Year: 2024

Gaming in Macau continued to recover in May but is still far below the pre-pandemic levels according to the monthly report by the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ).

2023 Upward Industry Trend Continues

The agency overseeing the gaming market in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China revealed that in May gambling operators registered gross gaming revenue (GGR) of MOP$ 15.57 billion ($1.92 billion), an increase of 366% compared to MOP$ 3.34 billion ($413 million) in May 2022.

The May GGR is 5.73% up to MOP$ 14.72 billion ($1.82 billion) registered by the market in April, confirming the market upward trend from February but the rate of sequential monthly increase continued to decrease.

GGR for the first five months of 2023 amounted to MOP$ 64.93 billion ($8.02 billion), which compared to the amount registered in the same five-month period in the year prior (MOP$ 23.79 billion ($2.94 billion)) represents an increase of 173%.

GGR in May 2023 i…

However, Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism is having none of it, as the government has qualms about the feasibility of the project as submitted by Nagasaki.

Nagasaki Misses the Mark with Government

Kyushu Resorts Japan and Nagasaki prefecture will have to go back to the drawing board or fold their bid altogether. Government officials have expressed open worry over the nature of financing of the proposed projects.

There seems to be an unsatisfactory level of commitment outlined in the letters that are supposed to show support and outline the terms of funding. They are customary and usually enough to convince government officials to indeed agree and proceed with the further stages of a project.

As such, the panel that weighed in on the decision said that they still doubted whether the proceedings could move on due to this lingering fear of lack of funds. It’s not just the funding, though, as the panel is similarly dubious of the cho…

In New Jersey and Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City has announced it will spend a minimum of $20 million in “capital improvements” as part of a reinvestment that is to include renovations to the Boardwalk property’s suites, the addition of slots and table games, a new dining outlet and a Starbucks, as well as a revitalization of beachfront amenities.

Commenting on the plan in a recent press release, President of Hard Rock Atlantic City, Joe Lupo said…

“The commitment of these capital dollars from our ownership proves their devotion to enhancing our guest experience, along with the revitalization of Atlantic City and our property which opened after a $500 million renovation less than three years ago.”

Lupo went on to explain, “Our growth over the past year during unprecedented circumstances speaks to guests’ trust in our property and enjoyment of their experiences, which we will continue to evolve and improve.”

Reinvestment details:

According to the presser, the lion’s share of the $20 million investment will be spent on the renovation of 66 Celebrity (North Tower) and 25 Rox…

On Thursday, December 16^th, 2021 Esports Technologies, Inc. (listed on the Nasdaq as EBET), is a top elite worldwide supplier of state – of – the – art complex e – sports betting products, services, and technologies, has recently announced that they have signed a non – legally – binding letter of commitment with Turnt Gaming to function as their exclusive e – sports data provider for the game, Taunt Battleworld.

Taunt Battleworld is a talent – centered and created fighting game simulator developed on Polygon’s blockchain solution. This new fighting simulator will include NFT’s of legendary and historic boxing icons such as Floyd Mayweather and Deontay Wilder. The highly – awaited game is planning to be released in early portion of the year of 2022.

Esports Technologies anticipates and prepares to supply the odds, game balancing, outcome math, and logic models in order to power the realistic gaming features of Taunt Battleworld. This exclusive analytical modeling will offer Turnt Gaming with outstanding live in – game data as well as events in order for them to produce new gaming products and second – screen…

After recently introducing its April line-up of new titles, Isle of Man-based gambling software company Microgaming has enhanced its crew of talented studio partners, having penned an “exclusive” content supply deal with GONG Gaming Technologies.

The innovative startup was established in 2020 by “super-experienced and passionate industry veterans,” who, according to a recent press release, have more than 20 years of gaming industry experience, and are focused on creating “sensational, premium entertainment products.”

Games portfolio:

While the company is still in its infancy, it already boasts a sizeable portfolio of games, including two new games, Skulls Heap and Pirate’s Quest, both of which were prior collaborations with Microgaming and released to positive feedback. The Malta-headquartered gaming studio’s offering is distinguished by innovative tech, engaging narratives, and distinctive themes.

