Last week saw a lot of gaming hardware related news, a few gaming news and a couple of mobile-phone launches. Let’s go over all the major news that happened last week.

Intel enters the GPU market with laptops and also teased discrete desktop GPUs

Intel has finally come out with some details about their Arc discrete GPUs. It will launch for laptops first and will come to desktops later in the year.

The Arc graphics will be in 3 classes as of now; Arc 3, Arc 5 and Arc 7. Arc 3 is an entry-level graphics that has already been launched for laptops. Arc 5 and Arc 7 will be mid-range and performance level graphics that will launch in the Q3 of 2022.

Intel Arc A370M will have performance comparable to Nvidia’s GTX 1650 laptop graphics. Click here to read more about the performance charts for the Arc 3 graphics.

Intel also talked about their upscaling technology, XeSS and a lot more, which you can read here. They also teased about their upcoming desktop graphics.

Nvidia launched RTX 3090 Ti

Nvidia announced their halo card back in January during the CES 2022. Nvidia’s flagship card is not much faster than their existing RTX 3090.

Coming at a price tag of $1999 or ₹1,87,000, it is just 7% faster than the RTX 3090 which costs ₹1,33,500. Although it is not a card meant for average consumers, it is aimed at people who want the fastest card their money could buy.

RTX 3090 Ti is not in stock to purchase in India currently.

GPU prices are finally going down in India

GPU prices were at an all-time for the most part of 2021 due to the pandemic and very high demand. Now that supply is catching up to the demand, GPU prices came down by a substantial percentage.

Although the prices are not yet at the MSRP and the price drop is not even across all the products. While Nvidia cards saw a significant drop in the last couple of weeks, AMD’s cards haven’t seen much drop in prices.

The 30 series cards like RTX 3060 have seen a significant price drop from around ₹70000 to ₹40000. The situation is not ideal but it’s good news. In the coming weeks, more price drops are expected.

it should be noted that popular lower-tier cards like GTX 1650, GTX 1050 Ti or GTX 1660 has not dropped in price.

Sony is relaunching Playstation Plus with a new 3 tiered subscription model

With the success of Xbox Gamepass, Sony is trying to up their game with this Playstation Plus subscription.

The plan will have 3 tiers: Playstation Plus Essential, PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium. This will not be a complete global launch as of now and will launch in the US, Europe, UK and Japan.

The PS Plus Essential will have the same prices and benefits as the existing PlayStation Plus subscription. The PS Plus Extra will have a catalogue of up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games. The top tier, PS Plus Premium will feature a catalogue of up to 740 games which will also include PS3 and retro games from PS1, PS2 and PSP.

For more details about the launch date, price of plans and the fate of existing Playstation Now and Playstation Plus users, click here.

E3 2022 is cancelled, will come back in 2023

E3 is one of the biggest game trade show and marketing events. It was originally scheduled to be held in person but was shifted to the online event in January. But now the digital event is also cancelled.

In addition to the worries of COVID-19, many companies and video game publishers are pulling out of E3 to host their own events.

E3 will return in 2023 and will host both in-person and online event.

One Piece is getting a new RPG based on an original story by Eiichiro Oda

Yes, a new One Piece game is coming soon. The game was announced by Bandai Namco during a video presentation celebrating the 25 years of the series.

The new game, One Piece Odyssey will be an open-world game and the story will be written by Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece. Nothing much was shown beside the cutscenes but most probably would be a turn-based RPG.

The game will be developed by ILCA, the studio that worked on games like Nier Replicant and Dragon Quest XI.

Smartphone launches

OnePlus 10 Pro

OnePlus 10 Pro, the latest falgship phone has finally launched in India. The price in India starts with ₹66,999 for the 8GB + 128GB storage variant and ₹71,999 for 12GB + 256GB variant.

Quick Specs

Samsung Galaxy M33 5G

The latest model of the Galaxy M series has been launched in India powered by an Exynos octa-core processor. It features a RAM Plus feature which can use the inbuilt storage to virtually extend the RAM up to 16GB.

The price starts with ₹18,999 for the base 6GB+128GB variant and ₹20,499 for the 8GB+128GB variant.

Quick Specs