It's true gaming doesn't make nearly as much as Microsoft's other segments, but Xbox is a continual source of guaranteed revenues that are important to the company.

Game Pass and an expanded ecosystem of cross-platform integration has given Microsoft high confidence in gaming. In 7 years, Microsoft went from possibly shutting down Xbox to transforming it into an $11 billion/year segment. This radical turnaround has given Microsoft a taste of gaming success, and now they want more billion-dollar earnings. "In gaming, revenue exceeded $11 billion, as we continue to expand our opportunity to reach the world's 3 billion gamers," Microsoft reports.

In a recent annual shareholders meeting, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the company is "very, very much focused on gaming". The Xbox brand isn't going anywhere, especially now that it's a money-making service that bridges consoles, PCs, and mobile phones. Nadella reiterates Microsoft's emphasis on cross-platform reach, and how Xbox consoles aren't the center any more.

Astronomers have located a very mysterious object out in space and have found that it's flying towards Earth.

The object, which has been named 2020 SO by astronomers, will come within "just" 31,605 miles of our planet at 3:50 a.m. ET on December 1. Astronomer Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project told Newsweek that this is an "extremely close", but yet safe approach from the object.

As for what the object is, astronomers originally believed it to be an asteroid of some kind, but now scientists at CNEOS aren't exactly sure what it is. Masi said, "We are not sure it is an asteroid-that is, a natural body". The object measures in at 15-33 feet across, and CNEOS director Paul Chodas suggested that it could even be an old rocket booster from NASA's failed Surveyor 2 lunar mission, which launched on September 20, 1966.

It first started with a monolith discovered in the Utah desert -- mysteriously disappearing days after it was discovered, and then a monolith was discovered in Romania... days later it too disappeared. There's now another one that has popped up, this time in California.

A new 10-foot-tall metal structure was discovered at the top of Pine Mountain in Atascadero, California. There's no information on how the monolith got there, but the monolith on Pine Mountain "was welded together at each corner, with rivets attaching the side panels to a likely steel frame inside. The top of the monument did not show any weld marks, and it appears to be hollow at the top, and possibly bottom" reports Atascadero News.

There's a bit difference with the new monolith in California, as it is not cut into the ground itself -- meaning it can be pushed over if someone rammed it hard enough. The Atascadero News estimates the metallic monolith weighs around 200 pounds.

Pizza Hut is now accepting payments for pizza and other foods and drinks in-store in Venezuela, with digital assets firm CryptoBuyer announced as the payment partner in Venezuela.

Venezuelan pizza-buying customers can use bitcoin, dash, and XPT -- which is CryptoBuyer's own token, to buy pizza at Pizza Hut. Richard Elkhouri, CEO of Pizza Hut in Venezuela explained: "Today Pizza Hut is trying to go hand in hand with technological innovation, with the support of what technology offers every day to be able to maintain ourselves and evolve in the market".

As for payment partner CryptoBuyer, they are a startup based out of Panama, and have been operating in Latein America since 2015. CryptoBuyer has been acting as a point-of-sale and cryptocurrency ATM service provider in the region. But recent economic issues with hyperinflation, etc, Venezuela is in dire need of a change in methods of payment and value of currency -- this is where cryptocurrency steps in.

A strange monolith appeared in the Utah desert recently, disappearing after going viral on the internet -- then another appeared in Romania, and now another in the last 12 hours in California.

The new monolith in Romania appeared on November 27, 2020 -- 10 days after the original monolith that appeared in Utah on November 17, 2020. The monolith in Romania appeared the monolith in Utah monolith disappeared,

The monolith that was in Utah was reportedly there for many years, after being discovered on Google Maps between August 2015 and October 2016. It recently disappeared, but the monolith discovered in Romania didn't stick around as long as the one in Utah -- vanishing after just a few days.

Elon Musk has said that he has plans to have SpaceX land a craft on Mars in 2022 -- with humans stepping foot onto the Red Planet in the next 4-6 years.

Musk recently made some new comments during the Axel Springer Award 2020 event, where he talked about SpaceX and its mission to Mars. He said that the journey from Earth to Mars has to wait for a specific time, when the planet's orbit lines up with ours -- which happens about every two years.

Not only that, but Musk himself said he wants to be aboard one of the SpaceX Starship trips, something he'll do in the next 2-3 years. Musk said: "I'd say six years from now, highly confident [that humans will travel to Mars]. If we get lucky, maybe four years, and then we're going to try and send an uncrewed vehicle there in two years".

NVIDIA has released its new GeForce 457.51 WHQL drivers, which provide support for the newly-released GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card. You can get them here.

