IO Interactive is in a "really good place," CEO Hakan Abrak said after Hitman 3 is already profitable after one week of sales.

With Hitman 3, IO Interactive took a chance and self-published a big AAA game for the first time. The gambit worked. Not only did Hitman 3 generate acclaim from reviewers, but it sold tremendously well. So well, in fact, that IO Interactive is already making a profit from the sequel.

IO CEO Hakan Abrak confirmed the news to GamesIndustry.biz, saying that the company's secret sauce lies in the close relationship between its marketing and development divisions. Instead of keeping the division separate, as most companies do, marketing is closely knit with the developers. The result is a clear and concisely communication that's relayed to consumers and fans.

It's not like Robinhood wasn't already knee-deep in a pile of DOGE sh*t, the company is piling on -- making changes where it has made Instant Deposits "temporarily unavailable for crypto purchases".

The company emails that this means you "won't be able to buy crypto with funds from a deposit until it settles (which can take up to 5 business days to complete). Your Crypto Buying Power will also not reflect your deposit until it settles". So if you've been trying to use Instant Deposits for the last couple of hours and couldn't figure out why -- now you do.

But never fear! If you are a Gold customer, Robinhood has your back as "you will still be able to use Instant Deposits to crypto purchases". The tweets from 'Doopie' who added that "I hear they're also limiting stocks tomorrow, so like 5 shares max for specific stocks which in guessing will be the big ones. GME, NOK, BB, etc".

It wasn't even 12 hours ago that I was reporting that the Robinhood app had been review bombed on the Google Play Store, but in the last few hours we've seen Google remove 100s of thousands of negative reviews.

Are you surprised? I'm not.

Above, I've got a screenshot of the now-changed Robinhood app listing on the Google Play Store, where the search giant is now meddling in this debacle and is wiping negative reviews... like we weren't going to notice. Below, I've got a screenshot of the Robinhood app page on the Google Play Store reviews which were all negative at the top and from January 29, 2021.

As trust in retail trading implodes over the r/Wallstreetbets $GME saga, people are looking at cryptocurrency, but it's not Bitcoin making the significant gains today. Doge is now the 8th largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $8.4 billion.

Usually, what "the internet" says doesn't really work as a collective mouthpiece, but sometimes enough people rally around an idea that it feels like a consensus; like the GameStop stock fiasco that's going on right, which has celebrities,

politicians, and billionaires alike rallying against hedge funds. Well, if you were caught up in the GME excitement today, you might have missed that the meme-based cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, has shot through the roof today.

Facebook is getting a lot more serious about its VR investment. The company just released its quarterly earnings call, and it had some news to share about the VR business. The Quest 2 is selling very well, but there's another headset in development.

Facebook released the Quest 2 in October 2020, and the device has been selling very well. Facebook never talks directly about sales numbers of its VR devices, but Mark Zuckerberg said the Quest 2 "is on track to becoming the first mainstream virtual reality headset."

Oculus falls under the "other" category in Facebook's revenue figures, which grew significantly over the last year. The last quarter of 2019 brought in $346 million, whereas, in 2020, Facebook's "other" revenue topped $885 million. It's unclear what else falls in that category, but it's a safe bet that Quest 2 and its content drive the lion's share of that revenue increase.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is probably one of the most talked about people in the world right now, with the Robinhood CEO talking with CNBC on Thursday night about all-things Robinhood.

The company restricted trading of stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment, with Robinhood only allowing sell positions and not letting people open new ones. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explained to CNBC: "In order to protect the firm and protect our customers we had to limit buying in these stocks".

Tenev added: "Robinhood is a brokerage firm, we have lots of financial requirements. We have SEC net capital requirements and clearing house deposits. So that's money that we have to deposit at various clearing houses. Some of these requirements fluctuate quite a bit based on volatility in the market and they can be substantial in the current environment where there's a lot of volatility and a lot of concentrated activity in these names that have been going viral on social media".

The Division 2 is getting a big update that will enable juicy smooth 4K 60FPS goodness on the PlayStation 5, and both the Xbox Series X and S consoles.

The news was revealed by Ubisoft Community Manager Johan Lindholm, who was replying to someone asking if there would be a State of the Game tomorrow. Lindholm said there wouldn't be a SOTG tomorrow, but did say that: "TU12.1 releases on Feb 2nd with the Resident Evil Apparel Event, a rebalance of the Optimization Station cost as well as 4K 60 FPS support for next gen consoles".

