Microsoft marketing still doesn't have launch answers for gamers interested in the Xbox Series X.

The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 still don't have launch date info or pricing, and Microsoft says it'll reveal full info "when we're ready." Sony and Microsoft are locked in a price war and no one wants to go first, especially given both next-gen systems should be pretty expensive compared to previous generations due to the enthusiast-grade hardware that's packed inside.

This time, Microsoft not blink first. They did that at E3 2013 with a huge $499 Xbox One price tag and it cost them lots of hardware sales. On Twitter, Xbox UK marketing exec Samuel Bateman told gamers that news will come...but no one knows when. "I understand everyone is excited to know and people want to plan purchases etc. We'll let you all know when we're ready," Bateman said.

DirectStorage, the API that supercharges data processing in Microsoft's Xbox Series X, is coming to Windows to optimize high-speed PCIe 4.0 SSD speeds.

Today Microsoft re-confirmed DirectStorage is also coming to Windows 10 PCs. The news was confirmed a bit ago, but has been reiterated thanks to yesterday's big new RTX IO announcement, new NVIDIA tech that allows SSDs to stream data directly to GPUs. DirectStorage is responsible for the underlying fabric of the Xbox Series X's Velocity Architecture and essentially makes next-gen gaming possible on the Xbox Series X.

DirectStorage API is part of the DirectX 12 Ultimate tech that powers both Xbox Series X and Windows 10 gaming. It's optimized specifically to unlock the potential of high-speed NVMe SSDs by matching the real-time IO data processing of games with the high bandwidth of Gen4 SSD storage. Up until now, APIs simply couldn't match up fast SSD perf with the massive amount of IO that modern games demand--a limitation that created bottlenecks and hampered in-game performance.

I have had just over 5 hours sleep in way over 48 hours now, trying to cover NVIDIA's launch of the new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards as much as I could.

But there is one story I wanted to sit down and make sure I wrote, and that was from an industry source who told me that post-launch there will be "no stock will be available till the end of the year". The first wave of cards is said to be small, very, very small -- possibly the smallest launch in many years.

Another source had something much more damning to say, but I want to flesh that out before I write it. For now, I'm being told stock will be extremely low for the next couple of months. Why? Samsung 8nm yields are unknown at this point, NVIDIA might not want to make too many before the yields improve.

COLORFUL has just unveiled its new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, with a revamped Vulcan series with the best-ever LCD on a graphics card yet.

The flagship GeForce RTX 30 series Vulcan model features an upgraded LCD3.0 display, which is a large 480 mm x 120 mm display that can be flipped 90 degrees if your COLORFUL GeForce RTX 30 series Vulcan graphics card is mounted vertically in your case.

It's a large triple-slot beast, but we should expect some stellar thermal performance on the RTX 30 series Vulcan cards from COLORFUL. On top of this, the company provides a toolbox in the package, which will include a screwdriver, VGA holder, and a microfiber cloth to keep your LCD display clean.

Lenovo must be in some deep doo-doo right now, leaking out NVIDIA's unannounced GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card which has 16GB of GDDR6 memory.

VideoCardz reports that it remains "unclear" whether this model is really the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, or whether it is the GeForce RTX 3070 SUPER -- with the site hearing "both names in private conversations with AIBs". I can back that up -- I've been trying to find out more information as well, and AIBs are confused as all heck.

Lenovo's new Legion T7 gaming system will be coming with a new Intel Core i7-10700K processor, as well as an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card which has 16GB of GDDR6 memory. This is an interesting addition to the stack, so let's refresh:

In among all of the hoopla surround the launch of the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, there was the introduction of RTX IO.

What the hell is NVIDIA RTX IO?!

NVIDIA is utilizing the new Ampere GPU architecture inside of its GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards to introduce RTX IO, which is a "suite of technologies that enable rapid GPU-based loading and game asset decompression, accelerating I/O performance by up to 100x compared to hard drives and traditional storage APIs".

One of the common ways NASA decommissions an out-of-use satellite is to direct it straight at Earth's atmosphere.

That process has now been recently used on one of NASA's most old school satellites, the OGO-1. If you have never heard of this satellite, don't stress, because it was launched all the way back in 1964. The satellites mission has long since been completed, but now the space agency has officially removed the satellite from orbit by directing straight towards Earth's atmosphere.

The OGO-1 was designed to observe Earth from outside Earth's atmosphere, and more specifically, as NASA explains, was designed to study the planet's magnetosphere - "the region of space surrounding Earth that is controlled by Earth's magnetic field." NASA says that the satellite was relaying scientific data for five years, and in 1969 it was placed in standby mode when the satellite was unable to relay said data. In 1971 the satellite mission was officially terminated, and now on August 29th, 2020, it erupted into a fireball upon entry into Earth's atmosphere.

