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Microsoft is ramping up into the release of its streaming service known as xCloud, with public trials kicking off in October but before then, we're getting a glimpse into what hardware is baked into the data center.

In a new interview with Fortune, Xbox streaming boss Kareem Choudry walks us through the inside of the server rack that will be powering xCloud games. Inside we'll find the insides of 8 x Xbox One S consoles that are crammed into a 2U rack unit that has been designed specifically to slide into a data center.

It seems as though the first runs of Microsoft's baby steps into cloud gaming will begin with xCloud using physical Xbox One S consoles to pump the game to the consumer, so they don't need the physical console in their house. While Microsoft would be paying a lower price for Xbox One S boards (as they are the supplier) it could eventuate into supercomputers emulating Xbox One S consoles.

The biggest fighting game tournament in the world is without a doubt EVO, or Evolution Championship Series. This year things are a little different as Super Smash Bros. has managed to knock off long standing Street Fighter games as the headlining tournament.

The news has come from the President of Evo, Joey Cuellar who recently took to Twitter to reveal the Evo 2019 finals order. According to Cuellar, on Friday Evo participants will see Soulcalibur VI finals be played out, on Saturday we will get Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st], Dragon Ball FighterZ, Samurai Shodown, and Mortal Kombat 11. Sunday will be BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, Street Fighter V, Tekken 7 and finally Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

This is quite unprecedented as the newest Street Fighter game usually holds the headlining spot at Evo, but this year Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's overwhelming popularity has swooped in and dethroned the long-running fighter. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was also the most registered title at this years Evo, check out more on that here. If you didn't know, Super Smash Bros. Melee was dropped from this years Evo competition, find out why here. Evo 2019 will be held in Las Vegas on August 2nd.

Amazon's highly anticipated Lord of the Rings TV show has revealed the first member to be casted to the most expensive show of all time.

A recent report out of Deadline has revealed that Young Australian actress, Markella Kavenagh will be casted to Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV series. Kavenagh is known for her role in the Australian TV series Romper Stomper, but her role in Amazon's TV show is not known at the moment. Some other sites are reporting that she will be playing a character named 'Tyra', but there hasn't been an official confirmation as of yet.

Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV show will be taking fans of the Tolkien's work all the back past the events of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Fans will be taken to the second age of Middle Earth, and be introduced to the rise and fall of Numenor (Aragorn descendants). I recently reported that a 'huge' part of the show was going to be filmed in New Zealand, the same location where Peter Jackson filmed The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, more on that here. Amazon also poached a Game of Thrones screenwriter to work on the Lord of the Rings series, check out that here.

Venezuela has been plunged into darkness for the fourth time this year with another nationwide blackout hitting the country, in something that Venezuelan officials are calling a hostile "electromagnetic attack".

The blackout has taken most of the country down including the capital Caracas, with close to 94% of the Venezeulan telecommunications infrastructure affected. Internet connectivity in the country has dropped to 10% nationwide, which means we're not hearing much out of the country and whatever comes out, is in drips.

The Venezuelan government released a statement on Twitter saying the blackout was "an electromagnetic attack" but didn't point any fingers in who did it. Officials are working around the clock to restore power and internet cconnectivity, while working on supplies like food and water, as well as health services and transportation.

10 years since its release, Red Dead Redemption is still a masterpiece title, but what if Rockstar Games gave it a fresh coat of paint? A recent rumor has suggested just that and the release date for the purported title is teed up for release in 2020-2021.

The rumor has originated on Reddit by an anonymous user who allegedly knows one of the Rockstar Games environment artists. According to the rumor, Rockstar Games is currently remaking Red Dead Redemption and is planning on adding a bunch of new features into the classic title that are present in Red Dead Redemption 2. The rumor also suggests that the story will be slightly change to have a better transition into the sequels story.

The anonymous user also discussed some details regarding a Red Dead Redemption 2 single-player DLC, saying that its "alien centered like people have rumored (this was hinted by the ufo Easter egg). You're still Arthur in this DLC." The full quote is located in the entirety of this post, and I must say before you go an believe this news that since this isn't an official announcement please do take the information with a healthy amount of skepticism. Nothing of this sort has been confirmed as of yet.

