The phrase “the early bird gets the worm” has never been truer than it is on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. During the insanity of those sales, it’s not enough to know what the best deals will be–you also want to know exactly when those deals will be available so you can be among the first shoppers to claim an offer. Otherwise, you can almost definitely count on the best deals to be sold out by the time you look online or head to the store on Black Friday.

To help you form your Black Friday shopping plan and ensure you don’t miss out on the best doorbuster deals, we’ve gathered everything you need to know about the major retailers’ store hours and online start times for Black Friday below, including stores like Best Buy, Amazon, Target, GameStop, and Walmart. Many retailers have started offering deals already in early access sales. Look for the bulk of Black Friday deals to go live on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day; however, some deals won’t go live until Black Friday itself. Quite a few stores will open Thanksgiving evening (unless you live in Rhode Island, Maine, or Massachusetts, where opening on Thanksgiving is illegal).

Please note that some stores haven’t released the exact time their deals will be live, only the date. We’ve included the information available below and will continue to update this story as more retailers announce their store hours and start times.

Black Friday 2019: Start times and store hours

Best Buy

Most of Best Buy’s deals will be available starting on Thanksgiving, presumably in the morning for online shopping and later on at 5 PM for brick-and-mortar stores. However, pre-Black Friday deals are already live on Best Buy’s site.

• November 11-20: For 10 days throughout November, Best Buy will make one doorbuster available for purchase.
• November 28-December 1: All Black Friday deals and doorbusters will be available.
  • Online deals start on Thanksgiving (unknown time)

Best Buy store hours

• Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28: 5 PM – 1 AM
• Black Friday, Nov. 29: 8 AM – 10 PM
• Saturday, Nov. 30: 9 AM – 10 PM
• Sunday, Dec. 1: 11 AM – 8PM

GameStop

At GameStop, online deals will go live beginning at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET on Wednesday, November 27. For brick-and-mortar GameStop stores, doors will open quite early on Thanksgiving Day, starting at 3 PM this year.

GameStop store hours

• Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28: 3 PM – 10 PM
• Black Friday, Nov. 29: 7 AM – 10 PM
• Saturday, Nov. 30: 10 AM – 9 PM
• Sunday, Dec. 1: 11 AM – 7 PM

GameStop’s Black Friday 2019 deals haven’t been announced yet.

Amazon

While Amazon has opened a small (but growing) number of brick-and-mortar stores across the US, the bulk of its Black Friday discounts will be available on Amazon.com. Because Amazon is primarily an online store, it’s not waiting until the end of the month to start offering its Black Friday deals. Instead, Amazon launched its Happy HoliDeals sale on November 1 with discounts across gaming, tech, entertainment, and other categories. Then, starting on November 22, more deals will be available on Amazon, including a wide range of smart devices. Basically, Amazon will have deals going live all the time, so check back often.

• November 1-22: Pre-Black Friday deals available in Happy HoliDeals sale
• Starting November 22: More deals will go live every day up until Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and probably the week after Cyber Monday.

Target

On the Wednesday before Black Friday, Target will have some special access deals for RedCard and Circle members. Otherwise, online deals will become available to everyone Thanksgiving morning, with brick-and-mortar stores opening at 5 PM on Thanksgiving Day this year.

• November 27: RedCard Early Access Sale runs all day, with select deals for Circle members available starting at 6 PM (online only)
• November 28-30: Black Friday deals and doorbusters available
  • Online deals become available starting Thanksgiving morning through November 30 while supplies last
• December 1-8: Cyber Week deals available (online only)

Target store hours

• Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28: 5 PM – 1 AM
• Black Friday, Nov. 29: 7 AM – 11 PM (normal closing time)
• Saturday, Nov. 30: 8 AM – 11 PM (normal hours)

Walmart

Walmart hasn’t yet revealed its Black Friday ad or store hours for 2019, but we expect it will soon. Last year, doors opened at 6 PM on Thanksgiving Day and stayed open through Black Friday. Meanwhile, early access holiday deals have been live on Walmart.com since late October.

