Gaming

Do you still enjoy Steam on your Windows XP machine? Seems that's just too bad for you, then. Valve's prior announcement that it will cease support for Windows XP and Vista comes into effect today. Users still on these platforms were still able to play games, but lost access to all other Steam features, in 2018; now, they are losing access to the client as a whole.

A dedicated fan of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has spent the past few years working on a remake of the classic title in Unreal Engine 4. He recently released a demo of the first village and dungeon, and the results are stunning. The fan, known as CryZENx, has said that he will continue working on the project throughout 2019.

The RTX 2060's previously rumored specs are now confirmed, as well as pricing. Starting January 15th, the RTX 2060 can be purchased for $350 and offers 1070 like performance as well as support for ray tracing.

A new variant of the AMD Radeon RX 590 has been spotted by HEXUS. The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 8GD5 OC has been listed on the Sapphire Technologies website. However, it seems the only difference between the latest addition and the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 8GD5 Special Edition is the color. The new version of the GPU comes in a black shroud.

Epic Games is now sitting on US$3 billion in gross profits this year. According to a new article in TechCrunch based on the claims of a 'knowledgeable' source. This level of success is (somewhat obviously) made off the back of Epic's flagship, Fortnite. It is a particularly impressive claim, considering that this title's revenue is largely derived from in-game purchases.

Apparently the 11 series of GeForce GPUs actually do exist, with the 1160 coming soon to a Lenovo laptop. These GPUs will allegedly be based on the current Turing architecture but without RTX support, meaning prices should be much lower than the RTX series.

A Twitter-based leaker claims to have found a Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) certification for the full list of Gigabyte/AORUS graphics cards to incorporate the RTX 2060 GPU. According to this extensive listing, the two brands are making no less than 40 separate SKUs of this line. They range from 3 to 6GB in capacity, are either GDDR5 or GDDR6 and cover many form-factors and editions, from Mini ITX to AORUS Extreme.

Some retailers have started offering Sony’s PlayStation Classic console at a much reduced price. In the USA, potential buyers can find the device for US$59.99, whilst those interested in the UK can get their hands on the mini console for £49.99. Sony released the PlayStation Classic on December 3, and it has been met with a generally lukewarm response.

Fallout 76 has been lambasted by users and critics over its significant bugs and lack of playability at launch. Its developers, Bethesda, has attempted to make restitution for these shortcomings through an offer of free access to older Fallout titles on PC to all who logged into '76, regardless of platform.

TechConfigurations has uploaded a video on YouTube showing off impressive renders of the Sony Xperia XZ4 based on numerous alleged leaks and rumors. The smartphone’s display is expected to offer a game-changing 21:9 aspect ratio, so not only will the device be tall and slender, it will also be able to play widescreen movies without any black bars at the top or bottom (letterboxing).

Loose USB Type-C charging cable, electronic noise, discharging battery when gaming, and abnormally slow processor performance round up the list of issues we encountered during our review on the latest Blade Stealth laptop.

The Core i7-8750H CPU in the Dell runs 25 percent faster than the same CPU in the Razer Blade 15. The thinner Razer system does not benefit from Intel Turbo Boost as much likely to keep surface temperatures and power consumption in check.

Microsoft is now rumored to be working on 4K webcams. These accessories, which are likely to go under the Surface brand, will be compatible with Windows 10-powered devices and the Xbox One. The new webcams, which may also support Windows Hello, may be available next year.

The RTX 2070 with Max-Q design is NVIDIA's upcoming mid-range laptop card. It has been spotted in leaked Final Fantasy XV benchmarks. The results (assuming they are genuine) put the new mobile GPU at the top of a list that also includes the GTX 1080 (desktop and Max-Q versions) and the Radeon RX Vega.

AMD has launched two more entries to its Athlon range: the 220GE and the 240GE. Both processors come with Radeon Vega 3 graphics and offer base clocks of 3.4 GHz (220GE) and 3.5 GHz (240GE), respectively. The 220GE has been priced at US$65 and the 240GE has a price of US$75. The California-based company already announced the 200GE CPU back in September.

