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Microsoft is steady and strong with Windows 10 updates, and now we're hearing the name of the 2018 update to Windows 10: Spring Creators Update.

The company started their February Bug Bush and had some Quests to Insiders in order to find some bugs, with references of the Spring Creators Update found by @WildDreamer95 on Twitter, and found by Richard Hay. Hay tweeted: "Is Windows 10 Redstone 4 the Springs Creators Update? This Windows Defender Application Guard Quest for this months Bug Bash seems to like that name! Thanks to @WildDreamer95 for the tip."

After the Spring Creators Update reference was found, Microsoft were quick to replace the text with 'R4 update'.

Anyone that is involved with cryptocurrency is feeling the same thing we're all going through right now: every emotion available to my human vessel is being amped to 500% right now.

The entire cryptomarket is in freefall right now and while it's not an outright crash, some people are calling it that - and it seems so, especially when you look at the total cryptocurrency market cap. At the time of writing the crypto market cap was at $328 billion, down from the lofty heights of $830 billion back on January 7.

This means a huge $500,000,000,000 has been wiped away from the cryptocurrency market cap, a huge number... half a trillion dollars, gone. Everything is down as well, not just Bitcoin which has dropped from its heights of $19,500 in January to just $7000 now.

Capcom Vancouver has been hit with major layoffs that have dramatically affected the studio's future projects, sources say.

Capcom's main Osaka branch has decided to slice up its Vancouver-based studio to make it more lean and re-focus development on the next Dead Rising game, sources told Kotaku's Jason Schreier. Development on the following Dead Rising game was apparently getting out of hand and the shape kept changing, so this was Capcom's response to keep things in line (although the studio is still understaffed).

The anonymous source said Capcom laid off about 50 employees in the move, or about 20% of its once 250-strong workforce.

Mario Party 11 will come to the Nintendo Switch sometime in 2019, according to a new rumor, pinning one of the most successful franchises in the second year of the console's lifespan.

Nintendo insider Marcus Sellars has made another prediction/leak/rumor with his latest Tweet, which attests that the Japanese gaming giant will release the next Mario Party on the Switch within 2019. Sellars didn't specify whether or not the game would be part of Nintendo's FY'19 release slate (if the game releases before March 2019 it's part of FY19, if it releases after it'll be part of FY'20).

So why should we even care what some person says on Twitter? Sellars has been accurate a few times--he announced the Nintendo Direct date and was right on the money there--but there's no guarantee this prediction will come to fruition. Saying that Nintendo will make a new Mario Party for the Switch should be clear as day to anyone, and the release timing somewhat fits, but be sure to take this with a nice spoonful of salt.

Strong hardware sales and software adoption drove Sony's network sales to milestone heights in its holiday quarter.

While scouting through Sony's Fiscal Q3'17 earnings I noticed something interesting: the company says it made over 300 billion yen (or $2.72 billion) from network sales in the holiday quarter. In it's entire storied history Sony affirmed this is the first time it's made that much in a single quarter. Remember that network sales include digital game and entertainment product sales on the PlayStation Network, PS Plus subscriptions, PS Now subs, and all of its streaming services combined.

The Games and Network Services segment, which serves as the parent segment for network sales, was up about 16% year-over-year to about 718 billion yen ($6.52 billion), driven by strong PlayStation 4 hardware and software sales during the holiday quarter and foreign exchange rates. Sony shipped 9 million PS4s during the Q3'17 timeline. However, network sales were up by a mighty 40% year-over-year.

Sony's plan to attract more paying customers to its premium PlayStation Plus subscription plan is working out.

In October Sony promised to "implement measures" to retain PS Plus subscribers by making the service more appealing and persuasive. "For existing members we would like to make our service more attractive so that the retention rate remains high. That's going to be more important. It is not easy to retain [users] for a long time, but we have been implementing measures to retain them," said Atsuko Murakami, Senior General Manager of Finance Department at Sony Corp, in the company's Fiscal Q2'17 earnings call.

It looks like these measures, which include offering a plethora of AAA games month after month on PS4, have worked: subscribers have risen about 2.7% since last quarter.

Sony's PlayStation 4 continues its strong sales streak through Q3'17, selling almost 10 million units during the crucial holiday period.

