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EA is ramping up the hype for Battlefield V as the new battle royale mode Firestorm launches today, with a new 2019 roadmap that covers the next two chapters for the game in Tides of War, while teasing a third chapter.

We know that Chapter 3, Trial By Fire launches with the update on March 25 and will pack the new battle royale mode Firestorm, new Combined Arms missions, a new Mediterranean map based on the German airborne invasion of Crete, and a Hardcore mode. But that's just for now, and there are another 3 months between the Trial By Fire and Defying the Odds update in June.

DICE's new Defying the Odds update for Battlefield V will throw up a new multiple mode, and a new map that the developer teases has an "urban design [that] has been sought after by the community and should feel both familiar and fresh at the same time". There will also be a new map called Marita, which will be based on the 1940 invasion of Greece.

If there's something I've longed for in games with an aching heart it has to be leaps and bounds made in the areas of environmental destruction, something that was better realized with Red Faction, infused into hardware with PhysX (that NVIDIA ultimately acquired) and then done oh-so-well in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Since then, destruction has mostly taken a backseat with only a few good cases of it... until now. Epic Games teased during its GDC 2019 keynote its new Chaos technology which is a new system for Unreal Engine that will provide real-time "high-performance" destruction into the graphics cengine. Chaos will be made available for Unreal Engine v4.23 and above.

Epic explains that Unreal Engine developers Chaos can "achieve cinematic-quality visuals in real-time in scenes with massive-scale levels of destruction". In the video above, Epic shows off Chaos using its in-house Robo Recall, a VR shooter. The destruction realism is off the charts, and something I truly want in new games. Man, it looks great.

Samsung had some interesting things to show at NVIDIA's GTC 2019 this year, with the latest version of High Bandwidth Memory in something called Flashpoint, which offers a 33% increase in memory performance over HBM2.

We're looking at 3.2Gbps of bandwidth per pin, with double the density to 16Gb per die in stacks of 8. This means we're looking at a single package that can pack 16GB of HBM2E with up to 410GB/sec of memory bandwidth, but in a 4 stacks of HBM2E we're looking at an insane 64GB at 1.64TB/sec of memory bandwidth. The current 4x 4-Hi stacks of HBM2 on the AMD Radeon VII has 16GB with 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth, so this is quite the increase in bandwidth.

Jinman Han, Senior Vice President of Memory Product Planning and Application Engineering Team at Samsung Electronics explains: "Flashbolt's industry-leading performance will enable enhanced solutions for next-generation datacenters, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and graphics applications. We will continue to expand our premium DRAM offering, and improve our 'high-performance, high capacity, and low power' memory segment to meet market demand".

If you've been playing The Division 2 on the PC, you would've noticed that it's annoying to not have an adjustable FOV slider and even though the game feels and shoots incredibly well without it, it's coming in a future patch.

Ubisoft has posted on the official The Division subreddit in a new 'State of the Game' post that the team is working on multiple fixes to the game, as well as some tweaks to the game that will roll out in a future patch. The team was low on details but promised a lot of things are coming with a small list of things arriving in the next server and client updates to The Division 2.

The team said that there are other features planned for The Division 2 but they "don't have a date" for the update on these changes. But this is what we can expect in an update for The Division 2 in the near future:

AMD will be launching its next-gen Ryzen 3000 series CPUs just before or during Computex, with the new X570 motherboards designed to support the new 7nm processors on the new Zen 2 architecture.

ASUS will be launching a new range of X570 motherboards with VideoCardz reporting that we are to expect a flagship ROG Crosshair VIII Formula motherboard. There are 12 motherboards in the X570 range so far, with AMD making the new chipset in-house versus using something made by ASMedia. Not only that, but the X570 will be the first chipset out to market with PCIe 4.0 connectivity.

We will know more about AMD's upcoming Zen 2 processors in the coming months, especially as we inch closer and closer to the launch of the X570 chipset and the exciting new PCIe 4.0 connectivity.

CD Projekt RED is going all out with Cyberpunk 2077, and it'll be full of meaningful, deep side quests to tackle.

One of the best things about The Witcher 3 was the huge variety of side quests it offered. These weren't just distractions to keep you playing; they were mini story arcs that had interesting outcomes and colored the world. But with Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt RED will overshadow The Witcher 3 in every way--especially when it comes to branching paths.

Night City is a living, breathing world full of dynamic, radiant AI and reactive environments that make the game feel alive. These side quests will offer one such avenue for reactivity and give gamers lots of freedom and choice.

Due to strong controversy, Activision-Blizzard's monetization further shifts away from paid lootboxes in favor of a more direct buy-what-you-want system.

Lootboxes are quite vilified in gaming communities, but they earn companies like Activision-Blizzard billions upon billions every year (it made $5.24 billion from microtransactions in 2018). All of Activision-Blizzard's big games are typically monetized with online hooks baked into its live games. Blizzard is changing, though, and at least one of its games is switching off paid lootboxes.

As outlined in recent patch notes, Heroes of the Storm will no longer have gambling-style lootboxes that gamers can buy with real money. "Loot chests are no longer available for Gem purchase," the update reads (gems are premium currency that can be purchased with cash). The game will instead only let players use gems buy heroes, cosmetics, and other loot directly from the store, removing that key randomized element that makes the company so much money every year.

