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Qualcomm has just announced its new Snapdragon 855 Plus, a mid-year refresh of its now previous flagship Snapdragon 855. The new Snapdragon 855 Plus is virtually identical to its predecessor, except the new chip is overclocked, and is further optimized for gaming, VR, AI, and 5G.

The company has overclocked the Adreno 640 GPU by 15% which will see the next-gen gaming phones from the likes of ASUS and Razer, rolling out with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus and faster-than-ever mobile gaming performance. Qualcomm is promising its new Snapdragon 8 55 Plus will deliver "best-in-class cellular performance, superior coverage and all-day battery life in premium 5G devices".

There is no on-board 5G modem on the Snapdragon 855 Plus, so there is the SoC with a 4G LTE chip and the separate 5G chip for now until we get to the Snapdragon 865 which should be announced later this year. We should expect to see Qualcomm's new flagship Snapdragon 855 Plus inside of the next-gen Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL as well as Samsung's new Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+ smartphones due out in the coming months.

Qualcomm announced its new Snapdragon 855 Plus chip which is focused on next-gen gaming devices, with ASUS the first company out of the gate announcing its new Snapdragon 855 Plus-powered ROG Phone II handset.

ASUS hasn't shared any details on its new ROG Phone II gaming smartphone ot her than it being powered by the new Snapdragon 855 Plus from Qualcomm. If we look at the first-gen ROG Phone it was made with keeping it cool in mind with its heat dissipation through a copper heat sink and cooling fan, the first smartphone in the world with a cooling fan.

The original ASUS ROG Phone used speed-binned Snapdragon 845 that was optimized for heavy gaming workloads, so when mixed with the improved cooling and fan it was a great gaming smartphone. The center of the gaming smartphone world are high refresh rate displays of which the original ROG Phone II had a 90Hz panel, you need more GPU juice to hit 90FPS in games on a smartphone.

Microsoft might have all but abandoned the Kinect sensor for its Xbox family of consoles, but that hasn't stopped the TSA from deploying some Xbox Kinect sensors at the Newark Liberty International Airport.

Video game historian and archivist Jason Scott recently tweeted a photo when he was going through the the Newark airport, where we can see Xbox Kinect sensors being used for surveillance. Better yet, the Kinect sensors still have their Xbox logo on display for some geek/gaming recognition in a surveillance scenario.

Microsoft discontinued the Kinect back in 2017, releasing an adapter that let gamers connect the Kinect sensor into their newer Xbox One S and Xbox One X consoles but that adapter was also discontinued, in 2018. Microsoft isn't only seeing its Kinect sensors used at the Newark International Airport, but its Xbox Kinect sensors are being used in some Walmart stores according to a Reddit post from u/docbaily from 8 months ago.

Ubisoft's new uPlay+ subscription is a tactical move that fits perfectly with its service-oriented business. Here's how uPlay+ will help transform and solidify Ubisoft as a digital-focused publisher.

Ubisoft has made a radical transformation over the last few years. All of its games are now sprawling, evolving experiences focused around engagement, live content, and microtransactions, creating a business that continually makes money long after its games are sold. Last fiscal year, Ubisoft raked in $1.56 billion from digital, or about 68.8% of its total yearly earnings, and $721 million from microtransactions.

Infusing live services into all of its biggest games (even singleplayer titles like Assassin's Creed are now hybridized into live games) was just the beginning. Now with uPlay+, we're seeing the real fruits of Ubisoft's plans.

Want to play Remedy's new ultra-weird Twin Peaks-meets-The-X-Files game? You'll need a somewhat decent PC.

Today the Epic Games Store revealed Control's PC spec requirements for both minimum and recommended settings. To play Control, you can't skate away with lower-end hardware: you'll need at least an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU or AMD RX 580 (or equivalent), an Intel i5-7500 CPU or an AMD Ryzen 3 1300X CPU, and 8GB of RAM. To use ray-tracing you'll need at least an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. Then again a lot of gamers already run a GTX 1060. According to Steam's recent hardware survey, the GTX 1060 is the most popular GPU for gamers (about 15% of active users have one, or around 13.5 million).

