Enlarge / Artist's conception of Blizzard fighting off DDoS attackers.

When a highly anticipated online game launches, unforeseen server capacity issues and long entry queues are nothing out of the ordinary. In the case of this week's Overwatch 2 early access launch, though, the usual crowding problems are apparently being exacerbated by coordinated distributed denial of service attacks.

On Tuesday evening, Blizzard President Mike Ybarra issued a generic tweet warning that "Teams are working hard on server issues with Overwatch 2." Less than an hour later, though, he followed up with some more worrying specifics. "Unfortunately we are experiencing a mass DDoS attack on our servers," he said. "Teams are working hard to mitigate/manage. This is causing a lot of drop/connection issues."

Overnight, Overwatch 2 Game Director Aaron Keller posted an update saying that "we’re steadily making progress on server issues and stability, as well as working through a second DDoS attack. We’re all hands on deck and will continue to work throughout the night. Thank you for your patience—we’ll share more info as it becomes available."

Enlarge / We took our handsome pair of new Arc A700-series GPUs out for some glamour shots. While minding standard static-related protocols, of course. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

What's it like owning a brand-new Intel Arc A700-series graphics card? Is it the show-stopping clapback against Nvidia that wallet-pinched PC gamers have been dreaming of? Is it an absolute mess of unoptimized hardware and software? Does it play video games?

That last question is easy to answer: yes, and pretty well. Intel now has a series of GPUs entering the PC gaming market just in time for a few major industry trends to play out: some easing in the supply chain, some crashes in cryptocurrency markets, and more GPUs being sold near their originally announced MSRPs. If those factors continue to move in consumer-friendly directions, it will mean that people might actually get to buy and enjoy the best parts of Intel’s new A700-series graphics cards. (Sadly, limited stock remains a concern in modern GPU reviews. Without firm answers from Intel on how many units it's making, we’re left wondering what kind of Arc GPU sell-outs to expect until further notice.)

While this is a fantastic first-generation stab at an established market, it’s still a first-generation stab. In great news, Intel is taking the GPU market seriously with how its Arc A770 (starting at $329) and Arc A750 (starting at $289) cards are architected. The best results are trained on modern and future rendering APIs, and in those gaming scenarios, their power and performance exceed their price points.

Enlarge / "Sarah" from Virtua Fighter gets an AI makeover thanks to Stable Diffusion and a fan named Colin Williamson. (credit: Colin Williamson)

In 1993, Sega's Virtual Fighter arcade game broke new ground with fully 3D polygonal graphics, a first for a fighting game. Thanks to a Twitter thread from an artist named Colin Williamson, we can take a look at what those original boxy characters might look like with their angles smoothed out.

To create the images, Williamson took vintage Virtua Fighter game graphics and fed them through an "img2img" mode of the Stable Diffusion image synthesis model, which takes an input image as a prompt, combines it with a written description, and synthesizes an output image. (In particular, Williamson used the "AUTOMATIC1111" release, which comes with a nice web-based user interface.)

Stable Diffusion doesn't work magically, so it can take some trial and error, and a keen eye to figure out prompting to get worthwhile results. Still, Williamson enjoyed the process. "Just describe the character, and img2img does its best," Williamson told Ars. "Though the hardest part was simply figuring out how to describe the characters' clothes."

Enlarge / Hackers are getting closer to fully unlocking user control of the PS5 hardware. (credit: Sony)

Long-time console hacker and exploit developer SpecterDev has released a PS5 exploit that can give users root privileges and read/write access to large chunks of system memory. While this exploit can't be used to actually execute arbitrary code just yet, it represents an important step toward getting homebrew code running on the console.

The exploit, released this weekend, makes use of a FreeBSD vulnerability in the system OS that was reported to PlayStation's HackerOne bounty program in January (a very similar vulnerability on the PS4 was reported to PlayStation in 2020). Making use of the exploit relies on setting up a fake DNS server on your local network such that accessing the PS5's on-screen manual (which is loaded via the system's hidden web browser) points instead to a page on your local PC.

From there, the exploit uses an error in how the PS5's browser implementation handles memory locking while setting IPv6 socket headers. While the details get pretty technical, the exploit essentially sets up a race condition to access that exposed socket header memory before it's fully locked. That small bit of access is then used as a hook to start reading and writing arbitrary data into large areas of the PS5's memory via an RPC server on the host machine.

Still reeling from the death of their king T'Challa, the people of Wakanda face a new threat from a feathered serpent god in the new trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It's the final film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Four, although technically, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, slated for a December release on Disney+, will be the official conclusion.

