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Amazon doubles its Q2 profits to $5.2 billion thanks to huge spending during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Amazon just reported its Q2'20 profits for the quarter ended June 30, 2020, and the results are astronomical. The retail titan generated $5.2 billion in Q2 profits on $88.9 billion in net sales revenues due to exceptionally high demand in deliveries and shipments from April onwards. North America made up 62% of total net revenues during the period, generating $55 billion in revenues. That's more than double the international sales, which raked in $22.6 billion.

Amazon spends almost as much as it makes, though. The company reported only $2.1 billion of operating income on $55 billion in North American geographical revenues. Altogether, Amazon spent over $83 billion on operating expenses including facilities management and more.

Sony filed a new patent that suggests a higher-end PS5 Pro console with dual GPUs (as well as a myriad of other possibilities).

A new Sony patent hints at some ambitious things with the PlayStation 5 and the PS business as a whole. The patent, which was filed in January 2019 and published just days ago, outlines a number of different possibilities. The most exciting one is mention of dual-GPU (or even dual APU) consoles for massively increased performance. Sony could be setting itself up for a PS5 refresh or PS5 Pro with multi-GPU support. This patent isn't that simple, though. There's mention of cloud gaming thrown in the mix so it's not all just based around local hardware.

Before we dive in, I want to remind everyone that this is a patent and not finalized information, meaning nothing's been confirmed or announced. There's no guarantee Sony is actually developing this technology. There's no confirmation that the PS5 Pro is even real or that it will have multiple GPUs, and most importantly, the tech/info outlined herein may not ever be created or released for--or in--a commercially-available system. It's not our intention to mislead anyone, and our interpretations of the patents could be wrong.

Battletoads is one of those legendary games that had to be played at the time of it release, which is something my brother and I did for countless hours sitting in front of our TV playing on the original NES. Well, it's coming back.

The new Battletoads is dropping on both the PC and Xbox One on August 20, developed by Dlala Studios in a partnership with developer Rare. Rare was the developer of the original Battletoads in the 90s.

The developer explains: "The Battletoads are back! Join Rash, Zitz and Pimple as they smash, stomp, drill, turbo bike, leap, shoot and generally be toadally awesome in their all-new, action-packed, multi-genre adventure of choreographed chaos! Battletoads launches on Xbox, Windows 10, Xbox Game Pass and Steam on August 20th".

We are getting closer and closer to AMD's big reveal of Big Navi / RDNA 2 and now we have yet another rumor to throw onto the ever-growing pile of hype.

The new rumor comes from Komachi and _rogame on Twitter, which have been teasing an 80 compute unit beast for AMD's next-gen Navi 21 GPU. With 80 compute units under the hood, we're looking at a huge 5120 stream processors which would really put the Big in Big Navi.

If AMD runs these 80 compute units and 5120 stream processors at 1700MHz, we'd be looking at a monstrous 17.5 TFLOPs of power.

Since its release in June 2017, Xbox Game Pass has radically transformed Microsoft's gaming business model. Now it's boosted Xbox revenues to an all-time high of $11.57 billion.

Xbox is no longer a console, but a vast webwork of cross-platform services, subscriptions, game sales, and monetization. Microsoft's digital empire orbits services, and so too does its Xbox division. Before, Xbox LIVE was at the epicenter of the Xbox ecosystem. Now Xbox Game Pass has taken over, redefining the brand's scope with game streaming to mobiles, instant-access on-demand gaming, and access to all first-party Xbox games. There's just no competition for Game Pass, and Microsoft's recent earnings reflect that.

Game Pass has consistently raised Xbox revenues every year since it was released and has tremendously boosted Xbox services earnings. We took a look at Microsoft's historical 10-K earnings reports to show how the brand has grown since the Xbox One's original launch in FY2014 to Game Pass' launch in FY2017, all the way to the present day of FY2020.

Bethesda is giving away free copies of Quake to everyone who tunes into Quakecon 2020 next weekend.

Quakecon 2020 kicks off next weekend on August 7, and to celebrate Bethesda is giving away id's classic brutal FPS Quake during the event. To grab your free copy, simply log into Bethesda.net and add it to your account. This version of Quake will be exclusive to the Bethesda.net launcher of course.

