Path of Exile 2 today released in Early Access on Steam and consoles, and, despite the game's $29.99 Early Access pricing, it has already managed to amass a peak player count of over 458,920 players on Steam alone. While this is undoubtedly good news for the developer and publisher, the increased server load has apparently already caused problems, resulting in excessive queue times to get into game sessions. At the time of writing, the game has only been available to play for a little over four hours, and the player count is only beginning to plateau now.

According to the Path of Exile X account, the development team has been hard at work trying to stem the bleeding, as it were. So far, the Path of Exile website has been down several times due to the high traffic, preventing players from claiming their Steam keys. Additionally, and somewhat hilariously, this outage has also affected the "Early Access Live Updates" site that was meant to be a resource for gamers to keep track of work the live service team was doing to try and deal with the high launch-day volumes.

At AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, today announced the general availability of AWS Trainium2-powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, introduced new Trn2 UltraServers, enabling customers to train and deploy today's latest AI models as well as future large language models (LLM) and foundation models (FM) with exceptional levels of performance and cost efficiency, and unveiled next-generation Trainium3 chips.

"Trainium2 is purpose built to support the largest, most cutting-edge generative AI workloads, for both training and inference, and to deliver the best price performance on AWS," said David Brown, vice president of Compute and Networking at AWS. "With models approaching trillions of parameters, we understand customers also need a novel approach to train and run these massive workloads. New Trn2 UltraServers offer the fastest training and inference performance on AWS and help organizations of all sizes to train and deploy the world's largest models faster and at a lower cost."

Microsoft is introducing Windows 365 Link, a compact cloud PC for business users. The device costs $349 and measures just 120 x 120 x 30 mm, making it smaller than Apple's Mac mini. The compact size comes from the fanless cooling design and the fact that the device doesn't have local storage capabilities. This small computer has quite a variety of connectivity options, including one USB-C, three USB-A ports, HDMI, DisplayPort, and Ethernet connections, supports two 4K monitors, and has Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E wireless capabilities. The specific hardware details are not yet revealed by Microsoft.

It requires Windows 365 with Microsoft Intune and Entra ID, and it works with 365 Frontline, Enterprise, and Business editions. As with other cloud-based solutions, Microsoft will lock some of the security options, "features like Secure Boot, the dedicated Trusted Platform Module, Hypervisor Code Integrity, BitLocker encryption, and the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint detection and response sensor can't be turned off, further helping to secure the device". Microsoft plans to launch the device in April 2025, with early previews in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Businesses interested in testing the device can contact their Microsoft account team before December 15, 2024, to join the preview program.

Lenovo Group Limited (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY), together with its subsidiaries ('the Group'), today announced Q2 results for fiscal year 2024/25, reporting significant increases and growth in net income, year-on-year revenue growth for the 4th consecutive quarter, and strong double-digit year-on-year revenue increases from all its business groups. Group revenue increased 24% year-on-year to US$17.9 billion. Net income was up 48% year-on-year to US$404 million on a non-Hong Kong Financial Reporting Standards (non-HKFRS)[1] basis, and non-PC revenue mix was up five points year-to-year to 46%. The Group's results reflect its clear strategy, operational excellence, investment in R&D, innovations in hybrid AI, and global footprint.

The Group's hybrid AI strategy and years of continuous investment in R&D and innovations are paying off, with its first phase of AI PCs, launched in China in May 2024, already reaching double digit share of its total notebook shipments in the China market. Recent launches of AI PCs for the global market with Lenovo AI Now have also been received positively. For enterprise AI, the Group is leveraging its full-stack hybrid infrastructure as well as Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage to capture growth opportunities. This relentless focus on AI innovation as well as investment in R&D (up 10% year-on-year to US$548 million) is firmly establishing the Group's market differentiation and industry leadership.

NVIDIA today announced incoming changes to its GeForce Now game streaming service, some of which are not likely to sit well with gamers. The biggest, and likely most controversial change coming to GeForce Now is the addition of monthly playtime caps for all GeForce Now users, regardless of which plan they're on. According to the blog post announcing the changes, GeForce Now gamers will be limited to 100 hours of gameplay per month in addition to the daily playtime caps. NVIDIA will allow gamers who don't use their whole monthly cap to roll 15 hours of game time into the following month.