Microsoft

Many of Microsoft’s online deals will become available at midnight ET on Thanksgiving morning (or 9 PM PT on November 27); however, some deals are going live a bit earlier on November 22. It’s unclear whether its brick-and-mortar locations will keep any special hours this year.

Ebay

While Amazon may be a go-to source for many people’s online shopping, Ebay has continued to surprise us with great gaming deals on a regular basis, especially when it comes to discounts on new games or subscription services like PS Plus. It also had some of the best deals around during Prime Day 2019, so be sure to keep your eye on Ebay during Black Friday this year.

Ebay is offering a series of “Black Friday Drops” every Friday leading up the major event. So far, they’ve offered nice discounts on expensive tech like the Apple Watch Series 5 and Bose SoundTouch 10 wireless speaker, and on November 15, they’ll have a deal on the Nintendo Switch Lite along with Pokemon Sword and Shield (the exact discount hasn’t been revealed). Each Black Friday Drop goes live at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET every Friday now through December 13. The spotlight deal for Black Friday itself, November 29, hasn’t yet been revealed.

Steam

For PC gamers, Steam’s Black Friday sale (or “Autumn Sale”) will be a huge opportunity to snag games on their wishlist at a discount. Unfortunately, Steam doesn’t release information about its sales ahead of time, and that likely won’t change for Black Friday 2019. That said, we have a pretty good idea when Steam’s Black Friday sale will start. According to a leak a few months ago, Steam’s Autumn sale will go live on November 26 and run until December 3. This is a bit later than in previous years, but considering Black Friday is also happening later this year, the November 26 start date is believable. It’s worth noting the leak also accurately predicted the dates for Steam’s Halloween sale last month.

• November 26-December 3: Steam’s Autumn Sale

Newegg

Online store Newegg is another great source for tech and gaming deals year-round, and the website has been gearing up for Black Friday all month long. Newegg has opted to celebrate “Black November” rather than limiting its deals to Thanksgiving weekend, and you can already find great discounts on gaming laptops, desktops, graphics cards, and more.

• November 12-18: Deals on components and storage for PC builders
• November 19: Black Friday pre-sale kicks off
• November 25-30: Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals available

Costco

If you’re someone who has a Costco membership, there are plenty of Black Friday gaming deals awaiting you this year. However, Costco will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, so there’s no beating the Black Friday rush if you plan to shop in stores. If you prefer to shop online, deals are already available, but some of the best deals will go live on Costco.com the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

• Live now: Early holiday deals available on Costco.com

Costco store hours

• Thanksgiving Day: Closed
• Black Friday, Nov. 29: 9 AM – 8:30 PM (may vary by store)

Kohl’s

Kohl’s isn’t usually a store you think of for tech and gaming deals, but the brick-and-mortar retailer is stepping up its game with some solid deals this year, including a nice Nintendo Switch bundle. Plus, the store is offering $15 of Kohl’s Cash for every $50 you spend from November 25-29, an excellent deal if you shop there regularly. On top of that, select products are eligible for an additional 15% off both in stores and online with promo code THANKS15.

• November 25: Online Black Friday deals become available at midnight CT / 1 AM ET (10 PM PT on Nov. 24)
• Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28: Online doorbusters available at midnight CT / 1 AM ET (10 PM PT on Nov. 27) through 1 PM on Black Friday (or while supplies last)
• November 30-December 9: Customers who earned Kohl’s Cash during Black Friday week can redeem it on anything online and in stores

Kohl’s store hours

• Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28: Doors open at 5 PM

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/black-friday-2019-start-times-store-hours-gamestop/1100-6471354/

Rockstar North, the developer of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, recently released Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, giving us a glimpse at what the team might be able to do with next generation technology. Now current job listing on their website suggests that they’re looking into the next generation very seriously, as they’re currently seeking a programmer that can assist in building animation systems for a next generation open-world game.

