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It’s likely that if you are reading these words on this website, you already know how hard it can be to get your hands on the new consoles. Well, I’ve got some bad news straight from Xbox VP of gaming Phil Spencer: Finding a console ain’t getting easier anytime soon.

As spotted and transcribed by VGC, Phil Spencer spoke to The Wrap recently and explained that while chip shortages were partly to blame for the ongoing console shortages, there was more going on with the situation.

“I think it’s probably too isolated to talk about it as just a chip problem,” Spencer said. “When I think about, what does it mean to get the parts necessary to build a console today, and then get it to the markets where the demand is, there are multiple kind of pinch points in that process. And I think regretfully it’s going to be with us for months and months, definitely through the end of this calendar year and into the next calendar year.”

Spencer claims he and everyone at Mircosoft is working hard to get consoles out the door and into people’s homes, but he expects it will continue to be a challenge for “quite a while.”

“The thing that’s most disappointing is just the fan disappointment,” Spencer admitted. “People really want this new generation of consoles—they’re good consoles, both from us and the other platform holders—and they want the new functionality.”

Read More: You Still Don’t Need A PS5

Almost a year after next-gen consoles first launched, Phil Spencer’s comments are just the latest bit of evidence that things aren’t getting better anytime soon. The continuing problems created by global chip shortages, issues with covid-19, extremely high demand, shitty resellers, and bots have combined to create a perfect and terrible storm that means most players are still unable to find either next-gen console.

It’s even become tricky to find an older c0nsole. I ran into this not too long ago when earlier this year I tried to go to a store to buy an Xbox One for a younger family member and discovered the store had zero PS4s or Xboxs to sell me.

An actor from Deathloop was able to use his star power and Bethesda’s corporate connections to score a PS5 recently, but for most folks that’s not a viable option. Instead, to get your hands on a PS5 or Xbox Series X you’ll need to jump through some hoops.

 

The final Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC fighter broadcast airs next week on October 5th. So, how is the game’s director Masahiro Sakurai killing time until then? With the PlayStation 5, of course!

No, really – in his latest social media post on Twitter, he’s shared an image of a PS5 DualSense Wireless controller. According to the Google translation, he’s upgraded to a 2TB SSD after Sony’s recent firmware update for the system.

If you know about Sakurai’s love of gaming, it’s obviously no surprise to see him with a PS5. We’ve previously seen his extensive library of video game systems in some Smash Bros. fighter reveal presentations and he’s got quite the collection:

It’s also been documented how he played 242 PlayStation games in 2019. Woah!

While most fans believe this is just Sakurai sharing an update about what he’s been up to recently, as usual, there are some fans out there who are reading into things – perhaps a little too much.

Some of the speculation based on this tweet seems to be suggesting the final fighter will be a PlayStation representative – and some comments are going the extra mile, referencing Crash Bandicoot. Others appear to be making jokes about “PlayStation” and “SSD” being confirmed for battle.

Heck, for all we know he might be teasing a sequel to PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

Are you glad to see Sakurai is finally taking some time out from Smash Bros. development? Do you think the above tweet is teasing anything? Share your own thoughts down below.

The latest high-resolution pictures of the Intel Core i9-12900K Alder Lake flagship CPU have been leaked by Yuuki_AnS. The leaker has obtained the latest engineering sample of the chip that was being sold over in the Chinese black market for a starting price of $700 US.

Intel’s Core i9-12900K Alder Lake Flagship CPU Gets High-Res Photos, New Hardware Guided Scheduling Onboard

The pictures give us a bit better glimpse of the Intel Core i9-12900K CPU which is the flagship within the Alder Lake 12th Gen Core lineup and also its 1700 contact pads which will make it compatible with LGA 1700 motherboards. The specific CPU sample is the ‘QX7H’ variant & falls within the ‘ES2’ spec. The side profile pictures show that the PCB on the chip is quite thick and will feature a more rectangular design compared to the square Intel chips we have seen over a decade now.

