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If PC gamers want to be able to game on the go, a standard gaming notebook is the traditional answer. The problem is that the hardware required inside most gaming notebooks means they are larger, bulky machines. A very small and portable mobile gaming machine for PC fans called the GPD WIN Max is currently on Indiegogo. The campaign went live not long ago, seeking a goal of $25,801.

As of writing, the Indiegogo campaign for the handheld game console has raised $1,149,675, which is over 4450% of its initial goal. Even more impressive than raising over $1.1 million is that the campaign has 44 days left to go. The hardware inside the small chassis is impressive considering the machine's size with a 10th generation and Intel Core i5-1035G7 and Intel Iris Plus 940 graphics. The builders of the device claim that the GPU performs nearly as good as an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 on 3DMark 11 with lower power consumption.

The little gaming machine has an eight-inch H-IPS display and 512 GB of storage. Under its tiny hood is 16 GB of LPDDR4 RAM. One of the more exciting features of the small, mobile, PC gaming device is D-Pad, a pair of joysticks, and four buttons above the keyboard. Power comes from three 5000 mAh batteries good for about three hours of runtime with heavy use and up to 14 hours of runtime for light use.

Microtransactions and monetization drive Activision's business. New games are just gateways to live service earnings. This should be the case for the new Tony Hawk remaster collection, which is a prime avenue for in-game purchases.

The new Tony Hawk remaster collection will have live service hooks via online multiplayer and custom map-making, so it should be monetized. Successfully monetizing engagement is the entire basis for Activison's billion-dollar business (ATVI earned $956 million from mTX in Q1'20 alone), and that even includes some games that don't really need it, including Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled.

The same should be true for the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 collection releasing in September. While Activision and developer Vicarious Visions promise the game won't have microtransactions at launch, that doesn't mean the game will stay mTX free. Crash Team Racing didn't have mTX at launch either--those were added in later. Given Tony Hawk's robust monetization potential, I'm pretty sure the game will have some sort of buyable content.

Amazon has an outstanding deal going right now on the Microsoft Surface Pro X. It's offering a discount of 31% or $399.01 off the standard retail price of $1299. With the discount, the purchase price comes down to $899.99. It's worth noting that this deal is for the version of the tablet with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage.

The removable keyboard is not included at that price. Buyers wanting the tablet with the Surface Pro X Signature Keyboard and the Slim Pen accessory will pay $1249. That represents a discount of $321 off the normal price. Either way, you go, both bundles include a tablet that has both Wi-Fi and integrated 4G LTE connectivity.

While the Pro X lacks an Intel processor like other tablets in the Surface range, it does run Windows 10 home. The processor is made by Qualcomm and is a custom part called the Microsoft SQ1. The display is a 13-inch touchscreen with a native resolution of 2880 x 1920. Microsoft integrates firmware TPM, and enterprise-grade protection with Windows Hello face sign-in.

Square Enix's latest financials show steady earnings and profit resiliency against COVID-19 disruption and weak yen exchange rates, but overall game sales are down year-over-year.

Square Enix just announced its latest earnings report for FY19, and unlike Sony and Konami, the Final Fantasy-maker didn't see a profit slide. In the period ending March 31, 2020, Square Enix earned $196.37 million in profits, up over 10% from last year's strong surge in game releases. Net sales were down 4%, weighted by hefty dips in physical game purchases. Operating income jumped 33% to $301.37 million on the back of strong mobile/browser and MMO segment earnings.

Overall game sales were down 32% from last year and managed to push 18.09 million across both physical and digital. Physical saw the biggest sales drop.

Italy has been one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus, and yet the country's government has just announced that it will reopen in early June.

According to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who spoke publically through a television address to the country, Italy will reopen early June to European tourists. This is an effort by the government to restart the economy, while at same time being extra cautious of a potential second wave of COVID-19. Cote said that gyms and cinemas will also be reopening, and that "We're facing a calculated risk in the knowledge that the contagion curve may rise again. We have to accept it otherwise we will never be able to start up again."

Italy is heavily dependant on its tourism, and early in early March, Cote announced a full shutdown of the country due to coronavirus. Now, the virus has taken nearly 32,000 lives. Italy will also be abandoning the two-week mandatory quarantine when tourists decide to enter the country; this new ruling will begin on June 3. Local authorities will be monitoring the situation, and if they notice a spike in COVID-19 infection cases, they will be limiting travel throughout the region.

I'm sure most of you will know what "red pilling" someone means, but if not here is the definition of it in the "slang dictionary" of Dictionary.com: "Red pill refers to the truth behind a situation, especially a truth that is difficult to accept".

The site itself even refers to it originating from "1999 cult classic film" -- and one of my favorite movies of all time: The Matrix. Dictionary.com explains: "There's a scene early on in the movie in which the main character, Neo, is offered two pills: a red one and a blue one. The red pill represents an awakening, but one that could be difficult and painful. Neo's world will be changed uncomfortably if he takes the red pill, but he'll be made aware of the truth of the world. The blue pill represents comfort and security. If he takes the blue pill, he'll continue to live in blissful ignorance".

