Learn about how TweakTown tests and reviews hardware. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you.
Stay Updated
Follow TweakTown for breaking tech news, reviews, and daily updates.
Cyberpunk 2077 world is 'huge' compared to The Witcher 3
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most hyped games of all time and now that we've had a proper look at what to expect from CD Projekt RED's most ambitious game ever, small nuggets of what to expect from the game are coming from weird places... like the official Facebook page for the game.
A representative of CDPR answered a fan question over Messenger, with the person asking how big the game world will be compared to The Witcher 3. The rep replied with: "Night City holds 6 districts, but I can't give you an exact number on square meters, because no one counted this yet. Also, this is tricky for an urban environment - Night City has lots of buildings and these buildings have floors".
CDPR adds: "You can have 120 square meters of space technically taking up 60m2 of space. In a tall building, and we will have many of them explorable, each flood can house a lot of activities. Floors stack. The Witcher 3 was, in a way, much flatter - the activities were scattered. Here, the world can be huge, but it can be huge upwards, or downwards".
Continue reading: Cyberpunk 2077 world is 'huge' compared to The Witcher 3 (full post)
Lootboxes aren't gateway to gambling, says UK commission
United Kingdom regulators find no causation between lootboxes purchased by young gamers and problem gambling behaviors.
In its new Young People and Gambling 2018 report the U.K. Gambling Commission reveals some interesting statistics.
The study, which questioned 2,865 young people about between the ages of 11 and 16 about all forms of gambling (electronic, card-based gaming, personal bets), found that 31% or 888 people in the group had either spent money on lootboxes. The awareness rate for lootboxes is quite high, too; 54% of the group, or 1,547 people, knew they could spend money on in-game items but only 888 of them actually did. This means the majority of the sample who knew about lootboxes, or roughly 57%, bought them.
Continue reading: Lootboxes aren't gateway to gambling, says UK commission (full post)
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X: 6C/12T beast is now just $190
If there's a time to buy PC hardware it would be right now before the new tariffs come into play, and Black Friday sales are getting out of control in a really good way with AMD processors on the cheap.
AMD's Ryzen 5 2600X is normally $229 and thanks to Black Friday sales that are nearly here, the 6C/12T unlocked CPU can be had for just $190 on Amazon. Considering the Ryzen 5 2600X includes the Wraith Spire cooler and overclocks 4.2GHz, you're getting a damn bargain for such a thread-heavy CPU that includes a cooler.
Continue reading: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X: 6C/12T beast is now just $190 (full post)
Nintendo thwarts Switch hackers with firmware update
The Nintendo Switch's latest 6.2.0 firmware may have closed off homebrewing, emulation, and piracy on the handheld-console hybrid.
For quite some time Switch hackers and modders have been one step ahead in the cat-and-mouse game they play with Nintendo. Thanks to a recovery mode exploit, hackers have been able to boot up a customized OS to run illegally downloaded games, play homebrew games made by amateur devs, emulate old-school retro games, and even enable external hard drive support for the Switch. As Motherboard reports, the world of Switch hacking is quite expansive and tumultuous.
But Nintendo has now delivered a striking blow to the hacking scene...or at the very least created a large speed bump. The Switch's latest 6.2.0 firmware patch secures the console's boot-up functionality and apparently fixes the Tegra X1 exploit. Furthermore, all Switch owners are now required to immediately download and install the update in order to connect to the eShop. Hackers typically pirate games directly from the eShop by tricking the servers in specific ways, and while this may not do anything about the existing offline-only games already installed on pre-6.2.0 devices, it temporarily prevents hackers from getting any new ones.
Continue reading: Nintendo thwarts Switch hackers with firmware update (full post)
Cyberpunk 2077 expected to sell 19 million copies
Red Dead Redemption II's monumental success has stock firms eyeing CD Projekt RED's new Cyberpunk 2077 in a different light.
Polish brokerage firm Vestor DM believes Cyberpunk 2077 has potential to be a sales monster along the lines of Red Dead Redemption II, which sold-in 17 million copies and made $725 million in just three days. In fact, the brokers estimate Cyberpunk 2077 could sell as much as 19 million copies thanks to its multi-platform release. This would outstrip RDRII's numbers and be closer to The Witcher's entire trilogy sales of 25 million. We're not sure if those are launch weekend or quarterly estimates, however.
Strong sales potential sees the firm elevate CD Projekt RED to buy status, especially after CDPR's recent affirmations that Cyberpunk 2077 will be as polished as Red Dead Redemption II when it ships. But when will it release? CDPR is coy about an official release date, saying Cyberpunk 2077 will release by 2021, but Vestor DM expects a Q4 2019 launch (possibly to coincide with next-gen consoles).
