Is it that time of the year again? It’s high time to start talking about the new games I’m looking forward to play in the upcoming year. I may have written fewer articles compared to 2023, but I have written better researched articles. But, looking back on 2024 is for the next article. In this article, I’m looking to the year 2025. A year when I have been writing articles for 15 years. And I have been writing these gaming related articles for 12 years. And the third year that I’m livestreaming together with my buddy Klamath. So, on this day, I’m going to reveal the 10 games I’m looking to play in 2025. What games do interest my on the release calendar. Also, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your list and/or thoughts on my list. So, let’s dive right into my list. Note, this list is in a random order.

#10 – Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Stole Time (Nintendo Switch – April 2025)

This game was supposed to be released this year. Yet, this game got delayed to 2025. Fantasy Life was a charm RPG on the Nintendo 3DS where you played through a charming and adorable story. You were able to play in different lives like a warrior, magician, wood cutter, miner…

This title from Level5 got a small cult following. We were beyond stocked when the sequel on the Nintendo Switch got announced. Now we can’t wait to play it and the delay is a shame. But on the other hand, the game may be even better because of the additional polish it might get. Or maybe the game will release on the Nintendo Switch 2, which is rumored to be released at that time. Who knows, we shall have to wait and see.

#9 – Professor Layton and the New World of Steam (Nintendo Switch – TBA)

On our live streams, when ever there is a logic puzzle… Klamath says I need to wait before I say my solution. For some reason, I have a knack for solving logic puzzles. I can’t tell you why. What I can tell you is that I love games where puzzles play a central role. Games like Professor Layton.

It has almost been 8 years since we got a new Professor Layton style game. And if you don’t count the spin-off of Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy… we need to go back 11 years to a cross over with the Ace Attorney series. Add another year for the final game with only Professor Layton in a lead role.

But a totally new adventure by the professor where solving logic puzzles in a central mechanic in the world is… a wild dream for me. So, please Level5… You have two amazing titles upcoming for 2025, don’t delay them or don’t undercook them. I’m beyond hyped.

#8 – Tomb Raider IV-V-VI Remastered (Multiplatform – Febraury 14th)

Take this admission however you want. But, my first original Tomb Raider game was Tomb Raider Chronicles. Yes, I first played Tomb Raider V.

I have always been of the opinion that Tomb Raider V was a decent game and shouldn’t get the hate it got back then. I can understand that due to the departure on the original formula, like less ancient tombs and small mini-adventures… That it didn’t sit well with Tomb Raider fans. But, as a starting point, it was a blessing, actually.
Now, does Tomb Raider V have problems? Yes, it has. But with the upcoming remake of Tomb Raider 4, 5 and Angel of Darkness… We finally have a chance to see a more improved version of it. So, a week after my birthday, dear Aspyr, you may be sure that I’ll be playing the remaster of Tomb Raider V on my Nintendo Switch to enjoy Tomb Raider V how it should have been. Or maybe on my PC for added nostalgia. That’s some food for thought.

#7 – Demonschool (Mutliplatform – Q1 2025)

As long as your game has an interesting concept, I don’t really care if you are a small studio or a big studio. Necrosoft Games is currently placing the final hand on their new title called Demonschool.

Demonschool is a turnbased tactics RPG game in the style of Fire Emblem, Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. The idea is very novel and adds a new depth to the genre. Where each unit has their own role, since the weakest enemies can be killed with one hit. So, it becomes more a chess match than anything else.

From the trailers I have seen, I’m beyond interested. I could try and explain it here in this article but I feel like the trailer and battle mechanics trailer they placed on the Steam store page explains it better than I can in this article. Also, give the demo a try since, I really enjoyed it myself.

#6 – Demon Tides (PC – TBA)

While I haven’t played through the original Demon Turf, just yet… I have played through various other similar games like A Hat in Time.

From watching the trailer, I have been highly interested and I got a nostalgia hit for A Hat in Time.

So, I wishlisted this game, and I’m so going to give it a try. Since I saw various video’s on the original game and I wonder by myself, why I haven’t played it. So, Demon Turf and your sequel. I can’t wait to play through you in 2025.

#5 – The Hundred Line Last Defence Academy (Nintendo Switch & PC – April 23th)

Danganronpa and the Zero Escape trilogy are two series very close to my heart. And now we get a new title with those two writers creating a game together and directing it.

Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi are working hand in hand in this game. You clearly see the influence of both their styles in this game. And it will even have a physical release.

To create this game, the studio Too Kyo Games has to take out a loan. That’s because a publishing deal fell through. Aniplex picked this game up as a publisher. And this game is being co-developed by Media.Vision, the company behind the Wild Arms series and various Valkyria Chronicles games. So we are in good hands for this title.

On purpose, I’m trying to avoid spoiling myself as much as I can. Since, I want to be as blind as possible when I play through this game.

#4 – The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st (Nintendo Switch/PC – TBA)

A RPG series I always wanted to get into was the Trails in the Sky series. Sadly, I was always distracted by other games or I had the bad luck of my PSP bricking and destroying my game.

When my PSP bricked, due to the internal battery leaking… I lost my save file as well and I was so annoyed that I didn’t want to restart the game right away.

So, the Trail series continued on and I saw amazing titles appear. Color me surprised that suddenly a remake of the first title gets announced and is coming to the Nintendo Switch and PC. So, I have a chance to play this game from scratch, and it’s totally remade from the ground up. Count me in. I can’t wait to start my journey in this series and see what I missed out on.

#3 – Date Everything (PC – February 14th)

When you see the title of this game, you most likely think to yourself: “Jonez, what in the name of …”. Well, I told you earlier in this article… That if your game has an interesting concept, count me interested.

In this game, you literally can date EVERYTHING in your house. If you have seen those YTShort skits by ProZD where everything is sentient, well… What if it is. And you can date those characters?

That’s what this game brings to the table. And this game is fully voice acted, has 100 (!) characters and branching paths. And get this, there are at least 3 different endings per character. You have the love ending, friends ending and hate ending.

Now, when I saw this concept and gave it a thought, I was like… Oh hey, this has a ton of potential. Since the potential for humor and amazing story telling in this is just huge. And as somebody who loves writing stories and articles myself, this clicked right away. So, I’m going to give this game a chance and see where they go with it.

#2 – Lunar Remastered Collection (Multiplatform – Q1/2 2025)

If I look at all the retro games I still want to play through, like Lufia, my list is getting pretty long. Once, I wrote an article about my backlog, and it has gotten even more out of hand.

So, if you give me a collection of games to play through to shorten my backlog, then consider me interested. Especially when it’s good old fantasy RPG.

A story where you are dumped in a fantasy world and explore it’s various stories. With the upcoming remake, I’m quite curious to dive into the Lunar series and see why various people have recommended it to me.

