Microsoft’s Flight Simulator released back in 2020 to a wave of success, with fans and critics alike giving the unique title its flowers. In the years since, the team at Asobo Studio have continually updated the game with new features, improvements, optimisations and more. With its successor mere months away, the team have revealed a brand new milestone set by MSFS.

Making the announcement on Twitter, the official Microsoft Flight Simulator account shared the latest milestone achieved by the game, saying:

“We're thrilled to celebrate 15 million pilots who have taken flight with us in Microsoft Flight Simulator! Thanks to each and every one of you for filling the skies with your adventures! Blue skies and tailwinds.”

Alongside this, the team also revealed that across those 15 million players, over 1 billion flights have taken off – an average of 67 flights per player.

Of course, as with all first-party Microsoft titles, a good portion of the 15 million are likely to be Game Pass players, and so the game is unlikely to have sold 15 million units itself.

Still, with Flight Simulator 2024 on its way soon, it’s nice to see its predecessor breaking past such significant milestones prior to launch.

KitGuru says: What do you think of MSFS today? Is a sequel necessary? How many hours have you put into the game? Let us know down below.

Despite being by far the best selling game of all time, Mojang had shown a surprising lack of interest in bringing current-gen versions of Minecraft to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Finally, after years of waiting, the current-gen Xboxes got a 4k patch late last year. Now, a native PS5 version has gone live.

Making the announcement on their blog, the team at Mojang said “We have some exciting news for our PlayStation 5 community! Today we’re launching the first preview of a native version of Minecraft for the Sony PlayStation 5 – and we need your help to test it!”

Full details on how to gain access to the preview version can be found HERE, but those who do upgrade might be a bit disappointed with the current result.

The long-teased super duper graphics pack is nowhere to be found, nor are there any ray-tracing features. That said, the PS5 version of the game does come in at a smaller file size compared to the PS4 version and also increased the overall render distance from 28 to 36 chunks.

Of course, this is just a preview build, and so more features may be added in the future (not to mention the fact that the PS4 Pro version already ran at 4K).

Regardless, getting any upgrades at all is welcome at this point. Hopefully more updates are added over time.

KitGuru says: What do you think of the PS5 upgrade? Is it long overdue? What changes did you want to see with the current-gen version? Let us know down below.

Crash Bandicoot is an iconic classic video game mascot, being closely associated with the PS1 back in the day, and helping to put developers Naughty Dog on the map at the time. In the decades since, Crash’s cache had fallen out of relevance – until the release of the much-loved Crash Bandicoot N’Sane Trilogy back in 2017 – remaking the original trilogy for modern hardware. Ahead of the game’s 7th anniversary the team have revealed that over 20 million copies have now been sold.

Making the announcement on Twitter, the official Crash Bandicoot page shared the following: “Whoa! Thank you to our community of Crash players for this memorable milestone!” – alongside a brief video revealing that more than 20 million units have been sold through.

This achievement is somewhat bittersweet as the game’s developers ‘Vicarious Visions’ were absorbed into Blizzard a couple years ago – being reduced to a support team from the likes of COD Warzone and the Diablo series.

With the Crash and Spyro Remakes selling 20 million and 10 million copies respectively, there is definitely interest in seeing the return of classic 3D mascot platformers.

Hopefully a Crash 5 and Spyro 4 are in the works (even if Vicarious Visions aren’t the ones developing them).

KitGuru says: What did you think of the N’Sane Trilogy? Did you take issue with the physics changes? What team would you want to see make a Crash 5? Let us know down below.

Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers are making significant strides in preparing for the release of Xe2-based Battlemage discrete GPUs. Set to replace the DG2/Alchemist architecture, the enabling work is underway for the upcoming Linux 6.11 kernel, with the latest drm-intel-next patches for Linux 6.11 revealing the addition of Battlemage Xe2 HPD display support.

