Today Amazon made a megaton announcement: It's teaming up with South Korean titan Smilegate to make a new game.

Amazon's first-party game development projects seem to be floundering. New World has been delayed to 2021, and Crucible, the Overwatch knock-off, is back in beta after an unsuccessful launch. So now Amazon is pivoting and will team up Smilegate, with one of the most successful developers on the planet.

Smilegate's FPS CrossFire is the most popular shooter in the world. It has 670 million registered users and 8 million active users across the world. Smilegate will develop the game, and Amazon Games will publish the project. We don't know exactly what Smilegate is working on, but it could be another shooter. The game is set to release in 2021. It's worth noting that Control and Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment is working on a singleplayer campaign for CrossFireX.

The PS5's DualSense controller has programmable adaptive triggers, and developers are doing some creative things with them including locking them completely when your gun jams.

Outside of VR-based peripherals, the DualSense might be the most innovative controller ever made. The controller has special adaptive triggers that interact with the force feedback in a dynamic way, creating multitudes of possibilities for nuanced and instantaneous sensory input.

Examples include how the trigger with vibrate to reflect the tensile strength of a bowstring pull, or different levels of targeted vibration to simulate different terrains. Devs can literally program the triggers to react to gameplay as they see fit.

Sony's next-gen PS5 lineup includes heavy-hitters like Spider-Man Miles Morales, Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7, the Demon's Souls remake, and the new Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart game. Sony is extremely confident in this selection of games, and even calls it the "best in PlayStation history."

As of right now, the PS5 won't have a whole lot of games when it releases in holiday 2020. Key launch games include Godfall, a third-party action RPG, and Spider-Man Miles Morales, a smaller spin-off of Insomniac's Spider-Man. Third-party will push sales more than first-party by virtue of more games, and we'll see big hits like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, NBA 2K21, Control Ultimate Edition, and Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War all release on the system.

Instead, the PS5 will mostly rely heavily on the backwards compatibility and play thousands of PS4 games at launch. Most of these games will be optimized with next-gen upgrades or enhancements, too.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's new key art has been revealed, and could give hints about the game's campaign.

Yesterday Treyarch confirmed Black Ops Cold War with a teaser trailer that outlined key story beats. The game takes place during the Cold War, and the trailer played a historic interview with Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov the lay out the dire circumstances of the conflict.

The new art confirms multiple time settings, too. The two soldiers--one KGB, and the other American--are covered with Space Race-era propaganda which stretched across 20 years. The previous teaser also shows events from the 50s (Red Square Protest from 1958), 60s (peace protests), 70s (Vietnam conflict) and 80s (fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989). The artwork gives key inference on what to expect about the game, and could indicate a dual-campaign approach similar to Modern Warfare.

Control is coming to next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles as a separate re-release, and 505 Games promises the game will harness the full might of each console. But current-gen versions will still be boosted too.

Today 505 Games put out a new blog post trying to explain why existing Control owners aren't getting free upgrades on PS5, Xbox Series X. They didn't specify exact details, but did confirm there were multiple roadblocks along the way, possibly with either console's handling of scaled next-gen performance. The logistics of upgrading the PS4 version of Control to a PS5 version may not be very easy. There's probably also contractual obligations to consider, and both of these things can't be talked about yet.

One thing 505 Games did confirm is that Control will "take full advantage of the power and features provided by these new consoles". The publisher didn't outline just how Control will play on next-gen, but expect hardware-based raytracing, high FPS, and native 4K resolution to name a few.

Intel is accelerating its $20 billion stock buyback strategy because of lower share values, and soon plans to buy up $10 billion worth of stock.

Despite sharp upticks in Q2 revenues ($19 billion, +20%) and net income ($5.1 billion, +22%), Intel's shares have dived nearly 20% in the last month due to the delay of its 7nm process to 2022.

Intel believes its shares are worth more than their recent trade values, so the company is spending $10 billion of its cash reserves to buy up 166 million shares of its stock. The motivation here is to raise stock prices by reducing the amount of shares on the market, thereby reducing dilution of the share value.

The entire world is changing and evolving to new standards, tens of millions more people working from home -- all over the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. In the middle of it, Samsung and Logitech see opportunity -- and have announced a new strategic partnership.

The companies will be collaborating on bringing the world the most "comprehensive display lineup including digital signages and desktop monitors, with Logitech's wide variety of video conferencing solutions for both meeting rooms and personal desks".

Samsung explains that its displays can turn any space, whether it is in the office or at home, into a productive workspace. Samsung adds: "Samsung monitors are available in a wide range of sizes, resolutions and screen types, from ultra-wide curve to traditional flat screens, to offer users the perfect fit. When paired with Logitech's USB-compatible conference cams such as MeetUp and Rally, and webcams such as Brio, C930e and C925e, any location can be transformed into an integrated workspace, saving users' valuable time while still providing powerful functionality".

