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Amazon have been planning on their full release in Australia for quite some time now and while local retailers have been preparing for the American retailer super-giant their time has run out, Amazon is fully open and operational. The plan of becoming open for business just before Christmas seems to of gone right ahead as Amazon have already been selling Kindle e-reader devices and audio books.

Now that the American retailer has been fully activated in Australia there is suspicion to what Amazon's game plan might be, known for sacrificing profits on sales through extremely low prices just to greater it's presence is something that would put local retailers under a huge threat. Australia is already home to many technology retail giants such as Harvey Norman, JB Hi Fi and The Good Guys, all of which are expected to take a considerable hit to their profits once Amazon becomes the social norm for purchasing technology upgrades or gifts.

Morgan Stanely analysts have warned that Kmart and Targets parent company Wesfarmers could take a huge loss of $400m in annual earnings by 2026. Wesfarmers may be afraid of the huge American retailer but Harvey Norman owner and director Gerry Harvey is quite the opposite, saying that him and his company are here and ready to take Amazon on if they have fair pricing.

California being arguably the leading state in allowing for the push of self-driving cars has recently tweaked the rules to get more self-driving cars on roads. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has stopped a loophole from General Motors (GM) that would of allowed autonomous car companies the power to not be liable if the vehicle was to crash due to code malfunction.

Californian regulators have read many comments objectifying to the regarding implication of the new rule, furthermore the DMV decided to dismiss the idea entirely due to the public's initial reaction.

Overall, this is beneficial to the people, having laws in place that make the creator of the self-driving car liable in times of malfunction will provide motivation for the company to perfect their product before releasing it to the public. Shifting the blame from the people causing the accidents to the companies creating the cars will mean that if the product is not perfected there will be very large scale costly mistakes, which I doubt companies are willing to put that up for risk.

Rockstar Games are getting in the holiday spirit by offering up some pretty damn amazing one-of-a-kind gifts, with L.A. Noire themed consoles with the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and Nintendo Switch.

PC gamers aren't left out, as there's a... PSU.

The developer is celebrating the re-release of L.A. Noire again, as it's available in VR and now on the Nintendo Switch. On the more powerful Xbox One X and PS4 Pro consoles, Rockstar has added in some technical enhancements including improved lighting and clouds, as well as higher resolution textures.

Thanks to a cast of stars and a slew of reveals, this year's The Game Awards celebration is shaping up to be pretty substantial.

2017 was one of the best year's for gaming in a long time, and the year just didn't quite pushing out great games. Now that December's rolled around 2017 is almost kaput, and that means it's time to reflect and reward devs' hard work. Geoff Keighley's annual TGA 2017 showcase will include a number of high-profile celebrities this time, including Justin Roiland, Felicia Day, Andy Serkis, Aisha Tyler, Zachary Levi, and of course Hideo Kojima, Guillermo Del Toro, and Norman Reedus (hey looks like we're getting new Death Stranding info!).

The show will also have "more reveals than ever before" so we should see some goodies announced from publishers and indie devs alike. The Game Awards 2017 starts on Thursday, December 7 at 8:30PM EST / 5:30 PM PST.

After most of the gaming world already knew it was happening, From Software has now confirmed it's handling the development of a new Armored Core game.

In celebration of the original game's 20th anniversary, From Software, who's mostly known for its Dark Souls series, has announced it will be making the next mech shooter. The anniversary will be celebrated with a new PS4 theme and a special stream highlighting the new game's music...but no new details will be announced during the footage.

"Armored Core 20th Anniversary PS4 theme will be delivered to 12/5 tomorrow. Please download it! Since from now on from software will continue to push forward with development, thank you!" the studio wrote on Twitter. "Watch Armored Core 20th anniversary music special, thank you! But now I can talk about the AC series is not going to end it, so please be patient. Continue from software, thank you!"

A user recently posted on Baidu that they were able to hack their MSI Z170A XPower Titanium BIOS, allowing it to support the Intel Core i3-8350K Coffee Lake CPU. Although Intel's 6th, 7th, and 8th Generation CPUs all use the same LGA1151 socket, motherboard vendors and Intel only allow 6th and 7th Generation processors to run on the Z170 and Z270 chipsets.

The 8th Generation processors, which offer more cores per dollar, can only run on the new and more expensive Z370 motherboards. When news of the incompatibility between 8th Generation Core processors and Z170 and Z270 motherboards broke, people were upset about the reasons given for locking the new CPUs out of the more affordable motherboards.

Power delivery concerns were the main reason we were given as to why Intel would not support 8th Generation CPUs on previous Z170 and Z270 chipsets. It seems that nature, or rather one very smart thinking hacker, found a way to make it work. They were able to trick the motherboard into accepting the unsupported CPU. The voltage regulator module on the Z170A XPower Titanium is a very robust one, and should not pose a problem with the newer CPUs.

In wake of the heated pay-to-win lootbox controversy, EA today revealed a slew of new changes coming to Battlefront II.

