Category: Tech

AMD just commented on its recent Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU shortages, and the culprit is pretty unexpected.

Are you looking for a new phone? Has your choice come down to a OnePlus 13R or iPhone 15? Let’s compare.

Three games are available to PS Plus subscribers throughout the month of January, so you should check those out this weekend.

Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 earbuds are on sale for $180 via Amazon. This is the first serious discount of the year and represents a savings of 28 percent. It’s not a record-low, but it’s darn close.

The AirPods Pro 2 earbuds have made a real name for themselves since originally launching back in 2022. They easily made our list of the best wireless earbuds, and with good reason. These are a marked improvement over the prior iteration in nearly every way. The sound quality is fantastic and the earbuds now feature active noise cancellation.

In our official review, we heaped particular praise on the transparency mode. It sounds so natural, especially when compared to some rival earbuds out there. You can leave the AirPods in during a real-life conversation and likely not even notice you’re wearing them. Other features include ultra-fast pairing with Apple devices, hands-free Siri and spatial audio. 

A recent software update also brought a reduction in wireless audio latency, which should be great for mobile gaming. Another boon for gamers? Voice quality has gotten an uptick, thanks to 16-bit, 48kHz audio during live chats.

The major issue with these earbuds is the price, which has been alleviated slightly by today’s sale. As a minor gripe, the touch gestures do take a bit of practice to get right, but it’s not rocket science.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-airpods-pro-2-are-on-sale-for-the-first-time-this-year-193537995.html?src=rss

At CES 2025, NVIDIA introduced DLSS 4, the latest version of its real-time image upscaling technology, and announced that it will come to all RTX GPUs. That includes the RTX 20 series that was discontinued back in 2020, but the older models aren’t getting all its features.

In the new GeForce RTX 50 series models, DLSS 4 will enable Multi Frame Generation. This feature will generate up to three additional frames for every traditionally rendered one, and it can help multiply frame rates by up to eight times more than traditional brute-force rendering. NVIDIA claims 4K 240 FPS fully ray-traced gaming will be possible thanks to Multiple Frame Generation when using its GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, the new $1,999 flagship GPU arriving later this month.

In addition, DLSS 4 represents what the company is calling the “biggest upgrade to its AI models” since the release of DLSS 2. DLSS Ray Reconstruction, DLSS Super Resolution and DLAA will now be powered by the same advanced architecture powering AI models, such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The company says that translates to improved temporal stability, less ghosting and higher detail of objects in motion.

A total of 75 games and apps will support DLSS 4 from day zero. When the new RTX 50 cards come out, games like Alan Wake and Cyberpunk 2077 will be updated with the ability to take advantage of the technology’s Multi Frame Generation feature. More titles will be updated with support for Multi Frame in the future, including Black Myth: Wukong, while upcoming ones like Doom: The Dark Ages and Dune: Awakening will support the feature at launch.

The GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs aren’t getting Multi Frame Generation, but they are getting DLSS 4’s enhanced frame generation, enhanced ray reconstruction, super resolution and deep leaning anti-aliasing capabilities. Meanwhile, GeFore RTX 30 series and RTX 20 series GPUs are getting the last three. 

NVIDIA

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/nvidia-announced-dlss-4-will-come-to-all-rtx-gpus-044835926.html?src=rss

Registration for the closed network test of Elden Ring Nightreign are open, publisher Bandai Namco announced today. The sign-up period for the co-op Elden Ring spinoff officially started on January 10 at 9AM ET and will run until January 20 at 9AM ET. You can add your name to the list now on Bandai Namco’s website.

The close network test will be spread across five different sessions on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S, running from February 14 through February 15th. You’ll be able to log in on each of those days from 6AM ET to 9AM ET or 10PM ET to 1AM ET the following day to put the game through its paces.

Selected players will be able to play “a portion of the game prior to the full game launch,” according to Bandai Namco’s sign-up page, with the goal of getting a sense of how the company’s servers and online systems will handle a mass of fans playing simultaneously. As to what that “portion” will actually contain, Bandai Namco says that players will get “to try the game’s co-op experience,” partnering with two other players to tackle a three day cycle filled with “increasingly challenging enemies and bosses.”