Project CARS 3 is nearly here, with the pedal being pushed firmly into the metal on September 28 -- but between now and then we're finding out about the changes inside of the new MADNESS graphics engine, and more.

In a recent interview with Wccftech, Joseph Barron, Marketing & esports Manager at Slightly Mad Studios talked about the technology side of Project CARS 3. You can read the entire interview here, but there are some great tidbits to take away from it.

The team have put some enhancements into the MADNESS engine for Project CARS 3, with Barron explaining: "The first big thing on the engine side is CFR (Clustered Forward Rendered) lightning. This is a different lightning technology compared to what he had in the previous Project CARS titles, and it allows us to have a greater number of active light sources in a specific given area thereby significantly increasing the quantity of lights that our systems can handle without any negative impact on performance".

Eurocom has just unveiled what seems to be the most crazy-specced laptop I've seen so far, packing Intel's latest-and-greatest Core i9-10900K processor and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER (Non Max-Q) graphics card. Introducing the Eurocom Sky Z7 Mobile Supercomputer.

You can option all the way up to the flagship Core i9-10900K + RTX 2080 SUPER, with up to 128GB of fast DDR4 memory, and an insane 13TB of SSD storage. This can come from 3 x M.2 NVMe drives (4TB each) and then 1TB of M.2 SATA (13TB total).

Better yet, if you need the super-fast CPU and 128GB of RAM, and needed that huge 13TB of super-fast NVMe storage -- they're easily accessible ports for users to quickly upgrade (or even plug-and-play) super-fast NVMe SSDs into Eurocom Sky Z7 Mobile Supercomputer.

Cerebras has just unveiled the world's largest chip, which packs a mind boggling 2.6 trillion transistors and 850,000 cores.

The new Wafer Scale Engine (WSE) was unveiled at Hot Chips 2020, with Cerebras using TSMC's new 7nm process to cram the 850,000 cores onto the 2.6 trillion transistors. The previous-gen WSE had 1.2 trillion transistors, 400,000 cores, 18GB of on-chip memory, 9PB/sec memory banwidth, and 100Pb/s of total fabric bandwidth that consumed a total of 15kW of power.

How does this work? The Wafer Scale Engine magic is because instead of making the chip into a traditional monolithic processor die, Cerebras instead stitches the processor dies together with a communication fabric -- letting the many, many chips act as one unit.

If you were about to pull the trigger on a new upgrade, I would suggest waiting just a little while longer. Not only do we have NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000 series cards, but AMD's new RDNA 2-based Radeon cards, too.

In the middle of that, SSD and RAM prices are plummeting and will continue to do so well into 2021. According to a new report, the prices are tumbling because of an oversupply of both DRAM and NAND-based products.

DRAMeXhange explains: "Despite the traditional peak season for electronics sales and the release of Apple's new iPhones in 3Q20, the quarterly decline in NAND flash ASP [average selling price] will likely reach 10 percent, due to the client end's excess inventory under the impact of the pandemic".

Dirt 5 is launching in October, so now Codemasters is preparing PC gamers with some system requirements for the game.

At a bare minimum, you're going to need 8GB of RAM and 60GB of HDD space -- although the recommended specs are 16GB and I would definitely recommend most gamers have 16GB of RAM minimum. The CPU requirements aren't too harsh with an AMD FX-4300 or Intel Core i3-2130 at a minimum.

The recommended specs are much, much higher -- pushing for an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i5-9600K, 16GB of RAM, and a higher-end AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT or GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card.

Microsoft has officially started the engines of Flight Simulator which is now taking off, with a bit of turbulence in the fact that you only download around 500MB of the game from Steam.

Once you've got Flight Simulator 'installed' with that 500MB download and installation, the game opens up and begins downloading. This means that time is ticking over for the many hours, and especially depending on your PC -- many, many hours it will take to download -- the Steam refund window closes.

So if you don't like the game for whatever reason (it's fantastic) and wanted a refund (I get it), you can't -- because you've played the game for more than 2 hours. Steam's internal timer begins once the launcher opens, so even on a high-end PC with a 500Mbps internet connection, it took me around 3 hours to get it fully installed.

Right on time, WB Montreal today opened up the second code entry for its cryptic Batman game teaser site, confirms Two-Face is in the game.

WB Montreal's big new Batman Gotham Knights game will be reveled on August 22, but we're getting four days' worth of teasers up until the reveal. Today was day two--yesterday's teaser confirmed the Court of Owls is in Gotham Knights--and skilled Twitter users had to de-scramble an icon to get a new code (941) and enter it on the r3dak3d website.