As we've reported previously, Wakanda Forever was already in development when Chadwick Boseman—who played T'Challa in 2018's Black Panther—died of colon cancer in August 2020. Director Ryan Coogler, Marvel's Kevin Feige, and many others had been unaware that Boseman was ill. They decided not to recast T'Challa, nor would they try to insert the character using visual effects, although most of the other main cast members are returning. So the finished film is, in many ways, a tribute to Boseman.

There are plenty of familiar faces in Wakanda Forever. Per the official premise, "Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Shuri (Letitia Wright), M'Baku (Winston Duke), Okoye (Danai Gurira), and the Dora Milaje (including Florence Kasumba) fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T'Challa's death. As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with the help of War Dog Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) and Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) and forge a new path for the kingdom of Wakanda."

Enlarge / Nothing weird going on here. No siree. (credit: https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/chaos-head-noah-switch/)

Japanese publisher Spike Chunsoft announced that the first official English translation of visual novel Chaos;Head Noah won't be coming to Steam as planned "due to Steam's guideline-required changes to the game's content." But while the game is apparently too risqué for Steam, the family-friendly folks at Nintendo apparently have no problem with a Switch version that Spike Chunsoft says will still launch in the US on October 7 as scheduled.

"Spike Chunsoft, Inc. believes these [Steam guideline-required] changes would not allow the game to be released to its standards," the publisher said in its announcement. "The company is looking into delivering the title through alternative storefronts, and when details are decided will make another formal announcement. Until then your patience and understanding is appreciated."

Chaos;Head Noah was initially listed for Steam pre-sale in April, but that page was taken down in August, according to tracking site SteamDB. At the time, that led to some concerns about the eventual fate of the Steam version, which Spike Chunsoft finally confirmed today.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Capcom)

A YouTube creator has gone on the offensive after facing an increasingly common problem on the platform: moderation and enforcement that leaves creators confused by the logic and short on their videos' revenue potential.

The trouble centers on a longtime YouTube video host whose content is popular among the retro-gaming devotees at Ars Technica's staff. The creator, who goes by the online handle "Summoning Salt," chronicles the history of various classic games' speedrunning world records. His hour-plus analyses demonstrate how different players approach older games and exploit various bugs. The games in question are typically cartoony 2D fare instead of violent or M-rated titles.

On Friday, Summoning Salt took to social media to claim that his latest 78-minute documentary about 1989's Mega Man 2, which went live in mid-September, has been "age-restricted" by YouTube's moderation system. Bizarrely, the video had been age-restricted roughly one week ago, only for YouTube to relent to the creator's appeal and claim that the restriction had been placed in error.

So-called cabinets of curiosities—aka wunderkammers ("wonder-rooms")—were hugely popular in the 17th century. They were largely random collections of strange-yet-fascinating stuff, including natural history specimens, archaeological artifacts, religious or historical relics, the odd work of art, and any other quirky item that caught the cabinet creator’s fancy.  The concept also inspired auteur director Guillermo del Toro when putting together a new anthology horror series for Netflix: Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. The streaming platform just dropped the official trailer for the series, and it looks like just the right kind of fright fare to bring some stylishly spooky frissons to the Halloween season.

As we've reported previously, the series was first announced in 2018 and features eight episodes written and directed by filmmakers handpicked by del Toro. The list of directors includes Jennifer Kent, who directed 2014's phenomenal The Babadook; her episode, "The Murmuring," is based on an original story by del Toro and features Babadook star Essie Davis (aka Miss Fisher). "Dreams in the Witch House," based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story, is directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown, Twilight).

"Graveyard Rats" is directed by Vincenzo Natali (In the Tall Grass, Splice), while Guillermo Navarro (Narcos) directed "Lot 36," also based on an original story by del Toro. Keith Thomas (Firestarter) directed "Pickman's Model," another episode based on a Lovecraft short story; David Prior (The Empty Man) directed "The Autopsy"; Panos Cosmatos (Mandy) directed "The Viewing"; and Ana Lily Amirpour—who directed the exquisite A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night—directed "The Outside."

Enlarge / Intel arrives at a crucial sub-$300 price for its medium-end GPU option. But will that bear out as a worthwhile price compared to its performance? (credit: Intel)

Intel's highest-end graphics card lineup is approaching its retail launch, and that means we're getting more answers to crucial market questions of prices, launch dates, performance, and availability. Today, Intel answered more of those A700-series GPU questions, and they're paired with claims that every card in the Arc A700 series punches back at Nvidia's 18-month-old RTX 3060.

