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Three years after it began, crowdfunding for the highly-anticipated Shenmue 3 has finally closed. After the initial Kickstarter raised $6.3 million in 2015, Yu Suzuki (the mind behind Shenmue) opted to re-open the Kickstarter and accept payments via Paypal. This garnered an additional $850,000, bringing the crowdfunding total to about $7.17 million.

In Japan, Acer has introduced seven new monitors with frame rates of up to 240 Hertz and response times of up to 0.5 milliseconds.

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! are now the fastest selling Nintendo Switch titles, having sold over 3 million copies in their first week of release. While the titles have outsold Switch champions like Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, they have a bit more ground to cover to join the success of other Pokémon titles.

The GeForce RTX 2070 will be in stock for $499 with more savings on PC components, budget laptops, monitors, and televisions.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is one of the most expensive phones of the year; however, it offers standout features for all of that money. The YouTuber JerryRigEverything's durability test demonstrated that potential and actual customers need to consider additional investments into protective accessories, however.

The Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 may have been egregiously named but it scratched an itch no other device on the market could, with its solid performance, humongous battery, and low price tag. Asus is set to build on the success of that device with a direct successor.

Renders of Samsung's upcoming Galaxy A8s have surfaced, showing a device with three rear cameras and a notch solution that we will likely also see on the Galaxy S10 next year.

Qualcomm's next-gen mobile SoC, the Snapdragon 8150 is billed to be unveiled on December 4. The system-on-chip is said to be built on a 7nm process and will feature Cortex-A76 cores.

Nokia has a launch event scheduled for December 5. While it remains unknown what devices will be unveiled on that day, it's almost certain that the Snapdragon 710-powered Nokia 8.1 will be one of them. Word on the grapevine also claims that the sub-premium phone will be the last Nokia smartphone to sport a notch.

The Mate 20 Pro is in contention for flagship of the year. The device was launched in Europe and China a while ago, but is only just about to make the trip over to the world's second-largest smartphone market, India.

Fallout 76 is getting hammered by critics and gamers alike. In its first week after release, the game has fallen close to the bottom of Metacritic's ratings. The PC version currently has a Metascore of 55, while the PS4 and Xbox One have Metascores of 49 and 48, respectively. All three versions have failed even harder with gamers; user scores across the three platforms sit at about 2.4-2.9.

Razer has opened its subscriber sale to all comers through this weekend. Deals include the original Razer Phone for $300 off ($400 total price) and the Razer Blade Pro 17 (7700HQ, 1060, FHD) for $500 off ($1800 total price).

Kodi 18 has been in development for two years, and the first release candidate (RC 1) is finally available. Although it is still technically a beta version, RC 1 will be reflective of the final release. There are several new features, including better Android TV support, a 64-bit version for Windows, and a new gaming section with support for emulators.

Whiskey Lake-U doesn't offer much in terms of performance enhancements over its immediate Kaby Lake-R predecessor based on our initial benchmarks with the Asus Zenbook UX433. It's largely forgettable if you already own a Kaby Lake-R laptop, but users with older systems will still see value if deciding to upgrade.

The Gameband, formerly known as the Atari Gameband, looked like a promising gaming-focused smartwatch during its successful Kickstarter campaign last year. Despite raising a total of $500,000 between Kickstarter backers and other investors, the Gameband has officially been killed. Worst of all, backers may never receive a refund

A report from Gizmodo UK has some bad news for those who were hoping for a price tag under US$2,000 for Samsung’s upcoming foldable smartphone. According to a verified source, the device, which may end up being known as the Galaxy Flex, will cost from £1,500 to £2,000 in the UK market. At current exchange rates, that’s ~US$1,922 to US$2,561.

Project Fi is offering some good sales for Black Friday on compatible LG, Moto, and Pixel smartphones. Buyers can nab a Pixel 3 for $599 with a $200 Fi service credit, an LG G7 ThinQ for $349, or a Moto G6 for $99 with a valid activation. There are a few other devices with discounts through the Project Fi shop, available now through November 27th.

Whatever happened to the Apple-branded Chromecast/TV Stick competitor? What indeed; however, some sources close to Apple allege that there was a team dedicated to such a product at one time. A cheaper version of Apple TV could have benefited some groups...however, it's apparently long gone now.