But now there's a war raging on Twitter between Lilly Wachowski, who is the director of the upcoming The Matrix 4 -- as well as co-director on The Matrix Trilogy, and SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO and founder Elon Musk -- as well as President Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump.

Epic Games blew the world away with the announcement of Unreal Engine 5, and while you will need a next-gen console like the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X -- you will be able to run it on the PC too.

On the PC you'll need a high-end GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER at a minimum, as well as a super-fast NVMe SSD -- but what about Commodore 64 owners? Yeah, sorry everyone -- you'll need to do some upgrades I think. Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney joked around recently, where during his talks about Unreal Engine 5 he said that the Commodore 64 won't be supported.

In a flurry of tweets, Sweeney addressed the mind blowing Unreal Engine 5 demo on the PlayStation 5 as "the culmination of years of discussions between Sony and Epic on future graphics and storage architectures". Sweeney tweeted:

MSI is continuing to introduce new members into its growing family of PC products, where today the company is announcing its first liquid cooler: the MAG CORELIQUID series.

The new MSI MAG CORELIQUID series comes in four different models, with the MAG CORELIQUID 360R, MAG CORELIQUID 360RH, MAG CORELIQUID 240R, and MAG CORELIQUID 240RH. As you can probably already tell by the product names here, there are two with 360mm radiators, and two models with 240mm radiators.

MSI has integrated the pump itself into the radiator, something that will reduce the sound emitted from the MAG CORELIQUID cooler. Not only that, but MSI has used a three-phase motor in the core of the pump which will reduce vibrations, also keeping the noise down.

Epic Games blew our minds with their recent unveiling of Unreal Engine 5 and its recent video, which is an utter work of art and one of the examples of the closest we've gotten to photorealistic graphics.

Well, now we know what kind of grunt you'll need inside of your gaming PC to pull it off. Epic used Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 to run the Unreal Engine 5 demo, but World Today News has compiled some statements from Epic Games that detail just what we need to run the demo on our PCs (if we could).

Kim Libreri, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Epic Games, was paraphrased by World Today News: "Can the demo work on a modern PC with the GeForce RTX 2070 Super? According to Mr. Libreri, yes, and the results will be 'pretty good.' For comparison: the PS5 graphics accelerator, on which the demonstration was run, is capable of providing up to 10.28 teraflops (TFLOPS), and the GeForce RTX 2070 Super has a theoretical performance of 9 TFLOPS".

Epic Games recently announced some big changes and developments that'll arm game creators with even more power and flexibility for their titles.

Shortly after announcing Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games also revealed two other major breakthroughs for game devs: Waived royalty fees until a game sells a certain amount, and new online services. UE5 in itself offers huge advantages for productivity and efficiency, namely for artists. The engine uses new Nanite polygon technology that allows artists to render native cinematic-quality megatextures into scenes via virtual sub-pixel goemetry, complete with no LoD or pop-ins. Devs can easily import assets and replicate them on-the-fly to increase productivity.

On the business level, Epic is also helping developers earn money without being instantly weighted down by fees. Unreal Engine royalty fees are now waived until the game makes its first $1 million, and that also includes UE5 when it launches in 2021. And even then the licensing is 5% afterwards.

UPDATE: Bethesda confirms Fallout 76's seasonal battle pass-style system will remain free for everyone.

You can often tell how well a live game is doing based on its updates--frequency, radical changes etc. If a GaaS title is constantly shifting things around and trying new things, odds are it's not monetizing well and the devs are trying new tricks to see what works. That's apparently happening with Fallout 76 and Bethesda's aggressive push towards new models.

Fallout 76 has pretty much tried every popular monetization scheme under the sun. Now it's trying something new, well not new for the industry, but new for the game. In an attempt to re-engage its playerbase and spin the Engagement Cycle wheel, Fallout 76 now has a tiered progression system right out of a battle pass. This system is free at the start, but Bethesda inadvertently hints we may have to pay for battle passes eventually:

Fortnite is a titan of the industry that continually rakes in billions, and now it's made over $1 billion from microtransactions on mobile.

Fortnite isn't just a game. It's a sensation, a kind of social experiment with interactive gameplay, and most importantly, the perfect advertising billboard for movies, products, and even musical artists. Fortnite transcends what a game could be, and as a result of this barrier-breaking success, the game has raked in billions of revenues (Epic made $3 billion in operating profit in 2018 alone). Now Fortnite mobile has joined the billion-dollar club.

Analyst firm Sensor Tower reports that Fortnite has generated over $1.003 billion in revenue across all platforms since releasing in 2018. The firm attributes COVID-19 lockdowns for accelerating spending, alongside the Travis Scott concert in April.

In early 2020, BioWare finally confirmed Anthem is getting rebooted. But now, roughly three months after the announcement, BioWare has only just started prototyping the big update.

Anthem is getting a big overhaul in an attempt to save the ailing live game. EA simply spent too much money on the project, and BioWare enjoyed big sales from the franchise. But the live service aspects utterly failed--BioWare broke Progression, step 3 on the Engagement Cycle--and the game is stagnant. The devs are planning something big, maybe a huge A Realm Reborn-style turnaround for the game, but it'll be a long time before it's ready. A long, long time.