Nightreign appears to use many of the mechanics, armor, weapons and abilities of Elden Ring, but drops them in a revamped setting, “Limveld,” that’s design to change every time you play. Per Bandai Namco, you start each cycle of the game in the familiar Roundtable Hold, where you can pick one of eight characters with unique abilities and “Ultimates.” The Limveld map you play in will shrink each night, and introduce a new boss that if beaten, lets you progress to the next day. The process continues until the final, third night when you face off against a “Nightlord.” And if you fail at any point in the process and have to start a new run (as many will likely do) you’ll earn a relic that lets you “customize and upgrade” your character.

Elden Ring Nightreign was an unexpectedly announced at The Game Awards in 2024, and was a pretty big surprise, not only because Shadow of the Erdtree came out that same year, but because the game’s structure seems remarkably different than anything developer FromSoftware has made before. Anyone lucky enough to be a part of the network test will now be able to see how different it actually feels.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/you-can-now-sign-up-to-test-elden-rings-co-op-spinoff-192012608.html?src=rss

Skate City was an Apple Arcade launch title way back in 2019, developed by Agens and published by Snowman, a company well-known for its mobile-first games like Alto’s Adventure, the “sequel” Alto’s Odyssey, When Cards Fall and a handful of other intriguing titles. It’s been over five years since Skate City first arrived, but the Snowman / Agens team is back with Skate City: New York, which is out on Apple Arcade today. 

There have been a number of content updates to the original game over the years, but this is a full-fledged new title that feels quite familiar but also has a number of improvements and updates. I had a chance to try Skate City: New York a few days before its launch, and I also spoke with Snowman’s Ryan Cash and Andrew Schimmel about the new game, which they said has been in the works for a good three years now. 

As with the first Skate City, you’re rolling left-to-right in classic side-scrolling format here. To make things accessible, you can pull off tricks by swiping in one of eight directions on the lower half of the screen; the left side is for ollie-based tricks while the right shifts you to nollie. You don’t have to do anything precise to land, just launch the trick and the game will make sure you hit the ground rolling (unless you land on stairs or an obstacle, of course). That’s the basic starting point, but you can also do spins, manuals, grinds and more. It’s simpler than a game like the classic Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series or the recent OlliOlli World, but there’s still a lot of timing and dexterity involved in really nailing your runs. 

As you’d expect, the visuals are more dynamic and the backgrounds are much-improved over the original (which was still a lovely game). But what sets this one apart the most, according to Schimmel, is the fact the “Pro Skate” mode, which is the most involved part of the game, uses procedurally-generated levels. 

“We didn’t want to limit ourselves to the original [game’s] loops through the city, but instead make something that was more adaptive and dynamic,” Schimmel said. “Procedural generation was the answer and the biggest technical challenge.” It’s not something that I was able to pick up on immediately, since I’ve only played the game for a couple hours, but Schimmel’s confident it’ll make Skate City: New York have even more replay-ability than the original.

Snowman / Agens

Pro Skate reminds me a lot of Snowman’s Alto’s Adventure, but translated to skating — the goal is to go as far as you can and rack up as many points as possible while completing three objectives to level your progress up. Objectives are things like “land three 180-degree spins” or “grind for 100 meters.” But with levels more unpredictable than in the prior game, you’ll need to be better at reacting on-the-fly to new obstacles, which can end your run but also give you an opportunity for a good grind or trick. 

As with all of Snowman’s games, there are no in-app purchases here; instead, you’ll get points for completing challenges and leveling up in Pro Skate. You can then use those to customize your character with the much more flexible and expanded Skate Shop. You can tweak your character’s body, hair, facial characteristics, clothes, skateboard and so forth. I haven’t played around with it a ton yet but it’s obviously right off the bat that there’s a lot more personalization here. 

As with Skate City, Snowman promises that there will be a steady stream of fresh challenges and more parts of the city to explore over the next year and beyond. Schimmel referred to it as a “live services” game even though there’s no monetization aspect to it. I also asked how the team decided to release Skate City: New York through Apple Arcade versus having it be a one-time payment or even including paid updates in the game — Cash called it an “easy choice.”

“We haven’t done a paid up-front game since Alto’s Odyssey in 2018,” Cash said. “Apple Arcade and Netflix Games are where we’re at right now. And it was an easy choice when talking about Skate City: New York, because the first game was a launch title and found a lot of success there. It just made sense to bring it back to Apple Arcade.” The first Skate City eventually came to consoles and PC, as well, and Cash said that was definitely under consideration for the future, but the goal is to make a mobile-first title as good as it can be. 

