Welcome to, The RoundUp! This is our news post summarising the past month in PC gaming, PC tech and new Thermaltake products. On today’s RoundUp for January 2021: an Indiana Jones game is on the way, Intel is making a graphics card, and CD Project Red is under investigation. All that and more in this RoundUp for January 2021.
GAMES NEWS
Games Released
January was a relatively quiet month for games as it tends to be. So, if you snoozed through the month like I did, here is a few standouts.
The highly anticipated Hitman 3 was the first major release of the year, coming out on January 20th.
On the 26th, The Sims 4 released their latest Stuff pack, Paranormal Stuff. The same day saw the release of the real-time strategy game Stronghold: Warlords.
Spooky game The Medium released worldwide on the 28th. Then the following day, the 29th, saw the release of Yakuza: The Remastered Collection.
Announcements
Bethesda has revealed they are working on new Indiana Jones game. MachineGames, who are best known for the Wolfenstein series, will be at the helm. The game is set to feature an original standalone story.
Ubisoft are developing an open world Star Wars game. The recently re-branded Lucasfilm Games (which we’ll go into a bit later) have stated the game is in very early development and will use Massive’s Snowdrop Engine.
After leaks at the end of last year, we are now finally seeing the first official glimpses of the new Resident Evil game. Resident Evil Village releases on May 7, 2021. Alongside the announcement came some crazy trailers, as well as a playable demo for the game exclusive to PS5.
The highly anticipated Biomutant will release on May 25, 2021. The action RPG featuring a kung-fu fighting cat has been in development since 2015.
Delays
Hogwarts Legacy is delayed. The game will now release in 2022, with the developers needing more time to perfect it. The game was originally due to release sometime this year.
Secondly, the Lord of the Rings: Gollum game has also been pushed back to 2022. The stealth game by Daedalic has been delayed, giving the develops more time working with the new consoles.
Everything Else
Red Dead Redemption 2 has won Steam’s Game of the Year award. This is voted on solely by players, beating out other popular titles such as: Doom Eternal and Hades.
Bethesda posted a cryptic tweet leading fans to spiral. As a new year’s message, The Elder Scrolls account posted a picture of a map of Skyrim with the phrase, “Transcribe the past and map the future”. Eagle-eyed fans have noticed that the map is dated a few years prior to Skyrim, so it perhaps hints that the new game is set a few years before it. Or it’s just a picture for a New Year’s message and we’re all just reading into it too much. Only time will tell.
Fans rejoice, Psychonauts 2 will be out in 2021! Originally slated to release last year, Double Fine Productions has almost finished the game and the studio didn’t even have to crunch. GG Tim Shafer, what a bloody legend.
Somehow, Lucasfilm Games has returned. Disney canned the studio once known as LucasArts back in 2012, but now it has been brought back in a way. At the time it was unknown how this would affect their current deal with EA owning the rights to Star Wars games. But as evident from earlier news, Ubisoft is making a Star War games now, so it looks like EA has lost dibs on all Star Wars titles from now on.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition could be on the way soon. Two retailers in Singapore and Indonesia are both showing a March 12, 2021 release date. EA has yet to confirm a date though, nor has any other retailer started using the March 12 date.
Investors have stated that Activison Blizzard’s total net worth is around a massive $72 billion! It’s stock price is is the highest it has been since 1984, sitting at $95 a share. This is believed to be due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the popular of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone.
In strange news, Tomb Raider is getting an anime. Netflix has greenlit an anime adaptation around the popular game character. Tasha Huo has signed on as producer. The series won’t follow the recent game or movies, and there is currently no set date for its release.
After 10 years, Sonic is getting a new voice actor. Well known voice actor Roger Craig Smith recently said goodbye to the iconic blue hedgehog in a tweet. There’s no word on who will take over the role.
Finally, Resident Evil Village actor Jeanette Maus has tragically passed away at only 39. In the upcoming game Maus lent her voice to the creepy witches in the game, as well as the “daughters” characters.
TECH NEWS
Some early bench markers for Intel’s upcoming Core i7 11700K are looking promising. The new CPU is sitting nicely above the Intel Core i9 10900K. It also might have a bit of a lead over the Ryzen 9 5900X in single-threated performance. But of course, these benchmarks should be taken with a grain of salt still so early before release.
