The big buzzword with graphics cards and gaming right now is definitely ray tracing, but it has been (mostly) exclusive to NVIDIA graphics cards... but it looks like Team Red might be joining Team Green (and even Team Blue) with ray tracing support sooner rather than later.

The latest rumor is that AMD's new Navi GPUs will receive a new driver update that will add ray tracing support for Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards (Radeon RX 5500 series and the flagship Radeon RX 5700 series) which has been spotted in AMD's latest Radeon drivers that support Gears 5.

AMD doesn't have full hardware ray tracing on its current first-gen Navi GPUs, but the second-gen Navi GPUs coming in 2020 as well as the custom Navi GPU that the company is making for Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Scarlett console and Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 console will have proper ray tracing support, and they'll both handle ray tracing differently.

Activision-Blizzard have been on seriously hot water, along with a large list of companies bowing to Chinese censorship pressure, but now Blizzard Entertainment (wholly owned by Activision, don't forget that) has buckled under pressure from gamers. Blizzard is even issuing 1000-year bans on their forums (yes, 1000 years -- that's not a typo).

Blizzard Entertainment president J. Allen Brack said in a statement on Blizzard's website that Blizzard didn't make their decision to suspend pro-Hearthstone player Ng "Blitchung" Wai Chung or take his prize money because of his views of what's going on in Hong Kong.

Brack explained: "The specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision. We have these rules to keep the focus on the game and on the tournament to the benefit of a global audience, and that was the only consideration in the actions we took. If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same".

As Blizzard's image tanks and burns thanks to the recent Hong Kong controversy, Chinese-owned Riot Games cautions League of Legends esports players to avoid "sensitive topics" during on-air streams.

After seeing what's happening to Blizzard, Riot Games wants to stay completely out of any fiascos or PR nightmares. It's trying to stay neutral by reminding streamers and esports pros to avoid discussions of Hong Kong or any other geo-political or cultural incidents. But as a China-owned company, gamers are having a hard time believing Riot Games is doing anything but censoring outcry and kowtowing to Tencent and the Chinese government.

"As a general rule, we want to keep our broadcasts focused on the game, the sport, and the players. We have reminded our casters and pro players to refrain from discussing any of these topics on air," Global Head of League of Legends Esports John Needham said in a statement.

The use of exoskeletons can and will be vast as the technology matures and time passes, with researchers over at the University of Grenoble releasing their results of a trial using a 4-limb robotic system that helps patients with tetraplegia, which is the loss of control of all four limbs.

The most tricky way of using the system is finding a patient with tetraplegia and getting them hooked into the system, with 28-year-old French man 'Thibault' using the suit. It's not a fully-baked and ready-to-use suit just yet, but in its current trial status the researchers along with the patients can train an algorithm that interprets brain signals which then converts them into physical movement.

Professor Alim-Louis Benabid, president of the Clinatec Executive Board, a CEA laboratory, and Professor Emeritus from the University of Grenoble, France, said in a press release: "Ours' is the first semi-invasive wireless brain-computer system designed for long term use to activate all four limbs".

Will a Final Fantasy VIII Remake happen? Maybe, but Yoshinori Kitase might not work on it.

After nearly 30 years of making Final Fantasy games, Yoshinori Kitase wants a younger generation to step in. He's not retiring--Kitase is leading the charge on the multi-volume Final Fantasy VII Remake alongside Tetsuya Nomura--but he seems a bit weary from RPG development and wants Square Enix's new guard to lead the charge.

When asked if he'd help development on a Final Fantasy VIII Remake once the FF7R was finished, Kitase told Famitsu:

Epic Games' major competitor Blizzard Entertainment is embroiled in a PR nightmare right now, and Epic is keen on capitalizing on it.

Unlike Blizzard, who banned a Chinese player for empathizing with the Hong Kong protests, Epic Games says it won't censor players' political views. "Epic supports everyone's right to speak freely. Chinese players of Fortnite are free to criticize the US or criticize Epic just as equally as all others," Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said on Twitter.

"Epic doesn't engage in politics or take a position on any political dispute. We've simply said we're a neutral game operator and don't seek to limit what players say. This neutrality applies equally to players on all sides of any disagreement."

Google makes some bold promises about Stadia, assuring the service will stream all launch games at up to 4K 60FPS.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming to PC on November 5, and to Google's new game-streaming Stadia platform as a launch game. But what kind of performance will it hit? Playing any game at 4K 60FPS requires some serious CPU and GPU horsepower, often needing an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2080 Ti.

According to Google exec Phil Harrison, all Stadia launch games will run at 4K 60FPS (providing your internet is up to par). And since Red Dead Redemption 2 is a launch game, Rockstar's Wild West magnum opus could likewise hit this spec.

Intel has been muddying up the waters as of recent with their processor stacks. Intel Ice Lake, which is 10nm, is working toward being consumer-available and Comet lake, which is 14nm and also apparently coming soon.

Regardless of your feelings of having potentially confusing naming schemes for Intel's new lineup, which are both labeled 10XXX. There is something to be said for the amount of performance we see thus far.

A benchmark result appeared on the SiSoft Sandra database showing a new Comet Lake entry. The Core i3-10100 is listed as four core and eight threads with an operational speed of 3.6GHz. This is likely omitting whatever turbo boost speeds you may see during regular operation, but time will tell as this SKU comes to light. The really cool part we see here is a quad-core entry into the i3 space, which is also HT enabled for 8 logical processors.

Sony is leaning out its workforce to streamline PlayStation 5 hardware and services development.

On the same day it revealed new PS5 info, Sony reportedly fired dozens of PlayStation Europe staff. It appears the power dynamic is shifting more towards Sony's American-based PlayStation branch, likely due to big first-party hits to come out of the region.

Sony is also likely culling its workforce so it can invest more money into hardware and services for its next-gen PlayStation 5. The console should be pretty expensive to buy thanks to its PCIe 4.0 SSD, Zen 2 CPU, and Navi GPU, let alone manufacture (especially with the U.S.-China trade war), and Sony wants to sell every PS5 at a profit. So it's likely doing what Activision-Blizzard did in 2018: Firing extraneous workers so it has more money for the PS5.

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