Gamers who updated their Steam desktop app recently may have seen something a little new in their browsing experience: a feature that is visually prioritizing what Valve considers helpful reviews – and is thinning out the meme-filled ones. “[O]ne-word reviews, reviews comprised of ASCII art, or reviews that are primarily playful memes and in-jokes, will […]

If you were hoping for some form of revelation for Embracer Group’s slate of MMOs to come out of the company’s April-to-June investor report for 2024, you should probably temper your expectations, as most of what our readers care about appears to be dangled carrots for the investor board instead of hard plans. We’ll start […]

Paradox Interactive has shared the unfortunate news that they have delayed the release of Prison Architect 2 indefinitely.

Prison Architect 2 had already been delayed a couple times, most recently aiming for 3rd September and with the announcement that the development was being handed over from original studio Double Eleven to new team at Kokku, but even that has been pulled back as they “re-assess the scope of the work needed to be done before the game is release-ready.”

There will be minimal communication about the game’s development through the coming weeks and months, until such a time that Kokku and Paradox feel ready to share something substantial.

Given the form of this delay, all pre-orders are being refunded automatically, though you will be able to request an expedited refund, as detailed in the FAQ.

It’s the latest blow to Paradox’s game line up. Cities: Skylines 2 launched last year to great dissatisfaction from players, with developer Colossal Order having now spent the better part of the year optimising the game and reworking gameplay elements. Last year’s The Lamplighters League also underperformed, and more recently, Paradox cancelled and shut down the studio behind their The Sims competitor, Life By You.

Here’s the Prison Architect 2 statement in full:

We have some difficult news to share: unfortunately, we will not release Prison Architect 2 on September 3rd because we need more time to improve both the game’s performance and its content. Our continuous internal reviews and beta test groups have highlighted areas that we need to focus on more, mainly performance and content, which we need to address before launch to ensure that you, the players, get a good experience in the game. We need to raise the quality a bit more to meet the standards we’d like to achieve with this sequel.

We are confident that the sequel to Prison Architect will be great, and we’re looking forward to showing you all the new ideas brought into it: the switch to 3D, multi-floors, and the new behavior system that all bring a new dimension to the game and open new gameplay possibilities for the players. However, we want to make sure the game lives up to the franchise’s legacy and is released in a state that satisfies both you, our players, and the Prison Architect 2 teams at Kokku and Paradox Interactive.

At this stage, we can’t commit to a new release date as we need to re-assess the scope of the work needed to be done before the game is release-ready. Over the next few months, we will focus on improving the game and building a more robust release timeline. This also means we will be limiting our communication with you all until we have a timeline we feel comfortable with.

With this indefinite delay, preorders on all platforms will be refunded, and the preorder items will be added to the base game.

This decision aligns with our commitment here at Paradox to reviewing and improving the quality of our released content. We are confident that delaying Prison Architect 2 is the best path forward for the game, allowing us more time to deliver a high-quality experience that honors the legacy of Prison Architect.

This is not the announcement we hoped to make, but it is necessary, as we believe this will result in a better game for you. Thank you for your patience, and we’ll see you again soon.

The Prison Architect 2 Team

Source: Paradox

Following the news of significant layoffs at Bungie earlier this week, there’s been a lot of further reporting on what this means for the company’s future and how they’ve ended up in this place. Senior staff have left, a new Destiny game has reportedly been cancelled, and many have called for CEO Pete Parsons to quit for mismanaging the company over the last few years.

The layoffs were announced on Wednesday by Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, with 220 of the company’s 1300 headcount losing their jobs, while a further 155 would be able to move across to the wider PlayStation business, and around 40 to form a new studio and take on an incubation project. That’s roughly a third of the company’s workforce, and follows on from 100 employees losing their jobs last October, leaving the new headcount at around 850 employees.

As part of this, it’s reported that key Bungie figures from Destiny 2’s early revival have departed the company. Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy have apparently left (per Jeff Grubb’s Game Mess Decides podcast) following the cancellation of their Destiny spin-off game, codenamed Payback. This had been reported as being Destiny 3, but as is often the case, further details are leaked once people are no longer employed, and Jason Schreier’s sources state it was not a direct sequel, and actually cancelled some time ago.

The layoffs have been met with a lot of shock from outside viewers, given the very positive reception of Destiny 2: The Final Shape. Bungie had delayed the expansion’s release in an effort to come back from failing to meet financial expectations with the previous year’s Lightfall, and by all accounts, The Final Shape was the narrative finale that Destiny needed and deserved.