It's not all bad news, however, as NVIDIA also announced that it will be increasing the resolution and image quality of the GeForce Now Performance tier—previously Priority—from 1080p to 1440p. The Ultimate and Basic tiers remain unchanged in both name and feature set. NVIDIA says the playtime limit was necessary in order "to continue providing exceptional quality and speed—as well as shorter queue times." Of course players can buy extra playtime at a rate of $2.99 for 15 hours of GeForce Now Performance and $5.99 for 15 hours of GeForce Now Ultimate. The playtime limits will come into effect on January 1, 2025, and anyone that signs up for a paid GeForce Now subscription before then won't be subjected to the new playtime limits until January 2026.

Denuvo has taken its fair share of flak over the years for a variety of warranted and unwarranted reasons, but it looks like the company has finally decided to put its foot down, or at least try to. Recently, Denuvo started a Discord server, seemingly in an effort to address the gaming community's complaints about a variety of topics. These include alleged performance impacts and hardware degradation caused by its anti-piracy and DRM software commonly used in modern games. Needless to say the Denuvo Discord server was met with about as much enthusiasm as one might expect, and the Discord sever was shut down just two days after it opened. Although the server has since been resuscitated, the company has muted unapproved community members. Today, however, Rock Paper Shotgun published an interview with Denuvo's product manager, Andreas Ullmann, and in it, Ullmann goes on to defend Denuvo's existence and outright dismiss gamers' concerns about the anti-cheat and anti-piracy software.

Addressing a question about "toxicity" and oft-genuine concerns from gamers over the use of Denuvo anti-tamper and anti-cheat software, Ullmann seemingly implied that gamers are just upset because the software works, robbing gamers of the ability to simply play a game for free instead of paying full retail price. When asked directly about why Denuvo doesn't address the claims of performance hits to games that implement it, Ullmann placed the onus on game developers to perform those comparative tests, again calling the gaming and piracy community toxic in the response. He dismissed the idea of Denuvo or a third party performing comparative analysis of the impact of anti-tamper and anti-cheat software, citing intellectual property concerns and community mistrust for a lack of first-party testing. At the same time, Ullmann admits that Denuvo has had performance impacts on games in the past but remarks that it's "interesting" that there aren't more incidents of reduced gaming performance. These comments were also made in spite of Denuvo's own marketing materials claiming that the software has "No impact on in-game performance."

Intel's Sales and Marketing Group (SMG) has announced a 35% reduction in costs as the company looks to streamline operations and adapt to challenging market conditions. The cuts, revealed during an all-hands meeting on August 5th, will impact both jobs and marketing expenses within the SMG. Intel has directed the group to "simplify programs end-to-end" by the end of the year, a directive that comes on the heels of the company's announcement that it would lay off 15% of its global workforce to save $10 billion in operating expenses. "We are becoming a simpler, leaner, and more agile company that's easier for partners and customers to work with while ensuring we focus our investments on areas where we see the greatest opportunities for innovation and growth," Intel said in a statement to CRN. The company emphasized that this restructuring is about "building a stronger Intel for the future," with partners integral to its plans.

The job cuts within the SMG are expected to target overlapping responsibilities, such as account managers and industry-focused teams, which can confuse customers navigating Intel's complex organization. Additionally, the company plans to significantly reduce its marketing budget and simplify programs, aiming to save at least $100 million in the latter half of 2024 and an additional $300 million in the first half of 2025. The impact will also be felt in Intel's market development fund (MDF), a crucial tool for supporting OEMs and other partners through events, training, and more. An ex-Intel executive warned that the MDF had become vital as the company's product leadership waned, allowing it to maintain valuable relationships with partners. As Intel navigates these changes, its partners are bracing for the impact, with one CEO describing the situation as everyone "hunkering down and just waiting to hear something." Another partner executive expressed concerns about Intel's ability to maintain the level of service and support its customers have come to expect.

In response to Intel's recent statement regarding reports of instability in certain 13th and 14th generation desktop processors, MSI has taken swift action and collaborated closely with Intel to mitigate the impact on our customers. Upholding our commitment to high-quality product design, MSI has promptly released a BIOS update to address these concerns and alleviate consumer worries. In addition, we are extending the warranty for affected desktop processors by two years, ensuring that our customers can continue to use MSI products with confidence.

Customer satisfaction has always been MSI's top priority. We remain dedicated to enhancing service quality and product design to provide our customers with the best possible experience. If you have any questions, please contact your local customer service center. Stay tuned for further updates.