“It’s great to see a new studio bringing multiple games to the market so quickly, and we’re thrilled to welcome GONG to our platform,” commented Andrew Booth, Director of Games for Microgaming.

<…

Asian casino operator Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited could reportedly soon be de-listed from the Nasdaq bourse under rules adopted by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in January.

According to a report from GGRAsia, the Hong Kong-headquartered firm behind a trio of Macau casinos was yesterday reportedly placed on the federal agency’s provisional list of foreign companies that are set to be de-listed. The source explained that the revelation saw the value of individual shares in the operator immediately plummet by more than 5.7% to stand at approximately $6.50.

Federal foundation:

Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited is responsible for Macau’s impressive City of Dreams Macau, Studio City Macau and Altira Macau venues as well as gambling-friendly facilities in Cyprus and the Philippines. However, the company run by billionaire businessman Lawrence Ho Yau Lung is now purportedly facing the real prospect of being de-listed after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission brought in the new regulations for Chinese companies under the domain of the nation’s Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act.

Auditing ar…

In South Korea and the Chinese firm building an $800 million integrated casino resort near the port city of Incheon has for a second time reportedly been granted an official one-year extension to its construction deadline.

According to a report from Inside Asian Gaming citing a story from Gyeonggi News, the local arm of Guangzhou R&F Properties Company Limited was furnished with a year-long supplement by South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism last March after initially asking for a three-year postponement that would have given it until the spring of 2024 to complete all work on the envisioned 750-room development. The source detailed that this opening reprieve was granted after the subordinate experienced delays linked with the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing departure of its American operating partner, Caesars Entertainment Incorporated.

Treble try:

However, the South Korea subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed Guangzhou R&F Properties Company Limited has now reportedly been granted another one-year extension on the provision that it increases its total investment in the five-star project being built near Incheon International Airport by…

EA Sports has ignited excitement across the gaming and sports communities with the release of ‘College Football 25’, marking a significant return after over a decade-long hiatus. This launch is particularly momentous as it revives one of the most beloved sports video game series, blending nostalgia with innovative modern gameplay.

Enhanced Preparation for a Smooth Launch

To prepare for the massive influx of eager gamers, EA Sports significantly bolstered their server capabilities, ensuring that the launch would accommodate the anticipated high demand smoothly. The game was released amid high expectations, and the initial response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive, reflecting the game’s quality and the depth of its features.

The return of the ‘College Football’ series was made possible by resolving previous legal issues related to the use of college athletes’ likenesses. With NCAA rules now allowing for such uses, EA Sports has included the likenesses of over 11,000 current athletes in ‘College Football 25’, each compensated for their inclusion. This not only adds a layer of realism and aut…

Macau’s Financial Services Bureau released the results for the first quarter of 2024 on Monday, April 22, 2024, and the city earned 116.8% more on taxes than in the same period last year.

Increased revenue:

The city earned around MOP21,92 billion, or US$2,74 billion in fiscal revenues from taxes imposed on gaming operations during the first three months of the year. To compare, in the first three months of 2023, Macau collected MOP10,11 billion in taxes. The main reason is the reopening the city’s economy after measures against COVID-19 were completely lifted. Various travel restrictions lasted for three years in this regulated market.

The revenue collected from gaming is 84.2% of the city’s total revenue in this period, ending on March 31. Only in March did gaming taxes bring around MOP7,13 billion to the state. However, the revenue in March decre…

There’s less than a week until the iconic gaming and hospitality resort, The Mirage Hotel & Casino, is expected to close its doors to visitors. The closure is related to a complete overhaul of the property that will transform it into Hard Rock Las Vegas.

July 17 will mark the closing date of the Mirage, putting an end to an era in the history of Sin City. The Mirage confirmed that it will host a farewell ceremony before closing its doors. The ceremony will start at 9 AM on July 17 and will include speeches from recognizable faces within the gambling sector, including Hard Rock’s chairman and CEO of Seminole Gaming, Jim Allen, as well as the Mirage’s president, Joe Lupo, among others.

Currently, some 1,700 workers at the casino resort are represented by the Culinary and Bartenders unions. The unions played a key role in helping workers affected by the closure to find new jobs with efforts including job fairs, information and training campaigns.