#1 – Paraside: Duality Unbound (Multiplatform – TBA)

Imagne a tactics RPG, where each battlefield has two sides. Yes, basically a light and a dark side so to speak. And can manipulate the battlefield by flipping the tiles.

Do me a favor and watch the trailer for this game. And then think how many interesting gameplay concepts that this game can have. How is the flipping mechanic going to work. What are the limits of this power.

I’m mostly interested in the story behind this game. Since it’s the style of story I love to write for my personal amusement. But, the gameplay is looking mighty interesting. Now, I have only to decide if I play this title on my PC or if I take it on the go with me on the Switch. We shall see, since the game will have modding support, so the PC version might be my best option.

15 years of game blogging

While this year has been a heavy year for me, I’m happy with everything I achieved. I have been recently published in a fan gaming magazine called ReLOADED by Dominus. And I’m so happy I was able to contribute my work to it.

Next year, I’ll be writing articles for 15 years. I have several special idea’s in mind and have been working on preparations for them. But, I’m not yet going to reveal what they are. Since, I want to leave them a surprise for all of you guys and girl. While 2025 is going to be a busy year for me, I’m sure that it will be filled with amazing adventures and unique opportunities.

When I look at the games that are going to release in 2025, I’m beyond stocked that I will have a lot of games to play and talk about in my blog. But, who knows, games on my backlog or retro games I find might grab my attention more and more.

And with that, I’m going to wrap up this article here. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

SemiAccurate was down for about a week, what happened? And what if anything do I need to do?
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The post SemiAccurate is back up appeared first on SemiAccurate.

The shortest amount of downtime between projects I had was two weeks. We shipped the game, I took my comp time, and I came back and started on a new project. We weren't going at full speed yet - it was mostly just exploratory preproduction work for the new game - but it was still work. The longest amount of downtime was indefinite. The project finished, didn't sell well, and almost everybody got laid off as a result.

Normally what happens is that we get off-the-books comp time, usually some factor of how much time we crunched before launch, and then we come back for a few weeks/months of taking it easy, doing retrospectives, and brainstorming new ideas for what we want to do next, and then ramping back to a normal work week after that.

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For those who haven't read it yet, here's my old post on a [typical day as a game designer]. When we're crunching, we just have a longer work day. Tasks don't really get more difficult or time-consuming when we're crunching; we still need to be able to complete each task in a reasonable time frame. Instead, during crunch the number of tasks we need to work through increases significantly, so the "identify the problem, iterate on solutions, try and test solutions, submit a fix" process just happens more often each day.

Normally, I can get called in to prioritize new tasks as they come in, get assigned a new task, or ask/get asked for help about an existing issue during the work day. During crunch, that time frame increases into the evening (e.g. late breaking bugs/issues) and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. In addition, the bugs that must be fixed during crunch get a little weirder because not everyone is around or available at all times, so I would often fix bugs outside my area of expertise. There have been occasions where I got assigned a critical issue for the sole reason that I was still awake and at the office. That kind of trial-by-fire experience is what hiring managers are looking for when a job description asks for shipped games.

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Over the course of my career, I've worked crunch hours (10+ hours a day) on at least ten separate games, two of which never shipped. I worked weekends on nine of them. Some crunch periods were intermittent (crunching near the end of milestones to make the deadline) and others were ongoing due to overly ambitious schedules and constantly-moving goalposts. Crunch period length was determined primarily by the project - some were short (shortest: two week crunch periods and not more than four weeks total over the entire year) and some were long (longest: eight months of sequential crunch leading up to launch).

I like Mark Darrah's perspective on this - crunch often brings completion urgency, which is the feeling that the team must make final decisions and commit to them, rather than second-guessing and redoing work or just not deciding. Significant amounts of work are gated by committing to large decisions - and crunch is one of those things that tends to force commitment. The longer major decisions go without commitment, the more work piles up on the other side of the decision commitment, thus often necessitating crunch to finish. Looking back on all of the games I've worked on, the projects that committed to the big decisions early were the ones that had the least issues with crunch.

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Got a burning question you want answered?

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The Remake Of The End Of The Greatest RPG Of All Time, or TROTEOTGRPGOAT for, uh, short, is a game that exists. I normally wouldn’t let such an opaque stub of a description survive outside of a quick Trello reminder to write something better later, but I’m currently finding it fulfilling enough just to gaze upon that title and consider the fully formed art object that may soon emerge from its tantalising promises. Ok, so the visual component helps too. Orientate yourself by means of the trailer below, and let’s dig into this brazen nose-hooker of a head turner of a game that does exist, about another game that doesn’t.

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The Remake Of The End Of The Greatest RPG Of All Time, or TROTEOTGRPGOAT for, uh, short, is a game that exists. I normally wouldn’t let such an opaque stub of a description survive outside of a quick Trello reminder to write something better later, but I’m currently finding it fulfilling enough just to gaze upon that title and consider the fully formed art object that may soon emerge from its tantalising promises. Ok, so the visual component helps too. Orientate yourself by means of the trailer below, and let’s dig into this brazen nose-hooker of a head turner of a game that does exist, about another game that doesn’t.

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Pár let po oznámení, že projekt byl předán Ubisoft Montreal,  dostal remake Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time  velmi krátkou aktualizaci během Ubisoft Forward s krátkou upoutávkou, která odhalila, že hra bude vyjde někdy v roce 2026.

A přestože v teaseru nebyly ukázány žádné záběry z hraní, rozhovor s vývojáři, který Ubisoft později zveřejnil, odhalil některé podrobnosti o tom, co můžeme od dlouho vyvíjeného remaku očekávat.

Když mluvil o přístupu vývojářského týmu k celému projektu, kreativní ředitel Bio Jade Adam Granger zmínil „posvětit, respektovat, modernizovat a přidat“ jako „čtyři pilíře“, které se používají k „definování všeho ve hře“. Zatímco některé aspekty zážitku se přenášejí s minimálními změnami – například mechanika běhu po zdi – jiné aspekty se dočkají změn v různé míře, například design úrovní, měřítko světa a způsob, jakým hra přistupuje k výzvám.

„Předělávat klasiku je pro mě velmi odvážné a vzrušující,“ řekl Granger. „To, co jsem chtěl přinést, je myšlenka ‚posvětit, respektovat, modernizovat a přidat‘. Takže tyto čtyři pilíře jsou tím, co používáme k definování všeho ve hře. Když si vezmeme například nepřítele: Chceme ho posvětit, nechat ho tak, jak je, protože je tak ikonický? Chceme ho respektovat, jen ho trochu opravit? Modernizovat ho, což je trochu větší změna – nebo je to něco úplně nového? Všechno, co bylo v originále, prochází touto optikou, stejně jako některé věci, které chceme zlepšit – například možnosti přístupnosti jsou něco, co přidáváme.

