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Capcom has released the debut trailer and information for the Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin version 1.3.0 update, which is due out on September 2.

The update adds the new monsters Oroshi Kirin, Soulseer Mizutsune, and Elderfrost Gammoth, as well as new co-op quests and subquests.

Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin is available now for Switch and PC via Steam.

Get the trailer and patch notes below.

■ Version 1.3.0

Main Additions / Changes

• Additional Monsters
• Additional Co-Op Quests
  • September 2
    • ★8 (Explore) Water Eggs
    • ★8 (Explore) Ice Eggs
  • September 16
    • ★9 (Slay) Soulseer Mizutsune
    • ★9 (Slay) Elderfrost Gammoth
    • ★8 (Turn) Mizutsune
    • ★8 (Turn) Gammoth
    • ★8 (Explore) Fated Four Den
• Additional Subquests
  • September 2
    • ★8 Ice Phantom
    • ★4 (Special) Bag Me Some Bugs
  • September 16
    • ★8 Heavenly Eye
    • ★8 Unconquerable Mountain
    • ★8 (Special) Pluck Me Some Shrooms

Bug Fixes / Miscellaneous

• Adjusted some monster voices.
• Fixed an issue where a Lv. 99 Battle Buddy and their Lv. 99 Monstie revert to Lv. 1 because of a certain condition.
• Fixed an issue where an error message appears when accessing multiplayer functions as a result of choosing certain Skin Tones.
• Improved stability to address an issue where the story’s final cutscene stopped playing for some players. If you continue to encounter this issue, we recommend restarting the game periodically.
• Fixed an issue where some sound settings do not carry over upon rebooting the game under certain conditions.
• Fixed an issue where a change is not reflected in Red’s appearance after altering your Rider’s appearance with a Character Edit Ticket.
• Fixed an issue where Palamute’s scarf looks extended after entering a battle and returning to the field because of a certain condition.
• Fixed an issue where Kulve Taroth’s icon and name disappear from the quest description, after completing a certain battle.
• Other miscellaneous bug fixes have been made.

■ Version 1.3.0

Main Additions / Changes

• Additional Monsters
• Additional Co-Op Quests
  • ★8 (Explore) Water Eggs
  • ★8 (Explore) Ice Eggs
• Additional Subquest
  • ★4 (Special) Bag Me Some Bugs
  • ★8 Ice Phantom

Bug Fixes / Miscellaneous

• Adjusted some monster voices.
• Fixed an issue where a Lv. 99 Battle Buddy and their Lv. 99 Monstie revert to Lv. 1 because of a certain condition.
• Fixed an issue where an error message appears when accessing multiplayer functions as a result of choosing certain Skin Tones.
• Improved stability to address an issue where the story’s final cutscene stopped playing for some players. If you continue to encounter this issue, we recommend restarting the game periodically.
• Fixed an issue where a change is not reflected in Red’s appearance after altering your Rider’s appearance with a Character Edit Ticket.
• Fixed an issue where Palamute’s scarf looks extended after entering a battle and returning to the field because of a certain condition.
• Fixed an issue where Kulve Taroth’s icon and name disappear from the quest description, after completing a certain battle.
• Other miscellaneous bug fixes have been made.

■ Version 1.3.1 (available September 16)

Main Additions / Changes

• Additional Co-Op Quests
  • ★9 (Slay) Soulseer Mizutsune
  • ★9 (Slay) Elderfrost Gammoth
  • ★8 (Turn) Mizutsune
  • ★8 (Turn) Gammoth
  • ★8 (Explore) Fated Four Den
• Additional Subquests
  • ★8 Heavenly Eye
  • ★8 Unconquerable Mountain
  • ★8 (Special) Pluck Me Some Shrooms

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Google’s Chrome Beta 94 announcement mentions that Google is implementing some new web standards that could make browser-based gaming experiences even better. The soon-to-be-released WebCodecs could help make cloud gaming easier and faster, while the experimental WebGPU could make it easier for developers of games that run in the browser to tap into your computer’s power.

WebCodecs is an API designed to give developers better access to the video encoding/decoding codecs that are already bundled with your browser, which figure out what to do with video streams. While there are already methods of getting video to play in Chrome, they’re not necessarily designed for things like cloud gaming, which is best when it’s as low-latency as possible. WebCodecs is built to avoid overhead, making it easier to get the incoming video stream onto your screen as fast as possible, potentially with the help of hardware decoding. This will also, in theory, make it perform better than it currently does on slower machines (which are the kinds of computers where cloud gaming is most desirable anyhow).

