Winner and Losers: Xbox ups its games while Nvidia RTX 3080 hunters come up empty

September has been a doozy of a month in the world of tech. Last week we saw Apple release a new iPad Air 4 and Apple Watch 6 plus numerous other goodies.

And this week the torrent of tech hasn’t stopped, with Amazon unveiling a new Echo 4, Ring Always Home Cam and Luna games streaming service, among other things.

Despite how good some of the Amazon tech looked, for us here at Trusted Towers, another tech company once again stole the spotlight. As always there was also a very clear loser in the world of shiny things.

Here’s who they are.

Winner: Microsoft makes a genius play in the next-gen war

Microsoft has been going from strength to strength launching its next-generation Xbox since it unveiled its super affordable Xbox Series S and confirmed that Game Pass will be part of its xCloud streaming service.

Which is why we thought it couldn’t do anything to top itself this week. We were wrong. This week Microsoft once again dominated the next-gen debate when it announced it was buying ZeniMax Media, the parent company of a little ol’ publisher called Bethesda.

To none gamers, this is quite frankly huge and a move none of us saw coming. Bethesda is one of THE names in games at the moment and the owner of key IPs including Elder Scrolls, DOOM, Dishonoured and Fallout. In short, games companies don’t come much bigger and more prestigious than Bethesda.

Though Microsoft’s confirmed it will leave Bethesda running as a distinct entity, the purchase could be used in numerous ways to give Xbox as a platform a leg up on the competition, either by giving it a cut of the games profits when they appear on other systems, or through exclusive games.

As a result, the purchase wins Microsoft a place as this week’s winner.

Related: PS5 vs Xbox Series X

Loser: PC gamers

This week, PC gamers had a hard time, with supplies of Nvidia’s truly next generation RTX 3080 graphics card not only disappearing in record time, but scalpers taking full advantage of the shortage.

When we last checked there were nefarious eBay retailers selling 3080s for the same, if not higher, price than a £1000-plus 3090. That’s over a 50% markup on the 3080’s RRP.

This is a massive shame because, as we noted in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 review, the GPU is a HUGE step forward. During testing we found it’s a key step forward on the older 20-series.

It’s the first GPU that’s truly capable of 4K ray tracing gameplay at framerates over 60fps. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, it’s also cheap, by GPU standards with the Founders Edition we tested carrying a £649 recommended retail price.