In further Intel news, the CPU juggernaut is diping their toes into the GPU market. The Intel Xe-HPC is looking pretty spicy with 7 advanced silicon technologies in a single package. Unfortunately Intel did not design the card for gaming PC’s, but their new DG1- based Iris Xe graphics card is! It is only compatible with Intel motherboards and CPUs though and will need certain BIOS support. For now, though, we will have to wait until the end of the year to find out more.
Moving onto AMD news now. Cowcotland suggests The RX 6700 XT and RX 6700 are expected to release in late March 2021. Additionally, there have been concerns over the last few months of the Ryzen 5000 CPU temperature. AMD though have come out and stated that it’s not something to worry about. Some users have noticed temps in the 90C range in some instances when gaming, however this is by design. If these are idle temps though, you might want to look at replacing your thermal paste or getting a new cooler.
NVIDIA’s RTX 30 series short supply could see be an issue until the end of April. Fingers crossed come May, and the start of Q2, we will start to see more cards in the market. NVIDIA has also confirmed that there will be no founder’s edition of their RTX 3060 cards. They have decided instead to keep these special edition cards for the RTX 3060 Ti’s and above.
Lastly in NVIDIA news, their streaming serving GeForce now will come to Australia in 2021. Australians can currently register their interest for a Beta of the service, with the servers located in Sydney and Perth, but will service users Australia wide.
PC sales are at the healthiest they have been in a long while. A report by IDC showcases that the PC market has grown by 13.1% in the last year alone. This is probably due to the current global pandemic, with many people being forced to work from home or suddenly housebound.
RIP to Adobe Flash. Browser support has sadly ended for the iconic software, with recent updates no longer supporting it. Adobe began the end-of-life process for Flash back in 2017.
Finally, Apple is entering into the VR market with its own headset. Their hardware is looking like its going to be far more expensive than other bands sets like Oculus and HTC. It is reportedly still in the late prototype phase, so still a bit of a while off.
CONTROVERSIAL NEWS
After the events in the U.S. last month, Twitch suspended Trump from their platform, as did a multitude of other providers. This happened after the shocking attack on the Capitol building. The platform later fully banned the former President’s account due to his ongoing behaviour and the risk of inciting further violence.
Twitch also removed the PogChamp emote in January due to controversial comments from the face behind the emote. The emote is now a different creator’s face each day.
CD Projekt are under fire from Polish regulators. This comes after the somewhat disappointing launch of their long awaited, Cyberpunk 2077. Poland’s Office of Competition And Consumer Protection are investigating the launch, especially the console release, to ensure the game gets up to scratch soon.
Additionally, CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski has addressed the controversy around the game’ launch. Iwinski formally apologized for the launch, stating that they underestimated the task of last-gen ports. He also revealed that DLCs are on the way in future.
Several composers of the popular game Celeste are still awaiting royalty payments. The creators accuse music label and publisher Materia Collective of failing to pay royalties on song and streams from back in 2019. Materia Collective addressed the complaints in a statement on Twitter. However, it remains to be seen whether the artists will be paid properly.
Scavengers Studio has suspended their creative director. The Montreal based indie studio behind the upcoming Season found themselves in hot water after allegations mainly about their ex-creator director Simon Darveau. The studio suspended Darveau indefinitely from all responsibilities in the company, and from the board of directors. Studio CEO Amelie Lamarche will also be stepping down from her role as CEO temporarily.
Activision Blizzard has called a requirement for diversity hiring ‘unworkable’. The rule requires at least one diverse candidate interviewed when hiring for a role, meaning one non-white non-male candidate. Their reasoning is that it will encroach on their ability to compete for talent.
THERMALTAKE NEWS
January has been quite a busy month for us here at Thermaltake Australia. We released a bunch of new products including the stunning mini-tower case The Tower 100.
We then released the gorgeous Argent K5 keyboard and the Argent M5 Wired and Wireless gaming mice.
Finally, in our TteSports range we released two new gaming mice, the Iris M50 and Iris M30.
Over on our YouTube channel we got straight back into the swing of things after a little break over Christmas. We released a first look of The Tower 100, as well as a first look of the Argent K5. Finally, we released a call out video for a new video editor.
Here on the blog, we wrote up How To Install a Power Supply. We also did a bit of reflecting in a post showcasing some things I wish I knew before starting PC building.
Currently our podcast Thermal Talk is on a break until February. But there is a back catalogue to check out if you’ve missed out on anything. Check out all our episodes on your podcast platform of choice: Spotify, SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