The publisher also plans to give out Quake II for free if a $10,000 charity donation threshold is reached during the weekend show. This will be a nice bonus to anyone with RTX cards thanks to the new Quake II raytracing update. There's various other freebies like an ESO pet, a special Quakecon skin for Doom Eternal, a new Quake Champions weapon skin, and a Fallout 76 outfit.

Halo: Infinite could have as many as three monetization paths that all weave together and reflect Microsoft's emphasis on services, engagement, and recurring revenues.

Halo: Infinite isn't just a game. It's a platform that'll span the next 10 years of Halo games. More importantly, it's a gateway to monetization that's explicitly tied to Xbox Game Pass. Infinite has been built from the ground up to monetized engagement in a number of ways.

It's an open-world FPS with RPG elements that're designed to keep you playing for a long time. It also has replayable multiplayer. Both have been built to incentivize continued Game Pass subscriptions, but just in case you don't buy Game Pass, 343i and Microsoft have lots of other opportunities to monetize you.

343 Industries hasn't outright said it, but Halo: infinite is pretty much a live service game with two big components: A reactive, sprawling open-world campaign mode that'll change with new updates, and free-to-play PVP multiplayer.

Back in August 2019, I said that Halo: Infinite sounds a lot like a live game. Now we know that's exactly what's happening. Halo: Infinite is a platform, not just a game (something else we predicted), and will be the centerpiece for the next 10 years of Halo.

There won't be any more Halo sequels; Infinite is quite simply the Halo Waypoint of Halo games. Infinite is basically Destiny 2's base game.

It's finally happening: Kunitmitsu is coming to Tekken 7 alongside a ton of new moves and optimizations.

Today Bandai Namco announced Tekken 7's new fourth season pass update, which includes a bunch of new moves for every single playable character (even DLC fighters), tightened online play with server P2P optimizations, and a tease for a classic fighter. While the publisher didn't confirm who's joining the roster, the tease can only be the ultra-fast Kunimitsu, the Manji clan thief who made a splash in Tekken 2.

Read Also: Tekken 7 Review: King of the Iron Fist

Obsidian's hilarious Fallout New Vegas in space game is getting two major new expansions as well as optimizations for the next-gen Xbox Series X.

Read Also: The Outer Worlds Review: Out of this World

The devs at Obsidian just made good on their promise of new The Outer Worlds DLC. Two new expansions are planned, first Peril on Gorgon on September 9, then Murder on Eridanos in 2021. Both expansions are priced at $14.99 each but you can buy the season pass for $24.99 to bundle them together.

Microsoft has just provided two new nuggets on information from Flight Simulator, which is about to make its descent onto gamers' systems on August 18 -- now, also on Steam.

In a new update, Microsoft explained that Flight Simulator "heralds a new era of data-driven flight simulation". In the update, Microsoft continued: "One of the exciting implications of this is that the data that makes up the world is always improving, and players can look forward to a simulator that evolves over time".

The post continued: "Thanks to our partnership with Bing, players will enjoy new, even better terrain, and an ever evolving, machine learning-fueled simulator that grows over time".

A huge leak on AMD's purported Radeon Instinct MI100 acclerator teases that AMD could be serious about not just contending against NVIDIA in the 4K gaming market with a new Radeon to combat the new GeForce RTX cards coming -- but also in the pro market, too.

AdoredTV is reporting from some leaked slides that slid into their inbox that AMD's upcoming Radeon Instinct MI100 accelerator is quite the beast. It is being teased in the slides in a dual socket AMD EPYC Rome/Milan system with 8 x MI100 PCIe-based accelerators.

In this system, we'd be looking at 256GB of HBM2 memory with 9.8TB/sec (yes, that's terabytes per second) of bandwidth and an insane 272 TFLOPs of FP32 compute performance using just 3kW of power.

Activision and Infinity Ward struck gold with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the massively popular Warzone and its battle royale greatness.

There are big changes brewing in Warzone's upcoming Season 5, which could see the entire map of the fictional city of Verdansk changed -- it could be nuked, flooded, invaded by aliens (which Elon Musk just confirmed built the pyramids, and I'm not joking) or something completely new.

We have no idea, and that is exciting -- because it'll be the first map change since Warzone launched.

If you follow Elon Musk on Twitter you will know that he hip fires tweets all day long, so if you did follow him you'll notice he has been tweeting out artists and songs including Nirvana and their infamous 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', something that as a follow of Musk on Twitter, made me listen to (all week, thanks Elon).

