BMW has announced it has partnered with battery developer Solid Power, which was a company that was 'spun-out' of the University of Colorado Boulder, and has been working on solid state rechargeable batteries since 2012.

Doug Campbell, founder and CEO of Solid Power said in a statement: "Since the company's inception, the Solid Power team has worked to develop and scale a competitive solid state battery paying special attention to safety, performance and cost. Collaborating with BMW is further validation that solid state battery innovations will continue to improve electric vehicles".

Solid state batteries are the in-thing right now for EV battery companies and the future of autonomous cars, as they pack larger energy density, which extends the range of EVs, and they have much less chances of catching fire and exploding - while supporting rapid recharging.

Inno3D has stepped up into the cryptocurrency mining scene in a big way with the introduction of their new GPU Mining System P104-100 which packs up to 9 graphics cards based on the P104-100 GPU from NVIDIA.

Inside, the new Inno3D GPU Mining System packs a CPU controller card that includes an Intel Celeron 3865U mobile processor, 4GB DDR4-2133 SO-DIMM RAM, and a 64GB M.2 SSD.

As for the GPUs, Inno3D is using their P104-100 Crypto-Mining Accelerator which packs an "optimized GPU and circuit board for mining purposes" with Inno3D maximizing the GPU and memory clocks in order to provide maximum cryptocurrency mining performance.

Following the big Battlefront II controversy which rocked the foundations of EA's monetization strategy for the game, gamers have been taking aim at lootboxes in general and have pushed local governments to regulate them as gambling.

First the ESRB stated that lootboxes aren't gambling, then the ESA shortly followed. Now on the heels of big player pushback, New Zealand's gambling commission has sided in favor of big-name publishers. Contrary to popular belief from tons of gamers worldwide, the country's officials say that lootboxes in fact do not constitute gambling under their specific laws.

"While the payment of money for a loot box with the contents of which are determined by chance may appear to be gambling, the Darpartment is of the view that loot boxes do not meet the legal definition of gambling. The Department therefore has no ability to regulate this activity under the Gambling Act of 2003," New Zealand official Trish Millward wrote in a statement.

Starbreeze Studios and Overkill are collaborating on a big The Walking Dead online co-op shooter, and now the dev has released a few new tidbits about the title.

Back in May the devs unearthed tons of new details about their Walking Dead game, highlighting key features like the character-driven story that follows the comic series and the co-op action players can expect from the FPS. In fact, from the lingo thrown around in the latest interview with ComicsBeat, the game should be an online service-based game possibly with Payday 2-style microtransactions (or a season pass maybe).

"We started on the project in 2014, exploring technologies to allow us to build our unique vision for the game," game executive producer Saul Gascon told ComicsBeat. "Since then, the game has evolved and grown into something more engaging and better than what we originally planned. It's been great for us to have the time to see the game evolve to its current state. We look forward to showing it off next year, and get people excited for its fall 2018 release."

Eidos Montreal, the team that handles Deus Ex games, is pivoting towards online-based titles rather than singleplayer-only experiences.

In a time where online service games reign supreme it's only natural that more and more dev studios and publishers embrace the lucrative business model. It appears that Square Enix may have pushed Eidos Montreal into the online service game arena in a bid to raise long-term sales and revenue. The publisher has been gearing towards online infrastructures for a while now and has experimented with games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and the episodic Hitman game from 2016.

Within Eidos Montreal's new mission statement, the developer affirms it'll be propelling itself towards online gaming. This could fold neatly in with the reports of a new Guardians of the Galaxy game from the dev as the Deus Ex franchise is put on hold.

AMD might be an entire generation behind with their Vega GPU architecture, but their next-gen Navi GPU architecture is due sometime in late 2018 and has turned up as the elusive "Super Secret" ID in AMD's new driver.

In the latest AMD's drivers, there is code that reads "new_chip.gfx10.mmSUPER_SECRET.enable[0:0]". Someone spotted the new Super Secret ID in the latest Linux release of Radeon drivers, but it could be Team Red having some fun with us.

Navi could be the first GPU from AMD that would see a scalable GPU design being deployed, with many smaller Navi GPU dies interconnected through AMD's super-fast Infinity Fabric technology. This means AMD could drop GPU cores from each die, resulting in less cores per die but multiple dies added together would give us a Threadripper-like GPU design.

Obsidian has taken to their developers forums to address the question of whether micro-transactions will or will not be featured in the new Fallout Developers game, the simple answer which Obsidian them self gave is "no."

Obsidian has posted a short and sharp answer concerning the use of micro-transactions throughout their new game, they said that "No micro-transactions, of any kind, in our game" and continued by saying that their new found partnership with Take-Two Interactives Private Division has not influenced their creativity and vision of the game at all but instead benefited it greatly.

"We also wanted to say a word about our partnership with Private Division, our publisher on this title. Far from "pushing" us to put anything -- microtransactions or otherwise -- into our game, Private Division has been incredibly supportive of our vision, our creative freedom, and the process by which we work to make RPGs. They have been fantastic partners, and we are extremely excited to work with them through release, to put what we know is going to be an amazing game into as many hands as possible."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics over 3.8 million Americans operate vehicles as their way of income, truck driving being the largest profession employing about 1.7 million people. With these statistics in mind it can be easily said that when self-driving cars become the norm a very substantial amount of Americans will be effected and may result in a country wide job loss across any industry that is in need of a vehicle to operate.

A report from Intel has surfaced and the company has predicted at least $7 trillion will invested into the Passenger Economy by 2050.

The report reads: "Autonomous driving technology will enable a new "Passenger Economy" worth US $7 trillion - more than the projected 2017 GDPs of japan and Brazil combined."

Maximum Games and Iron Galaxy Games upcoming game 'Extinction' is scheduled for a release in Q1 2018, and has now been confirmed by the developer to not be featuring any micro-transactions, to go with this announcement the publisher has released a video showcasing the games skills and mechanics.

From the above video we can see that players will have the option of a variety of different skills and traits each benefiting the main character in different ways overall giving the edge in battle. It is explained that the foes you are versing will sometimes require players to unlock these trains is in order for a successful kill to take place, this system of making players flee from some foes means that each combat encounter will be different and challenging.

In attempt to save humanity from these massive monsters players will not only be using their unlocked traits and abilities to their advantage they will also be using the environment around them as much as they can. Sprinting across roof tops and climbing trees will become the norm as strategy with placement of your character will be detrimental to survival.

Google started a trade-in programing leading up to the launch of the Pixel 2 with a goal in mind of lowering the initial cost of their flagship phone. This new program is a great idea but complaints across the Pixel sub-reddit surfaced as people were not happy with the packaging Google was sending out for customers to send their phone back to receive the discount.

Until Google addressed this issue, plastic bubble wrap sleeves were sent out to customers that desired to trade-in their phone to acquire the discount but now Google has upgraded their packaging to new cardboard boxes lined with padded foam.

Feedback from the Pixel sub-reddit has generally be very good for this new change, with many people worried their phone would become damaged throughout the shipping process now can rest assured that they will receive their discount.