Gaming

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.

NVIDIA seems to have finally acknowledged that some of its GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition cards seem to have missed testing during QA and that could have been the reason for the increasing number of complaints about faulty cards causing all sorts of problems. Those affected can directly contact NVIDIA Support to get their issue resolved at the earliest.

PlayStation 4 players who have been waiting for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 to hit their consoles since early March can now take this title for a spin, although this console version is still in a Beta phase. Its release date has been set for December 18 — more than five months after the arrival of the Xbox One version.

Asus claims its PC builder business (mainly the motherboard sales) has suffered due to Intel's 14 nm CPU shortages. Overall profits have seen a 39% year-over-year decline and the next few quarters will continue to hit Asus's profits, as the shortages are expected to last until Q2 2019. The gaming PC and server businesses are unaffected by these problems, however.

Microsoft reaffirmed the company's presence at E3 2019 via its official Xbox Twitter handle shortly after Sony confirmed that they are pulling out of E3 for the first time in the show's 24 year history. We aren't sure of Microsoft's plans for the event but expect a lot of information on upcoming consoles and exclusives.

Sony has confirmed that it will not be part of the E3 2019 trade show. The organizer of the event, the Entertainment Software Association, has issued a press release to highlight which companies will be in attendance, including Sony’s console rivals Nintendo and Microsoft. According to a press statement, the PlayStation maker is apparently searching for new ways of engaging with its community.

Red Magic is an 'alternative' gaming phone developed by Nubia in order to compete with the likes of Xiaomi's Black Shark. Now, the second generation of this device, which may be called the Red Magic Mars, has started to show up in benchmarks. It has reportedly beaten the Black Shark Helo variant by about 20,000 points on Antutu so far.

When the Turing based RTX series launched in October, zero games supported RTX technology. However, that finally changed with this new RTX focused patch for Battlefield V, the world's first RTX compatible game. However, "RTX on" doesn't come very cheaply to Turing GPUs.

The RTX 2000-series has been around for a few months now, and it was just a matter of time until the small form-factor models would start popping up. MSI is among the first to release an ITX Turing card with the RTX 2070 Aero ITX, but more models are expected from Gigabyte and Zotac. MSI's ITX card is missing a few connectors and gets stock clocks.

The award-winning creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4 are back with Fallout 76, an online prequel to the epic series of post-apocalyptic RPGs that was introduced by Interplay Entertainment back in 1997. Fallout 76 is now available via the Microsoft Store as an Xbox One X Enhanced title and also comes as a Tricentennial Edition with various in-game bonuses.

Good luck, commanders! EA announced today that Command & Conquer, the grandaddy of RTS games, will be getting a 4K remaster in the future. EA will work with Petroglyph Games, a studio founded by some of the original developers of C&C when Westwood Studios closed down.

Specs and pricing information for the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 590 based on the Polaris 30 architecture are now available. The Radeon RX 590 is said to have an MSRP of US$279. According to presentation slides accessed by Videocardz, the RX 590 will offer 12% better performance than the current RX 580. It is expected to be offered with a 'blockbuster launch bundle' with three free titles.

Corsair has announced that its wide range of gaming keyboards and mice will support the Xbox One. Microsoft recently announced keyboard and mouse support for the Xbox One and developers can choose to support their game for such input if desired. Corsair also said that the Elgato Stream Deck can now be integrated with Mixer for improved live streaming.

The latest update to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is a massive one and comes with a rather long list of changes, which includes Nuketown, Daily Tier Skip, Blackout with Nuketown Island zombies and the Bowie Knife, stability tweaks, and much more. The update is already rolling out to PlayStation 4 consoles, and the other platforms should get it next week.

The mobile game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite has finally received a teaser trailer, just over a year after its development was announced. There are plenty of games based in the Harry Potter world, but this one is particularly newsworthy because of the developer involved: Niantic. The American software company is probably best known for its work with Pokémon Go.

The successor of the original Razer Phone will go on sale this Friday directly online from AT&T's website, but those in a hurry will also be able to grab it from the San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and Seattle flagship stores. Even more, these locations will host special gaming events dedicated to the Razer Phone 2.