Apple has shipped an incredible amount of iPhones in Q4 2020 alone, with IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo showing just how huge this quarter was. Check it out:

The company kicked the year off with the super-popular 2020 iPhone SE which costs $399, ending the year with a huge 90.1 million iPhones sold in Q4 2020 alone. If we look at just Q3 2020, the Apple iPhone 11 and 2020 iPhone SE made up over 50% of all iPhone sales in the US for the quarter.

Apple has reportedly asked its suppliers to boost iPhone production by 30% in the first half of 2021, with Apple taking up 80% of TSMC's new 5nm production capacity for 2021 alone.

The Medium is here for both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles as well as the PC, with some nifty Dual-Reality gameplay done through a dual viewport that seems to really bring the next-gen Xbox consoles to their knees. But now Digital Foundry has done a deep dive on the performance of The Medium on the new Xbox Series X/S consoles, check it out:

Bloober Team, the developer behind The Medium, said that the Xbox Series X CPU and GPU power would let developers "go crazy" and I guess that means the most powerful console in the world being reduced to its knees and dropping to 900p.

The Medium runs at up to 4K on the flagship Xbox Series X and hovers around 1440p, while the Xbox Series S runs it somewhere between 1080p and 900p. But when you do the "dual viewport" mode -- which the game is built around (and explained in the DF video embedded above) both consoles go right into Chug Mode down into the 10-20FPS mark.

Elon Musk is in hot water right now, with the US Department of Justice investigating SpaceX over the company possibly discriminating against non-US citizens during its hiring process.

New court documents filed on Thursday by DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval explain: "The charge alleges that on or about March 10, 2020, during the Charging Party's interview for the position of Technology Strategy Associate, SpaceX made inquiries about his citizenship status and ultimately failed to hire him for the position because he is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident".

The Immigrant and Employee Rights (IER) division said it made SpaceX aware it had opened an investigation on June 8, 2020 and that it required more documents and information from SpaceX in regards to its hiring and employment eligibility verification processes.

You know the world is changing when you've got politicians on both sides agreeing on something as large as the huge Robinhood + r/WallStreetBets + GameStop + AMC trade drama -- scandal -- explosion. I don't even know how to describe it anymore.

The previously super-popular trading app Robinhood halted trades -- even SELLING users GME stock without permission -- on the to-the-moon stocks of GameStop, AMC and other companies because of the huge swath of Redditors coming in from r/WallStreetBets and now all over the world. Their bets caused hedge funds to lose billions of dollars, while they made huge profits. It has already led to class action lawsuits.

Well, now we have Donald Trump Jr and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighing in on the GameStop and Robinhood fiasco. AOC tweeted: "Gotta admit it's really something to see Wall Streeters with a long history of treating our economy as a casino complain about a message board of posters also treating the market as a casino".

A new mod unlocks 60FPS in Skyrim on PlayStation consoles, but it won't work in Fallout 4.

PS5 owners can now play Skyrim Special Edition in 60FPS and circumvent Sony's maddening 30FPS limit. All you have to do is download the Skyrim @ 60fps mod, a user-created mod uploaded to the in-game console mods section. Skyrim was originally meant to run at a native 4K resolution at 30FPS on the PS4 Pro, but with the mod it can hit 1080p 30FPS+ on the base PS4.

The PlayStation 5 in particular runs Skyrim at a solid and consistent native 4K 60FPS via the console's powerful backwards compatibility mode. The PS5 has more memory bandwidth (16GB of GDDR6 RAM) and a much more powerful GPU and CPU combo that can deliver lots more horsepower. The result is a PC-like Skyrim experience in terms of performance.

Well, well, well -- that was faster than I thought.

Robinhood Markets -- the trading app that is in the headlines right now, has reportedly drawn credit lines with banks to the tune of "at least several hundred million dollars" reports one of Bloomberg's sources. Robinhood lenders include companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Bloomberg adds that the "behind-the-scenes rush to bolster Robinhood's finances adds to signs that recent market havoc is putting a strain on the company". Robinhood explained in a blog post on its website today: "As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements, including SEC net capital obligations and clearinghouse deposits".

Robinhood has been in the headlines for literally all the wrong reasons, with people beyond pissed off that the trading app halted GameStop trade restrictions -- leading into a class action lawsuit, and now the Robinhood app being review bombed on the Google Play Store.

Users have bombarded the Robinhood app with one-star reviews, forcing the app down into averaging at the lowest rating on the Google Play Store. Users are rightfully angry, as they've seen their ability to buy shares of stocks that are skyrocketing completely banned from use, so over 100,000+ negative reviews for the app isn't a surprise.

