Consoles Hub

When talking about what we considered to be the multiplayer mode in Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt CEO revealed during an investor call that it is "a separate dedicated production" that is considered to be "a standalone product" although its price/free availability for those who buy the game remains uncertain.

The latest market research reports on gaming worldwide indicate that this space has grown to about US$159 billion in 2020. Furthermore, this value is thought to grow to US$256.97 billion over the next 5 years. This may be influenced by factors that include cloud gaming, the rise of e-sports and the increased importance of in-place entertainments.

Multiple PlayStation 5 teardowns by Les Numériques have revealed that Sony may have fitted up to three different fans into its new console, with differing results in regard to noise. Some gamers will end up stuck with the “noisier” fan, and it is even possible that PS5 review units were equipped with the quietest fan out of the three.

LibRetro, the developers behind the popular Retro Arch emulator, have added a PS2 core based on the PCSX2 emulator. This core was recently added to the UWP version of Retro Arch, which can be loaded onto the Xbox Series S. While performance isn't perfect, many titles run smoothly with minimal problems.

Although there have been plenty of Cyberpunk 2077-related separate leaks/rumors and official news so far, the time has come for a roundup of what we know about this title's release, its download size, settings, the possible endings, and so on. Fortunately, the release date remains December 10.

CD Projekt Red has just held its third-quarter earnings call for 2020, during which its president and joint CEO Adam Kiciński fielded various questions, many of which were about the upcoming title Cyberpunk 2077. One of them may also have been on the minds of those who still own "non-Pro" PlayStation 4 or Xbox consoles.

Estimated figures for the launch day sales for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles have revealed that although Sony’s device has greatly outsold its rival, there has still been plenty of demand for the Microsoft machines. In terms of weekly console sales, the Nintendo Switch has been happily snapping at the heels of the PS5 and XSX/S.

The ESM 9110 is currently on sale for $33 USD compared to $40 or $50 USD for an authentic Xbox One controller. The unlicensed PC and Switch gamepad comes real close to the real deal and it even integrates LED-lit buttons for extra visual flair.

A recent Sony patent for a virtual reality headset with haptic feedback indicates strongly that the company is working on a successor to the PSVR, despite saying that it had no plans to do so. The patent illustrations indicate that the purported PSVR2 will be far lighter and thinner than the original. But, with no official announcement from Sony, it's up in the air as to when (or if) the PSVR2 will arrive.

A reseller group has been detailing how its members managed to get hold of almost 3,500 PlayStation 5 consoles purely for the purpose of selling them at a much higher price than RRP. As the PS5 is now reportedly sold out worldwide, country-specific sites for eBay have become littered with thousands of listings for Sony’s new console.

The Last of Us Part II cleared up at the Golden Joystick Awards 2020 with five awards, six if you include developer Naughty Dog’s win for Studio of the Year. There were no prizes for big names like Ghost of Tsushima and Final Fantasy VII Remake though. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 scooped the Best Gaming Hardware title.

The Vizio-Gamestop partnership might be more beneficial to the Microsoft XBox series than for the Sony PS5 at least in the short term. The TV maker is pushing hard to make it the brand of choice for console gamers.

Retro gamers have managed to get the popular emulator frontend Retro Arch installed on the Xbox Series S and Series X consoles. Not surprisingly, performance is excellent, but considering the frontend's limitations of previous consoles, the retro gaming capabilities of Microsoft's new gaming machines are impressive.

Playing as a nomad, a game tester managed to play Cyberpunk 2077 for over 175 hours without reaching the end credits. However, he did this on the hardest difficulty setting by playing more stealthy than usual while looting everything and using every single feature this upcoming game has to offer.

Although it missed the October 27 global launch date, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands arrived less than a day ago, as rescheduled. This major update for Blizzard's iconic product includes new items and adventures, as well as technological advancements such as DirectX ray-traced shadows, ambient occlusion, and improved multi-threaded performance.

A thorough PlayStation 5 teardown has revealed a particular concern with one of the GDDR6 memory modules. Temperatures during testing reached an uncomfortable 93.3 °C (199.94 °F) on the bottom memory module of the PS5 console. This has the potential to cause system crashes, especially in countries with hot summers and high temperatures.