RealMax is preparing a very ambitious AR device. The company hasn't made an official announcement, but it started showing off previews of what the upcoming RealMax Qian can do.

According to RealMax, the Qian AR headset offers a 119.3-degree field of view, which is outrageous for an AR device. To put that into perspective, Microsoft's HoloLens 2 gives you a 52-degree viewport to see holographic content. The RealMax Qian gives you a broader view of the virtual world than most VR headsets.

We don't know much about the RealMax Qian other than the field of view. The company has not revealed any headset images, nor has it talked about the hardware specifications. We wouldn't expect to see the hardware on the market any time soon, though.

NVIDIA has revealed its initial trio of Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, with the ferocious GeForce RTX 3090 at $1499 -- the new flagship GeForce RTX 3080 for $599, and then there's the new gaming king GeForce RTX 3070 for $499.

The new GeForce RTX 3070 offers performance that beats the RTX 2080 Ti, which is a card that debuted for $1199 -- but the new Ampere-powered RTX 3070 is priced at just $499... which is ridiculous. We have 5888 CUDA cores, with 2x the FP32 throughput of the Turing GPU in the now previous-gen RTX 20 series cards.

NVIDIA is using the more cut down GA104 GPU for the GeForce RTX 3070, made on Samsung's new 8nm node. We have 8GB of GDDR6 memory, dropping the 'X' from the faster GeForce RTX 3080 and ridiculous RTX 3090. NVIDIA kicked the GDDR6 down to 16Gbps, with 512GB/sec of bandwidth.

Infinite Productions today released an open-source tool that measures the field of view of VR headsets and compares the readability of text in each. The utility doesn't have a name, but it captures each test's results and saves them in a comparison database.

Jan Horsky, one of the co-founders of Infinite Productions, took it upon himself to build this tool. He said his goal is the build a crowd-sourced database of FOV and readability results. In a tweet about the utility, Horsky noted that he was inspired to build this measurement tool because he felt the existing measurement tools were not accurate. He left his source code open so that the community could amend his work if he turns out faulty.

Horsky is looking for more people to test out his utility to strengthen the database. The more results received, the stronger that database will get.

Following NVIDIA's bombshell reveal of the GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, Acer announced that it would soon offer preconfigured Predator Orion gaming desktop computers with RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090 graphics card options.

"Acer is excited to be among the first to offer the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs on desktops with our Predator Orion gaming series," said Jeff Lee, General Manager, Stationary Computing, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "For gamers that demand the latest breakthroughs in performance, the Predator desktops with the latest GPUs will support them to game at their best."

Acer's Predator Orion lineup includes three models that represent different price points. The Predator Orion 9000 is the high-end option, which supports Intel's Core i9-10980XE Extreme-Edition. These systems will support up to NVIDIA's top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card.

NVIDIA showed off two of the biggest releases of 2020 with its beautiful RTX graphics enabled, with Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War teased with RTX -- and now Cyberpunk 2077, both of them on the new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards.

CD PROJEKT RED's upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 will be offering up RTX-enabled ray tracing-enhanced lighting, shadows, reflections, ambient occlusion, and more. It looks absolutely gorgeous when running, but I need to know what hardware can run it at 4K 120FPS with all of the RTX features enabled.

Cyberpunk 2077 with max RTX graphics will surely be the new Crysis, so I wonder if it'll crush that ferocious GeForce RTX 3090 that NVIDIA is pricing at $1499, packing an insane 24GB of super-fast GDDR6X memory. I'm sure we'll see 1440p or 4K 60FPS with the new flagship GeForce RTX 3080, which has 10GB of GDDR6X memory and a price of $699 -- it offers double the performance over the RTX 2080 -- all for $500 less than the RTX 2080 Ti, which it now easily beats.

NVIDIA unveiled its new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards less than 12 hours ago now, debuting a new trailer and unveiling that Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War has RTX tech attached onto it. Check out the trailer:

The trailer doesn't show us that much at all, other than some fancy real-time ray tracing graphical goodness. I mean, it looks incredible, the lighting effects, shadows, are all on-point here with Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War with RTX on.

Reflections off of glasses, or a clock, or a gun? It looks almost real. But virtually no real-world gameplay shown, other than some Michael Bay-inspired quick cuts. Still, it looks impressive and has me wanting more -- especially as a big fan of Call of Duty: Warzone.

World of Warcraft's new Shadowlands expansion calls for an SSD in its minimum requirements, but apparently it'll still run on hard disk drives too.

