In recent years we’ve seen a number of veteran developers and studio founders leave their long-standing occupations, either to pursue other endeavours or simply to retire. Following in the footsteps of Insomniac Games’ Ted Price earlier this year, Sucker Punch Productions co-founder Brain Fleming has now announced the end of his tenure at PlayStation.
Making the official announcement via a press release, Sony Interactive Entertainment confirmed that “After nearly three decades helping bring to life iconic franchises like Sly Cooper, inFAMOUS, Ghost of Tsushima, and Ghost of Yōtei, Brian Fleming has announced he’s passing Sucker Punch studio leadership on to a new generation.”
Though this comes as a surprise to many, efforts on handing over the reigns has apparently been going on for quite some time, with Sony adding: “Over the past year, Brian has worked closely with PlayStation Studios to ensure that Sucker Punch was in the best hands moving forward with a strong foundation for the studio’s continued success.”
Come the start of 2026, Sucker Punch will now be led by “longtime creative and technical leaders Jason Connell and Adrian Bentley” as part of a joint role (something which we have seen with other first-party PlayStation studios). That said, it seems Connell will also keep his role as co-creative director alongside Nate Fox.
As mentioned, this isn’t the first big PlayStation departure of the year, with Insomniac Games founder Ted Price leaving the studio back in January; likewise following 30 years of service. While these teams have been left in good hands following the retiring of their long-time leaders, it is bittersweet nonetheless to see another major figure leaving.
KitGuru says: What’s your favourite Sucker Punch game? Is the studio in good hands? Let us know your thoughts down below.
For Day 17 of the KitGuru Advent Calendar we have teamed up with Iiyama to give one lucky reader a new monitor upgrade! Today's prize is the Iiyama G-Master GCB3486WQSCP-B1, a 34-inch ultrawide gaming monitor with a blazing fast 240Hz refresh rate.
The Iiyama G-Master GCB3486WQSCP-B1 is a 34-inch curved ultra-wide gaming monitor with a 240Hz refresh rate. It features a VA panel with 3440×1440 resolution, HDR400 support, and FreeSync Premium for smooth, tear-free visuals. It even includes a USB-C dock with 95W power delivery and KVM switch, along with picture-by-picture and picture-in-picture modes, making it a great monitor for productivity as well as gaming.
How to Enter:
To enter this giveaway, all you have to do is head over to our competition announcement post on Facebook, HERE. In the comments, leave an answer to the following question – Have you used an ultrawide before?
This competition is open worldwide.
The winner will be picked randomly shortly after 11AM GMT December 18th, and a new competition will be announced for Day 18. The chosen winner has 48 hours to respond, if we do not hear from them, a new winner will be picked.
Terms and Conditions: This competition is open worldwide, starting at 11AM GMT on December 17th and ending at 10:59AM GMT on December 18th. Due to the busy Christmas season, prize deliveries could take longer than usual, and some prizes may not ship until January. In compliance with GDPR, we will not collect or store any personal information as part of this competition. Once the winner has been contacted and their prize received, personal details will be deleted from our email servers. Your details will not be shared, we respect your privacy.
KitGuru Says: Good luck to all who enter, we'll be back tomorrow morning to announce a winner and turn the calendar over to Day 18!
The latest AI-based attempt to visually reinterpret The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is attracting attention and causing controversy within the gaming community. It is based on a video created by a single content creator that uses artificial intelligence to transform original footage from the game into a photorealistic representation. The aim of this experiment is […]
Sharkoon has significantly expanded its current portfolio and has now introduced several new products that address both the classic gaming sector and the increasingly relevant office and home office sector. The new additions show a clear strategic focus on versatile usage scenarios, where ergonomic aspects, flexible connectivity and individual adaptability are paramount. The OfficePal C50 […]
The Bavarian state government is being criticized for the planned awarding of an extensive IT framework agreement to Microsoft without prior tendering. The subject of the dispute is a multi-year enterprise agreement for the use of cloud and software services in public administration, the volume of which is expected to reach almost one billion euros […]
A boom with an announcement: Google’s hunger for AI is giving MediaTek a firework display of orders that is not only shaking up its own balance sheet, but also the CWoS capacities at TSMC. While the world stares at Nvidia and its H100 clones, another chip offensive is running at full speed in the background: […]
The dramatic price increases for DRAM, both DDR5 and GDDR6/6X, will cast a long shadow over the gaming PC market in 2025. Edward “Ed” Crisler, PR Manager at Sapphire, gets to the heart of the matter in the Hardware Unboxed podcast: “The current price trends are eating through all levels of GPU manufacturing like a […]
The price development of the GeForce RTX 5070 series in Japan has changed significantly in just a few weeks and is increasingly attracting the attention of market observers and buyers. The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti in particular has recently seen an unusually rapid increase in street prices. Within just one week, the lowest available offer […]
