Gaming

It has been reported that EA Dice is working on a prototype battle royale mode for the upcoming title Battlefield V. The Battlefield series has been a massive success over the years for Electronic Arts, and it makes good business sense for the game developer to work on a battle royale mode and try to capture some of the market before it inevitably becomes saturated.

The next gen Geforce GTX 1180 GPUs from Nvidia could end up 50% faster than the GTX 1080, based on extrapolated data from the Volta architecture. Previously rumored to be released in July this year, the GTX 1180 might get a US$700 MSRP, but this could lead to more availability issues caused by cryptominers.

Despite all the bad publicity ZTE is getting these days, the Chinese company is well on its way to officially reveal the Nubia Red Magic gaming smartphone on April 19. The latest leaked picture from Weibo reveals a 2:1 Infinity Display without the dreaded notch, as well as an RG LED strip on the back. This model is rumored to be powered by the Snapdragon 845 coupled with 8 GB of RAM.

AMD's Scott Herkelman took to pen a blog post regarding AMD's stance in providing choice to the PC gamer. Although his post does not directly mention the controversial NVIDIA GeForce Partner Program, there is enough information in the post to convey that AMD will not take NVIDIA's route in the garb of ensuring a great PC gaming experience.

There is a rumor that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will not feature a single-player campaign. This may come as a surprise to the series’ legions of fans as the games have always featured a variety of campaigns for a lone player to battle their way through. Another report suggests that the latest CoD title may offer a battle royale mode.

Taiwanese computer manufacturer Asus has announced a rebranding for the AMD graphics cards that were previously part of the Republic of Gamers (ROG) line-up. The new name for the series is AREZ, which derives from Ares, the Greek god of war. The new AREZ-branded cards are expected to be available from May onwards.

In the wake of AMD making its Ryzen 2 platform official, MSI has released new motherboards based on the new X470 chipset. Features common to all these boards include support for two M.2 slots with support for PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs, four DIMM slots, MSI Mystic Light RGB LED control software, and proprietary hardware utilities.

Three “clues” have been unearthed that all seemingly point toward the development of Watch Dogs 3. Watch Dogs was released by Ubisoft in 2014 and was a huge commercial success. The sequel landed in 2016 and also received favorable reviews. Unsurprisingly, Ubisoft has not commented on the rumors in regard to a possible third title in the series.

British tabloid newspaper The Daily Star has reported that Sony may be planning to discontinue the PlayStation Vita handheld game console, possibly this year. The device was launched in 2011, and although it’s believed it has sold 10 to 15 million units, it just hasn’t managed to keep up with the fierce competition from Nintendo.

After Razer and Xiaomi, Asus could become the third big brand to hop on the gaming smartphone bandwagon. The rumor has been around for a while, but the device did not arrive at MWC 2018 as mentioned. Now, the company's CEO Jerry Shen also confirmed that a gaming phone by Asus can be expected, but did not reveal any details.

The new God of War game has come with all the bell and whistles associated with games in the series. Reviews have been exceedingly glowing, and the game currently ranks second on Metacritic. Sadly, like all other God of War games, it's a PlayStation exclusive.

The i7-8086K would be a limited anniversary edition marking 40 years since Intel first launched the 8086 16-bit microprocessor. Spec-wise, it is very similar to an i7-8700K, but the base and boost clocks got bumped to 4 GHz and 5.1 GHz, respectively. With proper cooling, the i7-8086K could be overclocked easily to 5.0 GHz and beyond.

The Android 8.1 Oreo OTA update for the Razer Phone has started its rollout earlier today. Its list of features includes multiple optimizations, an improved visual layout, as well as the latest security patches and bug fixes. The update rolls out in stages and all Razer Phone users should get the new firmware within the coming weeks.

A patent that is over one-year old reveals what appears to be a Switch tablet without the controllers, but it can also show a way to play games on more than a single display, similar to the Sifteo Cubes "intelligent game system" which has been discontinued more than three years ago.

Nvidia's voluntary-but-shady program that puts financial preferences for its members over non-members has turned away two of the largest OEMs in the world due to what the source claims to be "likely illegal" practices. The chipmaker has yet to provide any direct comments surrounding the details of its GeForce Partner Program.

The AMD Ryzen 2700X was given a test drive ahead of its official announcement and the CPU has managed to put up an impressive show. The Ryzen 2700X has managed to beat or come in close proximity to the Intel Core i7-8700K in gaming benchmarks and was absolutely stellar in multi-threaded performance.

