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It's been a big year for Xbox, thanks partly to the massive Activision Blizzard acquisition finally closing and the company launching its biggest game for the Xbox Series X|S with Starfield from Bethesda Game Studios. Not only that, but Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass have continued to impress with the sheer value you get for a monthly subscription.

And with Black Friday Sales kicking off, you can be sure there are several great Xbox deals to snap up. One of the great things about the latest generation of Xbox hardware is that it's the most affordable way to jump into the latest cutting-edge games. The first deal highlighted in this list is the Xbox Series S 512GB console with three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. For $279.99 at Amazon or $249.99 at Newegg, it's the perfect gift for new gamers and veterans.

Throw in deals for Xbox Series X|S storage expansion, extra controllers, an award-winning headset from Razer that is currently heavily discounted, and some brilliant games - let's dig in!

REDMAGIC might be a brand you haven't heard of before, but they're part of Nubia -- a Chinese smartphone manufacturer -- the gaming side of the company has just introduced their first gaming display with a 4K 160Hz Mini-LED panel wth 5088 light zones.

The new REDMAGIC gaming monitor arrives in a 27-inch 4K 160Hz package, with multiple Mini-LED partitions for the backlighting mechanism to see optimal display output. The native 4K resolution on a 27-inch is too small, in my opinion, whereas a 32-inch 4K panel would've been better, but the 160Hz refresh on a Mini-LED is still going to be very, very nice for PC gamers.

With up to 2200 nits peak brightness, you're going to be straining your eyes in a dark environment inside of a game, and something bright happening on the screen like an explosion. Awesome. There's also support on the REDMAGIC 4K 160Hz Mini-LED gaming monitor for 99% of the Adobe DCI-P3 color gamut and HDR1400 certification.

If there were a collector's item from NVIDIA's current-gen Ada Lovelace GPU family, it would be the ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 that was personally signed by NVIDIA CEO and founder Jensen Huang and sold in an auction for $16,000.

The super-custom ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 was put up for auction by ASUS to celebrate the launch of the majestic-looking card that I'd never want to actually use, just display it somewhere, with proceeds going to the Make-a-Wish International charity, helping fulfill wishes for children undergoing medical treatment.

ASUS had its custom ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 signed by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, with overclocker Der8auer spending a hefty $16,000 USD on the card, winning the auction. What did he get? Well, not only does he get the ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card that's personally signed by Jensen, but he also gets a ROG Matrix NFT... yeah, NFTs are still a thing it seems.

The UK's Competition Appeals Tribunal has denied Sony's request to strike down and eliminate an anti-competitive lawsuit. Now the appeals court wants more information from Sony before the courts decide what to do next.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is being sued in the UK. The $6 billion class-action lawsuit is on the behalf of 8.9 million UK gamers, and alleges that Sony has abused its position to negatively affect consumers.

Alex Neill, the lawyer representing consumers in this case, says that Sony has a "near monopoly" on digital game and content sales on PlayStation, and it uses this power to mandate "strict terms" that "allow Sony to set the price of digital games and in-game content" while charging a 30% fee for all games and DLC/microtransaction content sold on the PlayStation Store. Neill alleges that this practice leads to "excessive and unfair" prices for consumers.

If you own an Oura Ring you're no doubt already well aware of what it's capable of, and it's very similar in functionality to an Apple Watch. It sits on a finger, like a normal ring, and is capable of monitoring your temperature and heart rate, among other things. And now the company that makes it has a new hire - straight out of Apple.

The hire is Apple's Jason Oberfest, an executive who has been a key part of the health team at Apple since he joined the company from Mango Health back in 2018. That's according to a report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman who was writing in the weekly Power On newsletter this past weekend.

Speaking to Tom Hale, Oura's CEO, Gurman was told that the company is rapidly expanding its network of parents and that with the hiring of Oberfest, the company is now poised to take a deeper dive into the wider healthcare world. It isn't yet clear what that means, or what Oura has planned in terms of future projects, but Hale did reportedly say that Oberfest's arrival is the beginning of a new chapter for the company.