Elon Musk is the real-life Tony Stark of our age, founding companies such as Tesla and SpaceX and pioneering some of the best technology advancements in their respective fields.

SpaceX is currently designing a selection of rockets, some of which are eventually aimed at to at taking us humans to Mars. The rocket that is shaping up to be the winner of the Mars race is SpaceX's Super Heavy Rocket. Originally, the Super Heavy Rocket was planned to have 31 next-generation Raptor Engines, each of the engines are powered by cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Ignition of both of these substances creates 200 tonnes of force per engine, and the Super Heavy Rocket now has 41 of them on at launch.

Musk recently took to Twitter to answer a fans question regarding the full stack of engines on the rocket. Musk replied with "Full stack is 41 rn, but kinda beggin for just one more ..." SpaceX's Super Heavy booster will be launching the 100-passenger Starship vehicle towards Mars. Starship will be powered by 6 Raptors, which explains the total of 41 - Super Heavy having 35 + Starship having 6. Funnily enough, SpaceX already has one round flight booked to the moon, Yusaku Maezawa will be taking the Starship Super Heavy rocket around the moon sometime in 2023.

QuakeCon 2019 kicks off on Friday, July 26 and it will be centered around DOOM and its influence on the world over the last 25 years, leading right into the release of DOOM Eternal.

DOOM Eternal will be playable at QuakeCon, which will be the first time the public will get their hands-on the game. The opening keynote to QuakeCon 2019 this year will see its welcome message "focus heavily" on DOOM Eternal, with the keynote starting at 11AM CT on Friday, July 26.

Right after the keynote is the first panel titled "The Influence of DOOM" which will feature an "all-star lineup of Bethesda developers from MachineGames, Bethesda Game Studios, and id Software will discuss the impact of DOOM's release 25 years ago on games and the video game industry".

It looks like Apple is ready to splash some cash around with The Wall Street Journal reporting that the iPhone maker is close to a deal to buy Intel's smartphone modem division for $1 billion.

Intel backed out of the 5G modem business in April, right after Apple settled its battle with Qualcomm over modems. Then Intel CEO Bob Swan confirmed Intel had left the modem business because of the Apple settlement, and that without Apple as a customer of its modems the company "just didn't see a path forward" with its modem business.

It all started because Intel reportedly couldn't deliver a 5G modem for Apple's new 2020 iPhone in time so it forced Apple into settling its dispute with Qualcomm to get 5G-capable modems in 2020. Now the WSJ is reporting that Apple will acquire Intel's modem division, which will include its patents, staff, and more for $1 billion and that the deal will be announced next week.

The new ASUS ROG Phone II gaming smartphone has a super-fast 120Hz display but it looks like the 2020 iPhone will have a "switchable" 60Hz/120Hz display. Apple will be sourcing 120Hz panels from either (or both) Samsung and LG, with discussions happening now.

We should expect Apple's new iPhone to possibly roll out with 5G connectivity, with fresh news popping off this morning that Apple was in "advanced" discussions to buy Intel's modem division. The move to a 120Hz panel isn't completely new for Apple as both of the 2017 and 2018 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models feature a 120Hz display.

Apple calls the 120Hz screen technology ProMotion Display, which is a switchable refresh rate display that drops to just 24Hz with a static image on screen, and 48Hz when videos are playing. This is the big saver on battery life as it means the screen isn't constantly refreshing at 120Hz which would be a drain on battery life.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is right around the corner with a release date of July 26, but it will be launching without its ray tracing with the developer working with NVIDIA engineers in last-minute crams.

Executive Producer of Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Jerk Gustafsson, said during a recent interview with GamesBeat: "We're working together with NVIDIA on that, but raytracing won't be available at launch. The engineers at NVIDIA are still hard at work getting that solution to look as good as possible for the game, and the date is still to be determined. But from what we've seen so far, it'll be good".

