Gaming

Nintendo has briefed investors that it is already planning its next console, though it is focusing on 'value-added services' as well. The company also confirmed that it would continue to work on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, which has recently faced consumer criticism.

PNY had revealed that the next generation of its XLR8 Gaming RAM would be DDR5. Now, it has announced that these MAKO and MAKO RGB sticks will be on the market shortly. They will be joined by Performance DDR5, which will support the 4,800MHz speed mentioned earlier.

An HP Omen 17 variant running the 12th-generation Intel Core i7-12700H Alder Lake processor and laptop version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has been spotted online. It scores 90,114 and 127,392 on the Geekbench Vulkan and OpenCL benchmarks, respectively, and confirms that the latter will ship with 16GB of VRAM and 58 SMs.

With a release date set for November 11th, GTA: The Trilogy Definitive Edition is now ready to hit the Nintendo Switch as well. Rockstar confirmed this via six new screenshots from this ported edition of the upcoming title which promises to be one of the most popular releases of the year.

The Ryzen 9 5900HX APU and the GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPU bring almost every computer game smoothly onto the matte 4K screen. The latter scores points with very good color reproduction (Pantone-certified) and high brightness. This is complemented by good battery life.

Netflix has started to offer games as well as conventional content on Android. It is now also projected to do the same on iOS - however, there is an obstacle in the way of these alleged plans, and it is, of course, Apple's policy on mobile apps. On the other hand, this barrier may not be as immovable or implacable as it once was.

Bandai Namco Entertainment has published the official game specs and compatibility details for Elden Ring. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X owners and PC users with powerful rigs should get to enjoy the potential of up to 4K resolution or 60 FPS gaming. However, ray-tracing support has not made it to the Xbox Series S console.

Konami has released version 0.9.1 of eFootball 2022, the first patch for the much-maligned game. While version 0.9.1 introduces numerous fixes, it contains no new features. Konami expected to add features next week with version 1.0.0, but it has delayed the update until spring 2022.

For now, the i5-12600K is the value king, but, if you can wait for the i5-12400F releasing in two months, you could get roughly the same performance for sub-US$200.

AMD has increased its overall PC processor usage share in the October Steam hardware and software survey. Team Red has enjoyed constant gains against Intel throughout most of 2020. However, Alder Lake, and especially the Intel Core i5-12600K, could help Team Blue finally reverse that trend.

Asus refreshed its premium Android gaming smartphones of 2021 with the enhanced Snapdragon 888 Plus processor. Now, the resulting ROG Phone 5S series for the European market has been launched. It offers up to 18GB of RAM in a 6.78-inch display form factor with an innovative Matrix secondary display.

Scheduled to launch across multiple platforms on February 25, 2022, Elden Ring is now up for pre-order in five editions, including a numbered and limited edition of 6,000 units worldwide. Unsurprisingly, it looks like the Premium Collector's Edition sold out in a matter of minutes after showing up in the Bandai Namco Store.

Priced at roughly US$80, the Sharkoon SKILLER SGK50 S4 comes with three switch choices, namely Kailh red, brown, and blue. All these switches have an average life cycle of at least 70 million keystrokes. The list of available layouts includes DE, US, IT, ES, JP (only the red switches), CN, RU, and a few others.

The metaverse is the next big thing and Ubisoft intends to become one of the major players in the blockchain-based video game industry by integrating a pay-to-earn model.

In addition to the 521 and 128 EUs confirmed so far, Intel may also look to offer the Xe-HPG DG2 Arc Alchemist GPU in a 448-EU variant. Though the 448-EU variant was spotted long ago in a leak, a recent commit to the opensource Mesa 3D library further confirms that Intel may indeed look to offer a scaled-down version of the 512-EU chip that can possibly take on the Radeon RX 6600 or the RTX 3060 Ti.

A year on and the PlayStation 5 remains just as difficult as ever to get a hold of. In an attempt to improve the situation, Sony has chartered three Boeing 747 jumbo jets, which will deliver 50 pallets of consoles each to Europe.

Netflix has revealed that five mobile games will be released on its gaming platform. These games are expected to be launched on Android devices on November 3. Players across the world with a Netflix subscription will have access to mobile games at no additional cost.

Available for Game Pass on Xbox for a while, Minecraft is now also included in Game Pass for PC. Subscribers can play both editions, namely Bedrock and Java Edition, on machines loaded with Windows 10 and 11. Thankfully, PC players are also able to cross-play with those on other platforms as well.

The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti mobile GPU appears to be based on the existing GA104 die that powers the RTX 3080 version and is rumored to come as a response to Intel's ARC Alchemist laptop GPUs releasing in Q1 2022.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series has been enjoying rising popularity with Steam users again according to the hardware and software survey for October. In fact, no less than 10 GeForce 30 series SKUs have featured in the top 20 cards in terms of percentage change for the month. The biggest riser overall was the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660.

Valve has announced a Steamworks Virtual Conference set for next week. It will give developers a closer look at the company’s eagerly awaited Steam Deck handheld console and how to leverage the AMD Van Gogh APU powering it.

The new entries in two of Activision Blizzard's popular franchises will now be released in 2023 at the earliest after changes in personnel have delayed the development of Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2.

Sega has announced that it will be joining forces with Microsoft to employ Azure cloud services to create new and innovative video games. Azure will help Sega to advance its game development as part of its 'Super Game' project. The partnership can benefit Sega by improving its online infrastructure and supporting the development of cloud games.

