At $299, the Xbox Series S is great for consumers. But some developers are concerned the lower-powered next-gen console will just add more cross-gen optimization work.

On November 10, devs releasing cross-gen games will have to optimize across five consoles: The 2013 Xbox One, the Xbox One S, Xbox One X, and the newer Xbox Series S and Series X duo. All of these systems have varying performance and games will play differently on each one.

Some developers like Remedy Entertainment's Sasan Sepehr, who's working as senior technical producer on Remedy's new unannounced AAA game, says the Series S could cause trouble for game optimization.

Today Twitch announced Ninja is returning home to the streaming platform that started it all.

Ninja is back, and Twitch is paying big to keep him on the service. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ninja has signed a lucrative multi-year exclusivity deal with Twitch to keep him away from competing services like YouTube and Facebook Gaming.

Microsoft had originally poached Ninja from Twitch for its failed Mixer service, paying him millions to move to the Xbox-driven streaming service. Mixer was closed in July 2020, and it's only natural for Ninja to move back to the next-biggest service.

The Xbox Series X's retail box proudly touts 4K 120FPS gaming and makes it easy to differentiate among current-gen Xbox One family.

Consumer-facing messaging is extremely important in any product industry, and that goes double when you're about to have four Xbox consoles on the market at the same time. Luckily the Xbox Series X's box design makes it hard to get next- and current-gen systems mixed up.

The box art was revealed by Canadian retailer The Source, and it clearly highlights info consumers will see on store shelves.

Even with a duo of consoles including the low-cost $299 Xbox Series S, Sony's PlayStation 5 is still expected to beat Microsoft in the next-gen race.

Following today's Xbox Series X/S price announcements, analyst firm Ampere Analysis upwardly revised its next-gen console sales forecasts for 2020. The group predicts the PS5 will still outsell Series X/S combined sales by over 1 million units. The PlayStation 4's established lead is expected to carry over into next-gen thanks to backwards compatible games and peripherals.

The PS5 is expected to sell 5 million units in 2020 (+400,000 units), and the Series X/S are pegged at a combined 3.9 million (+600,000 units). These numbers exceed both the 2013 launch year sales of the PS4 (4.2 million) and the Xbox One (3 million).

EVGA has a pretty good stack of custom GeForce RTX 3080 graphcis cards coming, with no less than 5 custom RTX 3080 cards on the way.

The fastest of them all is EVGA's new GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 ULTRA graphics card, which has a GPU boost clock of 1.8GHz -- making it the fastest custom GeForce RTX 3080 so far. It is a 2.75-slot graphics card, with a chunky triple-fan cooler with EVGA's in-house ICX3 cooling technology and full-cover backplate.

You will need triple 8-pin PCIe power connectors, compared to the single 12-pin (which requires dual 8-pin) PCIe power connectors on NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics card.

Apple's next flagship iPhone will reportedly incorporate the same Lidar technology that Apple debuted in the 2020 iPad Pro. If that is true, we should see awe-inspiring AR capabilities out of the next iPhone.

According to Fast Company, Apple's upcoming flagship phone, the iPhone 12 Pro, will feature the same Lidar technology that the iPad Pro currently offers, which gives the tablet enormous advantages for developing augmented reality experiences.

A Lidar system is an advanced depth perception camera that uses a "direct-time-of-flight" calculation to determine distances at the speed of light. The Lidar system's accuracy on the current iPad Pro enables it to produce incredibly realistic augmented reality experiences that genuinely blend in with reality.

If you haven't seen the bombastic and Michael Bay-stylized multiplayer gameplay trailer reveal for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War -- you can read more about Black Ops Cold War here, or check out the trailer below:

But now we have COD: Black Ops Cold War developer Treyarch talking more about the game, about its battle pass system, and what Black Ops Cold War means for Warzone. Not only will COD: Black Ops Cold War have cross-play and cross-progression included, both games have shared post-launch content in the battle pass and store.

This means that if you unlock something in Black Ops Cold War and its new battle pass, it will carry over to Warzone -- and if you unlock something in Warzone, it will carry back over to Black Ops Cold War. Post-launch content for both games is completely free, which means you can easily transfer everything between Warzone to Black Ops Cold War.

The lads over at Digital Foundry have done what they do best -- and seriously, it is great -- and torn down a PC preview build of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Check it out:

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is being developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, using Treyarch's own engine -- and not the one Infinity Ward used in the mega-popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and its standalone F2P smash hit Warzone.

