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Twitch is making talk shows and dating shows for gamers

Anthony Garreffa | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | May 10, 2020 11:54 PM CDT

Twitch is ramping things up in 2020 and beyond, with Bloomberg reporting that the Amazon-owned gaming-focused company is taking in pitches for "unscripted" TV shows.

Twitch is making talk shows and dating shows for gamers

These new unscripted TV shows are being aimed at male gamers that are aged between 18-24, with the idea that Twitch will make its own game shows, dating shows, and other reality TV shows. The budgets for these new Twitch-made shows will be between $50,000 per week and $250,000 per week.

Twitch is expecting to make a show better than a normal video podcast that goes onto YouTube, or a multi-window Zoom chat. But it doesn't want the TV shows to swell out to the size of a traditional show. We should see these new Twitch shows in the coming months.

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Continue reading: Twitch is making talk shows and dating shows for gamers (full post)

Democrat politician: 'f*ck Elon Musk' over threats to move Tesla HQ

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | May 10, 2020 11:21 PM CDT

Elon Musk has had a pretty busy week, with his partner giving birth to their son -- named X Æ A-12, which you can learn on how to pronounce the name here -- but the real-life Tony Stark is also dealing with some drama.

Democrat politician: 'f*ck Elon Musk' over threats to move Tesla HQ

Musk has threatened to move the Tesla HQ out of California and into Texas or Nevada, over the attempts of containing COVID-19 coronavirus. But now a Democratic state politician is getting fired up, with Lorena S Gonzalez from San Diego putting it pretty bluntly:

"F*ck Elon Musk".

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Continue reading: Democrat politician: 'f*ck Elon Musk' over threats to move Tesla HQ (full post)

Elon Musk sues county over COVID-19, says Tesla HQ will leave CA

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | May 10, 2020 10:25 PM CDT

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to piss someone like Elon Musk off. He's someone that you'd want on your side, and to keep happy and let him do what he does best -- 24/7. Right? Yeah, not if you're Alameda County.

Elon Musk sues county over COVID-19, says Tesla HQ will leave CA

Tesla Motors filed a new lawsuit over the weekend against Alameda County, which is stopping the EV maker from re-opening its factory based in Fremont, California. The new lawsuit is seeking injunctive and declaratory relief against Alameda County, with Musk firing off some heavy-worded tweets.

Musk tweeted: "Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant 'Interim Health Officer' of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!"

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Continue reading: Elon Musk sues county over COVID-19, says Tesla HQ will leave CA (full post)

Cyberpunk 2077 fan film looks insane, check it out here

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | May 10, 2020 10:00 PM CDT

Cyberpunk 2077 on its own looks jaw droppingly good, but what about a movie version of the game? There's plenty of movies that Cyberpunk 2077 takes influence from, but now a fan film has been made and there's a 1-minute teaser you just need to check out:

Cyberpunk 2077 fan film looks insane, check it out here

How good does that look? Cyberpunk 2077: Phoenix Program is a fan fiulm made by action movie director Vi-Dan Tran who is an action designer/stuntman with the Jackie Chan Stuntteam. The fan film was made with a bunch of out-of-this-world cosplayers, including actor Ben Bergmann who plays Johnny Silverhand, which in Cyberpunk 2077 is played by The Matrix and John Wick franchise star Keanu Reeves.

Bergmann looks breathtaking in the role of Silverhand, featuring the same hairstyle, glasses, and more. He looks great in the role, and while we only see very quick shots of Phoenix Program, what we see makes me want to watch a hell of a lot more.

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Continue reading: Cyberpunk 2077 fan film looks insane, check it out here (full post)

The White House talking with Intel, TSMC to set up factories in the US

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | May 10, 2020 9:30 PM CDT

The news of shifting over some manufacturing from Asia to the US isn't new, with news that Trump wanted TSMC and Foxconn to consider moving to the US for manufacturing breaking in January 2017 -- right as Donald Trump was being inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States.

