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Modern video games are nothing short of amazing. My son and I were playing through the one of the latest Zeldas, which involve a mix of combat and puzzle-solving that’s pretty much the hallmark of the franchise. But the most recent open-world Zelda is simply massive. Made by around 1,000 people at a development expense of $150,000,000, it takes probably 60-80 hours to play through if you’re not rushing, and more if you’re taking it easy. It has layers of game mechanics, and worlds in the sky, on land, and underground. It’s big in every way.

Contrast the games of my youth, which were a lot smaller. Written by a pair of people or maybe a handful, with playtimes in the single-digit hours, and of course fitting in the limited computing resources of the time. But the low-stakes nature of the early phases of the industry meant that software developers could take risks, and many of the games were consequently kinda idiosyncratic in this more innocent time.

I think there’s something to be said for small games. They don’t require a lifestyle commitment just to get through. They can still be fun, without taking all of your time. And honestly, when you’re done with a game quickly, you have more time for other stuff. Granted, some of this spirit lives on in the small indie games of today, but even so, game developers have the big studios’ products in the backs of their minds when they are working on their smaller oeuvres.

We were talking about preserving old games for posterity around Hackaday and on the podcast, and our conversations reminded me of a couple of educational games that, despite their rudimentary graphics, are still pretty good today. Both were electronics related, and both are still playable today thanks to efforts on emulation and software preservation. To get a feel for the 1980’s, give Rocky’s Boots a try. (I like the TRS-80 Color Computer version the best, but that may just be nostalgia.) Most of you grownups out there will get through it in an hour or so.

And if you want a challenge, try Rocky’s harder sequel: Robot Odyssey. If you already have a background in digital circuits, you’ll find it doable. Younger me hit a wall about two-thirds of the way through.

Both of these games stick with me because they taught me something, but also because they were simply quirky in a way that a game can only be when it’s written by a small team of folks who are just having fun programming it. If you pitched “a puzzle game about a raccoon who builds logic circuits to activate robot boots”, the boardroom would look at you like you’re out of your mind. But it’s just exactly the quirkiness and individuality of some of these early games that I cherish the most.

If you find yourself knee-deep in an endless modern game, take a side-quest off into a more naive time, and you’ll appreciate why people are putting efforts into archiving them.

Viewers who caught the January 27, 1983 episode of BBC’s Tomorrow’s World saw presenter Peter Macann lay out real hardware that tried to solve an old complaint. Television sets of the day sat deep and heavy because their cathode ray tubes needed space for an electron gun to fire straight at the screen. Macann began with a plain observation: a set flat enough to hang on the wall like a picture would free up room and change how living spaces worked. The demonstration that followed showed both how close engineers had come and how many practical hurdles still stood in the way.

Macann begins with a small Sony pocket TV. It’s the same cathode ray tube idea everyone knows, but the engineers placed the electron gun to the side of the case, essentially sideways. The electron beam is then bent downward onto a small phosphor surface by charged plates. That clever method eliminates the majority of the depth that ordinarily extends from the back of the set. It still runs for about three hours on penlight batteries and receives BBC and the newer Channel 4 signals directly in the studio. The image quality is a little hazy, as if it were taken in a studio, but it appears to be something you could easily put into your pocket and take with you.

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The segment then looks at an entirely new approach, this time with liquid crystals. This material requires significantly less electricity because it does not generate its own light. Instead, it twists under electric current to control how much light passes through or bounces back. Macann is holding up a modest handheld game with a screen comprised of small liquid-crystal shapes carved out to resemble motorcycles. By turning those shapes on and off in sequence, you can create the illusion of racing bikes without using a light tube or constant high voltage. The similar low-power approach is used in a portable oscilloscope, where the display consists of hundreds of small square cells that turn black or white when exposed to voltage. This implies that technicians may now bring the tool into the field using only battery power, which was previously impossible with classic tube-based scopes that required mains power and bulk.

