Hyperkin, a global leader in video game hardware, announced Today that the all new colors of the SupaBoy Portable Retro Gaming Console are available for pre-order now, with the US and EU release date locked for October 28 2026. Available in two stunning new translucent finishes, the limited-edition SupaBoy Crimson and the SupaBoy Prime.

The SupaBoy delivers authentic, on-the-go 16-bit gaming the way it was meant to be played: with real physical media. No emulation, no legally ambiguous ROMs, no sign-ins, and no firmware updates required. Featuring a built-in cartridge slot, the handheld is fully compatible with original Super Nintendo and Super Famicom cartridges across PAL, NTSC, and JP regions.

BenQ, the internationally recognized provider of professional display solutions, today announced the availability of its new Creative Pro PV50 Series professional monitors, comprising the 4K 32-inch PV3250U and 27-inch PV2750U. Designed for video editors and post-production professionals, the new monitors deliver precise and reliable color grading for post-production workflows, enabling predictable and consistent results across advertising, short-form films, branded content, and social media campaign material.

Meeting the Growing Demands of Professional Post-Production
In commercial post-production, achieving consistent and reliable color decisions remains a key challenge, especially in dark scenes where subtle shadow details are essential to visual storytelling. While industry standards such as Rec.709 define the color space, maintaining accurate shadow detail across different displays and delivery environments is often difficult. Issues such as black crush and tonal inconsistencies can lead to grading errors, additional correction time, and unpredictable final outputs.

Branch, the office furniture company on a mission to make a great workspace accessible to everyone, today announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration with SEGA: a collection of three ergonomic gaming chairs inspired by the worlds, consoles, and characters that have defined generations of play. The Branch x SEGA Gaming Chair Collection—featuring the Sonic Chair, the Genesis Chair, and the Dreamcast Chair—launches in May 2026 on branchfurniture.com, with prices starting at $569 USD.

These are the first gaming chairs ever launched under the SEGA brand. Each chair builds on the acclaimed Ergonomic Chair Pro platform by Branch, reimagined with subtle, sophisticated design details drawn from SEGA's most beloved properties. Branch's design team translated the visual language of SEGA's most iconic properties into considered details: custom fabrics, textured armrests, branded casters, checkerboard accents, and console-inspired finishes that reward a closer look without overwhelming a room.

PLAION REPLAI, a leading global publisher and developer of retro video games and consoles announced today the return of a legend, with the NEOGEO AES+ (Advanced Entertainment System) returning to homes ready for Holiday 2026. With pre-orders opening today, and the launch date set as 12th November 2026, the NEOGEO AES+ has been produced in collaboration with SNK, the producers of the original hardware.

Celebrating 35 years of arcade perfection, the iconic NEOGEO AES stood as a beacon of excellence, with the 24-bit luxury super console a world apart from rival 16-bit systems, designed for gaming connoisseurs who refused to accept compromised homeports of arcade classics. With each title representing a 1:1 direct replica of the original arcade board used on SNK's MVS (Multi-Video System), NEOGEO cartridges would differ significantly from traditional console games typically shipped on a 4 Mb or 8 Mb cartridge, with the largest NEOGEO game weighing in at an incredible 708 Mb, and games which exceeded 100 Mb in size giving birth to the infamous '100Mega Shock' moniker.

Blaze Entertainment has today announced the next entry in the award-winning line of Super Pocket handheld retro gaming consoles from its brand, HyperMegaTech! - Rare!

This new handheld features 14 built-in games from the history of Rare, one of the UK's most prolific game developers, and responsible for globally renowned titles, many of which are included on this handheld console. The Rare Edition of the Super Pocket will feature titles from many different consoles and, for the first time on a Super Pocket - 64-bit console and home computer titles!

