When AMD launched its third-gen Zen 2-based Ryzen processors, it also introduced the next generation PCIe 4.0 controllers. Now, Gigabyte has launched one of the first PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs that shows the incredible speed potential of the new tech. The AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD can hit up to 5,000MB/s read speeds and 4,400 MB/s write performance. That's about 56 percent faster read and over double the write speeds of Samsung's 970 EVO, currently one of the fastest NVMe SSDs on the market.
Gigabyte isn't the only company to launch a PCI 4.0 SSD, as Corsair also unveiled the MP600 NVMe SSD with very similar performance. Both products use the Phison PS5016-E16 controller and 3D TLC (triple-level cell) NAND flash memory chips (from Toshiba, in the case of the AORUS).
The AURUS NVMe Gen4 SSD has a full body copper heat spreader, indicating that things might get pretty hot when it hits those top speeds. Gigabyte claims that the heatsink reduces temperatures by about 14 percent.
The drive will come in 1TB and 2TB sizes and the only way to get the most out of it, for now, will be to buy Gigabyte's X570 motherboard and one of the new Ryzen processors. Everything, including the AORUS SSD, motherboard and Ryzen chips will arrive sometime in July. There's no price, but given that this is a bleeding edge product, expect to be one of the more expensive NVMe SSDs available.
When AMD launched its third-gen Zen 2-based Ryzen processors, it also introduced the next generation PCIe 4.0 controllers. Now, Gigabyte has launched one of the first PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs that shows the incredible speed potential of the new tech. The AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD can hit up to 5,000MB/s read speeds and 4,400 MB/s write performance. That's about 56 percent faster read and over double the write speeds of Samsung's 970 EVO, currently one of the fastest NVMe SSDs on the market.
Gigabyte isn't the only company to launch a PCI 4.0 SSD, as Corsair also unveiled the MP600 NVMe SSD with very similar performance. Both products use the Phison PS5016-E16 controller and 3D TLC (triple-level cell) NAND flash memory chips (from Toshiba, in the case of the AORUS).
The AURUS NVMe Gen4 SSD has a full body copper heat spreader, indicating that things might get pretty hot when it hits those top speeds. Gigabyte claims that the heatsink reduces temperatures by about 14 percent.
The drive will come in 1TB and 2TB sizes and the only way to get the most out of it, for now, will be to buy Gigabyte's X570 motherboard and one of the new Ryzen processors. Everything, including the AORUS SSD, motherboard and Ryzen chips will arrive sometime in July. There's no price, but given that this is a bleeding edge product, expect to be one of the more expensive NVMe SSDs available.
Microsoft has announced that a version of Xbox Game Pass will be coming to PCs, and that more Microsoft Store exclusives titles will be available on Steam.
In a blog post by Phil Spencer, Microsoft's EVP of Gaming and Head of Xbox, he admitted that the software giant has "not always lived up to our aspiration" when it comes to meeting players needs on PC, and would be taking steps to improve the gaming experience on Windows.
"We believe the player should be at the center of their gaming experience and be able to harness the unique benefits of the devices they choose to play on," Spencer said. "As the creators of Windows, we have a unique responsibility to ensure we’re investing in experiences that benefit players everywhere, while respecting the PC community’s preference for an open, highly customizable platform."
Xbox Game Pass on PC
The first point in Spencer's plan is to make the Xbox Pass Game subscription service available to players on PC. "It’s called Xbox Game Pass, just like the original," he says, "but it’s a new experience that we are building together with the PC community."
Exit Theatre Mode
While there's no word yet on exactly how the PC version of Game Pass will differ from its console counterpart, subscribers will have access to more than 100 games from over 75 developers such as Bethesda, Paradox and Devolver Digital, and will also include day-one access to Xbox-studios exclusives from developers like Obsidian and inXile. Subscribers will also get a 20% discount when purchasing full games from the Microsoft Store that appear in the Game Pass library.
Microsoft Games on Steam
"Our intent is to make our Xbox Game Studios PC games available in multiple stores," Spencer says. "We believe you should have choice in where you buy your PC games." The post pledges that the company will continue adding Xbox Studios games to Steam, starting with Gears 5.
