GeForce RTX 4060, RTX 4050, or RTX 2000 Ada Generation). Under normal circumstances, a baseline build—reliant on an iGPU—starts at about $2400.

At the time of writing, Microsoft has not acknowledged The Verge's insider report. So far, resellers have shared top secret info—indicating an upcoming official announcement; possibly due by next month. Another group of unnamed sources claim that Surface Laptop Studio 2 manufacturing activities have already ended, as of early May (2025). The megacorporation has culled other Surface products in the past; sometimes coinciding with the departure of key executive team members and mass layoffs. A few days ago, mainstream news outlets covered Microsoft's latest batch of staff reductions—affecting roughly 6000 workers. Warren's article dashes all hopes of a potential third-gen design: "there doesn't appear to be a Surface Laptop Studio 3 on the horizon."

Pioneer has quietly confirmed that it has ended production of internal and external Blu-ray optical disc drives (ODDs), for computers. Rumors about the cessation of manufacturing activities emerged earlier this month; with a small number of Japanese news outlets publishing reports. Days later, an official company statement turned up in a low-key manner—via the brand's Japanese web portal. As of late April, shares of the Pioneer Digital Design and Manufacturing (PDDM) subsidiary were transferred to Shanxi Lightchain Technology Industrial Development Co., Ltd. Pioneer's optical disc-related businesses is now owned by the giant (Chinese) Shanxi Group. Commenting on shifting market conditions, a Pioneer Japan representative stated: "while we are moving forward with selection and concentration, centered on our car electronics business, we have come to the decision that it is preferable to advance the optical disc business with a new partner, rather than remaining within our group."

The Pioneer IT Japan webstore is due to close on May 30; as disclosed in a mid-April bulletin. In addition, NotebookCheck highlighted the complete lack of optical drive stock for North American webshop customers. At the time of writing, Pioneer's official Amazon.com presence still offers a small selection of portable slimline models. A chunkier external premium option—the BDR-X13U-S BDXL Blu-ray recorder—was launched only six months ago, so the firm's sudden change of heart is quite surprising. What Hi-Fi? noted that Pioneer's AV/home cinema division has not released any new 4K Blu-ray player products since 2019. Three months ago, Sony shuttered its last optical media factory, in Japan—signalling an end of an era. The vast majority of consumers have turned their backs on physical formats; instead favoring digital/streaming channels. In a refreshing (early 2025) PR piece, Verbatim and I-O DATA expressed their (joint) commitment to producing high-quality optical discs.

Dear Rally Community, every great journey eventually finds its finish line, and today, we announce that we've reached the end of the road working on WRC. After releasing EA SPORTS WRC in 2023, the 2024 season, including the recently released Hard Chargers Content pack, will be our last expansion. For now, we are pausing development plans on future rally titles. Rest assured, EA SPORTS WRC will continue to be available for existing and new players. We hope it remains a source of joy, excitement, and the thrill of rally racing. We've poured our hearts into making it for fans, and we know you'll keep the passion alive.

Our WRC partnership was a culmination of sorts for our Codemasters journey with off-road racing, spanning decades through titles like Colin McRae Rally, and DiRT. We've provided a home for every rally enthusiast, striving tirelessly to push the boundaries and deliver the exhilarating thrill of driving on the ragged edge. We've brought together incredibly talented racing developers, worked with some of the sport's icons, and had the opportunity to share our love of rallying. Thank you to all the fans who have and continue to be part of our rally journey.

• The Codemasters WRC Team

Last Saturday, Scythe Group announced the closure of its European branch. This followed mid-April reports of unusually low stock numbers in Germany—at the time, ComputerBase.de and its community highlighted the complete absence of the manufacturer's flagship Mugen 6 CPU air cooler at regional retail outlets. The site published an investigative article on April 22; presenting an important Consumer Protection Forum filing. Apparently "economic difficulties" have warranted the initiation of "preliminary insolvency proceedings"—as a result, Scythe EU GmbH faced an uncertain future. Looking back in TechPowerUp's news archive, the last official introduction of brand-new products—Mugen 6 standard and Black Edition coolers—happened around early February. Also within the same month, TPU's crazyeyesreaper reviewed the brand's "highly-recommended" Fuma 3 model. Despite releasing consistently high-grade and top-performing products; Scythe has faced aggressive competition across Europe—Chinese brands have flooded regional markers with cheaper alternatives. In particular, Thermalright has gained plenty of attention and uptake—due to a rapid cadence and wide variety of highly-acclaimed new releases.

