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Death Stranding is coming out in a few short months, and Sony is slowly peeling back the curtain on the game's rather odd cast of characters.

Today Sony revealed more info on Death Stranding's Heartman, played by Danish actor Nicolas Winding Refn, who literally dies every 21 minutes. Originally revealed in the release date trailer, Heartman is so named because his heart stops in quarter-hour intervals. Heartman is part of the interdimensional BRIDGES team alongside Sam (Normal Reedus), and he wears a defibrillator that consistently resuscitates his stopped heart.

Kojima's rather interesting character lives his life in small 21 minute windows, and his dying actually serves a purpose. When he dies, Heartman travels to the weird inky and ghostly otherworld of the Death Stranding. When he's brought back, he enters the actual living world--in a very real sense he's travelling between the land of the living and the dead. Heartman is searching for something...but we don't know exactly what it is.

In 2013, Microsoft purchased Minecraft for a whopping $2.5 billion, turning creators like Markus Persson into billionaires over night. But Mojang asked Microsoft if they wanted to buy Minecraft, not the other way around.

In a recent interview with Fortune, Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealed that Swedish indie giant Mojang actually approached Microsoft about the buyout of their huge indie darling. In particular it was then-Mojang CEO Carl Manneh who made the call (Manneh left Mojang in 2014).

"The next thing that happened is Carl calls up and says 'hey do you want to buy Minecraft?' We had the 360 relationship with them, with Notch and Carl through doing the 360 port of Minecraft," Spencer said in the interview while discussing how Microsoft doubled-down in the Xbox business. Buying Minecraft cemented Xbox and gaming as an important part of its business. "But it was a great point of clarity for us to go drive inside the company, when you're going to invest a couple billion dollars into buyinga video game...it's like you better be serious about being in the category if you're going to go make that investment."

What should've been a celebration of 25 years of ripping and tearing turned into a laugh riot for Bethesda.

Bethesda just released Doom, Doom II and Doom 3 on a bunch of platforms...but there's a caveat: you can't play unless you connect to Bethesda.net. Both Doom and Doom II require online connection for a one-time sign-in to Bethesda.net, which gives gamers bonuses for the Slayer's Club rewards program. Doom 3 requires a connection for specific features too.

The move was widely mocked and panned online and after lots of memes Bethesda issued a statement. "The BethesdaNet login requirement was included for the Slayers Club, to reward members for playing the classic DOOM games," the company said.

AMD has just dropped its new Radeon 19.7.3 drivers with some massive performance improvements for Wolfenstein: Youngblood that just dropped onto the market.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood receives up to 13% more performance with the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.7.3 drivers (what a mouthful, eh?) on Radeon GPUs. Also included in the new Radeon 19.7.3 driver is support for Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards in Radeon GPU Profiler.

There are some general issues fixed with games and software, with a bunch of known issues that will continue to get fixed in the drivers coming soon. Grab the new AMD Radeon 19.7.3 driver here.

Trump has blasted Apple on Twitter today, with POTUS saying that he would not grant the company a tariff waiver for its new Mac Pro.

A few weeks ago, Apple petitioned the Office of the United States Trade Representative for an exception for its new Mac Pro, after they had decided on moving production out of the USA from Texas, to China. The tariff that Apple is expected to pay is a 25% duty tax on both select components, and parts.

Trump tweeted: "Apple will not be given Tariff waiver, or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China. Make them in the USA, no Tariffs!" Trump has previously said that exemptions would be made if companies, like Apple, could show that important parts of the products can only be sourced from China if they're deemed not to be "strategically important".

Prepare the hype engines because Slightly Mad Studios CEO Ian Bell has come out saying that Project CARS 3 is going to be the next big thing, calling it a "revolution" and "a game changer" in a series of tweets:

Bell himself says a lot in the first tweet, but then he replied to some tweets that said "Don't know how you can improve on pc2 tbh. That was near perfection already". Bell replied, tweeting: "It's at least 200% better already. I can't stop playing it and I should be jaded at this stage..." -- remember, I did tell you to prepare your hype engines.

It's not just Bell that is praising Project CARS 3, it is the driver Slightly Mad Studios Chevrolet SS for Lengert Motorsports, Austin Ogonoski, too. He chimed in tweeting: "What if I told you that @bell_sms isn't actually kidding when he says the next pCars game is 200% better?"

If I could only go back 20-25 years to when I was in primary school and my teachers telling me "gaming is useless, computers aren't the future" and show them this article. Yeah, StarCraft II is helping to train the most state-of-the-art neural network in the world.

A refresher course in what DeepMind AI can do in StarCraft II is shown in the video above, but why the hell is the game being used to train AI? Well, the StarCraft II AI that Google's DeepMind network is using is a type of algorithm called PBT or population-based training. PBT was designed by DeepMind for improving video game algorithms.

