The investor report noted that Alan Wake 2 is the only project close to launch. The sequel to the recently released remaster of the 2010 beloved Xbox 360/PC title is in “full production” but still needs work. “There is still a lot of work to be done, but the game is coming together on all fronts,” said Virtala. Despite all the finishing work, Creative Director Sam Lake told IGN in May that a large portion of the game was already playable....

You will find that a handful of sites and many extensions don’t work properly yet, and although that’s mostly a non-issue, you’ll undoubtedly need a working browser at some point. Sadly, you won’t be able to use your preexisting version of Firefox (presumably 3.6.x) without closing the beta first, and that can be annoying. Of course, you could just hop on Internet Explorer, but what orange-blooded Firefox advocate would stoop to such a level?...

In response to US sanctions against Russia, its state space agency, Roscosmos, said it will no longer supply the United States with rocket engines. Reuters notes that Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the agency, made the somewhat humorous announcement on state-sponsored outlet Russia 24 TV. “In a situation like this, we can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what,” said Rogozin....

The results were interesting, though for the most part the margins weren’t overly different to what we had seen in our original CPU review. That is, performance in esports style of games didn’t differ greatly than when we tested modern AAA games using high and ultra graphics quality presets. We had found the i5-10600K to be 6% faster on average than the R7 3700X when gaming, and that margin barely changed to 7% using low quality settings in games such as Rocket League, Fortnite and PUBG....

These results are skewed in Intel’s favor a bit by the enormous disparity in MATLAB. Now, the Core i7 CPU here is a higher-tier model, but the equivalent Ryzen 7 2700U is only 10 percent faster on paper at best, so that’s won’t be enough to close the gap. It’s worth mentioning that most people will be upgrading to Ryzen Mobile from an older dual-core Intel CPU, which the Ryzen 5 2500U trounces with four-core power....

Depending on the workload, the Ryzen 5 2500U either sits between the Core i7-8550U and the Core i7-7500U, or in the mix amongst Intel’s 7th-gen Kaby Lake CPUs. Intel’s latest 8th-gen CPUs were routinely around 10 to 25 percent faster in these tests, which is an interesting result but let’s look at some more tests before we conclude anything.

Lars Wingefors, co-founder and CEO of Embracer Group, the Swedish media holding giant that counts Saints Row developer Volition and publisher Deep Silver among its many subsidiaries, spoke about the game during Embracer’s AGM on Wednesday (via Axios’ Stephen Totilo). Wingefors acknowledged that the reception to Saints Row has been “polarized.” He added, “There is a lot of things that could be said and details around it. I’m happy to see a lot of gamers and fans happy....

Samsung’s SSD 850 Evo M.2 500GB was 33% faster than the 840 Evo with a throughput of 267MB/s. That said, it was still 9% slower than the Crucial MX100 when copying a single large file. The 250GB mSATA model was 7% slower than the larger 500GB models. We only saw an 18% performance improvement when going from the old 840 Evo to the new 850 Evo M.2 500GB and 850 Evo mSATA 250GB, the latter two of which were just 3% slower than the Crucial MX100....

The Samsung Galaxy S II offers users a colorful and usable threaded text messaging application that can also be used for multimedia messaging. Instant messaging support in the phone includes Windows Live, Google Talk, and Yahoo! - but no AIM. Users can opt for either for Samsung’s own keyboard for text input or they can use the very capable Swype keyboard, which allows users to trace words with a fingertip....

Unlike LCD displays of this size and resolution, the Galaxy S5’s panel uses a PenTile subpixel matrix, which means there isn’t a dedicated red, green and blue subpixel per pixel in this display. This reduces the true resolution of the panel and, if this was an early AMOLED from 2011, would give it a grainy appearance. Luckily the technology has come a long way since then, and partially thanks to the high pixel density, the effects of the PenTile matrix are virtually unnoticeable....

CrystalDiskMark confirms that the SanDisk Extreme II 240GB is able to sustain high-speed read performance with a transfer rate of 517.7MB/s, faster than virtually every other SSD tested. CrystalDiskMark also confirms strong write performance for the newcomer, putting it roughly on par with the OCZ Vector and Vertex 450 SSDs. The Extreme II’s random 512K read performance is surprisingly weak with a throughput of just 272.3MB/s, whereas most modem SSDs have no problem breaking 400MB/s....