Ted Pappageorge, the Culinary Union’s secretary-treasurer…

In Macau and the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau regulator has reportedly announced that all of the enclave’s many land-based video slots will be required to feature an on-screen clock as standard by the conclusion of 2024.

According to a Friday report from GGRAsia, the government agency detailed that this directive is contained within the city’s new Electronic Gaming Machine Technical Standards 2.0 regulations, which came into force from the first day of the month. The source explained that these fresh rules apply to all of the many thousands of land-based video slots in the former Portuguese enclave and are to govern the watchdog’s approach to the local gambling scene moving forward.

Interval imperative:

The Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau reportedly disclosed that the new rules will oblige all slots in Macau to feature a digital clock at the bottom right-hand corner of their main screens. This affectation is to purportedly be required to flash up at the beginning of each player session and every subsequent ten minutes to display the current time via a twelve-hour format.

Toggle taboo:

Inside Asian Gaming reported that t…

A Starfield mod that replaces the game’s native FSR 2.2 support with DLSS 3.5 and enables Frame Generation has had its DRM cracked. The premium mod had been previously locked behind a Patreon paywall to support the mod’s developer, PureDark, but has swiftly been removed by a popular cracking website. 

Starfield offers so-far exclusive support for AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.2 (FSR 2.2)—a decision that raised the hackles of many on the internet. It’s generally seen to be a result of AMD’s partnership with Bethesda for the game, and not for technical reasons. Somewhat proven by how swiftly modders have since added DLSS and XeSS support into the game’s settings menu.

There are multiple mods already available over on Nexus Mods that promise to swap out AMD’s own upscaler for Nvidia or Intel’s. One from PureDark and two from LukeFZ.

PureDark has so far released two such mods for the game: one that enables DLSS 2.0 or Intel XeSS support, which has been released for free on Nexus Mods; and another that enables DLSS 3.5 and Frame Generation, which is behind a $5 Patreon paywall and was protected by DRM. 

Just as swiftly as these mods were …

After powering through Nightdive’s superb System Shock Remake, former Looking Glass developer Marc LeBlanc has returned to Twitch and YouTube to stream The Black Parade, a lauded mod that presents an interquel between the classic Looking Glass stealth games, Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age.

Thief modding is one of those little universes all its own, comparable to other retro treasure troves like the Doom and Quake scenes. Even still, the recent 10-level campaign The Black Parade is in a league of its own, boasting utterly huge levels, new voice acting and gadgets, as well as fresh systemic interactions like house servants who will clean up your sound-dampening moss arrow surfaces or relight torches you’ve extinguished. YouTube reviewer MandaloreGaming argues it might even represent a new peak for the series all these years later.

LeBlanc is an industry veteran who worked on Looking Glass’ essential games like Thief and System Shock. His streamed longplay of the System Shock Remake features his thoughts on Nightdive’s changes (he mostly dug them) as well as some ’90s development war stories.

From the jump in his first, abortive attempt at The …

There was a time in my early teenagehood where I was so entrenched in anime and JRPG brain rot that I convinced myself I was talented enough to make a game all of my own. That never happened, of course, but the one thing I do remember from that time was how much fun I had poking around in RPG Maker. It’s a great little bit of software that’s birthed some bangers like Corpse Party, To the Moon and Mad Father. And right now, one of its older versions is totally free on Steam.

RPG Maker XP, the fourth iteration of the toolset, is free to nab until February 19 at 10 AM PST. The deal is on as part of the RPG Maker Festival 2024 and “RPG Maker Day” on February 15, which celebrates the engine and a bunch of neat games that have come out of it.

It’s probably not the best RPG Maker on the market these days—though the actual answer on which one is depends on who you ask—but for no cost, it’s a great entry point to dabbling with developing a wee RPG of your own. RPG Maker XP has been pretty widely used over the years, and was the engine behind the now-dead Pokémon Uranium fan game. The toolset is sat at a 93% “Overall Positive” review on Steam too, so it’s ce…

It’s hard to explain the appeal of the various Truck Simulator games to someone who hasn’t played them. They’re almost like chill-out games, an experience where you do all the thinking at the start (your route and cargo) before relaxing for a while with the radio and watching the scenery drift by. I’m sure the actual trucking life is very different but, to me, these games are all about achieving a kind of highway zen.

