This new journey starring the legendary archaeologist comes from the award-winning team at MachineGames—the minds behind Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus—in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games and executive produced by Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard. Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is coming later this year to Xbox Series X|S and PC and will be available day one on Game Pass. Check out the full announce from the Developer_Direct and get more insights from the team at MachineGames below.

Set between "Raiders of the Lost Ark " and "The Last Crusade," Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is a first-person, single-player adventure that will take you all over the world, uncovering clues and solving an ancient mystery. Become the adventurer in a race against sinister forces. Your journeys will take you from the hallowed halls of the Vatican and the arid deserts of Egypt to the lush and sunken temples of Sukhothai and the frigid peaks of the Himalayas.

The fastest way to give the gift of cloud gaming starts this GFN Thursday: For a limited time, every six-month GeForce NOW Ultimate membership includes three months of PC Game Pass. Also, the newest GeForce NOW app update is rolling out to members, including Xbox Game Syncing and more improvements. Plus, take advantage of a heroic, new members-only Guild Wars 2 reward. It's all topped off by support for 18 more games in the GeForce NOW library this week.

Give the Gift of Gaming
Unwrap the gift of gaming: For a limited time, gamers who sign up for the six-month GeForce NOW Ultimate membership will also receive three free months of PC Game Pass - a $30 value. With it, Ultimate members can play a collection of high-quality Xbox PC titles with the power of a GeForce RTX 4080 rig in the cloud. Jump into the action in iconic franchises like Age of Empires, DOOM, Forza and more, with support for more titles added every GFN Thursday. Seamlessly launch supported favorites across nearly any device at up to 4K and 120 frames per second or at up to 240 FPS with NVIDIA Reflex technology in supported titles for lowest-latency streaming. This special offer is only here for a limited time, so upgrade today.

Rise and shine, it's time to quake up - the GeForce NOW Ultimate KovaaK's challenge kicks off at the QuakeCon gaming festival today, giving gamers everywhere the chance to play to their ultimate potential with ultra-high 240 frames per second streaming. On top of bragging rights, top scorers can win some sweet prizes - including a 240 Hz gaming monitor.

Bethesda's award-winning titles Doom Eternal, Quake, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Wolfenstein: Youngblood heat up the cloud this week, leading 21 new games joining the GeForce NOW library. Plus, Baldur's Gate 3 has been a hit with members. Make sure to upgrade to Ultimate and Priority memberships today to skip the waiting lines over free members and get into gaming faster.

The Ultimate upgrade is complete - GeForce NOW Ultimate performance is now streaming all throughout North America and Europe, delivering RTX 4080-class power for gamers across these regions. Celebrate this month with 41 new games, on top of the full release of Baldur's Gate 3 and the first Bethesda titles coming to the cloud as the NVIDIA and Microsoft partnership benefits gamers everywhere.

And catch GeForce NOW at QuakeCon - the popular bring-your-own-PC mega-event running Aug. 10-13 - where the in-person and digital GeForce NOW Ultimate challenge will kick off. Plus, game on with gaming peripherals and accessories company SteelSeries, which will be giving away codes for three-day GeForce NOW Ultimate and Priority memberships, along with popular GeForce NOW games and in-game goodies.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported record revenue for the second quarter ended August 1, 2021, of $6.51 billion, up 68 percent from a year earlier and up 15 percent from the previous quarter, with record revenue from the company's Gaming, Data Center and Professional Visualization platforms. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.94, up 276 percent from a year ago and up 24 percent from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.04, up 89 percent from a year ago and up 14 percent from the previous quarter.

"NVIDIA's pioneering work in accelerated computing continues to advance graphics, scientific computing and AI," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Enabled by the NVIDIA platform, developers are creating the most impactful technologies of our time - from natural language understanding and recommender systems, to autonomous vehicles and logistic centers, to digital biology and climate science, to metaverse worlds that obey the laws of physics.