Right now BioWare only has 30 people working on Anthem's new reconstruction. In a recent blog post, BioWare's Christian Dailey confirmed the status of Anthem's reboot.

Konami's total yearly profits dive on weak foreign exchange rates, coronavirus disruption across amusement and pachislot segments, and increased spending on new games in development.

Konami just announced its FY19 earnings, and like Sony, the games-maker is seeing a big drop in overall profits.

Konami's net revenues for the year ending March 31, 2020 sit at $2.4 billion, flat year-over-year on the strength of consistent games performance, but operating income is down nearly 40% to $284.9 million due to boosted expenses like moving to a new Konami-owned office in the Ginza district of Tokyo. Profits are likewise down a big 41% YoY to $182.9 million due to shaky global economics from COVID-19.

Today CD Projekt RED dropped a new glimpse at the scorching no man's land deserts that surround Night City, showing a very different side of the game's cyber-tech futurism.

Cyberpunk 2077 is absolutely huge and has lots of different areas to explore across Night City, complete with six districts that're run by different cultures and gangs. But outside the city there's a hostile near post-apocalyptic landscape straight out of Mad Max.

It's ruled by various factions including the Wraiths, ruthless bandits and raiders of the wastes, and the Nomads, who roam the sandy dunes.

Titanfall 3 still isn't in development, Respawn head Vince Zampella confirms. But something special is cooking up on the stoves at the newly rebranded DICE LA studio.

Apex Legends will be the only Titanfall-related game for a while. Titanfall 3 isn't happening at Respawn, despite EA's 2019 teases of a new premium Titanfall game. It might come out some day, but it's not being worked on right now.

"There's nothing currently in development," Vince Zampella told IGN. "But it's always there. You see the little bits of stuff coming back [through the lore in Apex Legends]. At some point, I would personally like to see some kind of resurrection there. We'll see if I can make that happen."

The coronavirus pandemic has most certainly changed the technology world and other industries all around the globe. Many events that would normally take place with hundreds or even thousands of people in the same location have been canceled and made digital-only. One example from Apple is it canceling its in-person WWDC event in favor of a completely digital WWDC 2020. Apple has now announced that it has purchased a virtual reality startup called NextVR.

NextVR is a startup that's focused on broadcasting major events in virtual reality. While Apple has confirmed the purchase, it hasn't said what exactly it plans to do with the company. An Apple spokesperson told Bloomberg, "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

It seems like current services offered by NextVR are being shut down with all content on the company's website removed and a message that says the company is "heading in a new direction" left in its place. Apple has been pushing into augmented and mixed reality, and claims to have the world's largest AR platform with hundreds of millions of AR-enabled devices and apps on the App Store.

Payday owner Starbreeze is still in dire straits. If the company doesn't get extra cash or secure a publishing deal by Q4 2020, it may have to start liquidating assets. The Payday franchise could be the first to go.

After disastrous losses and debt issues, Starbreeze is still hanging on. The company is still losing a lot of money, but the good news is now it's losing less money. As of Q1'2020, Starbreeze's losses were down a big 41% to $9.82 million (97 million SEK), compared to the $18 million (167 million SEK) it lost in 2019.

In the earnings report, Starbreeze CEO Mikael Nermark expressed cautious optimism for the company's roadmap, saying that Payday 2 demand has increased in the quarter. Payday is literally Starbreeze's only cash crop, and Payday 2 made up 98% of total revenues for the quarter.

Ford has announced an interesting new tidbit about it's coming electric vehicle called the Mustang Mach-E. Ford says that the charging time for the electric vehicle is improved by about 30% from early estimates. The automaker says that the Mach-E can add an average of 61 miles of range with only a 10-minute charge using the Electrify America DC fast-charging stations.

The charging estimate is for the extended-range battery and rear-wheel-drive version. Ford also announced that it is expanding its FordPass Charging Network by 1000 charging stations. It's also adding an additional 5000 charge plugs for a total of more than 13,500 stations and almost 40,000 charge plugs in North America.

Ford says that the estimated average of 61 miles of range added with a 10-minute charge is an improvement of 14 miles added with a 10-minute charge over its previous estimates. Ford says that the all-wheel-drive version with the extended-range battery could add an estimated 52 miles of range with a 10-minute charge. Both versions of the vehicle are still able to go from a 10% charge to 80% charge in approximately 38 minutes on a DC fast charging station.

Apple fans looking for a deal on a base model mid-2019 Apple MacBook Air with Retina Display should check this out. Usually, this laptop sells for $1099, but B&H has a sale going right now that knocks $170 off the price of that machine. With the discount, the MacBook Air costs $929.

That may not sound like a monster discount, but Apple notebooks are rarely discounted at all. The machine in question has 128 GB of storage. It has a 1.6 GHz eighth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a 13.3-inch Retina IPS display.

Native resolution for the Retina display is 2560 x 1600, and graphics are handled by Intel UHD Graphics 617. Only the Silver version is available at the $929 sale price. The Space Gray version is selling for the standard $1099 price tag while the, with 256 GB of storage is available for $1199.99.