Intel Core i9-12900K Spotted Running on Z690 AORUS Tachyon Motherboard & DDR5-8000 Memory

Aside from the pictures, we managed to get hold of a new slide for the Intel Alder Lake CPUs where the company outlined its brand new HGS+ (Hardware Guided Scheduling+) feature. Intel states that its new core architecture with HGS+ prioritizes and manages the distribution of workloads sending tasks to the best thread for the job, thereby optimizing performance per watt. This feature will be enabled by default (on select SKUs) and no user action is required to activate this technology. The HGS+ feature is a combination of hardware support in the processor and software optimizations in the latest Windows (11) operating system.

This technology shouldn’t be confused with Intel’s Thread Director as that’s another feature set for the Intel Alder Lake CPUs but both Thread Director and HGS+ will work in tandem to optimize the performance of hybrid CPUs like Intel’s 12th Gen processor on Windows 11. You can learn about Intel’s new HGS technology in detail in this article published by UnderFox over at Coreteks.

It is likely that the new HGS+ scheduler only works on Intel Alder Lake 12th Gen CPUs with hybrid core technology. We know certain SKUs will only feature Golden Cove cores so there won’t be that much of a use for HGS+ on those chips.

PCIe Gen 5.0 SSDs With Phison’s Next-Gen E26 Controller To Start Shipping in 2022, Up To 16 GB/s Speeds

Intel Core i9-12900K 16 Core / 24 Thread Desktop CPU

The Intel Core i9-12900K will be the flagship chip in the 12th Gen Alder Lake Desktop CPU lineup. It will feature 8 Golden Cove cores and 8 Gracemont cores for a total of 16 cores (8+8) and 24 threads (16+8). The P-cores (Golden Cove) will operate at a maximum boost frequency of up to 5.3 GHz with 1-2 active cores and 5.0 GHz with all-cores active while the E-cores (Gracemont) will operate at 3.90 GHz across 1-4 cores and up to 3.7 GHz when all cores are loaded.

The CPU will feature 30 MB of L3 cache and TDP values are maintained at 125W (PL1) and 228W (PL2). The ‘K’ variant is expected to retail at $599 US while the Non-K variant will retail at $509 US.

Intel’s Alder Lake Desktop CPUs will feature both DDR5 and DDR4 memory controllers and 600-series motherboards will also come with DDR5/DDR4 specific options. High-end motherboards will retain DDR5 while the more mainstream offerings will open up DDR4 support too. The Intel Alder Lake CPU lineup is expected to launch in November along with the respective Z690 platform and DDR5 memory kits.

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter recently, you may have noticed Kingdom Hearts’ Sora has been trending. That’s thanks to the ever-vocal Super Smash Bros. Ultimate community once again debating the potential of Square Enix’s big-shoed hero joining the already-packed fighting game as its final new combatant.

This isn’t a new song and dance for the game’s community, of course. The conversation goes back to at least 2016, when modders Nibrock.Rock and KTH put Sora in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate using Shulk as the base. Hell, even pro Smash player Tyrell “Nakat” Coleman told Kotaku over Twitter DMs that he’s been begging for the character’s inclusion for “over 10 years.” That’s a long time for one request.

The discussion resurfaced this past week for two main reasons: Sora’s got as many haters and as he has stans, and on October 5 game director Masahiro Sakurai will reveal Smash Bros. Ultimate’s long-awaited final DLC character. Needless to say, there’s lots of speculation about who it could be. And the game’s community is very much torn when it comes to Sora.

Some fans, like Twitter user 2xDana_, don’t want Sora in the game because of the character’s Disney ties. 2xDana_ told us that while they dislike Disney’s business practices, they also fear the company “would have too big of an influence in their characters’ design in Smash, taking away from Sakurai and the design team’s vision.”

The Disney connection was a contentious point among fans, but so too was Sora’s look. IGN senior editor Kat Bailey echoed that sentiment, telling Kotaku over Twitter DMs she “dislikes his design—the big shoes, the hair, all of it.” Bailey also found Sora to be “the least interesting element of Kingdom Hearts,” though she did enjoy the myriad Disney references and Final Fantasy callbacks.

