Xbox Series X; Amazon Delivering Nearly Half Own Packages; Mercedes Delays US EV SUV a Year; Intel Buys AI Chipmaker

Microsoft previewed it’s next generation Xbox at the Game Awards. It will be named Xbox Series X, and should be ready for your waiting hands and eyes by the holidays next year. According to venturebeat.com, it looks more like a PC tower than previous models. A large fan in the top handles airflow, while keeping noise to a minimum. The controller looks almost like the current one, except has a share button in the middle. Microsoft is claiming that ‘Xbox Series X will deliver a level of fidelity and immersion unlike anything that’s been achieved in previous console generations.’

Apparently Amazon is now delivering almost half its packages. CNBC.com reports that amazon Logistics (the arm of the company that handles deliveries) will attain a volume of 6.5 billion packages per year by 2022. This blows past an estimate from Morgan Stanley of the Amazon packages shipped by UPS at 5 billion and FedEx at 3.4 billion packages for that year.

Mercedes-Benz will delay the US release of its EV SUV, called the EQC from Q1 of 2020 until 2021. Businessinsider.com says Mercedes is making the move to try to support growing customer demand for the EQC in Europe. Mercedes still plans to release 10 EVs by 2022. EV sales in the luxury segment have been a bit soft this year, but European demand has been trending stronger.

Intel is picking up Israeli AI chipmaker Habana Labs for around $2 billion. According to techcrunch.com, last summer Habana had announced a chip that would outpace GPU based systems by four times. Apparently, Intel has had its eye on the startup for a while now. Intel has said they will keep the present team in place, and let them operate as an independent unit.