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Way back in 2017, we predicted Cyberpunk 2077 would have an online mode. We also guessed it'd have microtransactions or be monetized in some way. Now CD Projekt RED has confirmed both are true.

Cyberpunk 2077's new "seamless online multiplayer" mode is far from ready. It'll ship after the main game launches in 2020, long after post-release expansions and DLC are out. The project likely being developed with the help of the online gaming experts at DigitalScapes.

But what about monetization? Isn't that why any online game is made? CDPR isn't a stranger to microtransactions anymore--they made Gwent, a free-to-play card game with mTX--and we could see extra in-game purchases pop up in Cyberpunk 2077's online mode. CDPR didn't give any specifics on Cyberpunk 2077's multiplayer monetization, but they did say the system will be fair and balanced.

Tesla made waves all around the world with the unveiling of its futuristic Cybertruck, which Elon Musk himself has now tweeted that the company has received 146,000 pre-orders so far.

Musk even provided the split of numbers between potential customers of the Tesla Cybertruck with its single-, dual-, and tri-motor options. Musk said that out of the 146,000 ordered so far 42% of customers chose the dual-motor Cybertruck, while 41% went for the flagship tri-motor model while just 17% went for the single-motor Tesla Cybertruck.

Tesla Motors' own numbers directly from company CEO Elon Musk show that more customers want the higher-end models versus the single-motor Cybertruck. If the calculation of the 146,000 models seeing half of them with the optional Autopilot upgrade that costs $7000, that means Tesla has had over $7.5 billion worth of pre-orders of the Cybertruck already.

Everyone wants to know if we are alone in the universe, or if there was some form of life outside of our moderately-sized blue planet. Perhaps there was, and we already have the photos.

Entomologist, William Romoser gave an extensive presentation on his analysis of NASA's Mars rover images this past Tuesday. Romoser claimed throughout the presentation that through his analysis of the images, he can provide evidence to support that life was once and still is present on our red neighbor. Looking at the above image, Romoser says, "Once a clear image of a given form was identified and described, it was useful in facilitating recognition of other less clear, but none-the-less valid, images of the same basic form."

Romoser claims from the images that reptiles and other insect-like forms of life were once on the red planet, and that NASA's rover images are evidence of that. Romoser also says, "There has been and still is life on Mars. There is apparent diversity among the Martian insect-like fauna which display many features similar to Terran insects that are interpreted as advanced groups - for example, the presence of wings, wing flexion, agile gliding/flight, and variously structured leg elements."

CD Projekt RED's games are typically future-proofed to embrace next-generation technologies, whether they be higher-end graphics cards or new beefy consoles. This trend should continue with Cyberpunk 2077, which should get optimized for PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett.

We've already heard rumblings that CD Projekt RED wants to bring Cyberpunk 2077 to next-gen consoles, and now the company reinforces those claims. In a recent Q3'19 financial earnings call with investors, CD Projekt RED discusses next-gen and hints a new unannounced standalone game (likely that new AAA RPG) will release on PS5 and Project Scarlett, but it won't be Cyberpunk 2077 (which is obvious since it's coming to PS4 and Xbox One in 2020).

"When it comes to next-gen, our game is coming to the current-gen consoles. This is what we have announced. And of course we do have insight into what's around the corner, with what's happening with PlayStation and Xbox. We're watching it closely, and one may safely assuming that we're going to do something with the next-gen consoles. However, we can not really be very specific on what that might be, or when exactly that might be," CDPR joint CEO and president Adam Kicinski said.

Even as the project enters its final stage of development, CD Projekt RED is still spending big bucks on Cyberpunk 2077.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an immensely expensive game, and CDPR has sunk lots of money, manpower, and future-proofed tech development into the project over the last six years or so. Even though the game is almost finished, the company isn't taking any chances and has injected a ton of cash into Cyberpunk 2077's last phase of dev to ensure it lives up to our expectations.

