BioWare has confirmed that Mass Effect: Andromeda won't have a season pass, but that's not surprising, considering BioWare RPGs typically don't have season passes. But that doesn't mean the new Mass Effect won't have paid DLC--in fact, it will have microtransactions to fund multiplayer content.

BioWare General Manager Aaryn Flynn recently confirmed that ME: Andromeda wouldn't sport a season pass on Twitter. Like I said above, this isn't really a surprise--in fact, it's to be expected. What is surprising is that the game will have a loot bag style microtransaction model in its online multiplayer mode to unlock features in its card-based economy, likely similar to the one featured in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

And I fully expect Mass Effect: Andromeda to have DLC packs, but we'll have to pay for them a la carte like usual--but PC gamers will likely have to shell out for more BioWare Points.

CES 2017 - With their world's first smartphone, the ZenFone AR, that is both Tango-enabled and Daydream-ready, ASUS also unveiled the ZenFone 3 Zoom.

The ZenFone 3 Zoom is a 5.5-inch smartphone designed to excel at photography with a dual-camera system that comprises two 12MP cameras, one with a f/1.7-aperture, 25mm wide-angle lens and a second with a 59mm lens. Users can instantly switch from the 25mm primary camera to the 59mm camera, giving them a 2.3X optical zoom.

The ZenFone 3 Zoom is also the first ASUS smartphone with SuperPixel camera technology that enables it to focus incredibly quickly and capture clear photos at night or in low-light environments.

CES 2017 - HP has unveiled its latest high-performance monitor in its enthusiast Omen gaming hardware lineup, showing that the company isn't playing around when it comes to high-end gear.

The Omen X 35 is a premium display aimed at pro gamers, featuring a curved ultra-wide 35-inch display that delivers 3,440 x 1440 resolution in a 21:9 aspect ratio for a more complete field of view--the viewing angle clocks in at 178-degrees. The panel has a 2,500:1 static contrast ratio and a refresh rate of 100Hz and leverages NVIDIA's G-Sync technology to ensure low-latency, tear-free gaming, and has a 4ms response time with overdrive enabled.

Apart from the impressive wide angle, spacious screen, and decent G-Sync enabled refresh rates, the Omen X 35's screen is nearly bezel-less: it rocks a micro-edge display with side and top bezels that clock in at just 6.87 mm, adding even more value to the panel itself.

Despite grossing nearly $800 million at the world wide box office, the insane popularity of 'Deadpool' has seen the film top the list of most torrented film of 2016.

According to a report published by Torrent Freak, the Ryan Reynolds lead 'X-Men' spin-off triggered millions of downloads following the February theatrical release, and continuing strongly throughout the year. In no big surprise, Hollywood's 2016 tent pole blockbusters such as 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' followed closely in second place, with 'Captain America: Civil War' and 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' took fourth and fifth place respectively.

Meanwhile, the Digital Entertainment Group confirmed this week that sell-through of packaged movie media on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD was down 9.5% for the year, but digital releases such as streaming and video on demand was up 15.2%.

CES 2017 - Enterprise storage giant EDGE Memory has unveiled a rather sizable lineup of high-end storage, encompassing new SSDs in all form factors including M.2, M.2 PCIe, and SATA racking all the way up to blazing-fast 3D TLC NAND memory.

EDGE Memory's storage fleet is pretty sizable, so I've included a number of product spec sheets that you can find below. The most impressive of the lot is the company's NextGen M.2 PCIe SSD, which features up to 2TB of Tier-1 3D MLC flash memory on the M.2 protocol using PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.2 to hit insane 2.5GB/sec read and 1.1GB/sec write speeds.

EDGE also has some formidable drives based on the SATA protocol that use 3D VNAND flash memory. These include the eMerge 3D SSD, which sports the same grade 3D MLC flash memory as the NextGen M.2 set in a 2.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s profile. This model features 90,000 IOPs and up to 565MB/sec read and 525MB/sec write speeds.

CES 2017 - With LiquidSky, gamers can transform their old rigs into high-end PCs for free--all you have to do is watch ads.

LiquidSky is a more accessible free-to-play and microtransaction-style answer to NVIDIA's premium GeForce Now game streaming service. Using custom built IBM servers outfitted with high-end CPUs and enthusiast-grade NVIDIA video cards, LiquidSky using the cloud to beam supercomputer power to your outdated laptop, desktop PC, Mac, or Android and Apple mobile devices.

Yes, this service will stream PC games from Steam like GTA V on your phone over the cloud, although the touchscreen controls are a bit wonky.

I'm worried about Mass Effect: Andromeda. Actually, I'm worried about the future of the games industry as a whole--it feels like publishers only want to do safe bets and not take any chances. I think this strategy will bleed over into the latest, biggest Mass Effect game, and the RPG elements will suffer because of it.

