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Monolith delays Middle-earth: Shadow of War by two months to ensure the game lives up to expectations.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel to 2014's popular Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor, has been delayed past its original August release date and is launching on October 10, 2017 on PS4, Xbox One, PS4 Pro, Project Scorpio and PC. As Shadow of War is a massive undertaking with tons of new content, overhauls, and native 4K support on consoles, the developers at Monolith will use the extra two months to apply polish and optimizations to deliver the "highest quality experience."

"Middle-earth: Shadow of War expands gameplay in every dimension, including the massive open world, the story, the RPG systems, and personal player stories of the Nemesis System," Monolith said in a recent blog post. "As with Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Monolith is committed to delivering the highest quality experience. In order to do this, we have made the difficult decision to move our launch date to ensure that Middle-earth: Shadow of War will deliver on that promise."

Qualcomm announced QuickCharge 4 last year when they gave details about the new Snapdragon 835. However, QuickCharge 4 wasn't made available until this year when devices with the Snapdragon 835 came out. At that time Qualcomm promised 5 minutes of charging could deliver 5 hours of battery life (based on a 2750 mAh battery).

They also introduced USB Type-C and USB PD compliance, Battery Saver, INOV and Dual Charge capabilities, and they talked about going from zero to 50% in only 15 minutes, which is quite an improvement from previous experiences.

With QuickCharge 4+ Qualcomm is upping the ante further by reducing temperatures by 3C and charging an additional 15% faster while also being 30% more efficient. That means that if a device or accessory maker builds a QuickCharge 4+ device, it will very likely deliver a superior charging user experience.

Nintendo has added tremendous value to its new Switch Online subscription service, but delays the service into 2018.

Nintendo recently announced key features of its new Switch online subscription service, now called Switch Online. The subscription's price tag attractive at just $20 a year, which is 300% cheaper than Sony's and Microsoft's $59.99 PlayStation Plus and Xbox LIVE subscriptions. Secondly, the online service will no longer rotate its selection of free classic NES titles, referred to as the Classic Game Collection, on a month-by-month basis.

Under the revised policy, users can now play a "wide variety of free classic games" as much as they like with an active subscription. Like competing services, the Switch online service will revoke access to the Classic Game Selection if a subscription lapses. Right now Nintendo has only confirmed NES games will be part of the Classic Game Collection as of late, and SNES games are under consideration but not confirmed.

ZTE has launched its long anticipated flagship - the Nubia Z17. As rumored, the phone is powered by a Snapdragon 835, which makes it the second phone by a Chinese manufacturer to use that processor after the Xiaomi Mi 6.

The ZTE Nubia Z17 comes in three versions - 6GB of RAM + 64GB of internal storage, 6GB of RAM + 128GB of internal storage, and whooping 8GB of RAM + 128GB of storage. If you are considering getting this phone, having in mind that it doesn't have a card slot so be sure to choose the version that's right for you.

The phone has a dual rear camera setup (23MP + 12MP) that supports 2x optical zoom and up to 10x Dynamic zoom. The front shooter comes with a 16MP and 80-degree wide-angle lens.

Square Enix announces a partnership with the third-party developer behind Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgement.

Note: Above image is concept art from Gears of War Judgement, and does not represent the new game.

Although Japanese publisher Square Enix has made strong efforts to internalize the development of key franchises and titles to its in-house studios, the publisher has re-affirmed its commitment with third-party alliances with a new partnership deal. Square Enix will team up with Polish developer People Can Fly to developer a "new high-end original title for console and PC."

In case you forgot, Panasonic makes phones too, and they just announced their latest mid-range smartphone - the Eluga I3 Mega.

The device is a successor to the Eluga I3, launched in April last year. The phone comes with quad-core CPU clocked at 1.3GHz and 3GB RAM. The 16GB internal storage is expandable up to 128GB via microSD card.

The Eluga I3 Mega has a 5.5-inch HD display and 2.5D curved screen. The main camera comes with 13MP, while the front shooter has 5MP.

Huawei has launched another MediaPad tablet, the mid-range MediaPad M3 Lite 10.

The tablet comes with a 10.1-inch IPS display and 1920 x 1200 resolution. The M3 is powered by a Snapdragon 435 with octa-core CPU and comes in three options: 3GB of RAM + 16GB of internal storage, 3GB of RAM + 32GB of storage, and 4GB of RAM + 64GB of storage.