The new drivers also fix some issues with Ampere-based graphics cards, where bluescreens were happening when you'd wake your system up from sleep. On top of that, Freestyle and Ansel fixes have been applied with the new drivers for Star Wars: Squadrons.

You can read more about it and download the GeForce Game Ready 457.51 WHQL drivers here.

AMD has announced that it will be hosting a CES 2021 keynote on January 12, 2021 -- where we can expect some announcements of products that will be released throughout 2021.

The company has just launched its Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 series processors for desktops, and kinda paper launched its new RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. With CES 2021 right around the corner -- if you can believe this year is nearly over, that is -- AMD is announcing its plans for a CES 2021 virtual keynote.

The official CES website explains: "AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su will keynote during CES 2021, presenting the AMD vision for the future of research, education, work, entertainment and gaming, including a portfolio of high-performance computing and graphics solutions".

Medal of Honor Above and Beyond is just over a week away, and we now know the game includes five action-packed multiplayer modes on top of the full single-player campaign.

Respawn Entertainment is gearing up for the launch of the VR debut of Medal of Honor. The studio is taking the beloved franchise into the future with it's fully VR Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond. I've been excited about this game for months, but I had no idea it was a multiplayer experience.

Respawn released a new trailer for the game today that shows off the exciting multiplayer experiences. The five multiplayer modes include Mad Bomber, in which players must successfully plant explosives amidst a gunfight; a free-for-all Deathmatch mode, as well as Team Deathmatch; Blast Radius, where players fight with RPGs, and Domination, where you need to capture and hold all the zones on the map.

Pimax has been working hard to build out the Pimax Experience virtual environment where you can control your headset's settings and launch your games. The newest feature is a virtual desktop mode.

The Pimax Experience virtual desktop mode enables you to access your Windows desktop from within the headset. This feature is perfect if you want to work in a virtual environment. You can bring up your browser or any 2D application. You can also use the virtual desktop mode to watch 2D videos on a gigantic virtual screen.

Pimax said that it's not ready to deploy the virtual desktop to everyone, but the company is looking for users willing to test it and provide feedback for further development.

Wacom revealed an experimental device that hopes will carry the company through the next generation of digital art creation. It's taking its expertise with digital pens into the future with a VR Pen.

Wacom's new VR Pen device is a pressure-sensitive pen input device made for both 2D and 3D artists. The new VR pen supports 3D drawing with a full 6-degrees of freedom tracking solution while also supporting traditional 2D surface-based drawing with a digital tablet.

Wacom said the VR Pen uses "pen grip force" to determine your intended pressure in 3D space. It also includes an EMR pressure sensor in the tip, making it compatible with Wacom's drawing tablets. You can use the VR Pen for both 3D and 2D mediums. And it works with any VR headset thanks to Wacom's independent tracking system.

Cyberpunk 2077 will ship with a powerful and flexible photo mode to capture all those epic Night City moments.

Every single time I watch a Cyberpunk video I think "I sure hope this game has a photo mode." Today CD Projekt RED made my dreams a reality. Not only does Cyberpunk 2077 have a built-in photo mode option, but it's pretty robust and looks almost as dynamic as Miles Morales' editor.

The new photo mode trailer showcases what kinds of captures you can take. The possibilities are pretty endless. You can change V.'s pose, adjust the frames, touch up effects like exposure and depth of field, and there's even a save/load option that could let you save presets and lock them in for easy access later. Or it could let you save or load the game directly from the photo mode editor?

Lots of original Destiny players have moved on to other games. Bungie has a plan to win then back by catering new content to core fans.

For a while, Destiny 2 has a rocky road. Bungie has spent tons of time and man-hours righting the ship and focusing more on what core gamers actually want rather than trying to attract new players. This re-focusing is imperative for any live game that loses its way--an inevitable fate for most big online games. Even Destiny 1 went through the same metamorphosis with the The Taken King. With its return to classic areas like the Cosmodrome and soon the Vault of Glass raid, Destiny 2's big new Beyond Light expansion is basically the sequel's The Taken King equivalent.

Now in a recent interview with The Washington Post, Bungie execs re-affirm the studio's commitment to the Destiny faithful.

Fortnite's big new Chapter 2, Season 5 Zero Point update is bringing some big characters

Galactus just tried to absorb the Zero Point, but Iron Man foiled his plans by making billions of battle bus clones and blowing him up. Now gamers go through The Loop from the Zero Point into another battle map littered with bounty hunters from a ton of different realities, ranging from Mando and Baby Yoda to Mancake, a hunter with a head made of flapjacks. There's also Leka, a hunter lifted right out of anime and a Roman gladiator with two cruel flails.

