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Black Friday deals are upon us, and ASUS has discounted a range of its products on Amazon and other online marketplaces. Below are some of the best deals on ASUS products.

The madness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday has officially kicked off, with thousands of products discounted across various online marketplaces and retailers. Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer shoppers a great opportunity to snag a fantastic deal on an item they've had their eye on for quite some time, along with the potential to cross a few names off the Christmas shopping list.

ASUS, being one of the leading brands in the PC hardware industry has discounted several of its product offerings, such as its gaming laptops, GPUs, routers, gaming monitors, and much more. Below are some of my personal favorite deals that are currently available on Amazon for a limited time. Happy shopping!

Black Friday is upon us which means discounts have run rampant across online marketplaces such as Amazon, and even some Apple products have had their prices slashed.

The end of November Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are some of the best opportunities to snag a great deal on an item you have had your eye on for quite some time. With Christmas right around the corner, it's also a great time to cross a few names off that present list while saving some money in the process. If your heart is set on Apple, you will likely know Apple products don't often go on sale, but Amazon has discounted a few of the company's offerings with discounts of up to 23%.

Amazon has slashed prices across Apple M3 MacBook's in the 13-inch and 15-inch Air variants, along with an Apple Studio Display, which offers savings of up to $319. If you are interested in an Apple Watch, Black Friday has reduces the price of the Apple Watch Ultra by 16%. Buyers save $69.96 if the purchase is made during the sale period.

SEGA reiterates its new mid-term plans for games development and IP expansion, including its still-in-development Super Game initiative.

Japanese games publisher SEGA has been planning an interesting new strategy for a while now. The company wants to get into live service games and put together a new umbrella term for its idea--"Super Game," a take on mega-hit live service games that rule gaming today. And SEGA happens to have one such game under its wing with Phantasy Star Online. This plan was pared back with the cancellation of Hyenas, a shooter game from Creative Assembly.

A new financial snippet from SEGA's latest annual report shows how the publisher is treating its Super Game strategy in the years ahead. SEGA will allocate over 30 billion yen, or about $200 milion in today's exchange rates, to fund Super Games across the next mid-term range of 3 years.

This week on the TT Show, Jak and Kosta dive into the news surrounding Sony's plans to create a new PlayStation portable gaming handheld that will be powerful enough to run PS5 games natively. It's exciting if true, but it could be a few years off. Such a device has a good chance of hitting the same heights as the company's first handheld, the iconic Sony PSP.

In other handheld news, the duo briefly examines what the upcoming Xbox handheld might look like while discussing the eventual Steam Deck 2 - it's an exciting future for portable gaming. Moving over to the world of OLED displays, rumors point to Samsung unveiling a world first at CES 2025 - a 500 Hz OLED gaming monitor.

This week, Jak and Kosta also discuss some recent hardware they've reviewed. Kosta discusses his recent review of the RGB-lit Razer Barracuda X Chroma Wireless Gaming Headset. Jak goes deep into the massive curved 39-inch OLED panel that powers the new Acer Predator X39 Gaming Monitor.

SCDKEY is bringing the excitement this Black Friday with a range of unbeatable deals, exclusively for TweakTown readers! If you've been waiting for the perfect moment to upgrade your software at an amazing price, now's your chance. For instance, you can secure a Windows 11 Pro OEM key for an incredibly low $23.50 after using the 25% discount coupon code TT25.

And that's just the beginning! They've got a lineup of incredible offers tailored to help you save big this Black Friday. Check out some of the top deals available right now:

The first step toward saving on Microsoft software is to click the "buy now" button on the product page. It's easy to purchase and activate software keys at SCDKEY.com. On the software activation key purchase page for the product you want, just click the Buy Now button. Then simply sign up quickly for your free account (or log in if you're a repeat customer). After you complete your purchase, you will receive your software activation link via email.

Microsoft has reportedly been asked by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to provide information on its business practises in the following markets: cloud, artificial intelligence, and infosec.

