Gaming

Sony has made the right decision by postponing the upcoming PS5 event that was originally scheduled for June 4, because “more important voices” do need to be heard at the moment. PlayStation 5 fans should support the company’s move rather than complain about having to wait longer for the eagerly anticipated reveal event.

UWQHD gaming. While notebooks have not yet embraced the 21:9 display ratio desktop monitors have, and new products continue to appear. We take a closer look at the 35-inch Asus ROG Strix XG35VQ in order to assess its gaming capabilities.

The AMD Ryzen 9 4900H in combination with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 has paid a visit to 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark as part of an Asus TUF Gaming A15 FA506IV laptop. The result recorded was considerably better than the CPU Score produced by the Ryzen 9 4900H in a Dell G5 15 Special Edition that was tested last month.

The planned PS5 event for June 4 has now been postponed. The official PlayStation Twitter account recently posted a message to inform fans that now is not the time to celebrate the PlayStation 5, due to the global protests that have been occurring since the controversial death of George Floyd. Fans have reacted with highly mixed responses.

An AMD Ryzen 9 4900H APU in an Asus TUF Gaming A15 laptop (FA506IV) has been spotted on 3DMark’s Fire Strike benchmark where it managed a respectable Physics Score of 22,383 points. This put the Ryzen 4000 laptop ahead of most of the devices we have tested with either the Intel Core i9-9980HK or i9-10980HK.

Backers of the Atari VCS have had to endure repeated delays, but there looks to be light at the end of the tunnel. The team behind the console has announced that they will have an initial run of 500 units ready for a June launch, with more units expected to ship thereafter.

Kojima's final years at Konami were turbulent to say the least, but his legacy should be preserved. Solid Snake's swan song title has yet to be re-released on any other platform even after over a decade in the market.

The PS5 will supposedly be almost twice the thickness of a PlayStation 4 Pro and has a design that is completely different to everything that has been predicted so far according to a Sony “insider”. Sega may be planning a new console release or might team up with Microsoft in Japan for a “Sega Series X”.

The Pancake VR Starter Kit transforms Half Life: Alyx into something approximating a standard FPS game on PC. This allows users without the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, or Valve Index to enjoy the title.

The PS5 will offer backwards compatibility for PS2, PS3, and PS4 games according to a PlayStation 5 page recently published by a large Turkish retailer. PlayStation 5 owners will apparently be able to utilize the next-gen console’s Blu-ray drive to play the older titles.

The 49-inch Samsung Odyssey G9 1000R Curved Gaming Monitor is now available for pre-order and those interested will have to pay up £1,279.99 (US$1,581) for the pleasure of owning the magnificent display. The monitor has a 240 Hz refresh rate and 5120x1440 resolution to go with the ideal 1000R screen curvature.

The GPD Win Max handheld game console has already managed to attract over US$2 million in funding on Indiegogo and there is still 32 days of its crowdfunding campaign left. But when you see how well games like GTA 5 run on the mini laptop, it’s easy to understand why the Win Max has received so much attention.

The PS5 remains on track for a global launch this holiday season, according to Sony's Jim Ryan. Do not expect PS5 games to work on the PS4 though, nor for the PS5 to be the cheapest console either.

New rumors about potential PS5 games such as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Silent Hill, Gran Turismo 7, and Horizon Zero Dawn 2 have appeared online. In further game-related news, Sony has instructed developers to ensure PlayStation 5 compatibility with upcoming PS4 titles that are submitted to the company from July 13 onwards.

A highly dubious PS5 leak has appeared on an imageboard website with a series of claims made about the next-gen console. Apparently, the CPU and GPU clocks are unstable and the PS5 design is “ugly”. However, these cons are countered by pros such as silent and efficient cooling, an incredible dashboard, and a price of US$499 for the PlayStation 5.

Asus has been promoting its TUF Gaming A15 laptop on Twitter, revealing the high-end Renoir APU AMD Ryzen 9 4900H and the capable Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU. The laptop has already been advertised for pre-order on a UK site for £1,399.99 (US$1,721) and should be available in mid July. There has been some criticism about the laptop’s display, though.

Sony has confirmed plans for a PS5 launch game event. Dubbed the "future of gaming", the event will commence on June 4 at 13:00 PDT (21:00 BST/22:00 CEST). Sony has teased a toned down version of the DualSense, too.

PlayStation Official Magazine UK seems to believe that Dirt 5, Godfall and Rainbow Six Siege are among 11 launch titles for Sony's next-gen console. Assassin's Creed Valhalla will apparently be a launch title for the PS5 too, but there is no mention of Gran Turismo 7 arriving anytime soon.

The directional keys really got the short end of the stick here. Not only are they smaller than the ones on the last generation TUF FX705, but they're also smaller and more cramped than the arrow keys on most subnotebooks.

It has been reported that mass production of the PlayStation 5 console is starting, leading to the strong possibility that a PS5 design reveal could be imminent. In the meantime, Microsoft has been firing some of the first shots of the upcoming next-gen console battle by reminding people that the Xbox Series X is the “most compatible console ever”.

Steam has finally entered the cloud gaming arena with Steam Cloud Play. Unlike its competitor's offerings, Steam Cloud Play will only serve as a link between an existing platform and Steam. Developers can register for the service now, but it'll be a while before it is available to the general public.

A new market research report states that the gaming headset sector broke records in terms of US retail sales in April 2020. This study also found that 8 of the 10 best-selling devices in this category were from the brand Turtle Beach. Of these, its Stealth 600 has accrued the most revenue in 2020 so far.

It has been reported that Sony is planning on holding a PS5 game reveal event on June 3. It’s not known if the company will actually reveal any concrete details about the PlayStation 5 hardware, but fans are currently starving for any news concerning the next-gen console. The official PS5 page has also been updated.

