The PC gaming hardware market's total earnings for 2016 broke through the $30 billion barrier for the first time, analyst firm Jon Peddie Research has announced, showing that PC gaming is alive and well.

According to JPR's findings, the PC gaming hardware market's $30 billion earnings are mostly due to enthusiast gamers--but mid-range and entry-level gaming solutions are a huge part of the spend as well. JPR reports that the global PC gaming's $3 billion 2016 earnings are broken up into three categories: the high-end enthusiast market, which comprises 43% of the overall spend at 13,045 million ; the mid-range market which comprises 35% of the total numbers at 10,617 million; and the entry-level market that makes up 22% of the spend at $6,684 million. The Asia-Pacific market "leads the world in both growth and market size," and

JPR predicts that the PC gaming hardware market will continue to grow at a 6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2019.

Considering the main selling point of the Nintendo Switch is taking your "console-quality gaming" on the go, battery life is extremely important. While Nintendo has delivered basic battery life ratios, no in-depth specifics were really given. In an attempt to get more perspective on the Nintendo Switch's battery and usage life, we analyze information gleaned from FCC filings and Nintendo's own website.

Based on our analysis findings, we've concluded the Nintendo Switch doesn't support USB Type-C quick charging capabilities for dramatically faster recharges, although the actual USB Type-C protocol supports USB Power Delivery 2.0, which can transmit up to 100W of power over a Type-C cable. We've also concluded that the Switch will charge faster when directly hooked to the AC adapter versus cradled on the dock.

Nintendo's Japanese site revealed that the Switch has a non-removable 3.7V/cell 4310mAh battery. This capacity isn't bad, but it's not necessarily great; a dedicated gaming system with a 10-point capacitive touch 6.2-inch 720p display would benefit from a ~5000mAh+ battery for optimum battery life.

Resident Evil 7 will soon terrify millions of Biohazard fanatics across the globe, but Capcom has no plans to bring the game to Nintendo's new transforming Switch handheld-console.

Although Capcom is one of the dozens of third-party publishers and developers who have pledged to bring their games to the Nintendo Switch, it appears that its new high-profile triple-A Resident Evil game won't make the jump.

"I think it's a very unique piece of hardware," producer Masachika Kawata told Express UK in a recent interview. "I'm looking forward to the possibilities of the system itself, but we have no plans at the moment regarding Resident Evil on Switch."

Zelda: Breath of the Wild is likely Nintendo's biggest game of 2017, and represents a massive new undertaking for the series. It's the first fully-fledged open-world Zelda game Nintendo has ever made, and offers players a new kind of experience--in many ways, it feels like the ultimate Zelda, the kind of game that represents everything that Eiji Aonuma has wanted to do with the series.

As such, Breath of the Wild will be massive in scale and scope--so big that it even ousts Skyrim's huge hyborean landmass.

According to Reddit user's HylianWarrior impressive Breath of the Wild map, the in-game world is an estimated 60% bigger than Skyrim. The map--which isn't completely accurate, mind you--pinpoints Breath of the Wild's open-world Hyrule at 61.2 square kilometers, whereas Skyrim checks in at 36.72 square kilometers.

While not all of the reviews were kind, Lucasfilm's initial 'Star Wars' spin-off 'Rogue One' has been declared a success, as the film crosses the $1 billion dollar mark at the worldwide box office.

Propelling Disney to a $7 billion dollar year (just let that sink in), 'Rogue One' joins 'Finding Dory', 'Captain America: Civil War' and 'Zootopia' as the studio's fourth $1 billion release.

The next installment in the 'Star Wars' franchise; the as-yet untitled 'Episode 8' is scheduled for release in December.

Huawei's P10 should arrive this spring, and there is a possibility that the company will announce their newest phone at this year's MWC in Barcelona.

There have also been numerous leaks about Huawei's upcoming flagship, and it is expected that the device will be powered by Huawei's Kirin 960 processor, currently in the Mate 9, and it will come with a 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The more powerful model should come with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

Some leaks also suggest that the P10 will have wireless charging, meaning it would be the first Huawei phone to have this feature and a curved screen.

Ubisoft today announced the PC spec requirements for its upcoming online-only game For Honor, and they're not too demanding.