BioWare has followed certain trends with their recent games: the titles feel derivative, casualized, and more streamlined towards all gamers, not just core RPG fans. Not too long ago, BioWare was known for making great RPGs; now the studio's identity is much more nebulous, much more uncertain. Many of BioWare's core fans who grew up playing Dragon Age: Origins and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic often feel alienated, and know that something is amiss. Games like Dragon Age: Inquisition feel off, as if something isn't right; there's a big immersion disconnect, and it all boils down to one thing: watering down RPG elements.

EA games as a whole are focused more on high-end flashy graphics, environmental effects, and other eye-catching features. While the fluidity of many games are noteworthy, especially those powered by DICE's advanced Frostbite 3 engine, there's a distinct lack of depth to the current games (with the exception of Respawn's Titanfall 2, which had impressive depth...but Battlefield 1's campaign could've been so much more than what it felt like, which was a glorified tech demo). Dragon Age: Inquisition is very guilty of this, and it felt like BioWare put graphics and effects over the meat and potatoes of the game itself.

://CES 2017 - The new Sandisk Extreme Pro USB 3.1 Solid State Flash drive now features SSD performance in a portable aluminum body.____

There have been rumors of the technical specifications of Vega 10 before, but VideoCardz are reporting again about the old slide from September and "what we know today".

This is great, as it can show how much the rumors nearly 6 months ago were pretty solid - so let's go over it again. Vega 10 will rock its 14nm GPU goodness, with 64 compute units (which are now called NCU). Vega 10 will consume up to 225W of power, and will be released in the first half of this year.

We should see two variants, one with 8GB of HBM2, and another higher-end card with 16GB of HBM2 - both offering 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

CES 2017 - Considering smartphone-makers are borrowing Apple's "bravery" by nixing headphone jacks on new smartphone models, companies are starting to look into wireless earbuds. Now Sony has taken a move from Apple's playbook with its own wireless earbuds.

Instead of "bravery" or modern technological advancements, Apple's wireless AirPods conjure up other mental images--ridiculous cash-grab, to name one--but now that upcoming phones will start shipping without 3.5mm headphone jacks, the easy-to-lose audio buds are a trendsetter. Sony is next in this new forefront with its own wireless earbuds.

Sony's wireless buds come with a case that juices them up with on-the-go recharging, and are much more stylish than the Airpods, which look like two Oral B toothbrush heads. Sony's proprietary take on Apple's Airpods are just in their prototype stages, and don't have a release date or price just yet, but we should see more info drop later this year.

Microsoft is teasing that its upcoming "monster" 4K-ready Project Scorpio console could be unveiled at E3 2017, months ahead of the system's planned Holiday 2017 release.

Project Scorpio has excited millions of Xbox fans across the globe, and even key Microsoft execs are pumped for Scorpio's "new era of 4K console gaming." Xbox exec Aaron Greenberg recently said that "2017 is the year of Project Scorpio," following it up by asking gamers if they're "ready for the beast," and now Xbox spokesperson Major Nelson has dropped some not-so-subtle clues on Twitter by counting down the days until E3 2017.

Read Also: Project Scorpio renders games in native 4K

CES 2017 - Cherry, the company behind the world's most popular mechanical keyboard switches, today announced its new Cherry MX Board Silent keyboard.

This is a no-frills keyboard optimized for dependability and silent use--you won't find any fancy RGBs on this mechanical board. This particular model is based on the popular G80-3000 mechanical keyboard, and features uniquely rubber pads on the insides of the key switches to ensure ultra-quiet keypresses. "The integrated 2-component stem reduces audible clicks at the bottom-out and top-out to a minimum. As with every other MX switch, these features include a sturdy housing made of plastic polymer, a precise spiral spring, and the unique Gold Crosspoint contact technology."

The Cherry MX Board Silent comes in plain black and grey flavors with either Cherry MX Black or Cherry MX Red switches. As far as reliability goes, the Cherry MX Board Silent has impressive dependability ratings including 50 million keystrokes, a Mean Cycles Before Failure of 1 billion operations, and a Mean Time Before Failure of 80,000 hours. Cherry backs the board with a 2 year warranty to boot.

Following from last year's promise that the FX Network's long running animated hit 'Archer' would continue to run through to season 10, the network have today released the first promo teasers for the show's eighth season.

According to the network's announcement, 'Archer: Dreamland' finds the lead character "mixed up in a deadly game of tug of war between Los Angeles' most powerful crime bosses. Every clue leads Archer further away from his goal and deeper into a mystery involving kidnapping, prostitution and drug addiction."

'Archer: Dreamland' is set to hit screens sometime during the second quarter.

CES 2017 - We've seen some amazing things at CES so far, including NVIDIA's amazing new 4K 144Hz HDR G-Sync monitors, Zotac's tiny-yet-mighty NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mini video card, AvaDirect's beastly custom desktop rig, and Razer's new Project Valerie laptop with triple 4K G-Sync monitors, but now it's Intel's turn: introducing the Compute Card, a fully-fledged computer system that fits in your wallet.