But then it was this tweet that kick started a conspiracy:

Musk tweeted out: "Billy G is not my lover" which I'm sure he was referencing the song "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson, but people thought it was Bill Gates. Yeah, Elon Musk and Bill Gates -- but how did it turn into some sort of conspiracy theory?

Microsoft has just revealed that Flight Simulator will be coming to Steam after all, releasing on August 18. Flight Simulator will be dropping on Windows 10 and Xbox Game Pass on the same day, with Steam pre-orders for the Standard, Deluxe, and Premium Deluxe now up for grabs.

Not only that, but the developer has surprised PC gamers with support for TrackIR and VR support. The company is happy to announce it will have day one support for TrackIR while VR support will begin later this year when HP launches its Reverb G2 headset.

Microsoft details both TrackIR and the HP Reverb G2 on their website, adding:

GALAX has just unveiled two new kits of memory, aimed at high-end enthusiasts with the new Hall of Fame (HOF) OC Lab Diamond and HOF OC Lab Phantom lines of enthusiast-segment memory.

The first of which is the flagship DDR4-5000 memory kit with timings of 19-26-26-46 but GALAX hasn't detailed the voltages on this memory just yet. The DDR4-4800 kit has 19-22-22-46T timings that use 1.5V of power.

Here's the full list of GALAX Hall of Fame (HOF) OC Lab Diamond kits and their timings:

Outriders isn't even out yet, and People Can Fly is already working on a new AAA IP for next-gen consoles at its newly expanded studio.

People Can Fly, the devs behind Square Enix's new interesting-looking multiplayer shoot-and-loot game Outriders, is making a brand new AAA IP for the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X generation of consoles. The new project will be led by People Can Fly's fresh New York-based studio, which will work with its other UK and main Polish branches.

The studio also says that its different branches will work on different games. While People Can Fly Rezszow and UK will assist in the game, the main studio in Poland will be mostly focused on Outriders.

id devs Marty Stratton and Hugo Martin will talk about Doom Eternal at the digital Quakecon 2020 event, and we could get some info on next-gen optimizations for the game.

A bit ago, we predicted Doom Eternal could be among the first games to hit rock-solid 120FPS on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. This was predicated on the id Tech 7 engine, which runs buttery-smooth on PC and is able to even maintain 60FPS on the older (and rather weak) 2013 launch Xbox One console.

The engine should easily be scalable on the PS5's and Xbox Series X's 7nm AMD SoC tech, which sports a Zen 2 CPU and Navi RDNA 2 GPU. But nothing has been announced so far. That could change in early August at Quakecon 2020.

Halo 3 ODST's Firefight is the best. Reach is good, but ODST is on a whole other level. It's a four-player co-op survival-fest with no equipment--just your wits, your weapons management skills, and silenced 2x scope pistol. Now 343 Industries reveals how it's completely revitalizing ODST's Firefight mode for MCC.

Today 343 Industries confirmed some exciting news about Halo 3 ODST's Firefight mode on the Master Chief Collection, including new weapons, gametypes, custom games, and more. Halo 3's weapons are coming over to Firefight. This is a big, big deal that adds a new dimension of play.

343i says a lot of Halo 3's weapons are coming into ODST's Firefight that simply weren't available before. We'll see weapons like Halo 3's BR55HB cross over, and 343i teases a redacted weapon. What could it be?

For the most part, Xbox is a good sport. Halo: Infinite, 343 Industries, and Microsoft all got a grilling over the recent Xbox game showcase stream. Halo: Infinite, a game that's supposed to sell Xbox Series X features, just didn't look very next-gen. And then Craig, the stoic goofball Brute that was at the right place at the right time, showed up and became a meme legend. Thus Halo: Infinite has become synonymous with Craig the Brute.

While 343 Industries is 'very serious' about fixing Halo: Infinite's graphics and shadows, they're still rolling with the punches and trying not to take things too hard. In this business you really have to. When something you've worked hard on for years gets lambasted, memed, and made fun of, you kind of have to roll with the tide a little.

Xbox division head Phil Spencer is in the same boat. On Twitter, Spencer pulled a PR maneuver to embrace Craig instead of ignoring and deflecting, or promising Craig will look much better in ultra-HD resolution. Spencer says that Craig is now the official Xbox mascot. He's not, of course. The official Xbox mascot is the Game Pass logo, which is more important than Master Chief or Minecraft's Steve.