Continue reading: Cyberpunk 2077 expected to sell 19 million copies (full post)
Resident Evil 2 Remake being made by 800 developers
Capcom is quite serious about the Resident Evil 2 Remake and conscripts a massive 800-strong development team to work on the project.
The Resident Evil 2 Remake isn't just a remake of an older game: it's more of a re-imagining. It'll have the same storyline and old-school themes and settings, but the project is much more ambitious than its 1998 forebear; Capcom's powerful new proprietary REngine will ensure high-def lighting, visuals, and physics sequences to breathe new life into the beloved survival horror classic. Everything we've seen so far shows an impressive attention to detail (gore and blood, facial animations, sound, photorealism, lighting, motion-capture effects, etc). But all of this effort comes at a cost, and Capcom has been making serious investments into the REmake.
At a recent NHK showcase, attendee Alex Aniel notes that Capcom has 800 developers working on the Resident Evil 2 Remake. To put this number in perspective, Ubisoft typically has 1,000 or so global devs taking on massive open-world Assassin's Creed games, and about 600 developers apparently worked on Resident Evil 6.
Continue reading: Resident Evil 2 Remake being made by 800 developers (full post)
Pokemon Let's Go duo sells 3 million in first week
As analysts predicted, the Switch's new Pokemon games are selling amazingly well right out of the gate.
The new Pokemon Let's Go: Pikachu and Eevee duo have sold-through more than 3 million copies worldwide in one week, the Pokemon Company today announced. This makes combo the top-selling Switch games in first-week sales in the system's history.
Pokemon's monumental success was to be expected for the holidays and undoubtedly propelled Switch sales with a new system bundle. This helps Nintendo get closer to its current 20 million console sales target for FY2018 (Nintendo needs to sell 14.9 million more Switches to hit this goal).
Continue reading: Pokemon Let's Go duo sells 3 million in first week (full post)
Nintendo eShop Cyber deals, great picks-ups, cheap prices
Heading into Black Friday and the Cyber deals Nintendo has slashed the prices of 47 different games in their eShop. This could be the time to get that Nintendo Swith game you were considering.
Nintendo has never brought the prices down over a range of this many games before, so I'd say this would be as good as time as any to pick up any of the following titles if you were considering them before. We have in no particular order; Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: $42 (30%), Celeste: $16 (20%), Dragon Ball FighterZ: $42 (30%), Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection: $26 (35%), Skyrim, Doom, Wolfenstein II: $30 (50%).
That is just to name a few as well, other titles include the recently release from Ubisoft, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, NBA 2K19, Dead Cells, Undertale, Hyrule Warriors Legends and many more fantastic titles. Nintendo will only be having this sale for a limited amount of time, with the beginning of it being today and then original prices resuming on November 28th. For the full list of discounted games, visit the official Nintendo Cyber Deals website listing here.
Continue reading: Nintendo eShop Cyber deals, great picks-ups, cheap prices (full post)
Dragon Ball FighterZ feature trailer debut, learn to fight!
Months after the release of Dragon Ball FighterZ on the Nintendo Switch, Bandai Namco has released a new feature trailer educating fans in how to correctly brawl it out with eachother.
Firstly, those that own a Nintendo Switch and don't mind a fighting game every now and again should really look towards Bandai's Dragon Ball FighterZ. FighterZ allows for players to create a team that coincides with their personal fighting preference. Fights can be enjoyed by those with very basic skill in combos as well as those players that want to take it to the higher echelons of skill.
The above trailer showcases to players that are familiar with FighterZ the basic controls of the game and also the range of different ways players can interact with eachother. For fans that are already familiar with the Dragon Ball universe, FighterZ also comes jam packed with 3 story arcs to relive. Dragon Ball FighterZ for the Nintendo Switch is currently available, for more information visit the official eShop listing here.
Continue reading: Dragon Ball FighterZ feature trailer debut, learn to fight! (full post)
New Battlefront II trailer: Obi-Wan vs General Grievous
Will players be drawn back to Star Wars Battlefront II with the coming Battle of Geonosis update that will be featuring Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and General Grievous?
DICE might be expecting quite a lot of players to return to their game after the studio released the above visually pleasing trailer. In the trailer we can see that the Clone Wars have begun and Geonosis will soon be a hectic battlefield. According to Level Designer, Peter Vesti Frendrup, "It should rather feel like you're being part of the largest battle yet, and you're in it together with your team members on the frontlines."
Not only will players feel as if they are in the midst of battle while playing the Geonosis map, but they will also now have the option of stepping into the shoes of good or evil. Players can now enjoy the likes of dominating the map as legendary Jedi Obi-Wan or General Grievous. DICE will be rolling out this update on November 28th and will be coming completely free of charge. For more information regarding Star Wars Battlefront II, visit the official website here. Want to know more about Obi-Wan, check out another article on him here.
