Gaming

A group known for Nintendo Switch piracy has obtained and distributed a full file dump of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, set to release in two weeks on December 7th. While early game leaks are not uncommon, a leak this far in advance is quite unusual, especially a leak of a game as hotly anticipated as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

If you somehow missed all the Black Friday deals, not all is lost. Cyber Monday is here with similar bargains and Newegg has some of the best laptop deals around. This time we are taking a look at what Asus, Dell and Lenovo have to offer. Most of the models come with Intel CPUs but there is one AMD Ryzen model that might catch your eye.

Initially meant to get a US$500 MSRP, AMD's Radeon RX Vega 64 GPU had to go through serious supply problems that jacked the retail prices to almost US$800. Fast forward one year later, the card supply is almost too high now, and thanks to AMD's price slashes plus the Cyber Monday deals from Newegg, the RX Vega 64 can be ordered for US$400 along with three free games.

Get the Spectre x360 13t for just $850 USD while it lasts. The convertible has apparently become HP's "#1 selling Spectre" while the "top seller" is the last generation budget AMD-powered HP 15z for only $320 USD.

This franchise that has been around since 2011 — when the first Kingdom Rush title was introduced as a free flash browser game — is back to Android and iOS as Kingdom Rush Vengeance. This new fantasy tower defense title involves fights against trolls, orcs, wizards, in various environments such as forests, wastelands, and mountains.

Dell has denied that there are any BIOS related GPU issues with XPS 15 9570 laptops, the company has informed us. Despite providing the company with data and numerous online posts demonstrating otherwise, it has not been able to determine what is causing some NVIDIA GPUs to throttle until reaching 48 °C/118 °F.

According to a Taiwanese forum thread that claims to have information from an inside partner meeting, Intel may be developing a 10-core consumer-grade CPU in the Comet Lake-S family. The CPU would be built on the 14 nm process and may use a dual-ring bus design, implying that the CPU will split cores between two dies.

ASRock has released its Phantom Gaming 6 motherboard. It supports X399 Threadripper CPUs, up to 128GB of 3400MHz OC DDR4 RAM, Phantom Gaming 2.5G and Intel Gigabit LAN. It also has 7.1 channel audio, 3 PCI-e 3.0 x16 slots, 3 M.2 slots and, of course, RGB.

Some innovative gamers have gotten Pokémon: Let's Go to boot and run on the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu. Despite the game only being a week old, it is somewhat playable, although there are numerous glitches and oddities. The framerate is highly inconsistent and the audio is a mess, but the fact that a week old game is playable via emulation is impressive.

AMD posted a response to a common complaint from Ryzen-based laptop users on Reddit earlier this week, stating that the company would better support graphics drivers for Ryzen laptops starting in 2019. However, AMD plans to work with laptop OEMs and depend on them to release device-specific graphics drivers twice a year. The response garnered further criticisms of what many see as a lazy blame-shifting solution.

Stardew Valley is a bonafide hit, and the success keeps rolling in. In its first three weeks on iOS, the game brought in over $1 million in revenue. In total, Stardew Valley has sold over 4.6 million copies, although it's likely sold many, many more.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

It looks like some media outlets have a bone to pick with Nvidia, blowing things out of proportion where it really is not the case. Yes, there are faulty RTX 2080 Ti cards out there and Nvidia admitted some cards did not go through the QA process, but the cards are out of stock now not because Nvidia was forced to delist them for too many manufacturing faults. The green team simply did not expect the demand for these cards to be so great.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday usually bring some of the best PC component bargains of the year, but, in Intel's case, these are not really bargains, especially in the case of all the CPUs affected by the 14 nm shortages. Prices for these processors have been floating well over MSRP in the past few months, and now, retailers like Newegg and Amazon are offering the most demanded Intel models for MSRP prices.

Valve quietly announced that once physical stock of the Steam Link streaming device sells out, they will no longer sell physical units. Instead, Valve will shift focus and support to the Steam Link mobile app, currently only available for Android. While the reasons for the discontinuation aren't entirely clear, it's likely that the Steam Link is no longer selling enough to warrant continued support.

Epic Games has announced that the Fortnite Winter Royale Qualifiers and Winter Royale Finals will feature a total of US$1 million in prizes. The qualifiers, which are open to all, begin on November 24. The Winter Royale tournament is a test event to help the company prepare for the Fortnite World Cup, which will take place in 2019.

The GT83 Titan with GTX 1070 SLI or GTX 1080 SLI graphics will be a full $1000 off. Most purchases will come with free MSI-branded gifts such as carrying bags, mice, mouse pads, and more.

Not satisfied with just offering hardware, Lenovo will now have a dedicated online storefront for PC games and closed betas. The store will be limited to gamers in the U.S. for now, but the manufacturer is promising exclusive deals and a tight screening process to weed out "half-finished, half-hearted" demos.

The Red Magic may represent a novel alternative in a gaming-phone space dominated by a small number of brands. This phone, marketed by the ZTE sub-brand Nubia, is reportedly getting a second generation. A new leak shows a Geekbench score for the phone, and suggests some other new details about the device.

The "early sale" is for Razer newsletter subscribers via special promo codes only. Nonetheless, it's a sneak peek at the kinds of deals Razer likely has in store for the rest of the year.

On Thursday, Nvidia released its Q3 earnings report, and as a result stocks plummeted nearly 20% thanks mainly to Nvidia's Q4 guidance, which were $700 million below the expectations of third party analysts who predicted Nvidia would achieve $3.4 billion in revenue. Nvidia claims the lack of crypto demand and surplus of Pascal supply are to blame.

During its earnings report call this Thursday, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang predicted a decline in revenue in Q4 owing to an inventory backlog of Pascal cards and the fact that cryptocurrency miners would be offloading their cards at much lower prices given that the boom has now ended. Huang expressed confidence that this 'crypto hangover' would pass but this could delay shipments of midrange Turing GPUs such as the RTX 2060.

Tetsuya Nomura, the director of the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake, said in an interview with Famitsu that Square Enix was still working on the title and that development was "progressing favorably." He did mention that the company's marketing efforts were heavily focused on Kingdom Hearts III, which releases this January. After January 2019, Square Enix's PR team will likely shift its focus to Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Although Nekki's Shadow Fight has a history that started back in 2011, Shadow Fight 3 is only one year old. This action-RPG fighting game is available for iOS and Android devices, supports 11 languages, and works great on mid-range hardware while providing a realistic visual experience at the same time.

The PS4 console proved to be more successful than the XBox One over the past five years, and Sony prepared a special infographic covering some interesting sale figures including total units sold, total game titles sold, best-selling games, most downloaded games and favorite controller color. The company also announced a new CoD – Black Ops 4 bundle that will be available on November 27.

As the studio winds up and begins liquidating assets, Telltale has apparently pulled some of its titles from Steam. Back to the Future and Jurassic Park (among others) are no longer available for purchase, though some of their bigger games like Game of Thrones can still be bought through Steam.

In an interview with Kotaku, Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime all but extinguished hopes for an N64 Classic release any time in the near future. He explained that while the NES Classic and SNES Classic were wildly successful, they were intended to be bridges between the dying Wii U and burgeoning Switch. As such, Nintendo has no intention to pursue the retro mini console business.

It is possible Microsoft is working on an Xbox One variant that will not use discs for accessing media. The disc-less console will rely on digital downloads and come in at a cheaper price point than current Xbox One consoles with optical drives. Under a special Microsoft program, gamers will be able to exchange physical Xbox discs for download codes.