For Honor looks awesome in theory, and the premise is certainly interesting--gamers take on the role of Knights, Samurai or Vikings and battle each other in a never-ending war triggered by a malevolent god--but I'm not too enthusiastic about the game being online-only for one reason: no dedicated servers. That's right, For Honor will require a persistent internet connection for its dynamic PvP battling, and will be powered by peer-to-peer networking. Oh, and For Honor has a solo campaign, but that will apparently need an online connection too. But in any case, let's get on to the specs!

The following AMD and NVIDIA desktop video cards will be supported when For Honor releases:

Engineer Fritzchens Fritz has peeled off the Xbox One's APU cap to take a look at the scintillating die beneath, giving us an interesting look at the SoC that powers the original fat "Durango" Xbox One model.

The Xbox One's customized APU is based on AMD's Jaguar microarchitecture, and features a 1.75GHz AMD Jaguar CPU with two quad-core modules alongside a customized Radeon GPU clocked at 853MHz with 14 GCN compute units at 1.31 TFLOPs of power, which sits it around an HD 7870 (Pitcairn). The die also houses 47MB of on-die RAM, which boosts the die's actual size.

The die is 363 mm sq, and we can see some of the integral microarchitecture that powers the system: the system memory controllers at the top left and bottom left, the two quad-core Jaguar CPUs that sit below either memory controller, the SRAM module in the middle of the Jaguar CPUs and on the top and bottom right of the die, and the AMD Radeon GPU cores in the middle.

While the Samsung Galaxy S8 is the most anticipated smartphone for the next few months, there is a lot of fuss about the new LG phone as well.

The LG G6 will be unveiled before the S8, on February 26th in Barcelona. The new images from the case maker Ghostek give up a glimpse of what to expect from LG's flagship.

The images show the case that company is doing for LG, but we can also see the phone inside the case. According to the images, the G6 will come with a dual camera and a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone.

Can you believe that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was the #1 game of 2016? I can't either, but according to NPD Group's latest monthly report, which tracks sales in the US only. This isn't global, but the US is a pretty big market for gaming.

Battlefield 1 was in second place, but whimpered just 10% more sales than EA's last Frostbite-powered game, Star Wars: Battlefront. This is also a sign that BF1 wasn't the massive game EA and DICE, and gamers were hoping for. Surprisingly, The Division was in #3 - but Ubisoft has been making some large and swift changes to the game since it launched.

My favorite, Overwatch came in #7 place, while even Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 was in the top 10 sitting in #8. Remember that NPD Group doesn't consider digital sales in Battle.net titles, so Overwatch would be much higher on that chart if they did.

I hate to be the ringer of bad news, but the entire gaming market - both consoles, and PC - dropped 12% in the United States in 2016 compared to 2015's numbers.

The latest report from NPD Group said that PC software sales increasing by 5% in 2016 - compared to the 13% drop in 2015 - while console and portable software dropped 6%, hardware dropping by a larger 24% chunk, and accessories with a 6% drop. Overall, the gaming industry in the US dropped 12% to $12.1 billion.

Do you think the release of the Xbox Scorpio and Nintendo Switch will help console hardware, software, and peripherals sales this year? What about the next-gen Ryzen CPU from AMD, RTG's upcoming Vega GPU, NVIDIA's new graphics cards - and hopefully a tease of Volta at GTC in May? And, what games are looking to be big sales - because 2016 was filled with massive AAA titles, but 2017 isn't looking as lucrative to game publishers in terms of large sequels.

If there's a system seller for the Nintendo Switch, it would be The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which we're now hearing more details on.

During an interview with Eurogamer, veteran designer Eiji Aonuma - who has acted as the director, as well as the producer on each Zelda game since Ocarina of Time, and acts as a Godfather to the series, teased new details on Breath of the Wild.

The physics engine was a topic of discussion, where Aonuma said: "Another example of a challenge we faced was the physics engine. We wanted a consistent physics engine throughout the world that worked in a logical and realistic way. Actually implementing that was sometimes more complicated than it seemed. [For example], one day I picked up the latest build of the game and went to an area, and saw that all the objects that were supposed to be in that area weren't there. I was quite surprised and confused, and I realised after asking the programmer, the reason the objects weren't there was because the wind in-game had blown them all away". Amazing stuff, eh?