Sega has announced its classic adventure games Shenmue and Shenmue II will be made available for the PC sometime this year. Shenmue was originally released for the Dreamcast console in 1999, with a sequel coming out shortly afterwards, in 2001. A further sequel, which received over US$6 million in funding through a Kickstarter project, is also expected later on this year.

The Japanese video-game developer Sega has unveiled a Mega Drive Mini console at the recent Sega Fes 2018 event. The original Sega Mega Drive (known as the Genesis in North America) was released in Japan in 1988, and it ended up being immensely popular with over 30 million consoles sold worldwide. The micro-console is expected to be released later this year.

Move over, Hades Canyon. There's a new Kaby Lake G mini PC in town. The Beelink KB-G1 Game is an ultra-SFF desktop sporting Intel's new Core i7-8809G CPU with RX Vega M graphics. Although the KB-G1 Game is slightly thicker then the Hades Canyon NUC, it can support up to four displays at one time.

AMD has officially launched its 2nd Gen Ryzen Series high-performance chips for desktop computers. While faster acrosss the range, AMD has also been aggressive with its pricing strategy, cutting prices and putting further pressure on Intel in the process.

A report from Kotaku about the video-game company Hangar 13 has mentioned the development of a new BioShock game. BioShock Infinite was the last release in the popular series from 2K Games, and that title came out in 2013. There has been no official announcement about the game yet, which is apparently codenamed “Parkside.”

According to rumors, AMD's Navi-based GPUs, which are slotted for release in 2019, may compete with Nvidia's GTX 1080 but not supersede it. This could spell trouble for AMD; the GPU shortage caused by the cryptomining craze particularly hit AMD's stock, and the lack of a competitive GPU next year may cause a loss of market share.

The Black Shark gaming phone comes with totally unique features that include a 550 nits 5.99-inch display, special detachable game controller, sturdy back design for improved grip, watercooling system that allows the SoC to run at lower temperatures and thus avoiding throttling, plus stereo speakers that emulate surround sound acoustics.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has held its annual award ceremony for the video-game industry. The 2018 event was a great success for Nintendo, which took home three prizes, and for the dark fantasy action game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which scooped up five of the prestigious awards. The Best Game category was won by What Remains of Edith Finch.

The American video-game developer behind Destiny 2, Bungie, has announced the release date for the second expansion to the online first-person shooter. Warmind will be released on May 8, at the same time as the start of Season Three of the game, and a reveal stream on Twitch will begin on April 24. Destiny 2 was released in September 2017 and the first expansion, Curse of Osiris, was released shortly afterwards.

The well-known video-game tracking website Steam Spy will be shutting down after Valve announced changes to Steam’s privacy settings. The specific change that has affected Steam Spy’s operations is the default hiding of a user’s game library. Steam Spy scraped data from public profiles on the software distribution platform to estimate overall game sales.

Exklim has launched a kickstarter campaign for their ultra-portable take on external GPU's. Equipped with a GTX 1050 MXM card and running solely on power provided by the Thunderbolt 3 connection removes the need for additional power supplies and makes this a solution that can really be tucked into a laptop bag. The eX Core is still in the kickstarter stage and the marketing material leans towards promising more than the device might be capable of, but nevertheless it is an interesting product that is worth keeping an eye on.

According to PCPowerPlay, Dell's marketing for its new laptops in China involves hailing the ability of the devices to enhance cheating in PUBG. Players in the region have become notorious for their blackhat gameplay, so this isn't surprising. Update: Dell has issued an official statement on the issue.

AMD has released OEM-specific variants of RX 500 GPUs for both desktop and mobile. Dubbed the RX 500X, this is a simple re-badging exercise for OEMs help in advertising new systems. The RX 500X series are exactly the same as their corresponding base parts but OEMs can tune their clock speeds for thermal and power reasons.

The refreshed G75 Titan gaming laptops are the only MSI series to pack the high-end i9 hexa-core mobility CPUs. The rather bulky chassis feature large intakes/exhausts and gamers can choose among several configurations that can include the more affordable i7 hexa-core CPUs coupled with 16/32 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM, GTX 1070/1080 GPUs, and a choice between FHD 3 ms TN or 4K 17.3-inch panels.