NVIDIA at GDC dropped a major hint at where it wants to take PC gaming post the Arm acquisition. The company is demonstrating its RTX real-time raytracing technology, and the DLSS performance enhancement, on an Arm processor by MediaTek. To the PC, this means NVIDIA is laying the foundations of gaming in the post-x86 world where it holds Arm IP; foundations that were dug up by Apple and its mighty M1 chip, based on Arm CPU technology.

Making this unequivocal, was MediaTek. "RTX is the most groundbreaking technology to come to PC gaming in the last two decades," said PC Tseng, general manager of MediaTek's Intelligent Multimedia Business Unit."MediaTek and NVIDIA are laying the foundation for a new category of Arm-based high-performance PCs." The Taiwan-based Arm SoC major has developed a new Arm-based PC processor called Kompanio 1200, which it hopes will power PC platforms much like the Apple M1 or the Qualcomm Compute Platforms.

AMD sent ripples in its late-October even launching the Radeon RX 6000 series RDNA2 "Big Navi" graphics cards, when it claimed that the top RX 6000 series parts compete with the very fastest GeForce "Ampere" RTX 30-series graphics cards, marking the company's return to the high-end graphics market. In its announcement press-deck, AMD had shown the $579 RX 6800 beating the RTX 2080 Ti (essentially the RTX 3070), the $649 RX 6800 XT trading blows with the $699 RTX 3080, and the top $999 RX 6900 XT performing in the same league as the $1,499 RTX 3090. Over the weekend, the company released even more benchmarks, with the RX 6000 series GPUs and their competition from NVIDIA being tested by AMD on a platform powered by the Ryzen 9 5900X "Zen 3" 12-core processor.

AMD released its benchmark numbers as interactive bar graphs, on its website. You can select from ten real-world games, two resolutions (1440p and 4K UHD), and even game settings presets, and 3D API for certain tests. Among the games are Battlefield V, Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019), Tom Clancy's The Division 2, Borderlands 3, DOOM Eternal, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Resident Evil 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Wolfenstein Youngblood. In several of these tests, the RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT are shown taking the fight to NVIDIA's high-end RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, while the RX 6800 is being shown significantly faster than the RTX 2080 Ti (roughly RTX 3070 scores). The Ryzen 9 5900X itself is claimed to be a faster gaming processor than Intel's Core i9-10900K, and features PCI-Express 4.0 interface for these next-gen GPUs. Find more results and the interactive graphs in the source link below.

Microsoft today dropped a giant bomb on the balance of game development: the company announced the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks, and all its related IP. The purchase, which is expected to close for a tidy $7.5 billion, will carry over all ZeniMax Media subsidiaries. This includes Bethesda (The Elder Scrolls, Fallout), id Software (DOOM), Arkane Studios (Prey, Dishonored, upcoming Deathloop), MachineGames (Wolfenstein), among others.

The deal is the costliest acquisition for Microsoft (to date) in its push to increase the number of in-house development studios (up to 23 from 15 prior to this deal). Microsoft has announced that as part of the deal, games published by ZeniMax Media and subsidiaries (and in the future, by Microsoft) will be available on its Xbox Games Pass subscription service for Xbox and PC gaming. Microsoft is acquiring some of the most iconic gaming franchises ever with this deal, including all in-development IP. It's a huge boon for the company; it remains to be seen exactly how will this evolve over the years. But one thing is for certain: Microsoft isn't slowing down on its doubling down on game development.

NVIDIA's performance expectations from the upcoming GeForce RTX 3090 "Ampere" flagship graphics card underline a massive RTX performance gain generation-over-generation. Measured at 4K UHD with DLSS enabled on both cards, the RTX 3090 is shown offering a 100% performance gain over the RTX 2080 Ti in "Minecraft RTX," greater than 100% gain in "Control," and close to 80% gain in "Wolfenstein: Young Blood." NVIDIA's GeForce "Ampere" architecture introduces second generation RTX, according to leaked Gainward specs sheets. This could entail not just higher numbers of ray-tracing machinery, but also higher IPC for the RT cores. The specs sheets also refer to third generation tensor cores, which could enhance DLSS performance.