HP is currently holding a red tag sale and there are plenty of discounted laptops on offer for potential buyers. The sale includes high-end devices such as the HP Spectre X360 laptop with an i7-8705G and Radeon RX Vega M Graphics (4 GB) and the 15.6-inch Omen that comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. At the other end of the scale, bargain-hunters can find the basic HP 14Z with 4 GB RAM for a price starting at US$199.99.

Matt Thorson, the director and designer of the platform game Celeste, has revealed on Twitter that the title has sold over 500,000 copies in 2018. The game was released on January 25 and has been met with critical praise and has won several awards. To celebrate the achievement, the developers intend on releasing some new levels.

A Videocardz correspondent claims to have received tips to the effect that NVIDIA will be bringing out a Turing-based card without ray-tracing capabilities next year. It may be called either the GTX 1160 or GTX 1660 Ti, and may be launched alongside the RTX 2060. This putative card is rumored to incorporate the TU116 GPU.

Lemmings, the classic PC puzzler, has launched on iOS and Android. The smartphone port retains many of the gameplay elements of the original, but controls and level design have been optimized for mobile gaming. The levels themselves will be procedurally generated, but there will (sadly) be a variety of in-app purchases.

NVIDIA's Titan RTX, the best-spec'd (and most expensive) iteration of Turing architecture out there, has been reportedly overclocked and benchmarked. A Twitter enthusiast has claimed that it achieved just over 41,000 in the graphics portion of 3DMark Fire Strike. However, JayzTwoCents asserts that his own Titan RTX did not break 37,000 in the same sub-test, and that it was not much faster overall than an overclocked RTX 2080 Ti.

Thanks to the 7.10 patch, the list of Android phones officially supported by Fortnite now also includes the Nokia 8.1, Oppo R17/R17 Pro, Samsung A8s/A9, Vivo Z3, and the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE. The update also comes with the "14 Days of Fortnite" holiday special event, but the Driftboard has been delayed.

Tencent Games has asserted that it has drawn level with Epic Games' Fortnite in terms of mobile user numbers for its own game, PUBG. This means that PUBG has made it to about 200 million users. It is estimated that both games also have the same approximate number of users who play at least once a day (30 million).

Have an hour to kill and want a free copy of Assassin's Creed Odyssey? Google is giving a digital copy of the game to users who demo Project Stream, the search giant's venture into the world of online game streaming services. Project Stream is currently an invite-only program, but its free to sign up. If you can log an hour of gameplay before January 15th, Google will send you a download code for Assassin's Creed Odyssey via Ubisoft's Uplay service.

Dell has backtracked on its decision that the XPS 15 9570 does not have an NVIDIA GPU issue. The company has informed us that it is working on a fix that it aims to roll out via an updated BIOS by the end of this month.
Update: Dell changes its tune once again.

The upcoming Xbox 'Scarlett' family of consoles will feature two variants codenamed 'Anaconda' and 'Lockhart' as successors to the Xbox One X and the Xbox One S respectively. Lockhart is expected to be as powerful as the current gen Xbox One X while Anaconda is aimed at providing a more cutting-edge experience. Apart from Scarlett, Microsoft is also expected to announce the disc-less Xbox One console as early as 2019.

A spec sheet of the HP ZHAN 66 Pro 14 G2 has leaked online that lists the notebook sporting an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU with 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM. This is the first listing of the MX250 in the wild and from the information we have, it is just a rebranded MX150 with slightly higher clocks. So, while the RTX 2000 Turing GPUs will be getting mobile versions, NVIDIA could still continue to offer a rebranded Pascal GPU for entry-level notebooks and ultrabooks.

Razer has released a teaser video to accompany the launch of the first wireless keyboard and mouse combo for Microsoft’s Xbox One console. The launch of the video has brought to light an accompanying image of the actual keyboard and mouse that Razer first revealed a couple of weeks ago, but which slipped under the radar.

The Xiaomi POCO F1 has reportedly received an update to official stable Pie, following a recent beta to test the same. However, it's not all good news for fans of the device: some users have claimed that it no longer includes an option to hide the notch in the UI. The update has brought other apparent problems, most notably unusual battery drain.