In its Fiscal Q3'17 earnings filing, Sony has revealed that the PlayStation 4's total cumulative sales are now at 73.6 million units worldwide since the system launched in 2013. Sony says it has sold-in (shipped to retailers, not sold-through to consumers) 9 million consoles during the quarter from October through December 2017, bringing the total sell-in numbers to 76.5 million units. This effectively means Sony has sold about 96% of the systems it has shipped to retailers, and in Q3'17 it sold-in more than double than its previous quarters combined (Q2'17 saw 4.2 million shipments whereas Q1'17 saw 3.3 million).

The console-maker's Games and Network Services segment, which includes PlayStation hardware and software as well as streaming services, rose 16% year-over-year by 100 billion yen in sales thanks to the strong holiday gaming push. The segment pulled in 718 billion yen in sales and 84.5 billion yen in operating income, the latter of which was up 70% year-over-year.

A Chinese man has plead guilty to the crimes of selling counterfeit Apple products in the US, the criminal received $1.1 million in payments before being caught.

Jianhua Li, currently living as a student in the US has plead guilty to trafficking in 40,000 counterfeit electronic devices from China between 2009 and 2014.

Li wasn't alone though, there was three others that were in on the deal, Andreina Becerra, Rosario LaMarca and Roberto Volpe which have all also plead guilty. According to Justice Department the group did their best to attempt in covering their trails, when the counterfeit devices were shipped the group made sure the counterfeit labels were shipped separately to avoid suspicion.

Out of nowhere, we have a new company that we'll be keeping a close eye on; Ampere. Ampere has just launched a new 64-bit ARM server processor that will compete against products released by Qualcomm, HP Enterprise, and many others.

ARM is an important cog in Ampere's new machine, as it is capable of great power efficiency and lower cost of ownership. Until now, the biggest issue with ARM-based systems is that there isn't a massive list of applications that will work with ARM processors, but that will soon change.

Ampere's first processor rocks a custom core ARM v8 64-bit at up to 3.3GHz, up to 1TB of memory and a 125W TDP. Ampere is fabless, and will have production of these new ARM processors sometime in 2H 2018.

In a recent interview with GameCentral, the director and CEO of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda has vowed to continue support for single-player titles.

When Matsuda was asked about what he thinks Games as a Service means to him he replied with: "The way we're looking at it, what it boils down to is... that idea of keeping people engaged with our games and enjoying them for longer periods of time. The way we use that expression, really... the whole idea, for a single-player game particularly, is the idea that you have the game released and you keep adding more content to keep the players engaged and enjoying the game."

Matsuda continued answering questions such as if Square Enix will continue making single-player games as well as his personal thoughts on the popular loot box system.

Square Enix has provided those hardcore Final Fantasy fans with an epic Bahamut statue, something that is available to pre-order now and has a release date of July this year.

The statue which has been sculpted by Takayuki Takeya and has been designed with articulated jointing, meaning the statue is fully configurable to whichever pose is decided.

Behind the statue is the Bahamut stand which instead of being a boring plastic rod, Bahamuts stand features crystals that are emerging from the ground around him. The statue itself will cost around $135 USD and will be released later this year in July, for those wanting to pre-order the link can be found here.

A new short trailer has been released for the upcoming Nintendo Switch release, Bayonetta 2. The new trailer showcases the game running at a smooth 60FPS and gives more of a tease into the gameplay of Bayonetta 2.

The above trailer shows us some plot points that can be noted as well as gameplay from which Bayonetta seems to be taking on some very large enemies. The gameplay of Bayonetta 2 fighting is at 60FPS, this could of been achieved by reducing the FPS of cut-scenes to 30FPS, when looking at the trailer this is what seems to of happened.

Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 will release together on the Nintendo Switch on February 16th.

The PC version of Final Fantasy XV will release next month, ahead of the launch we have found out that the Windows version of the game will be supporting cross-play co-op with Xbox One players.

Yesterday we discovered the PC version of Final Fantasy XV is a generation ahead of the 2016 console release and now cross-play co-op has been revealed to us on the Microsoft Store listing.

According to the listing, Final Fantasy XV players will be able to play with Xbox One users if they have purchased the game through the Windows Store client, meaning that Steam users will not have this feature available.

As a huge fan of the Cloverfield franchise, the news of a freaking surprise Cloverfield sequel during Netflix's Super Bowl ad has blown my mind. I haven't watched it yet, and won't watch it, as the full movie comes out TONIGHT on Netflix!

