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Star Wars: The Last Jedi is going to be huge, that's a given. But how big? Box Office Pro recently released its first-weekend projections for the upcoming Star Wars movie with an estimated $215 million grossed in the US over its first three days. In comparison, The Force Awakens first weekend grossed $247million.

Box Office Pro notes that Twitter activity is comparable with The Force Awakens, with expectations that The Last Jedi will end its run with $760 million grossed. This is obviously less than The Force Awakens, which holds the record for highest-grossing movie in US history with $936 million. Box Office Pro states that this is due to the fact that The Force Awakens is the middle chapter of the trilogy, this has been the case for the previous Star War sagas.

"Presumably, this will provide the fewest "standalone movie" characteristics of the new episodes - ala The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones, middle chapters that became the "lowest" box office performers of the previous trilogies. As such, any suggestion that this film would have under-performed in the event that it falls well short of TFA's records and/or lifetime gross should be wholly ignored."

GIGABYTE have introduced the world's thinnest 17.3" laptop, the AORUS X9. The X9 features a 7th generation Intel i7-7820HK overclockable processor, two GTX 1070s in SLI, up to 64GB DDR4-2400 memory and even a mechanical keyboard... oh, and RGB lighting of course!

The AORUS X9 doesn't stop there with innovation, also providing a world first for 17.3" laptop with quad cooling fans and multi-functional RGB lightbar & chassis RGB lighting. Other options include a choice of 17.3" 4K UHD IPS monitor or QHD (2560 x 1440) 120 Hz WVA panel. Audio wise, the X9 is able to offer ESS Sabre HiFi audio DAC and 'quad' audio setup that features two speakers and two woofers.

The X9 is definitely a thing of beauty, GIGABYTE even stating that "the X9 design philosophy screams with exotic properties, taking cues from modern supercars and stealth fighter jets". Two configurations are available later this month, one with 512GB SSD and 1TB costs $3,649 while the slightly more expensive 2x512GB SSDs will costs $3,799 and is available from Newegg only.

ASUS ROG is bringing Ryzen to Mini-ITX with their latest motherboards, ROG Strix X370-I Gaming and Strix B350-I Gaming motherboards for AM4 sockets. Catering for small-form-factor Ryzen builds, these ASUS ROG motherboards are nearly identical and are packed full of cutting-edge features like their full-sized counterparts including RGB lighting, M.2 SSD heat sink, liquid cooling ready and a host of other features for your AMD Ryzen build.

ASUS Maximus Impact series showcased improved audio with a dedicated riser card, and the Strix X370-I and B350-I Gaming go one step further with an M.2 Audio Combo card that contains both SupremeFX sound and M.2 storage. As for overlocking, these motherboards feature unlocked multipliers, six-phase VRM design and support for DDR4-3600 memory. To make overclocking even easier, ASUS ROG have introduced exclusive 5-Way Optimization technology, this intelligent auto-tuning technology automatically overclocks the CPU and configures the cooling performance based on the components of your build.

Both the ROG Strix X370-I Gaming and Strix B350-I Gaming motherboards will be available late October.

Microsoft is quickly ramping up to its release of its new Xbox One X console, with a new trailer hitting the US called 'Feel True Power'. There are a few games you might spot, with PC gaming phenomenon PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds used in the latest Xbox One X teaser video.

The commercial aired on October 22, on the Xbox YouTube channel, and will be shown during the huge Season 8 premiere of The Walking Dead, and then during the Super Bowl 51 rematch between New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons during NBC's Sunday Night Football.

Microsoft explained in a post on Xbox Wire: "The global campaign is designed to appeal to all gamers, taking the audience on an emotional roller coaster to elicit emotions like awe, excitement, fear, and passion. A call for gamers to feel the emotions of gaming in a way they may never have felt before. 'Feel True Power' represents that the experience isn't just about what you see, but also what you feel".

The cable that is providing millions of people with internet access, and even the cable you have running to your router - heck, the same fiber optic cable that is going into my router here as I type this, could soon be an early earthquake detector.