Contrary to previous reports, Apple's new game service won't be based around cloud streaming. Instead Apple is taking pages from Microsoft's playbook.

Apple is slowly shifting into a service-oriented company, and gaming will be a big part of this focus. According to Bloomberg, the Cupertino-based tech titan isn't making a game-streaming service like Google's new Stadia platform. Apple's gaming service will be a premium subscription that's a lot like Xbox Game Pass, which gives users access to a pool of titles for a monthly fee.

Sources say Apple will only let higher-end paid games on its new service, not freemium microtransaction-ridden titles. Apple is expected to neatly wrap up the best App Store games in a subscription for mobile devices like iPhones and iPads. A unique revenue sharing incentive is also included: the more time gamers spend in a particular game, the more money Apple gives them.

Thanks to the efforts of Katalash's Mod Engine, Sekiro now has easy mod support.

Any PC game is better with mods--they open up a new world of customization and allow players to tailor-make their own experiences--and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the new hard-as-nails From Software release, is no different. Sekiro players can now use the newly created Mod Engine to conveniently inject all kinds of goodies into the game including the Moonlight Greatsword from Dark Souls, graphical enhancements like reshade tweaks and HDR presets, and the ultra-helpful PS4 button prompts that bring that authenticity for DualShock 4 users.

The Sekiro Mod Engine essentially replace game-dependent files without having to extract tons of data. Users can easily load up the Nexus Mod Manager and import mods right into the game itself with a few clicks.

Hello Games boss Sean Murray gives a rare, candid talk on No Man's Sky's successes, failures, and how the team kept hope.

Few games have a comeback story like No Man's Sky. The game launched in 2016 to explosive hype that quickly plummeted when gamers realized the tedious, often-frustrating mechanics. There was no multiplayer, no cohesion, no centrality to it at all--the experience was about getting lost in a kind of cosmic loneliness (as we noted in our review). It felt like a bait-and-switch and players weren't given the game they had been promised. This led to months of ridicule and lambasting, but rather than give up, Hello Games took everything in and kept working.

With determination, they turned everything around, releasing six major patches in two years that dramatically changed the game. And they did it all for free.

As its competitors embrace more open-ended platforms and adopt future-thinking strategies, Sony's grip on the walled-garden PlayStation approach is about to get even tighter.

According to a leaked memo sent to GameStop, Sony will no longer sell digital PlayStation Network game keys to third-party retailers starting April 1, 2019. This likely includes online shops like Amazon, Best Buy, and even Green Man Gaming.

If this memo is genuine, gamers will have to buy digital PS4 games directly from Sony and won't be able to purchase them at discounted rates from external sellers. This includes pre-orders as well as post-launch purchases.

To celebrate the release of 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' on home entertainment, we have ten Blu-ray copies of the film to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment!

Miles Morales is a New York teen struggling with school, friends and, on top of that, being the new Spider-Man. When he comes across Peter Parker, the erstwhile saviour of New York, in the multiverse, Miles must train to become the new protector of his city.

To go into the running to win a prize, post this article to your social media profiles, correctly answer the following question and send your postal address to ben at TweakTown dot com before the competition closes on March 29.

Epic Games divulged some impressive numbers at a GDC 2019 panel, but there's more than meets the eye.

According to Epic's internal metrics, the Epic Store is hope to 85 million users who peruse, shop at, and play on the digital storefront. There's a catch to these figures, though. The Epic Store is entwined with the Epic Games Launcher that millions of gamers use to start up and play Fortnite on PC. So the real question is: how many of the 85 million are active users, how many are shoppers, and how many of them are playing games other than Fortnite? Plus how many of them made an Epic Store account just to nab the monthly free games?

Epic goes on to say that 40% of these users don't actually have Steam. That means 34 million PC gamers who're registered with the Epic Store don't have Steam, or they lied on the survey. Again, I'm wondering how many of these users are active, and if they're playing Fortnite. The devs aren't done just yet; surveys also say 58% of the userbase, or 49.3 million gamers, have Steam but they don't use it regularly.

Google's new Stadia platform promises a new era accessibility and convenience, but it's not as open as you'd think.

Google hopes to revolutionize the industry with its new Stadia game streaming service. Using powerful AMD-built servers with 10 TFLOPs of compute power, Stadia will beam high-end AAA games to devices that aren't able to run them otherwise such as mobile phones, laptops, desktops, and even TVs. There's no downloads or patches: Stadia can wirelessly serve games natively in Google Chrome. Consumers will even be able to launch games in seconds directly from YouTube videos, or shared Tweets, emails, and Discord chats. But there's some restrictions and requirements outside of a high-end Wi-Fi connection, at least for right now.

Stadia works differently on each device. The Wi-Fi game streaming service currently doesn't work with all Android phones, only Google's newer Pixel models (it may not even work with competing iOS handsets, although Google asserts Stadia will come to iOS and Mac). Game streaming to a Chrome browser is apparently only available for laptops and desktops.