According to sources who spoke to CNN, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg, the FTC has launched a probe into Microsoft and requested that the company provide the regulator with information on the three aforementioned businesses and others that aren't listed. What could the regulator be investigating specifically? As for cloud practices that could be in violation, European authorities have pressed Redmond over its deals being exclusive to Azure customers.

Microsoft security could also be another point of interest for regulators as Microsoft's products have recently become compromised, leading to foreign adversaries infiltrating government email accounts and making off with valuable information. As for artificial intelligence, European authorities are already questioning if Microsoft's close $10 billion partnership with OpenAI is intentionally designed to avoid the microscope of an official acquisition but still maintain the level of influence or control on the market.

A former Google employee is being taken to court over allegedly leaking trade secrets about the company's Google Pixel smartphone.

Google has officially filed a lawsuit against a former employee for allegedly leaking trade secrets following his departure from the company. According to Google's legal action filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, Harshit Roy, a former Google employee whose LinkedIn's page states he was at the company for four years starting in 2020, is allegedly responsible for the distribution of internal documents revealing the hardware inside future generation Google Pixel smartphones.

According to the legal action, Roy, who was responsible for the design, development, and optimization of unreleased System-on-Chip (SoC) onto Pixel smartphones, posted confidential information on X about the unreleased chips, shared internal Google documents, and threatened Google with further disclosures. Additionally, Google alleges Roy ignored takedown requests for all of the leaked content he posted, along with Google's effort to resolve the matter "without judicial intervention."

A topic like the 'greatest gaming comeback ever' is always going to be arguable and subjective, but you can't argue with the eligibility of No Man's Sky as a contender for this title - a status which has now been cemented by the views of Steam gamers.

As highlighted by Sean Murray, the founder of Hello Games, on X, the rating for 'All Reviews' as scored by the denizens of Steam has just changed to 'Very Positive.'

As Wccftech, which spotted this, points out, that's a long way from the initial reception way back in 2016, where No Man's Sky got some pretty dire feedback from the original players of the game. It was a long time that it was stuck at a 'Mixed' rating, too, as even when more positive reviews started to weigh in, there was a whole lot of negative historical feedback holding the game back on Steam.

It was only earlier in the month the Australian House of Representatives voted to pass new legislation that bans social media for anyone that isn't over the age of 16.

That new legislation has now been voted upon in the Australian Senate, where it was passed, meaning the details of the Bill "Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age)" will be brought into effect. According to the new legislation, social media platforms will now be obligated to implement age verification checks and strategies to prevent social media platforms from being used by underage people.

Services that will fall under these new policies enable users to post material, interact with two or more people, and interact with all other end users, which all of the popular social media platforms, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and X, all fall under.How this new widespread regulation will be implemented is up to the companies behind the social media platform, not the Australian government.

Panasonic was originally founded in 1918 by Kōnosuke Matsushita under the name Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works, and now the founder has been resurrected by the modern-day Panasonic.

Panasonic collaborated with the University of Tokyo to resurrect Matsushita who died in 1989. Engineers fed 3,000 recordings of Matsushita into an AI, along with any relevant writings, lectures, and interviews. Panasonic's Peace and Happiness through Prosperity (PHP) Institute, a think tank originally founded by Matsushita, plugged all of the relevant data into an AI and trained it to character an AI character that is designed to replicate Matsushita's way of thinking and speaking style.

What's the goal of this? Panasonic wants to use the AI replica of the company's founder as a consultant, querying it in difficult situations to see what Matsushita would do based on the current circumstances. Notably, Matsushita was renowned for his incredible management philosophies in business, and is incredibly celebrated in Japan for the transformation of what was once a business that sold lamps into what Panasonic is today.

Tencent has been caught in hot water after Polaris Quest unveiled "Light of Motiram," a new open-world game headed to PC that appears to be directly inspired - copied - from Guerilla Games' Horizon Zero Dawn.

