The WH-1000XM6 is real, and it’s coming soon
The noise-cancelling headphone space is about to get another contender. Sony, makers of some of our favourite cans in the WH-1000XM5, wants to permeate your ears some more. After three years of punting the flagship headset, the company has finally confirmed the existence of the WH-1000XM6, set to release on Thursday, 15 May at 18h00.
Sony’s leaving all the little details like the specs and price to your imagination for the time being. You’ll have to tune into the official unveiling over on Sony’s YouTube channel at the time we mentioned to catch it alongside everyone else. If that’s a little too much work for a pair of headphones you can’t fit into your budget, no matter.
Several leaks have preceded the elusive XM6, touting improved Bluetooth, sound quality, and the return of a folding design being the highlights of the show. That’s all in conjunction with a nasty price hike that could see the device starting at $470. That’s $70 more than the XM5’s already lofty starting price.
How that’ll look by the time it reaches SA’s shores, we’d rather not imagine. If you’re desperate for a silver lining, take solace in the fact that Sony’s still-worthy XM5 will soon be cheaper than its newfound brethren. Hopefully.
Nintendo clamps down on piracy, reserves the right to brick your console
Nintendo’s never been one to let the illegal downloading and playing of pirated games slide. Where before it couldn’t do much more than send you a sternly worded email, a modded Nintendo Switch was out of the company’s reach. No longer, it seems. Judging by Nintendo’s latest amendments to its user agreement, the console maker reserves the right to brick your Switch if it even gets a whiff of piracy.
Like many, we brushed off the email sent to Nintendo users last week as just another bit of legal mumbo jumbo – until GameFile’s Stephen Totilo did the world a favour and scanned the very small text and discovered the change, amongst others. So, don’t “bypass, modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or otherwise circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Nintendo Account Services.”
Doing so will render your very expensive console “permanently unusable”. To state the obvious, that would be… bad. Real bad. It’s not yet clear how Nintendo can detect which devices have been tampered with or are running pirated games, particularly if the device is kept off a network, but we’d rather not poke the dragon that is Nintendo’s legal team.
Sony’s PSSR 2 upscaler is mightily ambitious
If you thought you’d hear fewer AI buzzwords as the world becomes used to the technology’s presence, think again. It seems like only yesterday Sony announced the PlayStation 5 Pro, bringing with it something it calls “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution” (PSSR), an AI upscaler that’s meant to deliver higher resolutions and more frames. According to leaker and YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead, Sony is working on the next iteration.
The idea is to get those games still struggling with frame rate issues up to scratch, preferably at 4K, 120fps. While that is already technically possible with the help of PSSR as it exists now, PSSR 2 (or whatever it ends up being called) will focus on ‘fixing’ the games struggling with a sub-100 fps. For the more impressive games out there, Sony reportedly wants their games to go as high as 8K at 60fps.
The next-gen tech is still being trained in a lab, with no word on when Sony might debut PSSR 2, though it seems likely it’ll hold onto the tech until the next big console release at least.
Apple Pay arrives on the PS5 to further test your resilience
As if the temptation of yet another PlayStation sale wasn’t hard enough to resist, the addition of another method to pay in the form of Apple Pay onto your console isn’t about to make matters simpler. It does, however, offer an extra layer of security from fumbling kids looking to cause some mayhem and question all your life choices.
When checking out on the PlayStation Store, users will now be greeted by Apple Pay, where they’ll be shown a QR code they must first scan with their iPhone or iPad to complete the transaction separately by scanning their face or fingerprint. As noted by 9to5Mac, the process isn’t quite as simple as saving a credit card to the console, but the 2% cash-back Apple offers on purchases can’t be ignored.
The new payment feature is fortunately supported in South Africa, though it should be mentioned that those who still rely on the ageing PS4 to get their gaming kicks won’t be offered the same freedoms.
