Another installment in the Halo: The Master Chief Collection for PC is gearing up for release. 343 Industries via its Halo Twitter account has just posted an announcement of the coming release on the second numbered installment on the Halo series. The remastered Halo 2 Anniversary was released as part of the Master Chief Collection's original release for the Xbox One way back in 2014, remastering a 2004 video game.

Within the #stayhome initiative, free games are one of the best ways for us techies to pass our time whilst giving our computers time to rest in-between Folding@Home calculations. If you're looking to get your PC to render beautiful 2D and 3D scenarios set in feudal Japan, one of the best entries in recent years in the Total War series of PC strategy games, SHOGUN 2, is now available for free until may 1st on Steam. Just navigate to the store page for the game to download it.

SHOGUN 2 has been very well received by the PC gaming community, sitting currently with a 90 Metascore based on critic reviews and a 8.4 average user score. It's widely considered to be the best entry in the series after the legendary Medieval Total War 2, and that's saying a lot for this genre of games. Have some hundred hours to spare? This is the free game to get. And if you're looking at other Total War entries, Creative Assembly is currently holding a sale on Steam that brings prices down for select titles in the franchise.

Players of Bethesda's Fallout 76 have been met with a relatively underwhelming game from the very beginning, starting with the number of bugs and puzzling design decisions that shipped with it. Since then, Fallout 76 has definitely become more polished; however, like any good Bethesda game (and one as expansive and with as many systems as a Fallout, it has to be said), Fallout 76 just recently introduced what has to be one of the most aggravating bugs of all time with the introduction of its Wastelanders expansion.

The expansion, which has been met as a much-needed step towards the game feeling like a proper Fallout, introduces Wastelanders, or NPCs that actually go on about their business, and are available to accompany you in a variety of missions. The Wasteland now seems a lot less empty... Though thanks to the introduced bug, you know might wish it to be the desolate place it always has been. You see, players are reporting that when they die alongside one such NPC, they sometimes end up looting the player character's corpse... For their very best weapon. Which they then proceed in using when you respawn. And which you can't get back, because you can't pickpocket them, or actually kill them - they just go to sleep. If this was a feature, this might've been a cautionary tale in living in a post-apocalyptic setting where every man fends for himself... As it stands, though, it's just a particularly wicked bug that can undo hours upon hours of grinding. Look after the break for a video that shows just that moment of disillusionment.

Microsoft's flight simulator, an upcoming game designed to bring real-life scenarios of flying an airplane, just got a list of system requirements needed to run a game. To play with Flight Simulator, you would at least need to have a quad-core CPU like AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or Intel Core i5-4460 equipped system, along with 8 GB of RAM. For graphics, you would need a GPU with at least 2 GB of VRAM, where the requirement is either AMD Radeon RX 570 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 GPU. Another interesting observation is the requirement of 150 GB of drive space, meaning that this game will be pretty big. Internet connection needs to be 5 Mbps at minimum, and as you up the resolution and graphics, you would need a faster connection. You can check out the entire table below.

The need for incrementally faster connection comes out of one reason - adaptive streaming. The game looks stunning, and if you wish to play at the highest quality, parts of the game will be rendered in the cloud. Microsoft is using its Azure infrastructure to help and render parts of the game and stream it down to your PC. This ensures that your PC is capable of playing the game and Microsoft is showing how they can tap the power of cloud for uses like this.

Kojima Productions announced that in light of temporary closure of its offices, the PC platform release of "Death Stranding" has been delayed. The game will now release on 14 July, 2020. The delay was necessitated by the development teams falling behind schedule amidst work-from-home orders in Japan. "Following the temporary closure of KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS, we have had to delay the PC launch of DEATH STRANDING to July 14, 2020, to allow more development time amidst the current work-from-home orders in place. Thank you all for your patience and continued support," reads the brief statement by Kojima on its English Twitter handle.

