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Kingston has announced that it has sent overclockable DDR5 memory modules to its motherboard partners, so that the qualification process of next-gen DDR5 memory can begin.

The company has engineered its high-end DDR5 modules with a preset XMP profile, but Kingston is also letting motherboard makers manually adjust the power management integrated circuit (PMIC) beyond the actual DDR5 spec with 1.1V which allows the ramp up of DDR5 memory speeds through overclocking.

Kingston says that it expects to ship its DDR5 solutions in Q3 2021, while it explains the memory validation process as requiring "cooperation of the entire computing ecosystem and Kingston has forged close ties with the leading motherboard manufacturers and chipset makers throughout its 33-year history. This step continues the critical process of bringing leading high-performance and overclockable memory solutions to market later this year".

Intel is getting awfully close to revaling its first gaming-focused GPU ever -- let's forget about the Intel i740 as it wasn't technically a GPU -- with Intel DG2 being "right around the corner" says Intel Senior Game Developer Relations Engineer Pete Brubaker.

Brubaker said it pretty plainly in his tweet, which was linking to a job posting by Intel which is looking for a new Senior Game Developer Relations Engineer. In the tweet, Brubaker said: "Come work with us at Intel! DG2 is right around the corner, it's about to get exciting".

This marks an exciting turn for Intel and its upcoming Xe-HPG gaming GPU, with Intel actively working with game developers on getting their games optimized for Intel's future graphic cards. Intel DG2 is a big step up from the DG1 which was effectively just a developer kit.

Activision expects 2021 to be its best year ever with $8.37 billion in net revenues. 2022 could be even better.

Activision teases a significant "step change" for financial growth in 2022 that could see multiple high-profile games launching during the year. In the company's recent Q1 2021 earnings call, Activision execs lay out a significant pipeline for 2022 and beyond. Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 are listed for projects in this timeline, and although no release windows were revealed, Activision says it expects a substantial earnings change in 2022. This could indicate that both of these games could release in 2022 alongside a mainline Call of Duty release.

"We are making great progress on our pipeline which includes key content that we expect to deliver another step change in financial performance in 2022 as well as unannounced initiatives that we expect to drive longer-term growth for the company," said Activision-Blizzard's new Chief Financial Officer Armin Zerza.

Saturday Night Live will be hosted by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk aka The Dogefather this weekend on May 8, which has not only the cast of SNL triggered but many other people around the world.

First off, the official SNL account on Twitter tweeted out an image of Musk at Studio 8 ahead of his hosting on May 8 where he is in front of a stack of paperwork. I doubt this is a script since Musk in a devilish delivery said he wanted to see "just how live Saturday Night Live really is" -- and more NDA paperwork that he would be required to sign.

Elon quickly retweeted it without adding anything to it, so it was just an image share of him at Studio 8H with Saturday Night Live, preparing for his hosting on May 8.

If you purchased Dogecoin at any point before February or March 2021, then you'd be one happy person right now -- with the people's crypto (in Elon Musk's own words) skyrocketing towards the moon (and hopefully, beyond).

But now we have Galaxy Digital CEO and founder Mike Novogratz speaking with CNBC on Wednesday, with the topic of cryptocurrency Dogecoin which is up around 19,000% since this time last year. Novogratz told CNBC: "When you think about the whole spirit of what this crypto revolution is, there's something pure in what dogecoin has done. It's a little bit of a middle finger to the system. People are unhappy with the current financial system. They just are".

He continued: "It would be very dangerous to be short, I'll tell you that much. I'm not participating on the long side. I think it's dangerous because once that enthusiasm dies, if it dies, you could have a long way down. But I don't want to discredit. It's shocking that it happened".

The new Battlefield is so close to being official revealed -- at least with its first teaser trailer, any moment now. The hype is pretty real, with industry insider Tom Henderson ramping up the hype engines to 11 with a flurry of tweets.

The first tweet from Henderson is a track by 2EWI feat. Ali Christenhusz called Run Baby Run, which is funny because I've had that track in my "Best Playlist Ever" on Spotify for quite a while now, just above the Battlefield theme music that I still to this day love. Listen to the track because it's pretty kick ass -- Henderson said "this is it", this is the Battlefield "reveal tune".

The next tweet is from Back to the Future, where at the start of the first movie when Marty tweaks the OVERDRIVE dial right up to and past 100. What a second tweet... and then the third:

Nintendo's FY2021 has broken records for profits, operating income, hardware and software sales thanks to astronomical overperformance of its Switch platform.

Nintendo just enjoyed its best yearly earnings since its platform boom back in 2009. The company's FY2021 results saw a whopping $16 billion in net sales revenues, second only to FY2009's DS and Wii dream-team earnings. FY2021 broke new ground for operating profit with over $6 billion (+81%) earned, and net profits that hit a new all-time high of $4.53 billion (+85%).

The results were driven by hardware and software sales surges during one of the most unprecedented demand periods in the last decade. Consumers turned towards gaming as they sheltered at home against the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of people wanted to buy Switch hardware and demand led to massive stock restrictions.

