NC America officially confirmed today that AION 2, the action-packed, open-world MMORPG, will arrive later this year on Steam and PURPLE platforms. Featuring flight as a signature experience, players can fly freely across a world 36 times larger than the original AION, dive underwater, and engage in aerial combat in PvE and PvP gameplay.

The AION 2 development team has invested deeply in building a version suited for global PC players and will be actively engaging with Western players and media throughout the year. The AION 2 development team will introduce more news for AION 2 in May, and looks forward to answering questions from the community.

THUNDEROBOT, a Chinese esports gear specialist, has taken the unusual step of showing off a Hygon CPU-powered gaming rig at a recent tournament. Under normal circumstances, the company builds machines based on mainstream AMD Ryzen and Intel Core processors—TechPowerUp perused multiple prime examples at CES 2025. In a fresh social media post, THUNDEROBOT declared that they had produced: "a new species, reshaping the future of esports!" Instead of utilizing familiar Team Red or Blue processing solutions, the firm's new "Black Warrior Hunter Pro" system is centered around a domestically developed "C86 next-generation processor." Internet sleuths discovered early units last summer; when slightly scuffed "fourth generation" units were offered up for sale via an online marketplace. Hygon's "C86-7490" CPU seemed to feature elements directly derived from AMD's EPYC SP5 format. TechPowerUp covered the emergence of the chipmaker's server-grade C86-5G model—based on a Zen core IP—back in May.

Fast-forwarding to November 2025, curious tournament attendees were granted hands-on time with THUNDEROBOT's latest gaming system. A fuzzy off-screen capture of CPU-Z information outlines the dual chiplet Hygon C86-4G chip's basics: a 2.8 GHz base clock, 16 cores, 32 threads, along with 32 MB of L3 cache. The measured 55535 W TDP rating is very likely erroneous. This intriguing processor is apparently up-to-date enough to run with DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 standards. Valorant and Black Myth Wukong sessions were up and running on showcased rigs. Comparative benchmarking demonstrates performance within the vicinity of Raptor Lake (-S and -R) generation CPUs—Wccftech proposes a middle ground between Intel's Core i7-13700 and i7-14700 models. Another domestic chipmaker—Loongson—has taken similar brave steps to play catch-up with typical past-gen Team Blue designs.

Intel's Q3 earnings delivered a solid number, but a few interesting things are happening at Intel's Fabs that aren't related to any leading-edge node production. According to Intel CFO David Zinsner, "In Q3, Intel Foundry delivered Intel 10 and 7 volume above expectations," indicating that demand for Intel's products built on these nodes is significantly exceeding supply. Zinsner noted, "Capacity constraints, especially on Intel 10 and Intel 7, limited our ability to fully meet demand in Q3 for both data center and client products," suggesting strong demand for Core and Xeon processors built on these nodes.

Intel first introduced Intel 7 node, previously known as 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin, with 12th Generation "Alder Lake." However, that is now discontinued and Intel continues to ship 13th Generation "Raptor Lake" and 14th Generation Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" client CPUs on the Intel 7 node. For Xeon server chips, the company uses the Intel 7 node for the 4th Generation "Sapphire Rapids," 5th Generation "Emerald Rapids" Xeon Scalable and manufactures the I/O die for the latest "Granite Rapids" Xeon 6, where the compute dies are made on the Intel 3 node. High demand from the gaming sector for 13th and 14th Gen gaming CPUs, along with strong demand for Xeon processors, has created a manufacturing bottleneck. Intel will prioritize delivering data center products first and gaming products second.

The Meteor Lake codename has been linked to the fourteenth generation of Intel's Core lineup for a while, following several significant leaks in 2022 and 2023. According to newly unearthed internal documentation and benchmark data, Intel has confirmed that the Meteor Lake family of CPUs will form its upcoming 14th Gen Core lineup - with laptop variations expected to arrive mid-2023 and heavily speculated desktop units in the fourth quarter, although a middle of the year refresh of Raptor Lake could push the entire Meteor Lake range's release window into 2024.

Meteor Lake is anticipated to be Intel's debuting of a "disaggregated" design - the most advanced laptop CPU variant features a top-of-the-line 6P+8E core configuration. Intel is solely responsible for fabrication of an IOE (I/O) tile (the company's own term for a chiplet) with PCIe 5.0 plus Thunderbolt 4, as well as an SoC tile. The GPU part of the design is rumored to be based on their own Arc Alchemist architecture, and TSMC has been contracted to manufacture this graphics tile - not a big surprise since Intel has also placed substantial manufacturing orders for discrete Arc cards with the Taiwanese foundry.