Tuesday news, part two:

Halo Infinite battle royale? Dataminers think they've found proof
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/halo-infinite-battle-royale-dataminers-think-theyve-found-proof/
With a build of Halo Infinite now out in the wild, dataminers have already begun diving for secrets within the games files. Now, one reckons they've found evidence of a battle royale mode courtesy of a single voice line from the game's multiplayer announcer.

Minecraft's most anarchic server brought to its knees by griefers
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/minecrafts-most-anarchic-server-brought-to-its-knees-by-griefers/
The public-facing side of Minecraft is the jolly, happy one. This is where we coo at people recreating the world of the Lord of the Rings, or admire the incredible visual tricks that can be pulled off with a little ingenuity. But then there's the less well-known (though often no less popular) side, where things all get a little grimmer.
>> Warning, it's a very long article with a lot of recap.

Tales of Arise has fishing and farming, and a demo is on the way
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/tales-of-arise-has-fishing-and-farming-and-a-demo-is-on-the-way/
Recently, Tales of Arise Producer Yusuke Tomizawa held a live Q&A and showed off some new features for the upcoming Tales RPG for the first time. The stream, which you can find on the official Japanese Tales Youtube channel in its entirety (alas, no subtitles), revealed some choice bits of info and includes some previously unseen footage including a skit that you can watch above. (There's a version with Japanese voice acting and English subtitles here).

Former Elder Scrolls devs announce 'Grand RPG' The Wayward Realms
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/former-elder-scrolls-devs-announce-grand-rpg-the-wayward-realms/
Back in 2019 we learned that veteran developers Julian LeFay and Ted Peterson, leads on The Elder Scrolls Arena and Daggerfall, had founded a new studio, OnceLost Games. At the time they said they were working on a new RPG, though they didn't give out many details and haven't said much since. Today that silence was broken.

Bannerlord patch adds duel mode for multiplayer, ironman for singleplayer
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/bannerlord-patch-adds-duel-mode-for-multiplayer-ironman-for-singleplayer/
A new Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord patch has dropped, bringing a heap of changes and fixes to the open world RPG. Most of the changes have been tested in beta for the past month or so, but they've now been patched into the game proper. Just as a squire becomes a knight, so too do these once-young fixes become public.

Gearbox confirms early 2022 release for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/gearbox-confirms-early-2022-release-for-tiny-tinas-wonderlands/
2021 has seen game after game delayed to later in the year or into 2022, but currently Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Gearbox's upcoming Borderlands spin-off, is sticking to its target. When Wonderlands was announced back at E3, Gearbox said it should be out in early 2022. Monday's Take-Two quarterly earnings report reiterated that window.

Take-Two confirms it's announcing a new game soon. Will it be Marvel XCOM?
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/take-two-confirms-its-announcing-a-new-game-soon-will-it-be-marvel-xcom/
2K is getting ready to announce a new game, and we have a good guess at what it could be. Parent company Take-Two held its quarterly earnings report today and mentioned that 2K will have a "new franchise" to unveil this month, with the release following not too far behind: it'll be out by the end of this fiscal year, which wraps up in March 2022. And that leaked turn-based Marvel game from Firaxis sure seems like a good fit.

Take-Two boss says inclusion and diversity are of 'paramount importance'
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/take-two-boss-says-inclusion-and-diversity-are-of-paramount-importance-in-games-industry/
During a Take-Two earnings call today, CEO Strauss Zelnick addressed questions about how the company deals with issues of diversity and harassment, in light of the recent lawsuit against Activision Blizzard.

GTA Online players are walking in endless circles to earn free stuff
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/gta-online-players-are-walking-in-endless-circles-to-earn-free-stuff/
If you've ever played GTA Online, it probably won't surprise you to learn that its most dedicated players will do anything and everything they can to get the newest, shiniest stuff on offer. In last month's Los Santos Tuners update that added new clothes and car paint jobs, players discovered that one of the best ways to get ahead is to simply not play. Or, more specifically, go AFK and make the game think you're still playing.

Splitgate dev 'can't just buy more servers' to deal with exploding player numbers
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/splitgate-dev-cant-just-buy-more-servers-to-deal-with-exploding-player-numbers/
Splitgate, an arena FPS that's basically Halo with portals, has quite literally become a victim of its own success. Having already postponed its departure from early access while it sorts out server issues, developer 1047 Games this weekend tried to explain why the solution isn't as simple as buying more servers.

Tencent stocks plunge amid fears of a Chinese government gaming crackdown
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/tencent-stocks-plunge-amid-fears-of-a-chinese-government-gaming-crackdown/
Early on Tuesday the stocks of several gaming companies, Tencent among them, fell sharply by up to 11% at Hong Kong markets, after the Propaganda Department of China's Communist Party announced at the ChinaJoy expo that video games needed to be "good, clean and secure". Shares of companies like Tencent, NetEase and XD started tumbling in response. The shares of China Mobile Games and Entertainment Group (CMGE) even fell by a whopping 20%.
>> ***Imagine the popular Top Gear "Oh, no... Anyway" meme here.

Rainbow Six Extraction's monsters infect Siege with a month-long event
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/rainbow-six-extractions-monsters-infect-siege-with-a-month-long-event/
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Extraction may have been punted back into 2022. But if you're hankering to have Team Rainbow blast some aliens, Rainbow Six Siege will let you fight a team of infected operators until August 24 with this month's Containment event.

Blizzard's president is out, studio to be co-led by a woman for first time in its history
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/blizzards-president-is-out-studio-to-be-co-led-by-a-woman-for-first-time-in-its-history/
On July 20th, California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard collecting "numerous complaints about unlawful harassment, discrimination, and retaliation" at the company. (...)
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick promised a rapid response. Today Blizzard has announced that J. Allen Brack is leaving his position as the president of the studio, to be replaced by Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra as co-heads of the studio.

