Welcome to, The RoundUp! This is our monthly news post summarising the past month in PC gaming, PC tech and new Thermaltake products. On today’s RoundUp for August 2020: another lot of new games were announced, there were some sad game delays, and it’s Epic Games VS Apple! All that and more, in this month’s RoundUp for August 2020.
GAMES RELEASED
August 2020 saw the release of some pretty awesome games! The INSANELY popular party battle royale Fall Guys released on August 4 to incredible praise. Releasing to far less praise sadly, the game version of popular film franchise Fast and Furious, Fast and Furious: Crossroads very quietly released on August 7. Next, the PC port for the ex-PS4 exclusive, Horizon Zero Dawn released on August 8. Microsoft Flight Simulator released on August 18 (however most people couldn’t play it until a day or two later due to its GIANT file size!). Finally, August 28 was a very busy day for games. This day saw the release of Project Cars 3, Wasteland 3 and the PC port for Control.
GAMES NEWS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Strap yourselves in for the longest list in a while! August was a busy month for games!
One of the biggest announcements this past August was the upcoming Call of Duty game for 2020. Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War will be a direct sequel to the first Black Ops game. It releases November 13, 2020.
DC Fandome Event
The DC Fandome event was held on August 22, revealing a ton of upcoming DC games.
Firstly, Rocksteady announced thier Suicide Squad game, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. This game sees the titular Suicide Squad (featuring Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Harley Quinn and King Shark), teaming up to hunt down a rogue Superman. The game has a 2022 release date for now.
WB Games Montreal finally revealed the game they had been teasing for months! Gotham Knights sees the Dark Knight himself dead, so his protegees have to team up to save Gotham in his stead. Gotham Knights sees you playing as either Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing or Red Hood, and similar to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, it seems to also support co-op play. This game luckily has a slightly closer released date, 2021.
Gamescom
A few days later, on August 27, saw the stream of the yearly Gamescom event. Here are just some of my personal stand out trailers/announcements…
A sequel to the 2017 eerie platformer Little Nightmares was announced. It releases sometime in late 2021.
The Sims 4 revealed their latest upcoming stuff pack, and it’s Star Wars themed. Star Wars: Journey to Batuu will release on September 8, 2020.
It’s time for a bit of a throwback, with classic detective duo Sam and Max getting a VR Game. Sam & Max: This time it’s Virtual is due for release in 2021.
Twelve Minutes is an interactive thriller about a man stuck in a time loop and features a giant all-star cast. Sadly, no release date has yet been confirmed.
Additionally, the trailer for Unknown9: Awakening looked incredible! While the CGI trailer isn’t necessarily how the game will look, the story already seems very interesting. There is also no set release date for this game either, however it is set to release on PC and next-gen consoles.
DELAYS
We must take the good with the bad these days, and with all the awesome trailers we got recently, sadly, comes the delay announcements too.
Halo Infinite won’t release now until 2021. This is so the Halo team has ample time to get the game entirely up to scratch for release. It’s speculated this is because of the polarizing criticisms many fans had of the game after the July Microsoft showcase.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s Early Access launch is postponed. It was due to open for Early Access in August, however now it’s looking like it won’t start until September 30.
Serious Sam 4’s release date is been pushed back by a month. While no specific reason was provided, it’s safe to assume it’s more than likely due to the worldwide pandemic situation. It’s now releasing on September 24.
The final game to not make its planned 2020 release, is Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. While the game never had an official release date, it was slated for a late 2020 release. The game is now expected sometime in 2021.
EVERYTHING ELSE
Blizzard have finally confirmed their digital version of Blizzcon. Blizzard has not confirmed any official dates, but the event will be held early 2021.
Ex-Mixer streamer Ninja seems to be streaming now on YouTube, but then suddenly, he was back on Twitch! It stills seems has hasn’t quite settled on where to go next fully though.
Next, Shroud, another popular streamer who had moved to Mixer, announced his official return to Twitch. Twitch welcomed Shroud back with open arms, with Shroud tweeting out “I’m coming home” with a link to his Twitch page.