Chuwi has recently announced the LarkBox a Mini-PC which can fit in the palm of your hand. The Chuwi LarkBox claims to be the smallest 4K PC at just 61*61*43 mm (0.16L). The LarkBox features an 8th generation Intel Celeron quad-core N4100 paired with 6 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and a 128 GB SSD. The Celeron N4100's UHD Graphics 600 iGPU allows 4K video output via the HDMI port.

The Mini-PC could be a great low power home office machine for basic web browsing and word processing. The Chuwi LarkBox is cooled by a single ultra-silence cooling fan which should keep the PC stable under all workloads. The Larkbox features two USB-A ports, a single USB-C port, HDMI connector and a 3.5 mm headphone jack along with Bluetooth 5.0 support.

Today, HP Inc. unveiled its newest Z by HP mobile workstation and HP ENVY portfolio - designed for creators who push the envelope of what's possible. The HP ZBook Studio, HP ZBook Create, and the HP ENVY 15 are the latest additions to the HP Create Ecosystem, which launched at Adobe MAX in 2019.

The powerful line-up enables all levels of creators, including consumers, prosumers and professionals, to capture, create, and bring to life digital concepts and ideas that can be shared, enjoyed, and experienced. In the past, creators had to choose between heavy workstations or bulky gaming devices to get the power they require for work and play. Today, HP is pushing the boundaries of engineering and creative productivity by allowing photographers, vloggers, graphic designers, architects, film makers, and everyone in between, to achieve what was never thought possible.

We have previously reported on the possibility of release of the new Crysis game in the form of a remaster of an older game, meaning that developers from EA and Crytek took an exiting game and updated its engine to support a few of the modern and graphics accessories like ray tracing and 4K textures. However, it seems that that report wasn't just a rumor and Crytek/EA collaboration is indeed reading a new Crysis Remastered game. The official Crysis website was showing a picture of the remastered game along with platforms it will be supported on. When going to a Cookie Policy part of the website, one could easily see a part of the website meant to showcase the Crysis Remastered game. It was taken down just a few moments ago, however, thanks to the Twitter user Metalfy (@Metalfy4) there is a video showing how easy it was to get to the website.

Showcasing the game, the website was showing that the game is going to be supported on a number of platforms like the regular PC, PS4, Xbox One, and perhaps the most interesting one - the Nintendo Switch. One person on r/Crysis found the following quote on the website: "From the makers of Far Cry, Hunt: Showdown and CRYENGINE, Crysis offers the first-person shooter fans the best-looking, evolved, and innovative gameplay, enabling players to adapt in real-time to survive. Crysis Remastered brings new graphic features, high-quality textures, and the CRYENGINE's native hardware- and API-agnostic ray tracing solution for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and - for the very first time - Nintendo Switch." Seeing this, it will be interesting to see how the Crytek plans to pull off the Nintendo Switch port, being that it has relatively weak hardware. Nonetheless, question remains which version of Crysis game will be remastered and when the game will actually launch.

Intel is preparing to launch its next-generation Tiger Lake-U lineup of CPUs based on the new Willow Cove core that is supposed to bring big IPC gains and plenty of new features. Being a part of the 11th generation of Core CPUs, these processors are expected to arrive sometime in the second half of 2020, built on Intel's 10 nm+ manufacturing process. Thanks to a popular hardware leaker @_rogame, we have found another Tiger Lake-U in the 3D Mark benchmark database. Unlike the last time when we saw Intel's Core i7-1185G7 being run on the 3D Mark tests, we now have test results of its brother - the Core i7-1165G7.

From the 3D Mark report, we can see some details like CPU's base frequency, which is 2.8 GHz in this case. This is just 200 MHz lower compared to the previous Core i7-1185G7 CPU that leaked. The platform used to test the new Core i7-1165G7 CPU was running Windows 10 and had 16 GB of DDR4 SODIMM memory. The new 3D Mark results are already looking promising. From the previous leak of Core i7-1185G7, we saw that Tiger Lake CPU which managed to score 2922 in the CPU test, 1296 in GPU test, and an overall score of 1414. However, this new Core i7-1165G7 CPU is a bit different. In the graphic test, it scores 1150 points, while the CPU test shows an impressive 4750 points. This Core i7-1165G7 result is much higher compared to the more powerful Core i7-1185G7 CPU, which is a bit strange. It could be attributed to a faster memory, but so far we don't know. However, the overall score of the i7-1165G7 is a bit lower compared to i7 1185G7, scoring 1297 points.