Somehow, PlayStation icon Kratos is also joining the fray. It hasn't been announced just yet but Sony did release a teaser. Click here to check out all the latest skins included with Season 5.

Microtransactions and live service purchases are the bedrock of digital gaming. Traditional publishers like EA, Take-Two, Ubisoft, and especially Activision all make hundreds of millions (and even billions) on mTX every year. Others like Tencent further dominate with a smorgasbord of mobile titans. SuperData's latest Black Friday figures illustrate just how important mTX is to a digital games economy dominated by F2P games.

According to SuperData's latest report, in-game purchases make up a whopping 88% of 2020's digital games industry revenues. Mtx and in-game purchases made up $92.6 billion from January - October 2020. Full game paid downloads made just $11.6 billion. Players spent nearly 8x more money buying things in games than they did on the games themselves, and microtransactions made up about 88% of 2020's current digital revenues.

These figures aren't all that surprising given how F2P games typically lead the charge. Mobile is on top, followed by consoles and then PC. F2P games like Fortnite, League of Legends, Genshin Impact, Dungeon Fighter Online, and Roblox pull in tremendous revenues from in-game purchases every year on all platforms.

Sony recently promised that more PlayStation 5 consoles will be shipped out before the end of the year. Some regions aren't included in this re-stocking plan.

The PS5 is the biggest console launch in PlayStation history and the systems are flying off shelves. Supply is more than constrained: scalpers are hoarding thousands of PS5s and consumers are lining up outside of stores for the chance to buy a system. Sony says more PS5s will be shipped to global worldwide regions, but some Oceanic countries will have to wait until 2021.

Sony confirm that all PS5 stock has been sold out in Australia and New Zealand and no more systems will be available until next year. "SIE Australia and New Zealand are pleased to have fulfilled all PS5 stock available to Australians and New Zealanders in 2020. We look forward to making more stock available in 2021," said in a statement to Kotaku Australia.

Oculus has started informing customers who purchased MARVEL Powers United VR that their game will cease to function on March 1, 2021. They won't even be able to play single player.

The Oculus Studios' produced MARVEL Powers United VR multiplayer co-op game launched in late July 2018, and sadly, it won't survive until its third birthday. Oculus has revealed that you won't be able to play it after March 1 next year.

Oculus and Sanzaru Games sent out a disappointing email to owners of the game on December 1, informing them that their purchase will soon be taken away from them.

Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer won't include a battle royale component, 343i's community director reiterates.

Battle royale still isn't in the cards for the Halo universe, even if it makes sense to offer the mode. Rumors of a Halo mass free-for-all component have re-circulated on the internet and now 343i community director Brian Jarrard has squashed them (again). "Nothing gets a post-holiday Monday going like fresh unfounded Halo Infinite rumors," Jarrard said on Twitter, but didn't elaborate further. Jarrard also notes the big lapse between news and says a new Infinite update is on the way.

"Btw yes I'm aware we could help solve this with real news. We certainly have some things we're overdue on and eager to talk more about. We're in the process of pulling together a year-end update."

It's only taken 3 years, but the Switch can now transfer your captured screenshots and video to other devices like PCs, laptops, and mobile phones.

The new Nintendo Switch firmware 11.0.0 patch adds some nifty new features to the handheld console. Users can now transfer video and images to desktops and laptops via USB--a feature I've been wanting since the console launched in 2017. Sadly there's still no way to back up your saves via USB. Nintendo Switch Online is the sole way to back up data.

You can even hook up the Switch to your phone using Wi-Fi Direct and transfer files that way. I've been able to transfer batches of multiple screenshots and video, but be sure to keep your Switch active or else you'll lose the connection. The Wi-Fi connection is lost when the system enters sleep mode.

The PS5's new activities section is a major innovation for console gaming. New internal documents obtained by Vice explains Sony's main motivations behind this quick access and why it was implemented.

The PS5 is built around a few fundamental principles: Access, compatibility, and power. Access is tapped via the12-channel PCIe 4.0 SSD capable of blasting data at 5.5GB/sec, but raw speed isn't everything. Sony is using this powerful storage tech to innovate access points with a transformative new PS5 feature called activities.

Activities change how you play a game by giving you quick access. Think of it as fast travel, only for objectives. Pressing the PS button in Spider-Man Miles Morales summons a menu of quick-launch missions. Clicking a card instantly transports you to the location corresponding to the mission. It's a means of instant access that respects players' time while getting them right into the action.