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One of the most recognizable video game characters in history is no doubt the yellow and orange lombax and his small metal friend.

Back in 2016, Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games and Sony Interactive Entertainment released 'Ratchet & Clank', which was a re-imagining of the very first game in the series (2002). The game was met by fans with big support, gaining more than decent reviews and overall reception. Now, rumors have begun flying about a new Ratchet & Clank game being in the works, and it launching alongside the PS5 as a flagship title.

According to Podcaster and former video game reporter Colin Moriarty, who shared this rumor on his podcast called Sacred Symbols, "We're going to get a Ratchet & Clank in-between [Marvel's Spider-Man and its sequel] on PlayStation 5. I feel like that's going to be a launch game, the game that's long been in development at Insomniac." If this rumor is accurate, it would mean that Insomniac Games are secretly working on a new Ratchet & Clank game alongside the purported Marvel's Spider-Man sequel. Does that mean there's two development teams? Perhaps so.

It has been a question for quite some time - how much does Google make from hardware sales? Until now, no one has ever really known, but we have just been thrown a bone (pardon the rhyme).

Alphabet, Google's parent company recently conducted its Q4 earnings call, and according to that report, Google's hardware division is a "multi-billion dollar" hardware business. There were no specific numbers released on what device/s are Google's most profitable, but since Alphabet stated "multi," we can accurately assume that hardware sales exceed $2 billion.

Google as a slew of hardware products; examples include Pixel phones, laptops, Nest doorbells, cameras, speakers, routers, and Chromecasts. Which of these is the top-selling is still a mystery, but we do know from Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh (last May) that the company's hardware numbers are "good, but not where we want to be at the end of five years".

When Disney Plus released, it was no surprise that the company with an astonishing amount of IP would gain a lot of subscribers quickly.

When the platform released, it gained a ridiculous 10 million subscribers just within its first week. Now, Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, has said in a call with investors that the company's new platform is on the brink of breaking the 30 million subscribers mark. More precisely, Disney Plus is sitting at 28.6 million subscribers as of this past Monday.

For a quick comparison, Disney-owned Hulu is currently sitting at 30 million subscribers, and judging by Disney Plus' growth rate, we can expect that it will overtake Hulu sometime during mid-2020. Iger also mentioned during the call that Disney Plus will be launching in India via the company's HotStar service and that Hulu will be going international in 2021. Disney Plus subscribers can expect season 2 of The Mandalorian this October as well as Marvel Cinematic Universe shows such as Falcon and the Winter Soldier in August, and Wandavision this December.

The third installment in the coming Definitive Editions for the Age of Empires series is almost upon us, Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition will be released "soon".

According to a new Twitter post from the official Age of Empires Twitter account, the Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition beta will be arriving in the inbox's of Insiders very soon. The post reminds everyone that if you want to play Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition when it releases, then you will have to sign up for the Insiders program. A link to that can be found here.

Many Age of Empires fans have expressed their concerns over the third Definitive Edition releasing and developer support for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition going down the toilet. This won't be the case as the Twitter account has replied to a fan who voiced these exact concerns, here's what they said - "Don't worry! It's still being worked on and will continue to be updated through all of this. We have several teams working on different things all the time! :)". Divide and conquer, am I right?

You'd have to be living under a rock, or maybe you've locked yourself in your doom bunker, to have not heard all the fear over the coronavirus outbreak.

It has caused concerns for even tech-related trade shows, with the likes of LG pulling out of Mobile World Congress over outbreak fears. Computex 2020 is one of the largest trade shows in the world out of every industry, not just tech -- and with the event taking place in Taipei, Taiwan -- it is awfully close to the constantly-expanding threat of coronavirus across the pond in China.

Computex 2020 will be a big one this year, with AMD continuing their unstoppable momentum -- NVIDIA should have its new Ampere GPU architecture detailed by then at GTC 2020 next month, Intel will have a slew of new CPU releases and then there's a million-and-one companies that will be unveiling and showing off new products at Computex once again.

Qualcomm unveiled its next-gen Snapdragon 865 at its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit in Maui, Hawaii in December 2019 -- and now the company has shared the first 8K video shot on a Snapdragon 865-powered device. Check it out:

8K video isn't easy and as an 8K monitor owner and 8K enthusiast myself, my tech enthusiast senses tingled as soon as I got the email from Qualcomm about this video. Qualcomm has used a "prototype Snapdragon 865 smartphone with a Sony IMX586" to shoot the video -- we're looking at 33 million pixels per second, so prepare your internet connection.

Qualcomm explains the 8K video: "The 8K video shoot took place in Arizona during November 2019. Arizona was chosen for this multi-location shoot to capture its dramatic imagery at sites including the Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and the Petroglyphs near Antelope Canyon".

If only North Korea had this new anti-solar panel technology that generates power in the dark when they made their historic trip to land on the Sun... but the country has been beaten to the punch by scientists at the University of California.

