Intel has its Xe GPU still cooking in the oven, as it does with its upcoming Tiger Lake CPUs -- but now we have some more details on the Xe DG1 GPU itself.

VideoCardz is reporting the latest leak on Intel's new Xe DG1 GPU from a leak from the EEC, which shows us that DG1 could sport 96 Execution Units, and up to 768 shading units. This would mean Xe DG1 is a very entry-level graphics solution, something along the lines of integrated graphics now -- or up to a GeForce GT 1030 (yeah, the one without the X).

We are to expect Intel's Tiger Lake to roll out with 96 EUs based on Gen12 Xe graphics, compared to the 72 EUs on Skylake, 48 EUs on Broadwell, and 40 EUs on Haswell. We should expect more news on Xe and DG1 at CES 2020, which is right around the corner.

Squadron 42 might not be dropping until Q3 2020, but new footage shows it'll be worth the wait.

Star Citizen's upcoming singleplayer campaign is a ways off, but Cloud Imperium dropped a new trailer to show the progress they've made. The result is some pretty impressive visuals that're straight out of an old 1970s John Berkey painting, complete with otherworldly spacecraft and animations that belong in a Kubrick film. The animations look smooth, the renders are all incredibly well-designed, and the lighting and atmospheric effects add a huge layer of immersion to the footage.

We're guessing this isn't exactly gameplay--probably in-engine rendering--but Cloud Imperium really has spun some magic here. Everything I see makes me nostalgic for Mass Effect, and reminds me what could've been. There's even some footage of the first-person elements we'll see in Squadron 42, like floating in space amidst a ruined space cruiser.

Square Enix will roll out a Final Fantasy VII Remake trial version ahead of release, possibly in time for the holidays.

A new listing for a Final Fantasy VII Remake demo popped up on Gamestat, a tracking service that shows everything that's coming soon to the PlayStation Store. As of the time of writing the FF7R demo isn't yet available on the PS Store. Gamestat has been accurate in the past and outed Resident Evil 3 ahead of Capcom's official reveal.

Square Enix has yet to formally announce the demo and there's been no mention of it being tied to a pre-order exclusive. The demo is listed for the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Asia, and it might be a limited timed experience on PlayStation 4. Maybe just maybe Square Enix will drop it tomorrow in celebration of Christmas.

If you are a Fallout 76 player and don't want to lose all of your hard work you have stored in your inventory, don't jump onto the game for the time being.

Warnings have gone out on community forums such as Fallout 76's subreddit and the official Bethesda forums in regards to the recent hacking of the public servers. The reports say that PC players are experiencing their items being lost from their inventories.

According to the Bethesda forums Community Manager, "We are investigating reports of a PC-only exploit that could be abused by cheaters, which may have resulted in a few players losing items that their characters had equipped". The post continues and says, "we are taking this very seriously and resolving this is currently our top priority."

A flaw in Twitter's system has allowed a researcher to connect 17 million phone numbers to their respective accounts.

A security researcher named Ibrahim Balic has spoken to TechCrunch about a flaw in Twitter's Android app. This security flaw gave Balic a window of opportunity to successfully match 17 million phone numbers with their respective accounts.

The users that had their numbers exposed and linked to their accounts were located in counters such as France, Greece, and Turkey. It should also be noted that some of the exposed numbers and accounts were prominent politicians and officials.

The Witcher has been released, and despite the controversial opinions on whether it's good or not, I think most people would be able to agree that the fight scenes are great.

Vladimir Furdik, who played the dreaded Night King in HBO's goliath show Game of Thrones has released a behind the scenes video of a fight scene in The Witcher TV show. The above video is a behind-the-scenes look at the stuntmen rehearsing the choreography scene to make it look as smooth as possible, and I must say they have done a fantastic job of it.

Since the release of The Witcher TV show, many fans of the series have either gone back to CD Projekt Red's Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, or new fans have decided to pick it up because the game has had a massive influx of players. The showrunner for The Witcher TV show has stood strong in the face of the controversial reviews that are being posted online, more on that story here.

NVIDIA has some fighting words towards its competitor in AMD (and in the process, Microsoft and Sony) during GTC China 2019 with the GPU giant saying its current-gen Turing-based GeForce RTX series graphics cards are more powerful than the next-gen Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X consoles.

During GTC China 2019, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang showed off some Max-Q gaming laptops with discrete GPUs powered by GeForce RTX series parts. One of NVIDIA's slides included a comparison between the Lenovo Y900 Gaming laptop which is powered by a previous-gen GeForce GTX 980M to the new Lenovo Y740 Gaming laptop that packs a new GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics card.

NVIDIA said that the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q gaming notebook is superior to the unreleased, and RDNA 2-based Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles that will drop this time next year. Right now, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q is the best mobile graphics card in a notebook, period.