We know very little about the upcoming iterations of the Xbox console apart from the fact that there will be a traditional as well as a cloud streaming-only version. A rumor is now doing the rounds that the streaming-only SKU will be powered by a semi-custom AMD Picasso APU. The exact specifications are still not available but this APU is expected to provide hardware accelerated deep learning for Project xCloud that allows for real-time AI predictions of player actions and thereby, helps in reducing latency while streaming.

War Thunder 1.85 "Supersonic" is a major update to Gaijin Entertainment's flagship product and — as its name suggests — it comes with supersonic aircraft. Other noticeable changes include the Italian ground vehicles tree, thermal guided air-to-air missiles, new ships, new locations, and many minor adjustments.

Razer has unleashed a version of its Raiju controllers for smartphones. It is ostensibly designed to compete with similar products made by Xiaomi and Asus, although it may fit devices besides the company's own gaming-focused smartphones. The 'mobile' Raiju features the Mecha-Tactile action buttons found on the Ultimate variant of this controller.

Tetsuya Nomura, the Game Director for the hotly anticipated Kingdom Hearts III, has taken to Twitter to ask the game's fans not to share the recent leaks. This material includes gameplay footage, a secret movie and other spoilers. Nomura claims that this request will enable everyone to 'experience the game equally'.

Discord, the popular communication client, has announced that they will begin a 90/10 revenue share scheme for the Discord store in 2019. This will give 90% of all revenue from game sales on the Discord store to the game developer while Discord keeps the remaining 10%. This is quite a shift from the typical 70/30 sharing scheme and a step further than Epic's 88/12 share.

In 2014, ZeniMax sued Oculus VR on allegations that CEO Palmer Lucky had stolen technology that made the Oculus Rift VR headset possible, and it became a 4 year long battle between ZeniMax and Facebook once the latter bought Oculus VR. Finally, the suit has been privately settled for some amount of cash.

Get your NES and SNES Classic Edition consoles while you can. Reggie Fils-Aimé, Nintendo of America President and COO, has announced that the company has stopped manufacturing both Classic Edition consoles. Fils-Aimé confirmed that the consoles will be available this holiday season in the Americas, but that Nintendo will not be producing anymore once they go out of stock.

The second half of 2018 has not been kind to Nvidia at all. The crypto craze is gone and AIB partners are still overstocked with pascal GPUs, the trade wars in China are creating economic instabilities and the launch of the RTX 2000-series was not really what the green team hoped for. This series of unfortunate events lead to falling share prices and investors are on the edge now.

The developer of a new home-made app claims that it allows for the streaming of PC games to the Nintendo Switch. Unlike many other similar attempts in the past, this version apparently has reduced latency and allows for the full control of said games. It is currently available for Windows only, however.

Asus has announced the resignation of the company’s long-term CEO, Jerry Shen. However, the executive plans to maintain a relationship with the Taiwanese manufacturer in his new position as chief of a start-up called iFast. In a change of marketing strategy, Asus intends to shift its focus on to gamers and power users in regard to future mobile product releases.

NVIDIA has released a new Game Ready driver that is available to download for RTX and GeForce GPUs. The new driver adds Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) beta to Final Fantasy XV and brings updates to GeForce Experience too.

As one could expect, leaks and rumors, whether they're true or not, often times inspire people to manufacture leaks of their own for fun. This seems to be such a case where a Ryzen 3 3300X has surfaced on Userbenchmark; the circumstances surrounding this CPU are very peculiar and seem to indicate that this is nothing but a forgery.

Although some issues that have been around for ages — such as idle players, a broken matchmaking system, and bots — have not been addressed, World of Tanks 1.3 comes with large-scale decals, a few reworked maps, a new map for the Grand Battles mode, tweaked Personal Missions, and other minor changes.

It has been reported that the new Sony PlayStation Classic has already been hacked, even though the console has only just been released. Apparently, hackers have been able to run software on the device using a USB flash drive, after discovering that the PlayStation Classic’s security key is on the system itself. The console has been met with a generally lukewarm response so far.

News and rumor website VideoCardz has reported the existence of the RTX 2060, some of its specifications, and that it will launch soon. With 1920 CUDA cores, the new midrange card could be up to 50% faster than the previous 1060 6 GB. Whether or not the RTX 2060 will support ray tracing and, if so, how fast ray tracing performance will be are both unknown.