MIT Technology Review reports that PBT "takes inspiration from biological evolution, speeds up the selection of machine-learning algorithms and parameters for a particular task by having candidate code draw from the "fittest" specimens (the ones that perform a given task most efficiently) in an algorithmic population".

GIGABYTE has just unveiled two new members of it s AORUS WATERFORCE family of graphics cards, powered by NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER graphics card (my review on the RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition, and MSI's custom RTX 2080 SUPER GAMING X TRIO).

The two new graphics cards in question are the AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER WATERFORCE 8G and GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER WATERFORCE WB 8G, with both featuring cherry-picked TU104 GPUs that are ready for overclocking thanks to the GPUs being certified by GIGABYTE GPU Gauntlet sorting technology.

Inside, the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER WATERFORCE has not just its TU104 GPU kept cool but the VRAM and MOSFETs are also cooled to ensure stable overclocks and longer lifespans of the cards.

DOOM Eternal has just received a bunch of new footage and details from the first day of QuakeCon 2019, with the new Battlemode teased and in the video below. Battlemode will see a fully-loaded DOOM Slayer battling two demons controlled by other gamers... check it out:

Battlemode will see the fully-loaded DOOM Slayer fighting two human-controlled enemies that can choose between different demons, each with their own respective powers and strengths. There will be 6 maps in total, 5 different demons, and Bethesda has said there will be plenty of post-launch maps and new demons coming to Battlemode, FOR FREE.

The 5 demons at launch will be:

ASUS has just unleashed some big fighting words against its motherboard competitors in GIGABYTE and MSI over the newly-released X570 range of motherboards. VideoCardz has the scoop with some very controversial marketing slides for the new X570 boards, and how ASUS dominates.

ASUS claims that both GIGABYTE and MSI have failed with their new boards in comparison to the superior products ASUS has across the board, and then AMD reportedly reached out to ASUS and "suggested" the slides be removed. Well, it seems both tech-focused companies forget how the internet works and that anything on the internet, is there forever.

Just like these slides.

Intel has released the latest drivers for its integrated graphics, and inside there is a nice surprise: a tease of its upcoming Xe-branded GPUs in the form of DG1 and DG2 codenames.

The 'DG' in both DG1 and DG2 should mean discrete graphics, while there is one variant of the DG1 and 3 variants of the DG2. The variants are broken into LP and HP could mean low-powered and high-powered, but it could also mean low-profile and high-profile... maybe.

Inside of the DG2 family there are three different numbers: 128, 256, and 512 -- this could be the EUs, or execution units. The DG1 variant seems to be the higher-end of the four SKUs.

Quakecon 2019 is kicking off, and Bethesda stealth launched a handful of classic Doom games onto the Switch to celebrate 25 years of ripping and tearing.

Doom Slayer's full bloody, demon-massacring saga is now on the Switch, which is a surprising turn for the family-oriented handheld. Every big mainline Doom game is now available on the Nintendo Switch's eShop: Doom ($4.99), Doom II ($4.99), Doom 3 ($9.99), and Doom 2016 ($59.99). And of course this year's huge heaven-smashing FPS Doom Eternal is coming to the Switch too, with double the demons in tow.

Both Doom and Doom II come with local 4-player co-op and multiplayer for old-school skull-smashing chaos, and the games are quite tiny at about 290MB and won't require any huge downloads. There's also expansions and bonuses levels thrown in for good measure.

Rumors are becoming far more prevalent as the inevitable launch of the new Apple MacBook Pro 16" comes to fruition. Rumors from the translated source are showing the new MacBook Pro 16" model could have a starting price of 90,000 to even 100,000 NTD which means an expected retail price of around $3000 USD.

The other point of contention for potential buyers is the lack of an OLED display, which to many is a significant upset as it has been the desired option for many users seeking MacBook Pro upgrades. Apple is reportedly sticking to an LG sourced LCD panel. This is not a horrible thing as LG makes some stunning display panels, but for the price, I do think users want to see OLED on the flagship mobile PC from Apple.

The existing 15" MacBook Pro starts at $2,399 which means this would be a sizeable jump in price, if true. No other details are known as far as specs at this moment, which means we can only extrapolate based on the data provided that the new hardware will be quite beefy to support the new starting price.

NVIDIA's newest Shield gaming console appears to be getting closer to making a public appearance.

Eagle-eyed viewers have taken notice of the newest updated FCC filings for the new NVIDIA Shield game console (Model # P3430). The new NVIDIA Shield per multiple FCC filings shows a new chipset labeled 'Tegra X1 T210 B01', which is a different model than the original Shield TV model, which was 'Tegra X1 A2'.