We already knew that Sony would be enabling M.2 SSD expansion on the PS5 via a future software update, but that is also the case for variable refresh rate (VRR) support. Sony is yet to confirm when either functionality will arrive, though.

Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay footage has been leaked online and it looks spectacular, especially as the footage was taken from PlayStation 4 gameplay. Although many gamers are expecting CD Projekt to release the game as scheduled on December 10, there is a persistent rumor that Cyberpunk 2077 will be delayed yet again.

According to the final system requirements for the PC version of the game, Cyberpunk 2077 will only launch with ray tracing support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX video cards. Although the AMD Radeon RX 6000 lineup also comes with this capability, it looks like Cyberpunk 2077 will add support for it in a future update.

The 4:2:2 chroma subsampling further limits the color space and some fine details can appear blurred in HDR games running at 4K@120 Hz. It's not clear if this is a hardware or software issue. Xbox Series X is not using the full 48 Gbps HDMI 2.1 bandwidth either, as it is limited to 40 Gbps, but the additional 8 Gbps allows it to correctly display 4:4:4 chroma definition.

Although the absence of a physical release resulted in many canceled pre-orders for GameStop customers, Nintendo Switch users will be able to get Doom Eternal as a digital-exclusive release. Sadly, there is only the official confirmation of this launch, but no accurate date to talk about yet.

Problems involving the PlayStation 5 are starting to appear en masse online, with system errors, hardware-related coil whine, scalping activities, and delivery issues among the most common complaints. However, at least an apparent fix for the PS5’s “queued for download” bug has now been issued.

The PlayStation 4 smash-hit adventure game The Last of Us Part II has amassed 10 nominations for The Game Awards 2020, including in the Game of the Year category. Indie hit Hades managed to grab eight nominations, while the critically acclaimed Ghost of Tsushima received seven nominations. Winners will be announced on December 10.

Estimated sales figures for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles in Japan have revealed that Sony’s device is outstripping sales of Microsoft’s hardware by over 5 to 1, but overall sales are down on the previous generation. November 19 was PS5 launch day for the rest of the world, as the now current-gen console lands in 65 countries around the globe.

There will be no successor to the PlayStation 5, according to some analysts from Citi Securities Japan. The reason is cited to be the long wait between generations and rising costs associated with manufacturing consoles. The analysts speculate that cloud gaming will eventually replace hardware-based consoles.

Amazon will have more stock of the PlayStation 5 and Digital Edition consoles in multiple countries come launch day. The company has a limited inventory of both consoles, but it should offer respite for some people who missed out on the pre-ordering Sony's next-generation console.

Bud Light, the most popular brand of beer in the United States, is releasing a one-of-a-kind gaming console. The BL6 packs six games and an HD projector into a six-pack carrying tray. The console includes two wireless controllers and also has holsters for cans that can keep beverages cold.

As more and more Cyberpunk 2077 product images show up, it becomes certain that the release date of December 10 will not be pushed forward once again. However, a set of recent shots also revealed that the PlayStation 4 version of the game will come on two discs. Remote Play is also in the features list.

Turtle Beach asserts that its Stealth 600 and 700 headsets have been top sellers in their markets for a few years running now. New data from the research group NPD indicates that this trend has been upheld by their latest generation, released in September 2020. Their Xbox-compatible variants were the first- and second-best selling units for the following month.

In addition to the updated Dagor Engine, which has reached version 6.0, War Thunder 2.1 "New Power" comes with the first battleships, vertical take-off aircraft, AI-controlled aircraft carriers, and more. The game is ready to run on 4K and 60 fps with improved graphics on the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

The PlayStation 5 hype continues as the UK boxed game chart shows gamers preparing for the console’s second launch date. Almost 19% of sales for the week were for titles on the PS5, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Sony’s console will be launched to the rest of the world on Thursday, November 19.

The PlayStation 5 is one of the world’s hottest products at the moment, which means many gamers will have been struggling to make a purchase due to the undesirable actions of scalpers and bots. However, a simple Chrome extension called OctoShop has recently been updated to help in the quest for securing a brand-new PS5 console.

Although no main storyline achievements were included in this recent leak, those that surfaced online via the GOG Galaxy app provide quite a few hints about the kind of side quests that will be included in Projekt RED's upcoming title. By the looks of it, Cyberpunk 2077 will have a total of 45 achievements.