The Cloverfield Paradox is directed by Julias Onah, who was behind the camera for The Girl is in Trouble, with the Cloverfield sequel starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Belle, Beyond the Lights, A Wrinkle in Time) and David Oyelowo (Selma, Queen of Katwe), and others.

Netflix explains The Cloverfield Paradox as "In the near future, a group of international astronauts on a space station are working to solve a massive energy crisis on Earth. The experimental technology aboard the station has an unexpected result, leaving the team isolated and fighting for their survival".

Update: Qualcomm acknoledges it has received the massive bid, with a huge reply in a PR statement just now:

Broadcom wants Qualcomm bad, and by bad, we mean really bad. Broadcom is reportedly meeting its advisers over the weekend in order to increase their takeover bid of Qualcomm to $80-82 per share, up from $70 per share previously.

This would land the takeover of Qualcomm in the vicinity of a huge $120 billion, which will see Broadcom getting more power to get the US tech giant to the negotiating table. Broadcom is also reportedly offering Qualcomm a higher-than-usual breakup fee in case regulators stop the deal, according to Reuters' sources.

Well, here we are: if you're a customer of Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, or Citigroup, you can't use your credit card to purchase cryptocurrency.

Bloomberg is reporting that the banks have now banned the purchasing of cryptocurrency using their credit cards, with BofA already denying use of their cards for crypto purchases on certain exchanges, while debit card transactions seem to still be fine. Citigroup has said that as of Friday last week, they won't be accepting crypto purchases, and JP Morgan Chase's new rules come into effect today.

The reason? JPMorgan spokesperson Mary Jane Rogers said that the bank doesn't want to deal with the risks associated with cryptocurrency, and they're saying they're trying to stop the risks of consumers' spending more than they can afford to pay back on cryptocurrencies, through their credit cards. Good guy banks? Pfft.

Razer has just announced a new limited edition version of their first gamer-focused smartphone, something that celebrates The Year of the Dog on the Chinese calendar.

The new 2018 Gold Edition Razer Phone is a limited edition version of the handset, and arrives in a beautiful red-sleeved box with gold foiling and even a certificate of ownership. There's the iconic triple-headed snake on the back of the phone, but it rocks an awesome gold style.

Razer says that the limited edition 2018 Gold Edition Razer Phone will be available at three Hong Kong-based telcos, the RazerStore Hong Kong, and RazerStore US while supplies last, and I'm sure that won't be long. There will only be 1688 of these new Gold Edition phones, so they will be gone in as fast as that 120Hz display can refresh.

Tesla has been using my home state of South Australia as its testing grounds for the future of its solar and lithium ion battery technology, with the SA government working out a deal with Tesla that would see at least 50,000 homes have their Powerwall technology installed.

SA Premier Jay Weatherill is running for the March state election, teasing that Tesla's next-gen solar systems and batteries would be supplied, and installed free of charge. The entire project would be financed through the sale of electricity, given that the solar panels would be taking in the power generated by the sun, with Weatherill saying it would be the largest project of its kind.

The retailer involved would have the ability of using the household batteries that would be installed, and use that power to throw it back into the state power grid. There will be a trial scheme run using Housing Trust properties (government owned), something that has already started, with 100 homes receiving Tesla Powerwall systems by June 30, and another 1000 properties in the next 12 months.

NVIDIA has been pushing the PC version of Final Fantasy XV for a while now, but with the PC version of the game right around the corner - March 6, we're now hearing just how good the PC version will be versus its console counterparts.

In a new video message from the director of Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, Hajime Tabata, who said that the PC version is not a port, and that it has been developed for the PC from the ground up. This means that the PC version of Final Fantasy XV will be very, very special when compared to the console versions.

Square Enix will be unleashing Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition on March 6, and will include all of the released DLC, as well as additional content that is made for the Windows Edition - and will launch on the same day for the PS4 and Xbox One versions.

Tesla is wanting to see its Powerwall technology go mainstream, with the company pushing their Powerwall battery packs and new solar panels at 800 Home Depot locations across the US.

Bloomberg is reporting the news, stating that Tesla's solar panels and Powerwalls will be at 800 Home Depot locations soon, with this marking the first time Tesla has inked a major US retain chain to sell their products. Tesla won't be giving Home Depot all the power, as they will just be putting their products on Home Depot's shelves.

Tesla will have their own designated "Tesla-branded selling spaces" in Home Depots, similar to Samsung and Apple with their own specified spots in retail locations.