However, Stephen Totilo reports that the deep job cuts were planned to happen regardless of the reception or success of The Final Shape. The need for job cuts was only made worse by The Final Shape having “sold less than Lightfall”, despite its positive reception. As Parsons stated in the job cuts announcement, “We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red.”

Since that announcement, a lot of anger has been directed at Parsons personally for his decision making, leadership and level of accountability. Parsons claimed that the leadership team “did everything we could to avoid today’s outcome,” but there have been various former employees calling for Parsons to quit, especially with anecdotes about him inviting them to view his personal car collection – a collection that has been found on car bidding site Bring A Trailer, and which shows a total value of $2.4 million, over $450,000 of which came since October 2023, the time of the first wave of layoffs.

Anyone else remember the time that Nintendo’s President took a 50% pay cut?

There’s also analysis of how this ties back into Sony’s 2022 acquisition of Bungie for $3.6 billion. Speaking to Totilo, an anonymous former Bungie insider said, “I think Sony overpaid for Bungie. I think Bungie sold things they were just not able to deliver.” The company had seemingly overstated their earning potential, while courting Sony as a buyer.

And Parsons is again going to be in the spotlight for that, as part of the 2022 acquisition was that Bungie would remain autonomous. That autonomy reportedly came into threat last year as Bungie started to miss financial targets, which was seemingly a driving factor behind layoffs late last year, so the company leadership could try to retain control.

Bungie is remaining committed to supporting Destiny 2 going forward and the development of extraction shooter Marathon, but the company’s future still feels uncertain. Jeff Grubb is claiming that, in time, Sony will take over control of Bungie’s management, similar to all other developers owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Bungie has announced it is laying off 220 staff, approximately 17% of its workforce, across all levels of the company including leadership roles. Pete Parsons, CEO of Bungie, has released a long statement for the reasons why 220 will be losing their jobs at the development studio. This includes the economic downturn of recent years, and costs relating to Destiny 2 and Marathon exceeding the financial limits of the company.

Pete Parsons has also confirmed that Bungie will become more integrated into Sony Interactive Entertainment, with 12% of roles being moved over to Sony. In addition, Bungie is spinning off a yet unnamed project into PlayStation Studios with the establishment of a new studio to continue work on the project. The full statement can be read below.

This morning, I’m sharing with all of you some of the most difficult changes we’ve ever had to make as a studio. Due to rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions, it has become clear that we need to make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon.  

That means beginning today, 220 of our roles will be eliminated, representing roughly 17% of our studio’s workforce.   

These actions will affect every level of the company, including most of our executive and senior leader roles.     

Today is a difficult and painful day, especially for our departing colleagues, all of which have made important and valuable contributions to Bungie. Our goal is to support them with the utmost care and respect. For everyone affected by this job reduction, we will be offering a generous exit package, including severance, bonus and health coverage.  

I realize all of this is hard news, especially following the success we have seen with The Final Shape. But as we’ve navigated the broader economic realities over the last year, and after exhausting all other mitigation options, this has become a necessary decision to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials. 

We are committing to two other major changes today that we believe will support our focus, leverage Sony’s strengths, and create new opportunities for Bungie talent.   

First, we are deepening our integration with Sony Interactive Entertainment, working to integrate 155 of our roles, roughly 12%, into SIE over the next few quarters. SIE has worked tirelessly with us to identify roles for as many of our people as possible, enabling us together to save a great deal of talent that would otherwise have been affected by the reduction in force.     

Second, we are working with PlayStation Studios leadership to spin out one of our incubation projects – an action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe – to form a new studio within PlayStation Studios to continue its promising development.   

This will be a time of tremendous change for our studio.  

Let’s unpack how we ended up in this position; it’s important to understand how we got here. 

For over five years, it has been our goal to ship games in three enduring, global franchises. To realize that ambition, we set up several incubation projects, each seeded with senior development leaders from our existing teams. We eventually realized that this model stretched our talent too thin, too quickly.  It also forced our studio support structures to scale to a larger level than we could realistically support, given our two primary products in development – Destiny and Marathon.  

Additionally, in 2023, our rapid expansion ran headlong into a broad economic slowdown, a sharp downturn in the games industry, our quality miss with Destiny 2: Lightfall, and the need to give both The Final Shape and Marathon the time needed to ensure both projects deliver at the quality our players expect and deserve. We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red. 

After this new trajectory became clear, we knew we had to change our course and speed, and we did everything we could to avoid today’s outcome. Even with exhaustive efforts undertaken across our leadership and product teams to resolve our financial challenges, these steps were simply not enough.   

