It was a couple of weeks of virtually all companies pulling out of Mobile World Congress before MWC organizers GSMA pulled the plug on the entire event, but now Facebook has just performed a similar move over coronavirus fears.

Facebook had its upcoming global marketing summit which was to take place between March 9-12 in San Francisco, but the social networking giant has canceled the event. Facebook explained: "Out of an abundance of caution, we canceled our global marketing summit due to evolving public health risks related to coronavirus".

The global marketing summit was expecting over 4000 people to attend, but has now been canned. The next event taking place is the Game Developers Conference (GDC) which also takes place in San Francisco between March 16-20, and right after that is NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) which is March 22-26 in San Jose, California -- a stones throw from San Francisco. I'll be at GTC 2020 bringing you GPU coverage from the floors of GTC, where NVIDIA is expected to unveil its next-gen Ampere GPU architecture.

Remember the story from a few days ago where NVIDIA's super-fresh game streaming service GeForce NOW lost its library of games from Activision-Blizzard? Well, that was all over a "misunderstanding".

NVIDIA hasn't been super forthcoming about what the "misunderstanding" was exactly, but the company released a statement that makes the situation a little clearer: "Activision Blizzard has been a fantastic partner during the GeForce Now beta, which we took to include the free trial period for our founders' membership. Recognizing the misunderstanding, we removed their games from our service, with hope we can work with them to re-enable these, and more, in the future".

Bloomberg is reporting that Activision-Blizzard wanted to negotiate a new commercial agreement before NVIDIA launched GeForce NOW, but NVIDIA doesn't want commercial agreements with game publishers. NVIDIA wants to let gamers buy their games on the likes of Steam, Epic Games, uPlay, and Battle.net -- and then, play them on GeForce NOW just like they would if they were playing them at home on their gaming PC.

The Division 2 was one of the best-looking games of 2019, but Ubisoft Massive's popular game will most likely not find a new home on the next-gen PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X consoles.

In a recent interview with the Daily Star, Ubisoft Massive Associate Creative Director Yannick Banchereau said: "we are not looking at porting it to new platforms. What I can tell you is that we are not making a specific version for those consoles, we are very much focused on just working on what we have now and making that as good as possible".

We could expect The Division 2 to run on the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, but they might do it through Microsoft and Sony providing backwards compatibility -- and not a newer version of the game tuned specifically for the additional power in the new consoles.

HBO Max is quickly ramping up to its big streaming debut in May 2020, with a new HBO Max teaser trailer released that showcases just a glimpse of what to expect from its gigantic library of content.

We shouldn't be surprised that the HBO Max teaser trailer opens with Friends, given that WarnerMedia paid a huge $425 million for the rights to Friends on HBO Max. But HBO Max will also include every episode of The Big Bang Theory and South Park, as well as every single episode of Friends and Game of Thrones -- oh, as well as every single Batman, Superman, and Joker movie released.

Not only that, but we're looking at The Matrix Trilogy -- a big scoop going into The Matrix 4 in 2021, as well as hit shows like Rick and Morty, The O.C. and The West Wing. On top of that, the company recently announced it had created a new division that was solely made to create streaming movies, so we should expect big things moving forward. The only thing missing?

Microsoft and Nike have teamed up for a new Jordan-themed Xbox One X console and controllers, with the iconic red elephant print dopped all over the Xbox One X and two controllers -- it looks slick. Check out an unboxing of one of them below:

Nike is unleashing its new Air Jordan III Retro U sneakers during the upcoming All-Star Weekend in Chicago, with the custom Jordan-themed Xbox One X console and controllers to be given away in a competition during the Microsoft sweepstakes on Twitter. If you want to enter that, follow the official Twitter account for Xbox, retweet the announcement and use the hashtag #Xboxsweepstakes.

The giveaway of the Jordan-themed Xbox One X ends on February 27, with a single winner to be announced. I wouldn't want to touch it if I won it, and would love to keep it in the box forever.

Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies of all time and I highly cherish it, it's something I don't want to ever be rebooted or remade -- but a deepfake inserting some new actors into it for fun? I'm up for that. Check this out:

In the movie, Michael J. Fox plays Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd plays Doc Brown -- but in a deepfake of Back to the Future, YouTuber EZRyderX47 has inserted Avengers: Endgame stars Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr. The two play Peter Parker / Spider-Man and Tony Stark / Iron Man respectively, but thanks to deepfake tech they take over the roles of Marty and Doc.

It's an absolutely incredible (and somewhat horrifying) look at what deepfake technology is capable of, and as someone who has watched countless hours and researched heavily into deepfake tech, it's one of the best I've seen yet.

We've been learning a little bit more about Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 thanks to a new report by Bloomberg, where the site reported that the manufacturing costs of the PlayStation 5 is sitting at around $450.

But in the report we also learn that Sony is putting some serious work into the cooling system for the PlayStation 5, with Bloomberg reporting Sony opted to "lavish more" on the cooling system to make sure "heat dissipation from the powerful chips housed inside the console isn't an issue".

Bloomberg wrote: "Most of the components for the console have been locked down, the people said, including the cooling system, which is unusually expensive at a few dollars per unit", adding that "typically, companies would spend less than a dollar" on the cooling system -- but Sony opted to "lavish more" on the PlayStation 5 cooling system.

Sony is aiming for a December 2020 release for its next-gen PlayStation 5 console according to my industry sources, but now Bloomberg is reporting about the manufacturing costs -- something that gives us a hint towards the final retail pricing of the PS5.

Bloomberg reports from "people with knowledge of the matter" that the PlayStation 5 manufacturing cost is "around $450 per unit" which is forcing Sony into a "difficult price-setting decision" with Microsoft and the next-gen Xbox Series X console. Bloomberg continues in its article saying that the "biggest headache" is making sure they have a reliable supply of DRAM and NAND flash memory.

The issues here is that other companies like AMD, NVIDIA, and Samsung are eating all that up for graphics cards and the just-launched Galaxy S20 family of smartphones which packs 8/12/16GB of RAM and a heap of super-fast flash storage. Sony's Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki recently said at an earnings briefing earlier this month: "We must keep PlayStation 5's bill of materials under our control and we need to make the correct number of units in the initial production".

Disney now sits on the world's biggest treasure trove of franchises and IPs, from Marvel to 20th Century Fox properties and Star Wars. Now it wants developers to make new games based on all of them.

At DICE 2020, Disney sent a clear message to game developers: Its wealth of IPs are now open for new game adaptations. The billion-dollar titan wants to leverage its massive franchise catalog to create interactive entertainment experiences with innovative and re-imagined characters and scenarios. Essentially Disney wants game devs to breathe new life into IPs like Aliens, Predator, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and a lot more.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, who was in attendance at the 2020 DICE Summit, Disney's interactive VP Sean Shoptaw extended a warm welcome to game developers.

Today Square Enix revealed Final Fantasy 7 Remake's opening cinematic sequence, and it's absolutely enchanting.

There's nothing quite like a Final Fantasy cinematic. Square Enix has set the bar to such a high pedigree with its cinematics that few developers hold up, and that's especially true today with the new FF7 Remake footage. The opener brings back all the chills of the 1997 RPG classic, transporting gamers back in time to those days when demo discs still came with magazines and you had to buy guidebooks to unlock all the secrets.

The graphics in the cinematic are just absolutely mesmerizing...and when that logo pops up over the steampunk city of Midgar, complete with the musical score, it hits you right in the feels. The lighting effects, the visuals, the atmospheric wizardry, the colors...everything comes together to blow your mind just as the original game did back in '97.