„Máme věci, které zůstanou zachovány, jako například běh po zdi, který je tak ikonický, že se mu budeme snažit co nejvíce vyrovnat. Stejně tak dýka. Existují základní prvky původního receptu, které respektujeme a posvěcujeme: časové síly, tón hry a gravitační hratelnost. Ale modernizujeme takové věci, jako je například design úrovní, a skutečně posilujeme měřítko světa. Také trochu více variujeme výzvy.“

Granger dále hovořil o tom, jak se remake snaží vylepšit svět původní hry, a uvedl, že tým „znásobil měřítko“ paláce Azad.

„Chci, aby lidé byli ohromeni! Úžas je pro mě superdůležitý,“ řekl Granger. „Protože je to příběh, který vypráví princ, a Azad je fiktivní místo. Znásobili jsme rozsah a úžas toho místa. Je větší než život, na hranici fantazie; ne úplně fantazijní, ale spíš vylepšené než realistické. Říkáme tomu „poetická odysea“. Poezie je ve vizuální stránce a tónu, s hudbou a zvukem. Pokud se nám skutečně podaří zajistit, aby se lidé cítili přeneseni do tohoto světa, myslím, že máme vyhráno.“

K tomu se přidal i herní režisér Michael McIntyre, který mimo jiné upřesnil, jak větší měřítko paláce umožní „větší pocit propojení“ uvnitř stavby.

„Kvůli technickým omezením byla původní hra – ačkoli dokázala úžasně vytvořit pocit místa a pocit, že se nacházíte v pohádkovém zámku – omezená z hlediska toho, co jste mohli vidět a jak byly prostory propojené,“ řekl. „Dobrým příkladem je, že jednou z věcí, které hráči v naší hře nyní zažívají, je pocit závratě, a to kvůli rozsahu hradu, kvůli tomu, jak vysoké se mohou zdát výšky. V původní hře by to musela být velmi oblačná mlha, která jakoby byla podlahou dole, a to bránilo tomu závratnému pocitu výšky – kterého jsme nyní schopni dosáhnout díky moderním enginům a podobně. Přijali jsme toto zvětšené měřítko, zvýšený pocit propojenosti hradu, pocit větší orientace, protože vidíte vzdálené orientační body.“

McIntyre dále v rozhovoru prozradil, že další oblastí, kde se remake snaží modernizovat zážitek, je boj, i když některé prvky zůstanou do značné míry podobné tomu, jak byly provedeny v původní hře.

„Myslím, že boj je dobrým příkladem,“ řekl. „Původní souboje by pro mnoho dnešních hráčů byly docela zastaralé. Souboje ve hrách, jako je Prince of Persia, za 21 let od této hry hodně pokročily a některé nedávné hry, jako Dark Souls a God of War, skutečně pozvedly kompetence i příležitostnějších hráčů v boji. Je to oblast, do které bylo opravdu potřeba vnést modernost.

„Ale jsou určité věci, které jsou pro bojový styl Prince of Persia ikonické, jako například úder sklepením, kdy se skláníte nad nepřítelem a zasáhnete ho, nebo kutálení se na zem a bodání do ležícího nepřítele, abyste z něj dýkou vysáli písek. Jsou momenty, které je třeba zachovat po vizuální stránce a z hlediska tempa, a také prostě pocit z boje v roli akrobatického hrdiny, který se ladně drží o krok před hordou, která ho převyšuje.“

Na jiném místě rozhovoru vývojáři také prozradili, že v remaku bude Farah hrát větší a angažovanější roli a bude přidán nový příběhový obsah související s touto postavou, který bude z velké části nepovinný. Více se o tom dočtete zde.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time vyjde v roce 2026 pro PS5, Xbox řady X/S a PC.

Článek Remake Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time bude obsahovat přepracované úrovně a boj se nejdříve objevil na GAME PRESS.

During today’s Ubisoft Summer Game Fest showcase, the publisher took a moment to acknowledge that, yes, its long-in-development and oft-delayed Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake is still being made. But if you wanted to play it soon...bad news. It won’t be out until sometime in 2026.

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Ubisoft’s remake of time-rewinding Prince of Persia classic The Sands of Time has finally reappeared to tease - with the emphasis on tease - a release not this year, not next year, but in 2026.

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Ubisoft has announced that it now plans to release Prince of Persia The Sands of Time Remake in 2026. Moreover, the French company released a new teaser trailer that you can find below. This trailer does not show much, so don’t expect to see what the game will look like. Ubisoft was planning to release this remake … Continue reading Prince of Persia The Sands of Time Remake now targets a 2026 release date →

The post Prince of Persia The Sands of Time Remake now targets a 2026 release date appeared first on DSOGaming.

After what has felt like forever for this Legend of Zelda-loving-Lego-nerd, the long-rumoured set based on The Great Deku Tree has been officially revealed by Nintendo.

The upcoming Lego set will be a two-in-one number, with the option to recreate Ocarina of Time's Great Deku Tree or Breath of the Wild's. The Breath of the Wild version comes with a buildable Hestu figure, as you can see in the header image above, and a little cooking pot inside the tree himself and a Korok at the top. Also, check out the Deku Tree's blossom brows!

When it is in its Ocarina of Time form, meanwhile, users will also be able to build Link's treehouse from Kokiri Forest, which has a little Navi perched on the balcony.

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MultiVersus, WB’s free-to-play platform fighter, has only been out for two days and we already have two new characters in the game. But more are coming, as you might expect, and thanks to Pickle Rick (the alter-ego of the titular character from animated series Rick and Morty), we have a good idea of who some of the…

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After an extended break, MultiVersus—WB Games’ free-to-play online platform fighter starring characters like Batman, Bugs Bunny, and Shaggy—is back. However, while fans were hoping the game’s return would be a triumphant one, the reality is that after its first day back a lot of players aren’t happy with the state of…

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Pakotime has been shitting up the Eshop for the last 5 months with generic Hentai Girls games like Sweet Doctor. Today, it released a game called Sugoi Girls Lovely Wife, same game just with bare boobs. Pakotime has been releasing the games every two weeks. They all have the same game play and UI. How does Pakotime get fifty images so fast? By generating AI images. But for the longest time, I never knew where. Now I do. It’s a site called OnlyWaifus.Ai, where you can generate unlimited waifus. It is a paid site, and for this editorial, I went ahead and bought the platinum plan for $23 to get the maximum quality images. I think its worth it, because I have Pakotime’s number now.

Let me show you a random Onlywaifus image I generated.

Now let me show you a pakotime image from a game called Hentai Girls: College Crush!

The key here is to look at the chin, its identical in both images. It is quite obvious to me that Pakotime is using OnlyWaifus to generate its images. But let me do this: I will take an image off the eShop site for Hentai Girls: Naughty Gamer and compare it to an image I generated. I’ve never played Naughty gamer, but look at the results:

Pakotime’s Image is on the left. My Image is on the right. They’re made by the same engine called Onlywaifus!

Don’t Buy Pakotime Games!