In its recent Fiscal Q3'19 earnings report, CDPR confirmed it spent a record-breaking 43 million PLN (roughly $10.7 million) on games development, up a mighty 14% year-over-year.

CD Projekt RED formally buys its HQ office space, cementing a huge workspace to develop Cyberpunk 2077 and future games.

In its recent Q3'19 earnings report, CD Projekt RED confirms it now owns a huge 193,750 square feet of usable area for its workers to develop new games. The huge office space is comprised of two major complexes: One at Jagiellonska 74, where CDPR's HQ has sat for the last 20 years, and the other in the nearby complex at Jagiellonska 76 in Warsaw, Poland.

"For over 20 years now CD PROJEKT has been conducting its business from offices located in the buildings on Jagiellonska 74," said Adam Kicinski, CEO of CD PROJEKT. "This is where we've brought amazing worlds and adventures to life, and invested in infrastructure allowing us to create great games. This is where we've put down our roots as a company and where we want to continue to grow moving forward. But we want to do that on our terms - by making it the company's true HQ, one that we can freely shape to our needs and vision as its owners."

In what has become one of the largest data leaks from a single source in history, the personal data of over 1.2 billion people has been exposed -- including names, email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and more.

The leak was discovered by Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia on October 16, 2019 in an open Elasticsearch server that had 4 billion user accounts inside of over 4TB of data. There were 1.2 billion unique people discovered inside of the leak, residing on an unprotected and totally-open Elasticsearch server with no password or any means of authentication protecting it -- so you could just download all 4TB of it easily.

The data in question comes from two brokerages, with California-based People Data Labs selling the data to advertisers who could use them for commercial purposes. User content to use this data commercially has not been approved, according to Troia. This particular data set has 622 million email addresses, 50 million unique phone numbers, and a bunch of different details from social media platforms.

No, Sony's PlayStation 5 won't use expandable SSD cartridges. The cartridge patent wasn't for PlayStation hardware, but instead for Sony's line of Toio kids toys.

Just as we warned, those purported PS5 cartridge patents aren't for the PlayStation 5 at all. The tiny cartridges are used by Sony's family-friendly Toio gaming system that's designed for kids, not an enthusiast-grade next-gen console designed for a mass-market audience of gamers.

Sony published a new Toio video on November 11 that showed the new cartridges. The previous Toio systems used a different cartridge--the older USB dongle-esque design that also caused a tizzy in the gaming sphere.

The internet has been abuzz recently with a swath of videos showing celebrities saying things ranging from funny to downright odd or alarming. This is the world of deepfakes, and MIT thought it proper to represent the power of the new deepfake video capabilities by making one of their own.

As you can see above, that is a small clip from the https://moondisaster.org project which is designed to simulate an alternate reality where the Apollo 11 astronauts did not land on the moon, but instead were stricken by tragedy and the ultimate result of the entire cred perishing on earth's largest satellite.

The video clip, while brief, is created by the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality. While it may be cool to see how computer technology can be used for lifelike recreations or even film production, it can be disturbing to think that world events by trusted individuals, reporters, or world leaders could be potentially skewed by those wishing to cause disorder or chaos.

For those of you excited for the newest high-speed 5G technology, you may be waiting a bit longer. AT&T, which is scheduled to roll out its new 5G service on the 850MHz spectrum, looks to be nothing more than the new band with expected performance similar to the companies' much-despised "Fake 5G" offering of "LTE Advanced" or "5G E".

Users in late 2018 and early 2019 were understandably underwhelmed and upset when they saw a 5G E icon pop up on their AT&T smartphone. They were initially thrilled at the possibility of new insane speeds, only to be met by performance in many cases well under their average 4G LTE speeds.