Maybe the trucking life is not that different, however, because one of the biggest transportation companies in the world, Schneider National, is now looking at American Truck Simulator players… and it likes what it sees—a veritable hotbed of truck-loving talent that may well need a job, and want to try out the real thing.

American Truck Simulator now features billboards with recruitment ads dotting its virtual United States (thanks, GamesRadar+), which point players towards Schneider’s careers page. And according to the developers, this is the first of what may be many.

“Even though we’ve previously used the in-game billboards to showcase a variety of exciting updates,” says SCS Software in an update, “this new add…

People did a lot of things to pass time during the early pandemic lockdowns: learn to play the guitar, make sourdough starter, spray their groceries with disinfectant. Among those popular pandemic activities was identifying murderous space goons in Among Us, and if you’ve set the social deduction game aside since then, you might be interested to know that there’s still lots of activity around it—most recently, a collaboration with a bunch of big indie games.

Announced this week, Innersloth is doing a new Cosmicube that features cosmetics from Celeste, Undertale, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Untitled Goose Game, A Hat in Time, Castle Crashers, and Alien Hominid.

A Cosmicube, for the uninitiated, is Among Us’s version of a battle pass. Once you purchase the cube with Beans, a free currency earned in-game, you can unlock the cosmetics by spending another currency you earn by playing the game. (It’s all explained here.) 

The Indie Cosmicube can be purchased with Beans until February 28, 2024, and once you own it, you can take as long as you want to unlock the cosmetics. And there are a lot of them to unlock: “25 hats, 18 skins, 12 nameplates,&nbsp…

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree earned an immediate reputation for its punishing difficulty, to the point that it suffered a brief barrage of negative reviews from players who thought its boss fights were excessively brutal. The DLC’s final boss, as you might expect, is particularly nasty—so nasty that it took legendary boss-deleter Let Me Solo Her three hours of attempts. Seems like all the fuss might be a little unnecessary, though, because over the weekend, Elden Ring streamer Ainrun killed Erdtree’s last boss with a single hit.

There will be spoilers for Shadow of the Erdtree’s final boss ahead, considering—well, you saw the headline.

Before you get your hopes up about walking through that last fog gate and one-shotting the boss yourself, I should clarify that Ainrun’s setup is… pretty involved. Bending Elden Ring’s combat math enough to pull off the instant knockout entailed an elaborate inventory juggling routine, where Ainrun stacked buffs from 5 consumables, 3 weapons, 4 helmets, and 5 talismans—some of which were actively killing him.

I’ll do my best to explain Ainrun’s procedure here, informed …

Prosecutors in the Tokyo District Court are pushing for a heavy punishment for Sonic and Balan Wonderworld creator Yuji Naka, Abema Times (via VGC) reports. They want to hit Naka with a 2.5 year sentence and a ¥2.5 million fine (around $18,000/£14,000), as well as a “supplementary penalty” of ¥170 million (around $1.2 million/£975,000). Prosecutors have lambasted the game designer for showing “no signs of remorse” over his actions.

The push by the prosecution comes only three months after Naka admitted guilt of insider trading on his first day in court in March this year. Naka was accused of using inside knowledge from his position at Square Enix to buy shares in ATeam and Aiming Inc before their partnerships with the publisher (on Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier and Dragon Quest Tact, respectively) were publicly announced. When the collaboration went public, Naka’s shares are alleged to have shot up in value, netting the creator a reported profit of around $146,000.

Naka later tried to pin some of the blame on an administrative error, claiming that he only gained access to the info that enabled the insider trading—which he wasn’t meant t…

Although Call of Duty is known for its dramatic setpiece action, Black Ops 6 tries to shake things up a little when it comes to its campaign. Sprinkled between gunfights and explosions are various puzzles, the most important of which are the safes which require cracking. To do that, you’ll need to know all the Black Ops 6 safe codes, including how to find and open every safe.