Although Fortnite is a big breadwinner that makes billions of dollars a year, it appears that Epic Games pays a flat 30% commission to all platform holders as part of a blanket fee structure.

The ongoing Epic v Google trial has revealed quite a bit about the Play Store, Google's failed games aspirations, and the Fortnite-maker's business. We've learned that the Play Store has a 70% operating margin (such a high margine unheard of in the realm of gaming, especially for a company that doesn't actually make games...well any more, that is), that Google once floated the idea of actually buying Epic Games with Tencent's help, and that Fortnite has earned $20 billion in revenues.

Now we have some other information that could highlight Epic's current overspending. According to The Verge's live blog of the Epic v Google case, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has confirmed that Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox all charge a 30% commission for games. This isn't a surprise and is generally common knowledge. While on the stand, Sweeney answered questions from Google's legal counsel regarding each platform holder's share take, reiterating a general 70-30 split that the Big 3 charge in order to maintain profitable store infrastructures.

If you're in the market to pick up a brand new pair of high-end wireless headphones you might want to hang fire on making a purchase, at least for a little while. That's following the news that Sonos, the company known for making wireless speakers and soundbars, is readying a pair of new $400+ headphones of its own. It's expected that the new headphones will compete with similar products from brands more familiar to headphone buyers including Apple, Bose, and Sony.

While Sonos is yet to officially confirm the new headphones Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that a release is expected to take place in or around April of 2024. Gurman doesn't say who his source is, but he does say that they are people familiar with the matter - the go-to term for unnamed sources these days.

Bloomberg contacted Sonos for comment on its plans although the company understandably declined to offer any commentary. However, CEO Patrick Spence is thought to be keen to find new ways for Sonos to make money following the decline of demand for smart speakers with products like headphones thought to be one area where Sonos could find additional revenue.

In a world where there is are seemingly exponential options when it comes to convenient streaming services, physical media sales are down with less and less people going out and buying Blu-rays of their favorite movies and instead just catching them on Netflix.

Famed directors such as Guillermo Del Toro, and Christopher Nolan have expressed concern regarding the dwindling physical media sales of movies, and the power streaming services such as Netflix have over film history. The directors point out that if Netflix remove a movie from its directory because the views its getting are no longer proportional, or profitable, compared to what it costs to have it on Netflix's servers, the movie is gone forever and can never been seen again.

Nolan recently touched on this, saying, "There is a danger, these days, that if things only exist in the streaming version they do get taken down, they come and go." This statement from the Oppenheimer director was backed up by Guillermo Del Toro, who wrote, "Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (where people memorized entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility. If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc etc of a film or films you love... you are the custodian of those films for generations to come."

Minecraft isn't just a game where you can let your imagination and creativity run wild; it can also be used to demonstrate real-world projects, or at least that is what Japan's government appears to be doing.

A new report from Automaton Media has highlighted a video posted to a YouTube account that's linked to Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism. The video states it is a demonstration of the ongoing Tatsuno Dam project and is a recreation of what is going to be built in real life.

The construction for this dam is currently underway in Kumamoto, Japan, and the video shows off a birds-eye view of the entire project, with the video creators even factoring in the surrounding environment. Reports indicate the video has caused a stir in the online Japanese community, with some users praising the Minecraft world creators' precision in replicating the real-world location within the game. The Tatsuno Dam is expected to be completed and operational sometime in 2024.

NASA has revealed never-before-seen features within one of the biggest star-forming regions in the galaxy, Sagittarius C, which is located approximately 300 light-years from the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*.

The space agency has taken to its website to explain that thanks to Webb's highly sensitive infrared instruments, the observatory is able to cut through dense regions of dust and gas, revealing never-before-seen details that lead researchers to understand more about the evolution of the universe. Additionally, Webb being able to see directly into the heart of our galaxy enables astronomers to test their theories of star evolution in the most intense star-forming regions in the galaxy.

NASA writes in its blog and on its social media channels that the above image contains an estimated 500,000 stars, and among these stars are clusters of proto-stars, or stars that are still in the process of gaining mass. Sagittarius C is located approximately 25,000 light-years from Earth, and NASA has highlighted specific regions of the image that astronomers have identified.