The market for artificial intelligence (AI) platforms software grew at a rapid pace in 2023 and is projected to maintain its remarkable momentum, driven by the increasing adoption of AI across many industries. A new International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast shows that worldwide revenue for AI platforms software will grow to $153.0 billion in 2028 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.6% over the 2023-2028 forecast period.

"The AI platforms market shows no signs of slowing down. Rapid innovations in generative AI is changing how companies think about their products, how they develop and deploy AI applications, and how they leverage technology themselves for reinventing their business models and competitive positioning," said Ritu Jyoti, group vice president and general manager of IDC's Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Data and Analytics research. "IDC expects this upward trajectory will continue to accelerate with the emergence of unified platforms for predictive and generative AI that supports interoperating APIs, ecosystem extensibility, and responsible AI adoption at scale."

By the time you're reading this, it's already too late to sign up for the old price, if you were planning on getting or extending your Game Pass, since as of today, Microsoft has increased the cost for both PC and Xbox owners. On top of that, Microsoft has added a new tier for Xbox owners and made its lower tiers a lot less interesting. However, as TPU is a PC centric site, let's start with the bad news for PC owners. Depending on where you live, the price increase varies, but on average, Microsoft has increased the price by US$/€2/£2. However, some lower income countries are only seeing an increase of US$1, although we're not sure why Switzerland ended up in this group. However, the exchange rate is clearly affecting some other countries either negatively or positively where some countries end up paying a little bit more and others a little bit less.

Now for the really bad news for Xbox console owners. Xbox Game Pass for Console is no longer available to new subscribers, but those already on this tier that have automatic renewal enabled will be able to continue to have access to the same tier and perks that it's been offered with to date. In its place, Microsoft is introducing the Xbox Game Pass Standard tier and the fundamental difference between it and the Xbox Game Pass for Console package is that subscribers no longer have access to day one releases, but they gain access to online multiplayer games and the full back catalogue of games. There's no word on how long those subscribed to the Xbox Game Pass Standard tier will have to wait to gain access to new releases yet, but the new tier isn't available immediately either, so we'll most likely find out in due time.

0patch plans to combat Microsoft's ending Windows 10 support by offering unofficial security updates for the 2015 operating system. Microsoft is ending Windows 10 security updates on October 14, 2025, after which the OS will stop receiving patches for vulnerabilities. The Redmond giant will provide you with an option to update your Windows 10 build, however, with a hefty fee slapped. Extended Security Updates (ESU) pricing structure follows a tiered model that doubles each year. From October 2025 to October 2026, the cost is $61 per device. The following year, from October 2026 to October 2027, the price increases to $122 per device. In the final year, spanning October 2027 to October 2028, the cost rises to $244 per device. For users planning to maintain Windows 10 until October 2028, the total expense over the three-year period would amount to $427 per device.

However, 0patch, a company focused on providing unofficial security updates for Windows OSes, will provide Windows 10 users with free and paid security updates post-end of service. Their system focuses on delivering targeted "micropatches" for critical vulnerabilities that emerge after Microsoft's official support ends. These micropatches are designed to be extremely precise and minimal, often consisting of just a few CPU instructions. A key feature of 0patch's approach is its non-invasive nature. The patches are applied directly to running processes in the computer's memory, leaving the original Microsoft files untouched. This method allows for rapid deployment of security fixes without requiring system reboots or interrupting user activities. The patching process is designed to be seamless and virtually unnoticeable to users. For instance, a user working on a document wouldn't experience any disruption while a micropatch is being applied. This approach is particularly beneficial for servers, where continuous uptime is crucial, as patches can be implemented without any downtime.

ASUS has had issues with customer support, as reported following last month's investigation by Gamers Nexus. However, they are now promising several fixes. If you've been wrongly denied a warranty repair or charged for unnecessary service, ASUS wants you to email them at "executivecare@asus.com" using a predefined template (see below). It also promises to respond within a week and apologizes for past negative experiences, citing customer feedback as an opportunity for improvement. These cases will be handled directly by ASUS staff.

Getting into a bit more details, after criticism, ASUS executives met with Gamers Nexus staff face to face and agreed to a list of promises.