As a result, today we must say goodbye to incredible talent, colleagues, and friends. 

This will be a challenging time at Bungie, and we’ll need to help our team navigate these changes in the weeks and months ahead. This will be a hard week, and we know that our team will need time to process, to ask questions, and to absorb this news. Today, and over the next several weeks, we will host team meetings and town halls, team breakout sessions, and private, individual sessions to ensure we are keeping our communication open and transparent.  

Bungie will continue to make great games. We still have over 850 team members building Destiny and Marathon, and we will continue to build amazing experiences that exceed our players’ expectations.    

There will be a time to talk about our goals and projects, but today is not that day. Today, our focus is on supporting our people.  

-pete 

Source: Bungie

How do you put 10 years’ worth of MMORPG like Final Fantasy XIV into a mobile version? We could all be seeing an answer to that question in the coming months, as there are new reports that confirm a mobile Eorzea is in the works, though it looks to be a game that’s only being […]

It’s time for a fresh quarterly report, and this time it’s coming out of Roblox, which saw its second quarter earnings for 2024 rise across the metrics that ravenous investors care about while the company’s long time CFO Michael Guthrie will be stepping down. According to the report, revenue rose by 31 percent YoY by […]

By Adam Kovac, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan.

Cadence plans to acquire BETA CAE Systems for $1.24 billion, the latest volley in a race to sell multi-physics simulation and analysis across a broad set of customers with deep pockets. Cadence said the deal opens the door to structural analysis for the automotive, aerospace, industrial, and health care sectors. Under the terms of the agreement, 60% of the purchase would be paid in cash, and the remainder in stock.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported that North Korea was targeting cyberattacks at domestic semiconductor equipment companies, using a “living off the land” approach, in which the attacker uses minimal malware to attack common applications installed on the server. That makes it more difficult to spot an attack. According to the government, “In December last year, Company A, and in February this year, Company B, had their configuration management server and security policy server hacked, respectively, and product design drawings and facility site photos were stolen.”

As the memory market goes, so goes the broader chip industry. Last quarter, and heading into early 2024, both markets began showing signs of sustainable growth. DRAM revenue jumped 29.6% in Q4 for a total of $17.46 billion. TrendForce attributed some of that to  new efforts to stockpile chips and strategic production control. NAND flash revenue was up 24.5% in Q4, with solid growth expected to continue into the first part of this year, according to TrendForce. Revenue for the sector topped $11.4 billion in Q4, and it’s expected to grow another 20% this quarter. SSD prices rebounded in Q4, as well, up 15% to $23.1 billion. Across the chip industry, sales grew 15.2% in January compared to the same period in 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). This is the largest increase since May 2022, and that trend is expected to continue throughout 2024 with double-digit growth compared to 2023.

Marvell said it is working with TSMC to develop a technology platform for the rapid deployment of analog, mixed-signal, and foundational IP. The company plans to sell both custom and commercial chiplets at 2nm.

The Dutch government is concerned that ASML, the only maker of EUV/high-NA EUV lithography equipment in the world, is considering leaving the Netherlands, according to De Telegraaf.

Quick links to more news:

Design and Power
Manufacturing and Test
Automotive and Batteries
Security
Pervasive Computing and AI
Events

Design and Power

AMD appears to have hit a roadblock with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) over a new AI chip it designed for the Chinese market, as reported by Bloomberg. U.S. officials told the company the new chip is too powerful to be sold without a license.

JEDEC released its new memory standard as a free download on its website. The JESD239 Graphics Double Data Rate SGRAM can reach speeds of 192 GB/s and improve signal-to-noise ratio.

Accellera rolled out its IEEE Std. 1800‑2023 Standard for SystemVerilog—Unified Hardware Design, Specification, and Verification Language, which is now available for free download. The decision to offer it at no cost is due to Accellera’s participation in the IEEE GET Program, which was founded in 2010 with the intention of providing  open access to some standards. Accellera also announced it had approved for release the Verilog-AMS 2023 standard, which offers enhancements to analog constructs, dynamic tolerance for event control statements, and other upgrades.

Chiplets are a hot topic these days. Six industry experts discuss chiplet standards, interoperability, and the need for highly customized AI chiplets.

Optimizing EDA hardware for the cloud can shorten the time required for large and complex simulations, but not all workloads will benefit equally, and much more can be done to improve those that can.

Flex Logix is developing InferX DSP for use with existing EFLX eFPGA from 40nm to 7nm. InferX achieves about 30 times the DSP performance/mm² than eFPGA.