Once the pull request shared by Phoronix is merged into the main branch, an updated Linux distro should be able to offer basic support to Battlemage discrete GPUs. This, however, will still take a while, as the Linux 6.11 merge window is scheduled to open only in mid-July.

Some features in the patches for Linux 6.11 include the Panel Replay capabilities, designed to contribute to display power conservation. Furthermore, the support for DP AUX-less Advanced Link Power Management, Link-Off-Between-Frames (LOBF), and Content Match Refresh Rate (CMRR) for Lunar Lake have also been added. It also introduces link training failure fallback handling for DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport (DP MST) links and various other enhancements.

The stable kernel is anticipated to be available in September. This release is expected to be featured in upcoming distributions such as Ubuntu 24.10 and other fall Linux distros.

KitGuru says These features have been available on Windows for some time, but having them on Linux might be crucial if someone wants a Lunar Lake-based laptop/gaming handheld or a Battlemage-powered desktop running a Linux distro.

Renowned overclocker Vince “KINGPIN” Lucido has partnered with PNY to develop next-generation GPUs for extreme overclocking. The news comes as a welcome development for fans waiting for KINGPIN's next project following EVGA's departure from the high-end GPU market, which created a noticeable void.

KINGPIN, known for his skill in pushing hardware to its limits, revealed this collaboration during a recent interview with Gamers Nexus at Computex 2024. Previously, he was the lead engineer behind EVGA's high-end KINGPIN designs, which aimed to push GPUs to their fullest potential. However, with EVGA's exit from the GPU sector, KINGPIN began exploring opportunities to partner with a new company for next-generation GPU designs.

In this search, PNY emerged as KINGPIN's preferred partner. While he had discussions with various companies, including GALAX and ASUS, he expressed concerns about working with them due to an overcrowded environment, citing “too many cooks in the kitchen” with these companies already having in-house overclockers. Additionally, he engaged in talks with MSI, but the company did not demonstrate a strong interest in developing GPUs for high overclocking. On the other hand, PNY has shown considerable interest in shaking up the high-end GPU industry.

KINGPIN highlighted a noticeable gap in the high-end GPU market, which he aims to address through this collaboration. The next-generation GPU designs influenced by KINGPIN are expected to debut with the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series of GPUs, carrying forward the legacy established at EVGA to PNY.

KitGuru says: Have you ever owned an EVGA KINGPIN PC component? Will you consider getting a PNY KINGPIN graphics card eventually?

A recent review has revealed exciting details about AMD's upcoming Strix Point APUs. Although an official launch date has not been announced, AMD and its partners are expected to release the first laptops next month, with some suggesting that some models could be available as early as July 15th. 

David Huang's review (via VideoCardz) is of an engineering sample 10-core Strix APU, the Ryzen AI 9 365. The specifics of the test system, such as TDP and whether it was a preliminary, qualification, or retail sample, are unclear. However, the review should still be good enough to see the architectural advancements brought by Zen 5 and Zen 5c. Moreover, it offers high-level comparisons of how the new architectures compare to Zen 4 (Ryzen 7 7840U) and Zen 3 (Ryzen 7 7735U).

The Ryzen AI 9 365 is reported to feature four Zen 5 cores and six Zen 5c cores with a maximum boost frequency of 5GHz. While AMD has not officially confirmed the clock speed for the Zen 5c cores, early testing results suggest that they operate at 3.3GHz. It's also worth noting that the testing system was equipped with 32GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory.

Performance tests included in the review show decent improvements with the Zen 5 architecture. Testing all APUs at 4.8GHz in SPEC CPU 2017 to measure the IPC uplift, we see Zen 5 bringing a 22.3% uplift over Zen 3 and 9.7% over Zen 4. Additionally, in the Geekbench 6 single-core performance test, the Zen 5 architecture demonstrates a 15.3% IPC improvement over Zen 4, which increases to 17.7% in Geekbench 5. These figures align closely with AMD's claim of a 16% increase in IPC over Zen4.