The White House talking with Intel, TSMC to set up factories in the US

But now, there are renewed talks between the Trump administration and Intel and TSMC about moving production to the US for some of its chip factories. Intel might already have a big presence in the US, but the talks with Intel could see Team Blue opening up a foundry that other companies could use to make products.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a "new crop of cutting-edge chip factories in the US would reshape the industry and mark a U-turn after decades of expansion into Asia by many American companies eager to reap investment incentives and take part in a robust regional supply chain".

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Continue reading: The White House talking with Intel, TSMC to set up factories in the US (full post)

AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, others rumored to soon pull out of Computex 2020

Anthony Garreffa | Science, Space, & Robotics | May 10, 2020 8:31 PM CDT

We all knew it was going to happen, and it now seems that we're not far from official announcements from all major companies that they're pulling out of Computex 2020.

AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, others rumored to soon pull out of Computex 2020

According to a new report from DigiTimes, it seems that AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA will be pulling out of Computex 2020 because of the current COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. It won't just be the major players like AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA -- with MSI reportedly not attending Computex 2020 either.

Computex 2020 was originally slated for its usual late-May kick off, but was delayed until September 2020 because of coronavirus. It seems that companies are now opting in for a virtual event, versus an in-person event in Taiwan.

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Continue reading: AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, others rumored to soon pull out of Computex 2020 (full post)

NVIDIA Ampere rumor: next-gen GeForce has no perf hit with RTX On

Anthony Garreffa | Graphics Cards | May 10, 2020 7:25 PM CDT

It was just yesterday I wrote about NVCache, a new Ampere GPU architecture feature that will use system RAM and SSDs to speed up game load times and optimize VRAM usage. We're in throwing distance of the new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000 series cards with some exciting news.

NVIDIA Ampere rumor: next-gen GeForce has no perf hit with RTX On

In a new video from YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead, according to "exclusive insider info" secured by Tom -- NVIDIA's new Ampere cards are not just a die shrink of Turing with more RT Cores. It is not just the "Pascal version of Turing" and instead Ampere is a "multipurpose architecture".

One of the more exciting parts of the new Ampere rumors is that ray tracing performance is significantly better than Turing -- so much so that it reportedly offers 4x better performance per tier. This means a GeForce RTX 3060 will offer the same ray tracing performance as the flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti -- if not better.

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Continue reading: NVIDIA Ampere rumor: next-gen GeForce has no perf hit with RTX On (full post)

Intel's first DG1 3GB graphics card is faster than a PlayStation 4

Anthony Garreffa | Graphics Cards | May 10, 2020 6:31 PM CDT

Intel's upcoming DG1 graphics card has been spotted hanging out in the SiSoft Sandra database, with its 768 cores at up to 1.5GHz (expect this to be higher at launch) as well as 3GB of VRAM.

Intel's first DG1 3GB graphics card is faster than a PlayStation 4

This isn't going to be some GeForce killer, but we should instead expect this particular DG1 graphics card from Intel to start knocking around the enterprise market. There will be another SKU that will be for gamers, and I'm sure it'll also have much more VRAM (at least 4GB, more likely 6-8GB and hopefully many more GPU cores and clock speed).

However, in this form the Intel DG1 has 1.9TFLOPs of compute power -- meaning it is faster than the original PlayStation 4. It's also good enough for minimum spec for VR gaming, in case you wanted to do that.

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Continue reading: Intel's first DG1 3GB graphics card is faster than a PlayStation 4 (full post)

Xbox Series X could cost $400, analyst predicts, but it's not likely

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 10, 2020 4:33 PM CDT

The Xbox Series X's high-end specs promise a high price tab. But one analyst thinks Microsoft could take a serious hit on manufacturing costs in an effort to undercut Sony at the start of the new generation. The move isn't very likely, however.