NVIDIA has released a new Game Ready driver that is available to download for RTX and GeForce GPUs. The new driver brings optimisations for Battlefield V, Fallout 76 and Hitman 2. The Game Ready driver also adds support for real-time ray tracing in Battlefield V for GeForce RTX GPUs.

Previous speculations of this curious variant of the 1060 have been confirmed: this particular 1060 is actually based on the same silicon the 1070, 1070Ti, and 1080 are based on. Nvidia is likely getting rid of old Pascal and GDDR5X memory stock.

Nintendo has won $12 million in a settlement with LoveRoms.com and LoveRETRO.co, two ROM distribution sites it sued this past summer. The couple that operated the two sites admitted that they participated in copyright infringement and agreed to the $12 million judgement against them. While it's unlikely the couple will have to pay the full judgement, this ruling will surely send a message to other ROM sites that distribute ROMs of Nintendo games.

The nominations for The Game Awards have been announced and both God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 managed eight nominations apiece. Other big names securing multiple nominations include Marvel’s Spider-Man with seven, Fortnite with four, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with four, and Celeste with four. The awards will be handed out on December 6 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.

Gigabyte has published a press release with details of four new graphics card the company is adding to its line-up. All of the new GPUs are part of the Aorus Waterforce GeForce RTX 20 Xtreme series. The Taiwanese company is offering four years of warranty to buyers who register via the official website within 30 days of purchase.

PlayStation 4 owners will soon be able to get their hands on the smash-hit battle royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). PUBG Corp and Sony have jointly announced that the title is now available for pre-order and will be launched on December 7. Four different editions will be available, and there are bonuses for those who pre-order the game.

It appears that Dell's most recent BIOS releases for the XPS 15 9570 have caused a GPU bug in some devices. Originally reported on Reddit, some XPS 15 9570 laptops power limit throttle their NVIDIA GPUs until they hit a temperature threshold, causing noticeably worse performance in games.
Update:Further benchmarks on an XPS 15 9570 running BIOS 1.3 added.

Previous rumors were saying that Navi would only match the GTX 1080 GPUs from Nvidia, and, according to some new information, this is more like a half truth. It looks like AMD is planning to release the mid-range Navi 12 in the first half of 2019, with the Navi 10 and 20 high-end models coming in late 2019.

Images and the specifications of the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy graphics card have been posted online. The card is obviously based on the upcoming RX 590 that features the Polaris 30 graphics processing unit based on the 12 nm FinFET process. The Fatboy variant will offer a boost clock of 1600 MHz and have a 256-bit memory bus.

Microsoft is making good on their September promise to bring mouse-and-keyboard input support to the Xbox One. Starting this Wednesday, November 14, select titles will receive updates that will allow them to be played with a mouse and a keyboard instead of a traditional controller. The first titles to receive the update will be Fortnite and Warframe. Microsoft will also partner with Razer to release "Designed for Xbox" branded mice-and-keyboard sets.

Sony's PlayStation Now video game subscription service is leading the market by 52% followed by EA Access at 16% and Xbox Game Pass at 15%, according to a report by analyst firm SuperData. The firm also found that the price of subscription plays a major role in consideration for gamers and that subscribers tend to spend twice as much on in-game purchases compared to other gamers.

Want to play Fallout 76 when it comes out later this week? Be prepared to stare at a loading bar. The game comes with a mandatory day-one patch that is a massive 56 GB in size. This is in addition to the 45 GB base game, meaning that gamers will need about 100 GB of free space. This patch has only been confirmed for the PS4, but considering the game's buggy beta, the PC and Xbox One versions are likely to have similar day-one patches.

A feature in the latest Pokemon game, Pokemon Let's GO, may get you to load up your game of Pokemon GO on your smartphone. Pokemon that trainers have captured in Pokemon GO can be transferred to Pokemon Let's GO on the Switch. There are a few caveats, but almost every pokemon in Pokemon GO can be transferred.

Microsoft Studios has revealed a release date for the much-delayed third installment in the Crackdown series. Crackdown 3 will be launched on February 15, 2019, and it is currently available to pre-order for Xbox One or PC gamers. The action-adventure title offers single-player and multi-player modes in a huge futuristic world created by Unreal Engine 4.

Unbeknown to most users, other resellers have been offering the same Walmart design for months. Walmart, however, has the clear advantage in price and volume and is able to offer the same exact chassis and specifications for hundreds of dollars less.