The Crysis Twitter account today once again became active, after almost four years of inactivity, to post a two-worded tweet - "RECEIVING DATA". The tweet is an indication of something happening and the current industry rumors are pointing to a nonother then a remaster of the beloved title. Yes, we are talking about a remaster of one of the Crysis games, possibly the last entry added in 2013 - the Crysis 3. Originally developed by a German developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts, the game is powered by CryEngine. The game is being worked on by both teams of EA and Crytek, however, the possible launch of the game is determined by EA, as it has rights to the game still. During the Q2 earnings call, EA's CEO mentioned that they are working delivering "some exciting remasters of fan favorites" for the fiscal year of 2021, so we can expect the game in a timeframe close to us.

It seems like the popular question "but can it run Crysis?" will gain traction again, as the game will likely be a real treat for the eyes. Implementing Crytek's latest CryEngine 5.6, it will feature all the latest bells and whistles of computer graphics. That means that Ray Tracing and support for 4K textures are going to be present. Meant for next-generation hardware of PCs and consoles like PS5 and Xbox Series X, the remastered Crysis game would need a powerful system to run on, however, judging by rumors of next-generation hardware it should be enough to power it without a problem. To see more about CryEngine 5.6, please check out the video below.

VR was hailed as the next frontier in games entertainment. However, reality hasn't quite lived up to the narrative. Even with support from giants such as Facebook and Valve, and mainstream support provided by PlayStation in its PlayStation VR, the adoption of this technology for the mainstream crowd has been slow. At first, problems with expensive user-end pricing drove slow adoption rates; then, as technology progressed, and prices went down, users were met with a low number of high-quality apps or games that actually provided them with reasons to boot up or invest in the technology.

Half Life: Alyx could have been the "killer app" that VR needed for a booming mainstream adoption - much like the original Halo was the sales point for many an Xbox system back in the days. However, it seems that this isn't the case - and likely won't ever be. Half Life: Alyx is set in one of gaming's most iconic franchises; for all accounts, it's an incredibly acclaimed game, featuring a 93 aggregate review score on Metacritic, and a mightily impressive 9.1 in user reviews. However, as it stands, the game was not unlike a popping balloon: it peaked at 16,459 concurrent players on the day of release, and has since seemingly settled in a 3,000 average concurrent player count. This speaks nothing of the game's quality, as we've seen: it speaks to the adoption of VR.

As part of the Inside Xbox event which was held yesterday, Microsoft revealed the addition of several new third party widgets for the Xbox Game Bar from the likes of Razer, XSplit and Intel. Several more companies are also in talks with Microsoft to add apps to Xbox Game Bar, this follows the successful release of a Spotify integration earlier.

Since we introduced Xbox Game Bar, we've continually evolved it in partnership with you: our community. From simple video capture, to quick access to audio settings, to seamless listening with Spotify, to providing an FPS counter, we've kept PC Gamers at the center of everything we do. This philosophy is the driving force behind the updates we're announcing today.

Intel's x86 processor architecture has been the dominant CPU instruction set for many decades, since IBM decided to put the Intel 8086 microprocessor into its first Personal Computer. Later, in 2006, Apple decided to replace their PowerPC based processors in Macintosh computers with Intel chips, too. This was the time when x86 became the only option for the masses to use and develop all their software on. While mobile phones and embedded devices are mostly Arm today, it is clear that x86 is still the dominant ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) for desktop computers today, with both Intel and AMD producing processors for it. Those processors are going inside millions of PCs that are used every day. Today I would like to share my thoughts on the demise of the x86 platform and how it might vanish in favor of the RISC-based Arm architecture.