While the game doesn’t feel wildly different than its predecessor, Skate City: New York still feels like a premium mobile game at a time when those can be hard to find. And Snowman and Agens have done a great job of balancing the pick-up-and-play aspects of a good mobile game with a deeper experience, at least from what I’ve seen so far. “We want a seven-year-old who’s excited about skateboarding to have fun,” Cash said, “as well as people like us who grew up loving skateboarding and really want a challenge.”

Skate City: New York is out today exclusively on Apple Arcade.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/skate-city-new-york-is-a-mobile-game-that-manuals-the-line-between-casual-and-deep-play-191526652.html?src=rss

The long-awaited streaming service Venu Sports is no longer happening, according to The Hollywood Reporter and others. The sports-focused streaming service was to be a joint offering by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox. There was no concrete reason given, other than corporate-speak.

“In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels,” the companies wrote in a statement.

We assume this move will also involve some serious layoffs, as Venu has been percolating for a while. To that end, the companies said they are “proud of the work that has been done on Venu to date and grateful to the Venu staff, whom we will support through this transition period.” There are no details as to what this support will entail.

The real reason for the shutdown is likely due to ongoing legal woes. Just as one threat disappeared this week, with Fubo dropping an antitrust lawsuit and joining forces with Disney, another popped up in its place. Days after Disney announced a deal to merge Hulu + Live TV with Fubo, a pair of satellite TV companies argued against lifting a pre-existing injunction that delayed the launch of Venu.

DirecTV and EchoStar suggested that Fubo and Disney’s newfound friendship doesn’t resolve alleged antitrust issues surrounding Venu Sports. DirecTV wrote to a judge, saying that the joint venture “restores an anticompetitive runway” for the companies “to control the future of the live pay TV market.” EchoStar wrote a similar letter.

An unnamed source familiar with Venu Sports told The Hollywood Reporter that the move to cancel the streaming service was made in the past few days and that the aforementioned legal snafu played a role.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/rip-to-the-entirely-hypothetical-streaming-service-venu-sports-180532990.html?src=rss

Life for Sleepers is fraught. They gain consciousness in a state of indentured servitude, an emulated human mind inside an android body, forced to work until they’re discarded. Those who escape don’t last long due to trackers in their bodies, and their hardcoded dependence on a drug known as Stabilizer. Without it, a Sleeper’s body will eventually reject its biosynthetic organs.

If this sounds like tech’s worst excesses of the present taken to their most extreme, you’re grasping what Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector’s creator, Gareth Damian Martin, is driving at.

“Citizen Sleeper was me drawing on things from when I was in my early 20s,” they tell me. In the past, Martin has spoken extensively about how the time they spent as a gig economy worker informed the alienation and atomization of labor that ran through the original game, which they released to widespread critical acclaim in 2022.

“With Citizen Sleeper 2, I’m no longer looking at things from that perspective, I’m thinking a little more about how do we continue to build a future when we know that it’s going to fall apart. We know that there’s an inevitable entropy to everything, not just political systems and structures, but our lives and our physical bodies. We know it’s going to fall apart, and yet each day, we keep getting up and we keep doing things.”

For story reasons I won’t spoil, the protagonist of the upcoming Citizen Sleeper 2 has managed to deactivate their tracker and no longer needs Stabilizer, but that hasn’t made their existence any less precarious. Where Citizen Sleeper took place exclusively on a single space station, Citizen Sleeper 2 lets the player explore the Starward Belt, a location that’s referenced frequently in the first game.

With the change of locale comes a ship and crew for the player to manage, and a dramatic increase in scope. At approximately 250,000 words long, Citizen Sleeper 2’s script is nearly double the length of the original game’s. The stakes are higher too, with a corporate proxy war threatening to engulf the Starward Belt.

Jump Over the Age

Martin has been working on Citizen Sleeper 2 for nearly two years, or about the same amount of time it took them to complete the original game. All essential systems were already in place, allowing Martin to spend more time on gameplay experimentation and story writing, drawing in particular on two of the most beloved (and deeply human) space operas.

“You know, Cowboy Bebop is a really good story about the gig economy,” Martin says, laughing. “And people forget how little the characters in Firefly like each other, right? They’re more colleagues than friends, so there’s something really relatable in that.” During their days as a gig economy worker, Martin notes they met many people from different walks of life and places, and while the work pulls people apart almost by design, workers still find solidarity and human connection.