The Pavilion Power series is now the more aptly-named Pavilion Gaming series to tackle on the newly announced mainstream Dell G gaming series. Currently, SKUs are limited to a single 15.6-inch chassis but with a very wide range of CPU, GPU and display options up to the Core i7-8750H with Optane memory and GTX 1060 Max-Q graphics for $1020 USD.

HP has announced a revamp to its Pavilion Power Desktop lineup. The new generation is christened Pavilion Gaming and comes in two chassis options with options of the latest Intel 8th generation hexa-core 'Coffee Lake-H- series or AMD 2nd generation Ryzen CPUs along with options of a GeForce GTX 1060/GTX 1080 or a Radeon RX 580 GPU. These PCs are aimed at those who value both content creation and gaming on a budget and feature a stand-out design language.

The inexpensive FX504 gaming notebook comes equipped with a Coffee Lake-H CPU and GTX 1050 GPU for a starting price of only $700 USD. The system is intended to complement the recently revealed mainstream Zephyrus GM501 and enthusiast ROG G703 that are also shipping with Intel 8th gen Core ix CPUs.

A new trailer has been released for Overkill’s The Walking Dead and it certainly looks impressive. The cinematic clip focuses on Maya, who will be one of the playable characters in the game. Overkill Software announced the title back in 2014 and it was originally scheduled to appear in 2016. The current release date for the first-person shooter is fall 2018.

There have been rumors in regard to Sony releasing the PlayStation 5 either later this year or in 2019. However, a number of sources speaking to Jason Schreier of Kotaku have poured cold water on the idea of a PS5 console being available within the rumored timeframe. More conservative suggestions have focused on a release date for the much-awaited device occurring in 2020.

The GPU maker is locking certain functions on the Vega M platform that are otherwise commonly found on all other Vega GPUs including DirectX 12.1 support. In fact, the feature set of Vega M has more in common with the previous-generation Polaris platform rather than the current Vega family.

Three South Korean video-game developers have been severely punished by the country’s Fair Trade Commission in regard to the use of loot boxes in some of their games. Nexon, Netmarble, and NextFloor are the companies facing fines totaling the equivalent of US$945,000. The fines were imposed because of an apparent lack of information offered by the firms involved.

The Fermi microarchitecture was first released 8 years ago, and was used in the 400, 500, 600 series on desktop and mobile, as well as the 700 and 800 series mobile cards. Nvidia has now stopped support for these GPUs, with a full list of affected cards in the article.

Intel is said to be working on a discrete GPU solution that will be targeted at PC gamers. The new discrete GPU is being headed up by former AMD Radeon Technologies chief Raja Koduri, lending credibility to the rumor.

For a limited time Paradox Interactive is offering Crusader Kings II for free (yours to keep). CK2 is a grand strategy game set in medieval Europe where players use warfare, assassinations, and strategic marriages to attempt to build a dynasty that spans over hundreds of years.

PC game retail joins peripherals, laptops, and smartphones in Razer's product line up as they diversify their portfolio. The store sells legitimate keys that can be redeemed on other platforms such as Valve's Steam and Ubisoft's Uplay. There is a strong focus on rewards/loyalty points with access to exclusives and discounts on Razer hardware acting as draw cards.

GPU prices dropped considerably throughout the month of March due to a series of factors that include: Amazon and Newegg refreshing their supplies more often, rumors about a possible July launch of the GTX 11 series and a late 2018 AMD Navi launch, plus Bitmain's announcement of the E3 Ethereum ASIC that could spell the end of GPU-based cryptomining.

The teased silhouette of the Black Shark presents rounded edges and a power or volume button on the side, but the previously rumored directional gamepad is most likely not going to get included. Xiaomi confirmed that the Black Shark will be unveiled on April 13 there will be variants with storage capacities ranging between 64 - 256 GB.

Pictures of Asus' X470 portfolio have surfaced online. The X470 chipset brings support for the upcoming Ryzen 2 CPUs, which are based on the Zen+ microarchitecture. While they look similar to the last generation X370 offerings, all of them now sport two M.2 slots and support for AMD's XFR 2.0 and Precision Boost 2.0 technologies. The new X470 boards also have support for the faster DDR4 3466 MHz RAM and are fully backward compatible with the first generation Ryzen CPUs.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced a launch date for the next World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth. The expansion will be released on August 14 and is currently available for pre-order. The standard edition of the latest WoW title is priced at US$49.99 and there is also a digital deluxe edition available for US$69.99.