The MediaPad M3 Lite has an 8MP rear camera, and the front one comes with the same number of pixels. The tablet runs on Android Nougat with Huawei's EMUI 5.1.

The OnePlus 5 is one of the most anticipated devices this year, and the company has confirmed its launch for the summer.

However, up until now, we didn't know the exact date of its unveiling. Now, a leaked poster claims that the company plans to announce the OnePlus 5 on June 15th.

The poster doesn't mention OnePlus 5, but we are close to the launch, so it makes perfect sense that it refers to the OnePlus 5.

EA has announced Ghost Games' new Need for Speed game for a release this November.

Need for Speed Payback has a very Fast & Furious vibe to it, and its singleplayer campaign is focused on a story of "betrayal and revenge." EA promises that Ghost Games' new racer is an "explosive adventure is filled with intense heist missions, high stakes car battles, epic cop pursuits and jaw dropping set pieces," and describes Need for Speed Payback as an action driving fantasy.

Read Also: Need for Speed Payback has microtransactions

Computex 2017 - AMD had its big reveal of its upcoming Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs this week at Computex 2017, but now we're hearing that the new 16C/32T variant will cost just $849... and if that's true, Intel is in for a world of hurt.

Intel's upcoming flagship Core i9-7980XE will cost $1999 and offer 18C/36T, slightly more than AMD's flagship Ryzen ThreadRipper and 16C/32T of CPU grunt. But if the $849 price is right, AMD will be charging less than half the cost, at $1150 cheaper. For that cost, you could get the motherboard and a good kit of DDR4 RAM and still have change left over.

Intel's upcoming 16C/32T chip is $1699, which is still massively more expensive than the rumored $849 price on the Ryzen ThreadRipper 16C/32T processor. If we are going to be in a world where AMD is charging $849 for a processor with similar performance to Intel's CPU that costs $2000... well... we're going to be in for a wild ride.

Qualcomm is continuing to evolve its charging standard, unveiling Quick Charge 4+ just 6 months after it unveiled Quick Charge 4. The new Quick Charge 4+ standard has some impressive new enhancements for new smartphones.

Quick Charge 4+ doesn't require a new chipset, and instead accessory manufacturers can add in the new enhancements to Quick Charge 4 capable devices:

Qualcomm have said that Quick Charge 4+ devices can charge 15% faster than QC4, and they'll charge up to 30% more efficiently. Better yet, charging will be 3C cooler (5F or so). We won't see these features with a software patch into existing devices, as they're hardware enhancements.

Update: It's possible that what EA meant by "in-game purchases" is actual purchased made by players within the game, not actual microtransactions. We've adjusted the headline and content to reflect this.

Ghost Games' new Need for Speed Payback game may have microtransactions.

EA may monetize its latest Need for Speed game with in-game purchases, presumably to fund new free content updates from developer Ghost Games. While neither the developer nor the publisher specifically discuss monetization plans for Need for Speed Payback, the publisher hinted at microtransactions with a chart that compares the game's $59.99 standard version and the more expensive $79.99 deluxe version.

Ubisoft will give Rainbow Six: Siege's engagement tactics a shot in the arm by adding loot boxes.

Rainbow Six: Siege is getting loot boxes quite soon, but you won't be able to buy them with R6 premium currency--you'll have to earn them by playing the game. The game's loot boxes are called Alpha Packs, and contain randomized cosmetic items and weapon skins to add flair to a player's operator character.

Alpha Packs can be unlocked in two ways: players can earn them randomly at the end of matches, with every successive match boosting the chance of an Alpha Pack drop, or buying them outright with Renown, the game's experience point currency used to unlock in-game content. Alpha Packs cannot be purchased directly with the game's digital premium R6 Points currency, which cost real money. However, players can buy Renown with R6 Points.

AMD was slowly but surely clawing back discrete GPU market share from NVIDIA over the last 6-12 months, but according to the latest report from Jon Peddie Research, graphics board shipments dropped 29.8% quarter-over-quarter, and 19.2% year-over-year.

NVIDIA now sits with 72.5% of the discrete GPU market to itself, their highest in months. NVIDIA has saturated the market with their GeForce GTX 10 series products, as they continue to release cards - and I'm sure they still have more right around the corner as a response to Radeon RX Vega from AMD.