Xbox Series X could cost $400, analyst predicts, but it's not likely

The Xbox Series X is a beastly system with premium components befit of an enthusiast PC. It features a 12TFLOP Navi 2X GPU, a 3.8GHz 8-core 16-thread Zen 2 CPU, 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, and a PCIe 4.0 SSD. That kind of powerful hardware comes with a steep price for consumers, but big companies are able to reduce costs due to mass quantities. Even still, they have to price out their consoles accordingly, but a cheaper price tag could conquer next-gen. So who will take the bigger hit and make their system cheaper?

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter says Microsoft can afford to take the hit. And honestly, he's right. Microsoft made $30 billion in one quarter alone, and Xbox is less than 10% of total earnings. If Microsoft wanted, they could sell the Xbox Series X for $400. But it doesn't mean they will.

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Continue reading: Xbox Series X could cost $400, analyst predicts, but it's not likely (full post)

Coronavirus could delay Switch games, Nintendo warns

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 10, 2020 3:28 PM CDT

If the coronavirus continues to get worse or lengthens the shut downs in worldwide countries and markets, Nintendo warns that Switch games could get delayed

Coronavirus could delay Switch games, Nintendo warns

In its latest FY2020 earnings report, Nintendo outlined a number of risk factors for its business. COVID-19, which has thrown a monkey wrench in the already-chaotic machine of games development, could have a direct impact on Nintendo's upcoming slate.

Devs are forced to work from home and key things like motion capture and voice recording are all hard to come by. The company was lucky enough to dodge significant development impact by releasing Pokemon in 2018 and Animal Crossing before the shutdowns in 2020, but other Switch games might not be so lucky.

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Continue reading: Coronavirus could delay Switch games, Nintendo warns (full post)

Nintendo profits up 33% to $2.37 billion as Switch sales surge

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 10, 2020 2:07 PM CDT

Nintendo's recent fiscal year earnings jump across the board thanks to massive software sales surge.

Nintendo profits up 33% to $2.37 billion as Switch sales surge

Nintendo just released its FY2020 earnings report, and the results are stellar. The company generated over $12 billion in net revenues during the year, 95% of which was from its gaming branch. Operating income spiked by a staggering 41% thanks to strong game and hardware sales, and profit likewise leaped by 33% year-over-year to a high $2.37 billion.

Nintendo FY2020 Earnings

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Continue reading: Nintendo profits up 33% to $2.37 billion as Switch sales surge (full post)

Nintendo may release less big Switch games this fiscal year

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 10, 2020 1:12 PM CDT

Nintendo expects to sell less Switch games and hardware this fiscal year, lowering total earnings throughout the year. This could telegraph lower Switch exclusives.

Nintendo may release less big Switch games this fiscal year

It's possible Nintendo's rumored Mario remasters will be the only major first-party Switch games launched this fiscal year. The company just reported stellar FY2020 earnings thanks to major first-party sales of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokemon: Sword and Shield, both of which surged software sales by 42% . The Switch Lite's strong 6.19 million start also helped push Switch hardware sales to 21.03 million fro the year.

This momentum won't continue for this year--at least Nintendo doesn't think so. For this fiscal year, FY2021, Nintendo laid out conservative forecasts. The company expects net revenues to drop by 8.3% to $11.24 billion, operating income to dip by almost 15% to $2.81 billion, and total profits to plummet by 22% to $1.874 billion.

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Continue reading: Nintendo may release less big Switch games this fiscal year (full post)

NVIDIA Ampere rumor: NVCache speeds up load times, optimize VRAM usage

Anthony Garreffa | Graphics Cards | May 9, 2020 11:21 PM CDT

We are beginning to learn much more about NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GPU architecture, with some super-juicy rumors that -- as always -- require a considerable amount of salt.

NVIDIA Ampere rumor: NVCache speeds up load times, optimize VRAM usage

The latest on Ampere is from YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead, with Tom explaining that has has some "exclusive indsider info" on Ampere. What is talked about in the video above is that Ampere is not just a die shrink (down from 14nm to 7nm) with additional RT cores -- but instead it is a full evolution of the Turing architecture.