I don't know about you, but I've found the Dishonored universe to be one of the most interesting ones to be explored in gaming in recent years. Now, publisher Bethesda has made the dishonored franchise available via CD Projekt Red's GOG digital storefront, which means DRM-free versions of games you get to keep forever, as well as digital goodies. The original Dishonored and DLC, alongside Dishonored 2 and its expansion Death of the Outsider (too late for a spoiler alert, uh?) are now available with discounts up to 75% off.

Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood are also available through GOG as of now, so if you have a Nazi-killing craving lurking somewhere in your conscious or subconscious mind, GOG has that itch covered for you with hefty discounts as well (and these are extensive to the entirety of Bethesda's published catalogue on GOG, including those more retro pieces of gaming such as Quake and Doom). Go now, and be happy.

NVIDIA today reported revenue for the fourth quarter ended Jan. 26, 2020, of $3.11 billion, up 41 percent from $2.21 billion a year earlier, and up 3 percent from $3.01 billion in the previous quarter. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $1.53, up 66 percent from $0.92 a year ago, and up 6 percent from $1.45 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.89, up 136 percent from $0.80 a year earlier, and up 6 percent from $1.78 in the previous quarter.

For fiscal 2020, revenue was $10.92 billion, down 7 percent from $11.72 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per diluted share were $4.52, down 32 percent from $6.63 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $5.79, down 13 percent from $6.64 a year earlier. "Adoption of NVIDIA accelerated computing drove excellent results, with record data center revenue," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Our initiatives are achieving great success.

AMD ended July with the fifth release of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition for the month, version 19.7.5 beta. The drivers address an application crash noticed with "Wolfenstein: Youngblood" on Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards, which is the only item on the change-log. AMD identified a number of new "known issues," but the 50 percent increased idle fan-speeds on RX 5700 series isn't one of them.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.7.5 beta

AMD today posted the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition. Version 19.7.3 beta comes in the nick of time with optimization for "Wolfenstein: Youngblood," with up to 13 percent higher frame-rates on offer compared to 19.7.2. The release also adds Radeon GPU Profiler and Microsoft PIX for Radeon RX 5700 series. AMD also expanded its Vulkan API support by adding six new extensions, two of which are AMD-exclusive, and four standard. These include VK_EXT_display_surface_counter, VK_AMD_pipeline_compiler_control, VK_AMD_shader_core_properties2, VK_EXT_subgroup_size_control, VK_KHR_imageless_framebuffer, and VK_KHR_variable_pointers.

Among the fixed issues are "League of Legends" failing to launch with RX 5700-series on Windows 7; RX 5700 series experiencing application crashes with DirectX 9 applications after an Express Upgrade, Windows Mixed Reality not launching with Radeon Image Sharpening enabled on RX 5700-series; out-of-sync audio with ReLive VR; incorrect Radeon Wattman power gauge values for Radeon VII; AMD Log Utility not correctly installing; performance drops with Radeon Anti-Lag; minor stutter noticed in the first few minutes of "Fotnite" gameplay on RX 5700-series; Radeon Overlay flickering over Vulkan apps with Image Sharpening enabled; and some corruption noticed when running Adobe Premier Pro 2019 benchmarks. Grab the driver from the link below.DOWNLOADS: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.7.3

The change-log follows.

Bethesda revealed that "Wolfenstein Youngblood" will launch a day earlier for the PC platform globally, on July 25. Console platforms PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch get the game on July 26. This prioritization of the PC platform is symbolic and underscores the vast revenue-base the platform constitutes. The PC is already Ubisoft's biggest revenue source.

A separate VentureBeat report reveals that at launch, "Youngblood" won't support real-time ray-traced eye-candy, which would be added at a later date through a patch. "We're working together with NVIDIA on that, but ray tracing won't be available at launch," said executive producer Jerk Gustafsson. "Youngblood" will be one of the first non-DirectX AAA titles to implement RTX. The game uses the Vulkan 3D API, and its RTX feature-set is exclusively NVIDIA's handiwork.

NVIDIA is reportedly going to introduce a new gaming bundle come the release of their new SUPER, Turing-refreshed graphics cards come July 2nd. The new bundle picks up RTX-enabled titles that were developed with NVIDIA's support, and will include access to MachineGames' Wolfenstein: Young Blood, as well as Remedy's Control.