We also see new accessories such as a new Shield TV Remote (model # P3700) which hints that new hardware is on the horizon, but the new console codenamed 'mdarcy' is still slated to be a minor incremental update. While the existing 2017 model (model # P2897) has been updated with the FCC showing a potential refresh to the now-aging hardware. The new P3430 could turn out to be a Shield TV dongle much akin to a fire-stick like device. This would be for those looking for the popular Android Shield interface without the size and grunt of the full-blown gaming console.

Wasteland developers at inXile are hiring for a new multiplayer VR game. What could it be?

inXile is no stranger to VR games, and VR Focus reports this new unannounced project has been in the works for two years now. Before we get too excited and think Microsoft is making a VR headset for the next-gen Project Scarlett Xbox console, remember this VR game was in dev before Microsoft acquired the studio.

The VR project sounds pretty ambitious in scope and could be a huge experience. It's apparently an open-world survival RPG with multiplayer elements set in a live service wrapper (which'll Microsoft very happy), and it's built with the flexible Unreal Engine 4.

Who is ready to nut up or shut up for a second time? I know I am, as this October Zombieland 2: Double Tap will be hitting theaters.

Zombieland 2: Double Tap will see the beloved cast from the first movie return for a continuation of the story that emerged back in 2009. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Emma Stone will be resuming their roles as Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock.

The sequel to the first movie is written by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick and Dave Callaham. The storyline will revolve around the characters traversing through many different locations, and having to deal with new kinds of evolved zombies and some new human survivors that seem to be similar to the main characters. The comical focus though seems to be on how all of the characters are trying to keep their little makeshift family together. Zombieland 2: Double Tap will be arriving in theaters globally on October 18th.

When building a world as diverse and futuristic as Cyberpunk 2077, one would consider the thought of religion still being present in it. CD Projekt RED did consider this thought, and religion will be playing a "very important" role in the immersion and world of Cyberpunk 2077.

According to a recent interview with polish site Gry Online WP, CD Projekt RED discussed the presence of religion in-game and how it would effect players. IGN managed to get an accurate translation of the interview, revealing that "Yes, and in many forms. As I mentioned, our vision is somehow based on the real-world. And religion is a very important part of the latter, society-wise. In our game we're going to see for example Christianity and its different branches, or religions from the East."

The developers continued and said "We do not want to avoid religion as a topic, authenticity of the world is what counts for us. Technically, the situation you mentioned is possible, but this is all about the choices made by the player. We won't encourage the player to do so. In our quests, which involve religious themes, we make sure there's no disrespect."

A recent study conducted by some international astronomers has shined a light on a dying star that is very similar to the one that is in our solar system and how it will eventually die.

It is a strange thought to consider the fact that our Sun, literally the source of life in our solar system will eventually die. Perhaps not in our life time (you reading this), but eventually it will. Dr Meridith Joyce, an astronomer at The Australian National University (ANU) in collaboration with Dr Laszlo Molnár and Dr Laszlo Kiss from the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences conducted the recent study on T Ursae Minoris (T UMi).

The astronomers observed T Ursae Minoris becoming unstable with internal energy flares from nuclear fusion that are deemed "hiccups" by the astronomers. These "hiccups" are scientifically called thermal pulses and according to Dr Joyce, "cause drastic, rapid changes in the size and brightness of the star, which are detectable over centuries. The pulses of old stars like T UMi also enrich the entire Universe with elements including carbon, nitrogen, tin and lead."

Following up on yesterday's news regarding the delay of SpaceX's cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS), recent news coming out from SpaceX confirms that today's launch was a success and that the Dragon capsule is on its way to the ISS.

And we have lift off, or at least SpaceX has gotten lift off from their Falcon 9 rocket carrying the robotic Dragon Space Capsule planned for connection with the ISS. This successful launch marks the 18th mission for SpaceX and also the first time that the same Dragon spacecraft has flown to the ISS three times.

In celebration of this milestone, SpaceX has placed three decals on the side of the capsule, two ISS logos and one more to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing back in 1969. Bill Specht, NASA's deputy manager for ISS Transport Integration spoke out about the launch, saying "Historically today, 50 years ago, we were able to complete Kennedy's challenge to get men to the moon."

Techland's upcoming sequel to Dying Light has got gamers shaking in their boots with excitement especially since players will be able to metaphorically watch the world burn if they so choose.

In a recent interview with WCCFtech, Techland's, Chris Avellone the narrative designer for Dying Light 2, Kornel Jaskula, a producer and chief technology officer Pawel Rohleder. In the interview, it was touched on if players have the ability of playing a chaos agent in-game. What I mean by that is - do players have the choice of choosing to reign chaos on the characters in-game by turning the against each-other and creating complete disarray?

Avellone answered the question confidently, saying "Yes. Dying Light 2 is designed to allow the player to play any number of roles - helpful benefactor, selfish looter, ruthless pragmatist, betrayer, or even a trickster if they wish, and you can definitely turn the factions against themselves and individuals against each other."