Recommended specs are more demanding, of course: Remedy wants you to have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or an AMD Radeon VII, Intel Core i5-8600K or an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 16GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for ray-tracing.

On the heels of a successful campaign test run, 343i's next closed beta will concentrate on Halo: Reach's Firefight mode.

Halo: Reach is a huge game that offers something for everyone: it has solo or split-screen campaign for offline gamers, campaign matchmaking for team play, Firefight solo or online play with others, custom Firefight, custom games, and an array of PVP matchmaking options. To get the full game running on PC, all these moving parts will get their own testing phases. First we had a very limited campaign test where less than 1,000 people got in, and now we're getting Firefight matchmaking.

343i confirmed the next flight is all about Firefight, aka the best mode ever invented, and is slated to launch later this month. It's an arcade-style survival gauntlet that pits you against teeming hordes of enemies that progressively get stronger, complete with vehicles and huge chaotic sandbox maps. Toss in some pre-defined loadouts for team-based action and you have a recipe for complete carnage-inducing awesomeness.

Xbox One backwards compatibility is a huge motivator to adopting the system. Find out if your old-school game is supported with this handy list.

Over 600 Xbox 360 and original Xbox games are playable on the Xbox One, including classics like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Morrowind, Fallout: New Vegas, and a ton of Fable games. Of course there's lots, lots more

Microsoft recently stopped adding new games to the list, so the following games are set in stone as the full backward compatibility selection. All of the games below will also be playable on the next-gen Project Scarlett console (as well as all Xbox One games), bridging four generations' worth of titles.

Mortal Kombat fans will be able to rejoice at the most recent news regarding the upcoming Mortal Kombat Movie that is soon to be released.

If you didn't know, Adelaide will soon be home to its biggest movie production ever, the upcoming Mortal Kombat live-action movie. The movie is being directed by Simon McQuid and it will be bringing a fresh new take to Mortal Kombat. Recent news has now surfarced regarding the movies rating and according to Greg Russo, a screenwriter for the movie, the Mortal Kombat Movie will be R-rated and will feature the games' iconic fatalities.

Russo said on Twitter in the above comment, "Since it's already been stated by other members of the team, I'm gonna put this one to bed. MK WILL be R-Rated and for the first time EVER, FATALITIES will FINALLY be on the big screen (and no I'm not gonna say which ones) You'll just have to wait for the movie & see!!! ;)" The last news we heard about the Mortal Kombat Movie is that Fast & Furious 6's Joe Taslim has been selected to play Sub-Zero. We are now waiting on who will play Sub-Zero's counterpart, Scorpion. The Mortal Kombat Movie is expected to launch in theaters on March 5th, 2021.

Netflix has decided to take a step into the suicide prevention area by removing one of suicide scenes from one of this most popular TV shows.

Netflix has taken to their official Twitter page to announce an update for 13 Reasons Why. According to the post, Netflix has "heard from many young people that 13 Reasons Why encouraged them to start conversations about difficult issues like depression and suicide and get help - often for the first time. As we prepare to launch Season 3 later this summer, we've been mindful about the ongoing debate around the show."

"So on the advice of medical experts, including Dr. Christine Moutier, Chief Medical Officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, we've decided with creator Brian Yorkey and the producers of 13 Reasons Why to edit the scene in which Hannah takes her own life from Season 1."

If you didn't know already, Amazon is currently hosting their own holiday called 'Prime Day'. Prime Day ushers in a range of new sales for consumers to enjoy, but not everyone has taken a liking - as many strikes have formed by Amazon employee's.

This is the second year in a row that Amazon employee's have decided to strike on Prime Day. Many workers located in Germany are refusing to work over what has been called unfair pay, and Minnesota workers are striking over unsafe working conditions. These are the only Amazon workers striking though, due to Amazon owning Twitch.tv some video game streamers have also decided to strike.

Adam "Yoman5" Hernandez, a competitive Magic: The Gathering streamer has decided not to stream for the next two days to show solidarity to the Amazon employee's who have it hard. "I think it's really simple to show solidarity to people who have it hard. A two-day strike did wonders already over at Polygon, and while that's a much smaller affair, a strike is really disruptive to the company's production and can force the company to actually address concerns. A boycott in solidarity with the strike can hit Amazon in the only place they care: sales numbers."