Google has officially joined the club of custom Arm-based, in-house-developed CPUs. As of today, Google's in-house semiconductor development team has launched the "Axion" CPU based on Arm instruction set architecture. Using the Arm Neoverse V2 cores, Google claims that the Axion CPU outperforms general-purpose Arm chips by 30% and Intel's processors by a staggering 50% in terms of performance. This custom silicon will fuel various Google Cloud offerings, including Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, Dataproc, Dataflow, and Cloud Batch. The Axion CPU, designed from the ground up, will initially support Google's AI-driven services like YouTube ads and Google Earth Engine. According to Mark Lohmeyer, Google Cloud's VP and GM of compute and machine learning infrastructure, Axion will soon be available to cloud customers, enabling them to leverage its performance without overhauling their existing applications.

Google's foray into custom silicon aligns with the strategies of its cloud rivals, Microsoft and Amazon. Microsoft recently unveiled its own AI chip for training large language models and an Arm-based CPU called Cobalt 100 for cloud and AI workloads. Amazon, on the other hand, has been offering Arm-based servers through its custom Graviton CPUs for several years. While Google won't sell these chips directly to customers, it plans to make them available through its cloud services, enabling businesses to rent and leverage their capabilities. As Amin Vahdat, the executive overseeing Google's in-house chip operations, stated, "Becoming a great hardware company is very different from becoming a great cloud company or a great organizer of the world's information."

We are thrilled to share that over the next few weeks, the EA app will officially replace Origin as our primary Mac platform. A faster, more reliable, and more streamlined experience - it's the best place for you to experience EA's incredible games, services and content. With the new streamlined design you will easily find the games and content you're looking for and discover your new favorite games. With automatic game downloads and background updates you can ensure that your games are ready to play when you are.

For existing Origin players, we've worked hard to make the transition to the EA app as simple as possible. When you get there, all your games and content, including games already installed on Origin, will be ready and waiting for you. Your local and cloud saves will transfer forward ensuring you can pick up where you left off. New players will start by downloading a new favorite game and jump into the action with our optimized experience. Players on unsupported macOS devices can continue to enjoy their favorite games on Origin.

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.

CORSAIR today launched a white color variant of the revolutionary RMx SHIFT Series of ATX 3.0 power supplies. RMx SHIFT, the world's first PSU with the DC connector panel on the side of the unit, quickly became a sensation among DIY PC enthusiasts after its launch last year thanks to cleaner and easier cabling than traditional power supplies. Available in 750, 850, 1000, and 1200 wattages, the RMx SHIFT Series exemplifies CORSAIR's commitment to addressing the evolving needs of its customers. With its repositioned side panel, builders have unobstructed access to all of its Type 5 Gen 1 micro-fit connections, making installation and maintenance painless. It also means less bending and twisting of the cables, removing unnecessary strain on the cables and connectors.

White models of RMx SHIFT address the overwhelming demand from the PC building community for more customization options to match a wider range of builds. The new white units retain all the features that have made the RMx SHIFT a market standout, including fully modular cabling, 80 Plus Gold-rated efficiency, premium 105°C-rated Japanese capacitors, and a 140 mm fluid dynamic bearing fan, while matching the clean aesthetic of white system builds.

Soon, you'll be able to play your favorite games from GOG, like the Witcher series or Cyberpunk 2077, on multiple devices of your choice. We're teaming up with Amazon Luna cloud gaming service to give you even more ways of enjoying your titles, while still keeping our mission of DRM-free gaming. Let's dive into it and take a look at how it works!

What exactly is Amazon Luna?
It is a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Amazon. The service first launched in March 2022 in the United States, and then spread its reach to other countries last year, with availability in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Luna works by streaming games from cloud servers and runs on Amazon's powerful cloud computing service Amazon Web Services (AWS). And what it means is that it allows its customers to enjoy gaming on the go, on the couch, or anywhere else you have an internet connection. No lengthy downloads or updates, no need for an expensive gaming PC, complicated setup, or heavy computer processing - just pure joy of running your games on a device of your choice in high-quality.

Razer Fintech, the financial technology arm of Razer Inc., together with its B2B payments unit, Razer Merchant Services (RMS), announced a dynamic rebranding initiative today. The company unveils a new single name, logo, and identity as Fiuu, signifying its ambitious plans to become a leading force in the future of digital payments. Fiuu, set to operate as a standalone subsidiary of Razer Inc. moving forward, aims to empower both the businesses and individuals by their evolving payment needs. This strategic move reflects the company's commitment to providing innovative payment solutions to merchants worldwide.