The number of challenges is growing in power semiconductors, just as it is in traditional chips. This tech talk looks at integrating power semiconductors with other devices, different packaging impacts, and how these devices will degrade over time.

Vultr announced it will use NVIDIA’s HGX H100 GPU clusters to expand its Seattle-based cloud data center. The company said the expansion, which will be powered by hydroelectricity, will make the facility one of the cleanest, most power efficient data centers in the country.

Amazon Web Services will expand its presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing a new $5.3 billion infrastructure region in the country that will launch in 2026. The new region will offer developers, entrepreneurs and companies access to healthcare, education and other services.

Google is teaming up with the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) to launch the XPRIZE Quantum Applications, with a $5 million in prizes for winners who can demonstrate ways to use quantum computing to solve real-world problems. Teams must submit a proposal that includes analysis of how long their algorithm would need to run before reaching a solution to a problem, such as improving drug development or designing new battery materials.

South Korea’s nepes corporation has turned to Siemens EDA for solutions in the development of advanced 3D-IC packages. The deal will see nepes incorporating several Siemens technologies, including the Calibre nmPlatform, Hyperlynx software and Xpedition Substrate Integrator software.

Siemens also formalized a partnership with Nuclei System Technology in which the pair of companies will work together on solution support for Nuclei’s RISC-V processor cores. The collaboration will allow clients to monitor CPU program execution in real-time via Nuclei’s RISC-V CPU Ips.

Keysight and ETS-Lindgren announced a breakthrough test solution for cellular devices using non-terrestrial networks. The solution is capable of measuring and validating the performance of both the transmitter and receiver of devices capable of supporting the network.

Nearly fifty companies raised $800 million for power electronics, data center interconnects, and more last month.

Manufacturing and Test

SEMI Europe issued a position statement to the European Union, warning against additional export controls or rules on foreign investment. SEMI argued that free trade partnerships are a better method for ensuring security than bans or restrictions.

Revenues for the top five wafer fab equipment manufacturers declined 1% YoY in 2023 to $93.5 billion, according to Counterpoint Research. The drop was attributed to weak spending on memory, inventory adjustments, and low demand in consumer electronics. The tide is changing, though.

Bruker closed two acquisitions. One involved Chemspeed Technologies, a Switzerland-based provider of automated laboratory R&D and QC workflow solutions. The second involved Phasefocus, an image processing company based in the UK.

A Swedish company, SCALINQ, released a commercially available large-scale packaging solution capable of controlling quantum devices with hundreds of qubits.

Solid Sands, a provider of testing and qualification technology for compilers and libraries, will partner with California-based Emprog to establish a representative presence in the U.S.

Automotive

Tesla halted production at its Brandenberg, Germany, gigafactory after an environmental activist group attacked an electricity pylon, reports the Guardian.

Stellantis will invest €5.6 billion (~$6.1B) in South America to support more than 40 new products, decarbonization technologies, and business opportunities.

The amount of data being collected, processed, and stored in vehicles is exploding, and so is the value of that data. That raises questions that are still not fully answered about how that data will be used, by whom, and how it will be secured.

While industry experts expect many benefits of V2X technology, technological and social hurdles to cross. But there is progress.

Infineon released its next-gen silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET trench technology with 650V and 1,200V options improving stored energies and charges by up to 20%, ideal for power semiconductor applications such as photovoltaics, energy storage, DC EV charging, motor drives, and industrial power supplies.

Hyundai selected Ansys to supply structural simulation solutions for vehicle body system analysis, providing end-to-end, predictively accurate capabilities for virtual performance validation.

ION Mobility used the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio for styling, mechanical engineering, and electric battery pack development for its ION M1-S electric motorbike.

Ethernovia sampled a family of automotive PHY transceivers that scale from 10 Gbps to 1 Gbps over 15 meters of automotive cabling.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved Waymo’s plan to expand its driverless robotaxi services to Los Angeles and other cities near San Francisco, reports Reuters.

By 2027, next-gen battery EVs (BEVs) will on average be cheaper to produce than comparable gas-powered cars, reports Gartner. But the firm noted that average cost of EV accident repair will rise by 30%, and 15% of EV companies founded in the last decade will be acquired or bankrupt.

University of California San Diego (UCSD) researchers developed a cathode material for solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries that is electrically conductive and structurally healable.

ION Storage Systems announced its anodeless and compressionless solid-state batteries (SSBs) achieved 125 cycles with under 5% capacity degradation in performance. ION has been working with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to test its SSB before expanding into markets such as EVs, energy storage, consumer electronics, and aerospace.

