Google is hosting a special gaming announcement set to take place at this year's GDC 2019. It's finally time to see what the company has up its sleeves, and what they have planned for the future in regards to gaming. The stream is now live, and you can watch the above video, or check back here to read GBAtemp's live updates.

Google wishes to build a game platform for everyone, bringing together all forms of gamers. This has been named the Stadia.

The Google Stadia will run on as many platforms as possible, from the Chromecast, to Android, to PCs, where games will be streamed using Google's low latency technology.

When watching games on YouTube, you'll be able to click a single "play now" button to instantly try any supported game in your browser, without downloading, without updating, or without any interruptions.

The goal is to lower the barrier to entry, so that gaming is more accessible.



Google will also be making their own controller which will connect through wifi to the host game session in order to reduce input lag. There will be a share button and a Google Assistant feature.

Right now, Stadia supports 1080/60, but at launch, it will support 4K, and even 8K.

Unreal, Havok, and Unity engines will support the hardware, which will run off Linux. Each game will run off of Google's data centers.

ID Software has gotten their upcoming DOOM Eternal working on the Google Stadia, and will be bringing it to the platform.

Google will also have its own first party development studio, Stadia Entertainment, which will create games for the platform.​

The developer AlexAltea (Alexandro Sanchez) has uploaded a video showcasing some very interesting developments made to his own PS4 emulator called "Orbital". The major feature being showcased, however, is the emulator being able to output graphics for the first time, which is made possible thanks to a reimplementation of the PS4 GPU graphics pipeline and a recompiler for AMD'S GCN bytecode.

In the aforementioned video Orbital is shown booting a PS4 5.XX kernel into safe mode and displaying a CE-343XX error, which can be taken as reminder of how it's still not meant for users at the moment as it's not able to emulate a working system just yet, let alone play any kind of games. However, the feat becomes quite impressive when taking into account that the error refers to a HDD failure, something the dev was expecting as the emulator was not booted with a valid HDD image, and also how the project has only been in development for a little more than a year.

If you need some background information on Orbital, it's an open-source PS4 low level emulator which is currently being tested with 4.55 and 5.00 decrypted kernels. The project is different from other console emulators as it's virtualization-based, something made possible by the custom x86 CPU found inside Sony's system and it consists of a fork of GRUB modified to boot PS4 targets (orbital-grub), a SeaBIOS fork for PS4 hardware (orbital-bios) and a fork of QEMU with Aeolia (APU) and Liverpool (Coprocessor\Southbridge) support (orbital-qemu).

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Super Real Mahjong PV has only been available on Nintendo Switch for a matter of days, but the game has already been pulled from the eShop after several scenes of nudity were spotted by players.

Super Real Mahjong is a series of arcade mahjong titles made by SETA Corporation, with many of its games being ported to the Sega Saturn (although some did make it to the Super Famicom, too). PV is a port of Super Real Mahjong P5, and it recently launched on the Japanese Switch eShop.

Nudity is featured throughout the series' arcade releases, so the Switch port has been heavily censored with beams of light being used to hide any offending material. These lights can be seen in various scenes contained with the game.various scenes contained with the game.

Unfortuantely, these beams weren't always 100% accurate in their placement, resulting in certain graphical details slipping through when they should have been fully covered. You can see an example here via Twitter user, QzakuSEGA (but be warned that the image featured may not be suitable for everyone, and is certainly NSFW).

The team behind the Switch release, Mighty Craft Co., has now issued an official statement on the matter, informing fans that the entire game is being corrected and will be once again sent to Nintendo for re-examination. Mighty Craft hopes to have the game back on the eShop next week.

Of course, the question remains: how did the game get by Nintendo's quality assurance in the first place? We'll leave...​

If you love Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and glorious pieces of gaming hardware as much as we do, you'll probably have a pretty hard time resisting this one. A Kickstarter crowdfunding project has recently launched offering backers a custom Switch Pro Controller featuring any character design they like from the game, and it's proving to be mighty popular.

Initially, the project had a goal of $7,500 - controllers will be made for every character regardless of whether or not someone chooses them, all to be included in a special artbook release - but this target was smashed in just four and a half hours. At the time of writing, total funds are nearing $25,000 with 27 days still left to go.

So how exactly does it work? Well, as well as cheaper options which will give you a discount on the finished book and put your name in the credits, the main backing option (set at $85) lets you pick up a customised Pro Controller featuring whichever character you like. You can see some more mock-ups below.



The crowdfunding page notes that the base controllers are not official Nintendo Pro Controllers - although you can upgrade to one of those at extra cost. The controllers used look and function almost the same, although amiibo functionality is not supported.

You can learn more about this and get your own controller via the Kickstarter link here.

Do you like the look of these? Will you be picking up your own? Let us...​

Reisyukaku and EliseZeroTwo's Switch custom firmware just received an update, bringing the version counter up to 2.1! The project had already added 7.0.x compatibility in an earlier unstable build, however this is the first stable release to include it. Unlike the early build, sleep mode has also been fixed and now works fine. Other changes and improvements include JIT patches and support for exosphere/lp0fw.

The full official changelog is as follows:
7.0.x support
JIT patches
support for exo/lp0fw
Stability™
If you are running the older unstable version, it's highly recommended you update to this newer stable release as soon as possible. As usual, a download link is available in the source down below.
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Knock knock.. who's there?​

Happy St. Patrick Day from Team-Xecuter, enjoy!
We know everyone has been eagerly anticipating support for firmware 7.x, some even said it would never come.. but the wait is now over!

This new 2.6 BETA of SX OS adds full support for Nintendo Switch firmware 7.x, including ALL functionality you expect when using our product. We've been pioneering our own unique and proprietary solution for defeating any future firmware protection and we're quite happy with the results so far.

This release is marked as BETA because we changed things drastically under the hood to streamline future firmware updates and some things may inadvertently behave differently.

That does not mean it hasn't been vetted at all, so give it a shot today!

Of course, we haven't been sitting idly behind the scenes either. A lot of our development resources and attention has been dedicated to bringing SX OS to those "unhackable" switches. We are working hard to bring the SX OS experience to all of you who are stuck with an "unhackable" switch. Stay tuned for more news!
That's it for today.

Enjoy this new BETA of SX OS. And don't forget to send us your feedback!

—< Team-Xecuter - Rocking the Switch in 2019 and beyond! >—

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