Both AMD and Intel as producer, and millions of companies as consumer, have invested heavily in the x86 architecture, so why would x86 ever go extinct if "it just works"? The answer is that it doesn't just work.

If there is one thing that the internet has done well, and well indeed, is bridging gaps in geography. That globalization is a well-studied phenomenon is a lapalissian truth; however, as humans, we sometimes tend to take what achievements have been made through technology for granted. Whether to bridge social distancing between parents or lovers through this quarantine, or enabling companies to remain with a semblance of (and sometimes higher than before) productivity, technology has once again come to the rescue. Physical distancing and seclusion does not equate to social distancing, after all.

This has been evidenced by the most recent market studies conducted by both the NPD and IDC, where sales of technologies such as webcams, headsets, mics, and other camera-integrated products have seen a steep rise. Webcams, for one, have increased their sales by 179%; laptops and desktops have seen 40% increases; headsets tip the scales once again at 134% and a 138% increase in PC monitors. I wager many people (some of our readers included) may have even removed the post-it or electrical tape from their laptop webcams. When physical presence isn't possible, technologies can render distances slightly smaller.

INNO3D, a leading manufacturer of pioneering high-end multimedia components and various innovations is thrilled to add the brand new Supercharger INNO3D GeForce GTX 1650 GDDR6 TWIN X2 OC and COMPACT. INNO3D is adding this to its already impressive arsenal of Supercharger line-up. INNO3D has to date also release different versions of NVIDIA's Turing architecture such as the INNO3D GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2060 and the latest releases of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 - the GTX 1650 TWIN X2 OC and COMPACT adopts the same award-winning 'Best-in-Class' NVIDIA's Turing architecture.

Acer today announced its new Predator Triton 500 and Acer Nitro 5 gaming notebooks. Alongside significant developments in thermal performance, both devices come with the latest 10th Gen Intel Core processors and newly announced NVIDIA GeForce RTX SUPER and GTX GPUs.

"In addition to the latest processors and GPUs, we've made exciting across-the-board updates to the Predator Triton 500 and Acer Nitro 5 this year," said James Lin, General Manager, Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer. "Most importantly we've applied new thermal technology which keeps the devices cool so gamers can enjoy the performance improvements from the latest silicon technology."

Micron Technologies, in the latest earnings report, announced that they will start shipping High-Bandwidth Memory 2 (HBM2) DRAM. Used for high-performance graphics cards, server processors and all kinds of processors, HBM2 memory is wanted and relatively expensive solution, however, when Micron enters the market of its manufacturing, prices, and the market should adjust for the new player. Previously, only SK-Hynix and Samsung were manufacturing the HBM2 DRAM, however, Micron will join them and they will again form a "big-three" pact that dominates the memory market.

Up until now, Micron used to lay all hopes on its proprietary Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) DRAM type, which didn't gain much traction from customers and it never really took off. Only a few rare products used it, as Fujitsu SPARC64 XIfx CPU used in Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX100 supercomputer introduced in 2015. Micron announced to suspend works on HMC in 2018 and decided to devote their efforts to GDDR6 and HBM development. So, as a result, we are seeing that they will launch HBM2 DRAM products sometime this year.

A Steam page store has appeared for Guerrilla Games' PlayStation exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn. If you haven't played this game yet, I'll assume you don't have a PlayStation; and if so, boy: are you in for a treat. Horizon Zero Dawn has you playing as Aloy, a native to this alternate reality where dinosaur-like machines have taken over the wilds. As you expand on the story and go on to discover the secrets to this world - and to humanity's downfall - you'll travel across a seamless, richly-detailed open-world experience that rivals The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.

Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition will feature both the base game and its The Frozen Wilds Expansion, which adds dozens of hours, new equipment, new lands, skills, and Machines for you to hunt. This looks like Sony's way (and continued efforts) to show you, years later, what you've been missing out on in the PlayStation platform, and I bet Sony's wishing these exclusive games hitting the PC will give you the PlayStation 5 hitch. Now if only the same happened for the incredible God of War...