KitGuru says: The review shows much more than just this, including further performance comparisons, inter-core latencies, microarchitectural features, and much more. It's definitely worth taking a look at if you're interested in learning more about the upcoming Zen 5 architecture, 

Five of us entered, but only one survived. This is one episode you won't want to miss!
In addition to all that, Brett came back, we discussed SFF specs, Copilot updates, the…

An iPhone running Apple Intelligence, in front of the EU flag

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.

There was a request for a round up of all the security nightmares unleashed upon us this week we missed in Insecurity Corner, from systemd doing horrible things to HTTP/2…

REDRAGON has built a name for itself in the gaming industry in recent years. The company which started as a budget-tier brand for peripherals is now entering almost all segments of the market including PC chairs, PC cases, PC power supplies, PC coolers, & even PC monitors. While the company continues to expand its portfolio, we wanted to take a look at its latest and brand-new additions within the keyboard segment. For this purpose, Microcenter sent us the latest REDRAGON FIDD gaming keyboard which is aimed at the budget segment and comes with rapid-trigger magnetic switches that are programmable and […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/review/redragon-fidd-8k-wired-rapid-trigger-magnetic-switch-keyboard-review/

Last year, Shinji Mikami left Tango Gameworks, more than a decade on from founding the studio. Less than one year on from his departure, Microsoft announced that it was shutting the studio down. Now, it seams that Mikami's departure may have had more to do with the shut down than expected.

Everyone was confused when Microsoft announced it was shutting down Tango Gameworks. The studio was its only foothold in the Japanese market, and it had just shipped a hit game, Hi-Fi Rush, the year before. However, Shinji Mikami and his protege, who directed Ghostwire Tokyo, Ikumi Nakamura, both departed the studio. Xbox's head of Game Studios, Matt Booty, has alluded to these high profile departures being part of the decision to close down Tango Gameworks.

As spotted by Eurogamer, Booty was interviewed by Variety for the Strictly Business Podcast. Without giving away any “nitty gritty details”, Booty said: “I think the thing to be considered is that for us, it's as much a forward-looking situation as much as it is looking back at one certain game… There are a lot of things that go into success for a game. What leadership do you have? What creative leadership do you have? Is the team the same team that shipped something successful previously?”

Booty said Microsoft has to look at those things and decide if they are “set up for success” going forward. The implication here is that Tango Gameworks was not set up for future success. For whatever reason, Microsoft had a lack of faith in the remaining team at Tango Gameworks and rather than trying to juice up the studio with new hires, it instead decided to cut costs.

I think it is also worth noting that Japan is a bit of a tough market right now, as the Japanese Yen has tanked in value. That may also have played a role in Microsoft's decision to scale back on its Japanese studio ambitions for now, while their economy recovers.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Tango Gameworks shutting down was a shock but with Microsoft's reputation in Japan, and Xbox's low fan base in the region, it is unclear if Microsoft would have been able to draw in top Japanese talent to lead the studio after Mikami's departure.

We had hoped that when Sony announced the PlayStation VR2, it would use some of its first-party development resources to deliver more impressive VR games. Instead, we got Horizon: Call of the Mountain, which was… not great. Now, it seems Sony has ‘scaled back' its VR efforts, according to a new report.

A source speaking with Android Central has claimed that Sony is cutting funding for VR projects. Apparently there are going to be ‘very few opportunities' for VR development at Sony's studios moving forward. Sony itself also recently shut down one of its UK studios, which primarily worked on VR.

It is unclear of this means we'll also see less funding for exclusive games, like Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4 Remake, which are only playable in VR mode on PS5, cutting out other platforms like PC VR.

This follows on from reports that PlayStation VR2 headsets have not been selling well, missing Sony's ambitious sales projections significantly at launch.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Sony has been known to lose interest in devices. It happened with the PS Vita, the original PSVR didn't get a whole lot of first-party love and now, if this rumour is true, it appears that PS VR2 will be in a similar boat, relying primarily on third-party developers.