Exit Theatre Mode
The post didn't specifically say anything about other digital PC distributors like the Epic Games Store or GoG, but Spencer did make a point of saying, "We also know that there are other stores on PC, and we are working to enable more choice in which store you can find our Xbox Game Studios titles in the future."
More Flexible Developer Tools
The last item that Spencer addressed in his post was that the Microsoft Store will be receiving updates allowing for games and apps that run on Win32 architecture instead of the Universal Windows Platform that its been supporting since Windows 8. "When I think about the role we play as a company to support and evolve gaming on Windows," Spencer says, "it’s critical that we make decisions that reinforce the open nature of the PC."
The post also says that Microsoft intends to have all new games from Xbox Studios support cross-play between PC and consoles, "To bring players together to create a shared player community regardless of where they play."
Spencer promised that more information on PC support - along with Xbox's biggest upcoming games - would be coming during their briefing at E3 2019. You can tune into every E3 press conference, from Microsoft to Square Enix, right here on IGN.
JR is IGN's Senior Editor of Features, and you can follow him on Twitter if you're into that.
Microsoft says it’s committed to supporting competing PC game stores and it’s announcing today that it will distribute more Xbox Game Studios titles through Valve’s Steam marketplace. Typically, Microsoft has distributed its games through only Xbox Live on its game console platform and through its own Windows storefront on PC. Now, Microsoft says it wants to better support player choice and let customers buy games in more than one destination on PC.
“Our intent is to make our Xbox Game Studios PC games available in multiple stores, including our own Microsoft Store on Windows, at their launch. We believe you should have choice in where you buy your PC games,” writes Xbox chief Phil Spencer in a blog post announcing the shift in strategy. The move follows Microsoft’s decision to publish its upcoming Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam.
“We will continue to add to the more than 20 Xbox Game Studios titles on Steam, starting with Gears 5 and all Age of Empires I, II, and III: Definitive Editions,” Spencer explains. “We know millions of PC gamers trust Steam as a great source to buy PC games and we’ve heard the feedback that PC gamers would like choice.”
It’s not an unusual move for Microsoft these days, especially not since Spencer took over the Xbox division in 2014 under CEO Satya Nadella, who promoted him again in the fall of 2017 to run all of the company’s gaming initiatives spanning Xbox and Windows 10.
The two have worked together to build a far more open and cooperative Microsoft, and that’s given birth to a lot of genuinely player-friendly advancements in the Xbox and Windows departments. Xbox games published by Microsoft can now be played on the PC free of charge, thanks to the Xbox Play Anywhere initiative, while Microsoft worked with Nintendo and game developers like Epic and Psyonix to successfully apply pressure on Sony to support cross-platform play. The company is also pioneering a new business model for games with its Xbox Game Pass subscription, and its upcoming xCloud cloud gaming service is poised to introduce an all-new distribution model for delivering games and potentially upending how games are both funded and sold.
What’s remarkable in this case is that Microsoft is standing somewhat in opposition to Epic Games, a company whose CEO Tim Sweeney once criticized Microsoft for attempting to create a closed ecosystem with its Universal Windows Platform strategy, which attempted to distribute all software, including PC games, exclusively through its own storefront.
”Microsoft has built a closed platform-within-a-platform into Windows 10,” Sweeney wrote in a 2015 op-ed in The Guardian, “as the first apparent step towards locking down the consumer PC ecosystem and monopolising app distribution and commerce.” At the time, Sweeney called for Microsoft to let developers publish games built using UWP on other stores. He went so far as to say UWP “can, should, must, and will die.”
Now, it’s Epic that’s trying to supplant Steam with its own game store and finding itself embroiled in controversy stemming mostly from its exclusivity contracts it secures with developers. Of course, Epic’s approach is much different than Microsoft’s was back then, given it does not own the Windows operating system and has nowhere near the level of power and control Microsoft did when it was trying to push UWP. But Epic, having grown to a level of unprecedented power in the PC marketplace due to the success of Fortnite, is discovering just how hard it is to dethrone Steam.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has given up entirely on that vision and is instead embracing a much more open model. And it extends beyond gaming. Microsoft recently announced a partnership with Google to rebuild its Edge browser, once built on UWP, using the open-source Chromium framework.