Continue reading: New Battlefront II trailer: Obi-Wan vs General Grievous (full post)
Steam Award Nominations/Steam Autumn sale now live
Valve has updated their Steam client for all users and made live their annual Steam Autumn sale, bringing massive discounts on across numerous genres.
The Steam sales are here, every gamer that uses the Steam service (basically every PC gamer) has their wallet crying out to resist spending the owners weekly pay on these awesome sales. Not only has the sales gone live, but Valve has also made the nominations for the Steam Awards available, Steam users can nomination their favorite games in a range of different categories.
Some of the categories that will give awards and are available to nominate game titles in are; Game of the Year, VR Game of the Year, Labor of Love, Best Developer, Best Environment, Best Alternate History and Most Fun with a Machine. Moving onto sales now, there is a ridiculous range of popular titles on sale, we have; Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Frostpunk, Sid Meier's Civilization VI Gold Edition, NieR: Automata, Monster Hunter World and many more. Sales are ranging from 30% off to a whopping 90% off, with most titles falling in the 30% to 50% discount range. To view the sales for yourself, click here. To nominate game titles, click here.
Continue reading: Steam Award Nominations/Steam Autumn sale now live (full post)
Smash Ultimate Director reveals title development details
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Director, Masahiro Sakurai has sat down in an interview with Gameinformer to shed some light on the development process of Ultimate.
Sakurai has answered many questiosns regarding his thought process when developing Smash Ultimate. Some of the question were based around why he choose to include so much content within this game in particular, his answer to that was "I worked with the same company and same team that worked on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS titles. And in those titles, we were able to include quite a few fighters. So I thought, if we work a bit harder, we can make the dream of including all fighters come true, so we went for it."
When asked about the process that he as a director takes when choosing the specific new fighters, Sakurai said "It is a project after all, so we take into consideration things like labor, man-hours, the time in which the title will be sold. We decide on the fighters from the very early planning stage, and from there, we calculate and begin production. We don't add or remove any characters during the project." Sakurai also mentions that he makes sure that there is a "difference in the types of fighters" and that the "results of the Smash ballot" are also taken into consideration.
Continue reading: Smash Ultimate Director reveals title development details (full post)
Chinese MMO 'Justice' scores NVIDIA's RTX technology soon
EA and DICE were the first to the gaming market with a real-time ray tracing added to Battlefield V and playable (with low FPS) on GeForce RTX graphics cards, and now Chinese MMO 'Justice' is joining the RTX-capable gaming family with a new update on the way.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced the news during China GTC 2018, with a new RTX on/off video above and some screenshots taken in-engine with RTX on and off. The trailer shows Justice with RTX on and off and does a good job and making the visuals look great, but the frame rate suffers. WHile the graphics are good, they aren't mind blowing with RTX on or off, so this feels like a very cherry-picked title to display RTX.
NVIDIA has said Justice will be the first game with "real-time ray-traced caustic effects", where light rays are re-focused or scattered once they shine on reflective or refractive surfaces. Once this happens in Justice with RTX on, the rays then "create a new light source" that is capable of casting its own shadows, and lighting up things near it. Impressive from a technical standpoint, but it won't add anything to the game.
Continue reading: Chinese MMO 'Justice' scores NVIDIA's RTX technology soon (full post)
RazerCare announced: 3-year protection plans for PCs, phones
Razer has just announced its new RazerCare Essesntial protection plans for gamers in the US, where it will bump the normal 1-year warranty on its gaming laptops to a larger 3-year warranty as well as 24/7 help, repair from authorized dealers, and free shipping for any repairs required.
The costs of RazerCare Essential protections plans break into these prices:
The full benefits:
Continue reading: RazerCare announced: 3-year protection plans for PCs, phones (full post)
DICE compares RTX in Battlefield V to original Quake, Crysis
DICE has now officially launched Battlefield V and while the world's first real-time ray traced game has beautiful RTX abilities on NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX graphics cards, it's not perfect yet - far from it.
During an interview with Eurogamer, Software Engineer, Rendering at EA, Yasin Uludag, talked about upcoming optimizations that DICE and NVIDIA are working on for Battlefield V. He said: "People can expect us to keep improving our ray tracing as time goes, as both we at DICE and NVIDIA have a bunch of optimisations coming in from the engine side and driver side and we are far from done. We have specialists from NVIDIA and DICE working on our issues as we speak. From now on, it's only going to get better, and we have more data now too since the game released. By the time people read this, many of the improvements mentioned will already have been completed".
But it was the next thing that he said that got my attention more, as he mentions the original Quake and Crysis games on the PC by saying: "As you mention Quake and Crysis - Working on ray tracing and being the first out with it in this way is a privilege. We feel super-lucky to be part of this transition in the industry and we will do everything we can to deliver the best experience possible. Rest assured, our passion for ray tracing is burning hot!"
