V1 Interactive, the lesser-known indie studio behind the ever lesser-known FPS/RTS mashup Disintegration, is shutting down.

Lots of gamers didn't know about Marcus Lehto's new game, Disintegration. The project was published by Take-Two's Private Division, a very new subsidiary, and mostly fell off the radar for multiple reasons, whether it was publicity or loss of traction during an immensely competitive 2020 period. Not many people knew about the game, or that Lehto, the co-creator of the Halo universe, was even making a new game let alone started up a new studio.

As a result, Disintegration was a commercial failure and simply didn't take off. The new IP floundered, and V1 Interactive pulled online play just five months after release because it was simply not worth paying to keep the servers active. Now less than a year after the game launched, the studio is closing down.

Worldwide regulators have approved Microsoft's buyout of ZeniMax Media, solidifying one of the biggest acquisitions in gaming history.

Both the SEC and the European Commission have greenlit Microsoft's $7.5 billion buyout of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media. Today, the European regulation board endorsed the takeover today with "unconditional approval" under Article 6(1)(b):

"The Commission concluded that the proposed acquisition would raise no competition concerns, given the combined entity's limited market position upstream and the presence of strong downstream competitors in the distribution of video games. The transaction was examined under the normal merger review procedure," the European Commission said in a press statement.

Anyone who has lost their smartphone into an ocean, river, or lake would think it is gone forever -- well, not for this iPhone 11 which survived at the bottom of a lake for 6 months.

The iPhone 11 was discovered at the bottom of a lake in British Columbia, and once it was discovered it was taken out and cleaned -- it was turned on and discovered to work. In an interview with CNBC, Chilliwack free divers Clayton Helkenberg and his wife Heather said that they were looking on the bottom of the lake for lost items... and what a find.

They discovered many other lost items including other smartphones, but this particular iPhone 11 had survived 6 months and was lost by Fatemeh Ghodsi. Once the iPhone 11 was recovered from the bottom of the lake, it was returned to the owner who explained it had been dropped during a boat ride.

In a strange twist of fate, Google's fledgling game-streaming service Stadia can now be run on Xbox consoles.

Xbox has transformed from a closed ecosystem into one of the most open platforms in gaming, complete with cross-publisher subscriptions, the industry-defining Game Pass, and even emulator support on Xbox Series X/S consoles. Now that openness is expanding to Stadia.

Xbox owners in the new Skip-Ahead testing program are now able to run Stadia on their Xbox consoles and play games via controller support. This is due to the new Chromium-based Edge browser that's offered in the update, which allows compatibility with Google services like Stadia as well as other extensions and plugins. The functionality is particularly interesting as Microsoft's own streaming service, Project xCloud, doesn't yet stream games to Xbox consoles.

A new job listing for a backend cloud developer hints that Digital Extremes could branch out to new streaming platforms.

Now that Tencent owns the company, it appears Digital Extremes is exploring new cloud-based gaming opportunities. The Warframe studio has opened up a new internal division focused on cloud experiences, and is currently looking for a senior backend dev to help fill out their ranks.

Here's the excerpt from the job listing: "Digital Extremes is seeking a Senior Back-End/Cloud Developer to join our team with experience in game development for our external project endeavors; this is a specialized role, and we're trying to find just the right person to fill it. This posting is for a new internal team working with cutting edge technologies, in an exciting novel area of development for the company."

The recent server hack delays one of CD Projekt RED's most important events: Its annual earnings reports.

The malicious cybersecurity intrusion has set CD Projekt RED back quite a bit. The hack blocked developers from working on Cyberpunk 2077's anticipated Patch 1.2 for consoles and PC, delaying the big update into late March. Now the hack is also affecting how CDPR talks to investors.

In a recent press release, CDPR says it has delayed its yearly earnings report from March 30 to April 19, citing the hack as the main reason.

It looks like AMD is working on RDNA-based cryptocurrency mining cards, with new information coming through Linux kernel patches with a new Navi 12-based GPU for crypto mining.

The new GPU does not support DCN (Display Core Next) and VCN (Video Core Next) that would see the new Navi 12 GPU without the ability of display output. The headless GPU would be the perfect compute acceleration card for working in clusters of GPUs, or in crypto mining farms.

It was back in October 2020 when the first tease of AMD working on a blockchain GPU first started, but that was with a Navi 10 part -- this is a new Navi 12 GPU. The Navi 12 GPU was only made for Apple and its Mac with the Radeon Pro 5600M, which had HBM2 memory. It would be interesting to see the Navi 12 with HBM2 memory as the Navi 10 chip has GDDR6.

The entire PC hardware and gaming market exploded in 2020 with the pandemic, with millions more people at home many gamers were upgrading and tweaking their machines like never before. NVIDIA launched new graphics cards, AMD launched new graphics cards that were actually kick ass enthusiast entries for the first time in ages.