The B550 chipset has been absent for a while, meaning that mid-tier motherboard models were lacking and that space is about to be filled. So far, the only thing we got was a B550A chipset, which lacked proper support for PCIe 4.0 connection, based on the refreshed B450 chipset. The B550A supports only one PCIe 4.0 slot, the one connected directly to CPU, while the regular, non-A version is said to deliver proper PCIe 4.0 configuration. The first picture of AMD's upcoming B550 motherboard has appeared.

Thanks to the findings of VideoCardz, we have a picture of a B550 motherboard manufactured by SOYO, a Chinese motherboard manufacturer, and the brand behind Maxsun. Pictured below is a Micro-ATX format motherboard featuring two x16 PCIe 4.0 slots and one smaller, x1 slot. There are two DDR4 slots, along with M.2 PCIe 4.0 connector. Additionally, it has some interesting dragon-inspired masking as well.

Activision yesterday announced that its next Call of Duty game, called Warzone, is launching today. At around 8 AM PST, owners of Modern Warfare will be able to experience the Warzone couple of hours before everyone, while the rest of the players will have to wait until noon PST to play. The game itself is a massive, free-to-play, battle royale style game that can fit 150 players in the single match and is cross-play enabled, meaning that folks with PCs can join forces with Xbox and PlayStation players. The download size of the game is going to be around 80-100 GB alone, so players will have to free up some space on their disks for that. Below you can watch the trailer and see how the game looks before it officially drops today.

Larian studios yesterday released two brand-new trailers for their upcoming Baldur's Gate 3. The game is being built with Larian Studios' new Divinity 4.0 Engine, so if you liked the base look of Larian's other titles (such as Divinity: original Sin), you'll likely enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 as well. This new game engine is being touted as representing a remarkable evolution for the studio, giving players unprecedented freedom to explore, experiment, and interact with a world that truly reacts to their choices. You can watch these trailers after the break.

It's interesting to note that Baldur's Gate 3 executive producer David Walgrave told Eurogamer that the game is currently only being developed for PC, with no intention of releasing it on current-gen consoles (next-gen ones, however, are a different matter entirely, of course). According to the producer, "I don't think that current-gen consoles would be able to run it. There's a lot of technical upgrades and updates that we did to our engine. I don't know if it would be capable of being able to actually run on those things. Maybe it could run, but then we would have to tone down the textures and this and that and it wouldn't look as cool anymore." Do you think the shown graphics justify that the games aren't being developed for current-gen consoles, or do you think Larian is simply catering to their prime market first?

AMD has just recently launched its 3rd generation of Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs, and it is already achieving some impressive stuff. In the world of PC gaming, there used to be a question whenever a new GPU arrives - "But can it run Crysis?". This question became meme over the years as GPU outgrew requirements for the Crysis game, and any GPU nowadays is capable of running the game. However, have you ever wondered if your CPU can run Crysis, alone without a GPU? Me neither, but Linus from LinusTechTips taught of that.

The CPU, of course, can not run any game, as it lacks the hardware for graphics output, but being that AMD's ThreadRipper 3990X, a 64 core/128 thread monster has raw compute power capable of running Crysis, it can process the game. Running in software mode, Linus got the CPU to process the game and run it without any help from a GPU. This alone is a massive achievement for AMD ThreadRipper, as it shows that CPUs reached a point where their raw computing power is on pair with some older GPU and that we can achieve a lot of interesting things. You can watch the video down below.

ASUS launched its ROG Huracan G21 mini gaming PC a long time ago intending to provide a small form factor gaming machine. Today, ASUS decided to update the Huracan with the latest hardware available. Inside a 17.7 liter chassis measuring 129.9×372.4×366.1 mm, ASUS managed to pack some powerful hardware. Starting with CPU, the ROG Huracan G21 is a house to Intel's Core i9-9900K 8 core, 16 thread CPU. There are also configurations available with Intel Core i7-9700K and Core i5-9400 CPUs. The CPU is installed on Mini-ITX Z390 motherboards made by ASUS, so it is technically possible to overclock it, however with an inadequate cooling solution for that it is not recommended.

