Sony Interactive Entertainment ("SIE") announced today that SIE has completed the acquisition of Nixxes Software B.V. ("Nixxes"), an industry-leading Dutch studio with more than 20 years of experience in game development and optimization. Based in Utrecht, Netherlands, effective immediately, Nixxes will join PlayStation Studios Technology, Creative & Services Group to provide high quality in-house technical and development capabilities for PlayStation Studios.

"I highly respect Nixxes and am excited for this very experienced team to become part of the world-class development community at SIE," said Hermen Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios. "They have a passion for improving games and for delivering the best possible experience for gamers. Nixxes will be a strong asset for everyone across PlayStation Studios, helping our teams focus on their most important goal, which is to create unique PlayStation content at the best possible quality."

Sony Interactive Entertainment ("SIE") announced today that SIE has completed the acquisition of Housemarque Oy ("Housemarque"), a leading game developer and long-time partner of SIE. Recognized for its extensive experience in the arcade-shooter genre as well as strong creative and technical capabilities, Housemarque has developed eight titles exclusive to PlayStation consoles including Returnal, Nex Machina and Alienation.

With the recent release of the hugely popular PlayStation 5 exclusive Returnal, Housemarque evolved its trademark style gameplay by weaving a haunting narrative into a 3D bullet-hell shooter. Based in Helsinki, Finland, Housemarque will join the global development operation of PlayStation Studios and will be the 13th studio to join the PlayStation Studios family.

Amazon Games today announced it has opened a new game development studio in Montreal, Canada. The Montreal studio, which joins Amazon Games development studios in Seattle, Orange County, and San Diego, will focus on creating original AAA games. Amazon Games is actively hiring to build out the talented team, with a variety of roles opening.

The studio's founding members include industry veterans Luc Bouchard (head of production), Xavier Marquis (creative director), Alexandre Remy (head of product), and Romain Rimokh (content director), who most recently worked as the core team behind the tactical shooter Rainbow Six Siege, which now has more than 70 million players since its launch. The studio's first project will be an online multiplayer title based on new IP.

Silver Rain Games, an interactive entertainment development studio co-founded by BAFTA-nominated actor and producer Abubakar Salim has signed a major deal with Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA) EA Originals Label, which is dedicated to elevating bold independent studios. EA Originals will provide funding for the up-and coming studio's unannounced IP, as well as guidance and support in the team's journey to bring a fresh perspective to games and to the industry.

Silver Rain, which is based in the U.K., was co-founded in December 2019 by Salim, best known for his role on HBO's hit show Raised by Wolves, alongside Melissa Phillips, who will lead as Head of Studio, who previously worked as the BAFTA Games Programme manager on BAFTA Games programs and events. The company was launched with the intent to generate thought-provoking and innovative games and content across different mediums of entertainment. Since its inception late last year, the studio has quickly grown to approximately 20 staff members, who all currently work remotely.

GIGABYTE backed up its late September launch of the RTX 3080-based VISION OC graphics card targeted at creators, with one based on the GeForce RTX 3090 (model: GV-N3090VISION OC-24GD), a GPU that offers greater dividends to creators thanks to its 24 GB video memory. GIGABYTE's VISION brand of graphics cards and motherboards are targeted at creators, and the RTX 3090 VISION OC, when paired with NVIDIA's GeForce Studio drivers, provides a formidable solution halfway between the gaming and professional-visualization market segments.

The GIGABYTE RTX 3090 VISION OC comes with the same board design as the RTX 3080 VISION OC, but with the addition of the NVLink interface for explicit multi-GPU. The card comes with a mild factory-OC which sees the GPU boost up to 1755 MHz (vs. 1695 MHz reference), while the memory is left untouched at 19.5 Gbps (GDDR6X-effective), for 940 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Display interfaces include three DisplayPort 1.4a and two HDMI 2.1 connectors. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. It uses a triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution with the VISION design scheme. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Until NVIDIA rolls out Ampere-based Quadro products, the closest thing to a "professional" graphics card on this architecture has to be the new GeForce RTX 3080 VISION OC by GIGABYTE. The VISION brand by GIGABYTE is targeted at creators, and the company wagers it can sell the RTX 3080 to this market, hoping they get the hint to pair it with NVIDIA's Studio drivers. The RTX 3080 VISION OC combines a black PCB with a mostly-white cooling solution that's characteristic of the VISION design scheme, along with some brushed aluminium accents.