ACS Photonics says researchers at the University of California have made something they're calling an "anti-solar panel" which works in the reverse way a normal solar panel does -- it generates power in the dark, versus a normal solar panel generating power from the sun.

The researchers explain: "In order to produce electrical power after the sun has set, we consider an alternative photovoltaic concept that uses the earth as a heat source and the night sky as a heat sink, resulting in a "nighttime photovoltaic cell" that employs thermoradiative photovoltaics and concepts from the advancing field of radiative cooling".

A new exclusive report has surfaced online regarding Warner Bros. Montreal's new upcoming Batman game, but it might not be the news you were hoping for.

According to an exclusive report from Geeks WorldWide (GWW) found via ResetEra, sources close to GWW have told the website that WB Montreal's new Batman game is a "soft reboot" of the critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham franchise. Back in late September, WB Montreal dropped some cryptic teasers for their new upcoming game, our games editor broke down those teasers and summarised that they are most likely an adopted nemesis system from the Shadow of Mordor/War games, or character wheels.

At the moment, the details on the new Batman games' plot/story are scarce, but GGW claims that there will be a playable Batfamily (most likely what the inner circles represent in the above image), the Court of Owls and additional co-op. GWW also states that this new Batman game is scheduled to release sometime this fall.

Sony could repeat 2013's big sweep by making the PlayStation 5 cheaper than the Xbox Series X.

In its recent Q3'19 earnings Q&A session, Sony had some interesting remarks on the PlayStation 5's pricing. The company isn't ready to reveal any specifics on the PS5 yet (that rumored February event probably isn't happening), and price is something that's hard to lock down for a number of reasons. One big reasons is competition.

Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki hints the PS5's price tag may not be revealed until after the Xbox Series X's. Sony could wait to sweep in like it did last-gen with a $399 price tag and completely dominate next-gen all over again.

It's nearly that time of the year again, where the mobile industry descends on Barcelona, Spain -- Mobile World Congress. But South Korean giant LG ELectronics has said it has pulled out of the event over the coronavirus outbreak.

An LG spokesperson told The Verge: "With the safety of its employees and general public foremost in mind, LG has decided to withdraw from exhibiting and participating in MWC 2020 later this month in Barcelona, Spain. This decision will prevent needlessly exposing hundreds of LG employees to international travel, which most health experts have advised".

LG continued: "In lieu of its participation in MWC, LG will be holding separate events in the near future to announce its 2020 mobile products".

Tesla has shaken up the financial market with the company's stock price skyrocketing in comparison to where it was sitting a year ago. Now, the market cap of Tesla has exceeded Bitcoin's.

According to CNBC, Tesla opened at nearly $883 per share, then it hit an all-time high of $968.99 per share, bringing the company's total market cap to above $170 billion. For a helpful comparison to just how big that is, other car companies such as GM and Ford closed out Tuesday with a combined market cap of $85 billion. Tesla is more than double that.

Now a new metric has been thrown into the mix. Tesla's market cap is now larger than Bitcoin's. Yes, Tesla, the automotive and energy company, was worth more than a digital currency (at that period in time). At the time of writing this, Bitcoin's market cap is currently sitting at around $166 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. This means that during Tuesday's high, Tesla's market cap was larger than Bitcoin's, quite an achievement for Mr. Musk and Tesla as a whole.

It's an end of an era at Rockstar Games: Studio co-founder Dan Houser is leaving next month, a departure that could affect Grand Theft Auto VI's development.

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser is leaving the studio after 22 years of games development, a new Take-Two SEC filing confirms.

"After an extended break beginning in the spring of 2019, Dan Houser, Vice President, Creative at Rockstar Games, will be leaving the company. Dan Houser's last day will be March 11, 2020. We are extremely grateful for his contributions," Take-Two wrote in the release.

Google just revealed titanic earnings for its fiscal year, but there was no mention of its new game-streaming platform Stadia. How curious.

At the beginning, I called Stadia a revolutionary game-changer. It still has that potential. But Google's incredible inept handling of the service--requiring your phone to use the service, weird forking of other tied services into Stadia, having to buy each game individually, and the expensive $150 up-front cost while the free sub is MIA--has set it back a fair amount. Right now Stadia is lukewarm at best.

Interestingly enough, Google didn't discuss the service whatsoever in its recent earnings call. Google, like Microsoft, doesn't care tremendously about gaming; they're both titans who earn billions from other segments. Case in point: Google earned $4.7 billion from YouTube ads in Q4 (more than Microsoft's entire Xbox segment makes), and an insane $134.8 billion from ads in the total year. Still, though, I expected some discussion on Stadia, especially given how synergistically it was to tie into YouTube, streaming, and overall digital engagement.

Blizzard apologizes for Warcraft 3: Reforged and promises that fixes are coming. But some features may remain gone for good.