Blizzard are continuing to combat cheaters in Overwatch, and while most games that are played don't contain cheaters the ones that do will now be shut down upon detection.

In the most recent Overwatch developers update, Blizzard Overwatch icon Jeff Kaplan sat down to discuss the more harsh punishments being introduced into the game. According to Kaplan, "the next evolution of cheat detection" will be that once the game detects that a player is cheating it will automatically shut down the entire game.

Players that are not cheating will not be penalized in any means, whether or not they are on the team with the cheater or not. This means that for competitive matches players won't have to be concerned with loosing SR if it appears there is a cheater on the other team. Blizzard seem to be cracking down on cheaters in Overwatch and Kaplan says that "very harsh actions are happening" to anyone who Blizzard finds to be breaking the rules.

As America and NASA come closer to the 50th anniversary celebration of the Moon landing, NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine shined a light on what the next space-program will be.

Bridenstine was on Face The Nation and was iasked about how NASA plans on getting to the Moon within the next 5 years. According to Bridenstine, "There's two risks. There's technical risk and there's political risk. We would be on the moon right now if it weren't for the political risk. We would be on Mars, quite frankly, by now had it not been for the political risk." Combining into the 'political risk' is the other half the equation which is funding, which Bridenstine also says that was a massive issue.

Since the announcement by the Vice President for a Moon mission in the next 5 years, NASA has recently received the funding necessary to make this mission possible. Donald Trump recently said on Twitter that the Moon mission should not be focused on, and rather that Mars should be America's next goal.

Respawn is using an interesting method of annoying cheaters and spammers in the super-famous Apex Legends, with teh developer working on a system that would matchmake cheaters and spammers into matches with other cheaters and spammers.

The developer is tapping into machine learning technology for the next level in detecting and banning cheaters and spammers in the game, as well as doubling to stop cheaters altogether. It seems that Respawn has already got an algorithm in Apex Legends that pairs cheaters and spammers through matchmaking so they play with each other, and not ruin the game for the rest of the server.

Apex Legends, like most popular games, has cheaters. In the Ranked mode of Apex Legends it creates a big problem, and it's something games like Overwatch experience with its similar game modes. Blizzard has, in the last 24 hours, said that it is working on a new system that if it detecting cheating it would automatically end the match. Blizzard won't punish the other players in the game for the abrupt end of the match, it will only punish the cheater.

NVIDIA revealed its new GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards during E3 2019, revealing the full stack of SUPER cards in the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER, and RTX 2080 SUPER. But what did this mean for the current cards? They are all replaced apart from the RTX 2080 Ti, and many have wondered if there will be an RTX 2080 Ti SUPER -- the answer is simple: no.

During the SUPER reveal event senior vice president of NVIDIA's PC business Jeff Fisher took to the stage, and during his presentation he asked if any of the press had questions. Well, I did - after being introduced to the RTX 2060/2070/2080 SUPER cards I wanted to know if we'd see a SUPER successor to the RTX 2080 Ti. I asked "will there be a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti SUPER" to which Fisher said there "would not be" an RTX 2080 Ti SUPER.

I've got a slew of content on the new RTX SUPER graphics cards, check it out here:

AMD is kicking all sorts of ass right now, so much so that I'm sure Lisa Su is changing her shoes a few times a day -- and especially so in major Asian markets where AMD has crossed the 50% market share line.

Danawa is one of the largest retailers in South Korea with its internal firm Danawa Research seeing AMD Ryzen CPUs overtake Intel Core CPU market share in the last few days, with the surge across 50% thanks to Zen 2 chips launching on 7/7. The most popular CPU was the Core i5-9400F followed closely by the new Ryzen 7 3700X, while the Ryzen 5 3600X had slightly less, and the high-end Ryzen 9 3900X being surprisingly popular with more sold than the Core i5-9600K for July 6-11.

Then we have some data from BCN Ranking which uses data from major outlets in Japan that AMD has crossed the milestone 50.5% market share, Intel has fallen from grace in Japan where it did dominate in October 2018 with 72.1% and is now sitting at just 49.5% in July 2019.