As a high-end motherboard for AMD’s AM5 platform, the ASRock X870E Taichi OCF is clearly positioned above the classic enthusiast segment and is aimed at users who are specifically looking for maximum electrical and signal reserve. With this model, ASRock consistently transfers the OC Formula concept to the X870E chipset and thus to the current […]
The new ARCTIC MX-7 is a consistent further development of a paste series that has been shaping the market for many years in a rather inconspicuous but technically relevant segment. ARCTIC focused early on creating uncomplicated yet reproducible solutions for users who require reliable thermal bonding without having to deal with exotic formulations or short-lived […]
Intel took the stage at the Barclays Global Technology Conference 2025 to dive deep into the company’s progress, challenges and strategic shifts. John Pitzer, Corporate Vice President of Corporate Planning and Investor Relations, provided a remarkably candid update on Intel’s manufacturing technologies, capacity planning and market positioning. The main focus was on the progress of […]
The ongoing Russian war of aggression against Ukraine not only has military and humanitarian consequences, but also raises legal questions about the responsibility of Western technology companies. Ukrainian civilians have filed lawsuits in the USA against several major semiconductor manufacturers because they believe that modern Western chips were used in Russian weapons systems that were […]
AMS-IX is ending its business activities in the United States. According to the company, operations at the two US locations in Chicago and the Bay Area of California will cease on March 5, 2026. The Amsterdam-based operator is one of the world’s largest and oldest Internet Exchanges and had been active in the US since […]
Internal documents from the South Korean memory manufacturer SK Hynix indicate that the supply situation for DRAM will remain tight until at least 2028. This primarily affects classic memory products for end users, including DDR4 and DDR5 for desktop and notebook systems as well as GDDR6 and GDDR7 for graphics cards. The analysis suggests that […]
I’m taking today’s launch of the Arctic MX-7 at 2 p.m. (article in full depth only here, of course) as an opportunity to give you a brief, deliberately neutral impression, without anticipating the actual test, as this is not intended as an advertising text, but as a clean technical classification. What I can spoil about […]
With the new ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, ASUS is positioning itself clearly: this card is not a shiny status symbol for RGB fetishists or benchmark record hunters, but a sober tool for demanding gamers and creative users. The GPU is based on Nvidia’s latest Blackwell architecture and delivers what is required […]
Everyone has to accept that AI is now present in many areas. Whether at work, at school or in everyday life, AI is playing an increasingly important role in the world. Of course, you can try to keep as much distance as possible and use AI only minimally. For owners of an LG TV, however, […]
Recent reports from the semiconductor industry have focused on the possible expiry of Apple’s long-term supply contracts for DRAM memory chips with Samsung Electronics and SK hynix at the end of 2025. These so-called long-term agreements generally serve to secure supply volumes and smooth out price fluctuations over several years. Based on the current facts, […]
Microsoft has released new dynamic updates for the Windows recovery environment WinRE in December 2025. The updates affect several currently supported versions of Windows 11 and are either distributed automatically via Windows Update or are available manually via the Microsoft Update Catalog. The aim of these updates is to ensure the functionality of the recovery […]
While Taiwanese foundry giant TSMC has traditionally been considered the undisputed top dog in the high-end semiconductor market, the balance of power in chip manufacturing is slowly beginning to shift. The latest report from Sedaily suggests that Samsung Foundry is in advanced talks with AMD to manufacture next-generation 2nm processors, apparently specifically the EPYC Venice […]
AMD is apparently preparing another update to its mobile APU portfolio, which will be known as the Ryzen AI 400 and codenamed Gorgon Point. The manufacturer has not yet made an official announcement. However, the existence of the series is considered plausible, as corresponding references were discovered in an official chipset driver from AMD. Experience […]
Over the past few months, I have received many inquiries regarding the availability and authenticity of Honeywell PTM7950 pads. The Linus Tech Tips store, which has become one of the few reliable publicly accessible sources for this material, was mentioned particularly frequently. The pads offered there are considered trustworthy in the scene because the distributor […]
Pocket Lands delivers a promising new sandbox for building digital worlds, and it's out now in Early Access on Quest. Read on for our full impressions.
Creative minds always find a way to express their individuality, no matter the means at their disposal. Pen, paintbrush, digital tools. Video games such as Minecraft exploded in popularity through the freedom of shaping its voxel art world, to the point where people created futuristic spaceships, sprawling cities, and medieval towns by hand. If you build it, they will come, so the old quote goes. Pocket Lands aims to deliver a world-building sandbox to allow those with inspiration a new avenue to convey their imagination. It shows signs of a promising future, even if what's here in early access leaves me wanting.