The announcement came with official listings for the title on both Steam and the Epic Games Store. However, no official release date was revealed. Polaris Quest is a subsidiary of Tencent Games, and according to the announcement and the game's description, Light of Motiram is an open-world survival crafting game that takes players to a world overrun by colossal machines, and judging by what can be seen during the trailer, along with all of the provided images in each of the storefront listings, it's safe to say Light of Motiram is HEAVILY inspired by Sony's Horizon Zero Dawn.

The similarities are close, even down to the font used for the title of Light of Motiram, that I personally believe Sony could file a lawsuit against the title's release, similar to how Nintendo is suing the creators of Palworld for what Nintendo believes is IP infringement. Notably, Tencent and Polaris Quest have now been caught in an online barrage of criticism, with many gamers claiming the company has "ripped off" Zero Dawn and Forbidden West while also copying mechanics from Pocketpair's Palworld. Below are screenshots and more GIFs of Light of Motiram, and by those, you can make your own mind up if Light of Motiram is a copy of Guerilla Games' hit franchise.

Qualcomm had a gigantic marketing push with its Snapdragon X laptops a few months ago, but the company has sold only 720,000 units worldwide capturing just 0.8% market share of the AI PC market.

According to recent reports, Qualcomm has sold just 720,000 units of its Snapdragon X laptops globally over Q3 2024, making up less than 1 in every 125 devices sold. Since launch, Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X series mobile processors have a tiny portion of the Windows laptop market, with less than 1.5% of the ecosystem.

Canalys told TechRadar Pro: "As this was the first full quarter of shipments for Snapdragon X Series PCs, we saw sequential growth of around 180% compared to Q2 2024. However, as a proportion of the total Windows market, the products remain very niche, at less than 1.5% share. The top shipping vendor was Microsoft, which has transitioned most of their Surface line to the platform. Behind them was Dell who has embraced the new platform quite strongly in terms of SKU count, followed by HP, Lenovo, Acer and ASUS (all four with similar volumes)".

Assassin's Creed Shadows has had one of if not the most tumultuous lead ups to release out of the entire Assassin's Creed franchise, and now we have discovered that half of the team working on the project has never made a game before.

The news comes from legendary Assassin's Creed developer Marc-Alexis Côté who is known for his work on previous Assassin's Creed titles and is the current Vice President Executive Producer for the entire Assassin's Creed franchise. Marc-Alexis Côté spoke at the External Development Summit 2024, where he revealed that since the pandemic, Ubisoft has adopted a lot of junior developers, saying, "Probably half the team that's building Assassin's Creed is building a game for the first time."

As for other Shadows news, Insider Gaming has heard that Ubisoft will begin sending out preview/review copies of Assassin's Creed Shadows mid-Janaury, specifically the week of the 13th. Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson wrote that this is an indicator that Ubisoft is on track for the February 14 launch of Shadows, following the delay of the title due to mounting criticism over artistic choices and further polishing before release.

For years, Nintendo fans and gamers have been asking themselves (and others): When will the Nintendo Switch 2 get its big reveal, and when will it launch? The latest rumor from a credible source on the Weibo forum points to an announcement that could be right around the corner - with a release to follow soon after.

Although the source has accurately leaked or confirmed the contents of multiple Nintendo Direct streams in the past, at this point, anything related to the Nintendo Switch 2 release should be taken with a big ol' grain of salt. That said, we'd love for this one to be true.

And that's because the source of the rumor claims that the Nintendo Switch 2 will get its big reveal sometime in January 2025, with a global launch or release sometime in March 2025. This would put the Nintendo Switch 2's release much sooner than many expect, with analysts and insiders currently pegging a second-half-of-2025 release for the long-awaited console.

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW Black Friday Deal is now on, with 50% off the first three months of new GeForce NOW Ultimate and Performance memberships. Ultimate subscribers get access to a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU and can stream their games up to 4K at 120 FPS or 1080p at 240 FPS. Performance tier members can stream at up to 1440p at 60 FPS.

Both plans fall under the new rules limiting the monthly game time GeForce NOW subscribers can access to 100 hours. NVIDIA notes that this time limit covers 94% or most of its users, and those exceeding the 100-hour allotment can continue to game on the 'free' tier or pay extra. This has been widely viewed as a controversial change to GeForce NOW's operation, so it's worth reiterating here.