Researchers have developed a new technology that detects seismic activity through the "jiggling" in fiber optic cables, with 'laser interrogators' looking for disturbances in the fiber, and then sending that information about the magnitude and direction of the tremors. Using fiber-based detections isn't something that's completely new, but it has previously been used for acoustic sensing that needed them wrapped in cement,or sticking them to a surface so that you ensured contact was made to the ground.

But this new system is capable of detecting different types of seismic waves, so it would know if the impending earthquake was something worth alerting someone, or a system somewhere about it. The new system is also capable of detecting very small, or localized quakes that would otherwise not be noticed.

Qualcomm and Microsoft made a big fuss over the upcoming LTE-capable Surface Pro at Computex 2017 earlier this year, but according to a listing on the Microsoft Store, Surface Pro LTE has been delayed until Spring 2018.

Microsoft's listing for the Surface Pro LTE on their store states: "The new Surface Pro with LTE will be made available for purchase at retail Spring 2018. We're excited to bring you a Surface Pro that is now faster, lighter, quieter, and more connected than ever".

Microsoft's new Surface Pro LTE will rock 4G capabilities, which should cost a decent chunk more than the base model Surface Pro which sells for $799. We should expect more details at CES 2018, where I'm sure we'll find out everything we're meant to know with Qualcomm and Microsoft's upcoming new slate.

NeoGAF is offline after its owner Tyler "Evilore" Malka has had sexual assault allegations thrown at him, with Malka stepping down and the future of the site in serious jeopardy.

Only hours ago, sexual assault allegations began hitting the internet, with posts suggesting Malka made "unwanted sexual advances against an individual", reports US Gamer. The moderation and admin members of NeoGAF sided with the victim, stepping down from the site, forcing it to shutdown. NeoGAF users were also protesting the site, and its owner, before the plug was pulled.

NeoGAF is reportedly preparing a statement that we'll update the article with when it happens. This is big news, as NeoGAF is one of the largest gaming communities online, with a heap of breaking news and content flowing from the site over the years.

Bitcoin has hit a new record of $6000, with the largest cryptocurrency reaching a total market value of $100 billion. If we compare this to credit card company American Express, which has a market value of $96 billion, Bitcoin is a serious thing now more than ever before.

A single Bitcoin reached $6064, reaching a market value of $100.81 billion or so, which is all leading up towards the upcoming Bitcoin fork that's expected on October 25. Then weeks later on November 18, Bitcoin will roll through SegWit2x, which is going to cause more instability (good, or bad) in the price of BTC.

With some people saying Bitcoin could be worth $100,000 or even $1 million per BTC, that reality could be here much sooner, rather than later. Just imagine being that person who traded 40,000 BTC back in the day for some pizza... that is worth $240 million right now. Ugh.

Samsung has out innovated Apple for a while now, but the next-gen Galaxy S9 could be an iterative upgrade over the Galaxy S8 and even the newly-released Galaxy Note 8, with the inclusion of a 3.5mm headphone port, and more.

The latest rumors for the Galaxy S9 peg it to have 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which puts the stock 64GB of storage on the Note 8 to shame. The new rumors tease that Samsung would use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 processor in the US and China, while they'll use their in-house Exynos 9 Octa processor - both on 10nm, for the Galaxy S9. Both the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ would feature the same specs, with different screen sizes, just like the current Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones.

Following the widely criticized closure of Visceral Games, and the rise of the games-as-a-service business model prompting doom for singleplayer games, ex-BioWare developer Manveer Heir gives a candid look at EA's thought process in the latest episode of VICE's Waypoint Radio.

Manveer Heir has a storied career in the games industry, and has worked on a number of high-profile games such as 2009's Wolfenstein, Singularity, and is most known for his work at BioWare on Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect: Andromeda. Heir recently sat down with Waypoint's Austin Walker and Danielle Riendeau to discuss EA, the closure of Visceral, and Mass Effect: Andromeda, leading to some interesting tidbits about the inner workings of the video games industry.

Heir's take on Visceral's shutdown aligns with our own reports that EA is pretty much putting traditional linear singleplayer-only games on the back burner in an effort to bolster its billions with more open-world monetized experiences like Battlefront II, and BioWare's upcoming Anthem.