Tomorrow’s World kept its most visually appealing example for last. A Japanese prototype packed a liquid-crystal screen into a casing the size of a wristwatch. The screen is simply sitting there, ready to display moving images, but the rest of the circuitry and power supply are in a separate pack connected by a wire. Sound travels through a set of headphones. Macann demonstrates the device and then explains its limitations in plain English. Since the crystals simply reflect the light surrounding them rather than creating their own, the image can appear faint or washed out in a regular room. The detail is obviously a little rougher than what you’d get from a traditional tube, but the fact that a moving image appears on something tied to someone’s wrist is a step ahead that goes beyond simple whiteboard sketching.

Macann concludes by pointing out that liquid-crystal panels have already achieved several of the characteristics that TV designers have sought for years, such as thinness and low power consumption. With some more effort on brightness and viewing angle, the existing playthings could become something you’d want to watch at home. Macann is cautious, refusing to declare that the future has arrived. The team is only demonstrating what was accomplished in early 1983 and leaving viewers to wonder how long it would take before things are good enough to utilize in real life.

ManageEngine’s Vimalraj Sampathkumar explores how R&D recruitment requires a long-term approach.

In the modern era, the majority of organisations within STEM depend on strong and robust research and development teams to ensure that new discoveries are being made, that processes and techniques are up to date and that current knowledge is not stagnating.

But this requires a consistent and skilled talent pipeline that nowadays is not so easy to maintain.

In May, a report from recruitment platform IrishJobs found that employers are hiring for highly specific, rather than broad roles, with a focus on AI and cybersecurity in particular. 

“Building a strong talent pipeline requires a long-term approach rather than simply hiring when demand arises,” explained Vimalraj Sampathkumar, the regional technical head for the UK and Ireland at Enterprise IT management company ManageEngine. 

“Irish organisations should partner with universities, offer internships and graduate programmes and provide structured learning and career development opportunities. 

“Equally important is creating an environment that encourages people to innovate, collaborate across teams and experiment with new technologies. When learning becomes part of the culture, organisations are better equipped to attract, develop, and retain highly skilled R&D professionals.”

Rise together

Despite best efforts, there is only so much you can achieve alone. Often the organisations with the most efficient teams are the ones in which there is clear collaboration and a committed effort to upskill as a unit. 

Sampathkumar finds that, as technology continues to advance rapidly, continuous learning becomes an essential element of the workspace. He advised Irish organisations to provide access to technical training, certifications, mentoring and opportunities to work on emerging technologies and also cited the benefits of knowledge sharing across teams.  

He said: “Investing in upskilling enables R&D teams to innovate faster, improve product quality, respond more effectively to changing customer needs and stay ahead of evolving security and technology trends. 

“It also helps improve employee engagement and retention. This can be a critical differentiator in what is still a very competitive Irish labour market where highly skilled tech talent has no shortage of options despite the emergence of AI.”

Tech and talent

Of the challenges R&D teams face nowadays, Sampathkumar noted the issue of balancing innovation with the need to deliver secure, reliable and scalable products in a landscape where compliance requirements are ever-evolving and deadlines tightening.  

“Simultaneously, customer expectations and technology within the European market continue to evolve rapidly, requiring teams to adapt quickly due to tightening regulatory demands, the EU AI Act, accelerating cloud and AI adoption and the evolving cybersecurity landscape,” he explained. 

“The opportunity lies in embracing technologies such as AI, automation, and advanced analytics, which enable engineers to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time solving complex problems that drive meaningful innovation.”

With the changing workplace environment in mind and as most companies continue the march forward, Sampathkumar made note of the tools and recent advancements that can aid R&D professionals in their work.

He explained that AI-assisted development tools, cloud-native platforms, automation and DevSecOps practices have transformed how engineering teams build and deliver software, while also improving productivity and maintaining quality and security throughout the development life cycle. 

“One area I believe remains underutilised is customer feedback analytics. Organisations collect significant amounts of customer data, but many don’t fully leverage those insights to influence product decisions. Combining customer feedback with AI-driven analytics can lead to more informed and impactful innovation.”

It isn’t all about trendy tech and gadgets, however. For Sampathkumar, the space is driven largely by its people.

