Gaming

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.

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.