It's a bit of a kick in the teeth considering Bethesda Softworks and NVIDIA announced at Computex 2019 that Wolfenstein: Youngblood would include ray tracing, and now 4 days before its release it is announced that it won't be included at launch. We don't know when it'll be launched apart from the date "still to be determined". Weeks? Months? How long do you think it'll be?

If you want to blow a huge chunk of money on a game then look no further than Dead or Alive 6, which is a money pit of a game with $670 worth of DLC on the Steam store page for DOA6. But it gets worse.

The second season pass for Dead or Alive 6 should cost around $90, the same as the original season pass -- something that cost more than the full game itself. What do you get with the new season pass? There's the new Seaside Eden area, with a bonus costume for both Marie Rose and Honoka.

You'll also get some Seaside Eden costumes, two additional costume sets, a Vacation to Paradise BGM set, and a new character with five costumes. But don't worry, world! Between July 23 and July 29 the two new characters are free, so it makes that $670 easier to swallow.

ASUS has just unleashed its next-gen ROG Phone II gaming smartphone, so now we have official specifications and details on the new top of the line gaming phone.

Inside, the new ASUS ROG Phone II has Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 855+ chipset which is a cherry-picked SoC for the next wave of gaming smartphones. ASUS has used a large 6.6-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with a native 2340x1080 resolution and super-slick 120Hz refresh rate.

ASUS is even using a 240Hz touch sampling rate for the best in touch response with a touch latency of just 49ms, something that you should see the results of instantly when it's in your hands. Underneath, ASUS is supporting 10-bit HDR, the ROG Phone II packs a display with 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 108% of the DCI-P3 color space, and is protected by Gorilla Glass 6.

During the San Diego Comic-Con, Simpsons creator, Matt Groening spoke out about the possibility of a sequel to The Simpsons Movie.

The Simpsons Movie debuted back in 2007 and was met with a large amount of commerical success by fans. The movie managed to rake in $527 million from budget of just $75 million. Since the movies release, fans have wondered whether a sequel was ever going to be released, especially since the movie ended with Maggie finally speaking and saying "sequel".

Since the movies production crew was the same as the one who works on the show, Groening explains that when creating the movie the production studio was stretched extremely thing. "The first Simpsons movie killed us. We're almost recovered. No doubt there will be another Simpsons movie one of these days. Disney wants something for its money."

We kinda knew it was coming but now it is here: DRAM prices have spiked by 20% from the Toshiba factory power outages and also fueled by the on-going trade issues between Japan and South Korea.

This will cause the price of DRAM used in most consumer PCs in the form of RAM, graphce cards, RAM for smartphones and much more will slowly increase. It'll happen as stock is depleted, and then some of it will be marked up along the supply chain before it gets into your hands. The tightly knit memory industry is co-dependant on one another, with Asia being a hotspot for DRAM with South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. DRAMeXchange reports that the spot-pricing of 8-gigabit DDR4 is up 14.6% week-over-week, and up a large 23% as of July 5.

Japan is flexing its muscles with regulatory moves, but industry sources have said that if the regulatory moves affect production of DRAM at Samsung Eletronics and SK Hynix -- two South Korean chip titans -- "memory prices could skyrocket".

The release of Avengers: Endgame marked a moment in cinematic history, 10 years of film all coming together into one highly anticipated movie. With those expectations on the line, it's not surprise that the movie was a box office smash hit.

Since fans of Avengers came in masses to the cinema, the opening weekend for the movie was incredible box office wise. The momentum even continued to the weeks after and soon enough projectionists said that Disney's creation would be in the running to take on James Cameron's Avatar, the highest box office movie ever.

While at Comic-Con, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios said "I literally just heard from our folks at Disney Distribution that Avengers: Endgame will be the biggest film of all time. You have to shout out to [Avatar director] James Cameron--if you adjust for inflation he still holds that title, but right now, thanks to you folks in Hall H, Avengers: Endgame is the biggest film of all time."

A hacking group that goes by the nickname '0v1ru$' has disclosed some secret Russian spy projects, some of these projects were designed to store, monitor and decipher Tor users data.

