Apple was in the headlines for all the right reasons last year when it comes to its Apple Car project, reportedly teaming with Hyundai to make its car happen in 2024 -- and now, Apple has just secured ex-Porsche Vice President of Chassis Development Manfred Harrer.

Harrer comes with a lot of expertise from Porsche where he was for over 10 years, where he worked on the Cayenne series recently and has been leading the chassis division since 2016. The news is coming from Business Insider Deutschland, which said that Apple, Porsche, and Dr. Harrer declined to comment on the news.

Business Insider did report that a former top Volkswagen manager said that Dr. Harrer was a "hidden champion" and the "measure of all things in his field".

AMD has now confirmed that it will have more Radeon RX 6900 XT and Radeon RX 6800 XT reference graphics cards within the next 8 weeks or so.

In a recent interview with BabelTechReviews, AMD's Ritche Corpus, the Sr. Director, ISV SW Alliances, Radeon Technologies Group explained: "Based on the response to our AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series and Radeon RX 6900 XT reference design graphics cards, we are extending production to make them available to as many gamers as possible on AMD.com at SEP. Additional reference cards are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2021. We will also continue supporting our partners in the development of their custom AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics card designs".

This will probably be the last run of cards made in the reference Radeon RX 6900 XT and Radeon RX 6800 XT, with AIB partners most likely taking most of the Big Navi cards for this generation from here on out. AMD was meant to make the Big Navi reference graphics cards as a once-off thing, but it was a super popular design and more gamers wanted them.

COLORFUL has just announced another member of its growing GeForce RTX 30 series Neptune family of graphics cards, with the new GeForce RTX 3070 Neptune revealed.

The company will be using 14+4 power stages and a TDP of 270W on the new GeForce RTX 3070 Neptune, down from the 14+8+4 power stages and 370W TDP on the GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 Neptune graphics cards.

COLORFUL will factory overclock its new GeForce RTX 3070 Neptune graphics card, with a default 1725MHz GPU clock but there's also an OC button on the rear I/O bracket that will drive the card up to 1845MHz with its secondary BIOS. You should be able to squeeze more out of it through manual OC, and with the higher-end AIO cooling versus traditional air cooling.

AMD launched its Zen 3 architecture and Ryzen 5000 series processors late last year, to massive success -- but now we have some specific numbers.

The latest CPU market share results have been published by Mercury Research, with the Q4 2020 numbers showing that not just AMD but Intel did well in the 3 months to end 2020. AMD sold close to 1 million Ryzen 5000 series processors in Q4 2020, Mercury Research said: "The Ryzen 5000 supply ramp was record-breaking for AMD by a very wide margin".

Mercury Research reports that when it comes to desktop CPU market share, Intel has 80.7% of the market while AMD has 19.3% which is actually down from 20.1%.

Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic) now owns a whopping 244 IPs and franchises, the company today confirmed.

Today Embracer bought some big companies, including Gearbox (Borderlands), Easybrain (mobile games), and Aspyr Media (known for ports). These acquisitions bumped Embracer's IP treasure trove by 22 franchises, and right now the media titan has 244 IPs at their disposal. This number includes Gearbox's mega-hit Borderlands series--a franchise so powerful that Embracer gave Gearbox its own unit division.

The company also updated its game studio count to 137 external and internal teams. Most of the teams are external (73) versus internal (64), and THQ Nordic is the largest with 41 studios, followed by Koch Media's 35 studios.

Gearbox, the devs behind Borderlands and the dreaded Aliens Colonial Marines, has been purchased by The Embracer Group (aka THQ Nordic).

Gearbox is now part of Embracer's massive arsenal of talent, and the acquisition is so big that Gearbox is getting their own operating division. Gearbox will sit at the head of its own table similar to Deep Silver and Saber Interactive. Right now, Gearbox leads its own internal companies--Gearbox Software, the dev team, and Gearbox Publishing, the publishing firm--but that could change as more studios are acquired.

Embracer paid $363 million upfront, of which $188 million was in cash and the remainder will be paid in 7.4 million Embracer Class B shares worth $175 million. Gearbox could earn a bonus worth up to $1 billion across a six-year timeline if it can fulfill specific sales revenue and operation targets.

PS4 worldwide shipments hit 115.5 million to date, but the console is winding down as the PlayStation 5 aims to replace the 7-year-old console.

Sony just released its holiday Q3'20 revenues, and recorded the best gaming earnings in its history. Despite the record earnings, which was driven primarily by an astronomical 103.7 million software sales, hardware has slumped. PS4 consoles sales in particular are winding down--FY2020 is currently the slowest year for PS4 sales.