AMD has released its "Zen 6" instruction set manual to both consumers and enterprise, which includes new CPU instructions that many have been anticipating. In the latest Znver6 ISA manual, we see instructions like AVX512_BMM, AVX512_FP16, AVX_NE_CONVERT, AVX_IFMA, and AVX_VNNI_INT8, among others. This is particularly noteworthy because 16-bit AVX-512 calculations will now be possible on consumer-oriented desktop CPUs, allowing developers to efficiently accelerate applications and data paths that leverage AVX-512. One of the HPC engineers on X, @FelixCLC_, notes that the introduction of these instructions means that the regular CPU becomes a universal base platform, fulfilling its intended role with enhanced observability.

A set of GNU compiler patches confirms this, as the new open-source enablement adds AVX512_BMM, AVX_NE_CONVERT, AVX_IFMA, AVX_VNNI_INT8, and AVX512_FP16 to GCC. These instructions are particularly interesting due to their intended use cases. AVX-512 BMM is designed for bit matrix manipulation, significantly accelerating local AI deployments. With native FP16 calculations and AVX VNNI in INT8 format on desktops, users will no longer need to rely on Intel Xeon CPUs for AVX-related development and process acceleration. This development benefits more users across the entire product family based on Zen 6. AMD is now directly competing with Intel in AVX development, meaning the difference between the two will come down to implementation strategy. There is also increasing evidence that Intel's next-generation "Nova Lake" will reintroduce AVX-512 functionality to desktops, suggesting that advanced vector and matrix acceleration is set to expand on consumer PCs.

AMD officially confirmed that a hardware defect in the RDSEED instruction on its new Zen 5 processors, cataloged as AMD-SB-7055 and assigned CVE-2025-62626. The company reports that the 16-bit and 32-bit forms of RDSEED can return zero values, which may be mistakenly interpreted as a successful entropy read. The 64-bit form is unaffected. AMD rates the issue as high severity and suggests short-term software workarounds: prioritize using the 64-bit RDSEED path where possible, mask RDSEED from software discovery, or treat a zero return as a failure and retry. Firmware and microcode updates are being rolled out to OEMs. AMD's advisory provides product-family target dates, such as AGESA TurinPI 1.0.0.8 for EPYC 9005, with a target date of November 14, 2025, and consumer families targeted for late November 2025. Users should install vendor BIOS/microcode updates when available and consider regenerating any sensitive keys created on unpatched systems.

RDSEED is a low-level instruction that supplies entropy used for cryptographic keys and other security functions. When it returns predictable values without detection, newly generated keys or nonces may be weaker than intended. According to AMD, the problem affects the 16-bit and 32-bit forms of RDSEED, while the 64-bit form does not appear to be impacted. The company is distributing firmware and platform updates to correct the issue, but until those updates are applied, the recommended interim measures are straightforward: prefer the 64-bit RDSEED path where possible, prevent software from discovering or using the affected RDSEED forms, or treat a zero result as a failure and retry. Once updates become available, users should install them promptly and consider regenerating any sensitive keys created on unpatched systems.

Late last year, Intel and AMD founded x86 ecosystem advisory group (EAG) to keep the x86 ISA growing and thriving in the era where Arm and RISC-V are expanding their presence. A year later, the hard work of Intel and AMD engineers is coming to a fruition. According to new blog posts by both x86 ecosystem advisory group founders, new instructions are being added as of now to harder the security layer and increase the vector and matrix performance. First in line is the new FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) instruction, designed as a new modernized and standardized interrupt model to reduce latency in software and improve reliability in software. In addition to FRED, instructions such as AVX10 and ACE (Advanced Matrix Extensions for Matrix Multiplication) are now standardized and implemented across the stack, meaning that we now have a standardized way to accelerate matrix multiplication, as well as 512-bit vector extensions.