The company that got hacked by 0v1ru$ is SyTech, a contracting company to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. SyTech had its servers hijacked and 0v1ru$ managed to extract a whopping 7.5TB worth of data. Within the extracted data was several different security projects, the most notable one that was found was a project called 'Nautilus-S'.

The goal of the Nautilus-S project was to deanonymize Tor traffic while also creating a database of Tor users and their data. The disclosure revealed that this project begun way back in 2012, and was initialized in 2014 when Swedish researchers discovered Russian Tor nodes attempting to sift Tor users data. Since the hack has taken place, SyTech has taken down their website and has refused to contact the press regarding these disclosed projects.

In a recent interview with CD Projekt RED, we have learned that if players choose to jump into Cyberpunk 2077's hardcore mode, that they won't have an in-game UI.

WCCFTech recently sat down with Alvin Liu to discuss the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, and throughout the interview numerous aspects of the games difficulty settings had a light shed on them. According to Liu, Cybperunk 2077 will have similar difficulty settings to CD Projekt RED's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Meaning, there will be a hardcore mode for game enough players, which removes the in-game UI.

Here is what Liu had to say: "Yes, of course, of course. The most fun one I think will be the Hardcore setting where we turn off the UI you live as well. And that will be a real challenge for a lot of players." Liu continues and explains that for more casual players there will also be a setting. "We want to tell a story and maybe you're a big fan of The Witcher and you're not comfortable playing a shooter, we have settings available for that. We even have weapons for that."

During the 50th anniversary for the Apollo 11 Moon missions, Vice President, Mike Pence shared with the American people some great news surrounding the next moon mission, Artemis 1.

NASA is currently planning on returning to the moon by 2024, and to do that the space exploration company needs to do two preparation tests on their brand new spacecraft called Orion. This new space program has been called Artemis by NASA - in honor of Apollo's twin sister in Greek Mythology and will consist of three stages.

The Artemis 1 launch will an uncrewed spacecraft thousands of miles past the moon. Artemis 2 will consist of the astronaunts actually being aboard Orion, and then finally Artemis 3 will be the launch where American astronauts will step foot back on the moon. Before these checkpoints of the Artemis space program can go underway, there still needs to be some final tests done to Orion before its blasted off into space.

NVIDIA is about to unleash its GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER graphics card, the kicker to the RTX 2080 which will deliver more performance -- but to grab those headlines, leaks today suggest the new card will beat the TITAN V.

In some leaked benchmarks the new RTX 2080 SUPER offers performance that is above the TITAN Xp and just under teh TITAN V, which launched for $3000. The tests are in the Final Fantasy XV database, benchmarking the game at 1440p with High Quality settings. The RTX 2080 Ti is still a beast, and man that TITAN RTX just leaps ahead.

The new RTX 2080 SUPER launches with its 8GB of GDDR6 overclocked to 15.5Gbps, up from the 14Gbps on the original RTX 2080. NVIDIA has already launched its RTX 2060 SUPER (my review here) and the RTX 2070 SUPER (my review here). The most exciting of the three definitely has to be the RTX 2060 SUPER with its increased VRAM (8GB from 6GB and faster bandwidth @ 14Gbps) but the 15.5Gbps on the new RTX 2080 SUPER will make for some super testing.

The graphics settings for Halo: Master Chief Collection on the PC have surfaced thanks to insider beta testers now playing with the PC beta of the game. This is what you can expect from Halo: MCC on the PC:

As you can see the game supports UltraWide monitors with HUD anchoring ast the last option, while FOV adjustments are there as well as up to Ultra graphics. There's not much to change here, and it really would've been nicer to see more graphical adjustment in the Halo games on the PC but then I do get it as there's a very good reason behind it.

343 Industries developed the game on consoles and not the PC, and is now giving it the once over getting it to the PC. None of the Halo games were built with what PC gamers consider standards: low, medium, high, ultra graphics settings. Those with lower-end machines can run games on low detail for improved FPS and high-end hardware owners can drop details to breach 120/144/240FPS for high refresh rate panels.