To make a gaming PC, you need to have a good GPU to push all the framerates, and ASUS opted to equip the G21 with up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card with a blower-type cooler. Other options include GeForce RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 GPUs as well. For storage, there are quite a few options. There is one M.2 SATA SSD which can range from 128 GB to 512 GB in capacity. In addition to a 3.5-inch HDD that is available in 1 TB and 2 TB capacity, there is a hot-swap bay for a 2.5-inch drive. As far as the main memory goes, there is room for up to 32 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz memory. For IO, two USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A and one USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port is available on the front of the chassis. In the back, there are two USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports, along with four USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports. Video outputs are dependant on which graphics card is equipped in a given configuration. Additionally, to power this PC, ROG Huracan G21 relies on external power adapters that come in 180, 230, or 280 Watt options that again depend on the configuration of the machine. It is also worth pointing out that for audio, the G21 uses Realtek ALC1150 with ESS DAC and amplifier. Support for RGB is not lacking and of course, and it is compatible with ASUS Aura Sync software.

People Can Fly and Square Enix today released a gameplay trailer for their upcoming, next-gen game Outriders. The game, which will be available in current-gen systems as well as Xbox Series X, PS5 and PC, is a 1-3 player, drop-in drop-out co-op RPG shooter which promises to be set in a futuristic, dark sci-fi universe. The premise is as such: humanity as we know it abandoned Earth in search of a new home, which they thought they had found in the form of Enoch. A worldwide, storm-like event dubbed The Anomaly (which may have been produced by more than weather phenomena, I wager) forced humanity back into cryo-suspension whilst they waited for the proverbial storm to pass. The eventually reawakened ones find burning powers within themselves that will force them to confront their humanity, evolve - and eventually, to become something different.

People Can Fly describe the game as "Players will create their own Outrider and embark on a journey across a hostile planet. With rich storytelling spanning a diverse world, they will leave behind the slums and shanty towns of the First City and traverse forests, mountains and deserts in pursuit of a mysterious signal." You can expect an arsenal of weapons and supernatural powers, though the exact nature of the game's world and systems (open-world, quasi-open world, or some such) still haven't been clarified. Expect the game to drop come holiday 2020, right alongside the next-generation console launch. A reveal stream will be available via Twitch in about two days - there's a countdown timer in the official Outriders page.

San Diego, CA - February 6, 2020 - Leading gaming audio and accessory brand Turtle Beach today announced three new colourways for the Company's best-sellin Recon 70 gaming headset. The all-new Recon 70 Silver is now exclusively available in the UK at Argos and will retail in other participating territories as of March 13, 2020. Additionally, two new Recon 70 Camo versions - Green Camo and Blue Camo - are available now for pre-orders from Turtle Beach in the UK and additional international territories, and will launch worldwide on March 13, 2020. The new Silver and Camo colours make nine total Recon 70 options for gamers to choose from, each one delivering the immersive sound and lightweight comfort gamers expect from the headset giant. Powerful 40 mm over-ear speakers, crystal-clear mic performance, leatherette-wrapped cushions, and multiplatform functionality with Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC and mobile devices, plus a MSRP of £29.99 make the Recon 70 an easy choice for gamers looking for a new, affordable headset.

"Our Recon 70 series gaming headsets have been doing great since they launched last April, becoming the Company's best-selling* headsets on multiple platforms, so we're excited to give fans even more colour choices as they gear-up for another great year of gaming," said Juergen Stark, Chairman and CEO, Turtle Beach. "With new consoles on the horizon, the Recon 70 Silver and Camo options are great choices for gamers looking to get a new high-quality gaming headset for less than £30."