Perhaps the most interesting and the most important part of this update is the ChkTag for x86 memory safety. ChkTag is a new x86 memory-tagging instruction set that helps catch common memory-safety bugs such as buffer overflows and use-after-free by attaching small tags to memory and checking them in hardware. It gives developers and compilers fine-grained control over which accesses are checked, so tools can enable protections where they matter most without the heavy overhead of software-only approaches. That makes it practical for hardening applications, kernels, hypervisors and even firmware, while ChkTag-enabled binaries can still run on older processors that lack the hardware features, which eases deployment. The designers intend ChkTag to complement existing defenses like shadow stacks and confidential computing, and the full specification is expected later this year.

At Digital Eclipse, we specialize in restoring historic games for modern consoles, giving legendary classics the respect they deserve. As you might imagine, we get a lot of requests from fans, and for many years now, the overwhelming number-one request has been…"MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAAAT!" That's why we were so excited to reveal in this week's State of Play presentation that we're partnering with our friends Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to bring Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection to PC and consoles later in 2025.

With multiple 90s and 2000s games from the early days of this groundbreaking fighting game series, Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection will also provide a comprehensive, detailed look at the franchise's history ever assembled. We'll take you back to the glorious 1990s, the days of arcades and tokens, of hidden Fatalities and secret characters, with the original versions of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat 3, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. But we're not stopping there—many of the home versions of these games from vintage 16-bit consoles and, yes, even handheld systems are also included. And the arcade and console games can all be played online with rollback netcode.

Logitech G, a brand of Logitech and a leading innovator of gaming and sim racing technologies and gear, today announced the launch of the Logitech G522 Gaming Headset, a new addition to its award-winning G5 series, designed to elevate both gameplay and personal expression. "G522 was made for gamers who bring passion and personality to everything they do," said Ujesh Desai, vice president and general manager of Logitech G. "Whether you're climbing the ranks, streaming for your audience, or pulling all-night gaming sessions, the G522 ups your game with top-tier performance, features, and style."

G522 builds on the strong foundation of the widely popular Logitech G733 headset, carrying its legacy further while introducing an exciting evolution. At first glance, the family resemblance is clear, but as you look closer, the G522 reveals a fresh, elevated design. It's all about progression - sleeker curves, a more sophisticated silhouette, and thoughtful design choices that reflect a modern take on performance and style. The sharper edges of the G733 have been transitioned into smooth, flowing lines showcasing a refined aesthetic.

Lightmatter has launched its latest photonic processor, representing a fundamental shift from traditional computing architectures. The new system integrates six chips into a single 3D packaged module, each containing photonic tensor cores and control dies that work in concert to accelerate AI workloads. Detailed in a recent Nature publication, the processor combines approximately 50 billion transistors with one million photonic components interconnected via high-speed optical links. The industry has faced numerous computing challenges as conventional scaling approaches plateau, with Moore's Law, Dennard scaling, and DRAM capacity doubling, all reaching physical limits per silicon area. Lightmatter's solution implements an adaptive block floating point (ABFP) format with analog gain control to overcome these barriers. During matrix operations, weights and activations are grouped into blocks sharing a single exponent determined by the most significant value, minimizing quantization errors.

The processor achieves 65.5 trillion 16-bit ABFP operations per second (sort of 16-bit TOPs) while consuming just 78 W of electrical power and 1.6 W of optical power. What sets this processor apart is its ability to run unmodified AI models with near FP32 accuracy. The system successfully executes full-scale models, including ResNet for image classification, BERT for natural language processing, and DeepMind's Atari reinforcement learning algorithms without specialized retraining or quantization-aware techniques. This represents the first commercially available photonic AI accelerator capable of running off-the-shelf models without fine-tuning. The processor's architecture fundamentally uses light for computation to address next-generation GPUs' prohibitive costs and energy demands. With native integration for popular AI frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow, Lightmatter hopes for immediate adoption in production environments.

After more than two decades, a team of industry veterans has united to bring back one of gaming's most iconic brands. Acclaim, the legendary video game publisher known for its groundbreaking titles in the '80s and '90s, is officially returning with a bold vision aimed at revitalizing the gaming landscape.