The newer, more experimental WebGPU gives web developers better access to your computer’s graphics horsepower, by letting them hook into your computer’s native graphics API (similar to Apple’s Metal, Microsoft’s DirectX 12, or Vulkan). In simpler terms, it makes it easier for web developers to talk to your graphics card in a language it understands, without having to go through other layers that could slow things down. It’s meant to be a next-generation version of WebGL, which lets developers tap into the (now reasonably out of date) OpenGL framework. In the future, the tech should make it easier for developers to make graphically intense games that run in the browser, tapping into the full power of current-generation GPUs.

Both technologies have their place outside of gaming too. In a July 2020 talk, Google mentioned that Zoom was interested in using WebCodecs for videoconferencing, and WebGPU could be used to render 3D models in the browser or to accelerate machine learning models. It makes sense that they’d show up in Chrome, as these are all areas Google plays in, from cloud gaming with Google Stadia, to its own video conferencing apps. Both pieces of tech are open standards though, developed by the W3C, and other browser makers have begun testing them as well.

Of course, we probably won’t be seeing experiences powered by WebCodecs or WebGPU for a little while. While WebCodecs is actually getting close to release (it’s expected to be turned on by default in the upcoming Chrome 94), developers will still have to make their apps work with it. As for WebGPU, it’s currently in its experimental trial phase, which Google expects to end in early 2022. Whether it’ll end up as a feature at that point depends on how the trial goes, if the specification is done, and if enough people are interested in using it.

While these technologies may not make things that were impossible possible, they’re exciting nonetheless. When things are easier, or more flexible, it lowers the barrier of entry for developers. For gamers looking to play on the web, either through streaming or native games, the time developers save on figuring out how to get frames onto your screen is time they can spend making other parts of the experience better.

Puma is making a pair of Animal Crossing shoes alongside a line of clothes, and they’re not that far away. The sneakers, which feature various Animal Crossing-themed design flourishes, launch on September 18.

The shoe company posted a picture of the kicks on Twitter, showing off how the design incorporates Nintendo’s neighborhood-building game series. The main fabric of the shoe has a pattern of Animal Crossing faces on it (including K.K. Slider, of course), while the tongue has a leaf logo. The shoe’s colors also reflect the series, with pastel blues, teals, and earth colors. It’s evocative of the Animal Crossing-themed Switch, too.

Puma will also release a line of Animal Crossing-themed clothing alongside the shoes, although details have yet to be officially announced. However, the website Animal Crossing World shared an initial picture of a light-blue hoody from the collaboration that features the same faces that appear on the shoes.

We still don’t know what else will come in the collection or how much they’ll cost, but it’s certainly not a surprising collaboration: Animal Crossing: New Horizons remains one of the best-selling Switch games of all time. In addition, Nintendo continues to support it with new seasonal items and updates.

Over the weekend, Sony’s curious new PlayStation 5 hardware revision—same price, same performance, slightly changed internals—began finding its way into fans’ hands, and at least one rushed to figure out exactly why it weighs 0.6 lb less than the launch model. The most obvious answer, at least parceled out on a measuring scale, is a smaller, wholly redesigned heatsink element, though the person behind the discovery didn’t necessarily make the right call about this PS5 revision being “worse.”

Tech reporter Austin Evans posted his findings on YouTube on Saturday, after sourcing a new Japanese PS5 and upgrading his purchase to overnight shipping (holy bank account, Batman). The resulting breakdown is informative, though not entirely authoritative. Evans and fellow YouTuber Jimmy Champane tore down both the new PS5 and a launch model in short order, noticing almost immediately that the newer heatsink takes up far less physical real estate. Before the teardown is complete, one visible heatsink portion near the system’s primary fan is reduced enough that a finger can fit in, but that’s nothing compared to the final comparison.

The launch model’s heatsink included a complete airflow-encompassing plate of copper, along with conductive metal all along the way. The updated heatsink, on the other hand, has been re-engineered to reduce both the base copper plate and the amount of metal attached to the cooling system’s heat pipes, all while leaving the heat pipe concept intact—and likely still relying on a liquid metal application on PS5’s System-on-Chip (SoC). After weighing the two consoles while fully assembled, Evans then weighed the extracted heatsink constructions, finding these accounted for nearly the entirety of the 0.6 lb difference.

Do not mod your PS5 with shag carpeting

However, Evans’ findings come with a gross misunderstanding of what the heatsink assemblies are meant to do: dissipate internal heat by any means necessary. His basic conclusion of the new console revision’s thermals comes from pointing a thermal camera at both consoles’ rear exhaust ports while testing the console’s launch game Astro’s Playroom. In doing this, Evans measures an increase in exhaust temperatures that averages out to 5° Celsius on the new revision. However, he doesn’t run the same tests with either thermal cameras or direct temperature measurements aimed at more crucial internal spots like the SoC, the motherboard-soldered DIMM modules, or the SSD storage expansion slot.