“Irish organisations that invest in developing talent, encourage collaboration between customer-facing and engineering teams and maintain a strong focus on solving real customer problems will be best positioned for long-term success. 

“Ultimately, continuous learning and adaptability will remain the defining characteristics of successful R&D organisations.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Apple has been accused of “aiding and abetting” the use of “nudify” AI apps on the iPhone, with San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu demanding they be removed from the App Store in a new cease-and-desist letter sent to the company.

A Wired report notes that both Apple and Google have been told to prevent the sale of AI apps that can be used to create deepfake images. They must also “sever” business relationships with all of the developers responsible for the apps.

So-called “nudify” apps have been around for some time. They allow users to create non-consensual intimate images of others, often minors, without the knowledge of the subject.

Such apps can be used to remove the clothes of subjects. Some allow the subjects to then be placed into specific scenarios of the user’s choosing.

Illegal, harmful, and completely unacceptable

In a statement provided to Wired, Chiu pointed out that generating deepfake imagery is “illegal, harmful, and completely unacceptable.” Chiu also noted that Apple and Google have likely made considerable sums from the sale of, or subscriptions relating to, such “nudify” apps.

Chiu also made it clear that Apple and Google have a responsibility to ensure that their platforms aren’t being used to create such content. His legal letters also pointed out to both companies that California law prohibits supporting services that can create deepfakes.

Google says that it investigates apps that are believed to be used to create deepfake content. It added that it “takes swift action” when required.

Apple issued a statement to AppleInsider on Friday evening after publication.

“The App Store was designed to be a safe and trusted place for users, and we have always strictly prohibited apps designed to generate, distribute, or consume pornography. ‘Nudification’ apps are against our App Review Guidelines and we have proactively rejected many of these apps and removed many others, including when users have flagged them via our reporting tools. We have removed three of the apps in question and are in the process of terminating their developer accounts from our program. We are in contact with four others that need to address policy violations or risk being removed as well.”

Apple previously removed a number of similar generative AI apps from the App Store. The company previously told AppleInsider that nudification apps aren’t allowed in the App Store, with no exceptions.

App Store reviewers appear to give developers some benefit of the doubt. Developers are first notified if their apps are found to be used to create “nudify” images.

Violations that aren’t addressed generally result in the offending app being removed from the App Store. It’s not clear if any of the apps in question have gone through this process, or where they are in it.

Apple also says that it actively blocks App Store search terms for such apps.

As for Chiu, he intends to continue to pursue both companies. For now, he wants Apple and Google to remove the offending apps and strengthen the tools that they use to screen new apps before they are made available for download.

Update July 18, 10:03 AM: Updated with Apple’s statement on the matter.

Facepalm: GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen has sparked an unlikely controversy among gamers and long-time industry observers after stating that sales of physical video game discs are “totally irrelevant” to his company. While some are blaming Cohen for giving up on physical games, others argue that he is simply stating the obvious: these days, most AAA games are only available as digital downloads.

During an interview with Bloomberg News, Cohen was asked whether he worries about his company’s future in an era when publishers are increasingly pivoting to digital-only releases. Cohen replied that the decline of physical games would not hurt GameStop because “software makes up less than 12%” of the company’s overall business.

Explaining GameStop’s current business model, Cohen noted that trading cards and collectibles account for more than half of the company’s revenue, with Pokémon trading cards being the single most popular product on its store shelves. Cohen also pointed out that the $143 million the company earned in Q1 2026 represented “the highest operating earnings in the company’s history.”

According to GameStop’s latest financial report, collectibles and trading cards accounted for around 41% of the company’s revenue during the quarter, while software sales, once the company’s core business, accounted for only about 12%. The figures suggest that GameStop has evolved from the country’s leading video game retailer into a company whose business is now primarily driven by collectibles.

Still, Cohen’s remarks caught some gamers off guard, with critics arguing that stores like GameStop should be fighting to slow the decline of physical games, since they have long been central to the company’s business model. Other, more pragmatic gamers believe the CEO was simply stating the obvious, as sales of physical video games have long been surpassed by digital downloads.