On the other side of the debate are Sora-loving diehards who would possibly kill to see the character join a Smash roster. An artist who goes by the Twitter handle Caehum, who happened to post a super-popular render of Sora in front of the Smash logo, told Kotaku that Sora was one of their favorite characters ever, and said they’d straight-up buy Super Smash Bros. Ultimate if Sakurai added Sora. (They don’t own the game, but have access to it via game sharing on Nintendo Switch.)

And of course, there’s pro Smash player and Joker/Pichu main Tyrell “Nakat” Coleman. Nakat, sporting #Sora4Smash in his Twitter name, told Kotaku that Kingdom Hearts fans have been “suffering” while waiting for the next mainline entry. (The long-awaited Kingdom Hearts 3 finally launched in 2019.)

“Sora is my favorite video game character and I have been begging for his inclusion for over 10 years now,” Nakat said over DM. “I think he fits in [Super Smash Bros. Ultimate] as an exciting character not only lore-wise, but gameplay as well. With how big he is as a gaming icon I think it is the proper sendoff to Sakurai’s years of work and having most of the world happy with his inclusion is a bonus.”

As a Kingdom Hearts fan myself, I can’t claim to be an unbiased observer. I think Sora would be a cool addition to the Smash roster. He’s got a deep moveset that spans multiple games, so there’s plenty of material to pull from, with copious keyblades and outfits to choose from.

That said! To be honest, I actually don’t want to see Sora in the game, in part because there are too many damn sword characters already. By my count, and according to Screen Rant, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has 20 bladed fighters. If Sora were added, that would mean some 25% of the 82 combatants use swords. That’s way too many! Couple this with the glut of echo fighters, and Sora starts to feel a little redundant in the roster.

So if not Sora, then who? Popular theories range from Jill Valentine to Tifa Lockhart, with dark horses including Dr. Eggman and Phoenix Wright. But Kingdom Hearts and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate YouTuber HMK, who’s released several videos about why Sora should be in the game, has one specific selection.

“While I had some heavily desired picks that eventually became Mii Costumes such as Travis and Dante, when it comes to another big character, I would want…It would definitely be Master Chief from Halo,” HMK told Kotaku over email.” Time to Finish the Fight!”

And yes, as usual, approximately half the internet is still holding out hope for Goku.

All will be revealed on Tuesday, though, when Sakurai-san will debut the game’s 82nd, final character, which will be the final component of the Fighters Pass Vol. 2 DLC. What could well be the final Smash Direct will begin on October 5 at 10 a.m. ET.

Amazon’s colonialist resource extraction MMO, New World, is currently the hottest new game on Steam, quite literally in some instances. More than a few players are reporting loud fans and high graphics card temperatures while running the game, and occasionally even just while queueing for it. And then there are the reports of the game bricking expensive GPUs altogether.

“We have people sending in emails that their GPUs are no longer working after playing New World,” custom PC builder website PowerGPU wrote on Twitter yesterday, as first spotted by PC Gamer. “All this means is they didn’t play the beta and we were anticipating those that didn’t to have the same issues.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

New World’s PC requirements are nothing too demanding, even for an MMO. But the game can be a resource hog, taking full advantage of higher-end components when they’re available. This problem cropped up over the summer during New World’s beta, leading more than one EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 card to get cooked in the process.

Amazon pushed out a patch to cap New World’s framerate in an effort to keep GPU loads in line, but the real culprit appeared to be manufacturing defects in the particular series of cards affected, as EVGA later explained in an interview. The cards were doomed to fail at some point; New World just happened to be the canary in the GPU mine, so to speak.

That’s why PowerGPU now says it was expecting this to happen once more players with potentially faulty graphics cards started giving New World a try. It’s not just EVGA GeForce RTX 3090s either. Gigabyte cards appear to be in the mix as well. “My ‘Gigabyte 3080 Ti OC’ was destroyed by New World has the bug been patched yet?” wrote one player on the game’s subreddit. There are several other anecdotal reports of cards bricking there, as well as general complaints about spikes in GPU temperatures when playing.