The top of the card features a large silicone ARGB diffuser that lights up in any color or transitions of color. The triple-slot, triple-fan cooler uses multiple aluminium fin-stacks skewered by six 6 mm-thick copper heat pipes that pull heat over a copper base-plate. The cooler is longer than the PCB, so GIGABYTE punched holes through the back-plate to let airflow form the third fan through. GIGABYTE ships the card with a yet-unspecified factory-overclock. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include two HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a connectors. The card is 32 cm long and 12.6 mm tall, and needs three slots in your system. The company didn't reveal pricing.

In the latest episode of Inside Xbox, Microsoft showed off trailers for several new games including Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Dirt 5. Alongside the new game trailers, Microsoft also published a list of over 140 publishers and studios all working on games for the new console. Big names such as 2K Games, Activision, Bethesda, Bungie, Electronic Arts, SEGA, Square Enix, and Ubisoft are all present along with countless smaller publishers and studios. The full list of publishers and studios can be found below.

Microsoft has just announced that we will finally get a glimpse (here's hoping it's more than just a glimpse) at their next-generation Xbox Series X gameplay. The event, scheduled for May 7th at 11 am ET / 8 am PT. To be transmitted on YouTube, the Inside Xbox event will be essentially a "global partner event", which means that we should see gameplay for a variety of franchises from AAA developers and publishers. And looking at today's announcement of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which featured Xbox marketing prominently, I'll wager that's just one of the games we'll get to see more of at the event.

Microsoft's general manager of Xbox games marketing Aaron Greenberg also said that "Xbox Games Studios teams are hard at work on some big summer plans". It remains to be seen whether that means another event will be taking place at a later date, focused solely on Microsoft's first-party studios, but I'd wager we'll be seeing most of the presentation focusing on Xbox's own development studios. Finally, we'll be getting a look at what "gaming revolution" next-gen consoles will really bring - and set a standard for future games development.

NVIDIA's GeForce Now game streaming service has been a bit of a hit and miss lately, with some of the bigger publishers like Activision-Blizzard, Bethesda, and 2K games revoking availability of their digital game libraries on NVIDIA's service. Possible reasons for those events were unknown and the platform did suffer from it. Some speculations were that the publishers were going to switch their preferred online streaming service platform or build their own. So far it is still a mystery. However, it seems like there is no end to the pain, as some very big publishers decided to revoke their digital libraries as well.

Big names like Microsoft Xbox Game Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Codemasters, and Klei Entertainment have all decided to stop offering their games on the GeForce Now game streaming platform. This is very much a major disappointment and another big setback to the platform, as now you can not play any of the titles from these publishers. Titles from the games series like Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Dirt Rally, Batman and many more, are now not available. It remains to be seen if these publishers announce a move to another streaming service, so we have to wait.

NVIDIA's efforts with Quake 2 RTX haven't gone unnoticed in the community, providing a distinct overhaul in image quality to the now decades-old game. Raytracing and its global illumination capabilities have already been well explored in this publication, and its effect in older games - the ones that already run remarkably well in modern hardware - has been well documented, with some third party solutions (such as ReShade) including the effect to great measure in a number of games that haven't been built from the ground-up for raytracing.

The new Lightspeed Studios from NVIDIA aims to bring Quake 2 RTX-like improvements to other games. A job posting from the company dated from the end of September seems to make it clear that the company is looking to increase the number of games with RTX support in this way. Read on after the break for the description in the job listing.