“We also know that there are other stores on PC, and we are working to enable more choice in which store you can find our Xbox Game Studios titles in the future,” Spencer writes, indicating that Microsoft may eventually publish its games on Epic’s store as well. Spencer goes on to say that the company is committed to providing voice and text chat, friends lists, and cross-play across PC and console to all titles it publishes under Xbox Game Studios. “On Windows 10 you’ll find this functionality in the Xbox Game Bar, which we’ll continue to evolve and expand,” he adds.
In addition to this shift to support Steam and competing stores, Microsoft says it’s also opening up support in the Microsoft Store for games built as native Win32 apps, which is the predominant Windows app format and the format that UWP effectively was designed to replace. This all but ensures UWP will fall out of favor with game studios that may have felt forced to adopt the format in recent years to better access core Windows 10 features.
“We recognize that Win32 is the app format that game developers love to use and gamers love to play, so we are excited to share that we will be enabling full support for native Win32 games to the Microsoft Store on Windows,” Spencer writes. “This will unlock more options for developers and gamers alike, allowing for the customization and control they’ve come to expect from the open Windows gaming ecosystem.”
Apple will kick off its developer conference Monday.
Apple
At WWDC next week, Apple may be talking to developers. But it's really all about you.
Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is the company's annual gathering where it hosts designers and engineers making apps for iPhones, iPads and other Apple devices. Thousands will descend on the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, at 10 a.m. PT on Monday to hear CEO Tim Cook and various executives outline their strategy for the company's software. They'll spend the rest of the week at sessions about the new technology and walk away with plans for updating their apps.
WWDC typically isn't where Apple launches new devices. Instead, it updates its iOS software for iPhones and iPads, MacOS for its computers, TVOS for Apple TV and WatchOS for the Apple Watch. Despite all of that news, most of what it unveils won't be available until later in the year, at best. Even if you're a big software fan, some of Apple's announcements, like discussions about the Swift programming language, get technical pretty fast.
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It may be easy to think WWDC doesn't have anything for you. You're not going to see the next iPhone there, and Oprah's not going to show up. She's already been to one Apple event this year, after all. What could a developer-focused show really offer you?
But if you look past all the talk about Swift and APIs, you'll find quite a lot. While WWDC is all about the developers, it's also Apple's way of teasing the features and services you'll see in products coming later this year. You won't see the new iPhone, but you will see what its interface will look like. You may not get the new Mac Pro, but at the very least, Apple will try to make you feel like it hasn't forgotten the creative professionals. And there will be various health, augmented reality and privacy advancements you'll soon get to access.
But just because it's doing more on its own doesn't mean Apple doesn't need developers. After all, it's their apps that keep you reaching for your iPhone. And Apple will give them even more ways to improve those apps you use everyday.
"Apple's not going to have a service for everything out there," Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said. "At the end of the day, developers drive engagement, drive new use case and drive the link the consumer has with their device."
While Apple likely won't completely overhaul the App Store, it's got to find ways to keep its developers -- and in return, you -- happy.
At a time when rival Google is touting its artificial intelligence prowess, Apple's software also needs to be smarter. Apple's Siri Shortcuts feature from last year allows the company's digital assistant to complete complex tasks with a single voice command -- or sometimes without a voice command at all. But Siri still doesn't match up to the assistants from Google and Amazon.
The breadth of apps in the App Store isn't the advantage it used to be.
"I don't know the last time I downloaded a new app from the App Store," Milanesi said. "We're now in a very mature part of the market. Apple can't tell the same story."
Beyond the iPhone
This year, there could be two major announcements by Apple that actually have very little to do with its iPhones: the launch of a Watch App Store and a bigger push with Project Marzipan, the effort to make iPhone and iPad apps run on Macs.
Apple's huge installed base of iPhone users has made developing for the iOS App Store an easy sell. At the end of 2018, there were 1.4 billion Apple devices actively used around the globe, the company said in late January during its quarterly earnings report. More than 900 million of them were iPhones.