EK Water Blocks has unveiled its new EK-Vector Radeon RX 5700 +XT water blocks which are made for the new Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT reference graphics cards.

The new EKWB water blocks for the RX 5700 series cards use a cold-plate that spans across the entire surface of the board, cooling the Navi 10 GPU, 8GB of GDDR6, and multi-phase VRM. There will be a base model of the EK-Vector water blocks with a copper waterblock, while the other option is the nickel-plated copper varirant, while the higher-end variant is made of high-quality acrylic material or black POM Acetal material (depending on the variant). The plexi-based water block rocks RGB LEDs and can be configured through software on most major motherboard brands.

EK will also provide a single-slot I/O bracket for those who want some of that super-slim watercooled Radeon RX 5700 XT life, which would look truly awesome. I really want to get a set and test Navi on it... email is being crafted now, EKWB.

AMD's next-gen Zen 5 architecture has been teased once again, popping up on the LinkedIn profile of David Suggs, the CPU architect on Zen 2 and Zen 5. Suggs lists "Chief architect for Zen2 and Zen5, high-performance x86 micro-processor cores". Makes it kinda obvious, yeah?

We shouldn't expect Zen 5 to pop up until at least 2022, as we have Zen 3 and Zen 4 in between that with Zen 3 coming on the 7nm+ node. AMD has already launched Zen 2 into the market on 7nm (our review here), with Zen 3 launching in 2020 on 7nm+ so we should expect Zen 4 in 2021 at that rate, leading into Zen 5 in 2022. But what architectural changes will there be between each Zen chip? Will it be on the 5nm node?

Nothing is known about the architectural improvements that Zen 3 will bring let alone Zen 4 and Zen 5, but if it's anything like the difference Zen 2 on 7nm is to Zen and Zen+ on 14nm then we're in for a wild ride over the next couple of years.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is grueling, unforgiving, and outright stressful. In other words, it's a FromSoftware game. But it doesn't have to be that way--if you're on PC, that is.

Apart from the higher-end hardware, improved frame rates, and amazing visuals, one big feature sets PC gaming apart from consoles: mods. Mods can drastically change a game and breath life into an age-old classic for years (just ask Bethesda). Now modders are using clever tricks to make Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice a lot less painful.

Introducing Sekiro The Easy, a new player-created mod that buffs the One-Armed Wolf's stats to make him more formidable. The mod boosts damage, defense, and stamina to reduce damage and resource costs per attack, and even raises the item drop rate among other things. It's essentially playing Sekiro with a handicap which lets you practice against certain bosses or even explore areas you couldn't get past otherwise.

Gearbox is very interested in letting PS4, Xbox One and PC gamers play Borderlands 3 together, but there's red tape barring the way.

Borderlands 3 could eventually get cross-play. It's definitely on the table and Gearbox wants to add it in, but it's not really up to the devs. Platform holders like Sony have to greenlight Sony's traditionally been more resistant to opening the cross-platform floodgates (Microsoft and Nintendo are all for cross-play). Luckily Sony is relenting and slowly approved cross-play in games like Rocket League and Fortnite...but we're not sure how Sony's picking these games. Top earners probably get first consideration. Case in point: the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare reboot will have full cross-play.

Due to the process and bureaucracy involved, Borderlands 3 won't have cross-play at launch. The shoot-and-loot multiplayer game may unify all systems "as soon as it's practicable," says Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford. And even then there's no guarantee it'll happen.

Amazon's Prime Day Deals discount a PS4 Slim model to $249, complete with two must-have console exclusives.

Prime Day is going on now and we're seeing some impressive deals on games hardware, including this $249 PS4 Slim bundled with Spider-Man and Guerrilla's excellent Horizon: Zero Dawn action RPG. The sale shaves off $50 from the console's base price and spices things up by tossing in two must-play exclusives to boot.

Remember newer PS4 Slim revision isn't beefier than the original 2014 launch model, but it runs cooler, quieter, and is overall more efficient. It's kind of a mid-cycle refresh with a shrunken 16nm APU, whereas the PS4 Pro's GPU horsepower is double the base model with 4.2 TFLOPs of compute power.