Without that data in hand, it’s unclear whether the re-engineered heatsink is getting more heat away from those crucial system elements. If that’s indeed the case, Evans’ claim that he’d prefer to own the launch PS5, with its heavier, over-engineered heatsink, doesn’t actually add up. Arguably, the new PS5 revision’s jump in average exhaust temperature is worse for anyone who might stow their console in a cramped entertainment center, at which point an abundance of copper to distribute trapped, hot air might be the only thing keeping your sweaty PS5 SoC from buckling. But if you’re trapping a PS5 in a tiny glass enclosure, surrounding it in carpet, or otherwise misunderstanding how hot an average PS5 runs, no amount of copper will keep your console in decent shape forever.

As a test of a single revised PS5, of course, Evans’ examination could turn out to be anecdotal, but it stands to reason that Sony has a vested interest in both reducing manufacturing costs per console and not cheaping its way into a Red Ring of Death scenario. Getting an extra chip-shortage year to refine and touch up the PS5’s heatsink probably meant ample time to test both the SoC’s heat envelope and new airflow opportunities. And if reducing the material weight without impacting internal heat measures—or, heck, improving them—gets more consoles onto store shelves (and, according to Sony, gets them to per-unit profitability), we’ll take it.

Sony representatives did not immediately respond to Ars Technica’s request for comment.

Listing image by Austin Evans

Hidden inside the newest smartphones are more than a thousand tiny bits of ceramic to control the flow of electricity. Inside an electric vehicle, there are more than 10,000.

They are called MLCCs, for multilayer ceramic capacitors, and the surge of Covid-19 infections across East Asia is raising the risk that factories won’t be able to make enough of them.

Murata Manufacturing Co. of Kyoto, Japan, the biggest MLCC maker, closed a major factory for the final week of August because of a virus outbreak. Japan’s Taiyo Yuden Co. , another major maker, said in August that it suspended some operations at its factory in Malaysia because of employee infections.

“MLCC supply will remain very tight,” said Forrest Chen, an analyst at Taiwan-based research firm TrendForce.

The world has seen this year how a shortage of normally little-noticed components can hit the global supply chain. Global makers of cars and electronics have shut down factory lines and missed potential sales because they don’t have enough semiconductors.

Images and specs of the GoPro Hero 10 Black have apparently leaked in full. According to WinFuture, which accurately leaked the redesigned Hero 9 Black at this same time last year, the new flagship GoPro action camera will look pretty much the same as last year’s miniature cam only with a more powerful GP2 processor of GoPro design inside for improved overall performance.

The new GP2 processor is expected to provide a major boost in performance with support for 5.3K videos shot at a smooth 60fps, or 4K video recorded at 120fps which is useful for slo-mo. That’s an improvement from 5K30 and 4K60 on last year’s flagship. The Hero 10 Black can also record at 2.7K and 240fps for even more motion control but at reduced resolution. There’s also a new image sensor that bumps photo resolution from 20 megapixels to 23 megapixels, according to marketing materials and packaging seen by WinFuture.

Image: WinFuture

GoPro’s excellent in-camera software stabilization is also seeing an update to HyperSmooth 4.0 and TimeWarp 3.0 for time-lapse videos. Features like a watertight housing up to a depth of 10 meters, touch and voice control, and front and rear displays carry over from last year.

Ther’s no pricing or release information yet (the Hero 9 Black currently costs $399.99 without a subscription), but if history holds then an announcement should be coming within the next few weeks. Check out WinFuture for even more pics until then.

The upcoming Apple Watch will feature its first new hardware design in years, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter. Gurman says the Apple Watch Series 7 will have “a flatter display and edges,” seemingly continuing Apple’s quest to flatten the sides of every product in its lineup.

The display is said to be slightly larger than the current panels found in the Series 6, and the cases’ sizes will also be a little bigger than before, with each model getting a 1mm bump to 41mm and 45mm. Unverified leaked images last week suggested the same 41mm and 45mm sizing. Gurman says Apple will include multiple new watch faces to make the most of the extra screen real estate.

Physical appearance aside, the Series 7 will also have a faster processor, according to Gurman. However, there reportedly won’t be any major health-focused upgrades this year, though Apple “may” include a body-temperature sensor in next year’s model.

An updated design for the Series 7 would continue an every-three-years cadence for major Apple Watch hardware refreshes. The first and last time Apple changed the case design of the Apple Watch was the Series 4; that basic appearance has remained unchanged through the Series 6, save the introduction of new materials and finishes.

Apple usually announces new watches in September, so a reveal for the Series 7 may not be far off. Last year the Series 6 and SE watches were a headline announcement at Apple’s September event, since the iPhone 12 unveiling was pushed back to October.