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It looks like things are rather glim for Blizzard where according to a new report from Kotaku, the developer of massive fan favorites like Diablo, World Warcraft and Overwatch, is offering its developers money to leave the company as part of a company-wide cost-cutting program called "Career Crossroads".

Kotaku staff member Jason Schreier spoke with an anonymous Blizzard source that confirmed Career Crossroads, a program that allowed certain developers to leave the company with a chunk of cash in their pocket. This is a way for the developer to provide its staff with a way out of the company instead of being fired, or having to quit when they look around and see the place crumbling.

The insider said: "We have had a completely voluntary and long-standing program in various locations around the world that gives eligible staff the option to make the most of incentives while proactively pursuing other career opportunities. No one is required or encouraged to participate in the program, but for those who do, we work hard to make it generous".

They continued: "We've been offering it for many years-initially to some of our customer service teams, and we expanded it for a short period of time to a few other departments recently, given that it has proven to be a good way to help people who have been thinking about a career change or going back to school to get a head start on that path if that's what they want to do. While fewer than 10 people in the departments we recently expanded the program to have taken advantage of it, the general idea is that in addition to providing them with that opportunity, it also helps us give more advancement opportunities to other employees on the team when possible".

Jack Black is a freaking legend, involved in so many industries that has spanned Hollywood in both TV and movies, as well as the music industry witeh the greatest band of all time: Tenacious D.

Black has announced a new YouTube channel called "Jablinski" where he will be talking about all things games, food, and life. What I love is that Black's pinned comment from a couple of days ago is in reference to my favorite game of all time: Overwatch. Black said: "I just want to clarify that there is no production behind this. this is all my son. He's holding me hostage and I can't be tracer. help...".

It will be Black's son that is handling the production, directing and editing his Dad behind the scenes (which as a father of two, I think is super awesome). Black will upload a video every single week, and with his sense of humor and no shame, I think he'll go far - hell, he's already giving a dig to YouTube mega star PewDiePie. It has barely been a week and Jablinski has 576,000 subscribers already.

NVIDIA had a few rabbits that it pulled out of its hat during the big GeForce RTX launch in Germany was the OC Scanner API, something that opened up developers to build in automatic overclocking into software like MSI Afterburner.

Well, the latest version of MSI Afterburner has support for OC Scanner on not just Turing-based GPUs like the GeForce RTX series, but Pascal GPUs that opens it up to the huge range of GeForce GTX 10 series cards. MSI Afterburner v4.6.0 Beta 10 includes Pascal GPU support for OC Scanner, and can be downloaded right here.

NVIDIA was in the headlines over the Christmas break with a new GeForce RTX 2060 that will include not one, not two, but six different models. If this leak is correct, we're looking at an absolute landslide of RTX 2060 graphics cards to choose from, and it's going to get messy.

The latest leak on the GeForce RTX 2060 is from a new entry at the EEC (Eurasian Economic Commission) where three different SKUs are listed with two different memory technologies. There will reportedly be a 6GB, 4GB, and 3GB model of the GeForce RTX 2060 in both GDDR6 and GDDR5 models, making for six cards launching under the GeForce RTX 2060.

If this is true it's going to be very confusing for consumers to choose between the cards as there are six in the price range that the GeFOrce RTX 2060 will launch in. Testing performance between each exact card is going to be harder, as one card should be faster than another in a particular game and resolution, but lose against it in something else.

Sony's PlayStation Classic apparently isn't selling too well, and has been discounted quite a bit over the holidays.

The PlayStation Classic hasn't even been out a month yet and it's already dropped down to $59.99, about 40% below its original costly $99.99 MSRP. Retailers like BestBuy, Walmart, and Amazon are all selling the retro mini-console at a steep discount.

The system was widely panned by critics for its lackluster library of 20 pre-loaded games, almost half of which are PAL region based, and poor performance caused by frame-rate drops.

Free-to-play mobile games are fraught with ways to spend money, but like millions of parents out there, SuperData analyst Joost van Dreunen is concerned how this is affecting kids.