Looking for a laptop with the Core i9-8950HK CPU? Then either Aorus or MSI would be your best bet if you want to get the most that the pricey Intel CPU can offer. We compare 9 different laptops equipped with the same Core i9 CPU to see which comes out on top or bottom.

The Black Shark is Xiaomi's take on a gaming phone. It is powered by up-to-date hardware, although it lacks a headphone jack. Xiaomi has announced that it will release this phone into the European market on November 16.

Get the Blade 15 in light gray for the same price as the standard black at $2200 USD. Razer has been pushing its line of Blade laptops harder than ever these past two years with the refreshed Blade Pro and introduction of the Blade 15.

Microsoft announced that it would be acquiring both Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment today at X018, Microsoft's Xbox conference. Obsidian is perhaps best known for titles like Fallout: New Vegas and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. Microsoft may be acquiring these studios to prop up the Xbox One's library of console exclusives.

The Nintendo Switch finally got a YouTube app yesterday, bringing the world's most popular video streaming service to the console. However, Netflix and Amazon are still absent. The lack of video streaming services on the console is becoming a sticking point for some, especially considering that the Nintendo Wii, which is 12 years old, offers Netflix, Hulu, Amazon video, and YouTube.

While TSMC's new 7nm is already quite popular, being the basis for several processors from companies AMD, Apple, and Huawei, even more are announcing that they too will be fabricating their products at TSMC using their new process. Nvidia, Qualcomm, and more will be ordering chips from TSMC in 2019.

Nvidia's entire mobile Pascal GeForce lineup has been Max-Q-ified conveniently before CES 2019. With seemingly no other major Pascal or Max-Q products to release for laptops, the time looks ripe for an official announcement about mobile Turing in the coming months.

Final Fantasy XV, particularly its benchmarking tool, has been a source of excitement for several months due to Turing performance leaks and DLSS support. However, Square Enix reports that they have now cancelled all future development for the game and will no longer deliver content they promised, including DLC, and perhaps DLSS support, modding tools, and a Vulkan API implementation.

Asus and AUO are leading the charge when it comes to narrow bezel 17.3-inch laptops. With the ROG GL704 and TUF FX705 now shipping, we can expect competing OEMs to expand their respective lineup of 17-inch laptops by next year at the earliest.

Sony has discretely launched its quietest PlayStation 4 Pro yet with the CUH-7200 that is only available as part of the Red Dead Redemption 2 bundle (CUH-7216B). The CUH-7200 brings a revised power supply and better acoustics with almost no cooling system whine or fan noise during gaming.

Frank Azor has just confirmed that the new top end hardware configurations for the Alienware m15 gaming notebook will arrive in about 60 days if everything goes as expected. This means that both the high- and low-end configurations will probably arrive at the same time, most likely by mid-January.

8BitDo has just released a wireless controller adapter for the Switch and Windows PCs. The GBros. Wireless Adapter for Switch allows gamers to connect Gamecube controllers, NES and SNES Classic controllers, and the Wii Classic controller to either the Nintendo Switch or a Windows device (running compatible software) wirelessly.

Pictures of the Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition have surfaced online. The exact specs of the card are still unavailable but we should be knowing more information close to the official announcement on November 15. The RX 590 is based on the new Polaris 30 architecture, which is being made in a 12nm process. Sapphire and other AIBs have retained the existing RX 580 designs for this refresh.

The plan was to show a short video presentation on the state of the Diablo 4 project right after the Diablo Immortal unveil, but Blizzard feared that fans would be disappointed even more. Diablo 4 is said to have been in development for 4 years, still the project has changed direction a few times and the current state is not entirely clear either.

Available for Microsoft Windows since October 2013, Path of Exile finally became available on Xbox One consoles in August 2017. Now, the PlayStation 4 version is finally (almost) ready to roll out, as it should arrive — if everything works as expected — by the end of next month. Sadly, cross-platform support is not in the cards yet.

Diablo Immortal, the latest title in the storied Diablo franchise, has hit a wall of criticism. Many gamers are upset over the mobile-only release, claiming that the game is a cheap cash-in and a re-skin of another mobile game that developer NetEase released a while ago. Whether or not these claims are true, the game has drawn the ire of Diablo fans around the world.