After announcing a $329 price for its A770 GPU earlier this week, Intel clarified that the company would launch three A700 series products on October 12: The aforementioned Arc A770 for $329, which sports 8GB of GDDR6 memory; an additional Arc A770 Limited Edition for $349, which jumps up to 16GB of GDDR6 at slightly higher memory bandwidth and otherwise sports otherwise identical specs; and the slightly weaker A750 Limited Edition for $289.

If you missed the memo on that sub-$300 GPU when it was previously announced, the A750 LE is essentially a binned version of the A770's chipset with 87.5 percent of the shading units and ray tracing (RT) units turned on, along with an ever-so-slightly downclocked boost clock (2.05 GHz, compared to 2.1 GHz on both A770 models).

Enlarge / Let's see: Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia Geforce Now, Xbox again, and Steam Link. That's all the cloud streaming services, right? Nothing's missing. (credit: Logitech)

It's not every day that you see the attempted birth of an entirely new category of video game hardware. But it feels like that's what we're seeing this month with the announcement of the Logitech G Cloud and the Razer Edge 5G handheld gaming systems.

While these devices (and somewhat similar emulation-focused handhelds like the AYN Odin) have their differences, they share Qualcomm SnapDragon internals, an Android-based OS, and vaguely Switch-like hardware designs. And while these devices can natively run games designed for Android phones (for whatever that's worth), the main focus seems to be streaming portable versions of high-end console and PC games through various cloud-gaming providers or in-home streaming options.

It's too early to know how well these handhelds will serve their stated purpose, or how much actual market demand there is for dedicated portable devices that primarily play games hosted on remote servers or platforms. Still, we can't help but compare and contrast this new hardware design trend with the last major (failed) attempt to create a new category of gaming hardware: the microconsole.

Enlarge / You're limited to eight files and a word processor, but you can put them anywhere you want in NESOS' rich (for 1985) desktop environment. (credit: Inkbox)

When you played the Nintendo Entertainment System, you were close to the hardware. It's why you can pull off remarkable glitch hacks, like playing Tennis to hot-boot into broken Super Mario Bros. worlds. The chips, the memory, the board—everything was designed to service the little board inside your cartridge (that and prevent unauthorized games). There wasn't much room for anything else in the early- to mid-1980s.

Room enough, however, for a custom-built operating system built in 2022, if just barely. NESOS 1.0 from Inkbox Software, a 48K OS, features "two core applications, the word processor, and the settings," according to Inkbox. The settings app gives you seven cursors, 53 background colors, and the ability to delete the eight files that can fit inside a maximum 2K of NVRAM (i.e. on-board memory that doesn't lose data when the system loses power). That's 832 bytes each, or about one full screen's worth of memory. You can drag those eight files anywhere you want on the desktop, however.

NESOS (pronounced "nee-sohs," according to its creator) is entirely graphical. Inbox notes that there's already a command-line system, Family Basic, for the NES and its Japanese progenitor, the Family Computer/Famicom. "I want NESOS to feel like an actual operating system that Nintendo might have made back in the day for the NES. What would it have looked and felt like?" the creator says in his video overview.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Earlier this year, Pokémon Legends: Arceus reinvigorated developer Game Freak’s iconic series by shaking up a formula that had gone largely unchanged for more than 25 years. But that recent bout of experimentation doesn’t diminish just how long the Poké-formula has remained mostly static. For two and a half decades, the developer essentially released the same game over and over, and fans like me ate it up like pulled Lechonk. Perhaps disappointingly, the series appears to be resuming its usual course with the more traditional Scarlet & Violet launch this November.

Whether Legends will form an enduring and fresh new branch on Pokémon’s franchise tree is the kind of philosophical quandary that could make Xatu spend all day staring at the sun.

But for those who look beyond Nintendo’s official releases, the Pokémon series is anything but stale. While Nintendo, the games' publisher, hasn't worked to make older Pokémon games accessible on modern hardware—or affordable on older gear—a certain demographic of dedicated fans has taken it upon themselves to not just preserve legacy Pokémon titles but to actively improve them. These volunteer ROM hackers and preservationists work to keep the passions of an aging generation of Pokémon masters alive, all while fighting occasionally brutal legal crackdowns from Nintendo.