Now onto the final piece in the streamer news triology! Controversial streamer, Dr Disrespect, has officially moved to YouTube. He still claims that he did nothing to warrant his Twitch ban, and it seems his legal battel with Twitch is still ongoing.
Amazon have offically renamed ‘Twitch Prime’ to ‘Prime Gaming’. This is to more clearly define the service as one for games specifically, and allows Amazon to focus more on games for this service in particular. The name change will not affect existing users.
And finally, sad news. Russell Kirsch, the inventor of the pixel, died at 91. Kirsch was a computer scientist, who first invented the pixel back in 1957. Additionally, the co-inventor of the computer mouse, William English also passed away at 91. English and co-creator Douglas Engelbart, first came up with the Computer Mouse in the mid 60’s.
TECH NEWS
August was a busy month for graphics card juggernaut, Nvidia. First, they announced a special event due to be held on August 31. This is to officially announce their Nvidia Ampere graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 3090 and RTX 380. A more in-depth report on this will be covered in next months RoundUp.
Staying with GPU’s, Windows 10 have introduced a new setting for users with multiple GPU’s. This allows users to manually configure which GPU is used with higher workloads. This setting is in your system settings, display, and then graphics settings.
Microsoft is officially ending support for Internet Explorer in 2021. The OG way to surf the web will officially lose support on August 17, 2021, and all Microsoft products that use the browser (e.g. outlook etc) will stop supporting it.
Happy birthday to Windows 95! This year marks 25 years since the release of the iconic operating system. It was released back on August 24, 1995.
Intel’s new Adler Lake CPU’s aim to rival AMD’s Ryzen. The CPU is due for release in 2021, and will feature hybrid computing architecture. This provides both high performance and high core-count processing for games and other tasks (e.g. video editing).
On top of this, Intel is finlly entering the graphics card market. Their Intel Xe graphics architecture is optimized for gaming, and will feature real-time ray tracing acceleration. These cards are also estimated for a 2021 release.
The popular VR Headset brand, Oculus, will soon require all users to have registered Facebook accounts. Existing users without an account will have up until 2023 before they lose all functionality of their headset without a registered account.
CONTROVERSIAL NEWS
One of the biggest controversies of August, was the battle between Epic Games and Apple. This all began because Epic Games found a way to bypass Apple’s very strict in-game app purchases rules. Apple in retaliation removed Fortnite from their app store entirely, which Epic Games was not happy about, revealing a short film parodying an old Apple ad. Epic Games then filed a lawsuit against Apple. The most recent update in the saga is that a judge has ruled partially in favour of Epic Gamers, ensuring that Apple can’t remove the Unreal Engine itself from their platforms, as well as their developer account. Fortnite though is still not available on Apple platforms.
Last month we reported on the issue the US Army were having with Twitch. Due to the US Constitution, technically they can’t really moderate their chat, meaning now their chat is basically just comments about war crimes which they legally can’t remove. Despite that though, it does seem that they will be continuing to stream on Twitch for the time being.
Recently, Rocksteady Studios have come under fire for staff harassments claim. This is due to a 2018 letter detailing that over half of the women working for the studio at the time were dealing with harassment. In response, Rocksteady has now promised to do more to more to be more inclusive and have better representation for women in their company.
The upcoming Marvel’s Avengers game stirred the pot this past month, revealing the character Spiderman will be exclusive to the PlayStation. This is on top of a bunch of other smaller content (e.g. skins etc) that will be also be exclusive to the console.
THERMALTAKE NEWS
Here at Thermaltake we released two major products in August. First, the gorgeous Micro-Case the V150, which we made a first look on HERE. We also dropped the highly anticipated Floe RC All-in-One Memory cooler, which you find out more about right HERE.
