The second part of the Monday news:

Become more powerful than you can possibly imagine with Fortnite's latest skin
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/become-more-powerful-than-you-can-possibly-imagine-with-fortnites-latest-skin/
As teased during Fortnite's fortnight of Star Wars celebrations, Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi is coming to the game on May 26. The skin will be sold in the item shop and comes with 'Desert Essentials Back Bling', and there are various accessories to purchase separately, including an emote of a holo-message.

Norman Reedus confirms Death Stranding sequel, Kojima Responds
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/norman-reedus-confirms-death-stranding-sequel-we-just-started-the-second-one/
Death Stranding is a pretty popular videogame—you may have heard of it before—and pretty good, too: "Slow, weird, and indulgent, but a true original, and a journey that will linger in your mind long after it's over," we said in our 85% review of the original PC release. (The expanded, "definitive" Director's Cut arrived earlier this year.) And now, as revealed by star Norman Reedus in a Leo interview, it seems that a sequel is in development.
Update: Hideo Kojima has seemingly made a tongue-in-cheek response to Norman Reedus leaking Death Stranding 2 in an interview, posting a tweet telling him to go to his room. "'Go to your private room,my friend'??," said Kojima in the tweet. Presumably as a punishment, but also as a reference to Death Stranding itself, in which Reedus' character has a 'private room' accessible from various bases around the world.

Scratch that post-Elden Ring itch with sci-fi soulslike Dolmen
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/scratch-that-post-elden-ring-itch-with-sci-fi-soulslike-dolmen/
After running a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2018 and being featured in last year's Future Games Show, sci-fi action RPG Dolmen is now available on Steam for $40. Other than Dolmen, Massive Work's only other listed project is a rhythm game called "Tap Hitz," so this full featured action RPG is a pretty impressive early or first effort for the studio.

Stardew but potions game Little Witch in the Woods is now in early access
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/stardew-but-potions-game-little-witch-in-the-woods-is-now-in-early-access/
Witch shop life sim (no, not that one, and not this one either) Little Witch in the Woods has entered early access on Steam this week and looks like it's already charming players. This little community and crafting sim asks Ellie the apprentice witch to collect items around the forest while helping out the local community. As expected, the Stardew-but-little-witch concept seems to be reasonably popular so far in the first few days of early access.
>> Since they posted links to two articles about other games, I post the one to Steam of this one.

Embracer Group wants to make a lot of Deus Ex and Tomb Raider stuff
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/embracer-group-wants-to-make-a-lot-of-deus-ex-and-tomb-raider-stuff/
Swedish game dev vacuum cleaner Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic AB, not to be confused with subsidiary THQ Nordic GmbH) recently sucked up Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal, granting the conglomerate ownership of Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Thief. We've seen big properties change hands with mergers and continue to stagnate, but it sounds like the Embracer Group plans to actually use the stuff it just bought.
>> gtotheunit91 made a thread about this some days ago.

Prolific Studio-buyer EA is reportedly looking to be bought in turn
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/prolific-studio-buyer-ea-is-reportedly-looking-to-be-bought-in-turn/
With the recent rush of consolidation in the gaming world, it might be easy to forget the original masters of studio acquisition: Electronic Arts. In an ironic twist, a new report from Dylan Byers of the independent publication, Puck, claims that EA, which has a market cap of $36 billion, has been seeking acquisition by an even larger company, and was almost bought by NBCUniversal.
>> The former "big fish in a small pond" has discovered that the pond has grown a lot, and that there are much bigger fishes. Anyway, Ryuu96 made a thread about this some days ago.

Get honey, get paid in charming beekeeping sim Apico
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/get-honey-get-paid-in-charming-beekeeping-sim-apico/
About a year ago we spotted Apico, a pretty cool lookin' game about beekeeping and conservation. It's now out, properly released and all that, and looks a delight. There's a demo you can play that takes you through the first few hours of the game.

Rainbow Six Siege's next operator takes a page out of Valorant's playbook
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/rainbow-six-sieges-next-operator-takes-a-page-out-of-valorants-playbook/
We're at the point with Rainbow Six Siege where just about everything has been done. There are a lot of operators, arguably too many, who can breach a wall, pilot a camera, or lay a trap. But with plans to add 4 new operators every year, Ubisoft is looking outward to create interesting new characters. Sens, Siege's newest attacker, feels like the product of one popular shooter in particular: Valorant.

Kiryu finally gets a gun in new Yakuza Rainbow Six Siege crossover skin
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/kiryu-finally-gets-a-gun-in-new-yakuza-rainbow-six-siege-crossover-skin/
The time for a new Rainbow Six Siege season has arrived, and that means another premium cosmetic partnership that makes me scratch my head a bit. After dressing up the Siege roster in convincing Lara Croft, Leon Kennedy, and Rick Sanchez cosplay, Ubisoft now has its eyes set on the most legendary Japanese gangster to ever throw a punch: Kazuma Kiryu from the Yakuza series.