Scythe's April 26 official notice stated: "To All Valued Clients, we deeply regret to inform you that SCYTHE EU will be ceasing operations. Moving forward, SCYTHE-branded products and customer support will remain available through our European distributors and online e-commerce platforms. During the transition period with our distributors/e-commerce channels, there may be some unfinished matters, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. SCYTHE will continue to uphold the principles of responsibility and integrity, ensuring consumer rights are protected in accordance with the law. We sincerely thank you for your support and loyalty to the SCYTHE brand over the years."

Intel product change notification documents—published on January 6—have revealed the planned "End of Life" (EOL) phasing out of 12th Generation "Alder Lake" mobile processor models. Tom's Hardware has pored over the listed products/SKUs and concluded that the vast majority of Team Blue's mobile-oriented Alder Lake selection are destined for retirement. Team Blue's HX series is being kept alive for a little while longer. Two documents show differing "discontinuance timelines" for their respective inventories—including lower-end Celeron and Pentium Gold SKUs, as well as familiar higher-up Core i3, i5, i7, and i9 families. U, P, H and HK-affixed models are lined up for the chopping block.

Intel's 13th Generation "Raptor Lake" mobile processor selection—comprised of Core 100 (series 1) and Core 200 (series 2)—offers similar silicon makeup. Many equivalent alternatives to older generation "Alder Lake" chips reside here—Tom's Hardware presented a key example: "i5-1235U, which is designated for thin and lightweight laptops. OEMs can instead opt for the i5-1335U, the Core 5 120U, or the Core 5 220U, as they're just better bins of the 1235U on the same FCBGA1744 socket." A significant number of Alder Lake mobile SKUs will be available to OEMs for ordering up until 26 April, with final shipments heading out on 25 October. The rest have been assigned a July 25 order cut-off date, with final shipments scheduled on 26 January 2026.

AMD has quietly issued a product discontinuation notice—their PDF document is dated January 1 2024—for a whole bunch of Xilinx Complex Programmable Logic Device (CLPD) and lower-end FPGA models. Team Red's opening statement on the matter reads: "AMD will be discontinuing XC9500XL, CoolRunner XPLA 3, CoolRunner II, Spartan II, and Spartan 3, 3A, 3AN, 3E, 3ADSP Commercial/ Industrial "XC" and Automotive "XA" Product Families due to declining run-rate and supplier sustainability reasons." The American multinational semiconductor inherited a large back catalog of programmable logic products once their acquisition of Xilinx was completed back in 2022.

Industry analysts believed that this takeover was mainly motivated by a desire to expand into FPGA territories, although Team Red indicated that it would carry on producing and supporting Xilinx's older CLPD products—for example, the Spartan 3 family debuted back in 2011, while a couple of the CoolRunner II parts on the list are of 2002 vintage. AMD's discontinuation notice provides details of Last Time Buy (LTB) final orders—the cut-off date for soon-to-be-axed devices appears to be June 29 2024.

Microsoft has quietly added WordPad to their list of "Deprecated features for Windows client," as of September 1—this classic word processor application has been part of their operating systems stretching back in time to Windows 95—when it debuted as Microsoft Write's successor. The announcement stated: "WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like.doc and.rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like.txt." Updates for the bundled rich-text editing program ceased following UI tweaks introduced around the Windows 8 era.

Microsoft presents two alternative paths for the near future—naturally, one involves a paid 365 subscription—you can opt for Word. An online version is available at no cost, but it involves registration (with MS) and only functions as a web app. Notepad is the next best free-to-use native word processor—it has been modernized with new features, albeit via Windows 11. HotHardware has hyped it up: "One major update that users have been asking for was recently added to Notepad, that being the ability to open multiple tabs within the same session. Future updates include an autosave feature and the ability to restore previously open tabs as well as unsaved content and edits across those open tabs." Microsoft will be adding a snipping tool at some point, with the introduction of a: "combined capture bar, making it easier to switch between capturing screenshots and screen recordings without having to open the app."