Publisher Electronic Arts has been adamant that nothing about Battlefront II is set in stone: even EA CFO Blake Jorgensen says the company made a few mistakes regarding monetization, and says the company will learn from these errors. Now after the first wave of changes that adjusted Star Cards, EA is altering a few other things about the contested Star Wars shooter.

The big new changes including adjustments to "economy and progression", ie how fast you earn credits and the like. Every match you complete nets you more credits that can be redeemed for lootboxes, and if you do better in the session, you earn more credits. Arcade Mode earnings has also been boosted, and EA confirmed a new singleplayer DLC pack for the game's campaign mode.

Nghia Pho, a former NSA employee has pleaded guilty to taking home classified information that was soon after linked to a hack from Russian intelligence. Pho will be sentenced on April 6th and has had his maximum penalty capped at 8 years, which would usually be 10 years.

According to sources of The New York Times, Pho stole the information both in physical and digital form between 2010 and 2015, then proceeded to intentionally use this information to then rewrite his resume. The hack came through exploited Kaspersky anti-virus software which the company was not aware of at the time. Kaspersky was aware that it has held NSA data but it is not clear whether it was that specific data or not.

Recently the NSA has had to deal with many leaks, scrambling to fix all these leaks could either motivate others to come forward and blow the whistle, or they could see Pho be made an example of, putting fear into others that were considering coming forward because of the penalty.

The hottest rumor of the weekend comes from a post on Reddit that teases the LinkedIn page of an AMD technical engineer saying they're working on a GDDR6 memory controller.

GDDR6 will see memory bandwidth cranked up to 16Gbps, up from the 11Gbps used on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti with its GDDR5X memory tech. 16Gbps will blow away even HBM2, which is fairly useless for gamers. NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GPU architecture should feature GDDR6, too.

I think we'll see a next-gen Vega and then Navi using HBM2 and even HBM3 if it arrives in time, or if Navi is delayed more since Raja Koduri has left RTG. Also, I think we'll see AMD use GDDR6 on their mainstream RX 600 series cards, leaving HBM2 on a re-spun Vega architecture. There's no need for HBM2 for gamers right now, no matter what AMD pushed out saying HBM2 was the bees knees.

To celebrate the upcoming home video release of '47 Metres Down', we have ten Blu-ray copies of the film to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Entertainment.

Stay out of the water! Fun-loving, twenty-something, sisters Kate & Lisa are ready for the holiday of a lifetime in Mexico. When the opportunity to go cage diving to view Great White sharks presents itself, thrill-seeking Kate jumps at the chance while Lisa takes some convincing. After some not so gentle persuading, Lisa finally agrees, and the girls soon find themselves two hours off the coast of Huatulco and about to come face-to-face with nature's fiercest predator.

But what should have been the trip to end all trips soon becomes a living nightmare when the cage breaks free from the boat and plummets to the ocean floor. Kate & Lisa find themselves trapped deep underwater with less than an hour of oxygen left in their tanks. They must somehow work out how to get back to the safety of the boat above through 47 meters of shark-infested waters.

To celebrate the upcoming home video release of 'American Made,' we have fifteen Blu-ray copies of the film to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Entertainment.

The CIA. The White House. Pablo Escobar. One man played them all. Tom Cruise reunites with his Edge of Tomorrow director, Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith), in this international escapade based on the outrageous (and real) exploits of a hustler and pilot unexpectedly recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history.

Based on a true story, American Made co-stars Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, E. Roger Mitchell, Jesse Plemons, Lola Kirke, Alejandro Edda, Benito Martinez, Caleb Landry Jones and Jayma Mays.

In the wake of the convoluted and messy Battlefront II lootbox controversy shockwaves have been sent across the industry and major publishers are taking notice. But for the most part the big players like Take-Two Interactive and Activision aren't really perturbed about microtransactions...but they've heard consumers loud and clear regardless.

Now that EA has been thoroughly vilified within the gaming community, what do its competitors think about lootboxes? Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption publisher Take-Two Interactive doesn't think lootboxes are gambling perse, but the company knows that content comes first and monetization second.

"We don't view that sort of thing as gambling. Our view of it is the same as the ESA statements. In terms of the consumer, the sort of noise you hear in the market right now, for me it's really all about content. It's all about how we're delivering on content and making sure you're focused on engagement," said Take-Two President Karl Slatoff at Credit Suisse's annual technology conference.

Sony's PlayStation brand is incredibly important to the Japanese tech titan, and the company shows no signs of stopping with exclusives and unique games.

The PlayStation 4 has a commanding lead over Microsoft's Xbox One for a very big reason: games. There's just so many great exclusives available on the platform. This proves Sony's gambit in pumping untold millions into studios and projects has paid off big time, and it's not about to slow up. At the 2017 PlayStation Awards in Tokyo, Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan and Asia President Atsushi Morita said some interesting things that proves the future is just as bright as ever for PlayStation--don't expect the "absolute joy" and touching moments to end any time soon.

"Entertainment has evolved over the years: it started in the world of text, then we had cartoons with pictures, which then adopted movement and turned into anime and films, and they have become interactive. Games continue to evolve absorbing the best or the best of all types of entertainment along with the advancement of technology. Today they are the most cutting-edge format of entertainment," Mr. Morita said during the event's keynote.