The new game inherits many of its predecessor’s gameplay systems. Each day or “cycle,” the player has up to five dice to assign to actions that can earn them money or advance the story. The likelihood of completing an action successfully depends on the die the player assigns to it. A five, for instance, has a 50-50 chance of producing either a neutral or positive outcome, while a six guarantees success. Each task also carries with it a risk factor, with negative dice rolls resulting in more severe results on “risky” and “dangerous” actions.

Then there are what the game calls “clocks,” the system that binds everything together. Most story objectives require the player to chip away at a task across multiple cycles. At the same time, there’s often a competing clock counting down the amount of time before a story deadline.

On the surface, all of Citizen Sleeper’s systems are simple, but they come together in a way that reinforces the game’s narrative. At least they did at the start. On my first playthrough of Citizen Sleeper, my character eventually earned enough money that securing Stabilizer for them was not an issue. Martin tells me that was by design.

“I knew I needed to have players on my side,” they say of the first game. “I needed to win people over. If the game was too harsh, I felt like players wouldn’t give it the time that I wanted them to give to it. This time around, I feel in a very different position.”

Jump Over the Age

Citizen Sleeper 2, by contrast, is a more confident game — in itself, and in its players to accept a certain degree of suffering. There are story beats and content the players can miss, which was mostly not true in the first game. It also features multiple difficulty settings, and on the hardest one, the player’s Sleeper can experience permadeath. (If you want to continue that save file, you need to lower the difficulty, but your Sleeper will be forever changed.)

“I didn’t know how Citizen Sleeper 2 was going to end when I started making it,” Martin tells me, describing that as a “dangerous game” for a developer to play. “But because I’d made the first one, I felt confident that I could play that game, and that it would come to something really exciting.”

The intended effect of Citizen Sleeper 2 is for the player to feel like Martin is leading them through a tabletop RPG experience, like Dungeons & Dragons or Blades in the Dark. The story should feel improvised, surprising and moving.

Nowhere is that newfound confidence and TTRPG inspiration more apparent than with “Contracts,” Citizen Sleeper’s 2 signature new gameplay feature. Contracts take the Sleeper and up to two companions on jobs away from the safety of the Starward Belt’s population centers.

An early one tasks the Sleeper’s crew with diffusing a damaged corporate battle drone. In practice, that meant deactivating two separate systems on the spacecraft, with the catch being that as soon as I gained access to one system, the timer for both started ticking. Each Contract is a miniature pressure cooker, with self-contained risks that can’t be relieved until the Contract is over or the player fails.

Jump Over the Age

Contracts also allowed Martin to explore one of Citizen Sleeper’s less fully realized ideas, “that the dice are the Sleeper’s body.” During Contracts, negative and neutral rolls made during risky and dangerous actions will cause the Sleeper’s stress gauge to increase — a system reminiscent of the need to obtain Stabilizer in the first game. As the gauge fills, specific rolls will begin damaging the player’s dice. Each of the Sleeper’s five dice can sustain three hits before they break; they can’t be repaired until fully broken, and not until a Contract is over. Crewmates also have stress gauges, and filling them will leave them out of commission for the remainder of a Contract.

Further complicating things is that even after fixing the Sleeper’s dice, they don’t work as expected right away, due to another new mechanic called Glitch. Depending on the components the player uses to fix the Sleeper’s body, they will fill more or less of the Sleeper’s Glitch gauge. In turn, that means there’s a greater chance of a regular die being converted into a glitched one, which has an innate 80-20 chance of producing either a negative or positive outcome, and skill points do nothing to change those odds.

At first getting a glitched die feels punishing, but I think it is one of the smartest systems Martin has added to the game. The fact that glitched dice aren’t impacted by skills means they also ignore negative modifiers, which made them great for attempting tasks my Sleeper wasn’t good at, and it really felt like I was pushing my luck. In a nice touch, there’s even an achievement players can earn, an apt nod to Cowboy Bebop named “Whatever happens, happens,” when they score a positive outcome with a glitched die.

Jump Over the Age

I never felt comfortable playing Citizen Sleeper 2 the way I did with its predecessor. The game’s constant surprises meant I often had to push my Sleeper’s body to its breaking point to complete some of its more challenging scenarios. In that way, Citizen Sleeper 2 is far more successful at bringing together its narrative and gameplay ambitions.

I also found the story profound and essential at a time when it feels like the world isn’t moving in the right direction. The characters of Citizen Sleeper 2 are surrounded by endless hardship, and yet they find a way to move forward.