Elgato, the leading provider of hardware and software for content creators, today announced the launch of HD60 S+, an external video capture card that lets content creators play high-fidelity console games in stunning 4K60 HDR10 while simultaneously streaming or recording gameplay in 1080p60 HDR10. It's easy to get set up and streaming with HD60 S+ thanks to a simple USB 3.0 connection and full compatibility with today's most prominent streaming applications including OBS Studio, Streamlabs OBS, and XSplit. Accompanied by powerful Elgato 4KCU recording software, HD60 S+ is ideal for content creators looking to grow audiences on Twitch, YouTube, and Mixer.

Building upon the original hugely popular HD60 S, HD60 S+ allows 4K60 HDR10 zero-lag passthrough, with onboard video downscaling to enable streaming to any platform in industry standard full HD 1080p60 quality and recording unlimited 1080p60 HDR10 footage to your hard drive. HD60 S+ also benefits from ultra-low latency Instant Gameview technology, keeping gameplay, mic, webcam, and other sources perfectly synched.

Flight School Studio have released today their unique pinball hack and slash Creature in the Well on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Steam for $14.99 USD. The title is also available for free to Xbox Game Pass subscribers on Windows 10 PC and Xbox One.

As the last remaining BOT-C unit, venture deep into a desert mountain to restore power to an ancient facility, haunted by a desperate Creature. Uncover and upgrade powerful gear in order to free the city of Mirage from a deadly sandstorm.

NVIDIA today announced that 10 new NVIDIA RTX Studio laptops and professional-grade mobile workstations are being released by major partners, delivering real-time ray tracing, advanced AI and ultra-high-resolution video editing to the world's 40 million creatives.

The latest designs from Dell, HP, Lenovo and BOXX bring the number of RTX Studio models to 27 - including 17 that are now available. These laptops power more than 40 creative and design applications that have turned "RTX On", enabling tens of millions of creatives to harness ray tracing and AI in their workflows. NVIDIA RTX features are being shown at SIGGRAPH this week in software from a diverse set of independent software vendors, including Adobe, Autodesk and Blackmagic Design.

The Vive Cosmos was not the only major announcement coming out of HTC's Vive business unit at CES this year. While that has massive mainstream appeal, the company was quick to let us know that it was still to early to comment further than what has already been covered in the aforelinked news post. Instead, they invited us to their suite to take a closer look at the Vive Pro Eye- one of the few things that really stood out for us at the trade show.

The Vive Pro Eye is, as the name would suggest, a new SKU with integrated eye tracking in the Vive Pro HMD. Working together with Tobii, the Vive Pro Eye allows for a more natural control mechanism within VR via eye controls, which in turn means a revamped menu navigation system is possible. This allows for increased accessibility to end users with disability, more optimization on VR performance, and detailed analysis of VR experiences for both the client and the businesses alike. Read past the break for a breakdown of our experience with the Vive Pro Eye, and the various demos on hand to showcase the feature.

beyerdynamic, one of the world's leading manufacturers of headphones, microphones and conferencing products, announces the TEAM TYGR bundle, pairing the TYGR 300 R gaming headphones with FOX Professional USB Studio Microphone. beyerdynamic will showcase TEAM TYGR during CES 2019 from January 8 - 11, 2019.

beyerdynamic's TYGR 300 R is the ultimate gaming headphone with adjustable yokes and a spring steel headband to adapt to any head size. Designed for gaming applications in quiet environments, the TYGR 300 R features an innovative acoustic fleece with soft ear cushions. The single-sided connection cable is terminated with a 3-pole, gold-plated mini jack plug and a screw-on gold plated adapter.

After EA shuttered Visceral Studios, who where working on a new, linear, single-player Star Wars videogame, Amy Hennig's situation never was cleared up by the publisher. Doubts remained on whether the developer, best known for her work at Naughty Dog with the Uncharted series, was still attached, in any capacity, to the newly-pivoted development of the aforementioned Star Wars videogame in EA Vancouver. Now, at the Gamelab conference in Barcelone, the air has been cleared: Amy Hennig has confirmed she hasn't been working with EA since January of this year. And the linear, single-player experience she was developing has been shelved by EA.