A part of this rebranding exercise, Lee Li Meng will be passing the helm to Eng Sheng Guan as Chief Executive Officer and will take on a new role as Executive Chairman of Fiuu, effective 1 March 2024. With Mr Eng's extensive experience of more than 25 years in the payments industry and proven leadership, his appointment heralds a new chapter of growth and innovation for the company. Sheng Guan's vision and dedication align with Fiuu's commitment and delivering top-notch solutions and services. With his guidance, Fiuu aims to reach new heights in the fintech industry.

SK Hynix Vice President Kitae Kim presides over the company's HBM Sales & Marketing (S&M) department—an official leadership blog profile reveals that the executive played a key role in making the South Korean supplier's high bandwidth memory (HBM) product line "a superstar of the semiconductor memory industry in 2023." Growing demand for powerful AI processors has placed SK Hynix in a more comfortable position, following recessive spells—including a major sales downturn in 2022. NVIDIA is the market leader in AI processing chips, and many of its flagship enterprise designs are fitted with cutting-edge SK Hynix memory modules. Kim noted that his firm has many notable international clients: "HBM is a revolutionary product which has challenged the notion that semiconductor memory is only one part of an overall system...in particular, SK Hynix's HBM has outstanding competitiveness. Our advanced technology is highly sought after by global tech companies."

The VP outlined how artificial intelligence industries are fuelling innovations: "With the diversification and advancement of generative AI services, demand for HBM, an AI memory solution, has also exploded. HBM, with its high-performance and high-capacity characteristics, is a monumental product that shakes the conventional wisdom that memory semiconductors are only a part of the overall system. In particular, SK Hynix HBM's competitiveness is outstanding." Business is booming, so much so that nothing can be added to this year's HBM order books: "Proactively securing customer purchase volumes and negotiating more favorable conditions for our high-quality products are the basics of semiconductor sales operations. With excellent products in hand, it's a matter of speed. Our planned production volume of HBM this year has already sold out. Although 2024 has just begun, we've already started preparing for 2025 to stay ahead of the market."

News reports from Asia point to an ongoing price battle between major chip foundries in the region—sluggish market conditions in 2023 have caused the big industry names to adjust charges, in concerted efforts to retain customers. This situation has escalated in early 2024—news media outlets claim that mainland China-situated factories have plenty of new production capacity, and are therefore eager to get their order books filled. The reports point to: "Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), Hua Hong Semiconductor and Jinghe Semiconductor lowering the price of tape-out services to chip design companies in Taiwan." Industry insiders believe that several Taiwanese IC designers have jumped onto better deals, as offered by Chinese facilities—it is alleged that Samsung, GlobalFoundries, UMC and Powerchip have all experienced a worrying increase in customer cancellations (at the tail end of 2023). The loss of long-term clients has forced manufacturers—in South Korea and Taiwan—into a price war.

TrendForce's analysis of market trends stated: "Due to the mature manufacturing processes in China, unaffected by US export restrictions, the lowered wafer fabrication costs have become attractive to Taiwanese IC design companies seeking to enhance their cost competitiveness. Reports also indicate that this competitive pressure has forced Taiwan's foundries, UMC and PSMC, to follow suit by reducing their prices. UMC has lowered its 12-inch wafer foundry services by an average of 10-15%, while its 8-inch wafer services have seen an average price reduction of 20%. These price adjustments took effect in the fourth quarter of 2023." Samsung is reportedly slashing prices by ~10-15%, and is expressing a "willingness to negotiate" with key clients in early 2024. Reports state this is a major change in attitude for the South Korean chip giant—allegedly, leadership was unwilling to budge on 2023 tape-out costs. TrendForce reckons that TSMC's response was a bit quicker: "(having) already initiated pricing concessions last year, mainly related to mask costs rather than wafer fabrication. It was reported that these concessions primarily applied to the 7 nm process and were dependent on order volumes."

Today, Microsoft launched Copilot Pro, bringing its AI-powered productivity features to mainstream consumers. Available as a $20 per month add-on to Microsoft 365 Personal or Home subscriptions, Copilot Pro injects AI directly into Office apps to help users write faster and work smarter. The key features include AI-generated text suggestions and summaries in Word, automated data analysis and graph creation in Excel, and even entire PowerPoint presentation generation from a text prompt. Copilot can also suggest email replies in Outlook and assist with other productivity tasks. What sets Copilot Pro apart from the free Copilot assistant is its tight integration with Office apps and ability to summarize long Word documents and generate entire decks. The Pro version also offers priority access to the latest AI models from OpenAI, Microsoft's key partner. The regular Copilot uses GPT-4 during non-priority times, while the Copilot Pro aims to serve its users with GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo all the time.