Originally founded in 1987, the relaunch marks an exciting new chapter for the publisher, as it seeks to support indie developers and reignite classic franchises. Acclaim will provide much-needed resources such as funding, marketing and PR support, giving independent studios the opportunity to bring their creative visions to a broad audience.

Nexa AI, today, announced NexaQuants of two DeepSeek R1 Distills: The DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B. Popular quantization methods like the llama.cpp based Q4 K M allow large language models to significantly reduce their memory footprint and typically offer low perplexity loss for dense models as a tradeoff. However, even low perplexity loss can result in a reasoning capability hit for (dense or MoE) models that use Chain of Thought traces. Nexa AI has stated that NexaQuants are able to recover this reasoning capability loss (compared to the full 16-bit precision) while keeping the 4-bit quantization and all the while retaining the performance advantage. Benchmarks provided by Nexa AI can be seen below.

We can see that the Q4 K M quantized DeepSeek R1 distills score slightly less (except for the AIME24 bench on Llama 3 8b distill, which scores significantly lower) in LLM benchmarks like GPQA and AIME24 compared to their full 16-bit counter parts. Moving to a Q6 or Q8 quantization would be one way to fix this problem - but would result in the model becoming slightly slower to run and requiring more memory. Nexa AI has stated that NexaQuants use a proprietary quantization method to recover the loss while keeping the quantization at 4-bits. This means users can theoretically get the best of both worlds: accuracy and speed.

Intel has announced it will not proceed with X86S, an experimental instruction set architecture that aims to simplify its processor design by removing legacy support for older 32-bit and 16-bit operating modes. The decision comes after gathering feedback from the technology ecosystem on a draft specification that was released for evaluation. The x86, and its 64-bit x86-64 we use today, is a giant cluster of specifications that contains so many instructions rarely anyone can say with precision how many are there. All of this stems from the era of original 8086 processor, which has its own 16-bit instructions. Later on we transitioned to 32, then 64-bit systems with all have brought their own specific instructions. Adding support for processing of vector, matrix, and other data types has increased the ISA specification so much that no one outside a few select engineers at Intel (and AMD) understands in full. From that x86S idea was born to solve the issue of supporting legacy systems and legacy code, and moving on to the x86S ISA, where "S" stands for simplified.

The X86S proposal included several notable modifications, such as eliminating support for rings 1 and 2 in the processor's protection model, removing 16-bit addressing capabilities, and discontinuing legacy interrupt controller support. These changes would have potentially reduced hardware complexity and modernized the platform's architecture. A key feature of the proposed design was a simplified boot process that would have allowed processors to start directly in 64-bit mode, eliminating the current requirement for systems to boot through various legacy modes before reaching 64-bit operation. The architecture also promised improvements in handling modern features like 5-level paging. "Intel will continue to maintain its longstanding commitment to software compatibility," the company stated in the official document on its website, acknowledging that the x86S dream is over.

Courtesy of ASUS Vietnam (via @rquandt on X/Twitter), we now have an idea of what ASUS' first Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite notebook will look like, but also what the main specifications are. It will share the Vivobook S 15 OLED branding with other notebooks from ASUS, although the leaked model carries the model number S5507QA-MA089WS. At its core is a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 SoC which is the base model from Qualcomm. The SoC consists of 12 Oryon cores, of which eight are performance cores and four are energy efficient cores. A peak, multi-threaded clock speed of 3.4 GHz and 42 MB of cache, as well as a 75 TOPs AI engine rounds off the SoC specs. The SoC is also home to a Qualcomm Adreno GPU, but so far Qualcomm hasn't released any useful specs about the GPU in the Snapdragon X Elite series of chips.