Blizzard should just officially acknowledge the fact that Diablo 4 is in the works in order to appease the enraged fans. Kotaku's sources claim that Diablo 4 has been in the works since late 2013 and the game changed direction in 2016. In its early stages, Diablo 4 looked like Dark Souls, but the vision changed to a more traditional isometric ARPG with dark art style.

Dell has lined up a wide array of devices as part of its Black Friday deals. Many of the selected laptops are being offered in limited quantities with savings ranging from an enticing 10% off right up to a whopping 50% off a Vostro 15 500 with 1 TB HDD (US$509.00). Dell is also offering discounts on desktops, monitors, servers, peripherals, and hardware upgrades.

The latest issue in the growing string of problems with the Windows 10 1809 update affects devices using certain versions of Intel's display drivers. The Windows 10 October update breaks audio playback through monitors or TVs connected via versions 24.20.100.6344 and 24.20.100.6345 of Intel's display driver.

A commit posted to Fuchsia's source code management hub last night showed that a Huawei engineer was able to boot the Fuchsia kernel (Zircon) on the Honor Play. This commit hints at many things, mainly that Fuchsia development is continuing strong and Google has partnered with Huawei to continue work on Fuchsia, perhaps to bring the OS to consumer smartphones.

It's that time of the year that sees significant discounts in PC hardware. We've chanced upon a few Intel and AMD CPUs that are being discounted heavily for Black Friday through Cyber Monday so this is probably a good time if you've been on the fence about upgrading your existing CPU. While most CPUs across budgets are seeing reduced prices, the following CPUs are seeing some of the highest discounts available.

The compute-oriented DGX-2 server launched in early 2018 is getting an upgrade consisting of more powerful Xeon CPUs and higher-clocked Tesla V100 GPUs. The Tesla V100 cards come with a total of 512 GB of HBM2 memory and are interconnected through special NVLinks, allowing them to act as a single GPU with a massive throughput of 2.1 PetaFLOPS.

The Japanese telecommunications firm NTT DoCoMo has announced the achievement of 27Gbps data transfer using a 5G transmitter in the course of a collaboration with Mitsubishi. This trial involved driving a car with a roof-mounted antenna past a test tower in order to monitor data speeds.

Microsoft has announced that only Secure Hash Algorithm 2 (SHA-2) code-signing will be used to update legacy versions of Windows (namely Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 SP1). Machines that only support SHA-1 will be considered too vulnerable, and will be prevented from updating by next April.

HTC has released the Vive Pro McLaren Limited Edition which is the result of a partnership between the Taiwanese company and legendary British Formula 1 racing team McLaren. In addition to a unique color scheme that matches the McLaren F1 racing car livery, the headset also comes with two McLaren F1 VR software experiences.

Steam's Autumn Sale is on now until November 27th at 10 AM PST. Thousands of titles are on sale, including many big games from this year and 2017. Valve is also clearing out stock of its Steam Link streaming box, which is currently on sale for $2.50. Check out the entire catalog of games on sale over at the Steam Store this week.

Apple is looking to enhance subsidies to Japanese carriers in order to boost sales of iPhone XR in the region, according to sources familiar with the matter. Apple is also expected to resume iPhone X production, partly to boost margins and partly due to the fact that Apple needs to buy the contracted number of OLED panels from Samsung SDI Co., given that the production of iPhone XS variants has been scaled down due to low market demand.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 has made an appearance in the Final Fantasy XV benchmarks. This is probably the first sighting of the card in the wild and according to this benchmark, the RTX 2060 seems to perform somewhere between the GTX 1060 6 GB and the GTX 1070 inline with expected generation-to-generation improvements.

The Pro and Gaming versions of Xiaomi Mi Notebooks are between 41 and 42% off on Gearbest for the peri-Black Friday period. These notebooks have up to 16GB of RAM and either i5 or i7 processors. The Gaming variant, which comes with a GTX 1060 GPU, may be a good option if Thunderbolt or G-Sync are not a priority.

Microsoft has acknowledged that there is a known issue with its latest Windows 10 update. Some users have reported that the seek bar in Media Player has become inoperable after downloading the new patches. The issue corresponds to KB4467708 (OS Build 17763.134) that applies to the now somewhat notorious Windows 10, version 1809 (October 2018 Update).

Apple’s stock price has suffered from further decline over recent days, with the current price reported by NASDAQ standing at US$176.78. Cautious investors are apparently biding their time to see what the Cupertino-based tech giant’s next move is going to be, and some analysts expect this to be a temporary downturn in the company’s fortunes.