A new study from the University of New York's Psychology department finds a direct collaboration between strategy games like League of Legends and high IQ test results.

MOBA skill can be a direct indication on intelligence, or at least that's what the study has found. Previously games like Chess and the Chinese game Go were seen as major brain-building past-times, but the advent of gaming brings yet another: strategy games. According to the study, the rote memory combined with the on-the-fly strategic planning and reactions to countless possibilities are the main drivers to this intelligence growth; gamers must be able to adapt to a number of different situations in order to win, many of which are expanded thanks to the myriad of characters, moves, environments, etc.

"If this was chess, no-one would be surprised by this at all," said Alex Wade, Professor of Psychology at the University of York. "The only surprise here really is that there are some videogames now that are as complicated as chess and people play them all the time. Unlike first-person shooter games where speed and target accuracy are a priority, MOBAs rely more on memory and the ability to make strategic decisions taking into account multiple factors.

It's been quite a long time since Capcom tapped the beloved Mega Man franchise, but that could change soon.

In a surprise move (well not that surprising) Japanese games-maker Capcom has teased a special 30th anniversary for the Blue Bomber. The company told IGN that it will hold a live stream on their Twitch channel starting December 4, but exact details were vague. There could be some nice surprises (maybe the Mega Man Collection is finally coming to Switch? or a brand new Mega Man side-scroller?!) during the event.

The invite sent to IGN says "you won't want to miss it," so Capcom could be cooking up something good here. Back in May we reported that Capcom wants to resurrect old franchises and IPs an in effort to bolster game sales on digital and physical platforms, and Mega Man is assuredly a golden oldie in that respect.

Despite being a big jump ahead of the original Xbox One model, Microsoft's new Xbox One X owners won't enjoy an FPS boost in PUBG.

Earlier we reported that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds--the hottest game on PC right now--will run at a nice smooth 60FPS on the Xbox One X, whereas the older Xbox One and Xbox One S models would be geared more towards 30FPS. Now PlayerUnknown Brendan Greene says the game will run at 30FPS on all Xbox One hardware, likely in an effort to preserve parity across the family and not give Xbox One X users a clear edge. However, it's possible the game could be fine-tuned when it's ready for a full-fledged release in 2018.

"While I previously stated PUBG would run at higher FPS at XGP launch on 12/12, I want to clarify that PUBG will run at 30 FPS across all @Xbox One devices," Greene said on Twitter. "We're constantly refining the game & exploring options to increase FPS, but this early in dev, we're unable to confirm more."

Google has silently updated all of their Google Home devices this week, giving Google Assistant the ability to be able to perform multiple tasks on-the-fly. Originally a single minded device only capable of performing and completing one mission at a time now has the ability of simultaneously completing two.

Google has promised the adding of Routines to Google Home, Routines is the creation of predetermined voice commands that cause the device to perform a select amount of actions once heard. This new update from Google allows for two of those actions to be completed on-the-fly without having to pre-load the device.

Unfortunately, Google Home can't take on board more than two commands at once and also won't understand two tasks said in the same sentence, this means that the tasks have to be said separately in order for the device to correctly understand them. This is quite a downside but then again could provide a much more handier experience than pre-loading voice commands to your device.

The ability to pass down knowledge from one to another through a repetitive teaching reward system has proven to be one of the pivotal aspects of human life. An example of this would be teaching a dog to sit or roll over, then to reward it with a treat after completion of the desired task.

This basic principle practice increases the likelihood of the dog performing the same task more efficiently once learned that their is a reward after.

The same principle practice can now be applied to AI robots, being named one of the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2017 by MIT Technology Review, this revolutionary kind of AI learning will mean that AI will be able to adapt and take in new information without human interaction, simply by experimenting.

Amazon is broadening the spectrum of ways that Alexa can assist its owners, from reading the weather out to you based on your current location, to catching you up with news are just some of the ways Alexa can benefit your day-to-day life.

Now, thanks to Amazon if you happen to be playing Destiny 2 you have the option downloading your own personal Ghost.

Destiny 2 players will have the option of downloading an Alexa skill called 'Destiny 2 Ghost' which allows your Alexa device to take control of your in-game Ghost granting it access to changing gear presets, checking if friends are online and answering curiosities by just simply asking "Alexa, ask Ghost what I should do next."

Star Citizen is currently within 3.0 alpha and the game seems nowhere near close to being complete, developers Cloud Imperium Games have also added microtransactions to the game even though they are the most successfully crowdfunded company to date, they have turned to what every PC gamer currently can't stand.

With the amount of ambition Star Citizen has and not to mention the pressure the company is on after receiving so much support, there is a clear fact that Star Citizen would benefit from having microtransactions as an option within the game.

Already, the game contains the option to purchase licenses for land plots on planets, moons and asteroids that are controlled by the United Empire of Earth. The plots are costing $50 for 4km x 4km and 8km x 8km for $100, through in-game currencies these plots can also be earned and will have no advantage when the game is fully released.