Digital Foundry had some hands-on time with the preview build of the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (check out the recent gameplay reveal trailer here), which in early form didn't have its just-announced RTX features enabled. The game still looks great, with DF noting that the game has a cinematic Michael Bay style... which is fitting for its early 1980s Miami vibe.

Another Reality, the developer behind the popular VR title Gorn, revealed that the game would be coming to the Oculus Quest standalone VR system. Don't get too excited, though, because the developer is not even speculating about a release date.

Gorn was an early title on PCVR. It hit Steam in early access in July 2017, shortly after the original Rift and Vive launches. It took the developers a couple of years to complete the game, but Gorn left early access in July 2019.

Another Reality was keen to let us know the game is in the works, but the company is unwilling to give us an idea of its release timeline. That may be because the company wants to avoid upsetting people if the game gets delayed. A PSVR version of Gorn was scheduled for release in 2019, but the game's development took longer than expected. Gorn eventually hit PSVR in May this year.

AMD announced that it will unveiling its next-gen Zen 3 CPU architecture and desktop Ryzen 4000 series CPUs at a new event on October 8.

We should expect a bunch of Ryzen 4000 seires desktop processors to be unveiled, and a deep dive on the new Zen 3 architecture itself. AMD has dubbed this event: "Next Generation Ryzen Desktop Processors".

Just over two weeks later on October 28, AMD will unveil its next-gen RDNA 2-based "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. We've just seen leaks that tease the Radeon RX 6000 series engineering sample with 16GB of VRAM, you can read more about that here.

EVGA's upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 has been spotted in the wild, with EVGA's own Jacob Freeman, tweeting out a picture of the card. Check it out:

The new EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 has a 2.2-slot design and a large triple-fan cooler, and will be one of two custom GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards from EVGA. The other will be the higher-end premium GeForce RTX 3070 ICX3 FTW3.

We have a fully custom PCB on EVGA's new GeForce RTX 3070 XC3, with a triple-fan cooler and massive heat sink that you can see underneath. Freeman said that the RTX 3070 XC3 will be around 11.2 inches tall (or long) while the RTX 3070 FTW3 card is 11.8 inches.

The RealMax Qian augmented reality headset is looking even more impressive now that we know the device's specifications. Not only does it boast a wider field of view than other AR headsets, but it can also convert into a VR device with SteamVR support.

Last week we discovered a video of the RealMax Qian AR headset that showed the headset's 119-degree wide field of view display in action. Today, RealMax revealed the device's general specifications, and now we're even more intrigued about this headset.

RealMax said the Qian would be powered by a Snapdragon 835, would include 4GB of memory and would offer 64GB of storage space, which are the same specifications as the Oculus Quest VR headset. Snapdragon 835 isn't the most recent Qualcomm hardware, but it should handle an AR headset with ease if it can power the Quest. Although the headset also doubles as a VR headset by slipping on a magnetic faceplate, we expect to see comparable VR performance from RealMax's headset.

GALAX has just announced its new super-fast Hall of Fame (HOF) Extreme PCIe 4.0 SSD, which packs Phison's incredible new SSD controller that enables 7GB/sec read speeds.

The new Phison PS5018-E18 controller is powering GALAX's new HOF Extreme PCIe 4.0 SSD, which means we're looking at an ultra-fast 7000MB/sec (7GB/sec) reads and 6850MB/sec (6.85GB/sec) writes. This is at the same level as Sabrent's new Rocket 4 Plus SSD which packs the same Phison E18 controller.

We can expect GALAX to offer its new Hall of Fame Extreme PCIe 4.0 SSDs in 1TB, 2TB, and even 4TB capacities which is great to see. GALAX has just stepped up, over and beyond Samsung with its new HOF Edition PCIe 4.0 SSDs -- the same with Sabrent which has come out of nowhere and dominated the SSD market.

AMD only just teased it would be revealing much more about its new Big Navi graphics card family, based on the RDNA 2 graphics architecture, on October 28.

But now less than 12 hours later we have a new mysterious engineering sample photo of a purported Big Navi graphics card. The leak is saying that this particular card uses 16GB of GDDR6 from Samsung (compared to the 8GB, 10GB, and 24GB of GDDR6/X that NVIDIA is using from Micron on Ampere).