One of the new nuggets of information is that NVIDIA will introduce something called NVCache with Ampere, which will act similar to AMD's own technology that debuted with Vega in HBCC (High Bandwidth Cache Controller). Like HBCC, NVCache will use some of the system RAM and SSD of your system, and super-speed game load times and optimize VRAM usage.

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Continue reading: NVIDIA Ampere rumor: NVCache speeds up load times, optimize VRAM usage (full post)

President Trump says coronavirus will disappear without a vaccine

Anthony Garreffa | Science, Space, & Robotics | May 9, 2020 10:49 PM CDT

President Trump has been pretty head on with a coronavirus vaccine, where the US president recently said that we don't even need a vaccine for coronavirus as COVID-19 is just going to go away.

President Trump says coronavirus will disappear without a vaccine

Trump said: "I just rely on what doctors say. I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests: this is going to go away without a vaccine. It's gonna go away, and we're not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time".

He did talk about the expected second wave of coronavirus in the coming months, with President Trump adding: "There are some viruses or flus that came and they went for a vaccine, and they never found the vaccine. And they've disappeared. They never showed up again. They die too, like everything else".

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Continue reading: President Trump says coronavirus will disappear without a vaccine (full post)

Real Assassin's Creed Valhalla gameplay coming soon, Ubisoft promises

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 9, 2020 5:28 PM CDT

The new Assassin's Creed Valhalla trailer was absolutely amazing, but there's just one issue: It wasn't really representative of the Xbox Series X gameplay experience. Ubisoft says actual gameplay is coming soon, though.

Real Assassin's Creed Valhalla gameplay coming soon, Ubisoft promises

The latest Inside Xbox show felt rushed and lacked the kind of next-gen magic we were expecting. But we can't fault Xbox too hard, especially with the coronavirus pandemic going on right now. Still, though, it might be too soon to get excited about third-party games on next-gen, especially when we don't see actual gameplay footage from big games like AC: Valhalla. We were hyped quite a bit and did our fair share of hype contribution for Inside Xbox...and it just didn't live up to expectations.

Read Also: Next-gen console hype check: Is it too early to get super excited?

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Continue reading: Real Assassin's Creed Valhalla gameplay coming soon, Ubisoft promises (full post)

Doom Eternal's first expansion will raze hell on heaven's gates

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 9, 2020 4:25 PM CDT

id recently teased a look at Doom Eternal's first major campaign expansion, revealing two locales: Urdak, aka Heaven, and what appears to be Earth.

Doom Eternal's first expansion will raze hell on heaven's gates

In Doom Eternal's campaign, we pretty much destroyed Heaven. Not only did we kill its second-in-command archangel (Khan Makyr), we pretty much wrecked Urdak, the celestial capital of the above-world. Doom Slayer left so many damn bodies in his wake of destruction, both angelic and demonic alike. Now he's back for more.

The first expansion will take us back to Urdak for more chaos. The sky-city sure has changed since we saw it last, though. Urdak used to be brilliantly-lit and glowing with a kind of wonder. Now it has all the appeal of a haunted house and is probably filled with ghosts and other horrors.

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Continue reading: Doom Eternal's first expansion will raze hell on heaven's gates (full post)

Gamer recreates Chinatown in stunning No Man's Sky custom base

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 9, 2020 3:25 PM CDT

What would pockets of humanity like Chinatown look like on faraway alien worlds? Gamer and skilled builder THInterloper answers the question with this amazing custom No Man's Sky base.

Gamer recreates Chinatown in stunning No Man's Sky custom base

No Man's Sky has a thriving base-building community. Gamers come together to share their custom creations, offering a more colorful sci-fi vibrance than something like Minecraft or Fallout 4. Many creations, like THInterloper's Chinatown complex, are quite elaborate and capture the neon-lit signs, plentiful eateries, and stores of the real-life square in SoHo. We got in touch with the builder to ask a few questions.