The listing, spotted by PlayStation Universe, is for an Animation Systems Programmer. As part of the job description, Rockstar North states, “we are looking for an experienced, talented engineer to help us in developing advanced animation systems for large open world character-based games.” Further down, under the subheading “What We Do,” it says that Rockstar is “a global team of programmers and researchers who collaborate on pushing the boundaries of character animation on next generation hardware.”

This is the first explicit reference we’ve seen to Rockstar North working on something for next generation consoles. Their output has slowed during this generation: Red Dead Redemption 2 is the only completely original game that the developer has released for the PS4 and Xbox One, alongside an improved version of Grand Theft Auto V. Both titles feature online modes that have made Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, a lot of money from microtransactions.

While it’s feasible that Rockstar North is developing a next gen version of Red Dead Redemption 2, the language used in the job listing suggests that they’re working on something entirely new. They’re looking for someone to “develop, maintain, extend, and support an extensive high-level runtime animation system, pipeline, and tools,” and to “implement well designed, robust, highly optimal new animation system features, integrating them into our existing animation, gameplay, and AI systems.”

The most likely next release from Rockstar North would be Grand Theft Auto 6. It’s been five years since the PS4 and Xbox One release of Grand Theft Auto V, which arrived about a year after the Xbox 360 and PS3 version. Grand Theft Auto V has sold over 115 million copies, making it one of the best-selling games of all time–a sequel seems inevitable.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/rockstar-north-is-hiring-for-development-of-a-next/1100-6471365/

Carrion, a reverse-horror game where you play as the monster, was first shown at GDC 2018 and is due to release in 2020. The game was announced as a PC release, and will be made available on Steam at launch. It casts you as a many-tentacled monster that smashes its way through the facility it was born in, killing the scientists that created you and destroying as much of the building as you can.

Now the game has been announced for Xbox One as well, ahead of a playable demo being available at X019 in London from November 14-16. The game will launch alongside the PC version, although neither release has a specific launch date yet beyond ‘2020’. A short trailer has been released alongside the announcement, although it does not reveal anything new about the game.

We also know, thanks to a tweet by Xbox Game Pass (embedded below), that some new titles will be announced for Microsoft’s subscription service during X019–although it seems unlikely that Carrion will be one of them, since publisher Devolver Digital’s co-founder Graeme Struthers is wary of game subscriptions.

A sneak-peek demo was available for a limited time over Halloween. It’s no longer available, but you can check out 15 minutes of gameplay footage we snagged from it.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/reverse-horror-monster-game-carrion-is-coming-to-x/1100-6471364/

With a new generation of consoles on the horizon, curiosity definitely strikes when thinking about what they’re going to bring to the table in terms of graphical power. Will they deliver a transformative jump for next-gen? Will they do native 4K with better textures and higher frame rates? Or is there a feature cooking in the background that we don’t know about yet? We can count on one graphical capability that’ll be new to the console world when PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett ship late next year: ray tracing.

What Is Ray Tracing?

Ray tracing is an advanced method of illuminating 3D environments. With ray tracing, light sources cast out linear rays of light which then bounce off the surface it hits to another and to another until it reaches your eye, or the camera view in that 3D environment. Another factor ray tracing accounts for is the fact that different surfaces (like glass or water) will reflect, refract, and absorb light differently. These calculations lead to a more accurate representation of how light works in the real world.

Areas obstructed by objects and blocked from light rays are properly darkened as a result (meaning proper shadows) and a scene’s illumination looks more realistic. Ambient light can also affect the darkness of shadows and ray tracing accounts for this, too–not every shadow is pitch black due to varied environmental illumination. Light will behave and react accordingly with mirrors, glass, and liquid as well. Scenes are able to represent changes to lighting conditions since rays are being cast and calculated in real time, making for realistic and dynamic environments.