Once de-scrambled, the icon appears to reveal another enemy faction to be featured in Gotham Knights. No one's exactly sure what the image pertains to, but it could be talons from the Court of Owls or another faction altogether, possibly related to Two-Face.

Like all simulator games--especially airplane ones--Microsoft's new Flight Simulator carves up key portions of content and sells it for extra money. Microsoft is locking higher-detailed airports behind the more expensive $90 and $120 deluxe editions.

The standard $59.99 version of Flight Simulator doesn't include many of the extras in the $90 and $120 deluxe editions--and rightly so, given the extra cost. The more premium versions come with more airports and more airplanes, but base game owners can buy them from an in-game microtransaction storefront. This is nothing new for the simulator genre. Aerofly FS 2, for example, has 21 DLC packs that cost $520 total, including $30 airplanes.

One key difference between the standard version and the Deluxe/Premium Deluxe editions is the quality of airport detail. The expensive versions come with handcrafted airports, meaning they have more detailed areas and are extremely realistic like-for-like renditions of their real-life counterparts. The standard edition comes with these airports, but they're basic renditions and lack the care and attention found in the meticulous hand-crafted ones.

It's finally happening: Activision will reveal Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War later this month.

Black Ops Cold War is the next Call of Duty game, and Activision will reveal it on August 26, 2020. The game obviously takes place during the Cold War, which actually lasted up until the Vietnam conflict, but recent leaked gameplay clearly outlines a 1980s setting for the game.

The new teaser trailer outlines a basic premise for the game's storyline: a Soviet spy codenamed Perseus who covertly infiltrates the U.S. to gather intelligence for the communist arms race. The game won't be completely grounded in historical events, but based around them, and calls for gamers to "know their history."

EA is taking an interesting approach to pivot away from the lootbox-based monetization that makes the company billions every year.

While scouting the new EA Play webpage, I noticed something interesting: EA Play Pro (formerly Origin Access Premiere) subscribers will get exclusive cosmetics in Star Wars Squadrons. I don't mean a little reward or just a single skin, but an entire series of unlockables that aren't available for normal players. This could be a new trend for EA to move away from in-game microtransactions.

Remember that Star Wars Squadrons doesn't have in-game purchases. It's an odd move because the game is prime territory for mTX; it has online-based play with replayable missions, it has tons of unlockables and cosmetics, and, well, it's Star Wars. The game is also $40. EA CFO Blake Jorgensen explains why the game doesn't have mTX (an anomaly for EA): "Our games are on different scales. We designed Squadrons to really focus on Star Wars dogfighting fantasy. It doesn't have the breadth of some of our games and we wanted to make it more widely available (cross-platform, cross-play, VR)."

After the massive over-performance of Persona 4 Golden, SEGA now wants to release its biggest games day-and-date on PC.

SEGA has always had high ambitions for PC re-releases, and in the past has pledged to bring more of its games to storefronts like Steam. SEGA's games typically come to PC after they've released on consoles, which is due to the higher proportion of console game sales and bigger worldwide install base of those systems. But now it wants to target PC from the get-go.

In a recent Q&A session, SEGA corporate says they want to start planning games development with PC in mind. The multi-platform approach should include consoles, PC, and other platforms, SEGA says, but it'll be on a per-title basis. SEGA could also try and make a splash in the game-streaming market via Google Stadia.

Ghost of Tsushima is getting a new free co-op multiplayer mode that allows four players to team up. But unlike most games, this mode won't be monetized.

The new Legends mode for Ghost of Tsushima is prime territory for microtransactions. It has action-based play, online interactions, multiple classes, and is a kind of separate add-on mode. But unlike most gametypes of this nature, Legends won't have any microtransactions. This is a sharp contrast to the multiplayer found in games like Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, and even Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us' Factions MP.

"There are no microtransactions in Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, and we have absolutely no plans to add them. All of the content is unlocked through play," Sucker Punch tells IGN.

When Oculus was bought by Facebook, many worried the social media platform would be forced onto HMD owners. Now it's finally happening.

Today Oculus managed to agitate most of its playerbase by confirming that Facebook accounts will be required to log in to use the HMDs. Oculus is merging its internal Oculus accounts with Facebook. All new Oculus owners will have to sign in with their Facebook accounts to set the hardware up, but existing owners won't be forced to use Facebook to sign in...yet.

Oculus says that current VR headset owners have 2 years before their Oculus accounts are no longer supported. On January 1, 2023, all Oculus account sign-ins will be discontinued and users will have to sign in with their Facebook accounts. Current owners have the option to merge their Oculus and Facebook accounts together to avoid any issues later down the road.