As the name suggests, the Compute Card is the size of a credit card, and is mainly aimed at powering new Internet of Things (IoT) systems and solutions--not consumers. The Compute Card features everything you'd find on a full computer: an onboard Intel SoC that rocks CPUs up to its latest seventh-gen Kaby Lake processors, onboard flash storage, and flexible wireless connectivity to ensure the device can meet a number of different solutions and form factors--from refrigerators and smart kiosks to security cameras.

"Device makers simply design a standard Intel Compute Card slot into their device and then utilize the best Intel Compute Card for their performance and price needs. This reduces the time and resources needed to design and validate the compute block and helps speed up innovation to bring the power of intelligence into an ever wider range of devices."

CES 2017 - An interesting partnership has formed between SoC giant Qualcomm and the upcoming Power Rangers movie, with Qualcomm showing off a new VR experience with a standalone VR headset.

The VR headset in question was powered by Qualcomm's own Snapdragon 820 processor, and not the new 10nm-based Snapdragon 835 (which is a beast, by the way).

As for the VR experience, you started off in a cave where you were being briefed on what was going on, before choosing a character - once you did that, you were in a mech suit of some sort. The graphics were pretty damn good for a SoC powering it, and an older one at that (well, now with the Snapdragon 835 here soon).

CES 2017 - ZOTAC's new GeForce GTX 1080 Mini is mighty impressive for its size, but ZOTAC's upcoming external graphics dock was another thing that surprised me at CES.

The new external graphics dock supports one graphics card at up to 13 inches in length, so you'll have no issues with nearly any card you can throw inside - and it supports up to 3-slot width cards, so even the chunky ones are fine, too.

We have 3 x USB 3.0 connections, 1 x quick charge 3.0 port, 1 x Thunderbolt 3 (Type-C connector), LED lighting, and a 400W built-in PSU. We should see it released before Computex in June, and as for pricing, hopefully under $200.

CES 2017 - You guys should all know how much of a resolution enthusiast I am, so the news of the HDMI 2.1 specification has me beyond excited.

HDMI 2.1 will support a wide range of resolutions and refresh rates, including 4K 120Hz, 8K 120Hz, and even 10K. Yes, 10K. HDMI 2.1 also includes something called Game Mode VRR, which "features variable refresh rate, which enables a 3D graphics processor to display the image at the moment it is rendered for more fluid and better detailed gameplay, and for reducing or eliminating lag, stutter, and frame tearing".

The 'Game Mode VRR' is an interesting addition, which can be explained as a wide-reaching version of G-Sync and FreeSync. The HDMI Forum says that it'll work on both PCs and consoles, so we definitely need to try that out as soon as we can.

CES 2017 - Dell continues to push display boundaries, teasing their new 32-inch 8K display here at CES. We're talking about a huge 7680x4320 - with the equivalent pixels of 4 x 4K displays, or 16 x 1080p displays - at a cost of $4999.

The new Dell UP3218K is "refined and ready for production" according to The Verge, with next to no bezel and the ability of pivot, tilt, swivel, and height adjustment. Dell is aiming the UP3218K at graphics, design, photo and video professionals.

Pushing the 7680x4320 resolution will be hard, and thankfully - Dell has pushed 60Hz at 8K, not 30Hz that I would've expected. Dell had to work with NVIDIA right up until the last minute to get driver support at 8K, with Product Launch Manager for Displays at Dell, Michael Turner, explaining to PC World: "[8K] is not practical, not yet. When the next round of graphics cards refresh, they'll get to the point where 8K is mass consumable".

CES 2017 - Mention of Project Scorpio was seen at AMD's Vega and Zen CES 2017 booth...is the graphics giant teasing an answer to our predictions?

Following the announcement of its impressive new Ryzen CPUs, AMD just announced its new high-performance, enthusiast-grade Vega GPU architecture at CES 2017, and is currently holding a booth to showcase this new tech to the public. One thing we didn't expect to see at the booth was mention of Microsoft's new "monster" 4K-ready Project Scorpio console.

Japanese games site 4Gamer snapped an interesting picture that mentions Project Scorpio at AMD's CES 2017 booth. Despite what you think, this isn't a 100% confirmation; AMD was showing a stream of its New Horizons Zen CPU announcement video at the booth, and AMD CEO and President Dr. Lisa Su directly discussed Project Scorpio at the event (you can find mention of that here and in the video embedded below). So this could just be a coincidence and nothing to get crazily excited over, or AMD might be teasing what I've been saying all along: Project Scorpio is built using AMD's latest and greatest technology.

CES 2017 - ASUS unveiled the ZenFone AR - the world's first smartphone that is both Tango-enabled and Daydream-ready. The ZenFone AR was developed in close cooperation with Google to deliver the best Tango and Daydream experiences.

ZenFone AR is also the world's first Tango-enabled device to be powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor and world's first smartphone with 8GB of RAM.

The phone has a 5.7-inch WQHD (2560x1440) Super AMOLED display and comes with Android 7.0 Nougat.