Sony has joined an ever-growing list of companies pulling out or reducing their presence at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain over concerns of the coronavirus outbreak.

The company joins Amazon, Ericsson, LG, NVIDIA, Samsung, and ZTE in pulling out of MWC 2020, which is still going ahead according to organizers GSMA. At this point, I don't know why... with virtually all major tech companies pulling out of MWC because of the coronavirus, so I expect big things to change in the coming week or so as MWC 2020 kicks off on February 24-27.

In a press release, Sony said: "As we place the utmost importance on the safety and wellbeing of our customers, partners, media and employees, we have taken the difficult decision to withdraw from exhibiting and participating at MWC 2020 in Barcelona, Spain. Sony would like to thank everyone for their understanding and ongoing support during these challenging times".

Samsung will fully debut its new Galaxy S20 family of smartphones on February 11 at its Unpacked event, but it'll also debut the new foldable Galaxy Z Flip handset -- now teased with a new Thom Browne Edition.

The new Galaxy Z Flip Thom Browne Edition comes in stripey goodness, with its iconic red/white/blue style on all of its included products. In the box you'll get the Galaxy Z Flip Thom Browne Edition smartphone itself, but you'll also get gorgeous Galaxy Buds+ and a Galaxy Watch Active 2 smartwatch, too.

Samsung is expected to price its regular Galaxy Z Flip from $1250-$1400 according to various reports, but the new Thom Browne Edition should cost a bunch extra -- we could expect a $1000 premium knocking it up to $2500 for the entire package. But hey, if you want this style then you're going to pay for it -- but how many of them will be made, or sold? I doubt it'll be much at all.

Amazon has now joined mobile industry giants in LG, NVIDIA, Samsung and ZTE in pulling out of Mobile World Congress this year over coronavirus fears.

Amazon pulling out of MWC 2020 is a big deal as it's one of the largest companies in the world, and a gigantic presence at any trade show. The company told TechCrunch: "due to the outbreak and continued concerns about novel coronavirus, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in Mobile World Congress 2020, scheduled for Feb. 24-27 in Barcelona, Spain".

Amazon wasn't the first and most likely won't be the last to pull out of Mobbile World Congress, with Sony announcing shortly after Amazon that it would not be attending the mobile-focused event in Barcelona, Spain over the same concerns over coronavirus.

Microsoft might have a magic ace up its sleeve, with the ability to upscale low-res textures in real-time using AI. This could become a big thing for Microsoft headed into the next-gen console battle between the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

The work is coming from Playfab, a company that Microsoft acquired back in early 2018, that worked on making tools for back-end games support in the cloud. Playfab founder James Gwertzman is working at the company as the GM, using the power of Microsoft's huge Azure network and has recently talked with GamesBeat on some of the things he and his team are working on.

Gwertzman teases: "One of the studios inside Microsoft has been experimenting with using ML models for asset generation. It's working scarily well. To the point where we're looking at shipping really low-res textures and having ML models uprez the textures in real-time. You can't tell the difference between the hand-authored high-res texture and the machine-scaled-up low-res texture, to the point that you may as well ship the low-res texture and let the machine do it".

The world is well aware of Tesla's all-electric Cybertruck, but now more and more car companies will get on the electric truck hype train with Nikola Motors joining in on the fun with its new electric pick up truck dubbed Badger.

Nikola Motors' new Badger will be offered as both a fully battery-electric vehicle, as well as an electric/fuel-cell hybrid that will have some serious horsepower. The hybrid powertrain of the Nikola Motors Badger will have a maximum range of 600 miles, while the battery-powered model taps out at 300 miles.

The company claims the electric truck will have towing power of up to 8000 pounds, and will go from 0-60 miles per hour in just 2.9 seconds. Nikola Motors will be getting very close to Tesla Cybertruck territory if it can meet these claims, which would not be too bad at all. But when can we expect the Badger? The company will fully detail its new Badger truck at the Nikola World 2020 event in September, where it will then accept limited reservations.