AMD launched its Navi GPU architecture this year with the release of the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 this year, cutting them down into Navi 14 parts for the new Radeon RX 5500 XT -- but the new RDNA 2 architecture will be powering the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles.

The fine folks at Digital Foundry have done an Xbox Series X deep dive, where they think the GPU frequency on the custom Navi-based design in the Xbox Series X console will be higher than any of the Navi-based Radeon graphics cards in the PC.

Digital Foundry said: "It would also suggest frequencies that are appreciably higher than those seen in AMD's Navi-based GPUs - which reverses the situation with the current-gen machines, which are typically underclocked compared to equivalent PC parts. Increasing both area and frequency inevitably pushes up power consumption way beyond anything we've seen in a home console".

It feels like Death Stranding only just launched, and its legendary creator Hideo Kojima doesn't seem to have stopped and is already hard at work on his new game -- at least in its concept stage.

Kojima took to his personal Twitter teasing the world that he's "working on the next concept while no one is in the office", with a clear shot of a massive sand dune in the background surrounded by a gorgeous blue sky. We also get to scope out his desk, which is littered with stuff.

If we're to take inspiration from his desk, we have a cast of Norman Reedus' face (the star of Death Stranding and The Walking Dead), a Rotten Tomatoes stress ball, a copy of Wired Magzine, a MacBook, a Sony Walkman, and much more. Maybe the sand dune is his background on his personal PC... but we all know the legendary Hideo Kojima works in mysterious ways.

SEGA plans to merge its successful pachinko and dedicated gaming businesses together to solidify its business.

Like Konami, SEGA is in an interesting company that doesn't just make video games. It has multiple branches in various fields like resorts, pachinko machines, and of course its mainstay, gaming. Now the company will merge two of these together to form one unit in an effort to consolidate its cross-synergy focus.

SEGA today announced that it will merge SEGA Interactive Co., the division behind its pachinko and arcade machines, with SEGA Games Co., the division that makes digital games like Yakuza and Sonic. Technically SEGA Games Co. will absorb the interactive branch, and as of April 1, 2020, SEGA Interactive Co. will be no more.

With over 100 all-you-can-play downloadable games including some of the best titles in the industry, Xbox Game Pass is such a good deal that people feel bad about it. Is this model actually sustainable? Yes, and it has been for some time.

Microsoft's wildly popular Game Pass subscription has transformed gaming. Major publishers like Ubisoft are trying to get in on it, and Sony even added offline downloads to PlayStation Now as a result. It's a viable solution that's pushing two forms of valuable earnings: Recurring digital subscriptions and full game purchases.

Game Pass is the ultimate value in gaming right now, giving access to a bunch of classics and every new first-party Xbox game as they release. So how does it make money? Why would anyone want to kind of give their game away for free? The service does something I call the Game Pass Effect: Game Pass subscribers are actually buying more games after having used the service.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirms that older-generation Xbox games will harness the power of the Xbox Series X's new Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU hardware in creative ways, leading to boosted performance on the new console.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer says the Xbox SX will play four generations' worth of Xbox games: OG Xbox games, Xbox 360 titles, current-gen Xbox One games, and new projects designed specifically for the higher-end hardware.

The goal, Spencer says, is to make any game that's playable on Xbox One play better on Xbox Series X than they would on any other console, hinting that the Xbox SX could offer an even greater level of performance enhancement patches and granular hardware fine-tuning than the Xbox One X. We could see a new era of enhancement patches that essentially remaster games by baking in new features like ray tracing and variable rate shading to massively transform the experience.

A new report from Anandtech suggests Macronix's upcoming 3D NAND chips could be used to finally make Nintendo Switch 64GB game cartridges. But this isn't likely simply because the carts don't use flash memory.

Macronix plans to ship its new 3D NAND chips in 2020, but contrary to recent coverage, they won't be used for Switch cartridges. The handheld-console hybrid's GameCards actually use Macronix's XtraROM technology instead of flash, a long-lasting customized read-only memory that doesn't compromise speed. The carts don't use flash storage, which requires a cache, controller, and performs both read/writes with increased degradation, and they certainly don't use the more expensive 3D NAND flash memory.

It's true that Nintendo is buying up tons of Macronix chips--in fact Macronix calls Nintendo's demand for the Taipei-manufactured chips is "highly unusual."

A new hack exposes new outside town of Silent Hills as it appeared (or as it didn't appear) in the terrifying P.T. demo.

Gamers have spent the past five years obsessed with P.T., a macabre demo for Hideo Kojima's cancelled Silent Hills game. It's utterly fascinating thanks to its cryptic secrets that provide various outcomes to how you solve its mysteries. But one thing always remains the same: It only takes place inside a kind of haunted house stuck in a purgatorial hell. You don't actually get to explore the ghost town of Silent Hill.