Over on our YouTube Channel, we have released some awesome content as always. On top of our First Look, we also made an easy to follow install guide for the Floe RC. We also did a cool clip video of my personal favourite moments from the first 20 episodes of our podcast, Thermal Talk. Finally, we made one of my personal favourite videos to date, the Build Off, which is a building battle between Taylor and Nick.
Here on the blog, we posted a long-form article about Game Trailers. We also listed 5 Great Cameras for content creation. Finally, we talk about Game Easter Eggs and listed some personal favourites.
And finally, a friendly reminder that our podcast, Thermal Talk,is still uploading fortnightly. If you want even MORE content from us, remember to go give it a listen. Check out all our episodes on your podcast platform of choice: Spotify, SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
SOURCES: https://www.pcgamer.com/au/new-games-2020/) https://www.pcgamer.com/au/activsion-confirms-that-treyarch-and-raven-are-making-the-new-call-of-duty/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/call-of-duty-arg-teases-black-ops-reveal-coming-later-this-week/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/call-of-duty-arg-continues-with-more-cold-war-teasing-but-no-reveal-yet/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/call-of-duty-black-ops-cold-war-confirmed-full-reveal-coming-next-week/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/call-of-duty-black-ops-cold-war-is-reportedly-a-direct-sequel-to-the-original/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/heres-when-you-can-watch-rocksteadys-suicide-squad-reveal/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/warner-is-teasing-a-new-batman-game-again-reveal-could-happen-tomorrow/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/the-next-batman-game-is-gotham-knights-and-batmans-dead/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/warner-bros-reveals-suicide-squad-kill-the-justice-league/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/rocksteady-confirms-its-making-a-suicide-squad-game/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/sam-and-max-are-getting-a-vr-game/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/the-sims-4-is-getting-a-star-wars-pack-and-it-looks-pretty-great/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/unknown9-awakening-is-a-new-game-about-a-mysterious-hidden-dimension-known-as-the-fold/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/halo-infinite-delayed-to-2021/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/baldurs-gate-3-early-access-launch-wont-happen-in-august/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/baldurs-gate-3-comes-to-early-access-on-september-30-hopefully/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/serious-sam-4-delayed-into-september/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-has-been-delayed-into-2021/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/blizzard-confirms-that-a-digital-blizzcon-will-happen-early-next-year/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/ninja-is-streaming-on-twitch-again/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/dr-disrespect-teases-an-imminent-return-to-streaming/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/dr-disrespect-responds-to-speculation-we-didnt-do-anything-to-warrant-a-ban/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/shroud-returns-to-twitch/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/amazon-renames-twitch-prime-to-prime-gaming/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/russell-kirsch-pixel-inventor-dies/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/william-english-dies-age-91/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/epics-nineteen-eighty-fortnite-video-attacks-apple-with-a-parody-of-its-famous-ad/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/epic-games-sues-apple-over-app-store-exclusivity/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/epic-permanently-lowers-cost-of-fortnite-v-bucks-in-a-challenge-to-apple-and-google/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/epic-seeks-restraining-order-against-apples-devastating-response-to-lawsuit/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/microsoft-backs-epics-request-for-a-restraining-order-against-apple/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/the-us-army-is-back-on-twitch-and-it-is-not-going-well-for-them/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/rocksteady-reacts-to-staff-harassment-claims/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/rocksteady-shares-employee-letter-defending-its-response-to-2018-abuse-allegations/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/rocksteady-promises-more-action-to-ensure-an-inclusive-culture-at-the-studio/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/avengers-dev-explains-why-spider-man-is-a-playstation-exclusive/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/marvels-avengers-is-getting-even-more-playstation-exclusives/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/windows-10-is-gaining-a-new-setting-for-power-users-with-multiple-gpus/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/microsoft-will-end-support-for-internet-explorer-and-legacy-edge-in-2021/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/happy-birthday-windows-95/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/intel-alder-lake-hybrid-architecture-desktop/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/intel-xe-hpg-gaming-graphics-card/ https://www.pcgamer.com/au/oculus-vr-headsets-will-soon-require-facebook-accounts/