LG might have pulled out of Mobile World Congress this year over coronavirus concerns, but the company is still hard at work on its new flagship smartphone -- something that might eventuate into the V60.

According to notorious leaker Evan 'evleaks' Blass, LG is working on the V60 ThinQ smartphone which might rock some flagship tech inside including Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 processor with 5G connectivity. Not only that, but we are told to expect the return of the 3.5mm headphone jack and a gigantic 5000mAh battery, too.

LG is expected to have not one, two, or three cameras -- but four cameras on its new V60 smartphone. The display will fall somewhere between 6.7 and 6.9 inches, while there will be a selfie camera on the front of the V60 with a small notch. We should expect LG to better detail its V60 smartphone later this month after MWC 2020.

Samsung outed its foldable Galaxy Z Flip smartphone during an Oscars 2020 ad, but will fully detail it at its Unpacked 2020 event on February 11 -- but what about sales expectations?

The company is reportedly aiming for around 2.5 million units according to a new report from The Korea Herald, which have called on industry sources to say that Samsung is preparing an initial 500,000 units of the Galaxy Z Fold. After that, Samsung expects a total of 2.5 million Galaxy Z Flip foldable smartphone sales by the end of 2020.

Samsung will be selling the new Galaxy Z Flip for around $1400, with reports saying the new foldable will start from around $1260 in South Korea. Inside, it'll rock modest but not flagship specs with Qualcomm's second-best Snapdragon 855+ (the Snapdragon 865 is the new flagship), 8GB of RAM (the Galaxy Fold ships with 12GB, and the Galaxy S20 Ultra rocks 16GB), while a dual-camera rig is on the back of the Galaxy Z Flip.

Intel is hard at work on its Xe GPU architecture, but a new rumor teases a tile-based architecture approach will be an interesting path as a new report suggests the datacenter variant of Xe could ramp up to 500W of power.

We now have more of an idea on the power consumption across the tile-design approach, where the 1-tile 'DG1' would come in with 96 execution units, 768 cores, and up to 75W TDP -- this is the entry-level Xe GPU. Up from there is the 128 execution unit / 1024 core version with up to 150W of power in the mid-range Xe.

The 2-tile GPU will have the same 128 EUs per tile but since there are two tiles we have 256 total EUs and up to 2048 cores with a TDP of 300W. This will be the high-end gaming card that we should see in 2021 or so, while the 4-tile 'Arctic Sound' is the beast with 4 tiles adding up to a huge 512 EUs, up to 4096 cores, and a huge 400-500W of power -- this is for the datacenter, and not gamers.

The Switch isn't very powerful, but it doesn't need to be. It's versatility, utility, and mobility has sparked tremendous hardware and software sales while also pushing many of gaming's biggest publishers to squeeze their AAA games onto the limited-power platform. Now Nintendo talks about the idea behind compromising with a low-spec system.

In a recent Fiscal Year Q3'19 Q&A session with investors, Nintendo executives discussed key points about the Switch business. One of the more interesting tidbits sees the company arguing against a higher-end 4K-ready Switch Pro upgrade by emphasizing creativity, innovation, and uniqueness over raw performance and hardware specs.

Nintendo execs say the Switch simply wouldn't exist if the company put more importance on power. As the natural combined evolution of the 3DS and the Wii U, it's only logical for Nintendo to focus more on adequately joining the two platforms in any way possible, even it meant compromises in hardware performance.

Activision makes good on its promise with content blowouts in Modern Warfare, revealing an absolute metric ton of new goodies coming to the game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's season 2 content is pretty robust. Most notably we see Ghost returning to the game as a playable operator as well as the classic Rust map, complemented by a slew of new guns, modes, and maps across various gametypes.

There's a marked discrepancy between the free and paid battle passes though, and you'll have to spend 2400 CP ($19.99) on the premium battle pass to unlock Ghost. Other operators are coming to the game too via the Call of Duty Store.