Even if New World isn’t the direct culprit, it’s still unfortunate for the folks involved. While it’s better to find out there are production issues in a $2,000 card while it’s still under warranty, ongoing inventory shortages and supply chain issues mean sellers aren’t exactly drowning in replacement parts. In the meantime, New World players can take the extra precaution of making sure their graphics card firmware and drivers are up to date, and that the game’s framerate is capped in the settings menu.

Patents are always a rather intriguing thing to track in the technology industry – sometimes they represent ideas and products that’ll never see the light of day, but there are occasions when they give clues to future releases. A freshly released US patent application could be the latter, as it addresses technology that could allow Nintendo to boost visuals in its hardware.

Opened on 25th March 2020 and released publicly yesterday (30th September), the application is titled ‘systems and methods for machine learned image conversion’, and though the initial language can be a headscratcher it is essentially an idea similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS. That’s short for Deep Learning Super Sampling in NVIDIA’s case, which works on some of its GPUs to upscale image resolution and quality in real time, while also being remarkably efficient and ensuring that the graphics card is under less strain. It’s impressive technology, and it’s been front and centre in a lot of talk about how Nintendo could produce a new Switch-style portable device that outputs higher resolution visuals while still working with low power output. Digital Foundry has explored this in detail.

What makes this application intriguing is that Nintendo is clearly exploring this internally – a named party on the application is Alexandre Delattre, who is a co-founder of Nintendo European Research and Development. It’s also acknowledged in the ‘Introduction’ of the patent that this is an area being explored throughout the industry:

Machine learning can give computers the ability “learn” a specific task without expressly programming the computer for that task. One type of machine learning system is called convolutional neural networks (CNNs)—a class of deep learning neural networks. Such networks (and other forms of machine learning) can be used to, for example, help with automatically recognizing whether a cat is in a photograph. The learning takes places by using thousands or millions of photos to “train” the model to recognize when a cat is in a photograph. While this can be a powerful tool, the resulting processing of using a trained model (and training the model) can still be computationally expensive when deployed in a real-time environment.

Image up-conversion is a technique that allows for conversion of images produced in a first resolution (e.g., 540p resolution or 960×540 with 0.5 megapixels) to a higher resolution (e.g., 1080p resolution, 1920×1080, with 2.1 megapixels). This process can be used to show images of the first resolution on a higher resolution display. Thus, for example, a 540p image can be displayed on a 1080p television and (depending on the nature of the up-conversion process) may be shown with increased graphical fidelity as compared to if the 540p image were displayed directly with traditional (e.g., linear) upscaling on a 540 television. Different techniques for image up-conversion can present a tradeoff between speed (e.g., how long the process takes for converting a given image) and the quality of the up-converted image. For example, if a process for up-converting is performed in real-time (e.g., such as during a video game), then the image quality of the resulting up-converted image may suffer.

Accordingly, it will be appreciated that new and improved techniques, systems, and processes are continually sought after in these areas of technology.

Ultimately it shouldn’t be a surprise that Nintendo is researching upscaling through machine learning, as it is likely to be a vital factor should the company opt to retain a Switch-style form factor while offering greater graphical fidelity in the future. Whether Nintendo will still utilise NVIDIA technology in future devices is also interesting; if it develops its own solution it may not need NVIDIA’s DSSL tools. Of course, depending on what and who you believe, there are reports that ‘4K’ development units are already out in the wild.

Let us know what you think in the comments!

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Dozens of News4Jax viewers called the newsroom and emailed about a loud boom they heard on Thursday night. Dishes and windows rattling, brief boom, “sudden and powerful” was how one News4jax viewer described it.

Some said it shook their house. What was it?

It’s highly likely what you heard was a sonic boom from SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft heading for a splashdown.

The video above was taken by a News4Jax viewer.

The spacecraft had just completed SpaceX’s 23rd cargo resupply mission to the space station. This is an unmanned craft that came through the atmosphere right over Jacksonville and splashdown just off the east coast.

Here’s more from SpaceX: