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In a big move to further gouge Steam's PC marketplace, Epic Games takes a play from Microsoft's playbook and buys one of the biggest indie studios on gaming.

Today Psyonix announced that it'll soon be "part of the Epic Games family." The studio behind the enormously successful Rocket League is set to be acquired by Epic Games for an undisclosed sum. Not satisfied with just paying big bucks so AAA games like Borderlands 3 skip Steam for months after launch, Epic is taking a new all-out approach: buying the studios behind the games and then locking them to the Epic Games Store.

Psyonix says Rocket League will come to the Epic Games Store, but neglected to mention one key part: the game will leave Steam and be exclusive to Epic's marketplace. Sources tell The Verge that Rocket League will drop from Steam sometime in late 2019.

Nintendo has followed the likes of Steam and begun their very own celebrations of the Golden Week that is currently taking place in Japan. Prices for many titles have been slashed across the Nintendo eShop.

If you didn't know, Japanese workers have about a week long vacation as apart of their annual 'Golden Week' which is a string of clustered national holidays. To celebrate this Golden Week, online game stores such as the PlayStation Store or the Steam Store have decided to heavily discount many titles across their libraries of games. Nintendo has decided to jump into the action as well, bringing many discounts to some fantastic games on the Nintendo eShop.

Nintendo has not discounted everything on their eShop but none-the-less, The Big N has brought some hefty discounts to 18 titles. We have sales across the entire Disgaea series, which includes DLC content as well. Discounts also have been slapped on titles such as Fallen Legion: Rise to Glory, Happy Birthdays, The Lost Child, Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk, The Longest Five Minutes, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, Yomawari: The Long Night Collection and many more games. The sales will run for about one week, and end on May 7 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET / 3 PM GMT (1 AM AET on May 8).

A new announcement has come out from Ubisoft in regards to the sales of their recently released Anno 1800. The announcement boasts that Anno 1800 has sold four times better than the previously released title in the series.

If you are unsure of what exactly Anno 1800 is, the franchise is a city building experience that allows for players to step into the shoes of a ruler. Players can build giant cities, send out units to discover brand new lands, wage warfare against your enemies, commence trade routes between other civilizations and even dominate your opponents via diplomacy.

Anno 1800 is developed by Ubisoft Blue Byte and the Managing Director at Blue Byte, Benedikt Grindel, commented on the titles success, saying "Anno 1800 has been an incredible journey for all the people working at Ubisoft Blue Byte and we are so happy to see that players really enjoy playing our game. Since the announcement of the game, the community of Anno 1800 has provided us with countless useful feedbacks through our community platform Anno Union and helped us releasing an excellent game."

It could be said that Nintendo are quite happy with the efforts they have put into the Nintendo Switch Online program as the userbase has grown considerably, recent reports out of Nintendo reveal that it is about to hit the 10 million members mark.

The Nintendo Switch Online program was released back in last September and since then it has accumulated over 9.8 million members, and will eventually break the 10 million mark by the end of the year. Nintendo specifically point out that Tetris 99 was a very strong aspects of why Nintendo Switch Online became so popular, they say that the title provided positive "engagement" due to it being free but requiring a Nintendo Switch Online membership.

There is no doubt that other titles such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would of impacted the amount of Nintendo Switch Online users, as many gamers could just have Switch Online to play with their friends in Ultimate. Nintendo have said that Tetris 99 ended up being played by 2.8 million Nintendo Switch Online accounts, and Nintendo "plan to implement in-game events to encourage consumers to keep enjoying the game."

Anything new that comes out Death Stranding related is extremely hot news, as the mystery surrounding Hideo Kojima's upcoming title is one that would very much like to be solved. With that being said, the director has yet again teased his audience.

Earlier today, Kojima took to his personal Twitter account to share an image of a Death Stranding video being played on a PC. The first image that Kojima uploaded featured the run time for the video in the bottom left hand corner of the PC screen. Kojima soon removed that image and uploaded an edited one that didn't feature the run time.

Before Kojima could get away with the edited image, a fan saved the image and uploaded it to his own personal Twitter revealing that whatever Kojima had running on the PC screen would be over 8 minutes long. If this is the next trailer for Death Stranding we can expect that whenever Kojima decides to showcase it that it will feature gameplay of some kind, as 8 minutes of straight cinematic would surely give some story away. At the moment Death Stranding is a PS4 exclusive, but when asked about a PC port for the game Kojima didn't deny one was possible, more on that here.

Oculus has just announced it will have its next-gen Oculus Rift S headset on sale on May 21, launching side-by-side with the new Oculus Quest headset.

The new Oculus Rift S will sell for $399 and packs a higher-resolution 2560x1440 display (1280x1440 per eye) with a lower 80Hz (down from 90Hz) display. Rift S also packs Oculus' new inside-out tracking technology that is dubbed Oculus Insight, which means you don't need to have external motion sensors as there are five of them built directly into the Rift S headset that provide full positional tracking.

Oculus Quest on the other hand is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835-powered standalone VR headset that has offers the same Oculus Insight technology with four built-in sensors and full positional tracking, with a higher-end 2880x1600 resolution display with its refresh rate set at 72Hz.

Following up on yesterdays rumors, Paramount Pictures have indeed released the first trailer for an upcoming live-action movie starring Sonic The Hedgehog and none other than Jim Carrey.

The trailer has been released onto the Paramount Pictures YouTube Channel and reveals to fans that in-fact the design we saw of Sonic back in early March was an accurate one. Now that a trailer has been released and we can see Sonic in action many fans aren't very sold on the design of their favorite blue hedgehog. Sonic doesn't feature his iconic gloves, nor does he have those over sized shoes and for some reason has human shaped eyes.

On a more positive note, Jim Carrey will be taking the reins as Sonic's villain Dr. 'Eggman' Robotnik, and while Carrey doesn't have the roundness that Eggman has in games, he will certainly have the character. Overall, this movie is a strange one and fans are quite on the fence to whether they enjoy it or not, at the moment the 'likes' to 'dislike' ratio on the video is 154,000 down-votes compared to 110,000 up-votes. Sonic The Hedgehog will be rushing onto the big screen sometime this November.

AMD is celebrating turning 50 with new Gold Editon CPUs and GPUs in the form of the Ryzen 7 2700X Gold Edition and Radeon VII Gold Edition, but AIB partners like SAPPHIRE are getting into the 50th anniversary celebrations.

SAPPHIRE's new Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Radeon rolls out with the same dual 95mm dual ball bearing fans, with the same cooling as the non-50th anniversary edition RX 590 Nitro+ from SAPPHIRE. We're looking at the same GPU boost of 1560MHz, 8GB of GDDR5 clocked at 8.4Gbps, and 5 display outputs (2 x DP, 2 x HDMI, and 1 x DVI).

You get the same two free games that the AMD 50 deal will give you, but then remember that Navi-based Radeon graphics cards aren't too far away with a Q3 2019 launch confirmed by AMD and my exclusive sources saying the big Navi launch will take place at E3 2019 this year.

AMD has confirmed that it will be launching its next-gen Navi GPU architecture in Q3 2019, with the news coming directly from the company and its recent earnings call. My exclusive industry sources told me Navi will launch at E3 2019, with the press to be invited in the coming weeks leading up to Computex 2019.

Navi will be made on the new 7nm node, the second GPU on the 7nm node after AMD's recent Vega 20 launch inside of the consumer-focused Radeon VII and the professional/data center-focused Radeon Instinct accelerators. We don't know much about what makes Navi tick, but we do know from our exclusive story that Sony worked hand-in-hand with the RTG engineers on the Navi architecture for its next-gen PlayStation 5 console.

Just recently Sony confirmed it will be indeed using a custom Zen 2-based CPU and custom Navi GPU-based design inside of its upcoming PS5 console, and we can presume Microsoft will be using the new 7nm-based tech inside of its next-gen Xbox, too. Rumor has it the PS5 will be priced at just $399, too.

Saints Row is the latest video game to get adapted to the big screen. What's next, Grand Theft Auto?

Koch Media is working alongside Fenix Studios and Occupant Entertainment to make a Saints Row film adaptation, Deadline reports. There's no word on which game in the four-title series will be adapted, but it's likely a mixture of of the first three Saints Row's gangland violence rather than the aliens-and-VR chaos of the fourth installment.

The movie will be directed by F. Gary Gray, who's responsible for directing films like the immortalized cult classic Friday, and more recently Fate of the Furious and Men in Black: International. Greg Russo, who's also working on a number of video game film adaptations like Mortal Kombat and a new Resident Evil, will write the script. No official details on the project have been revealed so far and the film is likely in pre-production phases of development.

343 Industries and its partners rev up hardware, UI, and control optimizations for Halo: The Master Chief Collection's impending PC release.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is coming to PC (it's even coming to Steam), and the team wants to harness the full brunt of graphics and processing hardware with the multi-configuration flexibility of the platform to breathe new life into the franchise. Now in a new Halo Waypoint update we get a full list of everything Halo MCC on PC should offer, and it's pretty enticing.

Short-hand optimizations include support for 4K resolution and beyond with HDR visuals, uncapped frame rates in certain games, adaptive sync support, FOV sliders, a plethora of video settings and UI tweaks, and support for multiple aspect ratios like 21:9. But 343i is careful to note that some of these features may not be available on all of the MCC's six games.

Today marks what should be a monumentous occasion for Valve, but ultimately makes the tech titan's job of wrangling users even harder.

With the new account amuseddragonfly, Steam just hit 1 billion registered users, an absolutely huge milestone for any platform. But there's just one problem: 91% of them aren't active PC gamers and are likely bots/scam accounts or even alts.

As of 2018, Steam had about 90 million active monthly users who did normal human things: logged in, bought and played games, and interacted with friends. A quick bit of math shows that Steam's MAUs are just 9% of the massive 1 billion accounts, meaning only 9% of all registered PC users are active on the platform.

Valve plans to release a marquee game onto its growing platform of VR headsets. Is it Half-Life related? Maybe. Maybe not.

Today Valve revealed its new powerful VR headset, the Valve Index, which supports all existing VR games on the SteamVR ecosystem. But the company wants to release a big first-party "flagship VR game" sometime in 2019 that leverages the full brunt of the Index's capabilities. After all, Valve is still making video games, and VR is a big part of its innovation now.

This new flagship game could be the rumored Half-Life VR game that was supposed to be bundled with the Index. Or it could be a Left 4 Dead experience with intuitive controls via the knuckle controllers' new design and crazy immersion capabilities via improved tracking, FOV, and refresh rates.

Today the new Valve Index VR headset was revealed, showing off hardware boosts in HMD tech, base stations, and controllers.

The new PC-powered Valve Index offers a nice performance leap over gen one HTC Vive headsets. Internal specs have been upgraded, including a panel boost to dual 1440 x 1600 resolution LCDs, up from the original Vive's 2160 x 1200 resolution. Valve has taken great efforts to reduce VR sickness by significantly reducing the headset's lighting illumination period by five-fold over previous Vive headsets, dropping it down to as low as 0.330ms and "allowing imagery to remain just as sharp when your head is in motion as when you're standing still."

The Index can maintain an explosive 144Hz frame rate, but Valve says this refresh rate is experimental and the headset will mainly run at 120Hz in newer games and 90Hz in older Vive titles.

Most people thought that the Razer Toaster was a joke, first making its appearance into this realm of existence 5 years from FB page 'Give us the Razer Toaster' asked Razer CEO Min-Liang Tang about the possibilities of a Razer Toaster.

Back in September 2013 the FB group started the Razer Toaster movement with the tease of 'have a slice of ownage' with the Razer logo burned into the bread, and it looked awesome. At the time, Min-Liang Tan said if the page hit 1 million likes he said he would definitely make one. Well, after the video went live the community did what they do best -- rallied together and made it happen.

