The holidays are just around the corner, and that means huge Black Friday savings. If you're in the market to pick up Sony's PlayStation 4 console you'll be able to grab a console and a free game for just $299.

Some retailers like Sam's Club are actually starting holiday sales as early as next week, offering up great savings across the board. Sam's has a great deal on a PS4 bundle with a free game for just $299, shaving off a clean $50 off the console's recent permanent price drop.

The deal was spotted on the Cheap Ass Gamer forums by an actual Sam's Club employee. The poster also notes that the free game is likely the one included with the PS4 bundles, meaning you probably won't be able to pick a free game off the shelf. Sony offers a number of console bundles including Batman Arkham Knight, The Last of Us: Remastered, Destiny: The Taken King, and the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection bundle.

Everyone who's ever played Fallout has always wanted their very own Pip-Boy, as evidenced by the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy special editions selling out in mere minutes. Now you can make that desire a reality with the Rufus Cuff, a stylized and futuristic-looking device that essentially straps a smartphone to your wrist.

Marketed as "more than just a smartwatch", the Rufus Cuff offers functionalities befit of a fully-fledged Pip-Boy-like "wrist communicator". It sports a 3.2-inch touchscreen and can run Google Play apps, send and receive voice and video calls, play music, and has a full suite of fitness hardware like an accelerometer and gyroscope. Essentially the wearable is a union between smartwatches and smartphones.

"The Rufus Cuff is an advanced wearable device with a revolutionary new take on wrist real estate. With a beautiful 3.2-inch widescreen, radical design, and reimagined form factor, the Rufus Cuff ends the era of the watch and ushers in the Wrist Communicator."

It looks like Activision is ramping up its titanic control over the games industry by setting its sights on the mobile market. Reports indicate that the console gaming juggernaut has bought out the infamous Candy Crush developers King for no less than $5.9 billion.

This merger further solidifies Activision's stance as a leading games publisher, now flexing their long arm over the realm of mobile games. The union could mean some different things for the gaming sector, as we might see a more unified approach to cross-platform integration--think in-app purchases via freemium smartphone mini-games and the like.

"The combined revenues and profits solidify our position as the largest, most profitable standalone company in interactive entertainment," Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said in a press release. "With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before."

Scientists at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science have created a new type of glass that is insanely strong, where it is almost as hard as steel.

Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, Atsunobu Masuno, said: "We will establish a way to mass-produce the new material shortly. We are looking to commercialize the technique within five years". This breakthrough is significant, as it could, and most likely will lead to the development of much tougher windows, and so much more.

How does the new glass work? The Asahi Shimbun reports: "Oxide glass mainly consists of silicon dioxide, with its strength boosted by mixing in alumina, an oxide of aluminum. But it had been difficult for scientists to form glass containing a large amount of alumina because the oxide causes crystallization when the glass comes into contact with its container".

Last night I watched Angry Joe's great review on Halo 5: Guardians, where he talked about some of the large issues on the Xbox One exclusive. Angry Joe said that there is no split screen gameplay, which is something that is a huge miss compared to the previous titles in the franchise. Before you watch the video, there's a NSFW warning for language.

Angry Joe called over 'Other Joe' where they were "immediately met with the first sign that this isn't the Halo I would fall back in love with" when he found out there was no split screen goodness on the Xbox One. Joe had to buy an entire second Xbox One and a second copy of Halo 5 just so he could play with Other Joe.

The reason for the removal of split screen in Halo 5? According to Xbox boss Phil Spencer, "the teams make decisions based on the bar that they want to hit for complexity of what they're going to run on a single box". Spencer added: "we see the robustness of what Xbox Live is today and where people are playing across Xbox Live--you at your house, me at our house. We know that's the vast majority of the co-op play. With Halo 5, the team really wanted to focus on making that experience great, both visually on the screen that you're looking at, and all the systems in place".

With the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, we're finding out more details on the PC version of the game. Treyarch has teased that the PC version of Black Ops 3 will include full modding tools, where you can even create your own maps, and run servers for your modded content.

While Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 launches in a few days, on November 6, the modding side of the game will not reach alpha stage until March 2016. But, the developer has released a bunch of information onto its blog, where they said:

Over the years, the Call of Duty® community has proven itself to be among the most passionate in the world - and we count ourselves fortunate to make games for you.

Since it was released on PC, Rocksteady's ambitious conclusion to their Batman saga has been pretty much unplayable and broken in fundamental ways. Now it looks like the devs and publishers at Warner Bros. have finally given up and are fully admitting they won't be able to completely fix the game, offering full refunds as a result.