But the issue is, you just can't buy Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards right now. If you thought buying an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series card was hard, Big Navi is a Big Hassle to find worldwide.

The reason? AMD's entire 7nm silicon allotment from TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) would be pushed into their semi-custom SoCs for Sony and the PlayStation 5, as well as Microsoft with the Xbox Series X/S consoles. Not only that, but AMD is using that 7nm silicon for its Zen 3 processors, Zen 3, EPYC, Threadripper, and everything in between.

Take-Two Interactive CEO Straus Zelnick says the company won't start releasing a ton of next-gen remasters, and re-releases will still be additive to its slate of new IPs, annual games, and in-development titles.

Remasters are a great way to capitalize on a new console generation. Take-Two knows this quite well; they've released GTA V on Xbox 360/PS3, and again on Xbox One/PS4. Now the billion-dollar GTA V is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles with significant upgrades. But Take-Two doesn't want to saturate the market with remasters. Company CEO Strauss Zelnick affirms their remasters are more specialized games with dramatic improvements (case in point: the recent Mafia trilogy re-release).

At a recent Morgan Stanley conference, Zelnick says remasters won't become a bigger part of their business despite the new console generation. Greater care will be put into any re-releases, and these older games are additive to the company's current slate of games--a massive pipeline of 93 titles across mobile, consoles, and PC.

Watch Dogs Legion's online mode has been delayed on PC, but will arrive on consoles next week, Ubisoft announces.

The anticipated online mode for Watch Dogs Legion is coming to PS4, Xbox One, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S consoles on March 9.

The mode is standalone, not unlike GTA Online, complete with seasonal objectives that rotate over time. The main drawing point is the online co-op that lets players team up to take on missions with emphasis on stealth, all-out chaos, and hacking.

A new Dungeons and Dragons RPG is currently in development from a Counter-Strike veteran team that's helped Valve over the last few years.

Wizards of the Coast is pushing more video game adaptations in key franchises, including Magic The Gathering, a new interesting sci-fi IP, and even Dungeons and Dragons is getting new titles. In fact, a new open-world third-person AAA D&D game is currently in the works from Hidden Path, a Washington-based developer that has collaborated with Valve for some time. Hidden Path helped Valve make Counter-Strike Global Offensive for consoles, and even helped released Age of Empires II HD.

"We are in development on a AAA, third-person, open-world fantasy RPG that will be taking place inside the Dungeons & Dragons franchise," reads a recruitment call from Hidden Path's Twitter account.

Samsung had one of the biggest and most bad ass gaming displays of 2020 with its Odyssey G9, which has just had some 2021 refreshes done to it and is better than ever.

The new Samsung Odyssey G9 2021 gaming monitor has some new upgrades up its sleeve with a new Quantum Mini LED panel, with its huge 49-inch super-ultrawide 5120 x 1440 rocking along at up to 240Hz. But where the new 2021 goodies come from in the 49-inch Odyssey G9 2021 gaming monitor is the Quantum Mini LED tech.

Samsung explains: "At just 1/40th the size of conventional LEDs, Quantum Mini LEDs allow for ultra-fine light control. With deep blacks, bright lights, and upscaling technology smarter than any Samsung TV has ever offered, Samsung Neo QLED delivers an ultra-realistic picture-whether you are watching a football game, or playing one on your gaming console".

NVIDIA hasn't made its GeForce RTX 3050 Ti mobility GPU official just yet, but ASUS may have just accidentally spoiled the RTX 3050 Ti reveal party with its upcoming TUF Dash F15 gaming laptop.

The new ASUS TUF Dash F15 gaming laptop will be powered by Intel's new Tiger Lake-H (35W) processors and will be customizable with up to NVIDIA's beefier GeForce RTX 3070 mobility GPU. But in the spec page for teh new ASUS laptop was the entry-level version with the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti mobility GPU.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3050 Ti mobility GPU has 4GB of GDDR6 on what should be a 128-bit memory interface, and should be a little faster than the GeForce RTX 2060 desktop graphics card. The interesting thing here is that you'll get RTX ray tracing features on an entry-level GeForce RTX 3050 Ti where previously we would've seen the RTX 3060 being the lowest in the RTX rung and could've had a GTX 1050 Ti without the RTX abilities.

AMD's next-gen Instinct MI200 has been in the headlines more and more over the last few months, with a new rumor suggesting the new Aldebaran -- a new compute architecture for Instinct MI200 that will be a dual-die GPU.