GamersNexus recently confirmed that NVIDIA is working on a platform-agnostic alternative to AMD's Smart Access Cache technology. According to NVIDIA, their Resizable BAR solution delivers a similar performance uplift as Smart Access Cache (up to 10 percent, depending on the title).

The lack of a native 1440p mode on the PlayStation 5 has created issues for owners of 1440p displays. MSI announced an innovative "fix" on some of its monitors, allowing certain 1440p monitors to accept the PlayStation 5's 4K signal and downsample.

Given that consumers may be gearing up for their 2020 holiday shopping, Mozilla has expanded its Privacy Not Included initiative by ranking various popular devices and/or gift ideas by how "creepy" they are. It is based on the organization's research into how they or their OEMs handle and respect user personal data, and has thrown up what may be unpleasant surprises in some cases.

The PlayStation 5 has now joined the Xbox Series X in being officially launched, and the two current-gen consoles have united with a superfast Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 1 TB SSD in a game load time comparison against a lowly PC hard drive. The real celebration here involves saying farewell to last-generation load times.

Scalpers are already making bank on the PS5 launch with successful listings ending at around $1000 USD or two times the retail price of the actual console. The system will likely remain out of reach for most users throughout the rest of the year.

Numerous videos of the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S in various states of malfunction have started appearing online, with clips of the next-gen console blowing out plumes of smoke being the most widely reported. While many of the videos are likely fake, some of them do appear to be genuine, especially when showing signal issues and disc-reading problems.

PlayStation 5 launch dates for nations in South America and Southeast Asia have started appearing on the official country-specific websites. Key markets such as Brazil and Singapore can still expect a PS5 launch on November 19, and there are a few countries that will have to wait until December, but there is a 2021 launch for Indonesia.

The PlayStation 5 may be a huge console, but it could have been even larger, had its design had his way. There may be some Easter eggs hidden within the next-generation console too, and not just the pattern of the DualSense controller that has already been discovered.

Although it's not available yet and Sony had previously stated that the PlayStation 5 will not come with support for it, now the tide has changed. The Japanese tech giant has just confirmed that, if there's enough demand, the PlayStation 5 will get support for native 1440p gaming via a future software update.

The decade-old Call of Duty: Black Ops has just got modded to run in 4K with ray tracing effects and the result is quite impressive. To record the video posted on YouTube, the game was running on a rig consisting of the following: Intel Core i7-9700K, 32 GB of memory, and a single NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super video card.

With a suggested price of just 30 Euros, the new Sharkoon RUSH ER30 USB gaming headset comes with a rich and attractive set of features and technical specs that includes RGB illumination, 50 mm drivers, a generous cable with gold-plated connectors that measures no less than 2,2 meters, as well as two sets of ear pads.

The official PlayStation blog has recently published its “Ultimate FAQ” aimed at future owners of the PlayStation 5. Some interesting tidbits include the absolute confirmation of an RDNA 2-based GPU, the inclusion of a base in the PS5 box, hardware-based ray-tracing capability, and the requirement for a day one system software update download.

PlayStation 5 critical reviews have been rolling in and have been full of praise for Sony’s console, although one particular complaint has surfaced numerous times. But a video clip of the DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers and haptic feedback in action has highlighted why the PS5 controller is the true star of the next-gen show.

At a whopping 200 W when gaming, the PS5 demands as much power as some of the fastest gaming laptops you can buy at the moment. The Asus Strix Scar 15 with the GeForce RTX 2070 Super, for example, consumes 201 W when gaming.

Square Enix has published its earnings report for the last 6 months (ending on September 30, 2020). It claims to have made 172.7 billion yen (~US$1.7 billion), or 46% more in sales year-on-year (YoY), for this period. This was attributed to strong performance in areas of its business such as its games (mobile titles including) and merchandising arms.

The upcoming action game Spider-Man: Miles Morales offers future PlayStation 5 owners the choice to play at either 30 fps and enjoy the ray-tracing effects throughout the title or at 60 fps with reduced graphics output. Various PS5 gameplay comparison videos have been helping gamers resolve this fps-related quandary.