"We are very sorry that many of our customers continue to be unhappy with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight," Warner Bros. official community admin said in a recent update on Steam. "We worked hard to get the game to live up to the standard you deserve but understand that many of you are still experiencing issues."

"Until the end of 2015, we will be offering a full refund on Batman: Arkham Knight PC, regardless of how long you have played the product. You can also return the Season Pass along with the main game (but not separately). For those of you that hold onto the game, we are going to continue to address the issues that we can fix and talk to you about the issues that we cannot fix."

Apple may have launched the new iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, but they're expensive handsets, so much so that Apple had its best quarter ever - again. But there are clones popping up, where in China you can pick up an iPhone 6S clone for as little as $37.

The basic iPhone 6S sells for $649 in the US, so this iPhone 6S clone is 20x cheaper, and looks virtually identical. It features a 5-inch screen, comes in three colors, and has a reduced resolution on its display. The real iPhone 6S rocks a 1334x750 resolution, while the iPhone 6S clone drops it down to 960x540.

The iPhone 6S clone runs Android, has a weaker Spreadtrum SC773 processor, 4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM. Comparing this to the A9 processor, 16GB of storage (with 64GB and 128GB models), and a reported 2GB of RAM. However, the iPhone 6S clone rocks two SIM card slots, compared to the one SIM card slot found in the official iPhone 6S.

PAX Australia 2015 - ASUS always impresses us at trade shows, and PAX Australia 2015 was no different. The company was teasing its new super-tiny, ROG-powered Maximus VIII Impact - powered by the new Z170 chipset from Intel and ready for the Core i7-6700K processor.

The ASUS Maximus VIII Impact features the company's SupremeFX IMPACT III sound card, which will provide crystal clear gaming audio all day and night long.

ASUS also had the ROG GR6 on display, offering PC performance inside of the size of a console. It's an ultra-compact gaming desktop, which also happens to look great, too.

PAX Australia 2015 - We stopped by Australian IT retailer PLE Computers at PAX Australia this year, as they had some great stuff that caught our eye. They were pushing a very comfortable, and slick-looking line of gaming chairs, had custom gaming PCs on show, and so much more.

This custom system looked incredible, and was getting a lot of people stopping in awe and snapping photos of it. The color scheme really works with NZXT's custom lighting really displayed well here.

One of the cool things on display at PLE was this awesome HOTAS system.

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On the heels of similar agreements struck with movie studios such as Disney and Warner Brothers, IMAX has inked a deal with 20th Century Fox, which will see some of the biggest films of 2016 get a little bigger.

According to Deadline Hollywood, the agreement will see eagerly awaited theatrical releases such as 'Deadpool', 'Independence Day: Resurgence', 'Maze Runner: The Death Cure' and the as-yet untitled third 'Wolverine' stand-alone picture hit IMAX screens worldwide. And while the forthcoming 'X-Men: Apocalypse' was not mentioned, there's hope that might also get the IMAX DMR upgrade.

PAX Australia 2015 - Aiming to bring virtual reality and motion capture up to another level, Deakin's Motion Capture lab serves as a dual purpose facility to offer education and research towards betterment of games and movies alike.

With its Friday showing at PAX Australia involving a short virtual reality space demo in which you can control limb movement and rotations with your body as the controller, Saturday was an even more impressive experience - hosting a live model testing out a full body motion capture suit.

Deakin Motion Labs director, Professor Kim Vincs, discussed the advancements in the VR and motion capture industries, pinpointing how her facilities help provide a hands-on experience for students. Unfortunately, due to hustle and bustle at PAX, with the added stress of them being next to the extremely loud Twitch booth, further discussion on the future of development was near impossible. Not wanting to disappoint, expect a full feature article from TweakTown as we aim to attend the motion lab early in November.

Aimed at high-end gamers, ASUS' ROG Maximus VIII motherboard series launched a few weeks ago, and today the latest entry makes its way to retail: the ROG Maximus VIII EXTREME flagship.

Features include Z170 chipset support, quad-GPU setup support, 4x DDR4 (3866 OC, 64GB) slots, thermal backplates, 24-bit ESS Hi-Fi Sabre DAC, HDMI/DisplayPort 1.2 ports (max resolution 4096 x 2160 @ 24 Hz / 4096 x 2304 @ 60 Hz), Bluetooth V4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (dual band 2.4/5 GHz), and the ROG SupremeFX 2015 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC, to name several. For the full spec list, head to the product page here.

The board will set you back a whopping $499.99.

Crystal Dynamics is at it again with their latest Lara Croft journey, spinning gritty adventuring magic right before our eyes. Rise of the Tomb Raider looks like it can go toe-to-toe with Naughty Dog's Uncharted series as it portrays the true soul of classic adventurers mixed with harrowing survival.