In Q3'20, Sony sold just 1.4 million PS4 consoles, down a substantial 77% year-over-year. The PS5 buying frenzy was the culprit and next-gen PlayStation 5 consoles remain sold out worldwide. Despite the slump, total hardware sales revenues are up 61.3% to 239.54 billion yen ($2.92 billion) driven primarily strong PlayStation 5 adoption and somewhat-consistent PS4 console sales.

Oculus today introduced App Lab, a new way to distribute games for the Oculus quest. People will no longer be restricted to purchasing games in the Oculus store. The company is now offering official access to third-party distribution.

When Oculus launched the quest platform, it wanted to cater to newcomers to virtual reality, and part of its strategy was to make sure all content on the platform was of high calibre. Many games were denied access to the Oculus Store for not meeting the company's standards. Today, there are far more users on the Quest platform, and they often want to explore new software beyond Oculus's curated platform.

From this point forward, developers can distribute content that's not in the Oculus Store without requiring side loading. Now they can send a link or a product key to distribute games that don't meet Oculus standards.

Oculus today announced that there are over 60 games That have generated more than $1,000,000 in sales to date, with most of them making far more than 1,000,000.

Oculus launched the quest platform in 2019, and since then, the company has sold multiple million quest headsets. Quest 2 is selling exceptionally well, and so is the software that goes along with it. Many developers have announced that they have made huge sales, including the developers of Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted, which hit the $1,000,000 mark in just over a week and Onward, which hit that same number in four days.

Onward has since gone on to bring in more than $10 million of revenue from the Oculus Quest platform alone.

EA has made over $3 billion from Star Wars games and the publisher has no plans to abandon the franchise.

EA has a rocky history with Star Wars games. The publisher has cancelled three high-profile titles to date; Project Ragtag, an ambitious bounty hunter/Uncharted game that died alongside Visceral Games; Project Orca, an open-world game from EA Vancouver; and Project Viking, a Battlefront-style spin-off also from EA Vancouver.

As a result, Disney has now given other studios like Ubisoft the rights to make their own Star Wars games.

EA says Battlefield 6 will feature "all-out military warfare" and all but confirms the massive 128-player rumors we've been hearing about.

According to EA, the next Battlefield will be bigger than ever before. EA CEO Andrew Wilson teases absolutely huge maps, more players than ever before, and big next-gen console upgrades. No specifics on perf targets were revealed, but EA did confirm Battlefield 6 is farther along than any other previous game--which signals DICE has been working on it for some time.

This is good news considering the game is set to release Holiday 2021 on next-gen systems and PC. A full reveal is coming sometime in Spring, the company said.

Nintendo Switch sales hit a new all-time high in Q3, leading to the third consecutive record-breaking quarter in a row.

Four years in, the Nintendo Switch is more popular than ever. 2020 has been monumental for Nintendo, and the vital holiday period is no different: In Q3, which ends in December, Nintendo sold an astronomical 11.57 million Switch consoles. These results weren't just a new high for Q3 sales, but historical quarterly volume: Q3 had more console sales than any other quarter since the Switch launched in March 2017.

The handheld-console hybrid has now sold over 79 million units worldwide, including the Switch Lite, which has now sold nearly as much as the Wii U.

The new Mass Effect trilogy remaster looks absolutely epic in 4K with HDR enabled, and BioWare also confirms next-gen optimizations for the new re-release.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition drops on May 14, 2021 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and will a free next-gen boost on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. Every game in the trilogy will hit a solid 4K 60FPS with HDR on PS5 and Xbox Series X, but perf is reduced on PS4 and Xbox One.

Sadly there's no ray tracing, but that's to be expected. Although EA and DICE have been helping Microsoft push its new DXR ray-tracing tech on Xbox and Windows 10, the Mass Effect games are built on a different BioWare engine with rasterization, and are pretty old games to boot.

GALAX has just revealed its new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 HOF graphics cards, with OGS from HwBox Hellas OC Team and Rauf from Alza OC -- both professional overclockers -- using the new GALAX RTX 3090 HOF to smash some world records.

They used liquid nitrogen cooling to push the GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 HOF graphics cards to their 3GHz+ limits as well as GPUPI software, breaking 16 world records with their massively-overclocked GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 HOF graphics card. OGS got his GALAX RTX 3090 HOF sample to hit 2805MHz boost with the actual GPU clocks touching 3015MHz using HPUPI 3.2 1B, which is incredible.

Rauf saw his GALAX RTX 3090 HOF hitting 2795MHz and a true clock of 3000MHz -- just short of OGS. Rauf commented: "Amazing Galax 3090 HOF! Unbinned, random card :)" while OGS said: "First 3+ GHz 3090 done by Galax. The way its meant to be overclocked. :) HOF is back. Thanks to Galax, ASUS, Crucial and Thermal Grizzly for the support".