Why should you care if Pakotime is using OnlyWaifus to make its images? You should care because there’s no reason to buy their games, not when you can make infinite identical Waifu images tailored to your liking for fourteen or twenty-three dollars a month. The Eshop is already cluttered with trash, I have already covered Midnight Works and Artem Kritinin. Now it is a Pakotime’s turn to get the hammer dropped on it. This company should go out of business for being cheap lazy assholes. Never buy their games, ever. You know their secret. You can create the identical artwork. I sincerely hope their days are numbered!

P.S. I was not paid by OnlyWaifus to write this editorial!

The post Pakotime and the Degradation of the Nintendo eShop! appeared first on The Game Slush Pile.

Warning: Finally Pakotime made a NSFW game!

Sugoi Girls Lovely Wife is the next generation of Pakotime, famous for the Hentai Girls line of games. I know what happened, after releasing ten titles in 5 months diminishing returns set in to the point where I doubt they were selling enough copies to justify making them. Never mind that I guarantee that those cost peanuts to make. So Pakotime changed the name of the series, and brought along bare boobs. Yes there is nudity in this. No, it does not justify buying this, because the art is AI generated.Yes, even the boobs in Sugoi Girls Lovely Wife are AI generated by something called OnlyWaifus.

But the problem with Sugoi Girls Lovely Wife is the problem that plagues all these games, why? You can find AI generated porn images online, I already linked where Pakotime gets their images. All you’re really paying for is the ridiculously easy “puzzle game” that is the same game in 90% of these. I imagine once Sugoi girls line reaches diminishing returns, Pakotime is going to pull a hot love dreams and bare all. And it will sell for a few weeks until Nintendo gets around to pulling it. Then I don’t know what Pakotime will do. Probably fold, and the eShop will be a hundred times better for it. Do not buy these games, they are bottom barrel and terrible. The worst of the Nintendo eShop personified.

Overall: Sugoi Girls Lovely Wife is Pakotime bringing the bare boobs, but still not bringing a reason to buy it.

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

P.S. Read my full editorial on where Pakotime gets their images.

The post Sugoi Girls Lovely Wife Review appeared first on The Game Slush Pile.

The long-rumoured The Legend of Zelda Lego set based on The Great Deku Tree will feature two different designs, according to the latest leaks.

As Bricktastic reports (thanks VGC), the set will be released in September and allow builders to choose between an Ocarina of Time design with green leaves, or a Breath of the Wild design with pink leaves.

In addition, the set will come with four minifigures representing Classic Link, Classic Young Link, Breath of the Wild Link and Breath of the Wild Zelda, and will also include shield and ocarina pieces.

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Just days after a Poppy Playtime book was released, a film adaptation of the cult horror series has been announced.

The game's developer, Mob Entertainment, is working with Legendary Entertainment (which counts Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire among recent hits) as well as Angry Films (the Transformers series among others).

The film is presumably a ways off yet, but is yet another move outside games for the Poppy Playtime franchise.

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A Poppy Playtime book, based on the cult-favourite horror game, is now available.

The in-world Poppy Playtime Orientation Notebook, published by Scholastic, has been authored by "a brilliant biologist-turned-employee of Playtime Co." and promises exclusive secrets and backstory on the origins of popular character Huggy Wuggy, the Smiling Critters, and more.

"This partnership with Scholastic marks a significant milestone for Mob Entertainment, solidifying our commitment to transmedia storytelling," said co-founders Zach Belanger, CEO and Seth Belanger, CCO of Mob Entertainment. "Each chapter of our video game series exposes more about Playtime Co. and we are excited that this book gives our fans a new way to go deeper into the story."

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Just days after a Poppy Playtime book was released, a film adaptation of the cult horror series has been announced.

The game's developer, Mob Entertainment, is working with Legendary Entertainment (which counts Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire among recent hits) as well as Angry Films (the Transformers series among others).

The film is presumably a ways off yet, but is yet another move outside games for the Poppy Playtime franchise.

Read more

A Poppy Playtime book, based on the cult-favourite horror game, is now available.

The in-world Poppy Playtime Orientation Notebook, published by Scholastic, has been authored by "a brilliant biologist-turned-employee of Playtime Co." and promises exclusive secrets and backstory on the origins of popular character Huggy Wuggy, the Smiling Critters, and more.

"This partnership with Scholastic marks a significant milestone for Mob Entertainment, solidifying our commitment to transmedia storytelling," said co-founders Zach Belanger, CEO and Seth Belanger, CCO of Mob Entertainment. "Each chapter of our video game series exposes more about Playtime Co. and we are excited that this book gives our fans a new way to go deeper into the story."

Read more

You're talking about downtime. Whenever I have downtime I try to be productive if I can, but the type of downtime determines what I can do. There's two main types of downtime - when my workstation is still usable and when it isn't.

If my workstation is still usable (e.g. the build is broken but I can still look at code/script/assets/etc.) then I notify my team that I've got some bandwidth and downtime to help out as a second set of eyes on any tasks my team might need help with. I can do code, design, or asset reviews for teammates and I can look over the various Slack discussions on other in-progress bug fixes and features to comment if I feel like I can contribute something helpful. I might not be able to run the game to test or validate anything, but I can still contribute my skill and knowledge to others who aren't having downtime.

If my workstation is unusable (e.g. all system resources are dedicated to building the game, building assets, compiling a level/lighting/etc., network or VPN down, etc.) then I really can't do much. I can't do reviews or join those conversations. In those situations I've traditionally done things to pass the time like listen to music or a podcast, scroll through social media, or think about what to write next on the blog. More recently, I've been focusing on leaning away from the social media scrolling and being more mindful so I have been taking the opportunity for mental and emotional "digestion" by not focusing on anything external and allowing my mind to process the normal emotional experiences in my life. It was difficult to start, but has definitely helped with my focus and my attention since I've started doing it.

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Just days after a Poppy Playtime book was released, a film adaptation of the cult horror series has been announced.

The game's developer, Mob Entertainment, is working with Legendary Entertainment (which counts Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire among recent hits) as well as Angry Films (the Transformers series among others).

The film is presumably a ways off yet, but is yet another move outside games for the Poppy Playtime franchise.

Read more

A Poppy Playtime book, based on the cult-favourite horror game, is now available.

The in-world Poppy Playtime Orientation Notebook, published by Scholastic, has been authored by "a brilliant biologist-turned-employee of Playtime Co." and promises exclusive secrets and backstory on the origins of popular character Huggy Wuggy, the Smiling Critters, and more.

"This partnership with Scholastic marks a significant milestone for Mob Entertainment, solidifying our commitment to transmedia storytelling," said co-founders Zach Belanger, CEO and Seth Belanger, CCO of Mob Entertainment. "Each chapter of our video game series exposes more about Playtime Co. and we are excited that this book gives our fans a new way to go deeper into the story."