Back to the Black Friday Deal: In addition to the 50% off GeForce NOW Ultimate and Performance memberships for new users, SteelSeries is offering a 30% discount to members (via the GeForce NOW rewards program) on its Stratus+ and Nimbus+ controllers. These cloud-ready controllers can be paired with any Android or iOS device running GeForce NOW.

Rumors suggest Intel will release its first desktop Battlemage GPU product, the Intel Arc B580, around December 12. We've already seen retail leaks of models online from Intel's partners at ASRock, with new reporting via Videocardz seemingly confirming a reference 'Limited Edition' model of the GPU coming from Team Blue in a couple of weeks.

However, based on the specs and naming, it does look like Intel's second-gen Arc desktop GPU line-up is launching with its entry-level or budget variant first. That's another thing; we also know from the retail listings that the B580 is priced at around $250, making it cheaper than the GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600. Throw in 12GB of VRAM, and it could be a budget winner.

As for those rumors that Battlemage would be Intel's last hurrah in the desktop GPU space, that doesn't look like it's the case. According to @jaykihn0 on X (via NotebookCheck), Intel is developing desktop Arc Celestial GPUs for release in 2025 or 2026, which will be followed up with Arc Druid.

8BitDo's new Xbox Edition Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard and Retro R8 Mouse feature a design inspired by the original Xbox console, specifically the Transparent Green Edition. The custom Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard's arrow keys also adopt the red, blue, green, and yellow of the Xbox controller's ABXY buttons.

Throw in a dedicated Xbox Button that brings up the Windows Game Bar, and it's a pretty incredible-looking keyboard - especially for longtime Xbox fans. Unlike other retro keyboards from 8BitDo, the Xbox Edition includes per-key RGB lighting to complement the transparent design. The Xbox Edition supports Bluetooth and low-latency 2.4 GHz wireless and ships with those large programmable buttons that debuted with the standard Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard.

The custom Retro R8 Mouse is also a looker, with a similar Transparent Green design. It ships with a charging dock and customizable side buttons on the left and right that look like the Xbox controller's ABXY buttons. Hardware-wise, it includes the high-performance PAW 3395 26K sensor that supports an 8K polling rate.

If you own a Belkin BoostCharge Pro Fast Wireless Charger power bank, you need to immediately stop using it, as there's a potential fire risk with this accessory.

Belkin issued a notice of a voluntary recall of all these power banks, the full name of which is the 'Belkin BoostCharge Pro Fast Wireless Charger for Apple Watch + Power Bank 10K' (and the model number is BPD005).

There's a manufacturing defect, we're told, which could lead to the lithium battery overheating and a resulting fire hazard.

Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is widely considered one the best entries the long-running franchise has seen in years, from its campaign to its competitive multiplayer modes and the all-new zombies action. And now we can add 'biggest Call of Duty ever' to its accolades, with Activision announcing that Black Ops 6 has had the biggest 'first 30 days' of any CoD.

"In the first 30 days from launch, together you made Black Ops 6 the biggest Call of Duty ever," Activision's post reads. Regarding three key metrics: total players, the number of hours played, and the number of multiplayer matches, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 sits on top of the Call of Duty mountain.

However, things aren't great for all Black Ops 6 and Warzone players, as Activision's RICOCHET Anti-Cheat initiative, which combats Call of Duty cheaters, is working overtime.

There was a time when every major publisher decided that its PC releases would require signing into and using a custom launcher, which would still be required even if you purchased and wanted to play a game on Steam or the Epic Games Store.

Outside of having more things minimized to your system tray, additional launchers are often buggy and bloated - case in point: the 2K Games launcher.

Well, there's good news: 2K Games has announced that its launcher "has been removed from every game that used it on Epic and Steam," meaning you can play games like Bioshock Remastered, Bioshock 2 Remastered, Bioshock Infinite, The Quarry, the Mafia Trilogy Definitive Edition games, and Marvel's Midnight Suns without having to go through the 2K Launcher.