The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an injunction earlier this week, in a renewed effort to temporarily block Microsoft's $69 billion bid for full ownership of the Activision Blizzard group. A judge has today granted the regulatory body's request. The court has issued a temporary restraining order—in which it states the legal measure "is necessary to maintain the status quo while the complaint is pending." The FTC proposes that the acquisition has the potential to "substantially lessen competition" within North America's gaming sector. Microsoft and Activision are required to attend a two-day hearing—scheduled for 22 June in San Francisco, California.
The FTC had previously penciled in an August 2 session with an internal administrative judge, following the expiration of Microsoft's proposed deadline (July 18) for the merger. A company spokesperson (commenting to Eurogamer) expressed that leadership was happy about the FTC's decision to bring proceedings forward in time: "Accelerating the legal process in the US will ultimately bring more choice and competition to the gaming market. A temporary restraining order makes sense until we can receive a decision from the Court, which is moving swiftly." The legal document outlines terms including the prevention of "any of their officers, directors, domestic or foreign agents, divisions, subsidiaries, affiliates, partnerships, or joint ventures from closing or consummating, directly or indirectly, the proposed transaction or a substantially similar transaction."
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(PR) Creative Assembly Showcases Total War: Pharaoh Gameplay
"I am the rising dawn... and I will lead us into a new age!" Check out our first Total War: PHARAOH gameplay showcase (below) and get better acquainted with our first faction leader, Ramesses - a young Egyptian warrior eager to fulfil his true destiny!
In Total War: Pharaoh, the newest entry in the award-winning grand strategy series, immerse yourself in ancient Egypt at the zenith of its power and experience the dramatic events that threaten its destruction.
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AMD Radeon Pro W7800 GPU Tweaked to Simulate "RX 7800 XT"
An AMD Navi 32 die was belatedly observed in a Forbes video feature on the company's CEO and President Lisa Su—this small tidbit fired up the PC hardware community once again with speculation about why Team Red has not yet released proper mid-range RDNA 3 game-oriented models. A handful of news sites have recently reported that a Navi 32 GPU sits at the heart of AMD's fairly new workstation-grade AMD Radeon Pro W7800 32 GB GDDR6 graphics card, but fact checkers have quickly pointed out that the $2499 (MSRP) product is actually based on Navi 31. Sites have theorized about the makeup of a possible "Radeon RX 7800" GPU and assumed that a similarly named/numbered workstation model would offer a preview of things to come.
Igor Wallossek (of Igor's Lab fame) has conducted an interesting investigation into this matter. He has put a Radeon Pro W7800 test unit through its paces as a gaming card, but the high-end nature of the Navi 31 GPU leads him to believe that the performance level on tap would be roughly equivalent to a hypothetical "RX 7800 XT." Igor assumes that his simulated gaming card will have access to a smaller pool of VRAM (16 GB instead of 32 GB)—he achieves this via the memtestcl program, since "RDNA 3 no longer allows us to emulate the cards directly." He also sets provisions for differing power consumption due to the workstation card being an efficiency-focused product: "The Radeon Pro W7800 has a TBP of 260 watts, my own extrapolation results in a TBP of around 270 watts for the RTX 7800XT based on the efficiency values of the other two Navi 31 cards."
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US Patent Office Sides with Intel in the $2.2 Billion VLSI Case
The U.S. Patent Office tribunal has ruled in favor of Intel Corp in a significant $2.2 billion case against VLSI Technology LLC. Intel's bid to nullify a patent that constituted $1.5 billion of a $2.18 billion verdict it previously lost to VLSI in 2021 was accepted. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated the computer chip-related patent and another VLSI patent, accounting for the rest of the Texas federal court verdict. An Intel spokesperson expressed their satisfaction with the decision, criticizing the invalidated VLSI patents as "low-quality."
VLSI, the company holding the patent that has filed several infringement lawsuits against Intel, retains the option to appeal both decisions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In a separate case last year, VLSI secured a verdict worth $949 million against Intel in Texas. VLSI is a subsidiary of Fortress Investment Group, which is managed by investment funds from SoftBank Group. The patent board proceeding was initiated by South Dakota-based Patent Quality Assurance LLC, while another patent from the $2.18 billion verdict was contested by OpenSky Industries LLC. Despite initial sanctions for attempting to extort both Intel and VLSI, OpenSky was permitted to continue the proceeding with Intel at the helm.
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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 to Release on June 29
NVIDIA could be advancing the launch of its GeForce RTX 4060 (non-Ti) graphics card from its July 2023 launch the company originally announced. Leaked documents shared by MEGAsizeGPU say that NVIDIA could make the RTX 4060 available on June 29, which means reviews of the card could go live on June 28 for the MSRP cards, and June 29 for the premium ones priced above MSRP. It was earlier expected to launch alongside the 16 GB variant of the RTX 4060 Ti, in July.
The RTX 4060 is a significantly different product from the RTX 4060 Ti the company launched in May, it is based on the smaller AD107 silicon. The card is expected to feature 3,072 CUDA cores, 24 RT cores, 96 Tensor cores, 96 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, compared to the 4,352 CUDA cores, 34 RT cores, 136 Tensor cores, 136 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, of the RTX 4060 Ti. The memory configuration is similar, with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit wide memory bus, however, the memory speed is slightly lower, at 17 Gbps vs. 18 Gbps of the Ti. The RTX 4060 has a TGP of just 115 W. The company hasn't finalized its price, yet.
Update Jun 14th: NVIDIA confirmed the launch date on Twitter:NVIDIAThe GeForce RTX 4060 will now be available to order starting June 29, at 6AM Pacific.
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The Last of Us Part 1 v1.1 Patch Released, Now Steam Deck Verified
Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy have proudly announced a major set of improvements for their PC port of The Last of Us Part 1. A social media message from yesterday stated: "Patch 1.1 is now live for The Last of Us Part I on PC, including performance improvements, fixes for various crashes, and more. Read the patch notes here. We are also happy to announce that Part I is now Steam Deck Verified.✅"
The development team has outlined a significant number of improvements for the PC version—just in time for the game's tenth anniversary celebrations this week. The patch notes mention tweaks for global CPU and GPU performance, texture and environment load times, a full shader rebuild as well as fixes for multiple types of game crashes. General performance on Steam Deck has been improved, and a memory leak issue has been addressed which previously caused crashes on the handheld system. These fixes very likely got Valve's attention, hence the granting of Verified status.
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