For Windows & Linux New Tab: Ctrl + T Reopen last tab: Ctrl + Shift + T Open link in a new tab: Ctrl + Click (+ Shift moves to the new tab) Switch to the next tab: Ctrl + Tab Switch to the previous tab: Ctrl + Shift + Tab Switch to tab #(1, 2, 3…): Ctrl + Number (“1” goes to the first tab, and so on) Close the current tab: Ctrl + W Open new Private browsing window: Ctrl + Shift + N Get to the URL address bar: Ctrl + L Add ....

Smartphone vendors are licking their wounds after an all-around lousy year in sales. Analysts at Canalys estimate worldwide shipments for Q4 2022 dipped 17 percent compared to 2021. Full-year sales were down to less than 1.2 billion, a decline of 11 percent year-over-year. It’s the worst performance the industry has seen in a decade. Apple and Samsung faired slightly better than the rest, with the Cupertino powerhouse wresting away 25 percent of the market over the Korean OEM’s 20 percent — both gains in the industry....

On October 29, 2021, EVGA Product Manager Jacob Freeman revealed that a shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX 3000-series cards had been hijacked while en route from San Francisco to EVGA’s Southern California distribution center. Freeman said the stolen cards’ values started at $329.99— likely the RTX 3060—and went all the way up to $1959.99—the RTX 3090. Those are the MSRPs, so their actual selling prices, and value, would have been a lot higher....

In September 2020, Square Enix announced a Dragon Quest mobile game titled Dragon Quest Tact. A small, relatively unknown studio named Aiming was working on the project. Some employees within Square Enix had heard this developer was working on a new entry for the beloved DQ franchise before the announcement and bought loads of stock in the company. According to Japanese news outlet FFN, Tokyo authorities arrested Taisuke Sazaki Thursday evening on charges of insider trading....

VRR is one of the enticing elements of the PlayStation 5 for those with compatible TVs or monitors, but unlike the Xbox consoles, it has taken a long, long time for this to arrive. PlayStation Platform Experience Senior Vice President Hideaki Nishino announced the upcoming arrival in a blog explaining the benefits of VRR, which syncs the display’s refresh rate to the PS5’s output to remove screen tearing and frame pacing problems, enabling smoother gameplay and reducing input lag....

Sony’s official specs for the PS VR2 are pretty much in line with rumors reported in May last year. The company’s next-gen VR system will offer a 4K OLED HDR gaming experience, with 2,000 x 2,040 pixels refreshing at 90/120Hz per eye. Unlike the current-gen PS VR with its external camera, the VR2 headset will have four integrated cameras (including IR) for eye and motion tracking. The system will also benefit from Sony’s Tempest 3D Audio tech and boost immersion with a vibration motor in the headset for added feedback....

It’s obvious what this product does, but is it worth getting one? If they were as important as a graphics card, then surely they’d be promoted and reviewed a lot more. Well, read on as we don our deerstalker hats and try to solve the case of the sound card conundrum. A quick trip down history lane Silicon chips dedicated to creating sound have existed in home computers for many decades....

Star Wars Battlefront has been met with tremendous anticipation. Its 5-day open beta attracted a staggering 9.5 million players across all platforms, who were willing to download over 8GB of game content, making it EA’s largest beta test ever. Although this is the third release in the Star Wars Battlefront series, it is not considered a sequel to the previous games but a reboot. This means unlike past Battlefront entries, this title does not have its own story and instead reinterprets the stories and battles presented in the original trilogy....

During the company’s earnings call on Wednesday, chief marketing officer Brady Brewer said Starbucks will be exploring new concepts such as ownership and community-based membership models. Part of that push will involve digital collectibles, some of which could be accompanied by “engaging” content experiences. Brewer said Starbucks anticipates launching a digital line later this year, but some believe the NFT ship has already sailed. The Wall Street Journal cited data from decentralized asset tracker NonFungible highlighting a 92 percent decline in daily NFT sales, from a peak of around 225,000 in September to roughly 19,000 this week....