Intel has informed ecosystem partners about the cessation of direct investment in its Next Unit of Compute (NUC) business—ServeTheHome was the first outlet to report on this development earlier today, following industry rumors cropping up on Monday. Intel has been pulling back on non-core business operations—back in April its server building operation was sold to MiTAC. Today's announcement signals Team Blue's exit from the PC building industry—their (internally manufactured) NUC products included SFF computers, kits, laptop reference systems and boards.

Intel sent an official statement to HardwareLuxx (translated from German): "We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth. This decision will not impact the remainder of Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG) or Network and Edge Computing (NEX) businesses. Furthermore, we are working with our partners and customers to ensure a smooth transition and fulfillment of all our current commitments."

As of September 21, 2023, Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera will shut down, as our teams focus on future Call of Duty content including the current Warzone free-to-play experience. We all have had incredible Warzone experiences across the Call of Duty franchise since its first launch, including those in Warzone Caldera. For those players who haven't jumped over to the current Warzone activities, expect a vast number of gameplay choices across three Battle Royale maps (including Season 04's new map Vondel), as well as Ranked Play, the DMZ Beta featuring five different Extraction Zones, BlackCell offerings, and more.

Players should prepare for even more Warzone content across consoles and PC, as well as a new era of Battle Royale on the go with the launch of Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, which includes a shared Battle Pass and cross-progression. The Call of Duty team and Studios look forward to sharing more details soon. Regarding purchased content in Warzone Caldera - from Modern Warfare (2019), Black Ops Cold War, or Vanguard - that will continue to be accessible in those specific games.

Intel is in the process of discontinuing its eleventh generation Tiger Lake-U CPU lineup according to the company's own Product Change Notification (PCN) system. Team Blue's database points to the final batch of (x86 Willow Cove architecture) processors getting shipped out on December 29, with an October 2023 cutoff point for last orders. These 11th Gen Core units (with Iris Xe iGPUs) have been part of laptops, mobile devices and small-form-factor (SFF) systems since launching in 2020. Intel started the end-of-life (EOL) for more powerful variants (some Tiger Lake-H models and the entire Tiger Lake-B range) back in April of this year.

Tiger Lake was an early example of a 10 nm++ SuperFin product, with improved production yields leading to the creation of high performance gaming laptop CPUs (the aforementioned H and B models), alongside the basic low power U-series. Intel has also added Tiger Lake-H35 models to the discontinuance list (totaling 42 models), and a trio of 500-series chipsets that were designed to accommodate their embedded 11th generation processor family: RM590E, HM570E and QM580E. Plenty of Tiger Lake-based stock still exists on the market, but Intel will be very keen to clear that excess - in favor of making way for its 12th and 13th generation product ranges.

A Taiwanese PC hardware news outlet, Benchlife, has been talking to insider sources positioned within several of NVIDIA's add-in-board (AIB) partners - the author reports that these organizations are experiencing significant changeovers. The AIB informants indicate that production of GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti models is accelerating, following rumors of the older Ampere-based RTX 3060 Ti card being discontinued. The article's author was seeking further clarification and confirmation from industry insiders, given that most of the recent leaks have emerged from Chinese technology discussion boards. Forumites have posited that NVIDIA has stopped supplying its AIB partners with RTX 3060 Ti silicon. It is difficult to tell whether (via translation) the AIB tipsters have concluded that the older card is totally done for, but NVIDIA is prioritizing the launch of new products.

It would make sense for Team Green to clear the way for the much newer Ada Lovelace-based lineups, but their entry level RTX 3060 cards have remained firm favorites with PC hardware buyers, so it could be quite tricky to play catch up with succeeding product lines. NVIDIA's component suppliers have stated (back in mid-April) that RTX 4000-series GPU production was not ramping up, due to a possible slow uptake of existing cards - in particular the recently released RTX 4070. Given the vast popularity of budget graphics card models, it seems that NVIDIA is preparing to embrace that market segment once again with its latest offerings - due for launch at the end of this month.

Hello Bloodhunt Community! Bloodhunt is a game that we developed as a standout title in the popular Battle Royale genre, where we focused on creating an immersive and unique experience for players that enjoy games that are easy to learn but difficult to master. Ever since launch, we have been on a journey to excite and delight our players, however, while we have an amazing and very engaged community, we haven't been able to reach the critical mass needed to sustain development. This has led us to the decision to stop further development of Bloodhunt.