GALAX has finally made its GeForce RTX 3090 Hall of Fame (HOF) graphics cards official, with not just 1 card announced but 6 new custom GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards.

The company is using a huge triple-fan design with a gigantic 4.3-inch "HOF Panel III" display with a 480 x 272 resolution. It's not just an LCD display for information, but like a crown for your graphics card with RGB lighting blinging out your system.

All of the new 6 graphics cards in the GeForce RTX 3090 HOF family will include the same white PCB, the same 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connector, and more. But there are differences between the versions as GALAX will be selling some of them globally, and some of the new GALAX RTX 3090 HOF cards are exclusive to China.

Blizzard is commercializing its 30th anniversary with a series of microtransaction packs that "celebrate" decades of gaming.

Blizzard has tried to monetize practically every facet of their games using tactics like cosmetics, lootboxes, and even Diablo III's dreaded Real-Money Auction House. Now the billion-dollar developer is monetizing its own 30th anniversary celebration.

In a recent blog post, Blizzard outlined key details on the free BlizzCon event going live on February 19-20. In the post they mentioned gamers can scoop up some in-game goodies to commemorate Blizzard's 30-year legacy of gaming. In 2021, Blizzard will indeed by 30 years old.

On the heels of 2020's successful Sonic the Hedgehog film, SEGA and Netflix are teaming up for a new TV show.

After 27 years, the Blue Blur is finally coming back to the small screen. Netflix today announced Sonic Prime, a new 3D animated series that will premiere on the service sometime in 2022. No exact details on the show have been revealed, but we do know Ben 10 creation/production studio Man of Action Entertainment and Canadian animation studio WildBrain Studios are involved in the project.

The new show is a big move for SEGA, who's been hit especially hard by COVID-19 lockdowns. SEGA's arcade gaming business has suffered significant losses as more people stay home away from large crowded areas, forcing the company to sell off 85% of its arcade division shares. The Sonic movie helped revitalize the series and push game sales up, while also grossing more than 3x its production budget.

Google is done investing in Stadia, and will soon relegate the service into a third-party streaming and storefront platform.

Today, Google announced that it will no longer put money into new first-party Stadia exclusives. Google has ceased funding for its Games & Entertainment projects, and both of Stadia's two game studios will be closed. Sources tell Kotaku that roughly 150 people will be affected by the closure. Division head Jade Raymond, who has commanded key roles in the industry, has also left Stadia.

Google will now use Stadia to exclusively sell subscriptions and full-priced third-party games--an unpopular business model in a landscape that's dominated by Project xCloud's tremendous value. It's also worth noting that the entire digital gaming industry is seeing significant surges in revenues, sales, and earnings, so this timing suggests Stadia is (and was) didn't live up to Google's expectations.

We've known the GALAX GeForce RTX 3090 HOF (Hall of Fame) was coming soon, but GALAX is teasing its new flagship graphics card once again. Check it out:

The new tease is really just that -- a tease -- of their upcoming flagship GeForce RTX 3090 HOF graphics card. We know that it will be coming in two variants now, both of which will pack a massive LCD display. This isn't new as companies like COLORFUL have great LCD displays on their custom GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards.

We still don't know about GPU clocks, whether there's any overclocking on the 24GB of GDDR6X (doubt it), or anything like that -- but we do know it'll have NVLink fingers for SLI support, 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, a HOF Support Stick (VGA support for horizontally mounted graphics cards), a white extension cable, a pair of HOF gloves, and 1 Click Pro-Cable (possibly acting as a BIOS switch feature).

Corsair has just unveiled its new MP600 Gen4 PCIe x4 NVMe M.2 SSDs, with 3 new entries: the MP600 CORE, MP600 PRO, & MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition.

The flagship liquid cooled MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition is a beast, the company's first-ever M.2 SSD with an integrated Hydro X Series XM2 Water Block. Corsair comes out swinging in 2021 with the liquid cooled MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition, with the XM2 Water Block also available to purchase on its own, and can be used on any M.2 SSD that comes in the 2280 form factor.

When it comes to performance on the new Corsair MP600 PRO, we're looking at read speeds of up to 7GB/sec (7000MB/sec) while writes scale up to 6.5GB/sec (6550MB/sec). Corsair makes it new MP600 PRO SSDs available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, with the company promising a larger 4TB model is on the way. If you want the liquid cooled MP600 PRO Hydro X Edition, then you're limited to just 2TB capacity unfortunately.