Newegg has been subjected to a grilling on Reddit in recent days. One such thread reports that a Microsoft rep has stated that two Windows 10 OEM keys sold by the online retailer were pirated. Newegg has since promised to send out physical replacements for those who have bought keys that will not activate.

The LG G7 ThinQ is still currently on Android Oreo, with no upgrade in sight. However, reports of a new Pie-based beta available to users in South Korea may give new hope to owners worldwide of a stable version of this OS soon.

Remember Duplex, the software that could make appointments by itself at Google I/O 2018? Well, it is to be seen in the wild soon on Pixel phones. The AI-powered feature will initially only be functional in some US cities; however, it may become more widespread in the future.

Available with up to 6 GB of memory and 128 GB of internal storage space, the HiSilicon Kirin 710-driven Honor 10 Lite sports a 6.2-inch display, a 3,400 mAh battery with fast charging, as well as a dual camera setup on the back and a generous 24 MP selfie shooter. It comes with Android Pie-based firmware onboard and retails for up to US$275.

Asus has announced that it will be unveiling the ROG Phone in India on November 29. The ROG Phone was announced at Computex 2018 and boasted gamer-focused features such as a 3D vapor chamber design, overclocked Snapdragon 845 SoC, and a whole lot more.

The latest Command Center software by Alienware finally brings CPU, GPU, and memory overclocking capabilities to the "current-gen platforms with compatible components," so those using older Alienware hardware might not be able to fully enjoy these benefits. However, even XPS users can install this piece of code and use some of its features.

LG has launched its answer to the Google Home Hub. Dubbed LG XBOOM AI ThinQ WK9 (yes, you read that right), it focuses on its audio prowess to differentiate itself from the competition, tapping Meridian Audio to deliver high-end sound.

Introduced at the end of September in Thailand, the 6.26-inch Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro is now coming to India. Although the 6 GB RAM variant was supposed to come with 128 GB of internal storage, both models available in India seem to sport 64 GB (there is also microSD support, fortunately).

The manufacturer will be taking $50 to $300 off on a wide range of laptops and ZenFone smartphones throughout the rest of this month. Participating retailers like Newegg are even shaving off an additional $100 on certain deals.

Microsoft has been busy updating some of its global online stores and has been placing deep discounts on a number of its Xbox consoles in time for the Black Friday shopping event. Customers in the US could save between US$70 and US$100 depending on their choice of console, whilst potential buyers in Canada and Australia can also get their hands on a discounted Xbox One.

According to a recent rumor, one of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S10 variants will feature a ceramic back, akin to Xiaomi products such as the Mi Mix 2 and Mi Mix 2S smartphones. It has been speculated that it will be the 6.7-inch Galaxy S10 model with six cameras that will be the edition to be adorned with a classy ceramic back.

According to malware researcher Lukas Stefanko, Google Play users have installed a number of driving game apps that are actually malware. The 13 affected apps, which all come from the same developer, had been downloaded and installed over half a million times before Google pulled them from its store. Two of the apps had actually been trending, offering greater visibility to users.

Lei Jun, Xiaomi's CEO, announced at a press conference that 43.9% of the company's revenues in the third quarter of 2018 had come from international markets. These overseas earnings had increased by over 100% compared to last year. This may be attributed to Xiaomi's by-now solid standing in Europe as an electronics provider.

Configure the laptop exactly the way you want it, request a quote, and then name your discount. The promotion will be for this weekend only and it will apply to all Eurocom laptops including gaming, workstations, Enterprise-class laptops, and mobile servers.

The recent 'crypto crash' may have resulted in a large-scale dumping of slightly older cards onto sites like eBay. Consequently, this may drive down the prices others with the same GPUs (e.g. gamers) can ask for their listings. In addition, this is the season to grab cash for upgrades.

Open Beta 7, the latest in a series of in-testing stock ROMs available to owners of the OnePlus 6 to test out, contains an interesting new feature. It is OnePlus Roaming, a SIM-independent form of access to the internet that can be purchased directly on the 6 - and only the 6 for now.

Two men have been jailed in England for their parts in the hacking of TalkTalk in 2015, which cost the British telecoms company an estimated £77 million (~ US$98.5 million). TalkTalk has already been fined £400,000 (~ US$512,000) for having inadequate security procedures.