Xiaomi has presented a new gaming monitor with a 240 Hz refresh rate. The XMMNT245HF2 also contains two HDMI 2.1 ports, supports AMD FreeSync Premium and is DisplayHDR 400 certified.

Activision has divulged a treasure trove of information about the PC version of Call of Duty: Vanguard. Unlike previous games in the franchise, Vanguard has fairly lax system requirements and will take up relatively less space on your hard drive. One can pre-load the game via Battle.net on November 02 at 10:00 PT.

HP has revealed the Omen 27c, a gaming monitor with a 27-inch VA panel. The curved gaming monitor operates natively at QHD, has a 240 Hz refresh rate and 1 ms response times, among other features.

With only one year left until the anniversary of its first decade, War Thunder celebrates by offering 50 percent discounts on premium accounts, in-game vehicles, as well as on modifications, backup vehicles, and talismans. Obviously, all these only stand as a part of the entire collection of anniversary offerings available.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo is one of the most interesting 15.6-inch gaming laptops out there, thanks to its innovative dual-screen set-up. Now, a famous leaker claims that a possible successor or second variant for this machine is coming, with a different screen size this time around. It may or may not arrive alongside new TWS earbuds to match its branding.

According to reports, NVIDIA is preparing to release three new graphics cards before the end of the year. All are revisions of existing and past models though, with the RTX 2060 12 GB arriving first in early December.

Founded less than a decade ago, Two Hat has been working with Microsoft's Xbox team for several years, and the time has already come for the next big step. By joining Microsoft, Two Hat will enable the Redmond giant to provide healthy, safe, and inclusive online spaces to its various online communities.

This model appears to be based on the same GA103 die that was leaked back in June with the Lenovo ThinPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 laptops. It is rumored to launch at CES next year with 7680 CUDA cores and up to 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM.

Alienware has unveiled its next-generation Aurora R13 and Aurora R14 gaming PCs. While the Aurora R14 is available with AMD Ryzen processors, Alienware has delivered the Aurora R13 with Intel's latest Alder Lake silicon. Alder Lake configurations start at US$230 more than Ryzen configurations, though.

Industry insider Christopher Dring has heard that Microsoft plans on making more Xbox Series X consoles available to the public this holiday season. The restock comes right before Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite will be launched on the platform.

After making the trip to 3DMark, the Google Pixel 6 Pro and its Tensor chipset have now been tested in real-world gaming conditions. The new Google flagship was put through the paces on the notoriously demanding title, Genshin Impact. Results? Conflicting.

After years of waiting, the fourth entry in the legendary real-time strategy series for the PC was officially released today. But due to a few technical issues which are showcased in a recently released review video, Age of Empires 4 unfortunately does not perform as well as it could on modern gaming PCs.

Dubbed "Ground Breaking" and released earlier today, War Thunder 2.11 brings a new tech tree into the game, although Israel only got two premium aircraft for now and no regular military hardware. However, the highlight of this update is terramorphing, alongside new maps, missions, visual effects, and quite a few new vehicles.

Monitor specialist AOC has expanded its Agon Pro series aimed at competitive gamers. The Agon AG274XM, AG274UXP and AG274QG all offer enticing specifications, although the latter is the only 240 Hz monitor on offer. The new Agon Pro monitors start at €969; only one is orderable this year.

The free games coming to PlayStation Plus service subscribers in November have been leaked. Among them, there is a well-received PlayStation VR game, a remaster of a PlayStation 3 action RPG, a social deduction party title, and a Rocket Arena-type game from Electronic Arts. It’s expected the games will become available for free from November 2.

Philips has unveiled the Momentum 279M1RV and Momentum 329M1RV, two gaming monitors that are Xbox certified. Accordingly, the pair run natively at 4K, have HDMI 2.1 ports and 144 Hz refresh rates, among other features.

The Ethereum dev team was initially planning to activate the difficulty bomb this December, but client releases are still not ready for the POS merger, so a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal was created to delay things until June 2022. This may have repercussions on the GPU supply, as miners will likely continue to hoard cards until the end of 2022.

A new video on Xbox's official YouTube channel imagines the state of gaming consoles in 2042. Among other things, it would use Quantum-powered hardware capable of 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second (FLOPS), a holographic UI and a personal AI. Games would be playable at a resolution of 32K, 480 FPS.

Most of the specs from previous leaks are confirmed, including the enticing price points. As far as performance goes, the i9-12900K is up to 30% faster in select games compared to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, and up to 100% faster in content creation applications compared to the i9-11900K.

Intel's new 12th gen Alder Lake platform brings with several notable changes on the architecture side. Alder Lake processors use a heterogeneous ISA with a shared L3 cache and an intelligent Thread Director that helps the OS in proper scheduling of threads. The CPU brings support for DDR5-4800 RAM and PCIe Gen5, but the Z690 chipset supports only PCIe Gen4 and Gen3.

Age of Empires IV developers World's Edge and Relic Entertainment have unveiled a new 'Min Spec Mode'. It compromises the visual quality, resolution, and number of people you can play with at one time. The mode is tailor-made for users running older, less powerful PCs.

Lenovo will be introducing a mid-cycle refresh of the Legion 7i soon. Called the Legion Y9000K 2021 Exploration Edition, the laptop features largely similar internals as the Legion 7i but may now come with liquid metal thermals and a DisplayHDR1000-certified mini-LED display option. Availability details are not yet known.