“Is it pointless that we continue to strive to have human, meaningful relationships and build lives when we know that there are structures bigger than us that might crush us at any moment?” Martin asks me. “Or is it that, even though those structures are so big and powerful, we still live and work with a sense that we can build something and have meaningful relationships because our realities are very personal, real and direct?”

Like any good GM, Martin isn’t interested in handing anyone the answer to that question but hopes Citizen Sleeper 2 might lead them to their own.

Citizen Sleeper 2 arrives on January 31 on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/citizen-sleeper-2-asks-how-we-stay-human-in-a-hopeless-future-180050858.html?src=rss

Lenovo has a new series of updated Legion gaming laptops at CES 2025. The star of the show is the 10th-generation Legion Pro 7i. It supports up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, thanks to its cooling system that enables up to 250W thermal design power (TDP). It also has an AI engine that dynamically adjusts CPU and GPU wattage for optimal performance.

The 2025 Legion Pro 7i supports up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and the aforementioned RTX 5090 on the graphics side. Lenovo’s Legion Coldfront Vapor cooling helps it support that high-end hardware. Tack on up to 64GB of 6400Mhz DDR5 (2 X 32GB) RAM and the built-in LA1+LA3 AI chip, and you’re looking at a souped-up machine for on-the-go gaming (and just about anything else you could throw at it).

The laptop has up to a 16-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600, 16:10) OLED display. The screen supports up to a 240Hz frame rate and has a 1ms response time. It can reach 500 nits of brightness. The Legion Pro 7i has two USB-C ports (one of which is Thunderbolt 4), three USB-A ports and HDMI 2.1. With all that high-end hardware inside, it’s quite the beefy machine, with a starting weight of around 6 lbs.

It launches in March. But all that horsepower doesn’t come cheap: Lenovo says the Legion Pro 7i has an expected starting price of $2,399 — and you can safely bet that RTX 5090 variants will fetch a premium on top of that.

Lenovo

Meanwhile, the 10th-gen Legion Pro 5i (Intel) and Legion Pro 5 (AMD) offer up to an Intel Ultra 9 275HX (the same as the Pro 7i) or AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX, respectively. Their thermal power supports up to 200W, which enables up to an RTX 5070 Ti Laptop for graphics. You can order configurations with up to 32GB (2 X 16GB) of 6400Mhz DDR5 RAM.

It also has up to a 16-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600, 16:10) OLED screen at up to 500 nits with a 1ms response time. But at 165Hz, its maximum frame rates don’t go quite as high as the Pro 7i.

Like the Pro 7i, the Pro 5 series uses Lenovo’s AI Engine+ with a Scenario Detection feature that dynamically tweaks the CPU and GPU wattage based on the moment’s needs. It has the same port setup as the Pro 7i, but at least it weighs a bit less (a minimum of 5.58 lbs).

Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait longer for the more affordable Pro 5 series. The Legion Pro 5i launches in May (starting at $1,499), while the Legion Pro 5 arrives in June (starting at $1,399).

Lenovo

Lenovo also has a 10th-gen version of the (non-“Pro”) Legion 7i, which the company’s oddly specific PR copy says is for “gamers actively studying in STEM programs and fields.” It also supports up to an Intel Ultra 9 275HX and RTX 5070 GPU and has up to a 16-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600) OLED with up to 240Hz and 1ms. However, its Coldfront Hyper cooling maxes out at a lower 145W TDP, so you won’t get the same top-level performance as the more expensive Pro models.

Starting at 4.4 lbs., it’s notably thinner and lighter than the Pro models. (The fact that it’s more portable but still decently powerful likely explains Lenovo’s strange “STEM student” framing.) It has an all-metal chassis. It will be available in June for $1,599.

Finally, there’s also a 10th-gen Legion 5i. Sticking with the oddly specific PR framing, Lenovo says this model is for “university gamers in non-STEM programs.” (Gotta nail down every niche!) It has up to a 15.1-inch WQXGA (2560 x 1600, 16:10, 165Hz, 1ms) OLED and supports up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and RTX 5070 Laptop GPU. (There’s also an AMD variant with up to a Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU.)

The Legion 5i is slated for a May launch, starting at $1,299.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/lenovo-ces-2025-the-10th-gen-legion-pro-7i-gaming-laptop-supports-up-to-rtx-5090-graphics-160004703.html?src=rss