Walking around the demo rooms at the Snapdragon Summit here in Maui, Hawaii -- I found something really interesting. Qualcomm had a Snapdragon 865 powered pinball machine on display, and it was kinda really cool.

The pinball machine has a huge LCD display in place of all the mechanics and physical parts of a real pinball machine, physically hooked up to a reference design Qualcomm Snapdragon 865-powered smartphone.

Qualcomm housed the Snapdragon 865 smartphone inside of the skateboard on top of the pinball machine, something that looks nice at the front -- but I snapped some photos on the back, too.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer brought home a Project Scarlett console and it's now his primary gaming system. This bodes extremely well for the system's backward compatibility.

Today Phil Spencer sent out a curious Tweet. The Xbox exec has a functioning Project Scarlett console at his home (like a devkit, or a very early consumer prototype build) that works well enough that it's replaced his other Xbox hardware. If it's replaced current-gen hardware, and no games have been released for next-gen, this practically means Scarlett's backwards compatibility is stable enough to run Xbox One games. Phil of course has access to all kinds of pre-release demo builds that gamers will never get their mitts on, but the observation still sands.

"This week I brought my Project Scarlett console home and it's become my primary console, playing my games, connecting to the community and yes, using my Elite Series 2 controller," Spencer said in the Tweet.

Ever wanted to bring a friend along into your Outlast nightmare? Red Barrels has you covered.

A new Outlast game is on the horizon, but it's pretty different than what we're used to. Instead of a totally singleplayer mind-bending horrorfest, the new Outlast lets you bring along some friend. It's called The Outlast Trials, is set during the Cold War and it features four-player co-op for tantalizing terror.

This time around there's no camera. Test subjects (aka players) have night-vision goggles strapped to their heads and are apparently trapped in an underground chasm. You could be American soldiers captured and subjected to nightmarish tortures--or the reverse, a Communist put through mind-breaking experiments on American soil.

Qualcomm may have launched a trio of new SoCs at its annual Snapdragon Summit, including the new Snapdragon 765, 765G and flagship Snapdragon 865 -- but mobile gaming and esports are a huge focus, too.

Let's start with the fact that gaming accounts for a gigantic 43% of all smartphone use, but an even larger (and more eye-opening) 74% of all app store spend. ThIs is serious business, and there are tens of billions of dollars per year to be made -- and it is all continuing to grow.

When it comes to esports, Qualcomm noted during its Snapdragon Summit that they expect 518 million esports viewers in 2020, which is a huge deal.

Starting in June 2020, CD Projekt RED's Witcher card game Gwent will no longer be playable on PS4 and Xbox One.

Today CD Projekt RED announced it will retire Gwent on consoles in summer 2020. The studio plans to copy all console Gwent progress to GOG.com, but there's a catch: Your console data will only be copied if you haven't played Gwent on GOG. If you play Gwent on GOG and consoles, then you're out of luck and your console data will be inaccessible. CDPR won't merge your data.

"Since we do not support the "merging" of accounts, we will only be able to copy progress to existing GOG accounts that do not have any GWENT progression on them at the time the request is made."

Anyone that knows me knows that I'm a refresh rate freak, with my addiction really beginning in the late 90s with Sony's flagship Trinitron G520 monitor -- all the way through to ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q offering 43-inch 4K 120Hz.

But it is Qualcomm that is impressing me, as they're completely dominating (and changing) the game when it comes to high refresh rate gaming smartphone world. The newly-announced Snapdragon 865 is the world's first to support 144Hz mobile displays, joining the current flock of 90/120Hz gaming smartphones on the market.

Qualcomm is working directly with PUBG Corp. for PUBG Mobile, getting it to run smoothly at 90FPS on Snapdragon 855 and Snapdragon 855+ powered phones. But the new Snapdragon 865 handles this, and more -- up to 120Hz and 144Hz now.

Qualcomm is really pushing desktop-level features with the Snapdragon 865, with unparalelled amounts of power that provides huge performance for unreleased smartphones -- but also some important features lke upgradeable GPU drivers.

The new smartphones coming in 2020 powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 will support updateable GPU drivers, with Qualcomm working with Google to have Adreno GPU Driver updates freely available on the Google Play Store.

This small (but very significant) change in Snapdragon 865 with updateable GPU drivers brings mobile users into the world of the PC -- as we've had this for decades. Qualcomm made a point that the GPU updates will come out "well after" the phone itself launches.

Yesterday Bungie announced Season of Dawn, Destiny 2's big new seasonal update that brings back Saint-14. Now they've revealed more specifics on when the content is coming.

Season of Dawn looks to be Destiny 2's most ambitious season yet, complete with a new 6-player Firefight-like horde mode called Defend the Sundial, as well as a ton of new weapons, gear, PVP maps and the return of the Rusted Lands, and a story based on time-traveling. But everything won't be available all at once. Instead, Bungie is staggering the content to last up until March 2020, and it looks like there's no raid and trials isn't returning.

The Sundial will have three big Cabal Psion bosses, and there's a bunch of little public events strewn across the solar system called Obelisks. The Sundial mode will have matchmaking, and there's also a new artifact called Osiris' Lantern. Season of Dawn will introduce a new event/mode? called the Empyrean Foundation in February that's free for all Destiny 2 players. There's also exotic quests thrown in there too.

If you want a new smartphone in 2020 with an insane 200-megapixel camera, then you're going to be using Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 -- as it is the only SoC on the market that supports 200MP camera sensors.

Snapdragon 865 supports up to a 200-megapixel camera sensor, but that doesn't mean every single smartphone will ramp up with a 200MP sensor out of the box, but there will be smartphone makers that want to cram the biggest and most badass beast mode camera into a smartphone and if they want that... there's only one choice for the SoC: Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865.

Snapdragon 865 can not only shoot 4K 60FPS HDR video, but it can snap 64-megapixel photos at the same time thanks to the improvements Qualcomm made to the Spectra 480 ISP.

Nintendo hits it big with U.S. Switch Black Friday sales, amassing a huge 830,000 unit sales during the week-long period.

The Switch won't stop breaking records. On the heels of its big 41 million global sales milestone, Nintendo today announced a huge holiday sales jump driven by Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. The company sold 830,000 Switch consoles in the United States, pushing total U.S. hardware sales to 17.5 million, and breaking the record for the best sales week in Switch history.

The sales spike was driven by introduction of the cheaper handheld-only Switch Lite for $199, as well as strong first-party software like Pokemon Sword and Shield (75% of all Switch owners buy the console just to play first-party games). Discounts and sales were also big drivers to the jump.