Enlarge / Fun fact: The divot in the middle of the D-pad can also hold a very small amount of salsa or dip. (credit: Verizon)

Just one week after Logitech confirmed its Android-based, streaming-focused G CLOUD Gaming Handheld, fellow peripheral maker Razer is getting in on the act. The Razer Edge 5G, announced in conjunction with Verizon at Mobile World Congress today, will play games "downloaded to play locally, streamed from your console or accessed directly from the cloud."

BREAKING: @Verizon, @Razer and @Qualcomm are teaming up on the world's first 5G mobile gaming handheld—Razer Edge 5G! It will allow you to play your favorite games regardless of whether you are gaming in the cloud, on an app or streaming from your console. https://t.co/TYPw5xFyeF pic.twitter.com/F9Vg3CfABl

— George Koroneos (@GLKCreative) September 28, 2022

As the name implies, Verizon and Razer are leaning heavily into their console as "the world's first 5G mobile gaming handheld," complete with the ability to stream or download games "over 5G Ultra Wideband." That should be an upgrade from 10 years ago, when Sony integrated a 3G mobile antenna in some versions of the PlayStation Vita, letting the device serve as a highly questionable cell phone replacement. That version of the system saw a severe price drop just months after launch before it was discontinued later that year, suggesting a lack of excitement for mobile data options in a game console at the time.

Not just a dev kit anymore

The Edge 5G will be based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 Gaming Platform, which the chipmaker revealed as a reference design last November. That announcement came alongside a Razer-designed dev kit for the platform, which featured a 6.65-inch OLED, 120 Hz screen, built-in 1080p webcam, and "Snapdragon Sound" four-way speakers (as well as theoretical support for 4K, 144 fps, 10-bit HDR color output via a DisplayPort USB-C connection to an external monitor).

Enlarge / As Skull & Bones suffers yet another delay, we question Ubisoft's choice of an ominous skull as its featured box-art image. (credit: Ubisoft)

2022 is turning out to be a substantial rebuilding year for game publisher Ubisoft, as its holiday 2022 release slate of major multi-platform games has now been all but wiped clean.

The bad news came on Wednesday when Ubisoft again delayed the launch of its open-world pirate adventure Skull and Bones, this time past its previously suggested November 8 launch date on PC and current-gen consoles. The game maker confirmed the delay to March 9, 2023, after an independent report from Kotaku suggested that S&B's latest rounds of pre-release testing pointed to a stable-but-boring experience for its online multiplayer modes and noted issues with the game's "progression" systems.

Skull and Bones debuted at E3 2017 as an apparent build-out of the third-person, open-seas pirate adventuring found in mid-'10s Assassin's Creed games—albeit with no formal ties to that other Ubisoft-helmed series. As originally announced, players would directly control a pirate ship's captain and issue orders to AI-controlled crewmates to either engage in a solo campaign or connect online for open-seas combat with both PvE (fight the computer) and PvP (fight real players) elements.

Enlarge / Multibeam sonar image of the SS Mesaba shipwreck lying on the sea bed in the Irish Sea. (credit: Bangor University)

Before the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in April 1912, the ship's wireless operators received multiple warning messages of icebergs, growlers, and field ice from six other ships in the region. Now, researchers at Bangor University have identified the wreck of one of those ships in the Irish Sea: the SS Mesaba, which sank in 1918 after being torpedoed by a German submarine. It's one of 273 ships mapped and mostly identified in that 7,500-square-mile region, using a state-of-the-art technique called multibeam sonar.

As we've reported previously, Titanic set out on her maiden voyage to much fanfare on April 10, 1912. Among other amenities, there was a shiny new wireless telegraph system on board, courtesy of the Marconi International Marine Communication Company, capable of transmitting radio signals over a radius of 350 miles (563 kilometers). Although its purpose was mostly to send so-called "marconigrams" for the ship's wealthiest first-class passengers, operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride also handled any messages from other ships—notably weather reports and ice warnings.

Phillips and Bride had been receiving ice warnings from other ships all day on April 14, beginning at 9 am with reports of "bergs and growlers and field ice" from RMS Caronia. Later that day, RMS Baltic warned that a Greek ship had reported "passing icebergs and large quantities of field ice." Captain Edward Smith acknowledged receipt of both messages and shifted course a bit further south in response, but he didn't reduce the ship's speed.

Enlarge / I'm not 18 yet, so I can do whatever I want here... right?

A serial Destiny 2 cheater currently facing a lawsuit from Bungie is arguing in court that his status as a minor means he can effectively opt out of the game's license agreement, including any anti-cheating provisions he may have violated. Ironically, though, trying to make use of this loophole may have opened the defendant up to much more serious copyright infringement claims.