I've checked the specs and it's a fine monitor. You'll be hard pressed to find something better at that price point.

Hopefully this means some changes will be happening at Blizzard. The company went down so hard over the years

6600XT has PCI-E Gen 4 x8 instead of x16

https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-radeon-rx-6600-xt-release-date-price/

If you are wondering why that matters, the 5500XT also had a similar setup and if you have a pci-e gen 3 system, then you would be getting PCI-E x8 as well instead of x16. And in certain games there were noticeably worse performance on gen 3 vs gen 4.

https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Radeon-RX-5500-XT-8G-Grafikkarte-275704/Specials/PCI-Express-3-vs-PCI-E-4-GPU-1339415/

Seems that AMD hasn't learned their lesson. Now this really wouldn't be a problem per say if all modern CPUs were all PCI-E gen 4 but AMD's brand new APUs, the 5600G and 5700G are limited to PCI-E gen 3. If you were thinking to go for a Team Red budget build... Well you would get a double whammy besides the fact that both of them are terrible value to start with. I believe Intel's i3 might also be gen 3.

Lenovo Notebooks with missing H264 Encoder support are getting Bios Updates that restore it.

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Gaming-Laptops/Legion-5-Pro-NVENC-error-NV-ENC-ERR-UNSUPPORTED-PARAM/m-p/5074583?page=16

Apparently the well known OEMs only "fix" things after they get caught

NVIDIA & AMD Graphics Card Prices Won’t Increase Further In Q4 2021 As GDDR6 DRAM Demand Falls Down With Crypto

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-amd-graphics-card-prices-wont-increase-further-in-q4-2021-as-gddr6-dram-demand-falls-down-with-crypto/

One thing I will say is that once the stock and price comes back to normal, it could be a wise decision to get Ampere or RDNA 2 card and then wait and see whether or not Lovelace/RDNA 3 will be in a better stock situation than to try your luck with Lovelace/RDNA 3 from the gecko. Because if the stock situation turns out to be just as bad if not worse and if mining boom happens again, then we could see a repeat of this gen.

6600XT sounds like the worst value midrange GPU for a long time. No wonder they didn't even send it out to reviewers, its like they knew what they are doing and what most would think of it but will quietly release it the knowing that consumers will snap it up anyways.

The worst thing is that people continue to buy these overpriced GPU's and pricing will continue to increase and inflate; with performance scaling increasingly being tied to cost regardless of generations of GPU tech. Shame people are just buying whatever, and rewarding companies for the bottom-of-the-barrel scraping, doing the bare minimum and paying for outright for being gouged for money. These should be $280-300 GPU's imo, but these days AMD's sucks for value.

Yea pretty much. I harped on the 3060 a lot because it's just a 2060 Super with 12GB of Vram yet a 6600XT makes a 3060 seem like a great value. And while 3060 for $329 isn't bad per say as a 2060 Super had an MSRP of $399. You looked at the 3060 Ti, it gave 2080 Super levels of performance for just "$70 more."

The 6600 XT on the other hand... Has really no place other than AMD taking advantage of the market and being greedy. It's up to 15% faster in some Raster games than a 3060 for 15% increase in price but it offers none of the benefits that you get with a 3060. A 3060 can keep up with the consoles in some Ray Tracing heavy games and gives you 12GB of Vram. A 6600XT will get killed. And of course, it's so close to a 3060 Ti in price and the Ti will demolish it in everything.

If anyone needed proof that an AMD monopoly would be just as bad as Intel/Nvidia monopoly if not worse... Well the signs are right here!

Idd both Nvidia are AMD and their partners are taking advantage of the current climate and situation, which is just well, shite. That's why I really want another player in the field to bring something else to the table - like Intel with their upcoming Xe dGPU's. Though, its increasing sounding like that will under perform and undeliver.

It sucks because there isn't much choice to buy GPU's, particularly for those who want a budget card. Its the same thing with CPU's, less BOM and and yet charged more. Like you said these 6600XT are going to be garbage for raytracing and no DLSS to make up for it. FSR is going to look a bit pants because this is a 1080P card and AMD (to put salt in the wounds) are charging the same as their previous 7 tier card (the 5700XT) and will likely be outperformed at higher resolutions due to differences memory bandwidth and other factors like being limited to PCI-e 4x8.

I digress though, AMD can suck it it at those prices and should this continue I'm going to look elsewhere in the my future builds for both CPU and GPU's.

The funny thing is, Jensen and Lisa are technically family so it wouldn't surprise me if they were to get together during a family dinner and discuss some back seat price fixing.

Personally I think it's a disgrace to have a company like AMD charge the price of an entire console for a GPU that will perform worse than the said console. I could but wrong but I don't think I seen that in the history of PC gaming where a console that costs about the same as a PC GPU performs better than the said GPU. Especially when the GPU comes out almost a year after the console!

We'll see. Ubisoft also replaced some managers and such and we're seeing that those changes didn't do a thing.

Also, I agree with you and hinch, the 6600XT looks like one of those chips to skip completely.

@Captain_Yuri I did not know that xD Its been rigged from the start lol.

And yeah this may be first time where consoles genuinely offer more GPU performance for the price. Usually discrete GPU performance leapfrogs the consoles. I guess the timing of RDNA 2 products and consoles and silicon shortages also come into play though its down on AMD on pricing. I mean there are some good stuff from them like their APU's. Then you look at them charging near $400 for a 1080P card in 2021 card like...