HDR gaming is continuing to pick up steam, with Hitman to soon join the HDR club in an upcoming patch that will be pushed out next week.

All versions of the game will receive HDR functionality, with the PC, Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game to be updated on January 31. Square Enix and IO Interactive have released a screenshot teasing some of the improvements to expect, but you really need a HDR TV or monitor to understand the difference - and it's big.

The developer teases: "As an example, think of 47 in a dark room looking out a bright window. Without HDR you would not be able make out what's outside, whereas with HDR you can simultaneously see details inside the room and outside the window. Another extreme example is the sun. Without HDR we could not render the sun brighter than a white piece of paper, so we had to 'simulate' the sun being blinding. With HDR we can draw the sun several times brighter, so that it is actually close to being blinding, just like in real life".

Earlier this month, HMD unveiled their first Nokia-branded Android smartphone, and the device proved to be an instant hit.

In its first flash sale for the Nokia 6, the device sold out in just one minute. While we don't know how many units have been sold, this isn't surprising considering that the phone received over a million registrations for their first flash sale.

The Nokia 6 has a 5.5-inch full HD display wrapped in 2.5D Gorilla Glass. The device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor with X6 LTE modem. The phone comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.

MSI today announced the winners of its VR Jam contest, which had over six hundred teams across 72 countries competing for a chance to win awesome prizes from MSI, including its GP52M VR gaming laptop and its high-end Aegis X gaming desktop.

MSI has announced four winners from the contest: 1st prize goes to the Netherlands' Sander Sneek with the VR game Block Rocking Beats; second plays goes to England's Dan Knight and Ben Barton for their game Mass Exodus; third place goes to Serbia's Slobodan Stevic and Nand Ognajanovic for their VR game Derail Valley.

The MSI community choice award goes to Ghost Alpha Project, a VR game that sees players as a futuristic ninja that wields transforming lightsaber-like weapons to wreak havoc on their foes. Oh man, that sounds like a blast.

The new Samsung flagship is, with the new iPhones, the most anticipated phone every year, and naturally, there are many rumors floating around before the official launch.

We have already heard many rumors about the Galaxy S8. The newest leak shows a beautiful edge-to-edge display and no physical buttons on the device which could mean that Samsung has removed the physical home button and flanking touch buttons, pushing the fingerprint sensor into the display itself.

The rumors also suggest that the Galaxy S8 might stick with the headphone jack after all, something that had initially been questionable.

When Faraday Future unveiled their first production vehicle at this year's CES, they were bragging that their electric car has faster acceleration that Tesla's Model S P100D, the quickest production car in the world.

Tesla's Model S P100D Ludicrous mode could achieve 0 to 100 km/h (0-60 mph) acceleration in 2.46 seconds, but Elon Musk said that there is room for improvement with the latest software update, Ludicrous+.

As it turns, Musk was right since a Model S P100D accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in just 2.389 seconds, after the latest software update. According to Faraday Future, their car can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.39 seconds, meaning that Tesla beat them with one software update. Also, Faraday Future plans to start the production of the FF 91 in 2018.

UPDATE: "Project Louisiana" is Pillars of Eternity 2, not Fallout: New Orleans. Obsidian has confirmed that it isn't currently developing a Fallout game, despite their desires to do so.

Original story is as follows.

Obsidian Entertainment is teasing "Project Louisiana," a new upcoming game that could very well be a new Fallout game based in New Orleans.

Xiaomi has launched the Redmi Note 4 in India, a smartphone that offers good specs for a low price.

The phone has a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS LCD, and the design is completed with 2.5D curved glass. The device is powered by a Snapdragon 625 and comes in three variants: 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

The phone packs a 4,100 mAh battery and since I was pretty pleased with the Redmi Note 3 battery life, I expect nothing less from the Redmi Note 4.

At CES, ZTE announced the Blade V8 and Blade V8 Pro, their new dual-camera smartphones.

While the Blade V8 is expected to hit the markets in February, the Blade V8 Pro is now on sale, and if interested, you can get the phone at company's official website.

The phone comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD display with Gorilla Glass 3.0. It is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 625 processor on a 2.0GHz octa-core CPU and comes with 3GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage expandable by microSD card.