That same focus hasn't extended to Apple's other products, though. The Mac App Store never really took off, with most software on computers coming through Web browsers. Not all developers have made companion Apple Watch apps, and Apple TV has largely centered around video, not the gaming platform Apple once envisioned. It can even be hard to find apps optimized for Apple's various iPads.
The next version of Apple's WatchOS is expected to make the Apple Watch more "independent." You'll be able to download apps directly from your watch -- even if your phone is nowhere around. Today, Apple Watch apps are companions to the main iPhone app. You currently add them, update them or change their settings through your smartphone, not your watch.
"The watch is an area where Apple has an enormous lead over the competition," Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart said. "But there's still a lot of headroom on the watch."
Mac attention?
The biggest advancements from WWDC could come to Apple's long-neglected Mac computer line.
Apple still generates about 10% to 15% of its quarterly sales from its computer line, but it hasn't given its Macs as much attention in recent years as other its devices like the iPhone and Apple Watch. In October 2016, Apple redesigned the MacBook Pro laptop for the first time in four years, but the "butterfly switch" keyboard it's used in every new laptop since then has been criticized. Last week, Apple said it would replace all defective butterfly switch keyboards for free -- even on the new MacBook Pro models it just unveiled.
Apple's Mac Pro is long overdue for an update.
CNET
Power users, like graphic designers, also have been waiting for more pro-friendly features for years. The company hasn't made big changes to its high-power Mac Pro since 2013. Notable for its cylindrical design, the Mac Pro is favored by creatives who need a lot of horsepower for professional purposes. Apple said in April 2017 that it's working on a big refresh of the computer, but a year later, it said the device wouldn't hit the market until sometime in 2019.
It's unclear whether Apple will actually launch the Mac Pro at WWDC, but it likely will spend a big chunk of its keynote on its computer line.
At the end of Apple's WWDC presentation last year, the company gave a sneak peak of Project Marzipan, its effort to make it easy to take apps developed for iOS devices to Macs. Its MacOS update released in September included four of Apple's own apps that originated on iOS -- News, Stocks, Voice Memos and Home.
This year at WWDC, Apple is expected to open that capability up to third party developers, as well as port more of its own iOS apps, like Podcasts, to the Mac. Marzipan brings Apple's mobile devices and computers one step closer -- without actually merging them.
Like much of WWDC, it may seem wonky and pretty removed from your actual devices. But listen closely, and you just might see the future of those Apple products you'll one day hold in your hands.
Google has made some major alterations to its Play Store policies that tighten rules surrounding sexual content, hate speech and loot boxes. Android Police has spotted the changes, noting that they were designed to make the platform's ecosystem more suitable for children. Under the policies' Monetization and Ads section, Google now notes that games offering randomized virtual items for purchase "must clearly disclose the odds of receiving those items in advance of purchase." In other words, you'll now know how hard it is to get particular items from loot boxes or gacha, so you can better manage your expectations.
The addition of the new rule coincides with the government's efforts to crack down on loot boxes. Senator Josh Hawley recently introduced a bill that would prohibit games marketed towards children from selling them. The FTC also plans to host a public workshop in August to look into consumer protection issues linked to the virtual items.
Google Play has also expanded its rules regarding sexual content to include a ban on nudity and on instances wherein the subject is wearing minimal clothing not "acceptable in an appropriate public context." The tech giant has changed the section's wording to add that it doesn't allow "animations or illustrations of sex acts or sexually suggestive poses," as well anything that "depicts sexual aids and fetishes." In addition, the updated policies note that Google doesn't allow anything considered "lewd or profane" and apps that promote "sex-related entertainment."
Under hate speech, Google has added examples of common violations to clarify the kind of content that will get apps banned. First in the list? "Assertions intended to prove that a protected group is inhuman, inferior or worthy of being hated." Apps that contain theories on how a protected group is a threat or how members inherently possess negative characteristics aren't welcome, as well. Finally, Google says it doesn't allow any content that encourages others to hate others because they're part of a protected group.