Read more

Whether you have a bunch of free time or hardly any at all, whether you’re playing on console or PC, there are plenty of great games to obsess over right now. Our recommendations for what to play this weekend include everything from sci-fi thrillers and loot-driven action-RPGs to esoteric puzzle games and action…

Read more...

Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Every year, there are awards given to the best lead and supporting characters in games or movies, or TV shows or whatever else. They are, after all, the characters that the stories usually revolve around. But what about all of the other characters in those fictional (and sometimes factual) worlds? They might be less integral to the overarching story but I don't know if they're any less important to the feel and impact of the world. Some, of course, can go on to be so memorable they actually replace some of the main characters in our memories of the game, and that's who I want to highlight here. The question is, which minor character do you most remember from a game, and why?

Read more

There is a lot to watch on the various streaming services available in 2024 — sometimes, it almost feels like too much. To simplify things for you, we’ve compiled some of the best new streaming movies to watch that are new this week.

Check out our top picks from major streamers like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and will sometimes even bring you an exciting new VOD movie or two. In addition to the latest movies from this week, we also give you other recommendations for shows that have arrived on a new streaming platform in the last 30 days. 

There is a lot to watch on the various streaming services available in 2024 — sometimes, it almost feels like too much. To simplify things for you, we’ve compiled some of the best new streaming movies to watch that are new this week.

Check out our top picks from major streamers like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and will sometimes even bring you an exciting new VOD movie or two. In addition to the latest movies from this week, we also give you other recommendations for shows that have arrived on a new streaming platform in the last 30 days. 

SK hynix and TSMC plan to collaborate on HBM4 development and next-generation packaging technology, with plans to mass produce HBM4 chips in 2026. The agreement is an early indicator for just how competitive, and potentially lucrative, the HBM market is becoming. SK hynix said the collaboration will enable breakthroughs in memory performance with increased density of the memory controller at the base of the HBM stack.

Intel assembled the industry’s first high-NA EUV lithography system. “Compared to 0.33NA EUV, high-NA EUV (or 0.55NA EUV) can deliver higher imaging contrast for similar features, which enables less light per exposure, thereby reducing the time required to print each layer and increasing wafer output,” Intel said.

Fig. 1: Bigger iron — Intel’s brand new high-NA EUV machinery. Source: Intel

Samsung is slated to receive $6.4 billion in CHIPS ACT funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) as part of a $40 billion expansion of its Austin, Texas, manufacturing facility, along with an R&D fab, a pair of leading-edge logic fabs, and an advanced packaging plant in nearby Taylor, Texas.

Micron and the U.S. government next week will announce $6.1 billion in CHIPS Act funding for the development of advanced memory chips in New York and Idaho, according to AP News.

Cadence unveiled its Palladium Z3 Emulation and Protium X3 FPGA Prototyping systems, targeted at multi-billion-gate designs with 2X increase in capacity and a 1.5X performance increase compared to previous-generation systems. Cadence also teamed up with MemVerge to enable seamless support for AWS Spot instances for long-running high-memory EDA jobs, and extended its hybrid cloud environment solutions through a collaboration with NetApp.

Fig. 2: At CadenceLive Silicon Valley, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang (r.) discussed accelerated computing and generative AI with Cadence CEO Anirudh Devgan. Source: Semiconductor Engineering

Quick links to more news:

Global
Markets and Money
In-Depth
Security
Education and Workforce
Product and Standards
Research
Quantum
Events
Further Reading

Global

After Taiwan’s recent 7.2 magnitude earthquake, TSMC reached more the 70% tool recovery in its fabs within the first 10 hours and full recovery by the end of the third day, according to this week’s earnings call. Some wafers in process were scrapped but the company expects the lost production to be recovered in the second quarter.  Also in the call, TSMC said they expect their “customers to share some of the higher cost” of the overseas fabs and higher electricity costs.

Advantest‘s regional headquarters in Taiwan donated $2.2 million New Taiwan dollars ($680,000 US) for aid to victims and reconstruction efforts related to the Taiwan earthquake that struck on April 3.

Japan’s exports grew by more than 7% YoY in March, driven by an 11.3% increase in shipments of electronics and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, much of it to China, according to NikkeiAsia.

China‘s IC output grew 40% in the first quarter, primarily driven by EVs and smartphones, according to the South China Morning Post.

In the U.S., the Biden Administration released a notice of funding opportunity of $50 million targeted at small businesses pursuing advances in metrology research and technology. Also, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $33 million funding opportunity for smart manufacturing technologies.

Germany‘s Fraunhofer IIS launched its On-Board Processor (FOBP) for the German Space Agency’s Heinrich Hertz communication satellite. FOBP can be controlled and reprogrammed from Earth and will be used to investigate creation of hybrid communication networks.

Markets and Money

RISC-V startup Rivos raised more than $250 million in capital investments to tape out its first power-optimized chips for data analytics and generative AI applications.

Silvaco filed to go public on Nasdaq. The company also received a $5 million convertible note investment from Microchip.

Microchip acquired Neuronix AI Labs to provide AI-enabled FPGA solutions for large-scale, high-performance edge applications.

The advanced packaging market saw a modest 4% increase in revenues in Q4 2023 versus the previous quarter, with a projected decline of 13% QoQ in the first quarter of 2024, reports Yole. Overall, the market is expected to increase from $38 billion in 2023 to $69.5 billion in 2029 with a CAGR of 10.7%.

TSMC’s CoWoS total capacity will increase by 150% in 2024 due to demand for NVIDIA’s Blackwell Platform, reports TrendForce.

ASML saw a nearly 40% drop in new litho equipment sales QoQ in Q1 2024 and a 61% drop in net bookings as manufacturers reduced investments in new capital equipment during the recent semiconductor market slump.

Global PC shipments rose about 3% YoY in Q1 2024, and that same growth is expected for full year 2024, reports Counterpoint. Manufacturers are predicted to promote AI PCs as semiconductor companies prepare to launch SoCs featuring higher TOPS.

The GenAI smartphone market share is predicted to reach 11% by 2024 and 43% by 2027, reports Counterpoint. Samsung likely will lead in 2024, but Apple may overtake it in 2025.

The RF GaN market is expected to exceed $2 billion by 2029, fueled by the defense and telecom infrastructure sectors, reports Yole.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter this week. Top articles include:

• Electromigration Concerns Grow In Advanced Packages
• What Works Best For Chiplets
• Enabling Advanced Devices With Atomic Layer Processes

Plus, check out these new stories and tech talks:

• Architecting Chips For High-Performance Computing
• Future-Proofing Automotive V2X
• Secure Movement Of Data In Test
• Challenges With Chiplets and Power Delivery

Security

In security research:

• Seoul National University, Sandia National Laboratories, Texas A&M University, and Applied Materials demonstrated a memristor crossbar architecture for encryption and decryption.
• Robert Bosch, Forschungszentrum Julich, and Newcastle University investigated techniques for error detection and correction in in-memory computing.
• The University of Florida introduced an automated framework that can help identify security assets for a design at the register-transfer level (RTL).