It’s much more clear when you see it for yourself, and Nvidia has an in-depth walkthrough of ray tracing in action:

Since light sources can cast thousands of rays and can bounce off multiple objects and surfaces with varying properties, it becomes a burdensome rendering technique for graphics processors. These are all calculations that your hardware has to process in real time and considering just how complex and intense ray tracing is, it’s unreasonably difficult for current consoles to do it.

What It Takes To Do Ray Tracing

Ray tracing is currently making waves in the PC hardware space and first hit the consumer market last year with the launch of Nvidia’s RTX family of video cards. These graphics cards are built with Nvidia’s Turing GPU architecture which include dedicated processing cores–called RT Cores–to solely focus on ray tracing and work alongside the main GPU cores. Currently there are 8 video cards in the Nvidia RTX lineup equipped to handle ray tracing in PC games:

• Titan RTX
• RTX 2080 Ti
• RTX 2080 Super
• RTX 2080
• RTX 2070 Super
• RTX 2070
• RTX 2060 Super
• RTX 2060

Ray tracing is also on a spectrum; Nvidia allows games with RTX ray tracing features to control how many rays can be cast in order to perform ray tracing. This means previous generation graphics cards can at least toy around with the tech, but it’s largely inadvisable since you can take drastic hits to your framerate.

The interesting aspect to next-generation consoles aiming for ray tracing is the fact that hardware manufacturer AMD will be building the graphics processors for both Xbox Scarlett and PS5. Currently, AMD does not have a GPU on the market specifically built for ray tracing and has only said that it has plans to dedicate the shader cores on its video cards to do ray tracing in the near future. Of course, future console hardware will be much different than what’s currently available for PCs, so we’ll have to wait until we get more details on how next-gen platforms will handle it.

But Why, Though?

You might be wondering, how is that any different from how light and shadows work in games without ray tracing? By comparison, the more common method, called rasterization, is a quicker way of doing lighting and shadows though it is more crude. But it doesn’t account for the constant bouncing of light rays since it doesn’t include real-time calculations. Nvidia has a more detailed explanation rasterization.

When it comes to how ray tracing actually affects a scene of a game, I often think about Nvidia’s presentation of how ray tracing looks with Metro Exodus’ global illumination. Without ray tracing, the inside of cabins are fairly lit, albeit flat and not entirely accurate in terms of how it would be in the real world. With ray tracing enabled, light that shines through the windows bounce around and illuminate the areas of the cabin properly, leaving certain corners darker in the players view:

Animated films, such as Pixar movies, have been using ray tracing for years. But of course, these are not interactive experiences that need to be rendered in real time, and film studios also have access to powerful machines that can render these scenes efficiently. But gaming hardware is slowly getting there. Sharper shadows, better ambient occlusion, and proper global illumination are all the benefits that animation and games get out of ray tracing.

Many high-profile games have included Nvidia’s RTX ray tracing tech and there will be more to come. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is the latest release to use the tech and next year’s highly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 will take advantage of it, too. Developers typically work alongside Nvidia to implement it properly, and so far, here are a few of the big games:

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
• Control
• Battlefield V
• Metro Exodus
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Cyberpunk 2077 (upcoming)
• Atomic Heart (upcoming)
• Quake II
• Minecraft

The term ray tracing is increasingly getting thrown around in discussions about the next generation of gaming hardware, and if you haven’t been keeping up with the PC hardware then you may be lost; hopefully we’ve at least provided a fundamental understanding of it. To put it simply, ray tracing is a graphical rendering technique that has light sources casting rays that behaving as they would in the real world to provide more realistic looking shadows, reflections, and overall illumination–however, it’s hardware-intensive.

We don’t know much about how next-gen consoles will be handling ray tracing, but don’t expect every PS5 and Scarlett game to include it or run the full gamut of ray tracing features. The tech is still in its early days and only a handful of PC games have it implemented today. If you want to get into the weeds of ray tracing, you can check out this Nvidia developer blog that explains the heavy technical details.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ray-tracing-explained-what-it-means-for-ps5-and-sc/1100-6471353/