JPR explains: "The attach rate of AIBs to desktop PCs has declined from a high of 63% in Q1 2008 to 42% this quarter, a decrease of 9.0% from last quarter which was negative. Compared to this quarter last year it decreased 12.9% which was negative. The overall GPU shipments (integrated and discrete) is greater than desktop PC shipments due double-attach-the adding of a second (or third) AIB to a system with integrated processor graphics-and to a lesser extent, dual AIBs in performance desktop machines using either AMD's CrossFire or NVIDIA's SLI technology improved attach rate".

Computex 2017 - AMD unleashed their new ThreadRipper CPUs at Computex, offering a full stack of multi-threaded processors with up to 16C/32T, and 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes through the new X399 chipset - but, Ryzen 7 pricing is now dropping big time.

AMD's current Ryzen 7 1800X, Ryzen 7 1700X, and Ryzen 7 1700 have all had price drops - and are in effect on Amazon and Newegg. The AMD Ryzen 7 1800X was $49 and can now be found for $459, while the Ryzen 7 1700X was $399 and is now just $349, while the Ryzen 7 1700 drops from $329 to just $299.

I thought it would be Intel that would drop the prices on their Core range of processors, but this puts AMD in a great position ahead of the big launch for ThreadRipper.

Take-Two Interactive, the parent company for major games like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and the NBA 2K series, says it will support Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid with games as long as the install base is there. Just don't expect its biggest franchised hits to cross over.

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick believes in Nintendo's new Switch console, and affirms the company will support the system in its formative years with one of its most lucrative sport titles, NBA 2K18. "We're there, front and center. We have basketball coming for the platform, and we consider ourselves in a very important partnership with Nintendo. We believe in it, and we see it the way they do: we think it's going to be a successful launch," Zelnick said at Cowen and Company's 45th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference.

But Zelnick also highlights the business elements of supporting the Switch, iterating that it's still too early to call the Switch a bona-fide success, despite strong initial sales, massive demand, and snowballing momentum. Whether or not Take-Two continues to bring key games to the Switch depends on the system's install base--and even then the company will be very selective in which games it brings to the console (so don't expect GTA V or Red Dead Redemption 2).

The Pokemon Company, who's responsible for major video game hits such as the Pokemon games on Nintendo 3DS, has reported massive profit earnings for its nineteenth fiscal year.

Major games-maker The Pokemon Company just recorded a huge boost in year-over-year profits, Japanese games analyst Dr. Serkan Toto reports. The company raked in $143.4 million (15.921 billion yen) in profits in the fiscal year ended February 28, up 2460% from last year's $5.6 million.

Dr. Toto notes that big releases such as Pokemon GO and Pokemon Sun and Moon were major contributors to the company's earnings. Nintendo affirms that 14.69 million copies of Pokemon Sun and Moon were sold within a 44 day period alone. As Nintendo owns a 32% stake in The Pokemon Company, the performance of these major titles directly affected Nintendo's recent 521% surge in year-over-year profits.

UPDATE: We've been informed that Take-Two Interactive didn't actually buy Kerbal Space Program's independent development team, Squad, and instead only acquired the IP itself.

"Take-Two acquired Kerbal Space Program, but not the development team. Squad remains an independent developer," Take-Two Interactive's Senior Manager of Communications Brian Roundy told TweakTown in a recent statement.

Original story is as follows.

In a render of the rumored iPhone 8, someone has compared the rumored size of the upcoming iPhone 8 to all of the major phones currently in the market. This includes the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, Galaxy S8 and S8+, LG G6, Note7, Google Pixel and Pixel Plus.

Based on this rumored side by side render, you can see that the new iPhone 8 is expected to be slightly larger than the current iPhone 7, but with a much larger edge to edge display.

Read also: Apple could launch the iPhone 8 and iPhone 7S this year

Nintendo could hike the price of its new Switch system past $299 to offset increasing parts costs, and the company may have troubles keeping up with massive consumer demand.

Nintendo is fighting other tech titans like Apple for critical mobile components to power its new Switch handheld-console hybrid, which could trigger a price hike for the new machine. Nintendo's Switch system uses many parts and components that are currently in high demand by smartphone makers, including its LPDDR4 RAM, NAND flash memory, and LCD panels--all of which are crucial to make mobile devices like Apple's popular iPhones tick.

Demand for traditional 2D NAND flash memory, which is used in mobile devices and Nintendo's Switch system, has steadily risen as more companies push out new notebooks, tablets, smartphones and the new Internet of Things sphere of devices, and as semiconductor fabrication facilities owned by key companies such as Toshiba transition over to new premium high-end 3D NAND storage.