DARPA conducted successful in-air tests of AI flying an F-16 autonomously versus a human-piloted F-16 in visual-range combat scenarios.

The National Security Agency’s Artificial Intelligence Security Center (NSA AISC) published joint guidance on deploying AI systems securely with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and international partners. CISA also issued other alerts.

Products and Standards

Samsung uncorked LPDDR5X DRAM built on a 12nm process that supports up to 10.7 Gbps and expands the single package capacity of mobile DRAM up to 32 GB.

Keysight revealed its next-generation RF circuit simulation tool that supports multi-physics co-design of circuit, electromagnetic, and electrothermal simulations across Cadence, Synopsys, and Keysight platforms.

Renesas released its FemtoClock family of ultra-low jitter clock generators and jitter attenuators with 8 and 12 outputs, enabling clock tree designs for high-speed interconnect systems in telecom and data center switches, routers, medical imaging, and more.

Movellus expanded its droop response solutions with Aeonic Generate AWM3, which responds to voltage droops within 1 to 2 clock cycles while providing enhanced observability for droop profiling and enabling fine-grained dynamic frequency scaling.

Efabless announced the second version of its Python-based open-source EDA software for construction of customizable flows using proprietary or open-source tools.

Faraday Technology licensed Arm’s Cortex-A720AE IP to use in the development of AI-enabled vehicle ASICs. Also, Untether AI teamed up with Arm to enable its inference acceleration technology to be implemented alongside the latest-generation Automotive Enhanced technology from Arm for ADAS and autonomous vehicle applications.

FOXESS used Infineon’s 1,200V CoolSiC MOSFETs and EiceDRIVER gate drivers for industrial energy storage applications, aiming to promote green energy.

Emotors adopted Siemens’ Simcenter solutions for NVH testing of next-gen automotive e-drives.

SiTime debuted a family of clock generators for AI datacenter applications with clock, oscillator, and resonator in an integrated chip.

JEDEC published the JESD79-5C DDR5 SDRAM standard, which includes a DRAM data integrity improvement called Per-Row Activation Counting (PRAC) that precisely counts DRAM activations on a wordline granularity and alerts the system to pause traffic and designate time for mitigation measures when an excessive number of activations are detected.

The LoRa Alliance launched its roadmap for the development of the LoRaWAN open standard for IoT communications, referring to long-range radio (LoRa) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs).

Education and Workforce

Texas A&M introduced a new Master of Science program for microelectronics and semiconductors, which will begin in fall 2025.

The Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) is partnering with Tompkins Cortland Community College and Penn State to offer a free Microelectronics and Nanomanufacturing Certificate Program to veterans and their dependents.

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has more than 700 researchers and 25 research group focused on the chip industry, but the number is projected to grow significantly due to the Dutch government’s recent investment.

Research

Intel announced a large-scale neuromorphic system based on its Loihi 2 processor. Initially deployed at Sandia National Laboratories, it aims to support research for future brain-inspired AI. Intel is also collaborating with Seekr on next-gen LLM and foundation models.

Los Alamos National Lab, HPE, and NVIDIA collaborated on the design and installation of Venado, the Lab’s new supercomputer. “Venado adds to our cutting-edge supercomputing that advances national security and basic research, and it will accelerate how we integrate artificial intelligence into meeting those challenges,” said Thom Mason, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in a release.

Penn State is partnering with Morgan Advanced Materials on a five-year, multi-million-dollar research project to advance silicon carbide (SiC) technology. Morgan will become a founding member of the Penn State Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance. Also, Coherent secured CHIPS Act funding of $15 million for research into high-voltage, high-power silicon carbide and single-crystal diamond semiconductors.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers found a more efficient way to extract lithium from waste liquids leached from mining sites, oil fields, and used batteries.

Quantum

Quantinuum said it reached an inherent 99.9% 2-qubit gate fidelity in its commercial quantum computer, a point at which quantum error correction protocols can be used to greatly reduce error rates.

D-Wave Quantum uncorked a fast-anneal feature to speed up computations on its quantum processing units, which reduces the impact of external disturbances.

MIT researchers outlined a new conceptual model for a quantum computer that aims to make writing code for them easier.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich, and Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid researchers proposed a method that harnesses the structure of light to tweak the properties of quantum materials.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading

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

The post Chip Industry Week In Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

There is a lot to watch on the various streaming services available in 2024 — sometimes, it almost feels like too much. To simplify things for you, we’ve compiled some of the best new streaming movies to watch that are new this week.

Check out our top picks from major streamers like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and will sometimes even bring you an exciting new VOD movie or two. In addition to the latest movies from this week, we also give you other recommendations for shows that have arrived on a new streaming platform in the last 30 days. 

SK hynix and TSMC plan to collaborate on HBM4 development and next-generation packaging technology, with plans to mass produce HBM4 chips in 2026. The agreement is an early indicator for just how competitive, and potentially lucrative, the HBM market is becoming. SK hynix said the collaboration will enable breakthroughs in memory performance with increased density of the memory controller at the base of the HBM stack.

Intel assembled the industry’s first high-NA EUV lithography system. “Compared to 0.33NA EUV, high-NA EUV (or 0.55NA EUV) can deliver higher imaging contrast for similar features, which enables less light per exposure, thereby reducing the time required to print each layer and increasing wafer output,” Intel said.

Fig. 1: Bigger iron — Intel’s brand new high-NA EUV machinery. Source: Intel

Samsung is slated to receive $6.4 billion in CHIPS ACT funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) as part of a $40 billion expansion of its Austin, Texas, manufacturing facility, along with an R&D fab, a pair of leading-edge logic fabs, and an advanced packaging plant in nearby Taylor, Texas.

Micron and the U.S. government next week will announce $6.1 billion in CHIPS Act funding for the development of advanced memory chips in New York and Idaho, according to AP News.

Cadence unveiled its Palladium Z3 Emulation and Protium X3 FPGA Prototyping systems, targeted at multi-billion-gate designs with 2X increase in capacity and a 1.5X performance increase compared to previous-generation systems. Cadence also teamed up with MemVerge to enable seamless support for AWS Spot instances for long-running high-memory EDA jobs, and extended its hybrid cloud environment solutions through a collaboration with NetApp.

Fig. 2: At CadenceLive Silicon Valley, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang (r.) discussed accelerated computing and generative AI with Cadence CEO Anirudh Devgan. Source: Semiconductor Engineering

Quick links to more news:

Global
Markets and Money
In-Depth
Security
Education and Workforce
Product and Standards
Research
Quantum
Events
Further Reading

Global

After Taiwan’s recent 7.2 magnitude earthquake, TSMC reached more the 70% tool recovery in its fabs within the first 10 hours and full recovery by the end of the third day, according to this week’s earnings call. Some wafers in process were scrapped but the company expects the lost production to be recovered in the second quarter.  Also in the call, TSMC said they expect their “customers to share some of the higher cost” of the overseas fabs and higher electricity costs.