The hype for the Razer Toaster continued with other content creators getting behind it with their own takes on the gaming toaster, and even Razer itself for April Fools 2016 where it joked about 'Project Breadwinner'. An actual Razer Toaster tease with the marketing slogan of 'It's a little bit... toasty'. From there it gained enough steam that the Give us the Razer Toaster page on Facebook had over 1 million likes, and now Min-Liang is living up to his promise of making the Razer Toaster real.

According to a recent leak out of a dedicated SEGA news Twitter account, it has showcased Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik and has also claimed that a new trailer will be released tomorrow.

At the start of early March we saw that some images come out for a coming live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie. The images were quite odd and showcased Sonic with no gloves, shoes and a cheeky look on his face. According to SEGABits, a new trailer for this movie will be released tomorrow and we should see the final design of Sonic.

Combined with the rumored trailer announcement we also get a image of Jim Carrey playing Dr. Robotnik. If you are a skeptic to image I have provided an image from Carrey's personal instagram where he said that he got his hair cut for the role of Robotnik. A set picture has also been taken of the spacecraft that Carrey is sitting in. If a trailer is released tomorrow I will be sure to follow up with another post.

Stardew Valley developer Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone has revealed via his personal Twitter a new coming update to Stardew Valley. The update will be adding a brand new map for players to enjoy over multiplayer.

Barone has teased the new update on his personal Twitter account by sharing a screenshot of the new map which has been titled 'Four Corners'. The new update will bring the game up to version 1.4 and according to Barone this update will be "a big one". Barone also touches on the fact that this new farm map is "perfect for the much requested "separate money" option in multiplayer".

At the moment there is no known release date for this coming update, but what we do know is that PC users will be getting 1.4 first before any other platform. After the update has debuted on PC it will then be followed by a debut on the Nintendo Switch and mobile versions of the game. For further information regarding Stardew Valley, visit the official website for the title here.

NASA plans on putting a man and a women on the Moon by 2014, to do that they are going to need integrated human lunar landing systems.

NASA are sticking to their guns with their goal of putting a man and the first women on the moon by 2024. To do this the Space exploration administration is seeking proposals from the industry in support of rapid development of an "integrated human lunar landing system" that will include "elements such as a descent element, ascent element, and transfer vehicle."

NASA will be going over proposals from U.S industry that fulfill their needs of integrating a crewed demonstration of the elements they require and accurately meet the challenge of getting a man and the first women on the moon by 2024. If you are interested in checking out anymore news regarding NASA, head on over to their website here.

At the moment Japan is embracing what they call their Golden Week, this is when Japanese workers have about a week off work due to their being a cluster of national holidays. To celebrate this week Valve has discounted many games across the entire Steam Store.

Steam isn't the only store that is being hit with massive sales, Sony have also brought the Golden Week sales to the PSN Store, discounting 500 titles across the PS4, PS4, PS Vita, PSP and DLC content. Microsoft hasn't joined in on the action as of yet but Valve have stepped up to the plate with a HUGE range of discounts across Steams entire breath of library.

Valve has heavily discounted a range of classic Japanese titles such as the Dark Souls series, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Resident Evil and Nier: Automata. There is also other titles such as Dragon Ball FighterZ, Jump Force, God Eater 3, Frostpunk, Resident Evil 2 and the Nioh: Complete Edition. All of the mentioned titles are discounted by at least 25%, and this is just scratching the surface of all of the games Valve have decided to discount. To see the sales for yourself head on over to the Steam Store here.

It wasn't too long ago that we learned that Kingdom Hearts III would be getting its very own challenge mode, now a new announcement has confirmed that there is a DLC coming for the title.

The announcement comes from the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra: World of Tres concert, where Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura confirmed that there is a Kingdom Hearts DLC on its way. The DLC has been titled Kingdom Hearts III ReMIND and will include the following; an additional scenario 'ReMIND', Limit Episode + boss, secret episode + boss and a new keyblade + a new form.

There has been no official release date mentioned for the DLC as of yet, so I will keep my ears pricked for when an official announcement comes out of Square Enix. If you are interested in checking out more Kingdom Hearts III news, check out this gameplay video for the title here. Kingdom Hearts III is currently available on the Xbox One and PS4.