The Microsoft-Nintendo relationship could get very interesting from a development standpoint, and the Switch could benefit tremendously from Xbox technology.

At GDC 2019, one sharp-eyed Reset Era user spotted something interesting at Microsoft's PlayFab booth: a Nintendo Switch handheld. Microsoft is making big waves to arm devs with more cohesive packaged toolsets to make games, services, and content with. It just released Game Stack, which brings Xbox LIVE to Android and iOS devices (and likely Switch), and now it wants to bring a new feature called PlayFab Party to Nintendo's popular handheld-console hybrid.

Microsoft acquired PlayFab, a cloud infrastructure, back in 2018 to help bolster its growing roster of services and live games. The Azure-powered system has evolved since then with new content including PlayFab Party, which bakes in key online features like voice chatting, matchmaking, voice-to-text, and servers and lobbies.

AMD paved the way for much better looking UI for its graphics control panel, but it is not perfect. But when you compare it to the years-old NVIDIA Control Panel for GeForce graphics cards, AMD is in the future.

Intel has previously teased its upcoming Graphics Command Center, and now we have our first official looks at what to expect. Oh, and it's been released and is on the Microsoft Store right now. You can see in the above shot that the Graphics Command Center starts off by just looking great, with a bunch of different areas to click into from the left hand panel: home, display, video, system, support and preferences.

In the display menu you'll find everything you need to know about the native resolution, refresh rate, scale, and rotation of your display. I'm using the Dell UP3218K monitor which is a native 8K panel at 60Hz here in this shot.

Brace Yourself Games, the devs behind Crypt of the Necrodancer, are making a groovin' action game in the Zelda series.

Nintendo is typically fiercely protective over its IPs--sometimes to a fault--so when it lets an indie studio create a game in something as big as the Zelda series, it says a lot. Introducing Cadence of Hyrule, a new spritely beat-based adventure set in the mystical land of Hyrule. The game is very much like Crypt of the Necrodancer but with a fantasy twist: not only does it take place in that beloved world of yore with its castles, moblins, armos knights, and fearsome bosses, but Link and Zelda are playable characters. And they both have some serious moves.

Cadence of Hyrule features 25 randomly generated dungeons and a shifting overworld to match, complete with unique movesets, weapons, items, and content found in The Legend of Zelda franchise. Since indies are a huge hit on the Switch, this move lets Nintendo earn some cash via licensing, create more brand awareness for its core franchises, and help promote a strong indie in the process.

Intel hosted some members of a newly-formed graphics card community, a group of people surfing the hype wave of Intel's upcoming launch of graphics card for both the professional and gaming markets.

The Odyssey event was held during GDC 2019 in San Francisco, with a few different concept designs teased that fans have submitted. Intel being this confident showing off concept designs leads me to hoping that they actually use them, even if we get a launch of a few different SKUs, the same card/specs but different designs would be cool.

They look very similar to the shown-off-but-never-released Radeon Vega Nano, which Chris Hook showed off leading up to the launch of Vega. Hook is now working at Intel in pretty much the same role he held at RTG, and now we're seeing Vega Nano-like designs from Intel's upcoming graphics cards. Funny that.

Nintendo's handheld-console hybrid is getting virtual reality support...but it's not a dedicated headset. VR will be a constructive Labo kit with many transforming iterations.

Nintendo recently announced its Labo VR kits for the Switch, showing a refreshing new take on a rather niche market. Switch Labo VR kits see gamers building their own interactive toy-like peripherals including a bazooka blaster, an elephant faceplate with flexible trunk, and even a bird. JoyCons are slotted into the tough cardboard creations for motion tracking, and the Switch gets combined with a VR goggles attachment that slots into each Toy-Con creation.

Each cardboard creation is a kind of makeshift controller that has its own software, complete with 360-degree viewing and interactivity. As demonstrated in Nintendo's recent Labo VR deep dive video, the Toy-Cons do some nifty and rather goofy things to bring small slices of delight to consumers. There's a wind pedal you stomp on to jump as a frog in a puzzle game. There's a bazooka you use to shoot fruit into hippos mouths with. There's even a bird creation that has you soaring the skies.

BioWare's big new IP sold quite well on PS4 and Xbox One at launch, but its long-term monetization could falter.

To survive, all live service games need to correctly monetize their audiences. Whether it be with lootboxes, cosmetics or even subscriptions (or a combination of all three), these online-only experiences need continual funding to make them worthwhile in publishers' eyes. Companies like EA and Activision-Blizzard put up tens of millions to create the games and they expect profits over time. Anthem follows this same requisite path, but BioWare's new game may have a have a longevity problem.

According to latest stats from analyst firm SuperData, Anthem made $100 million in digital revenue on PS4 and Xbox One. But only $3.5 million, or 3.5% of that sum, is earned from its optional cosmetic microtransactions on two platforms that are specifically geared towards monetization. This is actually impressive for launch figures. But the real issue is that these earnings probably won't remain consistent. They're likely the result of the launch-hype spurt. Anthem's litany of problems have pushed gamers to other titles like The Division 2, and the game is already at a critical re-engagement point--most service games take 3-5 months before fragmentation arises.