Latest News - Page 1491

The Division 2 has now received its next-gen console update, super-powering the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. The update runs The Division 2 through backwards compatibility, driving up to 4K 60FPS in some cases.

A comparison video was made, and shows the differences between the 3 next-gen consoles:

We know that The Division 2 runs at native the native 4K resolution on Xbox Series X, and drops down to 1080p on the Xbox Series S console. Meanwhile, Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 console renders it at 1944p -- with the PS5 lagging behind in areas like reflections, fog, anisotropic filtering and draw distance issues in The Division 2 compared to the superior Xbox Series X.

Intel is preparing its 4th Gen Xeon CPUs for later this year, with the new Sapphire Rapids processors arriving on the Eagle Stream platform and will use the third refinement of Intel's 10nm process tech called 10nm Enhanced SuperFin.

Intel's new Sapphire Rapids CPUs should rock on-board HBM memory and Compute Express Link 1.1 technologies, and will mark the first server CPUs that Intel has made that support PCIe 5.0 technology. Intel will also have the first architecture to market that supports DDR5 memory, with rumors that it'll support 8-channel DDR5 memory.

We should see desktop and mobile CPUs shifting to DDR5 later this year, with Intel's upcoming desktop and mobile launches of Alder Lake CPUs.

MSI has just launched its flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT GAMING X TRIO graphics card, which will join the other custom Big Navi cards that the company have released so far.

The new MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT GAMING X TRIO should be exactly like the MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT GAMING X TRIO that I reviewed not too long ago... but the Radeon RX 6900 XT version of that. So expect more performance, and more OC headroom -- but it'll be interesting to see if it can compete with other flagship custom Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards.

We have:

Activision made a record-breaking $8 billion in revenues in 2020 thanks to Warzone, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, and World of Warcraft.

Activision did it again. The company has broken its own sales record for a second time, beating 2018's previous $7.5 billion record by over $500 million. Throughout 2020, Activision-Blizzard generated a staggering $8.086 billion in revenues (+25% year-over-year) and handily beating the original yearly sales estimate of $7.675 billion.

The company generated a new all-time profit high of $2.173 billion on the back of the huge revenue gains, alongside a new $2.7 billion operating income record. The publisher attributes these astronomical gains to its new four-part plan, which emphasizes focus on mobile games, full-priced premium games, F2P titles, and monetization. The plan sees big franchises like Call of Duty transforming into a cohesive cross-monetized ecosystem made up of F2P games like Warzone, two premium CoD releases (Modern Warfare and Cold War), and a Call of Duty mobile release.

ZeniMax co-founder Robert Altman has passed away at the age of 74, Bethesda today announced.

Industry icon Robert Altman has died, leaving behind a decades-long string of games and entertainment. A former lawyer, Altman co-founded ZeniMax in 1999 and created the Bethesda parent company alongside Bethesda Softworks founder Chris Weaver. An everlasting legacy of interactive content ensued, solidified with big-name franchises like The Elder Scrolls, eventually branching off into the multi-studio network that includes studios like MachineGames, Arkane, and id.

Altman was reportedly well-liked at Bethesda and key industry figures have chimed in to recount their experiences with the transformative CEO. Bethesda won't be the same without his guidance, and we could see the company shift after Altman's loss and the recent Microsoft acquisition.

With just 667GB of usable space, the PS5's SSD is premium real estate. But there's some good news for PS5 owners: Specific games are now becoming smaller compared to other platforms due to powerful compressing tech.

Control Ultimate Edition is one of the first games to flex the PS5's new Kraken compression tech. The game clocks in just 25GB on PS5 with 4K resolution textures and PS5 optimizations intact, a 42% reduction from the Series X/S file size of 42GB. This isn't a big reduction from the PS4 version, though, which only clocks in at 24GB.

It's worth noting the two consoles use different compression systems. PS5 uses RAD Game Tools' new Oodle Kraken, which massively improves data compression. This new toolset synergizes with the PS5's new highly customized PCIe 4.0 SSD and 12-channel memory controller that enables compressed data speeds of up to 9GB/sec.

The PS5 didn't have enough stock to beat the PS4's initial holiday sales, Sony confirms.

Demand for Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 has far exceeded supply, and limited availability has hampered console sales. Sony reveals the PS5 has only been able to match the PS4 during a year of unprecedented sales potential.

In Q3'20, which stretched from October through December 2020, the PS5 sold-in 4.5 million units--the same sales volume as the PS4 during its holiday 2013 launch. The numbers are actually pretty good as the PS4 was no slouch at launch, but Sony could've hit much greater thresholds if production and console stock hadn't been so restricted.

Elon Musk has just single-handedly sent the price of cryptocurrency Dogecoin to the moon with a bunch of tweets, sending the price of Dogecoin through the roof. His tweets kicked off a Dogecoin rocket, with the price skyrocketing from $0.05 to just under $0.058 within minutes and I'm sure the party is only just starting for Dogecoin.

45 minutes Musk started with this simple picture of a rocket, flying in front of the moon.

Then he simply said "doge" a few minutes later.

In what should come to a surprise as most people but Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder of Amazon, has just announced that he will be stepping down from his role as CEO of Amazon in Q3 2021.

Later this year Bezos will transition from his role as CEO to the Executive Chair of the Amazon Board, while the current CEO of Amazon Web Services -- Andy Jassy -- will become CEO of Amazon. Bezos wrote to his employees: "In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives".

Bezos continued: "Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have." From the letter, it sounds like Bezos intends to use the time he has outside of running Amazon's day-to-day operations to focus on other initiatives, including the "Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions".

Intel's new NUC 11 series PC has just launched, with the new Qi version of the NUC 11 Panther Canyon PC coming in an interesting house-shaped box.

The regular version of the Intel NUC 11 doesn't come in the house-shaped box, but the Qi-charging capable version of the NUC 11 does (and confirmed by Robtech) Inside of the NUC 11 you'll find an Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor, and support for a super-fat NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Intel's new NUC 11 Performance Panther Canyon is the flagship gaming high-end NUC that packs a discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card, Optane Mem H10 memory, and 16GB of RAM by default -- but it can be upgraded.

Zack Snyder's Justice League now has a firm release date: March 18, 2021 where it will debut exclusively on HBO Max and surely pumping the streaming service as high as GameStop and DOGE are right now.

The movie was originally announced back in May 2020 for sometime in 2021, where it was thought to be a 4-part series that would debut on HBO Max. But it was confirmed just a couple of weeks ago that Zack Snyder's Justice League would not be a 4-part series, but instead a full-fledged 4-hour movie.

The new post on HBO Max's official Twitter account also teases 3 new teaser posters for Zack Snyder's Justice League. For anyone who thinks this is just a re-edit of Justice League, you'd be flat wrong -- Joss Whedon came in and replaced Snyder during a family tragedy and re-shot 80% of the movie.

XFX looks to be preparing another custom Big Navi graphics card, with the introduction of the Radeon RX 6800 QICK 319 graphics card. Check it out:

It looks near identical to the higher-end Radeon RX 6800 XT MERC 319 graphics card that I reviewed not too long ago, but with awesome Radeon RX 6800 logo that is LED illuminated missing... a pity, because I loved that on the XFX RX 6800 XT MERC 319.

XFX's new Radeon RX 6800 QICK 319 graphics card will have the same Navi 21 XL GPU with 3840 Stream Processors, 16GB of GDDR6 memory and 128MB of Infinity Cache. XFX will have GPU clocks at 1980MHz Game Clock and up to 2190MHz Boost Clock.

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.