Sales of physical copies of games have been declining for several years, with most AAA publishers no longer releasing physical editions of their latest titles. Recent high-profile games that launched as digital-only releases include Cairn, Marathon, Esoteric Ebb, and The Alters: Last Variable.

Rockstar Games also recently announced that the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will be a digital-only release, with the so-called physical edition containing nothing more than a code to download the game. However, following severe backlash from fans, the company hinted that it could release a true physical version at a later date.

Sony also joined the digital-only trend recently, announcing that it will no longer release physical copies of new PlayStation titles starting in January 2028. Despite protests, the decision is unlikely to be reversed, with the EU clarifying this week that it cannot prevent Sony from ending physical PlayStation game releases.

Months after analysts warned that AI-driven demand for memory chips would ripple through consumer electronics, India is providing the strongest evidence yet that the disruption has arrived, with rising handset prices reshaping the smartphone market.

The memory chips in question — RAM and storage components — are the same ones tech giants need by the truckload to build AI data centers. Manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have been shifting production capacity toward high-bandwidth memory, the specialized chips used in AI accelerators, because they’re much more profitable per wafer than the standard memory used in phones and laptops — leaving less capacity, and driving up costs, for everyday consumer electronics.

India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market by shipments after China, saw smartphone shipments fall 10% year-over-year in the April-June quarter, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research, marking the steepest June-quarter decline in six years as higher memory costs pushed up handset prices.

The impact has been more pronounced in India than in China, where smartphone shipments fell just 2% in Q2, according to Counterpoint. India has been hit harder because about 60% of its smartphone market is concentrated in the sub-₹20,000 (under $210) segment, where higher memory costs have had the biggest impact on prices, Tarun Pathak, the firm’s vice president of research, told TechCrunch.

India has been a prominent market for global smartphone brands for several years. The South Asian nation, home to more than 1.4 billion people and over 700 million smartphone users, has become a bellwether for consumer demand in price-sensitive markets, making shifts in buying patterns closely watched by device makers, chip suppliers, and investors tracking the broader health of the AI supply chain.

Pathak told TechCrunch that consumers are unlikely to abandon smartphones altogether. However, many of them are expected to delay upgrades, stretching replacement cycles to around four years from about 3.5 years previously, while premium brands such as Apple and Samsung remain better insulated from the slowdown.

The uneven impact is already reshaping competition among smartphone makers. Samsung was the only major smartphone brand to post shipment growth in India in Q2, with volumes rising 2% year-over-year, according to Counterpoint. Apple, by contrast, saw shipments fall 3% — though that dip largely reflected supply constraints and inventory shortages limiting how many iPhones Apple could deliver.

Consumers buying higher-end smartphones have proved less sensitive to price increases, with financing making expensive devices more affordable, Prachir Singh, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, told TechCrunch.

The pain has been most acute at the lower end of the market. Shipments in the sub-₹15,000 (under $150) segment fell 45% from a year earlier, Counterpoint said. Because Chinese brands are heavily exposed to entry- and mid-tier smartphones, their combined market share fell to its lowest level for a second calendar quarter since 2020.

The tougher economics are also prompting strategic shifts. This week, Chinese smartphone brand OnePlus said it would stop launching new products in Europe and North America, while maintaining its India business, following what it described as a careful assessment. Counterpoint data shared with TechCrunch showed China accounted for 74% of OnePlus’ global smartphone shipments to distributors and retailers in Q1, up from 59% a year earlier, while India’s share fell to 19% from 30%.

In other words, OnePlus is retreating to markets where it can still turn a profit and ceding ground elsewhere — a pattern likely to repeat across other budget-focused brands as margins tighten.

Indeed, Pathak told TechCrunch that running several sub-brands only makes sense if each one sells enough volume to cover shared costs, and that math stops working once margins get this thin. “Sub-brands normally have overlaps and shared resources, and you need a minimum base to justify the cut-throat margins. Profitability is the key to deciding market operations,” he said.

Consumers feel the squeeze

That pressure on brands is trickling straight down to the people buying their phones. Kiranjeet Kaur, associate research director for mobile phones research at IDC, said the Indian smartphone market is shifting from volume-led growth to value growth — meaning fewer phones are being sold overall, but each one generates more revenue — as higher component costs make lower-priced smartphones increasingly uneconomical.