Today Blizzard did two major things: It said sorry for bungling Warcraft 3: Reforged's launch, which was plagued by missing features like custom campaigns and profiles, and outright replacing the original WC3; and then it made promises to patch the game and make it better.

"First off, we want to say we're sorry to those of you who didn't have the experience you wanted, and we'd like to share our plans for what's coming next," Blizzard community manager Kaivax said in the post.

The mysterious slot in Xbox Series X's prototype is actually a CFExpress port, not a debugging port, hinting the console will support portable memory cards for expanded memory.

The Xbox Series X may support external memory cards on the CFExpress standard, sources tell Thurrott's Brad Sams. CFExpress memory is primarily used in high-end camera memory cards, and utilizes PCIe 3.0 across NVMe for transfer speeds up to 4GB/sec. This matches up with the Xbox Series X's maximum SSD speeds. There are plans to update CFExpress to support PCIe 4.0 as well.

If the port is retained in the final hardware, console memory cards are coming back in a big way. Gamers will be able to buy CFExpress memory cards to expand storage without compromising speeds. Hooking up an older mechanical HDD or even a slower SSD to the Xbox Series X will cause speed discrepancies and possibly impact performance, but CFExpress storage will match the internal SSD quite well.

Sony's latest quarterly earnings clearly show the generation is winding down for the PlayStation 5, but the drop isn't dramatic enough to significantly disrupt the PS4's current cycle.

Throughout Sony's Q3'19 period, which runs from October - December 31, 2019, the company raked in $5.8 billion from overall Games and Network Service sales, a 20% drop from last year. Both hardware and software sales are down year-over-year too. Sony sold 6.2 million PS4s in the Holiday 2019 quarter, down 25% YoY, and a combined 81.1 million digital and physical PS4 games, down nearly 7% YoY.

These trends can be attributed to the absence of major heavy-hitting third-party games like the Q3 2018 launch of Red Dead Redemption 2, as well as the hardware market starting to peak.

Sony today launched a PS5 website portion on PlayStation.com, and also might've squashed rumors of a February reveal event.

Sony's big PS5 February reveal event might be postponed after all. On a new PlayStation 5 website, the company says it's "not quite ready to reveal the PlayStation 5," and prompts gamers to sign up for a digital newsletter for more info before and as it happens. The sign-up button isn't yet live, though.

"We've begun to share some of the incredible features you can expect from PlayStation 5, but we're not quite ready to fully unveil the next generation of PlayStation. Sign up below to be among the first to receive updates as we announce them, including news on the PS5 release date, PS5 price and the upcoming roster of PS5 launch games," the site reads.

Sony's PlayStation 4 family has now accumulated 108.6 million worldwide shipments to date since 2013, cementing its reign as the best-selling system of the current generation.

Today Sony announced its Fiscal Year Q3'19 earnings results, that while positive, show a clear decline in overall games revenues. In the Holiday 2019 quarter, Sony sold 6.1 million PlayStation 4 consoles, bringing the total sell-in (shipments) to 108.6 million. Actual sales, or sell-through to consumers, sit at 106 million.

The games-maker recorded $1.36 billion from PS4 hardware sales, down a noticable 33% year-over-year. In fact, overall hardware sales during Sony's busiest quarter were down nearly 25% from last year's console push. Digital software was also likewise down 35% from last year, driven by lower sales of third-party titles on the PlayStation Network.

Up until the catastrophe that is Warcraft 3: Reforged, I was all for a Diablo II remaster. Not any more.

With Warcraft 3: Reforged, Blizzard committed the ultimate sin: It betrayed its legacy fans. The original Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne doesn't exist any more. It's now lost to time. The only Warcraft 3 that exists now is Reforged, and all older versions must now be updated and replaced with the remaster. You can't play custom games the same way, the UI has changed, and ultimately the core old-school experience has been carved out. You can still play with the original graphics, but the game is on the new wonky Battle.net 2.0 framework that doesn't let you do basic stuff like browser chat or even check your profile stats.

I can't imagine a worse fate for a beloved yesteryear game. This method is basically a means of bringing an old classic forward by smashing a square through a circle-shaped hole. If Warcraft 3: Reforged is how Blizzard plans to remaster its fan-favorite games, then I really hope they just stop here. I hope they don't touch Diablo II.

If you are a PC gamer and don't own a PlayStation 4 but would like to enjoy some PS4 titles, you might not be out of luck. Emulators are coming.

All PS4 emulators are currently under development by their creators, and most are still in their beta phases. One of these emulators is called GPCS4, and according to its creator, it can now officially boot and run a commercial game. While that is certainly eyebrow-raising news, beware that the framerate is barely acceptable for a good gaming experience.

Another thing to note is the commercial game that it's playing is We Are Doomed, which is a twin-stick shooter that is 2D. Hardly a demanding game at all. The best PS4 emulator for the PC that I could find is PCSX4, and it shows games such as God of War being played at extremely reasonable framerates, but seems shady. If you are interested in GPCS4, a link can be found here.