What I'm going to need is for you to knock off what ever you're doing now and read this WRUP. Or don't, I guess. It's up to you, really. I don't want to be pushy. This one is pretty cynical...
Well I'm sure you've all heard/read that Microsoft is really thirsty for a big fat dirty jug of Activision Blizzard. MS is looking to purchase and absorb ActiBlizz for nearly 70 billion dollars and if the deal goes through it would make MS the third most bloated eater of studios putting their number over 30. Bobby Kotick would remain CEO, at least for a while, before he's given his golden parachute and avoids the fallout of definitely not knowing about all the bad shit that's been going on under his swollen nose. I mean you can only see so much when you're looking at powder coated mirror from behind a tightly rolled hundo while clutching a stack of extra hundos. That last part may not be true, but you know, it's fine to just make shit up and deny it later. Talk is that he even considered buying media outlets in order to moderate bad press after all the bad workplace allegations made their way to the surface. The Verge even posted the internal email sent from his office to show everyone how great it'll be to probably get fired when the deal goes down. Of course all this is dependent on whether regulatory bodies even actually let MS buy up such a massive studio as ActiBlizz. But seeing as how Disney owns like 40 percent of all entertainment without much balking from regulators I doubt Microsoft will have much issue with adding a little more to their portfolio. It's a bit of a worry that Blizzard titles will become Xbox exclusives. What's going to happen is way above my pay grade but I happen to very much dislike the idea of MS owning Activision Blizzard.
Preorders have started for the soon to be readily available and not at all scalped or price inflated 3080 12GB edition from Nvidia. So if you're ready to spend just a shit load of money on a piece of tech that's valued at the full cost of a mid-range PC in it's entirety at base MSRP but in all likelyhood will end up twice as expensive --go right ahead. Who's stopping you? Here's some info from Notebook Check. Oh, also Nvidia has just gone ahead and raised prices across the board around six percent just because that's a fun thing to do I guess.
And hey, let's keep the good news rolling with AMD's newest and worst GPU since 2016, the RX 6500 XT. Just when things were starting to look good for AMD in a competitive space they decided to release a current gen GPU for the PC you built six years ago. Making matters worse, AMD tried to hide a comment that they made some time ago about how four GB of VRAM is dead and it would never come back right after announcing the four GB 6500 XT. They got called out and the deleted comment got a re-post with an implied "Can't blame me for trying" shrug. TechSpot has a pretty comprehensive review for you. That small amount of VRAM means the card doesn't even have any hardware encoding enabled, so you can't even use it as a capture card. At least it's potentially affordable... But c'mon AMD OMGWTFBBQ Okay?
What is on the play list guys?
Greywolfe: final fantasy 3 is done, so in the lead up to four in february, i'm going to see if i can beat cat quest 2.
AJ: Well, I recently hit up that nearby retro video game store again and came home with a great looking copy of Marvel Vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes for the Dreamcast. I also just received a pretty pristine copy of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the Saturn, which I had ordered online. So I may play those a bit, and I may swing by that store once again as there are still a couple more items there that I've been hoping to add to my ever-growing collection.
Scrooloose: I have been really enjoying playing For The King with friends. Really overlooked game, I think. I finished Disco Elysium. Play that if you haven't yet, it's kind of amazing. I decided to reinstall Dishonored 2 (not to test a 6500 XT) and see where that takes me. I never finished it way back and I'm not super enjoying it now. Who knows?