Enlarge / The RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Nvidia's announcement of the GeForce RTX 4060 series last week broke the pricing trend set by every other RTX 4000-series card released so far: The 4060 Ti is launching at the same price as its predecessor, and the 4060 is actually getting a small price cut.

But these cards also continued a trend that we noted in our RTX 4070 review—compared to past generations, the performance upgrade just isn't as impressive. The $400 RTX 3060 Ti could match or beat a $700 RTX 2080 Super from the previous generation. The 4060 Ti... well, it can definitely beat a 3060 Ti.

It's a very capable mid-range graphics card that's great at 1080p and can often stretch to 1440p. It gives you more performance and lower power consumption at the same price you'd pay for a 3060 Ti yesterday. And it does all of the Ada Lovelace architecture's special tricks, like DLSS Frame Generation and hardware-accelerated AV1 video encoding. But it doesn't bring last generation's high-end performance down to a more reasonable price the way older Nvidia cards have.

Enlarge / A group of PlayStation owners worries that an image like this is coming in their near future...

A federal judge has refused to grant a requested preliminary injunction that would have stopped Microsoft's continuing effort to buy Activision Blizzard . But as the private case moves forward, the judge in the case writes that the plaintiffs have "plausibly" argued that they might be adversely affected by the deal's anti-competitive effects.

The so-called "gamers' lawsuit" against the Microsoft/Activision deal was initially filed by a group of 10 PlayStation Call of Duty players in December, alleging that the deal could lead to increased prices and/or decreased quality or availability for the franchise on their console of choice. While the case was dismissed in March , the plaintiffs offered an amended complaint last month , laying out more precisely the harm they believe they could suffer after a merger.

Regarding those amended claims, District Court Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said in a Friday ruling that, while it was too early to fully rule on the merits of the case, the plaintiffs "plausibly attest to their loyalty to the Call of Duty franchise and thus that each will purchase a different console or subscription service, or pay an inflated price, if needed to continue to play Call of Duty, especially if needed to play with their friends." That's a turnaround from the initial March dismissal, where Corley wrote that the plaintiffs didn't "plausibly allege" that the merger "creates a reasonable probability of anticompetitive effects in any relevant market."

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  Lego's 2,561-piece Pac-Man arcade cabinet. [credit: Lego ]

Lego's video game-themed sets for adults have focused mostly on home consoles and the Super Mario universe , but its newest set is turning its eyes to the arcade era. A new 2,561-piece Lego Icons set recreates the original Pac-Man arcade cabinet, complete with a hand crank on the side that makes Pac-Man, Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde move (along pre-determined paths) on its "screen."

The set will launch on June 4 for $270.

The Pac-Man set isn't a full recreation of the 1980 original—it looks more like a half-height bartop arcade cabinet rather than one that goes all the way to the floor—but the marquee, the controls, and the decals on the sides are all dead ringers for the old bright-yellow cabinet.

Enlarge / Intel GPUs, ultra-wide monitors, and a vague sense that it's time for some gamers to refresh: These are some of the factors that have one report showing industry growth for PC gaming. (credit: Peerapon Boonyakiat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

PC gamers may be concerned about losing their jobs in 2023, but not so much that they can ignore a glut of new GPU and ultra-widescreen monitor options.

That's the elevator-pitch version of Jon Peddie Research's report on PC gaming hardware sales and costs . At a high level, it suggests that while mid-range gaming will see only gradual growth from 2023 through 2025, both entry-level and high-end hardware should see notable upticks through 2025. The market should recover more than $5 billion overall from its 2022 drop-off, with the high end taking $3.92 billion and entry level $2.29 billion.

PC gaming market figures from JPR.

Reading exactly which bits of PC hardware fit into which segment, and getting more detail on how JPR put these numbers together, costs even more than a 40-series Nvidia card, at $27,500 per year for access. So we're left to wonder which cards, monitors, chips, and other gear fit into entry-, mid-level, and high-end. But JPR does suggest a few factors moving the numbers around:

Enlarge / Frostpunk , an alternate history survival city building simulation game. (credit: GOG.com)

Several staff members are big fans of the GOG games marketplace, primarily for two reasons: the games are DRM-free, and there are many classic DOS games from the '80s and '90s.

GOG has been running its annual Spring Sale for a few days now. This time around, we worked with GOG to curate a list of Ars Technica picks. These are discounted games chosen by Ars staffers Samuel Axon and Lee Hutchinson that we think Ars readers might enjoy—assuming you haven't played them already.

If you haven't, discounts during this sale range from 20 percent to as much as 75 or 80 percent. Since most of them are classics, they generally weren't too pricy to begin with.

Enlarge / Cross-platform voice chat has arrived on the PlayStation 5. (credit: Samuel Axon)

This week, Sony rolled out Discord voice chat support for PlayStation 5 consoles, marking the first time a third-party OS-wide game voice call option has been available on Sony's consoles.

Previously, PlayStation 5 users could display what game they were currently playing on their Discord profiles, but they couldn't communicate with other players without using their phones, tablets, or computers.

The rollout follows a similar one on Microsoft's Xbox consoles last fall. Discord voice calls had long been available on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. The only major gaming platform outlier is Nintendo's Switch.