Latest News - Page 1202

NVIDIA teased us with the new monster flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti reveal at CES 2022, but then nothing... literally nothing since.

I exclusively revealed production issues on January 14, where an industry source of mine told me that NVIDIA demanded that AIB partners "halt production" on the new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, and we still don't know why. That doesn't mean that AIB partners are sitting around on their hands, they could've made a few... or they'd at least know what the coolers will look like, as they're sitting around doing nothing without GPUs and VRAM underneath.

Even though there's a GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 Ti EX Gamer teased in Vietnamese retailer Minh An Computer, with a pre-order listing price of 86,990,000 VND which works out to around $3840. That's a lot of Benjamins, but hey... what did you expect for a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti 24GB graphics card? I think we'll see the price even higher than this, and not many on the market at all... if NVIDIA ever gets around to releasing it.

NVIDIA is going to be one of, if not the biggest GPU ever made when it unleashes its next-gen Hopper GPU architecture -- with fresh rumors teasing it rocks a Godzilla-sized 140 billion transistors -- 2.6x the transistors of the Ampere-based GA100 GPU.

The new rumors are coming from Chiphell, which states one of the flagship NVIDIA Hopper GPUs will have a huge 140 billion transistors, and be made on TSMC 5nm. We might see a monster monolithic design in the GH100 -- but also a multi-chip module (MCM) design in the GH102 -- with 140 billion transistors somewhere in the 5nm mix.

NVIDIA's new Hopper GPU architecture whether it be in monolithic or MCM GPU design, will be going up against AMD's next-gen Aldebaran GPU -- a new MCM-based GPU with up to 128GB of HBM2e memory and on TSMC 6nm -- as well as Intel's upcoming Ponte Vecchio GPU (which will use an Intel 7 base GPU tile, TSMC N7 for Xe-Link, and TSMC N5 for the compute tile) with up to 128GB of HBM2e memory.

We thought that the new ASUS ROG Thor II PSUs would be pumping out 600W over their new 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power connector, but it looks like that 600W is now 450W.

In what seems to be some clarification on the PCIe Gen5 12-pin power connector and the 12+4-pin version, is the full spec cable with 12 pins and 4 data signal paths. These additional pins are actually required if you want to be included with the stamp of approval from PCI-SIG for the "12VHPWR High Power Connector (H+)" standard.

You'll need that big beefy PCIe 5.0 power connector for a next-gen GPU, or NVIDIA's maybe-maybe-not GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card if it ever sees the light of day. It was previously thought you'd be able to drive up to 600W of power through the PCIe 5.0 power connector, but ASUS confirmed the 12-pin PCIe 5.0 power cable "can pipe up to 600W of power to PCIe Gen 5.0 graphics cards. Get ready for the future of power delivery".

The Red Dead Redemption franchise has now sold-in more than 65 million copies worldwide.

Take-Two recently gave updates on Red Dead Redemption's sales numbers that shows consistent quarter-over-quarter growth. Franchise sales have now surpassed 65 million, with RDR2 at 42 million units and the original RDR hitting about 23 million copies.

Although Red Dead Redemption 2 pales in comparison to GTA V, the dramatic western has sold roughly 1-2 million copies per quarter since release. Q3'21 saw the biggest jump in sales with 3 million and Take-Two attributes the spike to holiday sales and price markdowns.

Rockstar's new re-release proves that nostalgia leads to heavy sales--especially in one of the most powerful franchises of all time.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy- The Definitive Edition has sold about 10 million copies to date. The data inadvertently comes from new Take-Two figures that say the GTA franchise has sold 370 million.

GTA V is currently at 160 million, and our previous figures show GTA had sold 360 million copies as of last quarter. So that leaves about 10 million for the remaster collection considering there aren't any other retail copies of GTA currently in mass circulation. That's a respectable 30% of GTA V's staggering 32.5 million copies sold at launch.

Grand Theft Auto V has now officially out-sold major franchises like Assassin's Creed.

Today Take-Two Interactive confirmed GTA V is still a sales monster. The mega-hit sensation has sold 160 million copies since releasing in 2013. That's more copies than the entire franchise sales of Resident Evil (123 million) and Assassin's Creed (155 million).

"Since its launch in 2013, Grand Theft Auto V has remained within the top five best-selling titles of each calendar year across the Americas including the U.S. and over 50 major worldwide territories," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said.

Sony's latest Q3 earnings show that digital absolutely dominates physical game sales.

Like Microsoft with Game Pass, PlayStation also thrives on its bustling digital ecosystem of products, services, and engagement. Sony's PlayStation division generated $4 billion from video games in Q3'21, but the overwhelming majority of this revenue was from digital channels.