Work on Stalker 2 is once again underway
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/work-on-stalker-2-is-once-again-underway/
The community manager for GSC game world has said that development on Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has resumed. In a post on Discord, GSC Game World community representative Mol1t has said that "it continues" and "the work is in progress."

A brand new sidescrolling shmup just surprise-launched on Steam
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/a-brand-new-sidescrolling-shmup-just-surprise-launched-on-steam/
The Indie Live Expo, a two-day digital showcase for indie games broadcast in English, Japanese, and Chinese, just wrapped up. Over 400 games were shown, including some we'd seen before and some that were totally new. Among the new games was the latest from Team Ladybug, developer of Touhou Luna Nights and Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth.
The metroidvania studio has branched out for their latest title, a sidescrolling shmup in the vein of R-Type, which was released on Steam as it was announced. Drainus—yes, it's a terrible name—is both the game and the ship you pilot in it, a fighter with a reflector that can absorb bullets then spit them back at enemies. You have to strike a balance between dodging waves of fire, turning on the shield to soak up as much as you can before unleashing a counterattack, then going back to dodging while the reflector comes back online.

And now, the AMD news with Yuri.

A few of the news items will be a repeat of yesterday but it's now official instead of being a leak and we have more context.

AMD Ryzen 7000 desktop series to offer over 15% single-thread uplift, launch this fall

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-7000-desktop-series-to-offer-over-15-single-thread-uplift-launch-this-fall

AMD demonstrates Ryzen 7000 Zen4 CPU reaching 5.5 GHz while gaming

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-demonstrates-ryzen-7000-zen4-cpu-reaching-5-5-ghz-while-gaming#disqus_thread

AMD reveals its X670 Extreme, X670 and B650 chipsets for first-gen AM5 motherboards

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-reveals-its-x670-extreme-x670-and-b650-chipsets-for-first-gen-am5-motherboards

Intel to disclose more details on Meteor/Arrow Lake with 3D Foveros packaging technology at HotChips 34

https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-to-disclose-more-details-on-meteor-arrow-lake-with-3d-foveros-packaging-technology-at-hotchips-34

can confirm v rising would be great if only you didnt need friends to enjoy the full content

After seeing the press conference and articles and such, I think it's pretty clear that the "Pascal" days of Ryzen is over and now we are in the "Turing" era so to speak.

15% single traded uplift from 5950x in Cinebench is pretty disappointing to say the least. Even the 12900k is faster in single threaded than a 5950x in Cinebench. They do show Blender results but even the 5950x beats 12900k pretty handily in Blender. They do technically say > but generally that means >15% <20%. Hopefully they are low balling it so when it releases, it will be above expectations. But as Kopite said it in his tweet:

I think the biggest knock though is the treatment of B650. With B550, it was essentially a baby X570. You had PCI-E Gen 4 for GPU and primary storage from X570 and you had CPU overclocking support from X570. Now with B650, it looks like you don't get overclocking nor do you get PCI-E Gen 5 for the GPU, you only get it for storage which is useless for most people.

The irony is if you are looking for a budget build, you may be better off with getting B550 + 5700x + DDR4 than going to B650 and spending a lot of money on DDR5 and (for now) marginal increase in CPU performance. I could be wrong but it doesn't even look like AM5 offers any DDR4 compatibility like Intel does with their budget series. And of course, you get further segmentation of X670 vs X670E when it comes to PCI-E gen 5 support.

Hopefully as we get closer to launch, the news will improve but so far, this is a pretty big disappointment from both a CPU performance stand point and a platform standpoint.

From what I heard, Zen5 would be a much bigger upgrade, with an architecture overhaul. Zen4 seems more like a stopgap in between Zen3 and Zen5 since not much changes on the CPU side apart from the larger L2 cache.

Hopefully but Raptor Lake is going to come out this year which is what Zen 4 is supposed to go up against but it feels like it will barely be faster than Alder Lake based on current info. Zen 5 will go up against Meteor Lake so the improvements really need to be huge for AMD to keep up. But so far, Zen 4 feels like a skip.

Yeah, if one has a powerful PC, there's not much of a point to switch to Zen4 so far. Hopefully future announcements can change this a bit.

I will probably get a Zen4 PC, but that's because I'm currently just on a laptop and building a new PC with Zen3 now seems pointless as the platform is eol. So I'll wait until Zen4 so I'll have some upgrade path going forward.

Yea if you are building a new powerful PC, getting Zen 4 would be the better option than getting Zen3 unless you are on a budget. You will at the very least have an upgrade path to Zen 5 and hopefully longer with AM5 but we haven't had any commitments to it's longevity afaik but even at the worst case, Zen 5 should at least beat Raptor lake.

Up to 15% upgrade in SC performance in two years.. that's kinda big meh tbh. A little relieved now I didn't wait out that long for it.

Zen 5 (on N3/N3E) should be a lot more exciting.. And is probably AMD's 'tick' on their roadmap rather than Zen 4's 'tock'.

I hadn't thought about the 4 vs. 8 cores design of Zen2 and 3, thanks for bringing that out.