Until now, that is. YouTuber Lance McDonald created a floating camera hack that let him break outside of the house and take a stroll in the town as it appears in the cinematic ending scene. The result is ultra-creepy and sets the stage for what could've been one of the most cerebral horror games ever made.

I can't think of a Rick and Morty episode where everything just goes smoothly, in fact, I don't think there's even one. So when everything does go smoothly, it feels really strange and weird.

Above we have an example of just that. Created by Paul Robertson and Tom Walker for Adult Swim, we have Mr. Poopybutthole's Beautiful Day. The title of the one minute video spoils the clip, as the creators aren't lying when they tell you that Mr. Poopybutthole does have a beautiful day.

We see Mr. Poopybutthole and his family taking a nice road trip to a secluded ranch near a lake. They walk on in and start enjoying themselves by playing some cards and sitting by the fire. Mr. Poopybutthole puts his kid to sleep over a nice bedtime story and then goes and sits with his wife. Hearts start to race when Rick pokes his head out of a portal, but he doesn't do anything to mess with Mr. Poopybutthole. Instead, he watches and nods in approval as if he is checking on him to make sure he's alright.

Imagine if Marty McFly never actually had to drive the DeLorean in Back to the Future, imagine if the DeLorean just drove itself at 88mph.

Standford Unversity engineers perhaps thought of the same thing and decided to make a 1981 DMC DeLorean be independent of its human driver. In the above video released onto the Stanford YouTube Channel, engineers took the new and improved DeLorean to "Martykhana", an autocross speed test track that includes many obstacles.

The DeLorean had no driver but did have two passengers. One behind the wheel enjoying the ride and another person in the passenger seat holding onto the laptop that set the DeLorean on the programmed route. The car drifted, twisted, and fish-tailed it around corners with what seems to be like extreme ease. I wonder if Marty McFly and Doc would be impressed? Maybe not, as it's not going fast enough to travel Back to the Future.

The showrunner for the hit Witcher TV show, Lauren S. Hissrich, has slapped down critics who are comparing her show to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss's Game of Thrones.

If you haven't been jumped into Netflix's Witcher TV show and are wondering if its worth a watch, maybe this article will help you out. I'm going to give you a solid picture of what the reviews are currently looking like at the time of writing this. The Witcher TV show has a 57% critics (44 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes. While that doesn't sound too exciting, it has a public score of 92% (6,850 reviews).

Hissrich also drew this very same comparison (while not mentioning the numbers), and said in the above Tweet, "Who do I care about? "Professional" critics who watched one episode and skipped ahead? Or REAL fans who watched all eight in one day, and are starting their rewatch?".

Just last week, Netflix released its highly-anticipated Witcher TV show, and with its extreme popularity, viewers of the show have been guided into playing CD Projekt Red's immaculate title.

People have really flocked to Netflix's Witcher TV show, and now that viewers can peer into the Witcher world, some people didn't want to stop there and decided to pick up the Witcher games. In this sense, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt from CD Projekt Red has been the go-to Witcher game, and according to the Steam Stats page that reflects this, the title has got some new traffic.

At the time of writing this article, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has peaked out at 50,701 players, and current players are sitting at 32,942. To draw a comparison to a title of the same caliber, Red Dead Redemption 2 peaked out at 46,390, and its current player count is at 21,165. Keep in mind that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is five years old, compared to Red Dead Redemption 2, that released last year. Personally, after diving into The Witcher TV show, I felt an urge to jump back into the incredible world that CD Projekt Red created, and from these player-count increases, I can tell I wasn't alone in this feeling.

Tesla Motors shareholders will be cheering during the Christmas period, with Tesla stock breaching $420 per share on Monday -- and in perfect faction, Tesla and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk made a weed joke.

Musk is no stranger to blazing up controversy after he smoked weed live on the Joe Rogan show and landed in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But now that Tesla stock was smoking hot at $420, Musk tweeted out: "Whoa ... the stock is so high lol".

Back in August 2018, Musk found himself stuck in residue over a tweet that saw the Tesla CEO joking that he was "considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured". An obvious weed joke, but something the SEC didn't take lightly -- accusing him of misleading Tesla investors.

Halo Wars took a serious toll on developer Ensemble Studios, leading to lots of overtime, crunch, and sleepless nights.

Crunch is all-too common in the games industry. The market's biggest games often require crazy 100-hour work weeks and significantly affect the physical and mental health of game devs (BioWare devs, for example, had mental breakdowns while developing Anthem). This problem has existed for time immemorial--as long as people made games, they crunched to get them shipped.

Ensemble Studios was yet another team of developers who crunched hard to get games made, in particular with Halo Wars. The ambitious Halo RTS was demoed in 2007 and shipped in 2009, the same year Ensemble closed. It would be their last project.