While you won’t need the best Black Ops 6 loadouts at hand to solve these puzzles, there’s no shortage of action in the campaign mode. Luckily, these puzzles are completely optional, so you can skip them if you’re not cut out for the Robin Hood lifestyle. Don’t forget though, you need money to upgrade the safehouse.

Black Ops 6 safe locations and solutions

There are a total of nine safes to find in the Black Ops 6 campaign—one in each main mission (excluding the opening and finale), and one elaborate safehouse puzzle. Thankfully, aside from the safehouse safe, all safes follow the same structure. So, once you’ve solved one, you&rsqu…

Diablo 4 can be a little opaque. Players roaming the wastes of Sanctuary often find themselves asking questions like “Why is that guy so big?” “Where can I get some pants?” and “What do the rats know?” But the question most people ask themselves, almost to the point of obsession, is “How do I level faster?” Well console yourself, traveller, because an absolute legend has figured it out using nothing but the scientific method and a superhuman level of dedication. 

I Tested XP in All 130 Dungeons & Strongholds So You Don’t Have To from r/diablo4

The hero in question is a player named Drybear, who has “hand-tested every single permanent Dungeon and Stronghold in the game and compared them together for clear speed, mob density, and how valuable your time is per second spent in that encounter,” with the aim of creating a “resource that the Diablo IV community could use to determine the best source of Experience at any given level.” The fruit of his labours is—what else?—a spreadsheet of great and terrible power.

Drybear went out of his way to make sure his findings were as accurate as possible. In order to a…

September 2, 2024: The 2.5 codes have now expired.

The Honkai: Star Rail 2.5 livestream codes are here, dropping alongside the regular special program that previews everything set to arrive in the upcoming version. For those who are new to the game, miHoYo broadcasts a stream in advance of each regular update, showcasing the new characters, events, and narrative quests set to arrive. And, as a little incentive to tune in, they also drop three codes during the stream.

The new characters this time around look to be Feixiao, Lingsha, and Moze. The first is a wind hunt five-star, the second is fire abundance five-star, and the third is a lightning hunt four-star. We’ll also likely get some reruns for recent Penacony characters. 

As always, I’ll include each code below as it drops during the livestream as well as how to redeem them lower down the page. Since these codes usually expire within a day, make sure to grab them if you want them.

Honkai: Star Rail codes—All current livestream Stellar Jade

• DB3FKWZ4NUG7 – 100 Stellar Jade and 50,000 credits…
  

A lot’s happened since 2007 when Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 was released. Three generations of home consoles, a global pandemic, Dragon Age 2 received a 94. What hasn’t happened in that time is a sequel to a series that has become a cult hit among Dragon Ball fans. Until now.

As revealed at the Dragon Ball Fighterz World Tour finals, we’re finally getting Budokai Tenkaichi 4 after 16 years. The announcement trailer features some fun throwbacks to the previous game, before showing off Goku transforming into his Super Saiyan Blue form. It’s super brief with not much else to go on yet, seemingly pretty early in development. 

Despite no platform info or release window (or how disgustingly big its roster will be), it hasn’t stopped hype from absolutely going through the roof. A live reaction at the finals shows how excited the announcement has fans, and Twitter has been blowing up with people still not believing the game is actually happening. “DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 4 announcement just further proves that literally anything is possible when it comes to videogames,” one fan tweeted. “I kept trying to see if this was fake or not,” another said. 

While…

In the company’s This Week at Bungie or TWAB update, the Destiny developer clarified the series of events that led to a number of players missing in-game titles, a bug that required a rollback of player progress and 20 hours of downtime for the popular looter shooter/MMO/Guardian-em-up game (credit to Massively Overpowered for the spot).

On January 24, a number of Destiny players logged in to find the unthinkable had happened: their triumphs were gone! All those achievements, precious ‘cheevos, lost to time, like tears in rain. All jokes aside, this is a major bummer in a game where some triumphs and seals require absolutely herculean trials to earn, while others are tied to legacy content and can no longer be acquired.