Not only that but there are "only 8 video memory bits" which means we're looking at a 256-bit memory bus, which is "far less" than the GeForce RTX 3090. This might be Big Navi, but AMD needs the bigger guns with something like Bigger or even possibly Biggest Navi if it wants to compete with the beast that is the GeForce RTX 3090.

Xbox All Access can save you money in the long run, but only if you plan to buy Xbox Game Pass Ultimate anyway.

Microsoft's Xbox All Access program opens new flexible access points for consumers who don't have $499 or $299 to drop on a new Xbox. All Access allows consumers to sign a credit lease contract and pay for a next-gen Xbox Series X or Series S console over time.

Instead of paying hundreds all at once, consumers pay in monthly installments across a 24 month term.

Destiny is the penultimate service game shooter, and it's come a long, long way since 2014. The game is now six years old, and to celebrate we decided to take a quick look back at the old beta from 2014.

While scouring my PlayStation 4 captures I dug up a few Destiny beta screenshots from the very beginning of Bungie's dream game. I've seen Destiny evolve before my eyes from the scrappy ambitious FPS-RPG startup to the mega-engaging, cross-platform behemoth it is today. Before Shadowkeep and Beyond Light there was just vanilla Destiny. The story was weird, there wasn't a whole lot to do, and our floating ghost spoke of wizards from the moon. But it was a campy, memorable, and simpler time; a time where you roamed across Old Russia in search of spinmetal and secrets. Sometimes you found cool things, like a level ?? Celebrant of Oryx, or a loot cave that just kept spilling goodies.

Other times you found friends. I'll still never forget my first trip to the moon with a friend, or the first Vault of Glass raid I ever did. There was nothing like--and still is nothing like--Destiny on the market. Bungie has made good on its promise to connect players in an evolving world, and there's been lots of hiccups along the way, but ultimately the game is something special.

EA is bringing its on-demand all-you-can-play vault of first-party games to Game Pass for free. This is a carefully-designed business move that has far-reaching implications.

Today Microsoft announced a fusillade of next-gen value: First the Xbox Series S allows ray-traced next-gen 1440p gaming for $299, and the Xbox Series X was confirmed for $499, making it the most accessible point for 4K 60FPS+ gaming. But the real bombshell surrounds Xbox Game Pass.

EA Play is coming to Game Pass Ultimate on both PC and Xbox for no extra cost. Normally, EA Play is $5 a month per platform on its own, but it's now included free with the $15 a month GP Ultimate subscription. Why would EA wrap itself in a potentially competing service? It's simple, really: EA wants to use Game Pass to sell microtransactions and game sales.

The full multiplayer reveal trailer to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is here, and it looks like an insane amount of fun. Check it out:

We can expect gamers to be dropped into the world of the Cold War and its tight grip on the world in the early 1980s, with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War throwing you into a huge single player campaign that will see you going up against historical figures in some gorgeous locations including: East Berlin, Vietnam, Turkey, Soviet KGB headquarters, and more.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is next-gen ready, where you can purchase the 'Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Cross-Gen Bundle or Ultimate Edition digitally' on either platform and you will get -- in the Black Ops Cold War official website description:

AMD has just announced it will be revealing its next-gen RDNA 2 graphics architecture on October 28, in a new tweet that you can check out below:

AMD teases a that RDNA 2 is a "breakthrough gaming architecture" designed for both "PCs and consoles" and that "a new journey begins October 28". I guess we'll be introduced to Big Navi, which should be the new Radeon RX 6700 XT if AMD keeps the same nomenclature.

The new card will be the competitor to NVIDIA's about-to-be-released monster GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, but recent rumors have suggested Big Navi will bring with it 16GB of VRAM -- up from the 10GB offered on the RTX 3080.

NVIDIA will be kicking off the price of its riduclous but oh-so-delicious GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card at $1499, but you knew it wasn't going to stay there long.

The GeForce RTX 3090 isn't even out yet and we're seeing custom RTX 3090 pricing that is passing $2000, with German retailer Caseking.de listing custom GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards priced at €1,719 which converts to just over $2000 USD without taxes.

It looks like the cheapest custom GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card is going to cost around $1855, while the cheapest custom GeForce RTX 3080 will cost around $900. This is without taxes in the US so those prices might be a little higher depending on where you live.