In fact, 94% of all games revenue was from digital. Sony's Games & Network Services segment made $4.012 billion from games in Q3'21. The overwhelming majority of that, $3.755 billion, was from digital software and add-ons. Physical made just $257 million in sales revenues.

PlayStation Plus subscribers hit a record 48 million in holiday 2021, but most PlayStation gamers aren't subscribed to the service.

Sony's latest financials show the substantial growth of PS Plus and may give a taste on what's to come with PlayStation Spartacus. The service achieved 48 million paying subscribers as of Q3'21, a new all-time high for PS Plus, but most users are still non-subscribers and still enjoy access in games like Fortnite, Warzone, and Rocket League.

Using numbers provided by Sony, we've charted some of the major trends with PlayStation Plus over the last few years. We've been able to calculate the number of subscribers vs non-subscribers by subtracting PS Plus numbers from total MAUs. Then we compared PS Plus subscriber percentages to total MAUs to get a better idea of the overall percentage and quantity of subscribers versus users.

Sony's PlayStation platform makes more money from microtransactions than it does from full games.

Like most modern day games companies, Sony generates far more revenues from live services, microtransactions, and DLC than it does from actual video game sales. Based on data provided by Sony and charted by us, the company has consistently delivered more revenue from add-on content than it does from physical and digital game sales combined.

In the holiday 2021 period, Sony generated $2.18 billion from add-on content, which is typically from heavy-hitting third-party games like GTA Online (which helped GTA V make over $6.4 billion to date), Fortnite (which has made Sony $6 billion as of 2020), Apex Legends (will make $2 billion in two years), and Call of Duty Warzone (helped push 2020's COD revenues to a record $3 billion).

The public has put recently put a spotlight on Joe Rogan following some of his comments on the coronavirus vaccine, health regarding COVID-19, and racial slurs.

Individuals have voiced their concerns over the host of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast being able to speak freely on his podcast about sensitive topics such as COVID-19 and vaccines as it could spread misinformation. Individuals unhappy with Rogan's content have publicly called for Spotify to remove Rogan and his podcasts from the platform.

A billion-year-old black rock will be going up for auction and is expected to be purchased for more than $6 million.

The extremely expensive rock is a 555.5-carat black diamond that belonged to its owner for more than twenty years. According to the BBC, the black diamond is called "The Enigma" and is expected to be purchased for more than $6 million at a Sotheby's auction in London by the time the online bidding closes at the end of this week. Notably, black diamonds are some of the toughest forms of diamond and are usually anywhere between 2.6 to 3.2 billion years old.

The Enigma is a carbonado, which is an extremely rare gem that has only been discovered in Brazil and the Central African Republic. As for the origins of black diamonds, geologists haven't yet garnered a unanimous theory about where they come from. So far, geologists know that black diamonds contain osbornite, a mineral that is only found in meteorites, which leads some geologists to believe that they could form at impacts sites where a large asteroid has struck Earth.

Jeff Bezos' $450 million superyacht is going to cause a historic World War II steel bridge to be dismantled so it can get out to sea.

According to a report from The Guardian, the historic steel frame bridge in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam is to be partially dismantled in order to let a 417 foot-long superyacht called "Y721", constructed for Jeff Bezos, to pass out into the sea. The superyacht costs $485 million and is too large to get past the Koningshaven Bridge that was built in 1927, and rebuilt after the Nazis bombed it during World War II. The bridge operated until 1994, where it was then declared a national monument, with the city stating that it would never be dismantled again.

However, that doesn't seem to be the case, with the mayor of the city now pointing towards the economic benefits created by the construction of the superyacht. Additionally, the local council reassured individuals in the Netherlands angered by the decision to partly dismantle the bridge that it would be rebuilt exactly how it was before Bezos' superyacht began construction. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

A team of researchers has identified evidence that suggests a comet only narrowly missed Earth, but still managed to make a devastating impact on the surface of the planet.

A new study published in Scientific Reports hones in on a comet that passed Earth sometime during 252 and 383 BC. Researchers believe that the comet passed close enough to Earth that debris entered Earth's atmosphere and was observed by several different civilizations at the time, including Chinese astronomers, the Miami tribe, and the Shawnee tribe. The debris from the comet exploded over the Ohio River Valley region. The event was described differently by each civilization, but all fit the description of comet debris.

The team of researchers found evidence for the event at 11 sites that belong to the indigenous Ohio Hopewell culture as 9,200 square miles would have been set on fire and leveled from the explosion. In 1908 comet debris exploded over a Russian forest and wiped out 830 square miles of forest, this was called the Tunguska event. The comet debris that exploded over the Ohio River Valley impacted ten times the area and would have caused widespread suffering for people living in the affected area.