There's much more to all of this story below:

We knew it wasn't going to end well with trading app Robinhood over the $GME (GameStop) shares and $AMC (AMC Theaters) shares skyrocketing because of Reddit -- and a Mr. Robot / Fsociety-fueled stick-it-to-the-man-AND-the-system r/WallStreetBets and millions of normal people around the world like you and I.

Well, now Robinhood has been slapped with a class action lawsuit claims that Robinhood "purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock 'GME' [GameStop] from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock rise thereby deprived retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market and manipulating the open-market".

Get this, with the new limits that Robinhood has introduced -- its users will not be able to buy new stocks of companies such as GameStop, AMC, and BlackBerry -- the very stocks that WSB is pumping right now. You will be able to close out existing trades, but you won't be buying any $GME, $AMC, or $BB in Robinhood right now.

Naughty Dog's ultra-violent and controversial opus sequel now has more total awards than CD Projekt's best-selling RPG The Witcher 3.

The Witcher 3 is hailed as one of the best games ever made for its RPG storytelling, compelling characters, and gritty fantasy world. The Last of Us II is likewise hailed for similar things, including its riveting story arc of blood and revenge, its varied cast of characters, and ambitious in-game detail. It's hard to compare the two directly--they're too different games--but one metric stands out: Total accolades.

According to GameAwards.net, The Last of Us Part II now has more awards than The Witcher 3. Naughty Dog's sequel sits at 265 awards, whereas The Witcher 3 is at 260. Each game's Metacritic also seems relevant--The Witcher 3 sits at a 92 on PS4 and The Last of Us Part II is at 93 on PS4. It's worth mentioning The Witcher has a 93 on PC, though.

The huge financial drama surrounding the US markets right now with Reddit and its fully viral r/WallStreetBets pushing GameStop and AMC shares through the roof. Well, Robinhood is stopping retail investors from getting in on the wave, and even selling their shares automatically.

Robinhood users began noticing their $GME shares being sold without warning, with Robinhood alerting users that due to "recently volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only. However, due to unreasonable risk involved in brokering your position, we have closed your 4,500 shares of GME for an average price of $118.93 on January 28th, 2021 at 11:24 AM".

The notice from Robinhood continues: "Your trade confirmation will be available in your order history on Robinhood in one trading day".

The U.S. Senate will soon weigh in on the eye-opening (and wallet-draining) stock situation booming the market right now.

Individual day traders on the u/wallstreetbets Reddit forum are taking on Wall Street. The upstart sees thousands of traders clash with billion-dollar brokerage and investment firms in a bid to help equalize the market, and short-sellers in particular are being punished. The result of this clash has skyrocketed GameStop stock by more than 600% in a week's time, and AMC stock briefly surged 300% to over $19 today before mellowing out at $9.77.

This bruhaha has caused lots of controversy. Major traders like Robinhood temporarily restricted buying and selling of these volatile stocks. This move was believed to help give brokerage firms time to cover their short positions--or to basically stabilize and freeze trading to give the billion-dollar firms time to buy back their stocks and cover their short bets (here's a primer on what short sales are).

Control's next-gen Ultimate Edition is coming out soon, and will be free on PlayStation Plus next week. Here's what to expect from the game's two performance modes.

Like most next-gen games, Control on PS5 and Xbox Series X has two modes that prioritize either graphical fidelity and visuals or in-game performance. The Series X is locked at just the performance mode and won't be able to maintain ray tracing. Luckily, Control will shoot past 1080p for both of these modes.

It was rumored but now it seems to be confirmed -- Intel is BFFs with TSMC -- from a DigiTimes report that RetiredEngineer tweeted about. The report teased: "Intel signed a contract to outsource CPUs to TSMC using 3nm. Crisis of shortages and process falling behind will be resolved by the end of next year".

Yep, it's happened -- Intel is outsourcing manufacturing of its CPUs after the clusterf*** that it has been over the last few years and into the talented hands of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). RetiredEngineer provided a translation of DigiTimes report, which highlights some juicy facts:

You can see there DigiTimes reports that its sources in the semiconductor industry say that Intel and TSMC have "already concluded negotiations on an outsourcing agreement. Unlike in the past where non-core products were outsourced to TSMC, the scale of these new orders are larger than expected, and will use TSMC's 3nm process slated to enter mass production in the second half of 2022. Intel is set to become TSMC's second largest customer, next to Apple. The cooperation between the two will continue through the 2nm generation, Intel would not comment on market rumors".