Hennig says that she is staying independent, now, and is in the process of setting up her own indie studio - and is likely taking a VR spin with her next creations. We wish her all the best, and hope that the indie liberty gives her enough room - and funds - to develop that dying breed of videogames that is the solo kind. Meanwhile, Henig's also confirmed that EA Vancouver's pivoting of the Star Wars videogame is reworking it into a - can you guess? - open world approach that is barely recognizable from her own work - so it does seem a game in the likes of Destiny and Anthem will be the end product.

The present is likely a result of Telltale Games' vertiginous rise as a developer of single-player experiences - and their precipitous fall afterwards. As telltale Games has had to restructure its studio team by laying off some 25% of its workforce not that long ago, its seems the company has decided to cut its losses on a tool that arguably made their name and fame: their in-house engine.

Development costs have only gone up as the need for more detailed animations and assets has increased developers' graphics development costs, and Telltale had been working with an engine it had been continually building upon since 2005. however, the fact remains that the engine was showing its age - and gripping its teeth at performance - for the last few games the studio developed. In the end, the studio must have decided that in the face of the reduced workforce, games development and engine engineering were too much at the same time, and naturally decided to cut the latter.

We have always been at the side of musicians wherever music is made. On stages throughout the world, in studios across cities, and now we can accompany them to the ends of the earth. Thanks to Fox. The new USB microphone can capture any music in any place, at any time. There is now no way to lose a melody. Because you'll always have your studio with you. The beyerdynamic FOX guarantees excellent sound quality, be it for recording vocals or speech, for a performance with an acoustic guitar, a regular podcast/ gaming or Let's Play videos on YouTube.

Studio-quality microphone technology
The beyerdynamic FOX features a high-quality microphone capsule, as found in professional studio microphones around the world. This large-membrane condenser microphone provides high sensitivity compared to common dynamic microphones. This means that even quiet sounds and the finest nuances can be captured perfectly. The cardioid polar pattern shields against rear-incident noise, providing ideal protection against background noise. The elastic suspension on the microphone capsule prevents structure-borne noise - eliminating footsteps and fret noises. The microphone capsule's high quality is no accident: beyerdynamic has more than 90 years of experience in developing and constructing a wide variety of microphones. beyerdynamic has been responsible for the audio quality of countless music, sound and television productions. The new FOX provides beginners with access to the results of this extensive wealth of experience.

ROCCAT is moving deeper into the gaming sphere with its very first in-house developed title, Sick City, a Real Time Tactical Combat game which ROCCAT says "Breaks with both conventional genre and developmental norms." The newly founded "ROCCAT Games Studio" looks to not only create a unique interpretation of action-based tactical combat, but more importantly, deeply integrate player feedback into core development decisions.

ROCCAT presents this close proximity relationship between developer and community as the future of gaming, saying that "No other early access title integrates its players and prospective buyers so thoroughly in production." This means players will have the opportunity to actively participate in decisions that will shape the retail version of Sick City. Features such as new maps, factions, game types, campaigns, even the future of Sick City in eSports - these decisions will be placed in the hands of the player, in what ROCCAT envisions as a truly collaborative project.

VR is one of the most important buzzwords in tech, not only for current development, but also for what studios and tech insiders deem to be our entertainment future. Oculus, which paved the way for VR with its Rift headset concept (before being snagged by Facebook), is one of the biggest, most recognizable players in this space. Now, after a series of hurdles such as the Oculus-ZeniMax sonata, which saw the former facing payments of $500 million, and Oculus' founder Palmer Luckey abandoning the company, a house of cards is crumbling. Namely, Oculus' VR-driven Story Studio.