Continue reading: DICE compares RTX in Battlefield V to original Quake, Crysis (full post)
Rocket League being updated to 4K 60FPS on Xbox One X
Psyonix has announced a huge new update for Rocket League in December with enhanced Xbox One X support that sees console owners enjoying the game at native 4K and 60FPS.
If you're an Xbox One X owner and don't have a 4K TV yet, Rocket League will render at 1080p and use super sampling to drive up the image quality with the new update. Psyonix hasn't detailed whether the PS4 Pro will benefit from the new update, but the Xbox One X is considerably better than the PlayStation 4 when it comes to high-res high refresh rate gaming.
The new Rocket League update drops on December 3 at 10AM PST, 1PM ET, and 6PM in the UK and will add:
Continue reading: Rocket League being updated to 4K 60FPS on Xbox One X (full post)
Obi-Wan Kenobi comes to Battlefront II this month
Ole Ben Kenobi (well not old-old Ben, the young one) is coming to Battlefront II in a new content update.
In lieu of the cancelled Star Wars RPG from Visceral Games, EA and DICE have continually added to Battlefront II's updates to fill galactic gap between releases. This has culminated in a variety of new characters including General Grievous, and more recently, Obi-Wan Kenobi from the prequels timeline. DICE says Obi-Wan's countenance from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith will be available on November 28, 2018 on all platforms.
Obi-Wan comes with three major abilities that highlight his prowess with the Force:
Continue reading: Obi-Wan Kenobi comes to Battlefront II this month (full post)
Analyst: Iterative consoles disrupt hardware sales trends
Thanks to iterative consoles like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, console hardware lifecycle trends are a lot harder to map out.
NPD analyst Mat Piscatella recently brought up a good point about iterative consoles: they're disrupting the historical tracking guidelines for sales and overall cycle longevity. Traditional console cycles typically last up to eight years and have a distinct sales curve (ie up at launch and down at retirement), but the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X have extended the current hardware lifecycle by turning it into an ecosystem-driven family of systems. The usual next-gen cycle has been broken and hardware-makers no longer seem keen on restarting from scratch and possibly invalidating whole libraries of games. So now Sony and Microsoft have disrupted tracking trends by effectively selling new hardware that plays old games.
Here's what Mr. Piscatella said: "Hardware cycles as we knew them are over. So, the decay curve for hardware sales used to look like a normalized curve. Very predictable changes from year to year. All you really needed was year 1 sales of a new console, and you could predict, using history, what the 5-7 year curve would look like, pretty closely."
Continue reading: Analyst: Iterative consoles disrupt hardware sales trends (full post)
Xbox takes aim at Asia with new overseas team
Microsoft just opened a new division in Asia to help court overseas game developers and secure big partnership deals with Japanese, Chinese, and Korean games-makers.
In a bid to fortify its currently shaky relationship with Asian developers, Microsoft has now added an Asian team to its Global Gaming Partnership and Development (GDDP) division. This team will aim to win over key overseas developers and publishers (Capcom, SEGA, and Square Enix to name a few) with deals to help fill out the Xbox ecosystem's flagging exclusive games roster.
But it's not just about games. Xbox isn't just game-centric any more and is an ecosystem that's powered by lucrative services including Xbox LIVE, Game Pass, Mixer and of course the Xbox Store. As a recent GDDP Asia job listing states, the team will focus on Microsoft's bigger picture gaming and engagement strategy rather than just grabbing game rights. Essentially Microsoft wants to adapt their existing services for other territories and make them more appealing for, say, Japanese consumers.
Continue reading: Xbox takes aim at Asia with new overseas team (full post)
Diablo IV to be a 'modern Diablo II'
Blizzard is hellbent on reversing Diablo III's cartoon-ish style and return the series to its dark and malevolent roots.
Diablo was always sourced from the macabre; the first game took us through grim catacombs, bloody fanes to unholy gods, and to the very depths of hell itself. Diablo II did the same but only better, adding a trans-dimensional feel to the demon-infested world of Sanctuary. But Diablo III took the series on a more accessible road that didn't alienate everyday consumers so much, transforming the hallowed brutality into something more commercial and safe.
With Diablo IV, the team at Blizzard wants to reverse this path. Anonymous Blizzard devs tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier that Diablo IV aims to skip Diablo III's style and return to the chaotic hellscapes of Diablo II. While Diablo IV has gone through two major iterations so far, the latest one, project Fenris, is molding itself around the horror style, themes, and scope of Diablo II.
Continue reading: Diablo IV to be a 'modern Diablo II' (full post)






