Bethesda had concerned a few people last year when they had announced most of their new games would be available on the PC platform only via their own store and launcher, at least initially. People were quick to speculate whether this was Bethesda wanting a bigger share of the pie than Steam would allow, which is hilarious in hindsight with everything Epic Game Store related since then, and also whether this was because they were worried that Fallout 76, the first of these games affected by said decision, would have generate refunds galore on Steam as a result of bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Today Bethesda took to social media to make good on their promise, saying that all their upcoming games will be simultaneously available on both Steam and the Bethesda Store, including Rage 2, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot.

Interestingly, it will still be a while before Fallout 76 will make its way on Steam, which does not help its cause as far as far as having a depreciating player base goes. The move in general also plays into the larger dynamics of PC game stores, with game exclusives suddenly becoming a valid point of consideration as the competition from Epic Games heats up. It is also interesting to see how few complaints there are online of how these games are not available on, say, the Epic Games Store, or Discord, or GoG, and points further to the loyalty-factor of the populace complaining about exclusives on PC game stores in 2019.

Bethesda has confirmed that they will be having their own presentation even before the actual E3 (Entertainments and Electronics Expo) kicks-off. Bethesda's presentation, which will be live on June 9th, will, according to Bethesda, offer an "in-depth look at DOOM Eternal plus much, much more." The company also teases that they want to "be together" with the community this year - likely because of one particular interstellar journey that dwells in such a team - perhaps in the form of Starfield?

You may remember that we covered in detail the new technologies being implemented on NVIDIA's new brainchild, Turing, back when the architecture and its whitepaper were initially announced. One of the pieces of technology we talked about back then was Content Adaptive Shading, a new technique that would allow for smart trade-offs in image quality for added performance - potentially allowing for increased overall rendering resolutions at a much lesser impact cost.

The tech is now simply known as Adaptive Shading, and it basically works as a post-process step that looks at previous frames to calculate which determine quality conditions for the next one - lowered detail areas such as skies, flat walls, or even shadowed portions of objects require lesser amounts of shading detail, and thus, their shading rates can be reduced from a per-pixel shading to four pixels per shading ratio. And this new feature, which was originally showcased on MachineGames' Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, will finally be implemented in working form on that particular game, via a patch that's being released on November 19th. This is the first title to make use of this technology - and hopefully, it isn't the last.

When Bethesda took the stage at E3 this year and announced Wolfenstein: Youngblood, many were dismayed and feared that the lower-than-expected sales for Wolfenstein II, combined with the deep discounts early in the product cycle, may have changed the timeline in more ways than one. Specifically, there was doubt on whether another numbered entry was coming to the main Wolfenstein story which had received a reboot of sorts beginning with the 2014 hit Wolfenstein: The New Order. In an interview with GameCentral, Pete Hines (VP, PR and Marketing for Bethesda) confirmed that Youngblood is to be treated as a standalone title similar to what we saw with Wolfenstein: The Old Blood in 2015, and that MachineGames is absolutely going to develop Wolfenstein III.

Specifically, Pete Hines said and I quote, "Absolutely we're making a Wolfenstein III. They [MachineGames] said on stage that they're taking a break from the larger story to do this thing. But we all have to see how that ends." This was part of a long discussion, that is well worth the read, with insights on the revival of single-player AAA games, Bethesda's continual commitment to story-driven gameplay, and more. As part of said discussion, Pete Hines also helped provide some relief to fans of Arkane Studios' Dishonored series which, as with the recent Wolfenstein series, enjoyed great success with the first entry but then tapered down subsequently when it comes to sales of Dishonored 2 and its standalone DLC. Arkane Studios had recently said that the series is "resting", and in response to this Pete said that he "wouldn't read too much into that" and that Arkane having two studios meant that the situation was similar to how Bethesda Studios themselves went from the Fallout franchise to Starfield before returning to The Elder Scrolls series. Sounds like good news to Dishonored fans, and we will be sure to inform our readers of any updates accordingly.