Unfortunately for those who don't want to use cash, the new update only includes premium content for the upcoming Battle Path missions and various (apparently) minor tweaks and fixes, such as performance optimizations, spotting system changes, harsher penalties for deserters, various interface improvements, and so on.

OnePlus has announced a new deal with Epic Games, by which the OEM's current flagship 8 series will be the first mobile devices to be able to play the runaway hit Fortnite at 90 frames per second (fps). The game will do so through the medium of Unreal Engine. Furthermore, some older OnePlus phones will be able to run this app at 60fps.

Take-Two's 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission offers strong hints about Grand Theft Auto 6's release timeframe. The downside? PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X owners might have to wait a couple years for the title.

After nearly a decade of rehashing its stock cooler, Intel's finally made substantial (although entirely cosmetic) changes to its stock cooler design for a limited number of Comet Lake S SKUs.

An Intel Phantom Canyon NUC 11 Extreme powered by a Tiger Lake-U CPU and the GTX 1660 Ti has made its appearance on the 3DMark Time Spy database. The CPU score and clock speeds indicate that this NUC 11 Extreme engineering sample could be powered by a 28 W Core i5 Tiger Lake-U part. The Phantom Canyon NUC 11 is also expected to available in an RTX 2070 Super Max-Q configuration.

Although its name should be "Regia Marina" due to the introduction of the Italian Fleet tech tree — only for those who buy preorder early access packs at this stage or complete various missions, as usual — War Thunder 1.99 comes as "Starfighters" thanks to the F-104 jets that have been added to the game as well. Obviously, there is much more to it than just the above.

Peter Chou was once the very visible face of HTC when it was still a force in the smartphone market. These days, with HTC and Vive well and truly in the rear vision mirror, he is back with a new VR start up that looks like it has some potential.

Powkiddy has launched a new, handheld games console. The Powkiddy X2 costs US$80 and looks unmistakably like the Nintendo Switch.

Microsoft has confirmed that Minecraft has been sold over 200 million times, almost six years after purchasing the rights to the game. The studio behind the game, Mojang AB, has been given a rebrand too and has announced work on new projects.

Creative has introduced the limited edition Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Plus Edition in a white variant with additional RGB lighting. The Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Plus Edition also supports Dolby Digital and DTS encoding and uses the Sound Core3D DSP and the ESS Sabre 32 Ultra DAC for 32-bit 384 kHz playback and 122 dB SNR.

Intel has announced that it has acquired Rivet Networks, a company best known for its Killer brand of connectivity modules. The silicon giant asserts that this move will enhance its standing as a proponent of Wi-Fi standardization. It may also simply help the company stay ahead of the competition in terms of this area of specs.

NVIDIA's latest financial report indicates that notebooks now account for 30% of its gaming-related business. The company's chief financial officer (CFO), Collette Kress, attributes this success in part to increased demand for these PCs due to the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic. Similarly, Nintendo's Switch appears to have been a popular buy lately.

The new AMD Ryzen 4000-powered Dell G5 15 Special Edition gaming laptop can now be purchased from the OEM’s online store. However, the 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 9 4900H APU is still missing from the lineup. AMD executive Frank Azor has detailed how a 120 Hz display option will be coming in August for the Dell G5 15 SE.

Towers of Everland just landed on Apple Arcade. The first-person dungeon crawler offers a more light-hearted experience than The Elder Scrolls: Blades and Legends of Grimrock, without sacrificing content quality. However, poor performance, even on the high-end iPhone 11 Pro Max, raises questions about just how well the game will run across iOS devices.

Base Model or Advanced Model? Razer Blade 15 laptops look so much alike that they can be difficult to tell apart. Our table below summarizes all the physical differences between the latest models currently available.

SKU names and PCIe device IDs variants of AMD's upcoming "Big Navi" Navi 21 GPU across Gaming, Pro, and Apple-exclusive segments have leaked. Navi 21 will be largest die in the Navi 2x family and is expected to feature up to 80 CUs and 5,120 SPs. AMD would also be making available a Navi 10 Refresh to cater to budget and mid-range gamers as Navi 23 is likely to be comparatively more expensive owing to higher clocks and core counts.

Quick Fix. While Nvidia's new Super GPUs are mostly identical to their respective predecessors the Max-Q variants have a nice surprise up their sleeve: Dynamic Boost. We took a closer look at this feature with the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED.

AMD and NVIDIA are to launch their next-generation GPUs in September, according to a new report. Big Navi and Ampere announcements could be planned for this summer too, while price cuts are apparently incoming for current-generation cards.

It seems both Silent Hill and Gran Turismo 7 have now joined the PS5 games list thanks to the latest rumors about titles for the next-generation console. Silent Hill for the PlayStation 5 is expected to be a “soft reboot”. The PS5 games list of confirmed, expected, or rumored titles now contains dozens of entries.

A supposed leak has revealed that Civilization VI and Borderlands: The Handsome Collection will be the next free games offered on the Epic Games Store. Ark: Survival Evolved is also mentioned as an upcoming freebie from the popular site. Epic has recently offered up Grand Theft Auto V to gamers completely free of charge.
Update: Civilization VI has been revealed as the latest free game.

Indie developers at Neon Giant studio spoke to EDGE magazine recently about their experience working on Xbox Series X hardware. Microsoft's machine is "easier to develop for," and has "magic loading speeds," they claimed.

Razer has announced a refresh to its Blade Pro 17 gaming laptop. The 2020 refresh of the Blade Pro 17 now offers an Intel 10th gen Comet Lake-H Core i7-10875H CPU, RTX 2070 Max-Q and RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU options, and a 300 Hz refresh rate FHD panel. Rest of the specifications and design are more or less similar to the 2019 version.