AT&T has made some very bold claims in regards to 5G service and their capabilities and roadmap, the timeline they provide is for test markets of 5G to be live in late 2018 with devices in hand the same year. We can only assume this was the 5G E service they are referencing, but the fact that the move to actual 5G may be as underwhelming as the 5G E service is not a good sign. We can only hope that this is a mere stepping stone to the actual true 5G, which will come to pass on the 700MHz band sometime soon.

Today 343 Industries confirms that Halo: Reach on PC will have an uncapped variable FPS mode at launch, but it's experimental and it may cause other in-game issues.

Halo: Reach will launch on PC on December 3 with a few issues, and the game won't be 100% bug free. These potential issues include the uncapped frame rate option. The studio says Reach can break the original 60FPS hardcap, but it could lead to massive mouse-aiming delay, crashing, and overall instability.

So for now you'll want to just play at 60FPS. Luckily Reach's PC specs aren't demanding at all: You can play Reach at 4K 60FPS with an Intel Core i5-3450 and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770.

Sony says the PlayStation 5 will have an ultra high-speed SSD that could eliminate loading times. But the SSD's raw power even out as developers push more high-def assets on next-gen consoles.

The PS5's SSD is so potent it can load Spider-Man in just 0.8 seconds versus the 13 or so seconds for a PS4 Pro's mechanical HDD. This raw speed discrepancy might only be noticable on older native PS4 games simply because of the new layer of complexity devs can put in next-gen PS5-optimized titles (more effects, more textures, high resolutions, etc). At least that's what some developers like Remedy Entertainment think.

In a recent interview with PlayStation Official Magazine, Remedy technical director Mika Vehkala said the PS5's SSD might not load PS5 games that much faster than the previous gen. In short, we might not want to expect blazing-fast speeds for PS5 games because they can use more data and devs can cut corners.

Inside sources say Resident Evil 3: Remake is set for 2020, which is pretty exciting. But what's even more exciting is how it should be optimized for next-gen consoles.

Pretty much every game releasing in 2020 will be optimized for next-gen consoles in some way. We don't know exactly how this will work, but expect enhancement patches to roll out for games released prior to the PS5 and Project Scarlett in Holiday 2020. Games released during next-gen rollout should be fully optimized for each platform, complete with a separate SKU for next-gen systems.

Capcom is among the major heavy-hitting publishers who are banking big on next-gen. The company only released one major game in FY2019 (Monster Hunter World: Iceborne) and sent a clear message to investors: They're ramping up their biggest games for next-gen consoles. Capcom's COO already confirmed the REngine is being used to craft new titles on next-gen consoles, and we expect Resident Evil 3 Remake to be one of them.

Half-Life: Alyx is just the beginning of Half-Life's comeback story, and Valve reveals why they chose to make a VR-exclusive game rather than jump right into Half-Life 3.

The new Half-Life game isn't what we expected. It's a VR-only Half-Life 2 prequel that aims to be virtual reality's killer app and justify Valve's massive investment into the still-fringe platform. But it also serves another big role: Half-Life: Alyx is basically a practice run for new Half-Life projects. It's a way to get Valve back into the groove of the franchise, all while learning new things about Source 2 like optimizing graphics, textures, and FPS mechanics. A lot of what Valve learns from Half-Life: Alyx can translate into other Half-Life games, even if they're not VR projects.

In a recent interview with Geoff Keighley, Valve programmers talked about how Half-Life: Alyx is a stepping stone to new things. The team might not be ready to work on Half-Life 3 just yet, but this new VR project will help pave the way to that magical threequel.

Borderlands 3 is getting four story DLCs throughout its lifetime, and the first one brings Handsome Jack back (well...kind of).

Introducing Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, Borderlands 3's brand new wacky DLC. The expansion sees gamers hijacking Handsome Jack's interstellar floating casino (not unlike Gargantua-2 from The Venture Bros.) and absolutely destroying everything to steal that sweet loot.

You'll find lots of new gear on Handsome Jack's slot machine wonderland and blast tons of casino security bots and a few new hulking bosses--including evil Claptraps.