KIOXIA will be detailing their next-gen, flash-based SSDs for enterprise and data center markets at the Dell Technologies World 2021 event this week.

KIOXIA has sponsored the Dell Technologies World event for 5 years in a row as a diamond-level conference sponsor, collaborating with Dell for many years making the "best-in-class storage solutions that redefine what is possible". KIOXIA will be showcasing how its next-gen SSDs can open up a new world of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and VMware vSAN™ solutions.

Where the majority of focus from KIOXIA will be placed is into the power and performance that its new PCIe 4.0-based SSDs plugged into Dell EMC PowerEdge servers provides.

Nintendo's digital earnings surge thanks to COVID-19 quarantines and record-breaking game sales across its Switch platform.

Digital gaming has surged as worldwide countries sheltered in place against the coronavirus pandemic. Nintendo in particular saw a boom in digital games earnings; Nintendo generated a whopping $3.2 billion from digital game sales, subscriptions, DLC, and microtransactions on the eShop in FY2021, up nearly 70% from last year.

Nintendo sold 230.88 million Switch games in FY2021, a new yearly record with every quarter consecutively setting new all-time highs. 42.8% of total game sales were digital, or 98.81 million, a new high point. Nintendo says that nearly 80% of game sales were first-party titles, or roughly 183 million games.

I just finished writing an article about AMD and its RDNA 3 GPUs taking the performance crown from NVIDIA in 2022, with the star of that show being the purported Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card.

AMD's new Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card is getting some more solid rumors from Tom at Moore's Law is Dead, who says in his new video that the Radeon RX 7900 XT "should at a minimum be 40% better than the RX 6900 XT" and that "Ray Tracing & Geometry Performance should get a decent uplift per DCU".

The new RDNA 3-powered Radeon RX 7900 XT is where AMD could actually take the performance crown from whatever NVIDIA has at the time from Ampere + Samsung to battle the RDNA 3 + TSMC GPU from AMD. NVIDIA will at most have an Ampere refresh, but the Samsung 8nm node is holding them back -- AMD however, will be sliding into the next-gen 5nm node from TSMC on top of the next-gen RDNA 3 architecture.

AMD's next-gen RDNA 3 architecture has been in the headlines quite a lot this past week, with rumors flying hot and fast -- but now we have some solidification on those hot AF rumors.

Our mate Tom from Moore's Law is Dead has published a new video that says that his sources have said the current rumors of RDNA 3 being 3x faster than AMD's current RDNA 2-based flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT are "utter bullshit" and that his sources told him in "harsh terms" that the performance numbers are "horse shit".

We're being told to expect at least a 40% performance uplift from RDNA 3 over RDNA 2, and that it should be 3x faster -- than RDNA, not RDNA 2 -- something AMD itself has said for a number of years now.

Xbox consoles aren't profitable, but Nintendo Switch consoles sure are.

Yesterday, Microsoft exec Lori Wright confirmed no Xbox console has ever been sold at a profit (Xbox is however about to make more money than it ever has before). The opposite couldn't be more true for the Nintendo Switch, which was manufactured to be profitable right at launch. Nintendo's recent FY2021 results illustrate this point quite clearly.

While Sony and Microsoft sell consoles at a loss and rely on game sales, monetization, and services to turn a profit, Nintendo designed the Switch so it made a profit at the beginning of its lifespan. Every year Nintendo makes profits from Switch hardware, and in FY2021 alone, the company generated a whopping $8.2 billion from hardware sales. Hardware made up over half (57.2%) of its total gaming earnings (over $16 billion), the company said in a recent earnings report.

The Nintendo Switch shows no signs of stopping. The console just hit 84.59 million units sold and beat the Game Boy Advance, making it the fourth best-selling Nintendo product of all time. Software is likewise smashing records, and now Nintendo has an assortment of mega-hits on the Switch.

The Switch platform is skyrocketing right now. Nintendo made more than $16 billion from games in FY2021, and 57% of that, or roughly $8.2 billion, was from hardware alone. Nintendo sold a massive 230 million games throughout the year, pushing its top 10 best-sellers to new heights.

The Switch currently has 10 first-party games that have sold over 10 million copies each. Animal Crossing New Horizons has finally slowed down its monstrous sales pace (it was previously selling 1 million copies every week for quite some time) and Mario Party saw a particularly nice uplift throughout FY2021.

The Nintendo Switch just beat the Game Boy Advance in sales. It's next target? The mighty Wii.

Nintendo just posted up its Fiscal Year 2021 results to much fanfare. We'll be going over the exact details of the numbers across a few articles, but first let's take a look at Switch sales growth. As of March 31, 2021, the Nintendo Switch has sold 84.59 million units cumulatively over its lifetime (our numbers below are at 84.62 million based on rounded figures from Nintendo). The handheld-console Switch family now outranks the Game Boy Advance (81.51 million) and has become Nintendo's fourth best-selling platform of all time in hardware sales.