The base was made in Euclid, the game's first starting galaxy, and took two weeks on and off--or about 40 hours--to make. That's pretty impressive. I've spent a lot longer in Fallout 4's base building and my stuff never turned out like this. The build was made possible due to some clever glitches and tricks, which gives creators a lot more freedom.

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Continue reading: Gamer recreates Chinatown in stunning No Man's Sky custom base (full post)

Switch Lite's 6 million debut almost rivals Switch's launch figures

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 9, 2020 8:31 AM CDT

Nintendo's handheld-only Switch Lite is a huge success right out of the gate, and came close to the original Switch console's massive 2017 debut.

Switch Lite's 6 million debut almost rivals Switch's launch figures

While combing over Nintendo's recent earnings report, I found something interesting: The Switch Lite has sold 6.19 million units in its first six months on the market. But how much is that really? To put things in context, I compared the Switch Lite's figures up against the original Switch's 6-month sales in 2017. The results speak for themselves.

The Switch sold 7.65 million units in its first 6 months on sale, just 1.44 million units higher than the Switch Lite. The cheaper $199 portable shaves off a number of features--no TV docked play, for instance, and a lower-clocked GPU that's locked at 302.7MHz--but the $100 price drop is a huge driver for widespread adoption.

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Continue reading: Switch Lite's 6 million debut almost rivals Switch's launch figures (full post)

Xbox Series X won't shrink game sizes by default, Microsoft warns

Derek Strickland | Gaming | May 8, 2020 5:28 PM CDT

The Xbox Series X has the flexibility, software, and storage hardware to shrink game sizes...but there's no catch-all solution that will reduce every game. It's up to developers to find that compromise.

Xbox Series X won't shrink game sizes by default, Microsoft warns

Games are getting way, way too big. Warzone is over 100GB, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the same, and even Final Fantasy 7 Remake clocks in at 80GB. The Last of Us II could also be 100GB on two Blu-ray discs. Next-gen consoles like the Xbox Series X have the potential to dramatically reduce the size of games through a combination of hardware and software, both of which revolutionize how console data is managed, stored, and processed.

Speed is a big part of how storage will be revolutionized on Xbox Series X. The console's new ultra-fast 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD can blast compressed data through at 4.8GB/sec to the new SoC-based decompression block, which then rapidly decompresses the data and sends it to the RAM, CPU, and GPU for processing. Once it's decompressed, the SSD can deliver stored uncompressed data at 2.4GB/sec to the rest of the system.

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Continue reading: Xbox Series X won't shrink game sizes by default, Microsoft warns (full post)

Microsoft Surface Book 3 ships May 20

Shane McGlaun | Laptops | May 8, 2020 4:02 PM CDT

Microsoft has officially announced its new Surface Book 3 hailed as its most powerful Surface laptop yet. Microsoft brags that the laptop combines speed, graphics, and immersive gaming with the versatility of a laptop and tablet combination. The machine can be figured with 10th generation Core i5 and i7 processors paired with up to an NVIDIA GeForce 1660 Ti GPU.

Microsoft Surface Book 3 ships May 20

Buyers can get up to 32 GB of RAM and up to 2 TB of storage. Surface Book 3 comes in 13.5-inch or 15-inch screen sizes. With the new high-end hardware, Microsoft brags that the Surface Book 3 is 50% faster than its predecessor. Microsoft promises up to 17.5 hours of runtime per charge.

The machine has the graphics muscle to act as a digital canvas for creating in Adobe Creative Cloud and other applications. Book 3 will connect with the Surface Dock allowing users to output video content to dual 4K displays. Connectivity options include both USB-C and USB-A ports along with an SD card slot. The 13.5-inch unit has a native resolution of 3000 x 2000 and supports multitouch. Native resolution for the 15-inch version is 3240 x 2160.

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Continue reading: Microsoft Surface Book 3 ships May 20 (full post)

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