The higher component costs are already filtering through to consumers. Smartphone prices in India have risen by between 4% and 68%, depending on the model, Pathak said, and as prices rise, consumers are either moving to higher-priced devices, delaying upgrades, or turning to the secondhand market.

Financing has meanwhile become “central to affordability,” Kaur told TechCrunch. She added that brands and retailers were also building inventory ahead of the festive season to lock in lower costs before further increases in component prices.

IDC also expects India’s smartphone shipments to decline by double digits in Q2, a steeper fall than the 4.1% decline in the first quarter and the 5.3% drop in the previous quarter, Kaur said. However, she noted the firm’s estimates were not yet finalized.

Kaur told TechCrunch that memory shortages and elevated smartphone prices were likely to persist until at least the end of 2027, although the pace of price increases should moderate as consumers gradually adjust to higher prices becoming the new normal.

“For Indian consumers, it is a double whammy as the weaker currency makes imports costlier, which has added to margin pressures for the market players, and they are passing on the cost to the consumer,” Kaur said.

Alibaba’s chip design unit T-Head announced at the World AI Conference in Shanghai on Saturday that it is open-sourcing SAIL, the full software stack for its Zhenwu series of AI chips. The move is designed to lower migration barriers for developers currently locked into Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem. T-Head said programmers can adapt SAIL to mainstream AI frameworks in under seven days.

The vast majority of AI developers globally write software using CUDA, Nvidia’s proprietary toolkit for programming GPUs. That dependency effectively locks them into buying Nvidia hardware, a dynamic that has helped the company reach a $3.4 trillion market cap. Xi Jinping used the same conference on Friday to argue that no single country should monopolise AI, and T-Head’s open-sourcing of SAIL is the infrastructure-level expression of the same argument: if China wants AI independence, it needs to break the CUDA lock-in at the software layer, not just build alternative chips.

T-Head is not alone. Huawei open-sourced CANN, the software platform for its Ascend AI processors, in 2025. Moore Threads has pursued a similar strategy with its own GPU stack. All three are competing for the same developer migration: getting AI engineers to write code that runs on Chinese hardware without losing access to frameworks like PyTorch. The challenge is less technical than habitual. CUDA has a 17-year head start and the largest library ecosystem in the industry.

For Alibaba, the timing is loaded. Anthropic accused Alibaba’s Qwen lab of running the largest AI distillation campaign ever against a US company last month, and the Pentagon added Alibaba to its Chinese military companies blacklist in June. Open-sourcing SAIL positions the company as a contributor to open AI infrastructure while it fights those designations in court. The 560,000 Zhenwu chips Alibaba has already shipped to over 400 customers now have a publicly available software layer, which makes the ecosystem stickier and harder for any single government to shut down.

Apple has continued to put the prices up for its online services, with iCloud+ rising in cost in a number of territories.

Over the course of a few days, Apple has been increasing the prices of its various online services. Not to be left behind, iCloud+ has now upped its prices to join the rest of the roster.

The change, revealed by Apple’s iCloud+ pricing support page, doesn’t outright say what countries are affected by the pricing. However, comparisons with previous pricing, including via the Wayback Machine, shows it affects eight countries in total.

The affected countries, seeing higher iCloud pricing, include:

• Egypt
• Indonesia
• Japan
• New Zealand
• Nigeria
• Philippines
• Turkiye
• Vietnam

The price increases vary between territories, but fall in the range of 17% to 30%. For example, the 50GB plan was 150 yen per month but is now 180 yen, up 20%.

Pricing in other markets, including the United States and United Kingdom, remains unchanged. The perks of iCloud+ also hasn’t changed, including Hide My Email, iCloud Private Relay, a custom email domain, and HomeKit Secure Video support.

While Apple hasn’t explained why the prices have changed, it is most likely the company periodically accounting for changes in currency conversion.

Other price upgrades this week include Apple One, Apple Music, and AppleCare+.