While regular Copilot is available to anyone with a Microsoft account, Copilot Pro is reserved for those with active Microsoft 365 subscriptions. However, it brings previously business-only AI capabilities like PowerPoint generation to mainstream users. Microsoft's Divya Kumar, global head of marketing for search and AI at Microsoft, stated in a discussion for The Verge that Copilot Pro will continue to expand over time: "Given that pattern we've been in, that rolling thunder, you can expect we're going to do the exact same thing for Copilot Pro." So, while the initial launch focuses on core Office apps, expect Copilot Pro to pop up across Microsoft's software and services eventually. For now, it aims to boost productivity for Office power users willing to pay a little extra for AI assistance.

Today, alongside the Early Access launch of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Ubisoft+, Ubisoft is renaming its subscription plans. Ubisoft+ Multi-Access and PC Access will now become Ubisoft+ Premium, offering day-one new releases and early access where applicable, alongside premium editions, monthly rewards, and more. Ubisoft is also introducing a new offer: Ubisoft+ Classics on PC, a curated selection of popular back-catalog and live games. We sat down with Director of Subscription, Philippe Tremblay, to discuss the changes and reflect on the past four years of of Ubisoft+.

What are the core differences between Ubisoft+ Premium and Ubisoft+ Classics?
Philippe Tremblay: Premium means day one access to new releases and in some cases, like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, early access to upcoming new releases. This is on top of our extensive back catalog, where you'll have access to premium editions, DLC, and monthly rewards. All of this is offered on Xbox, PC, and Amazon Luna, and you'll only need to subscribe once to have access to these games across all these platforms. Players can subscribe to Ubisoft+ Premium for a monthly fee of $17.99.

During its Ignite conference, Microsoft introduced a duo of custom-designed silicon made to accelerate AI and excel in cloud workloads. First of the two is Microsoft's Azure Cobalt 100 CPU, a 128-core design that features a 64-bit Armv9 instruction set, implemented in a cloud-native design that is set to become a part of Microsoft's offerings. While there aren't many details regarding the configuration, the company claims that the performance target is up to 40% when compared to the current generation of Arm servers running on Azure cloud. The SoC has used Arm's Neoverse CSS platform customized for Microsoft, with presumably Arm Neoverse N2 cores.

The next and hottest topic in the server space is AI acceleration, which is needed for running today's large language models. Microsoft hosts OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, and many other AI services. To help make them run as fast as possible, Microsoft's project Athena now has the name of Maia 100 AI accelerator, which is manufactured on TSMC's 5 nm process. It features 105 billion transistors and supports various MX data formats, even those smaller than 8-bit bit, for maximum performance. Currently tested on GPT 3.5 Turbo, we have yet to see performance figures and comparisons with competing hardware from NVIDIA, like H100/H200 and AMD, with MI300X. The Maia 100 has an aggregate bandwidth of 4.8 Terabits per accelerator, which uses a custom Ethernet-based networking protocol for scaling. These chips are expected to appear in Microsoft data centers early next year, and we hope to get some performance numbers soon.

According to the latest NVIDIA knowledge base FAQ, the pricing structure of NVIDIA's GeForce NOW game streaming service is increasing. Applicable only to Canada and Europe, the price increases due to "increased operational costs in those areas," as NVIDIA notes. The customers paying in CAD, GBP, EUR, SEK, NOK, DKK, CZK, and PLN will experience a roughly 10-20% price increase of around one to two Euros, based on the GeForce NOW subscription level. However, there is a good chance to secure better prices for the following months, as active and new members who sign up for GeForce NOW before November 1st can lock in their memberships at the current pricing for six months before experiencing an increase.

The company notes that this also impacts membership gift card pricing adjustment, with gift cards purchased before November 1st honoring the old pricing and newly minted gift cards after November 1st getting a price increase. This change occurs across all subscription tiers, including the Priority tier for 1080p gaming at 60 FPS, the Ultimate tier for 4K experience at 120 FPS, and the Founders Ultimate tier, which increases gameplay duration from six to eight hours. You can see the updated pricing structure in the table below.