New minimum spec requirements for World of Warcraft Shadowlands explicitly call for an SSD, listings on the Battle.net app confirm. This is the first time any major World of Warcraft expansion has called for an SSD and is an interesting move for Blizzard. Right now game developers are starting to target SSD storage in games thanks to new tech like Microsoft's DirectStorage, Sony's built-in PS5 SSD architecture, and the new RTX IO.

The $40 Shadowlands expansion will have tons of content packed into a 100GB package, including the cross-race/-class Death Knight, a new area across the veil to explore, new bosses and items, and more. The expansion is set to release October 26, 2020.

AT&T has abandoned its plans to sell WB Games, sources tell Bloomberg.

WB Games will remain part of AT&T's new WarnerMedia division, sources familiar with the matter say. Early reports suggested AT&T would sell WB Games in a sweeping $4 billion deal, which would include key development studios and licensing rights to DC properties, Harry Potter, and more. Companies like EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Take-Two were previously interested in buying.

The news is welcome for fans who are awaiting big new WB titles, including WB Montreal's new Gotham Knights, Rocksteady's new Suicide Squad live game, and Avalanche's unannounced Harry Potter RPG. Reports originally said AT&T would sell of WB Games in an effort to shave its massive $152 billion debt.

Game devs are starting to weigh in on the PlayStation 5's next-gen 5.5GB/sec SSD tech and how it can revolutionize gaming. But right now devs are mostly focused on speed versus huge gameplay changes.

The PS5's SSD is a massive development that changes everything. But it won't change everything right at launch. Developers still need time to get used to the tech and utilize it in innovative ways. While first-party devs like Insomniac are using the 12-channel PCIe 4.0 SSD to completely revolutionize gameplay in Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart with instantaneous omni-dimensional traversal, other devs are mostly focusing on raw speed.

Sony just interviewed a few devs about the PS5's SSD and the consensus is that the raw hardware speeds will drive initial next-gen experiences. There's no talk about custom data libraries or APIs or I/O architectures, and no discussion of technical info (which is disappointing). Just hype around instant access, elimination of loading times, and how the PS5 can load assets for rendering at 5.5GB/sec.

Microsoft's Xbox Series S gets mentioned yet again from official promotional materials. It's time to announce it already.

Microsoft is working on two next-gen consoles: The beastly, more expensive enthusiast Xbox Series X, and the cheaper, digital-only, entry-level Xbox Series S. The latter hasn't been formally revealed, but it's been leaked a bunch of times. Now it just got leaked again.

First the Series S was mentioned in the new cross-gen Xbox controller that released months early (this controller also revealed the Series X's possible launch date). Now Xbox Series S is also being mentioned in Game Pass slips included with current-gen Xbox One controllers.

NVIDIA has finally unveiled its new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, with the introduction of the 'big, ferocious GPU' in the GeForce RTX 3090 -- 'the new flagship' in the GeForce RTX 3080 and the 'sweet spot' with the RTX 3070.

The new GeForce RTX 3080 will start from $699 and will offer 2x the performance than the original GeForce RTX 2080 with 8704 CUDA cores and has been "designed for 4K gaming" where the RTX 3080 will "consistently delivers more than 60 fps at 4K resolution".

NVIDIA notes the new GeForce RTX 3080 is made on a "custom 8N manufacturing process", packing a huge 28 billion transistors and 10GB of GDDR6X from Micron. The 10GB of GDDR6X is on a 320-bit memory bus at 19Gbps with memory bandwidth hitting 760GB/sec. We have a 320W TDP on the RTX 3080, too.

NVIDIA has just unveiled its new stack of Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, with the ferocious new $1499 graphics card the world's first 8K 60FPS gaming GPU.

During the recent NVIDIA livestream where the Ampere GeForce RTX 3090, RTX 3080, RTX 3070 graphics cards were unveiled, NVIDIA CEO and founder Jensen Huang gushed over the ballistic GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card.

Rightfully so, as he heralded it as the world's first 8K 60FPS gaming GPU -- packing the GA102 GPU on Samsung's 8nm node with 10496 CUDA cores in total. There's a huge 24GB of GDDR6X memory, the same framebuffer amount offered on the TITAN RTX which costs $2499.

NVIDIA has just unveiled its new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, with company founder and CEO Jensen Huang literally pulling the RTX 3090 from the oven during the Ampere GeForce unveiling.

The quick skinny on NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card is the crown jewel of Ampere, rocking the GA102 GPU on Samsung's 8nm node with 10496 CUDA cores in total. This is a huge increase over the 4352 CUDA cores inside of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which gives the new GeForce RTX 3090 some serious muscle to flex.

Not just that, but we have a gigantic 24GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X memory, a huge upgrade from the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and its 11GB of GDDR6. NVIDIA's previous-gen TITAN RTX had 24GB of GDDR6 memory, and debuted -- and is priced right now (I'm sure this will change once the news goes live) at $2499.