ASUS has paired the SoC with 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory of an unknown clock speed, although Qualcomm officially supports speed of up to 8,448 MT/s in a to PC users unusual configuration of eight channels at 16-bit wide, for a bandwidth of up to 135 GB/s. For comparison, Intel's latest Core Ultra processors max out at LPDDR5X 7,467 MT/s and up to 120 GB/s memory bandwidth. Other features include a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, a glossy 15.6-inch 2,880 x 1,620 resolution, 120 Hz OLED display with 600 nits peak brightness and a 70 WHr battery. It's unclear what connectivity options will be on offer, but judging by the screenshot below, we can at least expect an HDMI out as well as a pair of USB Type-C ports, a micro SD card slot and a headphone jack. As far as pricing goes, Roland Quandt is suggesting a €1,500 base price on X/Twitter, but we'll have to wait for the official launch to find out what these Arm based laptops will retail for. ASUS Vietnam has already removed the page from its website.

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announced the latest roadmap milestone for Vulkan, the cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API. The Vulkan roadmap targets the "immersive graphics" market, made up of mid- to high-end smartphones, tablets, laptops, consoles, and desktop devices. The Vulkan Roadmap 2024 milestone captures a set of capabilities that are expected to be supported in new products for that market, beginning in 2024. The roadmap specification provides a significant increase in functionality for the targeted devices and sets the evolutionary direction of the API, including both new hardware capabilities and improvements to the programming model for Vulkan developers.

Vulkan Roadmap 2024 is the second milestone release on the Vulkan Roadmap. Products that support it must be Vulkan 1.3 conformant and support the extensions and capabilities defined in both the 2022 and 2024 Roadmap specifications. Vulkan roadmap specifications use the Vulkan Profile mechanism to help developers build portable Vulkan applications; roadmap requirements are expressed in machine-readable JSON files, and tooling in the Vulkan SDK auto-generates code that makes it easy for developers to query for and enable profile support in their applications.

Thanks to the information from Windows Report, we have received numerous details regarding Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon Elite X chip for laptops. The Snapdragon Elite X SoC is built on top of Nuvia-derived Oryon cores, which Qualcomm put 12 off in the SoC. While we don't know their base frequencies, the all-core boost reaches 3.8 GHz. The SoC can reach up to 4.3 GHz on single and dual-core boosting. However, the slide notes that this is all pure "big" core configuration of the SoC, so no big.LITTLE design is done. The GPU part of Snapdragon Elite X is still based on Qualcomm's Adreno IP; however, the performance figures are up significantly to reach 4.6 TeraFLOPS of supposedly FP32 single-precision power. Accompanying the CPU and GPU, there are dedicated AI and image processing accelerators, like Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which can process 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS). For the camera, the Spectra Image Sensor Processor (ISP) is there to support up to 4K HDR video capture on a dual 36 MP or a single 64 MP camera setup.

The SoC supports LPDDR5X memory running at 8533 MT/s and a maximum capacity of 64 GB. Apparently, the memory controller is an 8-channel one with a 16-bit width and a maximum bandwidth of 136 GB/s. Snapdragon Elite X has PCIe 4.0 and supports UFS 4.0 for outside connection. All of this is packed on a die manufactured by TSMC on a 4 nm node. In addition to marketing excellent performance compared to x86 solutions, Qualcomm also advertises the SoC as power efficient. The slide notes that it uses 1/3 of the power at the same peak PC performance of x86 offerings. It is also interesting to note that the package will support WiFi7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Officially coming in 2024, the Snapdragon Elite X will have to compete with Intel's Meteor Lake and/or Arrow Lake, in addition to AMD Strix Point.

Blasphemous set itself apart in 2019's crowded indie scene thanks to a firm belief in its roots. Developed in Spain, it was clear from the beginning that The Game Kitchen would have to adapt itself to an international audience—but even if the game released with an English demographic in mind, the art direction and overall tone were uniquely Spanish.

With the sequel, the team was adamant that they preserve that identity in the writing as well, regardless of which language you choose to play in. For Enrique Cabeza, Creative Director at The Game Kitchen, the development of Blasphemous 2 felt sentient. It continued to shift and morph of its own volition, almost as if providing guidance to the team about where to go next. "You have to make mistakes and realize when it's time to change course to avoid paths you shouldn't take," he said.