Hello Everyone! First up, thank you all for all the feedback following the announcement of House Ecaz. We're very happy with how the faction is coming together and we can't wait to hear your thoughts on Arrakis' newest arrival when the game launches out of Early Access later this month, which conveniently leads us to our next announcement...

We are very proud to share that Dune: Spice Wars launches out of Early Access and into 1.0 on the 14th of September! With release now within spitting distance, we thought it would be a good time to address some of the burning questions we've been getting of late and give some details on what to expect from this major milestone in D:SW's development! So read on for the official Dune: Spice Wars 1.0 F.A.Q...
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ASML's First Pilot Tool for Next-gen Products to be Delivered in 2023
ASML's CEO, Peter Wennink, has announced that his team will be shipping out the first pilot tool (a high-NA EUV system) in its next product line before the end of this year. Reuters reports that supply chain problems have caused hold-ups along the way, but the Dutch multinational corporation is confident in delivering its next-gen opening salvo—these high numerical aperture EUV machines are large enough to warrant transportation via truck, and their per unit cost is over €300 million (~$322 million). The most demanding of chipmakers will be snapping up ASML's behemoth apparatuses in order to produce improved (i.e. smaller) chips over the next ten years.

Wennink spoke to Reuters at an industry event (that took place in Eindhoven): "A few suppliers had some difficulties in actually ramping up and also giving us the right level of technological quality, so that led to some delay. But in fact the first shipment is still this year." The CEO expects to see a growth in revenue thanks to burgeoning interest in AI-oriented silicon—new manufacturing facilities in Arizona and Taiwan are primed to adopt high-NA EUV machines in 2024. Key clients will be experimenting with these new machines (EXE:5200), before a full push into commercial production—logic chip makers have demanded that they get priority access over memory manufacturers. Intel has made declarations, in the recent past, that its foundries are first in line to receive ASML's latest and greatest tools.

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Gunnir Reveals Arc A770 & A750 Photon OC Asian Games Special Editions
The Asian Games 2022 athletic event was originally set to take place last September—officials have rescheduled proceedings to later this month (opening September 23, closing October 8). Gunnir has prepared new versions of its existing Arc A770 & A750 Photon OC graphics cards in celebration of e-sports competitions being added to the roster at XIX Asian Games, Hangzhou. The Chinese hardware manufacturer has produced an extensive portfolio of Intel Alchemist-based discrete solutions, so it is not surprising to see slightly revised designs being issued to tie-in with a significant multi-sport tournament.

Gunnir's Photon OC White Edition shroud has been updated with the official Asian Games emblem as well as wavy graphic patterns—their retail packaging shares similar revisions, giving off some very calming vibes. According to product listings on JD.com, the A750 8 GB model currently sells for 1699 RMB (~$232), while the range-topping A770 16 GB variant is available to pre-order at 2399 RMB (~$328). The latest Intel and Gunnir collaboration is not likely to reach Western shores—Team Blue's Chinese operation announced (last month) that it was the official graphics processor supplier for this month's Hangzhou Asian Games. We expect only the most hardcore of GPU collectors to import these curiosities from Joybuy/Jingdong (JD).

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(PR) Unreal Engine 5.3 is now available!
We're excited to announce that Unreal Engine 5.3 is now available. This release brings numerous wide-ranging improvements as we continue to expand UE5's functionality and potential for game developers and creators across industries. As well as enhancements to core rendering, developer iteration, and virtual production toolsets, we're introducing Experimental new rendering, animation, and simulation features to give you the opportunity to test extended creative workflows inside UE5—reducing the need to round-trip with external applications.

Refinements to core UE5 rendering features
With this release, we've continued to refine all core UE5 rendering features to address our ongoing goal of making it easier for developers to leverage them at higher quality in games running at 60 FPS on next-gen consoles; the improvements also offer higher-quality results and enhanced performance for linear content creators. Specifically, Nanite has faster performance for masked materials, including foliage, and can represent a greater range of surfaces due to the new Explicit Tangents option, while Lumen with Hardware Ray Tracing has expanded capabilities that include multiple reflection bounces, and delivers faster performance on consoles. Other areas with notable advancements include Virtual Shadow Maps (VSM)—which is now Production-Ready—Temporal Super Resolution (TSR), Hair Grooms, Path Tracing, and Substrate.
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Larian Working on Baldur's Gate 3 Cross-play for PC & Consoles
Michael Douse, the director of publishing at Larian Studios, has confirmed to Eurogamer that cross-play functionality is being worked on, although the team was not able to get it ready in time for release day code on PC (August 5) and PlayStation 5 (out today!): "It was always in the planning, but we knew it wouldn't be for launch. It's in the roadmap, and though we have an idea of when we'd like to get it ready for, we don't want to put a date on it until we're sure." Larian and the BG3 fan base are hoping to see players united in online multiplayer across PC and console platforms in the near future, with the Xbox version due to arrive at some point before the end of the year.

Technical and performance issues are present in the PlayStation 5 version—reviewers have noted that split-screen performance on Sony's console is choppy, with local multiplayer sessions forcing a 30 frames per second "Quality" visual mode. This perhaps provides a small insight into the problems encountered when developing split-screen mode for Xbox Series X and S platforms, with the latter proving to be the largest headache. Eurogamer's journalists were also privy to Larian highlighting: "in a pre-launch note to PS5 reviewers, problems with performance in the game's climactic final act in the city of Baldur's Gate. It said it was working hard to fix it. Remember, the studio has had issues with this area on PC too."
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(PR) Samsung Announces 4 TB SSD 990 PRO Series
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced the release of a new 4-terabyte (TB) offering in its SSD 990 PRO series. The 990 PRO series is a lineup of high-performance PCIe 4.0 SSDs powered by Samsung's eighth-generation V-NAND (V8) technology and enhanced proprietary controller. Offering blazing-fast speeds and ultimate power efficiency, the 990 PRO series is optimized for massive data volumes, such as 3D/4K graphics work, data analytics and high-quality games, making it the ideal SSD for today's PCs, laptops, game consoles and computing systems. With improved total bytes written (TBW) ratings of up to 2,400 TB, the 990 PRO series ensures increased SSD reliability and longevity, ideal for those with highly demanding workloads and large storage capacity needs.

"Today's gamers and creative professionals require high-capacity, high-performance SSDs and Samsung's new 4 TB SSD 990 PRO is the perfect storage solution to meet their needs," said Hangu Sohn, Corporate Vice President of the Memory Brand Product Biz Team at Samsung Electronics. "As the demand for high-resolution content and ultra-fast data-processing speeds continues to grow, high-performance NVMe storage has become a core requirement."
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