The new dual-die Aldebaran GPU has been spotted by Coelacanth's Dream inside of some new Linux patches and hidden in code, with a patch from February 24 referring to the Aldebaran dual-die GPU as 'alde_die_0' and 'alde_die_1'. This would, in very obvious terms, refer to a dual-die GPU -- or MCM (multi-chip module) which is similar to the chiplet technology AMD uses on its Zen CPU family of processors.

AMD's next-gen Aldebaran GPU will be their first multi-chip module GPU that will compete with Intel Xe-HPC and NVIDIA's next-gen Hopper GPUs which should be MCM designs also. In the same patches for Linux it shuold be noted that there are references to HBM2E, which is the faster variant of the super-fast memory technology.

Razer has just unveiled its latest gaming chair, a tweaked version of its Razer Iskur gaming chair that drops the black-and-green design everyone knows and loves from Razer with a new all-black Iskur gaming chair. Check it out:

The new Razer Iskur all-black gaming chair costs $499, the same as its black-and-green sibling with the same ergonomic lumbar support system, the usual Razer styling and quality, and more. There's multi-layered synthetic leather, high density foam cushions, and 4D armrests.

You're paying $500 for the Razer Iskur which is in the same territory as Secretlab's premium and very, very comfy TITAN chair. If you're sitting in your chair all day and all night long working or gaming or doing everything in between, and didn't want the green-and-black style that Razer is known for, then the all-black Iskur gaming chair could be the one for you.

Intel's new 11th Gen Core processors are still a few weeks away, but AnandTech has performed some magic trick and has a review of the Core i7-11700K close to a month before its official launch.

The thing is that Intel hasn't even announced the new series of CPUs and have been light on details of its Rocket Lake-S family of chips even though there's been a mountain of leaks over the last few months. AnandTech purchased a retail version of the Intel Core i7-11700K and even though they've signed an NDA, there's no new information shared that breaches that contract.

Dr. Ian Cutress of AnandTech explains that the information shared in his Core i7-11700K review: "Units obtained by that method are not under NDA by definition, and we obtained the Core i7-11700K for this review at retail, and as such we are not under NDA for any information we have obtained through using this processor".

AMD has just announced that Resident Evil Village and its ray tracing turned on will require an RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card -- skipping over the just-announced Navi 22-based Radeon RX 6700 XT.

AMD tweeted out one of the most lowest-quality, heavily-compressed videos showing off the next-gen ray tracing graphics with Resident Evil Village on Twitter. On AMD's own website it states that you'll require a Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card for ray tracing being turned on, but you'll only need an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 processor.

We don't know if NVIDIA will have RTX ray tracing inside of Resident Evil Village, but I'd dare say that if that happens it'll be many months before GeForce RTX owners will have it enabled. AMD will also have its own FidelityFX features inside of Resident Evil Village, which is part of their collaboration with Capcom.

Max Payne, Alan Wake, and Control game developer Remedy Entertainment outlines its future plans for new titles, showing a very busy slate for the Finnish studio.

Remedy is currently working on five different projects across four teams. The games are a mix of live service and traditional single-player based experiences on the full AA and AAA spectrum. Remedy CEO Tero Virtala discussed future plans with GamesIndustry.biz, outlining what we can expect from the studio in the next few years.

Of the five projects, two of them are major games. The team behind Control is currently laying the foundation for Remedy's next AAA title, but details are quite sparse. We do know that Remedy's Sam Lake has finished the first draft for this next-gen PS5, Series X game, however.

Nintendo is enjoying astronomical success with its Switch family of hardware, but the specter of its past failures (like the Wii U) haunt the company. That's why Nintendo never rests and is continually planning on The Next Big Thing.

In a recent interview with Nikkei Business, Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa highlights the intense pressures of the entertainment industry. Unlike the affable Phil Spencer, or the smiling Jim Ryan, Furukawa expresses that every year is faced with anxiety and worry of falling behind--but this concern of failure propels Nintendo forward. The never-ending quest for innovation and unique experiences sets Nintendo apart from its peers, but this focus comes at a cost, one that executives must shoulder as they lead the company through the present while trying to lay the foundations for the future.

"Not matter the hits, in the entertainment business people someday do lose interest. Up until now, we have repeatedly had the experience of our business taking a nosedive," Furukawa said.

Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition for ZeniMax Media has apparently been approved by worldwide regulators, closing one of the biggest entertainment mergers in the history of the games industry.

The Microsoft x ZeniMax merger has apparently gone through. Providence Equity, the main stakeholder in ZeniMax Media, has listed ZeniMax as a "realized" investment on its portfolio webpage.

This essentially confirms a deal has gone through. Investments are listed as either active or realized; when an investment is listed as realized, that means the stakeholder has made a profit by selling the investment stake for more money than it was purchased for. Conversely, an active investment means no profit has been made yet. As part of the acquisition, Microsoft promised Providence a six-fold return of their initial ZeniMax Media investment.