The new official launch trailer is just as satisfying as the E3 reveal footage, if not moreso. It's a little over three minutes and sets the tone of the story, which revolves around Lara looking for some ancient treasure of immortality that was originally discovered by her father.

Needless to say that she's not the only one looking for this enchanted elixir: a nefarious group called Trinity is hot on her heels to stir up trouble. The game is pretty much everything that Indiana Jones fans would ever want to have, featuring all the classic staples like pouring through ageless texts and matching symbols, solving enigmatic puzzles, exploring deadly ruins and overcoming traps, and generally surviving the brutal wilderness with nothing but sheer strength and determination.

Following recent reports Windows 10 was attempting to self-install on some systems, Microsoft assured the public this was a mistake and would be rectified in short order. That's true (the upgrade will be flagged as an "Optional Update" now or soon), but come early 2016, Windows 10 will officially adopt this behavior when it becomes a recommended update.

To be clear, Windows 10 will not automatically install itself, it will simply begin the process, at which point you can stop it or continue. As well, you can change this behavior and whether or not you see the notification upgrades via settings. Lastly, you'll have the option to roll back to your previous version of Windows within 31 days of installing Windows 10.

Google's newest flagship Nexus 6P smartphone has taken the world by storm, winning over the media and users with unanimous praise. Everyone loves the new handset and sees it as a huge improvement over the Nexus 6, but it looks like the celebrations might be premature. The Nexus 6P is actually incredibly tough to repair.

iFixit recently opened up the Huwaei-made smartphone to see what makes it tick, running through its guts and putting everything back in tip-top order. In a way you could say that iFixit are technical surgeons, popping open devices and handling their innards only to see how difficult it is to do DYI repairs.

Google's Nexus 6P has scored a measly 2 out of 10 on iFixit's repairability scale, noting that the devices is almost impossible to open without damaging the camera's glass cover. What's more is that the display itself can't be replaced without having to "tunnel through" the entire phone, making it super difficult to replace the screen. Huawei clearly didn't have DYI repairs in mind while making the phone.

As a longtime Halo fan, I've always wanted to see the series progress beyond the space-marine shooty-shoot mold that's kept it the same for so long. It's always been about pushing new FPS mechanics to the bar, and at its core Halo is a shooter, but the franchise is so much more...and 343 Industries' Frank O' Connor knows it.

Halo has a thriving, expansive universe of lore, characters and themes that haven't been explored in game form. Sure the Halo games all tell stories and tap this rich vein of possibility, but nothing really comes close to the Halo Legends collection or the books that go beyond the humanity's struggle. Halo is more than Spartans, more than Master Chief...why not explore the Forerunners more, or change up the points of view with different character perspectives?

In a recent interview with TIME, ex-Bungie dev and 343 Industries exec Frank O'Connor talked about what it'd be like to explore the stories that lay beyond Halo's traditional FPS style. "You asked me what I'd be excited about in the future, and certainly in terms of interactivity, I think games or methods of gameplay that aren't simply shooting interest me," O'Connor said, hinting that a new game could bridge gaps in the franchise. "I'd love to go do a xenoarcheological expedition to the original Halo ring. You know, take some scientists down, drive around, catch samples, do some detective work, maybe there's a mystery. And it wouldn't require shooting. It's the universe and environment that can still be exciting, even without action. So that's one of the things I'd love to see us invest more in."

According to reports published by the Wall Street Journal, leading tech giant Google will unify Chrome OS and Android to build a new synergized operating system that will roll out sometime in 2017.

WSJ notes that Google has been planning to fuse Chrome OS and Android for "roughly two years", and have recently made significant progress in the merger. Google plans to showcase an early build of the unified OS next year.

As Android will consume Chrome OS, this means we'll likely see Android-powered PC's. Fusing the beleaguered and under-used Chrome OS with the widely-adopted Android makes a lot of sense, as the two operating systems each have their own strengths. Android has a huge app ecosystem but is pretty bad with a keyboard and mouse, and Chrome OS is optimized for a PC experience, but its "browser-only" approach is more closed off and lacking in software.

PAX Australia 2015 - Alienware was making a big push this year at PAX Australia, where they had countless Steam Machines and even the new Steam Controllers.

Alienware teased the Area 51 system once again, but the cable management was atrocious.

One of the more impressive things at the Alienware booth were the Steam Controllers, and now that we've had some very brief hands-on with the Steam Controller, I can personally say I have faith. The touch pads were very responsive with our quick testing, but I need some more time with it to provide more thoughts on it.