A new study has found that SpaceX's Starlink satellites are causing an increasing number of problems for astronomers.

The new study was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and claims that SpaceX's Starlink satellites are causing streaks of reflected sunlight to appear in a growing number of astronomers' photographs. Currently, SpaceX has around 1,900 of its Starlink satellites in orbit, and the US Federal Communications Commission has approved the use of 12,000 satellites.

The researchers behind the study found that in Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) images that were taken during the night, there was a 35-fold increase in the number of sunlight streaks caused by Starlink satellites. Comparatively, in late 2019 less than 0.5% of ZTF images contained Starlink streaks, and as of August 2021, 18% of the images were found to be contaminated with streaks.

SpaceX recently launched the COSMO-SkyMed Earth observation satellite, and incredible footage of the rocket separating during the flight has been captured and published for the public to enjoy.

The above video has been posted onto the SpaceX YouTube channel and showcases the company's workhorse launch vehicle, the Falcon 9. The footage shows the Falcon 9 using its first-stage booster to push the rocket's payload higher into Earth's atmosphere at the ridiculous speed of more than 3,700 miles per hour. After the first stage has completed its burn, it separates from the rocket and makes its way back down to Earth.

During its descent, the rocket orientates itself to safely land so it can be reused, saving millions in manufacturing. After the first stage separates, the second stage ignites its Merlin boosters to continue the rest of the journey. Notably, the video showcases the payload firing, which is the "shell" of the rocket separating, allowing the payload to be dropped off at the requested altitude.

The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) space has been plagued with projects that are purely created to scam investors, and now Mark Cuban's "NFT company" has been caught up in promoting these illegitimate projects.

The claims come from Twitter user Space Cowboy, who publicly claimed that the verified Instagram account @NFT, which Cuban officially backs, promoted shady projects that have resulted in investors losing their money. Cowboy claims in the Twitter thread that the Instagram account was charging developers $100,000+ for promotional posts that were not disclosed as advertising to the Instagram accounts followers.

The NFT Instagram account managed to obtain 1.7 million followers, and after noticing the immense growth, Space Cowboy decided to look into its authenticity. According to YouTube investigator Coffeezilla, who recently exposed a YouTuber and Streamer for scamming his audience out of $500,000, states that he impersonated a "pretend NFT project promoter" to talk to the team behind the @NFT Instagram account where he learned that the team was charging creators $25,000 a post, with five posts minimum.

Candy Crush developer King has consistently made more revenues than Blizzard over the last 3 years.

Activision's latest financials give key insight on its three business segments: Activision, Blizzard, and King. Over the years the revenue pecking order has roughly matched up with its ABK namesake. Activision typically makes the most revenues thanks to annualized Call of Duty games, deferrals, and strong monetization, followed by Blizzard with its live games, and King usually ends up third place with its mighty F2P empire.

However Blizzard's presence has slowly fallen year-over-year. Now Candy Crush-maker King is overtaking Blizzard in terms of revenues. In fact, King has made more yearly revenues than Blizzard for the 3 consecutive years across 2019, 2020, and 2021.

From the NES to the Switch, Nintendo has sold over 5 billion games in the last 39 years.

Nintendo is one of the most powerful forces in the entertainment industry. Its booming games hardware business has delivered over $200 billion in revenues since the NES released in 1983. Other figure are just as surprising: Nintendo has shipped over 814 million devices in the last 39 years (it sold over sold 533 million handhelds alone).

Software is where the real numbers lie. Nintendo has sold an incredible 5.318 billion games to date across all of its reported hardware lines. That includes all systems from the original NES to the DS and the newer Switch.

Activision-Blizzard made more money from microtransactions in 2021 than it ever has before.

2021 was Activision-Blizzard's best year ever. The company delivered all-time highs in net revenues ($8.804 billion), operating income ($3.62 billion), and a whopping $2.7 billion in net income. Last year also delivered a bounty in microtransaction cash.

The company generated a staggering $5.1 billion from in-game purchases across its live service titles, which includes DLC, World of Warcraft subscriptions, and of course lootboxes and cosmetics. These purchases made up 61% of Activision-Blizzard's total $8.354 billion net bookings.

2021 was the best year ever for Activision-Blizzard with record-breaking net revenues, income, and in-game net bookings.

Activision-Blizzard's games business is remarkably resilient. Despite ongoing controversy from sexual harassment lawsuits, the major delay of big games like Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV, not releasing very may games, and a drop in Call of Duty game sales, Activision just reported its best year ever.

2021 full of milestone, mostly thanks to online-driven live services, digital content, and a hefty $950 million deferral + distribution deal stream. Activision-Blizzard hit new high points in 2021 across pretty much every trackable earnings metric.