With that said, Bloodhunt servers will stay up and the game will remain available to play. Our aim is to keep the servers going for as long as we have an active player base and community. For those who enjoy the game and want to continue playing, we have worked on some solutions to ensure that the game continues to be interesting. An in-game player voting system will be deployed to regularly unlock new things and keep Bloodhunt fresh. We will share more granular details about how this system works when we get closer to releasing our next update, which will be the last planned patch for Bloodhunt. Beyond that update, patches will only be related to maintenance.

Apple hardware hoarders do exist - a friend told me that he'd only just replaced a 2013 vintage 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro this month - these folks continue to enjoy repairs or miscellaneous services at Apple Stores and authorized service providers on some products. Unfortunately there is potential bad news for preservationist owners of the original Thunderbolt Display and the first generation iPad Air tablet - a leaked internal memo suggests that Apple has decided to add these two antiques to their end-of-life (EOL) device list, according to MacRumors. Apple's Thunderbolt Display was released back in the summer of 2011, the company boasted that its fancy 27-inch 1440p monitor was the world's first display with Thunderbolt I/O technology (at the time), the asking price was $999. Alongside its requisite Thunderbolt I/O port (designed to connect to compatible Mac Notebooks), the monitor had a number of other spiffy features including an in-built 720p webcam, three USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 800 port and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

Apple stopped making the Thunderbolt Display in 2016, and customers had to wait another six years for a successor to turn up - the Studio Display launched alongside the Mac Studio in March 2022. The original (1st gen) iPad Air was released on November 1 in 2013. It was the first entry in the iPad tablet family to feature a thinner design - its standard (non-Air) predecessors were a bit chunkier in comparison. It was discontinued in March of 2016, and Apple has so far released five generations of iPad Air products - last year's model debuted with the ARM-based M1 chipset.

Microsoft has confirmed that the current version of Windows 10 - 22H2 - will be the final one. A company product manager revealed this information yesterday in a Windows IT Pro Blog entry posted alongside a mass of articles on Microsoft's Tech Community site. As covered on TPU almost two years ago, Microsoft had given advance notice that it was terminating support for Windows 10 on October 14th 2025 - for both Home and Pro versions of the operating system. Windows 11 was released later on in 2021, and thus became the priority OS product for the North American tech firm.

Yesterday's blog reiterates key information from the past, and details an interim update cycle (albeit small): "Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date. Existing (enterprise) releases will continue to receive updates beyond that date based on their specific lifecycles." Microsoft has proceeded to update the lifecycle page entry for Windows 10 Home and Pro in line with the latest announcement. The product manager (in his blog) recommends that current Windows 10 users move to 11 as soon as possible, in order to enjoy a continued stream of feature updates.

Valve has posted advance notice that Steam will not officially support macOS versions 10.11 ("El Capitan") and 10.12 ("Sierra") from September 1 2023. After this date "the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of macOS." Valve recommends that users should upgrade to a newer version of macOS, if they intend to continue running Steam and related games and products. The cited reason for ending support is: "core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of macOS. In addition, future versions of Steam will require macOS feature and security updates only present in macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and above."

Last week, Valve announced that support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems would cease at the very beginning of 2024. It has been a while since older versions of macOS have been declared as unsupported by the Steam Client - Valve announced, way back in late 2018, that it would stop supporting macOS versions 10.7 ("Lion"), 10.8 ("Mountain Lion"), 10.9 ("Mavericks") and 10.10 ("Yosemite") by January 1 2019. Again, an embedding of an iteration of Google Chrome was given as the main reason behind this discontinuation.

As we close in on 15 years since the release of Battlefield 1943, and Bad Company 1 & 2, we are announcing that their journey is coming to an end. Starting April 28 2023, Battlefield 1943, and Battlefield: Bad Company 1 & 2 will be removed from digital storefronts and you will no longer be able to purchase them.

This is in preparation for the retirement of the online services for these titles which will happen on December 8 2023. For Bad Company 1 and 2, you can still continue playing them and use their respective offline features, such as the single player campaign. You can also read our FAQ and Service Updates for further information on the retirement of online services.

Update 14:17 UTC: EA updated their press release this morning, to clarify that the inclusion of Mirror's Edge was an error. They stated via Twitter: "We currently have no plans to remove Mirror's Edge from digital storefronts."