In a motion to dismiss filed earlier this month (as noted by TorrentFreak), the plaintiff in the cheating case (referred to in court documents as L.L. to protect his real identity) argues that he is not subject to Bungie's Limited Software License Agreement (LSLA). That's because, as a minor, L.L. has the right to "disaffirm" that contract, which means it is "legally treated as if it was never formed." L.L. did just that on September 8, filing documents disaffirming "any and all contracts between himself and Bungie."

In his motion to dismiss, L.L. argues that this move means he is retroactively not subject to LSLA clauses that prevent players from "hack[ing] or modify[ing]" the game or "us[ing] any unauthorized software programs to gain advantage in any online or multiplayer game modes." Thus, Bungie's claims based on breach of that contract should be dismissed.

Enlarge / The Arc A770 GPU, coming from Intel on October 12, starting at $329. (credit: Intel)

One week after Nvidia moved forward with some of its highest graphics card prices, Intel emerged with splashy news: a price for its 2023 graphics cards that lands a bit closer to Earth.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger took the keynote stage on Tuesday at the latest Intel Innovation event to confirm a starting price and release date for the upcoming Arc A770 GPU: $329 on October 12.

That price comes well below last week's highest-end Nvidia GPU prices but is meant to more closely correlate with existing GPUs from AMD and Nvidia in the $300 range. Crucially, Intel claims that its A770, the highest-end product from the company's first wave of graphics cards, will compare to or even exceed the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, which debuted last year at $399 and continues to stick to that price point at most marketplaces.

A traumatized survivor of a zombie apocalypse must face hordes of the "Infected" to protect a teenage girl who might hold the key to a cure in The Last of Us, a new HBO series based on the blockbuster action/adventure game of the same name. HBO just dropped the first official teaser, giving gaming fans their first look at this long-awaited TV adaptation.

(Some spoilers from the game below.)

The Last of Us game from Naughty Dog debuted in 2013 to pretty much universal acclaim for its narrative, gameplay, visuals, and sound design. Ars senior gaming editor Kyle Orland called it "a thrilling, beautiful, exceptionally human zombie apocalypse story" in his 2013 review. The game sold more than 1 million units in the first week of its release and won multiple gaming awards. It's still often cited as among the greatest video games ever made. Co-showrunner Craig Mazin called it the "Lawrence of Arabia of video game narratives." Naughty Dog co-President Neil Druckmann, who wrote and directed the original game, co-wrote the first season of the TV series with Mazin.

When it comes to World of Warcraft's long-demanded "Classic" servers, players understandably want an experience that's identical to the MMO experience they remember from years ago. At least one player has taken that concept to an extreme this week, using years-old exploits to reach the level 80 cap on Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King Classic (aka Wrath Classic) servers mere hours after they launched.

Streamer Naowh and his compatriots at Echo Guild announced their level 80 speedrun achievement on Twitter early Tuesday morning. As Naowh explains in an accompanying video, the rapid leveling takes advantage of a bugged Icecrown boss that continually spawns mobs of undead zombies. A player can "tag" those zombies with a single attack, then get full experience for defeating all the zombies when the next mob spawns in.

Naowh said he practiced this method in the live retail version of World of Warcraft before the launch of Wrath Classic servers Monday. "It's still the same to this day in retail," Naowh said. "I'm surprised no one has noticed this."

Enlarge / It's baaaaaaack! (credit: ESA / ReedPOP)

The annual gaming expo once known as E3 is finally drawing closer toward rebirth as a physical event. While information about the next iteration of E3 remains scarce, this week's big news suggests a crucial change in how the decades-old event will work: a split between audience types.

The expo's new showrunners at ReedPOP, an agency responsible for regional gaming and comic expos like PAX, EGX, and Star Wars Celebration, confirmed on Monday that E3 2023 has locked down its location and date range. Both should sound familiar to E3 fans: a week-long span in mid-June (specifically, June 13–16) at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

This time, E3 will better resemble overseas game-industry showcases like Gamescom and Tokyo Games Show. The event's first two days, dubbed "E3 Business Days," will exclusively host "registered industry personnel," which ReedPOP says will include game makers, distributors, licensors, and press. E3 2023's third day will function as a hybrid industry/public day, and the fourth will be exclusively open to public ticket purchases. During this two-day span of "E3 Gamer Days," the event will host a theater full of "deep-dive looks at highly anticipated titles."