At the 2016 annual Microsoft Surface Event, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Surface Computing Panos Panay announced a new addition to the company's Surface lineup: a 28-inch All-in-One, with a 3:2 aspect ratio monitor Microsoft calls a "Pixel Sense Display", packing a 4500x3000 resolution (with around 62% more pixels than 4K resolution, combining to provide about 192 pixels per inch), as well as 10-point touch and Microsoft Pen support.

All of that screen real-estate comes in at just 12.5mm thick - the AIO's innards are actually on the monitor's base, with an hinge that promises to allow the display to be moved seamlessly and in a wide variety of angles, as well as allowing it to take on extra weight in studio mode. All of this is powered by an Intel Skylake processor (configurable as an i5 or i7 model), your choice of an NVIDIA GTX 965 M 2GB or an NVIDIA GTX 980 M 4 GB model, 8 through 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1 TB or 2TB storage - with all configurable options also including in their base specs what Microsoft calls a "Rapid Hybrid Drive", which at the moment, remains unclear as to its nature of either a SATA or PCIe SSD, or even an SSHD.

Valve announces a number of product and technologies at this week's Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. "We continue to see very strong growth in PC Gaming, with Steam growing 50% in the last 12 months," said Gabe Newell, Valve's president. "With these announcements we hope that we are helping build on that momentum."

Steam Machines, Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux PCs will be able to take advantage of a new product announced at GDC called Steam Link. Designed to extend your Steam experience to any room in the house, Steam Link allows you to stream all your Steam content from any PC or Steam Machine on the same home network. Supporting 1080p at 60Hz with low latency, Steam Link will be available this November for $49.99, and available with a Steam Controller for an additional $49.99 in the US (worldwide pricing to be released closer to launch).

ROCCAT Studios, the German manufacturer of professional gaming peripherals, has announced the release of the ROCCAT Kone XTD - Max Customization Gaming Mouse and the ROCCAT Kone Pure - Core Performance Gaming Mouse - with the new mice to hit shelves in Europe on October 26 and in North America and Asia end of November.

Both new models feature the acclaimed Kone design, with the Pure offering a slimmer option that's 91% the size of the original Kone - a measurement decided upon after ROCCAT conducted extensive research with gamers to determine an optimally-reduced Kone version. And, as with earlier Kone mice, each comes standard with a world-beating performance package, this time featuring a fully-adjustable 8200 DPI Pro-Aim R3 laser sensor - with 41 DPI settings, ranging from 200 to 8200 - a 32-bit Turbo Core V2 72MHz ARM MCU processor, 576kB on-board memory, and the planet's most advanced Tracking & Distance Control Unit - all working in clockwork unison to deliver the world's most impressive speed, control and accuracy.

Eurocom Corporation, a developer of High Performance Mobile Workstations and Hardcore Mobile Gaming Rigs is adding the AMD Radeon HD 7970M GPU to the Neptune 2.0 and Racer 2.0 high performance notebooks. The addition of the MXM 3.0b spec AMD Radeon HD 7970M offers gamers and enthusiasts a new level of ultra high performance GPU computing with AMD Enduro for insane battery life by taking advantage of AMD's existing ZeroCore Power and Power Gating battery-saving features.

"Hardcore gamers, enthusiasts, your dreams have come true! The AMD Radeon HD 7970M is the best graphics GPU in terms of overall price and performance on the market . The AMD Radeon HD 7970M, combined with Intel XTU and Intel XMP gives gamers and power users full control of their powerful EUROCOM super-notebooks " Mark Bialic, Eurocom President.

Mad Catz Interactive, Inc. today that it has entered into an agreement with Microsoft Studios, to create Halo 4 branded Gaming Headsets to be released later this year.

"We are excited to add Halo 4 to our portfolio of world class video game licenses," said Darren Richardson, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Mad Catz Interactive, Inc. "Halo is one of the world's most popular video games and these new Halo branded headsets are sure to appeal to the passionate gamer who wants to maximize his or her Halo experience."