It was a few weeks ago when a group of researchers published a paper claiming they had discovered the origin of the mysterious rocket that crashed into the surface of the moon.

The researchers reported that the strange double crater discovered on the surface of the moon lined up with the trajectory of this rogue rocket. Additionally, the researchers traced the rocket's trajectory back to China, specifically the Long March 3C rocket body that was discarded from China's 2014 Chang'e 5-T1 mission.

Reports indicate that an undisclosed additional payload aboard the rocket is what caused the strange double crater that one aerospace engineer said, "This is the first time we see a double crater," per Tanner Campbell from the University of Arizona. Campbell further explained that to get two craters roughly the same size, you need two "roughly equal masses that are apart from each other".

The artificial intelligence industry has been rocked over the last couple of days as the leading company, OpenAI, had its CEO ousted by its board of directors.

Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, the developer behind the highly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, was fired from his position at the company and was quickly snapped up by Microsoft to run its entire advanced AI research division. However, 700+ of the 800 employees at OpenAI wrote a letter to the company's board of directors demanding Altman be reinstated to his position, or they would walk off the job and go straight to Microsoft, along with Altman.

Currently, Altman is reportedly in "intense discussions" with OpenAI's board of directors on his return to the company, with, at the time of writing, no official confirmation as to whether he will be reinstated. So, where does the letter fit into this? Elon Musk took to his personal X account to share a letter penned by former OpenAI employees and sent to its board of directors. The letter outlined several concerns and requested the board conduct an internal investigation into the allegations and take appropriate action.

If you thought that the launch of the Apple iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro as well as the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro signalled an end to the flagship phone releases for 2023, you were very much mistaken. We're now expecting the OnePlus 12 to be unveiled within the next couple of weeks and now we also have an idea of when we'll be able to buy it, too. And that includes those of us who don't live in China.

We'd already been told by OnePlus to expect a big unveiling to celebrate the company's tenth birthday and now that looks to be the OnePlus 12. An event is to be held on December 4, 2023, and it's a safe bet that this will be the next big thing in the company's lineup. The OnePlus announcement of the event came via the Chinese social network Weibo with the promise that the new phone would be the "flagship of the decade." But that unveiling is sure to be for the Chinese market only, so what about the rest of us?

Now, leaker Max Jambor has shared details on the X social network which suggests that we won't be waiting too long for a global launch. After initially posting to say that we can expect a worldwide release in early January, the leaker followed that up with clarification that the "early" part was an error which suggests that a release will take place towards the end of that month instead.

Ever since Apple released the first iOS 17 update in September iPhone owners have been reporting various bugs with their devices. Those bugs have steadily been fixed with subsequent updates, and it now appears that another one is on the horizon with yet more bug fixes in tow. However, Apple hasn't confirmed the update and we don't know quite when it will be released. That doesn't mean that we can't make a calculated guess, however.

According to a new MacRumors report Apple is currently testing the iOS 17.1.2 update as seen in the outlet's analytics software. The software version started to appear in the last few days, we're told, which means that people within Apple are likely running it on their own devices by way of a limited beta test.

As for what the update includes, that's difficult to tell for certain until it is released to the public. However, there are a couple of bugs that people continue to struggle with and it's possible that this update is coming to try and fix those for once and for all.

The Apple Watch first went on sale in April of 2015 and we're getting closer and closer to a full decade of the world's most popular watch. But there were of course plenty of prototypes before that model went on sale and we've seen some of those pop up online in recent years. But none of them have been quite so old as this one.

This new prototype is in the hands of the Apple collector Giulio Zompetti with photos shared with 9to5Mac. While Zompetti had previously shared photos of an Apple Watch prototype from early 2014, it seems that this one is even older than that and was being put through its paces in December of 2013.

The newly shared prototype is apparently running a version of SwitchBoard that is based on the same version of iOS 8 that used to power the iPod touch at the time. SwitchBoard is software that is used inside Apple to allow its engineers to test specific features and components of a device before it progresses to wider testing. But there are some other notable differences here as well.