Advantest‘s regional headquarters in Taiwan donated $2.2 million New Taiwan dollars ($680,000 US) for aid to victims and reconstruction efforts related to the Taiwan earthquake that struck on April 3.

Japan’s exports grew by more than 7% YoY in March, driven by an 11.3% increase in shipments of electronics and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, much of it to China, according to NikkeiAsia.

China‘s IC output grew 40% in the first quarter, primarily driven by EVs and smartphones, according to the South China Morning Post.

In the U.S., the Biden Administration released a notice of funding opportunity of $50 million targeted at small businesses pursuing advances in metrology research and technology. Also, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $33 million funding opportunity for smart manufacturing technologies.

Germany‘s Fraunhofer IIS launched its On-Board Processor (FOBP) for the German Space Agency’s Heinrich Hertz communication satellite. FOBP can be controlled and reprogrammed from Earth and will be used to investigate creation of hybrid communication networks.

Markets and Money

RISC-V startup Rivos raised more than $250 million in capital investments to tape out its first power-optimized chips for data analytics and generative AI applications.

Silvaco filed to go public on Nasdaq. The company also received a $5 million convertible note investment from Microchip.

Microchip acquired Neuronix AI Labs to provide AI-enabled FPGA solutions for large-scale, high-performance edge applications.

The advanced packaging market saw a modest 4% increase in revenues in Q4 2023 versus the previous quarter, with a projected decline of 13% QoQ in the first quarter of 2024, reports Yole. Overall, the market is expected to increase from $38 billion in 2023 to $69.5 billion in 2029 with a CAGR of 10.7%.

TSMC’s CoWoS total capacity will increase by 150% in 2024 due to demand for NVIDIA’s Blackwell Platform, reports TrendForce.

ASML saw a nearly 40% drop in new litho equipment sales QoQ in Q1 2024 and a 61% drop in net bookings as manufacturers reduced investments in new capital equipment during the recent semiconductor market slump.

Global PC shipments rose about 3% YoY in Q1 2024, and that same growth is expected for full year 2024, reports Counterpoint. Manufacturers are predicted to promote AI PCs as semiconductor companies prepare to launch SoCs featuring higher TOPS.

The GenAI smartphone market share is predicted to reach 11% by 2024 and 43% by 2027, reports Counterpoint. Samsung likely will lead in 2024, but Apple may overtake it in 2025.

The RF GaN market is expected to exceed $2 billion by 2029, fueled by the defense and telecom infrastructure sectors, reports Yole.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter this week. Top articles include:

• Electromigration Concerns Grow In Advanced Packages
• What Works Best For Chiplets
• Enabling Advanced Devices With Atomic Layer Processes

Plus, check out these new stories and tech talks:

• Architecting Chips For High-Performance Computing
• Future-Proofing Automotive V2X
• Secure Movement Of Data In Test
• Challenges With Chiplets and Power Delivery

Security

In security research:

• Seoul National University, Sandia National Laboratories, Texas A&M University, and Applied Materials demonstrated a memristor crossbar architecture for encryption and decryption.
• Robert Bosch, Forschungszentrum Julich, and Newcastle University investigated techniques for error detection and correction in in-memory computing.
• The University of Florida introduced an automated framework that can help identify security assets for a design at the register-transfer level (RTL).

DARPA conducted successful in-air tests of AI flying an F-16 autonomously versus a human-piloted F-16 in visual-range combat scenarios.

The National Security Agency’s Artificial Intelligence Security Center (NSA AISC) published joint guidance on deploying AI systems securely with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and international partners. CISA also issued other alerts.

Products and Standards

Samsung uncorked LPDDR5X DRAM built on a 12nm process that supports up to 10.7 Gbps and expands the single package capacity of mobile DRAM up to 32 GB.

Keysight revealed its next-generation RF circuit simulation tool that supports multi-physics co-design of circuit, electromagnetic, and electrothermal simulations across Cadence, Synopsys, and Keysight platforms.

Renesas released its FemtoClock family of ultra-low jitter clock generators and jitter attenuators with 8 and 12 outputs, enabling clock tree designs for high-speed interconnect systems in telecom and data center switches, routers, medical imaging, and more.

Movellus expanded its droop response solutions with Aeonic Generate AWM3, which responds to voltage droops within 1 to 2 clock cycles while providing enhanced observability for droop profiling and enabling fine-grained dynamic frequency scaling.

Efabless announced the second version of its Python-based open-source EDA software for construction of customizable flows using proprietary or open-source tools.

Faraday Technology licensed Arm’s Cortex-A720AE IP to use in the development of AI-enabled vehicle ASICs. Also, Untether AI teamed up with Arm to enable its inference acceleration technology to be implemented alongside the latest-generation Automotive Enhanced technology from Arm for ADAS and autonomous vehicle applications.

FOXESS used Infineon’s 1,200V CoolSiC MOSFETs and EiceDRIVER gate drivers for industrial energy storage applications, aiming to promote green energy.

Emotors adopted Siemens’ Simcenter solutions for NVH testing of next-gen automotive e-drives.

SiTime debuted a family of clock generators for AI datacenter applications with clock, oscillator, and resonator in an integrated chip.

JEDEC published the JESD79-5C DDR5 SDRAM standard, which includes a DRAM data integrity improvement called Per-Row Activation Counting (PRAC) that precisely counts DRAM activations on a wordline granularity and alerts the system to pause traffic and designate time for mitigation measures when an excessive number of activations are detected.

The LoRa Alliance launched its roadmap for the development of the LoRaWAN open standard for IoT communications, referring to long-range radio (LoRa) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs).

Education and Workforce

Texas A&M introduced a new Master of Science program for microelectronics and semiconductors, which will begin in fall 2025.

The Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) is partnering with Tompkins Cortland Community College and Penn State to offer a free Microelectronics and Nanomanufacturing Certificate Program to veterans and their dependents.

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has more than 700 researchers and 25 research group focused on the chip industry, but the number is projected to grow significantly due to the Dutch government’s recent investment.

Research

Intel announced a large-scale neuromorphic system based on its Loihi 2 processor. Initially deployed at Sandia National Laboratories, it aims to support research for future brain-inspired AI. Intel is also collaborating with Seekr on next-gen LLM and foundation models.

Los Alamos National Lab, HPE, and NVIDIA collaborated on the design and installation of Venado, the Lab’s new supercomputer. “Venado adds to our cutting-edge supercomputing that advances national security and basic research, and it will accelerate how we integrate artificial intelligence into meeting those challenges,” said Thom Mason, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in a release.