For years, Forbes has been tracking the richest people in the US and their most recent list has included someone we all know and love: our lord and savior, GabeN. Gabe Newell, the boss of Valve, is one of the 100 richest people in the United States with $5.5 billion.

Newell is in a 10-way tie for the 97th richest in the US, with the Valve boss now the 43rd richest tech billionaire in the US, and the 427th richest person in the world. If you thought it was good now, it will be much bigger in the future as Valve's continued success through receiving a cut of every single game sold on Steam, Valve's money flow will only continue to grow. Newell is now richer than even George Lucas (118th), and Steven Spielberg (206th).

Now this is where it gets interesting: Valve is a private company, so Forbes' numbers are just estimates. Newell's personal wealth, along with Valve, could be worth magnitudes more. Forbes' educated guess is that Valve is worth $10 billion, with Newell owning just over half of the company. If you ever want to know why Valve haven't made Half-Life 3 yet, it's because they don't have to... they make more money from providing the largest digital game distribution service in the world.

Did you know: Sharp once made a television set with a Nintendo Entertainment System built right in? Let's take a closer look.

Back in the 1980s, Sharp teamed up with Nintendo to make a nifty invention that will probably be the face of video games in the not-too-distant future: a TV-video game console combo. Behold the My Computer TV C1, an invention that saw a Sharp TV with a built-in NES console to make the ultimate all-in-one entertainment package. The NES TV (sounds a lot better than its actual name!) came out in 1983 in Japan, the same year the Famicom debuted, and came in 19-inch and 14-inch models selling for $1,278 and $819 respectively. In 1989, the nifty package traveled overseas and released in the U.S. as the Sharp Nintendo TV (aka the GameTelevision)

YouTuber Kelsey Lewin highlights this unique Sharp-NES TV's history and talks about how this little slice of history impacted the gaming world. For instance, since the Sharp NES TV had native RGB output, it was the best possible display for NES games at the time, and many gaming publications used it to take screenshots. And the NES built into the TV is almost identical to a retail NES model sold separately.

HORI's new kid-friendly PS4 controller has a nice idea behind it, but the $30 controller just looks like trouble waiting to happen.

Wireless controllers are great, as I'm sure any parent will agree. Sony's new kid-friendly Mini Wired Gamepad, however, lacks this nice little feature that has undoubtedly protected many an expensive video games console from ruination. Sony's cheap controller, however, could put our collective PS4s in danger once again when, say, a child yanks too hard on his or her mini gamepad and sends the console crashing to the ground. More often than not the USB cord will just yank out and nothing happens...but sometimes you aren't so lucky (I've seen it happen).

Furthermore, the controller looks super uncomfortable, even for children. I'm sure Sony tested the device with R&D and marketing, but the point still stands--the device looks cheap, unwieldy but durable. Let's hope it actually fits tiny hands well.

Nintendo's new Switch hybrid console has sold 2 million units in the United States alone, according to the latest figures from analyst firm NPD Group.

The Nintendo Switch continues its sweeping success across the games industry through the month of September, where it reigned over Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One in sales for the third month running--a milestone that the company proudly touts. The figures come from the NPD Group's latest monthly sales charts, which see the Switch selling over 2 million units in the U.S. alone, making up almost half of the Switch's currently reported 4.7 million install base.

The NPD Group also notes that the Switch has topped sales charts for five out of the seven months since its launch in March of 2017. "When combined with the Nintendo 3DS family of systems and the plug-and-play Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition system, Nintendo systems claimed two-thirds of the month's total video game hardware sales," reads an official Nintendo press release that cites NPD's data.

The video games industry's Gaming Video Content (GVC) segment is tremendously lucrative, and according to analyst firm SuperData, it will pull in over $4 billion in 2017.

Gaming Video Content is one of the biggest pillars of the current Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) business model that gaming's biggest publishers--Activision, EA, Take-Two Interactive, and Ubisoft--are currently embracing. Service-based games such as Overwatch are built to monetize engagement, which is continually generated via content creators streaming gameplay on Twitch and YouTube, massive eSports tournaments with big payouts, and a steady stream of new content for players to enjoy. Publishers monetize said engagement in a number of ways, including lootboxes and other microtransactions, and, most importantly, through GVC.