The bug ultimately required a rollback of player accounts to their state on the morning of January 24, with players losing any progress they’d made in the three-hour window after Destiny’s regular weekly refresh. Not the end of the world then, losing a couple hours of progress made on a Tuesday morning, but shout out to that one person on Reddit who secured the coveted exotic combat bow Hierarchy of Needs within the perdition window.

“We discove…

Like many PC gamers across the world, I was appalled when I heard about the shuttering of Arkane Austin by Microsoft. Despite the studio’s recent woe with Redfall, a game described by some commentators as one where ‘executives ruined everything’, I’d presumed that its previously stellar track record and new ownership by a financial juggernaut would insulate it from the tsunami of gaming industry job losses we’ve witnessed over the last year.

But no, Arkane Austin, the studio that made the immersive sim masterpiece that is Prey, as well as contributed to probably my favourite gaming series of the past 15 years, Dishonored, is now gone, leaving nothing but a trail of ‘fury and heartbreak’ throughout the gaming community. Personally, I feel much of that discontentment comes from the powerlessness of being unable to do anything to rectify this.

The only thing I thought to do when I heard the news is to replay Arkane Austin’s greatest hits and remember what awesomeness it delivered up to the release of Redfall. As a huge Arkane fan, I already own most of its back catalogue, including its greatest work, Prey, but if you haven’t played this then, in some sort of co…

It’s been a rough couple of years for the games industry—and even laying it out like that feels like an understatement. Back in February, the number of layoffs and studio closures were already numerous enough to fit into a horrifying chart, and things haven’t exactly slowed down since.

One of the more high-profile recent shocks came from Microsoft, which shut down studios Arkane Austin—developers of Prey and Dishonoured—as well as Tango Gameworks, the studio behind surprise hit Hi-Fi Rush.

It was an especially messed-up situation because, as plenty of developers noted in the aftermath: A studio probably shouldn’t sink after a single flop like Redfall, but even if they do make an excellent game, that still won’t save them from the margin-fuelled manoeuvres of executives who can’t seem to put a straight answer together that justifies putting hundreds out of work.

To commemorate some of the recent losses, New Blood Interactive—the publisher behind games like Ultrakill and Gloomwood—rented a billboard in downtown Los Angeles to express posthumous frustration for the waste in a turbulent industry ruled by acquisitions of unim…

Baldur’s Gate 3 has voiced narration—a lot of it, as I’ve personally confirmed by playing the dang thing while having the sound turned on. I recently had the pleasure of speaking to the voice behind the game’s reams and reams of narration, Amelia Tyler, earlier this week. 

While Tyler’s dulcet tones do stay largely consistent, there are noticeable differences if you play the game’s different origin characters. She’s on record as having done over a dozen different narration styles for the game, each representing a different character’s inner voice. 

Not for every single line of narration, as Tyler assures me, but for key moments? Absolutely. “When we started off recording the narration for the early access version, it was very much a one-note narration style … but with much more of an attitude. The brief I was given was ‘Scar from the Lion King’.”

Granted, that’s something we knew already from her past interviews. However, she explains why they shifted away from smarmy judgement to inner monologue, namely, that it would get exhausting to be judged all the time. Instead, “we wanted [the narration] to echo the choices the pl…

After six years, Blizzard is bringing back one of the most popular Overwatch skins to date. The coveted Pink Mercy skin will return, along with a new rose gold variant, on June 25 as part of another campaign to raise money for breast cancer research with the BCRF.

The original Pink Mercy skin will cost $15 and the new rose gold version will be included in a $20 bundle with other cosmetics. Blizzard says 100% of the purchase price (excluding platform fees and taxes) will be donated to the BCRF after the campaign ends on July 8.

In 2018, enough people bought the Pink Mercy skin to raise $12.7 million, which has remained the largest single donation ever made to the BCRF. And you can tell, because any Overwatch 1 Mercy main you meet keeps the skin in regular rotation. It’s one of the few skins she has that recolors her wings while she’s flying in her ultimate, giving them a bright pink glow. It also has sparkly sound effects.