NASA is revolutionizing how spacecraft communicate with a new experiment officially called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC).

According to a NASA blog post found on the NASA JPL website, DSOC has achieved "first light" by successfully sending data via laser to and from a metallic asteroid in deep space. The space agency reports that the milestone in deep space communications was achieved on November 14 when Psyche's flight laser transmitter, a next-gen device capable of sending/receiving near-infrared signals, locked onto a powerful uplink laser beacon transmitted from the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory near Wrightwood, California.

Once the uplink was established, the transceiver was able to focus its downlink laser back at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. The new communications technique enables higher-data-rate communications between ground-based systems and spacecrafts, which will be essential for humanity's next big leap; colonizing the surface of the moon and Mars.

Over the weekend, SpaceX conducted its second orbital launch attempt with the world's largest and most powerful rocket, Starship.

The launch took place on Friday last week and was an overall success, with SpaceX inching closer to being the company that can provide a viable and reusable means of transportation to the lunar surface and Mars. Starship is the launch vehicle to do that, and while both orbital launch attempts ended in an explosion, much knowledge was gained, and milestones were reached.

The main objective for the second orbital launch attempt was to successfully achieve hot staging, or the part of the launch where the booster separates from the main ship. Below, you will find some video footage of SpaceX hitting this milestone with hot staging successfully completed. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk visited the Starship launchpad and reported that it was in "great condition" and won't require any refurbishment, unlike the first orbital launch attempt.

Black holes are almost impossible to observe through telescopes as the massive cosmic monsters have such a strong gravitational pull that light isn't even able to escape them, making them blobs of cosmic darkness that is slowly but surely consuming everything around them.

It was in 2021 that humanity was able to capture the very first photograph of a black hole, specifically the supermassive black hole known as M87. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) analyzed the cosmic monster that is located 55 million light years from Earth, and the EHT data was combined with other radio telescopes to discover that M87 was actually spinning.

Researchers have now looked at the M87 image again and found that the black hole's magnetic field can sometimes be strong enough to stop the black hole from consuming matter. Further analysis led researchers to discover that the magnetic field of the black hole could also be responsible for slowing down the rotation of the black hole, similar to how a spinning top eventually begins to wobble after being spun.

When Apple finally took the wraps off of the Vision Pro headset during the WWDC 2023 event on June 5, it had much of what we'd been told to expect by all of the rumors and leaks leading up to it. One of those rumors was of course the infamous hip-mounted battery pack, with Apple seemingly keen to make sure that it didn't overload the wearer's head with too much weight. However, it seems that the company might be planning to get around that problem if a new patent is any indication.

That patent was spotted by the eagle eyes at Patently Apple and appears to make reference to placing the battery fo a headset into its band, rather than the main unit itself. The theory is that Apple would be able to get around the issue of front-loading the weight and making the headset uncomfortable by moving the battery's weight to the back of the head.

This approach also has an added benefit in that it would help to balance out the weight of the main headset component - all of the electronic magic that makes it work, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, and of course those two displays. The patent itself was filed in Europe and references using an attachable headset mount that could house a battery. The result would of course mean that the Vision Pro would no longer need that external hip-mounted battery that some are so worried about. While the battery will no doubt work as intended, the requirement for a cable running to the battery is a concern for people who want to have the absolute most free ofmovements while wearing the headset.

Whenever you sign into WhatsApp you have to wait for the instant messaging service to send through an SMS with a six-digit code for you to enter. And that's fine most of the time, except when it isn't. And for those times WhatsApp is now implementing a whole new way to verify that you're who you say you are.

As noted by the WhatsApp watchers at WABetaInfo, a new version of the WhatsApp app now available in the App Store seems to have enabled a new feature that allows users to verify themselves using their email address for the first time. The change means that users can now request the verification code be sent to their email address, allowing them to sign in that way.

This is of course huge news for people who need to sign into their WhatsApp account but don't have an active cellular connection. That could be when they are outside of cell service, for example, and is one of those very times when something like WhatsApp could be so vital.