In a recent email newsblast, of which typically have wise insight on the games industry, SuperData's Joost van Dreunen had a few choice words about over-monetized mobile games. These titles, which typically target kids and younger gamers, help churn mobile gaming's billion-dollar wheel of microtransaction revenues with invasive, often manipulative tactics. Progress is often interrupted or even held ransom unless users spend a dollar here or two dollars here, creating a self-sustaining loop of instant gratification vs. having to wait (hence the "freemium isn't free" argument.).

"The current offering of kids games has a glaring problem in terms of how they connect kids with suitable content. The issue, as I see it, is two-fold: first, there's a sobering amount of overly aggressive in-app monetization going on," van Dreunen wrote in the newsletter.

"In most free-to-play games (looking at you, Minion Rush) there are way too many interruptions that force you to buy some meaningless currency to spend on things you don't need.

With the Witcher in full-scale production at the moment, insiders that are working along Justice League star, Henry Cavill have leaked some information regarding future seasons for the upcoming show.

The rumor is sourced by known DCEU insider, KC Walsh of Geeks WorldWide. Walsh has quite the track record for leaking information about upcoming TV shows and movies and the information that he has managed to gather for the 'Witcher' TV show is about how Netflix is overall feeling about its current production rate and quality.

According to Walsh, Netflix is reportedly "very happy with the Witcher and we could see multiple seasons greenlit before season one airs or shortly after." Walsh continues to explain that if Netflix does this then Henry Cavills schedule would be quite full for awhile, which in turn could take away from the potential of Cavill making a return as Superman. As you would expect, this is just a rumor so please take it with a grain of salt.

Intel is still over a year away from launching its discrete graphics card, promised in 2020, but between now and then we have a beautiful new render to take our minds off of the 'what ifs' about Intel Xe.

3D artist Cristiano Siqueira has teased us with other graphics card concept art, namely Radeon graphics cards, but now he has dipped his toes in the Intel Xe. Siqueira's concept art of the Intel Xe sees it taking design inspiration from the Intel Optane storage world, with a blower-style fan, LEDs, and a full cover backplate with slick Xe branding.

In this concept art, the Intel Xe graphics card dons an awesome black/silver look with blue LEDs that really do look great. I don't know why Intel wouldn't be taking this design into consideration when they begin the design process of Xe in 2020. The designs really are kick ass.

Discord secures a big $150 million investment to help bolster its storefront plans.

The PC game storefront wars have begun. Industry titans like Epic Games (Fortnite) and Discord (the massively popular social app) are now opening up their own digital game stores to compete with Steam. While it doesn't have Fortnite's billions, Discord is a strong force and just raised a substantial $150 million in capital, bringing the company's valuation to over $2 billion. Discord has managed to raise $200 million for its various business ventures in 2018.

Multiple companies contributed to the funding round including Chinese juggernaut Tencent, and other equity firms like IVP, Index Ventures, Greenoaks Capital, Firstmark, and Technology Opportunity Partners. Discord aims to use this revenue to bolster its digital store plans, which aims to attract developers with a substantial 90-10 earnings split in devs' favor.

Microsoft is working on multiple new Xbox consoles in its next-gen Scarlett family of systems, including a mid- and enthusiast-grade console. But what kind of performance can we expect? Maybe 4K 240FPS?

Official details about Microsoft's new next-gen Xbox family are scarce. Sources say the higher-end system will be outfitted with AMD's powerful new Navi GPU and Zen 2 CPU architectures to surpass the Xbox One X's 4K 60FPS perf, similar to the tech that should power Sony's PlayStation 5. How much more powerful will the Scarlett Xbox system be than the Xbox One X? No one knows for sure, but one analyst tossed around an interesting figure: 4K 240FPS.

In a recent interview with Gamingbolt, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter discussed the new Xbox family and attached huge perf to the top-tier model. "So I think there will be a streaming device, like a $100 Xbox console that doesn't run in 4K or 240 frames per second. And then I think there will be a more expensive $400 console that supports 4K, 240 FPS, virtual reality. I don't know if there will be 'models'. I don't think you're going to get completely different devices," Pachter said in the interview.