The new version of the skin is essentially the same with rose gold accents on her suit, and her matching hair now ends with pink tips. Someone at Blizzard knew exactly how to reel in people like me who don’t even play Mercy much anymore. It’ll…

AMD’s cheapest RDNA 3 graphics card has already dropped under MSRP, despite only being released back in December ’22. A sign of wider GPU price drops to come? Uh, probably not. There are a lot of other pricing factors involved in that. But it is likely some result of AMD and Nvidia’s constant competition.

It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen this sort of price reduction early on in a graphics card’s lifespan, but lo and behold there are two RX 7900 XT listed over on Newegg for under MSRP of $899. There was a third even cheaper model earlier, too, a BioStar reference card, but after it was spotted by Videocardz it shot back up in price.

Still, there’s the ASRock-branded reference RX 7900 XT and third-party-designed XFX Merc 310 on sale for $880 right now. A price reduction from MSRP on both counts, if only a small one.

And what might be the cause for such a price drop? Supply and demand, for one. If retailers have inventory of a graphics card to shift and they’re not flying out the door quick enough, a price reduction will surely help. 

Though the elephant in the room is Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Ti.

Nvidia launched the RTX 4070 Ti last month wit…

Bernie Sanders met his first catboy vtuber on a Twitch stream yesterday to help promote presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and, I gotta say, he handled it pretty well. Most people—let alone U.S. Senators—might’ve been more hesitant, but Sanders took it in stride.

Twitch streamer and virtual YouTuber Sykkuno greeted Sanders in his anime avatar moments after he joined the stream and explained why he wasn’t on camera like the others, which included host AustinShow and popular streamer Pokimane.

“Do you know what a vtuber is?” Sykkuno asked. There wasa brief moment of awkward silence before Sykkuno repeated the question: “Have you heard of a vtuber before?”

“Nope,” Bernie admitted.

“No? I’m the first one! Thank you for supporting vtubers!” Sykkuno exclaimed while AustinShow tried to move the show forward.

Sanders smiled and told him he’s “looking very good.”

The short exchange was a treat in an hour-long Q&A where Sykkuno, Pokimane, Valkyrae, and Mark Hamill asked Sanders about politics and the upcoming election. They covered topics like his support for Harris, the conflict in Gaza, and U.S. healthcare. After Sanders made his …

Five years after its last update, Bethesda’s digital card game The Elder Scrolls: Legends has been removed from sale on Steam, and is set to go offline at the end of January.

We called The Elder Scrolls: Legends “a deep and potentially rewarding alternative to Hearthstone” when it launched in 2017, albeit one that needed a bit more juice in the art department, and a bigger playerbase. Despite numerous post-launch improvements that continued to impress, those player numbers never really materialized, and it was unable to seriously challenge Hearthstone’s grip on the mainstream CCG crown.

In 2019, Bethesda halted development of the game “for the foreseeable future,” which included cancelling the release of an expansion planned for that winter. Legends remained available and playable, though, in both online and singleplayer modes; monthly rewards and in-game events also continued to flow.

That will all come to an end soon. The Elder Scrolls: Legends is no longer available on Steam, and an in-game message says the servers will be permanently shuttered on January 30, 2025.

“From now until January 30, 2025, all items in the store a…

Launch weekend has seen Baldur’s Gate 3 break into the top 10 all-time concurrent player counts on Steam with 712,281 players here on on August 5th, 2023 at once according to SteamDB. That huge peak puts it above Goose Goose Duck, taking the 9th most-played spot, and pushing Apex Legends and its 624k peak into the 11th spot. The “you must be this tall to ride” bar for the top 10 is now firmly fixed at a peak of over 700,000.

Don’t feel bad for poor Apex Legends, in the merely prestigious 11th spot, as the free to play battle royale shooter can wipe its tears upon a giant pile of money and a current player count that the concrete, bounded experience of Baldur’s Gate surely won’t consistently have a year from now.

Baldur’s Gate 3 surpassed 500,000 players yesterday and nearly reached 600k, so this Saturday peak puts it a strong hundred thousand people up from that peak. Probably because not all of us can just play all day on a weekday and/or take off work for a game launch.