Pokemon Sword and Shield are massive sellers on the Nintendo Switch, moving more than 6 million copies in the first three days of availability. Apparently that proposed boycott didn't achieve much.

With its decision to cut out a lot of original iconic Pokemon from Sword and Shield (a controversy known as Dexit), GameFreak aggravated lots of fans. There were also moves that were cut, and other features watered down to make the games more friendly for new players. Many called for a boycott of the new Switch RPG duo, but the proposed boycott really didn't have an affect on game sales.

Nintendo today announced that Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield together sold-through more than 6 million copies worldwide, including physical and digital purchases. This makes the duo the highest-grossing Pokemon game of all time. Nintendo also confirms the games managed to sell over 2 million copies in the United States in the launch weekend.

Alien Isolation has been officially announced to be arriving on the Nintendo Switch before the end of this year.

The announcement comes from the official Feral Interactive Twitter account, who will also be bringing the title over to the handheld console. If you have never heard of Alien Isolation, here's a quick excerpt from the game's description: "When she left Earth, Ellen Ripley promised her daughter she would return home to celebrate her 11th birthday. She never made it. Fifteen years later, Amanda Ripley learns that the flight recorder from her mother's ship has been recovered. Amanda enters Sevastopol space station to finally solve the mystery of her mother's disappearance, only to confront an unknown menace."

The acclaimed horror title will be making its way over to the Nintendo Switch on December 5th. The title will cost $34.99, and pre-ordering is currently available via the Nintendo eShop. A link to that can be found here. It should be noted that you might have to change your region to your respective country to be able to pre-order the title.

Soft Robotics just took a step forward into the future with a new advancement that sees the development of stretchable skin-like robots.

This new technology has been published in Soft Robotics and has come out of the University of Bristol. The difference between 'soft robots' and normal robots is that soft robots can adapt to their environment by stretching and shifting design, while normal robots are much more ridged. Up until now, researchers have had to choose between the soft robots' ability to move and its ability to be able to grip onto surfaces.

Now, researchers from the University of Bristol have taken large inspiration from biological life such as slugs and snails and developed a new robotic skin that can do both. This new robotic skin can crawl across surfaces by the new artificial muscles that researchers have developed for it and grips to surfaces using electrical charges. The new invention has been titled ElectroSkin, and it's so stretchable that it can be compressed down a normal pants pocket.

Yesterday, contradicting news came out about a potential Joker sequel being in the works by Warner Bros. Thankfully, Todd Phillips the director of Joker has settled the confusion.

Phillips has said to IndieWire that a Joker sequel isn't currently in production despite the recent reports by other media outlets. THR reported that Phillips and Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich met to discuss a potential sequel to the film, Deadline then reported that this meeting never actually happened. Now Phillips is clearing up all the news.

Here's what he has said, "While Joaquin and I have talked about it, and while touring the world with Warner Bros executives--going to Toronto, and Venice, and other places--of course, we're sitting at dinner and they're saying, 'So, have you thought about...?' But, talking about contracts, there's not a contract for us to even write a sequel, we've never approached Joaquin to be in a sequel."

Elon Musk, the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX has written an email to all of his SpaceX employee's regarding drug use in the workplace.

While on The Joe Rogan Podcast back in September last year, Elon Musk decided to take a load off and have a puff a blunt containing cannabis and tobacco. Musk also mentioned that smoking the cannabis on the JRE Podcast "was not wise", and that the way that he smoked the drugs is a clear demonstration of his unfamiliarity of it. Musk also reinforced that the JRE Podcast is located in California where cannabis is recreational legal.

Since that time, Musk has emailed SpaceX employees regarding drug use at work, saying "SpaceX personnel may not use or possess any controlled substance while in the workplace, and also may not be under the influence of legal or illegal drugs while at work". This information was acquired by The Washington Post and it reads, "Anyone who appears to be inebriated or under the influence while at work is subject to drug testing and potentially other employment actions".