Penn State is partnering with Morgan Advanced Materials on a five-year, multi-million-dollar research project to advance silicon carbide (SiC) technology. Morgan will become a founding member of the Penn State Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance. Also, Coherent secured CHIPS Act funding of $15 million for research into high-voltage, high-power silicon carbide and single-crystal diamond semiconductors.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers found a more efficient way to extract lithium from waste liquids leached from mining sites, oil fields, and used batteries.

Quantum

Quantinuum said it reached an inherent 99.9% 2-qubit gate fidelity in its commercial quantum computer, a point at which quantum error correction protocols can be used to greatly reduce error rates.

D-Wave Quantum uncorked a fast-anneal feature to speed up computations on its quantum processing units, which reduces the impact of external disturbances.

MIT researchers outlined a new conceptual model for a quantum computer that aims to make writing code for them easier.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich, and Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid researchers proposed a method that harnesses the structure of light to tweak the properties of quantum materials.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading

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

The post Chip Industry Week In Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

Nintendo hasn't announced which of its many development studios or partners is making Princess Peach: Showtime, this spring's biggest new Nintendo Switch game, and doesn't seem likely to before it debuts later this month.

"The development team will be credited in the game credits," a Nintendo spokesperson simply told me today when I enquired which developer had made the game.

There's no reason why Nintendo has to say who has made the game, of course, but fans have said it feels odd that the answer remains a mystery, just a few weeks away from Princess Peach: Showtime!'s 22nd March debut, after press have already played a preview build of the game, and following the launch of this week's public demo.

Read more

Nintendo has released a free demo for Princess Peach: Showtime! ahead of its full release later this month.

The demo can be downloaded now on Switch. It begins at the start of the game and offers two levels to play, featuring Swordfighter Peach and Patisserie Peach.

If you've missed it so far, the game has players as Peach helping to save a theatre by playing dress up in various costumes that provide different powers.

Read more

There is a lot to watch on the various streaming services available in 2024 — sometimes, it almost feels like too much. To simplify things for you, we’ve compiled some of the best new streaming movies to watch that are new this week.

Check out our top picks from major streamers like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and will sometimes even bring you an exciting new VOD movie or two. In addition to the latest movies from this week, we also give you other recommendations for shows that have arrived on a new streaming platform in the last 30 days. 

The first game since 2005 with Princess Peach in the starring role launches on Switch on March 22. That’s not far from now. And while we have a demo for Princess Peach: Showtime and have seen plenty of trailers for it, we still don’t know who actually developed Showtime. Weirdly, when asked directly, Nintendo just…

Read more...

Are you ready for opening night? Princess Peach: Showtime! is launching later this month, and Nintendo surprised us when it announced on March 6 that the Switch-exclusive action-adventure game has a free demo that’s available now. The demo lets you get a feel for two of Peach’s transformations before the full game…

Read more...

Dear Pakotime: I did a cursory search and found nothing on you. But judging the AI artwork in Hentai Girls Sweets Doctor, and the other three Hentai Girls titles, I assume its one guy publishing under a pseudonym. We need to talk. We need to have a frank conversation about you are doing with your life. You are publishing trash “hentai” games that don’t actually have any nudity, every two weeks. The women are all AI generated, and I’m beginning to think the images are the same game to game, just with the clothes swapped. I could download the previous titles and check, but I really don’t care to do so. I’d rather talk about you, than talk about Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor. There just isn’t anything to talk about, they’re all the same game, what are you doing?

I know what you’re doing, you’re releasing low effort trash to make some cash from gullible horny dudes. But how much money are you really making? Is releasing the same game every two weeks really paying dividends? Is this what you want to be known for, Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor? Do you brag about this to your friends? Does your family know? Decades from now, on your death bed, when asked what your life accomplishment was, are you going to say this series? I think I know how you’d respond, but considering the silence, I don’t think you care. I’ll stop addressing you now.

I’m done with the Hentai Girls series. Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor will be my last. It isn’t because I don’t like clicks, its because I’ve run out of things to say. They’re the same game every time and eventually every topic gets discussed. So I’ll be ignoring them going forward.

Overall: Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor is the same game as all the others, not worth your time.

Verdict: Garbage

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I just come off reviewing a Pretty Girls game that was pretty good. Now I have to review Hentai Girls College Crush, which is the same exact game as Office Romance and Hot Police. It is bottom of the barrel, low effort garbage that is stinking up the eShop. I hate Pakotime more than I hate Midnight Works. At least with Midnight Works, their trash is varied. Pakotime Just releases the same AI generated garbage over and over again. And they’re not alone in this style. BigBoot Studio, the geniuses behind the tour-de-force Jigsaw Ice Princess has released Jigsaw Dinosaurs. among other titles. I actually own Jigsaw Dinosaurs, but refuse to review it for some reason. I have to review to this garbage for the hits I’ll get. Its insidious.

The word Hentai appears in every other lewd game now, even if it doesn’t include actual hentai. Developers do it for the same reason, I review the games, for the hits, and well tricking people into the thinking games like Hentai Girls College Crush contain tits. It doesn’t. It is rated T. It is really annoying and I wish they’d stop doing it, seriously. If you’re going to have the word hentai in the title, I want hentai, not tame AI generated imagery.

If you noticed, I just copied and pasted a paragraph I used in the other two Hentai Girls games. Why not, this review can be as low effort as this entire series. Heck, I probably put more effort into trashing these games as the developers do making them. Though I make far less money, as this is a labor of love. So, yes, do not buy Hentai Girls College Crush, it sucks.

Overall: Hentai Girls College Crush is total and complete garbage with absolutely no redeeming qualities.

Verdict: Garbage

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The post Hentai Girls College Crush Switch Game Review appeared first on The Game Slush Pile.

Toys for Bob - the Activision Blizzard studio behind the likes of Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot 4, and the Spyro remasters - has announced it's parting ways with Activision to become an independent company once more. It also says it's "exploring a possible partnership" with Microsoft as development on its new game gets underway.

Toys for Bob, which was founded back in 1989, formed a publishing partnership with Activision in the 2000s that would lead to the studio's acquisition by the publisher in 2005. Toys for Bob has been part of Activision Blizzard ever since, initially working on the hugely popular toys-to-life Skylanders series before developing 2018 remaster Spyro Reignited Trilogy and 2020's well-received Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. Since then, it's served as a support studio for Call of Duty while also releasing last year's Crash Team Rumble.

Earlier this month, following Microsoft's $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard and subsequent decision to lay off 1,900 workers across its Xbox teams, it was confirmed 86 Toys for Bob employees had lost their jobs. It was also reported the studio's physical office would be shutting down and that remaining staff would transition to working from home. And it's in this context that Toys for Bob has now announced it's splitting from Activision to go independent.

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Folks trying to play Theatrhythm Final Bar Line--a Final Fantasy-themed rhythm game—were unable to due to a bug preventing the game from connecting to servers on February 29, aka a Leap Day. A similar bug happened in an EA racing game, too, forcing players to change the date on their consoles to play.

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