If you think that this peak will be the last for Baldur’s Gate 3, that could well be wrong. Monster hit Elden Ring didn’t hit its 953k peak concurrent player count until the weekend after laun…

CES 2024 is nearly here, and as the Las Vegas event draws ever closer we’re starting to see teases of some of the reveals already. This time it’s Asus’ turn to give us a sneak peak (via Twitter) at what may be on display at its launch event come January 9, and it looks like a fairly hefty refresh of the ZenBook Duo.

While we’re unlikely to learn the specs until the big reveal proper, Asus’ tweet gives us a shadowy glimpse at what looks like a new ZenBook Duo with two same-sized screens, and what seems to be a removable full-size keeb to boot. 

This would be quite the upgrade over the previous Duo with its tiltable screen pad and integrated keyboard, and it looks like this new model allows you to remove the keyboard entirely for full access to those full-sized screens.

It’s a design concept that Asus has played with before in the form of the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED with its very own removable keeb (albeit with one single, foldable display), so there’s some evidence to suggest that the new ZenBook Duo may have learnt a thing or two from its bigger brother. Given the prominent reference to “Duo AI Experiences” it seems reasonable to infer that this new Duo may w…

It’s been quite a year for Tango Gameworks. After releasing the acclaimed Hi-Fi Rush in 2023, it was shut down by Microsoft in May 2024, only to be rescued from oblivion a few months later by PUBG publisher Krafton. In a new interview with Game Developer, Krafton CEO Changhan ‘CH’ Kim explained the company’s motivation for snapping up Tango, and he claims it wasn’t for money—it was for the love of the game.

“We wanted to maintain their legacy,” Kim said. “Although they did not have a big success in their games, we saw many creatives worth pursuing. That’s why we wanted to work with that organization.”

The real goal of the acquisition, Kim said, is to increase the diversity of Krafton’s lineup: Making videogames is an inherently risky “hit or miss” business, “but having more project lineups is actually a way to mitigate risk, because one of them might work out.”

“We can’t acquire Tango Gameworks based on their financials or their numbers, right?” Kim said. “We don’t think Hi-Fi Rush 2 is going to make us money, to be frank. But it’s part of our attempt. We have to keep trying [to develop games] in the spirit of challenge-taking.”

As for why Krafton…

AMD has finally announced the availability date and pricing for its upcoming Ryzen 7000-series processors with 3D V-Cache stacking technology. You can expect the two Ryzen 9 chips imbued with heaps of cache later this month, February 28, but you’ll have to wait until April 6 for the cheaper Ryzen 7.

The top chip, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, is priced the same as the Ryzen 9 7950X was at launch, at $699. However, that non-3D chip has dropped in price significantly over the past few months. It’s around ~$600 today.

Both the Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D launch for $50 more than what their non-stacked counterparts arrived for last year. Considering the expected increase in gaming performance, I could see why that sort of price premium might be appealing to many. But, again, you can find both the Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 7 7700X going for a lot less nowadays.

Any decision between the non-3D and 3D chips is complicated by the fact that it’s possible to buy the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X for $444, pretty much the same price AMD is asking for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, an eight-core/16-thread chip. Of course, the difference here is in all that cache that the Ryzen 7 7800…

Here it is, fellow RPG romance freaks: the ultimate “I can fix him” companion. I’ll walk you through how to romance Lucanis in Dragon Age: The Veilguard whether you’ve been an Antivan Crow smoocher since Origins or you’re just finding yourself particularly drawn to The Demon of Vyrantium.

Lucanis Dellamorte is high up in the Antivan assassin’s guild The Crows and was the favored heir of its leader, his grandmother Caterina Dellamorte. At the beginning of The Veilguard, Lucanis has been presumed dead for a year, locked away in an underwater prison by the Venatori and forcibly possessed by a demon called Spite. Lucanis’ personal story revolves around getting revenge on the Venatori, coming to terms with Spite, and protecting what remains of his family and guild in the midst of the war with the elven gods.

As for his romance, Lucanis isn’t nearly as sour as his scowl makes him look. Though he takes his contracts seriously and appreciates a direct approach, he’s not nearly as emotionally constipated as your typical contract killer romance. Lucanis has an Antivan’s romantic spirit and isn’t afraid to share his feelings.

How to romance Lucanis<…