There is a prebuilt landscape that you can start working from.
A full-scale playground to design complex architectural ideas is not a new concept, as previously seen in cyubeVR and RealmCraft among others, yet Pocket Lands stands out for several small but defining features. The first is its flexible way to engage with your blank canvas, as the diorama is viewable from three different perspectives: a resizable island in mixed reality, as that same snippet of the world but with your surroundings covered, or a sprawling fully immersive mode where everything is rendered in the voxel world, even the day-night cycle. Snappy hand tracking or a controller quickly lets you see how expansive your imaginative kingdom is becoming.
Second is the fact that you can drop into your own world at any moment, going from a God-mode perspective to walking around next to your creations. This feeling, especially once laser-focused on more elaborate constructions, is a brilliant addition that inspires awe. That's helped by the ability to jump and, most importantly, fly around the map to look at the environment from another area. This entices you to perhaps add a new tower to your castle, mast to your airship, or neighboring skyscraper to your skyline.
The day-night cycle is quite jaw-dropping when building skyscrapers out of lamps.
Finally, no creative sandbox is complete without accessible building tools. From a quick 17-slide tutorial where Pocket Lands succinctly explains how it all works, the onboarding to pick up and play is as easy as it gets. Making the motion of grabbing a rectangle from two opposite sides lets you spawn a figure as long, wide, or short as you wish. A handy menu with over 25 full and half block types awaits to accommodate every type of building. Concrete, sand, wood, and lampshades are but a few foundations to build unique creations on. The calming music, ranging from medieval Oblivion-esque melodies to soothing piano sounds, instills a relaxing vibe in the creation process.
However, hand tracking feels a little hit or miss right now. There is a nifty feature that by tapping your thumb to your hand, you can “scroll” through the map as you would a smartphone, turning it yellow to signify selection. You can close your fist to move around the map, pinch to move the edges of the mixed reality diorama, or grab blocks and add new ones. But Pocket Lands doesn't always register when I stop making a fist gesture, only to end up on an entirely different side of the map. Or worse, the diorama itself ends up in another area of the room.
While Mountainborn Studios is aware of these false positives, the only current solution is to be gentle with the movements so that they can be properly registered to avoid such nuisances. A bit of comic relief against these issues is the addition of arm-swinging locomotion, which doesn't add much, but it's undoubtedly fun to make that primal motion while exploring. For the avoidance of doubt, artificial stick-based locomotion is also available.
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An unexpected but welcome addition.
I wish that I could do more in Pocket Lands right now. Yes, it's a wonderful Early Access release with all the aforementioned details. But I'd love to see more items, block types, and creatures added. Thankfully, the latter is in development, along with new biomes and multiplayer. It's a great playground for creative minds, one that hopes to fill a void after Microsoft abandoned VR support for Minecraft. Here’s hoping that this sturdy foundation builds a lasting legacy.
Pocket Lands is out now in Early Access for the Meta Quest platform.
Nearly 15,000 data breaches and leaks were reported worldwide in 2025, according to Cyble’s Global Cybersecurity Report. Corporations and government agencies were frequent targets, with experts warning that 2026 will bring even more attacks as hackers adopt AI-driven tools.
Qantas was among the hardest hit, with data from 5 million customers exposed and later sold on the dark web. Other companies, including Oracle, Volvo, and SK Telecom, faced leaks or disruptions. Researchers also uncovered the largest breach in history: 16 billion passwords linked to Apple, Facebook, Google, and Telegram. Government institutions were not spared, with the US Congressional Budget Office hacked.
Individuals were targeted as well. In South Korea, more than 120,000 cameras were compromised to capture footage of unsuspecting users, which could then be used in blackmail efforts. Konstantin Levinzon, CEO of Planet VPN, said AI amplified many of these incidents. “Even though AI improves our daily lives and strengthens cybersecurity, it is also widely used by hackers,” he noted.
Levinzon outlined three potential threats to watch out for in 2026:
Autonomous AI attacks – Agentic AI systems may exploit zero-day flaws without human input.
Advanced Deepfakes – Fraudulent video and audio are increasingly used to bypass verification.
Wearable device hacks – Smartwatches and other sensors collecting health and location data are becoming prime targets.
“Potential wearable hacks, deepfakes, and autonomous AI systems mean that next year, users will need to take extra steps,” Levinzon said. He recommended two-factor authentication, regular software updates, and VPN use as basic defences.
KitGuru Says: Most major AI-focused corporations have a lot of safety nets in place to avoid their AI systems from ‘going rogue'. It is highly unlikely that criminals seeking to cause harm would have the same level of checks and balances in place.
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