Security

Advanced process nodes and higher silicon densities are heightening DRAM’s susceptibility to Rowhammer attacks, as reduced cell spacing significantly decreases the hammer count needed for bit flips. A multi-layered, system-level approach is crucial to DRAM protection.

Researchers at Bar-Ilan University and Rafael Defense Systems proposed an analytical electromagnetic model for IC shielding against hardware attacks.

Keysight acquired the IP of Firmalyzer, whose firmware security analysis technology will be integrated into the Keysight IoT Security Assessment and Automotive Security solutions, providing analysis into what is happening inside the IoT device itself.

Flex Logix joined the Intel Foundry U.S. Military Aerospace Government (USMAG) Alliance, ensuring U.S. defense industrial base and government customers have access to the latest technology, enabling successful designs for mission critical programs.

The EU Council presidency and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on a Cyber Solidarity Act and an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act (CSA) concerning managed security services.

The EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and partners updated the compendium on elections cybersecurity in response to issues such as AI deep fakes, hacktivists-for-hire, the sophistication of threat actors, and the current geopolitical context.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched efforts to help secure the open source software ecosystem; updated its Public Safety Communications and Cyber Resiliency Toolkit; and issued other alerts including security advisories for VMware, Apple, and Cisco.

Pervasive Computing and AI

Johns Hopkins University engineers used natural language prompts and ChatGPT4 to produce detailed instructions to build a spiking neural network (SNN) chip. The neuromorphic accelerators could power real-time machine intelligence for next-gen embodied systems like autonomous vehicles and robots.

The global AI hardware market size was estimated at $53.71 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach about $473.53 billion by 2033, at a compound annual growth rate of 24.5%, reports Precedence Research.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers and partners built compact chips capable of converting light into microwaves, which could improve navigation, communication, and radar systems.

Fig. 1: NIST researchers test a chip for converting light into microwave signals. Pictured is the chip, which is the fluorescent panel that looks like two tiny vinyl records. The gold box to the left of the chip is the semiconductor laser that emits light to the chip. Credit: K. Palubicki/NIST

The Indian government is investing 103 billion rupees ($1.25B) in AI projects, including computing infrastructure and large language models (LLMs).

Infineon is collaborating with Qt Group, bringing Qt’s graphics framework to Infineon’s graphics-enabled TRAVEO T2G cluster MCUs to optimize graphical user interface (GUI) development.

Keysight leveraged fourth-generation AMD EPYC CPUs to develop a new benchmarking methodology to test mobile and 5G private network performance. The method uses realistic traffic generation to uncover a CPU’s true power and scalability while observing bandwidth requirements.

The AI industry is pushing a nuclear power revival, reports NBC, and Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania from Talen Energy for $650 million, according to WNEP.

Bank of America was awarded 644 patents in 2023 for technology including information security, AI, machine learning (ML), online and mobile banking, payments, data analytics, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR).

Mistral AI’s large language model, Mistral Large, became available in the Snowflake Data Cloud for customers to securely harness generative AI with their enterprise data.

China’s smartphone unit sales declined 7% year over year in the first six weeks of 2024, with Apple declining 24%, reports Counterpoint.

Shipments of LCD TV panels are expected to reach 55.8 million units in Q1 2024, a 5.3% quarter over quarter increase, reports TrendForce. And an estimated 5.8 billion LED lamps and luminaires are expected to reach the end of their lifespan in 2024, triggering a wave of secondary replacements and boosting total LED lighting demand to 13.4 billion units.

Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) researchers mined high-purity gold from electrical and electronic waste.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the University of Utah launched a National Data Platform pilot project, aimed at making access to and use of scientific data open and equitable.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Event	Date	Location
ISS Industry Strategy Symposium Europe	Mar 6 – 8	Vienna, Austria
GSA International Semiconductor Conference	Mar 13 – 14	London
Device Packaging Conference (DPC 2024)	Mar 18 – 21	Fountain Hills, AZ
GOMACTech	Mar 18 – 21	Charleston, South Carolina
SNUG Silicon Valley	Mar 20 – 21	Santa Clara, CA
SEMICON China	Mar 20 – 22	Shanghai
OFC: Optical Communications & Networking	Mar 24 – 28	Virtual; San Diego, CA
DATE: Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference	Mar 25 – 27	Valencia, Spain
SEMI Therm	Mar 25- 28	San Jose, CA
MemCon	Mar 26 – 27	Silicon Valley
All Upcoming Events

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading and Newsletters

Read the latest special reports and top stories, or check out the latest newsletters:

Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials
Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing

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