As SuperData notes, the main methods of generating revenue through GVC are advertisements, strategic partnerships, subscriptions, donations, and sponsorships--all of which can be monetized via engagement strategies. As more people watch their favorite content creators, the more people play the games, and potentially buy into the monetization path--or simply generate billions in advertisement revenue simply by watching.

Star Wars: Battlefront II is slated to release next month, and will include an interesting looking singleplayer campaign that not only folds into the original trilogy, but tells a unique story from the Empire's point of view. One of my biggest concerns about the campaign is its length--Battlefield 1's War Stories were short-ish--but EA Motive's David Robillard affirms the experience well be somewhat beefy.

Back in April, EA and DICE teased that Battlefront II's campaign, which is told from Empire commander Iden Versio's point of view, would be "emotionally gripping" and deliver a tale of "revenge, betrayal and redemption." The story, which is being penned by Spec Ops: The Line writer Walt Williams alongside ex-IGN editor Mitch Dyer, will bridge the end of the original trilogy to the expanded universe, and touch upon the New Order's rise--all while featuring new and classic characters like Luke Skywalker.

But how long will Star Wars: Battlefront II's campaign actually be?

EK Water Blocks have announced the world's first TR4 based RGB monoblock for several ASUS X399 motherboards, the EK-FB ASUS ROG ZE RGB. Featuring a RGB LED strip, this monoblock utilizes award-winning EK-Supremacy EVO cooling engine to ensure best possible CPU cooling for your X399 motherboard.

Compatible with ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme, ASUS PRIME X399-A and SUS ROG Strix X399-E Gaming motherboards, the EK-FB ASUS ROG ZE RGB Monoblock is made of nickel-plated electrolytic copper while the top is made of quality acrylic glass. This monoblock directly cools your AMD Ryzen Threadripper processor as well as your MOSFET module to provide incredible cooling properties for high and stable overclocks. Thanks to a redesigned cold plate, the X399 monoblock is able to provide improved contact with the entire Ryzen Threadripper processor IHS to enable superior heat transfer.

ASUS X399 series motherboards uses the most advanced LED system on the market, the EK-FB ASUS ROG ZE RGB Monoblock takes full advantage of this by allowing each individual LED to be customized by the user.

Cooler Master have decided to celebrate their 25th anniversary by expanding their 80PLUS Bronze certified MasterWatt range. These new power supplies offer an improved modular design, enhanced cables, and an innovative semi-fanless system.

The MasterWatt range is symbolic for delivering impressive performance while maintaining cost efficiency. These PSU feature a quiet Silencio model fan that has established a reputation for noise reduction thanks to its swept fan blades and LBD bearings. Improved components allow the MatterWatt range to operate without a fan for up to 15% of rated output wattage. Cooler Master have also revised all the cables to accommodate larger cases, this has resulted in improved cable management and cables are 14% longer than previous generations.

Available in 450W, 550W, 650W and 750W, these new models will be released at the end of October 2017.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a runaway success with 2 million concurrent gamers on Steam, and over 15 million copies that have made South Korean developer Bluehole, nearly $500 million. Insanity.

Battle Royale is now blending with the virtual world with Virtual Battlegrounds, something that was born from a post on Reddit, and then Oneiric Entertainment went to work with it. It looks very basic right now, almost like it was made as a joke - which it kinda was, with a limited 16-player world for now with plans to expand the player count.

Virtual Battlegrounds has free-for-all and squad-based options, with a release in 2018 for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets. If it is to become something better than it is now, it's going to need some serious work, and much more time in the development oven.

NVIDIA is expected to launch their new GeForce GTX 1070 Ti as a direct competitor, and killer of AMD's recently limped to market Radeon RX Vega 56. AMD's new Radeon RX Vega 56 is a great value for money card when compared to the GTX 1070, but the new GTX 1070 Ti will take care of that. Today, we have KFA2's leaked GTX 1070 Ti EX.

KFA's new GeForce GTX 1070 Ti EX rocks a dual-fan cooler, with our first look at the retail packaging. We have 6+8-pin PCIe power connectors, with 8GB of GDDR5 on-board. The usual suspects of specs with the GTX 1070 Ti, which should arrive on October 26.

Another sneaky shot, this time of the PCB.