On a quarter-by-quarter basis, the Switch has consistently hit record sales performance. Fiscal Year 2021 was the best period in the system's history with 28.84 million sales globally (+37% year-over-year). Each quarter in FY21 consistently set a new record high for sales thanks to the tag-team Switch Lite and base Switch duo working together during a period of unusual demand.

Sony Bend is currently ramping up its dev teams for its next big AAA game, but it won't be Days Gone 2.

Sony's Bend, Oregon-based game studio is hiring 11 people to help make its new game. According to the job listings, which range from art and animation to direction and programming, the project is AAA in scope and is a next-gen PlayStation 5 exclusive.

The listings don't paint a clear picture of what's next for Sony Bend Studio, but past reports from Bloomberg say the team is working on a new original franchise.

Tencent may be forced to divest its ownership and investments in U.S. game companies over national security worries.

The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment is currently weighing whether or not Tencent will get to keep its investment in U.S.-based game companies. The concern surrounds how Tencent collects, handles, and stores the personal information of millions of players from U.S. firms like League of Legends developer Riot Games and Epic Games. Together, both Epic and Riot generate billions every year from in-game transactions and game sales on the Epic Games Store.

Sources tell Reuters that the Chinese games titan Tencent is currently negotiating with the inter-agency in the hopes it can keep its stakes in U.S. games companies like Riot Games (100% ownership), Epic Games (40% ownership), and Activision-Blizzard (5% minority stake).

The official Twitter page has tweeted out an update for quality of life improvement to the app on both iOS and Android.

According to the tweet, Twitter has released full-sized images on both iOS and Android devices. Now, users will be able to scroll down their feeds and see pictures in their full aspect ratio. Before this update, Twitter would crop all non-16:9 images, so the feed maintained a clean-cut uniform look.

The Twitter Support account replied to a user asking, "what's the actual aspect ratio tho", by saying, "Images with 2:1 and 3:4 aspect ratios will show in full." Back in March, Twitter trialed two new options, full-sized images and the option to upload images in 4K quality. The option to upload images in 4K rolled out to users at the end of last month. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

SpaceX now has more than 1,300 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth, and on Tuesday, SpaceX revealed that more than 500,000 people have already placed their $99 deposit for the internet service.

Elon Musk has replied to a recent article post by Michael Sheetz, the space reporter for CNBC, who was writing about SpaceX already receiving more than 500,000 orders for the Starlink internet service. It's noted in the CNBC article that the deposits are fully refundable if the service isn't provided. Musk replied to the article on Twitter to discuss some of the limitations of the Starlink internet service, saying, "Only limitation is high density of users in urban areas".

Additionally, Musk also said that "Most likely, all of the initial 500k will receive service. More of a challenge when we get into the several million user range." At first, the Starlink satellite internet service will only be available to people in North America, but eventually, SpaceX plans to roll the service out to as many countries as it possibly can. At the moment, SpaceX has permission to launch up to 12,000 Starlink satellites, which shows just how much more work SpaceX has to bring this competitive internet service to life.

Most UFO sighting claims can be explained by something boring or obvious, and to onlookers of the Washington skies on Tuesday night, these "sightings" are no different.

News outlets have reported that many people took to social media to ask what they were seeing in the skies above western Washington late Tues night. Many residents began to record bright light in the sky, with some onlookers claiming that what they were witnessing was a Unidentified Flying Object (UFO). Unfortunately, as with most UFO sightings, there is a very simple explanation that certainly throws a wet blanket on the whole UFO theory.

SpaceX just launched its most recent Starlink satellite mission yesterday, and what Washington residents are actually looking at is tiny satellites all slowly spreading out to form a line. Once in position, SpaceX continues to spread them out so they can synchronize and link up with the larger Starlink grid. It's understandable that people who aren't aware of how Starlink works would think what they are seeing in the eyes is some extraterrestrial magic, but unfortunately, that isn't the case. It's just SpaceX working it's magic.

Stars have a very violent ending to their lives, they erupt in an explosion that is called a supernova, which is them basically collapsing on themselves.

Astronomers have a good idea of how and why stars go supernova at the end of their lifespans, especially for yellow stars. Most yellow stars have a protective layer of hydrogen that encases the extremely hot center which when looked upon would appear blue to our eyes. When a yellow star begins to go supernova all of the hydrogen layer that is encasing its insides is expelled outwards in a violent burst, but not if you are 2019yvr.

2019vyr didn't show any hydrogen around it in the years before it went supernova, which has puzzled scientists as this doesn't fit current scientific models. Charles Kilpatrick, lead author of the study said, "We haven't seen this scenario before. If a star explodes without hydrogen, it should be extremely blue - really, really hot. It's almost impossible for a star to be this cool without having hydrogen in its outer layer. We looked at every single stellar model that could explain a star like this, and every single model requires that the star had hydrogen, which, from its supernova, we know it did not. It stretches what's physically possible."