Marvell significantly expands ARMADA SoC open-source OS compatibility

Jeff Williams | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Feb 25, 2016 3:02 PM CST

Marvell just expanded their line of ARMADA SoC ecosystem, that are frequently used in NAS and other networking devices, to include native support for open-source software platforms like OpenWRT and openSUSE.

Before now Marvell didn't officially support any other software than that which was initially installed on their platforms. Adding support in the kernel of the various open-source OS's required a lot of time from volunteers to make it work properly. Because of that, support was always a bit precarious, and it could take quite awhile for new devices to be added to the compatibility lists.

Now, however, their 64-bit ARMv8 powered ARMADA 3700 Cortex-A53 device family and ARMADA 7K and ARMADA 8K Cortex-A72 device families are getting full-fledged support for the Linux kernel as well as U-Boot support. That means that it'll be compatible with a much wider range of OS's, anything that has ARM support baked in can run on their chips, essentially.

Continue reading: Marvell significantly expands ARMADA SoC open-source OS compatibility (full post)

System Shock level designer isn't impressed with mainstream games

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 2:09 PM CST

Warren Spector, the mind behind the original System Shock and Deus Ex, is making his way back into the game industry but he isn't too impressed with the progress he's seen since he made his exit so many years ago.

He left the University of Texas to get back into an industry that he says changes constantly, but even that change seems to be just putting a facade over the same wall. Putting a new coat of paint on the same thing. "I can't believe I'm about to say this -- I'll never work in this industry again -- but in the mainstream space I really haven't seen a whole lot of progress. It seems like we're getting more finely-tuned, prettier versions of games we've been playing for years."

Spector sees a stagnant industry that's being held back by a number of different factors, but he's confident that better AI, non-combat related AI specifically, could help revitalize and breath new ideas into games. "What I want to do, is I see a variety of places where we could make some strides that would help take games to the next level. The biggest one, for me, is more robust characters and character AI. We've gotten very good at combat AI, we've made great strides there, but I don't think we've done much in the world of non-combat AI and interacting with people -- human or otherwise."

Continue reading: System Shock level designer isn't impressed with mainstream games (full post)

Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 remasters coming to PS4 and Xbox One

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 1:30 PM CST

Following its trend of re-releases, Capcom today announced a new trio of remasters set in its landmark zombie outbreak franchise: Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 will be released on PS4 and Xbox One.

Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 remasters coming to PS4 and Xbox One

The Japanese games-maker broke the news in a recent Capcom Unity blog post, and honestly we're mostly excited for RE4 making the jump to current gen. It's the best out of the bunch, and is arguably the best Resident Evil game of them all.

Sadly, Capcom has a disjointed release schedule for the remasters. Each game will be released separately for $20, and instead of going in order, RE6 will be released first on March 29, followed by RE5 in Summer 2016, and RE4 in Fall 2016. Each game will be available digitally or on physical discs in North and South America. Be sure to check out the screens below, and the reveal trailer above.

Continue reading: Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 remasters coming to PS4 and Xbox One (full post)

Assassin's Creed Syndicate patch 1.4 is out, improves performance

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 1:04 PM CST

Assassin's Creed Syndicate just got a new patch that seems to focus the most on improving performance all around. It wasn't the worst performing AC game on release, but it also wasn't the smoothest experience from a new game either.

Unlike the misstep that was the release of Assassin's Creed Unity, Syndicate had fewer bugs and game-breaking glitches when it became available. The crowd density was reduced in order to help alleviate some of the issues regarding framerate while walking around the bustling city. That helped, but the increased environmental geometry, improved ambient occlusion along with increased shadow map rendering quality has made for quite the resource hungry game.

SLI in particular scaled horribly in the beginning, though it works quite well now. Ubisoft has been very quick to react to player feedback this time around putting out patches that have solved nearly all the issues and glitches that did, unfortunately, happen to make it into the final release of Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Curious if your system is any better, download the patch and let us know!

Continue reading: Assassin's Creed Syndicate patch 1.4 is out, improves performance (full post)

Pokemon Sun and Moon trademarks slip out, announcement tomorrow?

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 12:03 PM CST

It seems that the cat is out of the bag a little early on this one. Once again the trademark system has helped to uncover and confirm two upcoming Pokemon games for the 3DS before the big Nintendo Direct anniversary celebration tomorrow. Though nothing has actually been confirmed (aside from a fake parody account doing so) officially as of yet. The filings, however, are indeed real.

According to OHIM website, Nintendo put in an application to trademark Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon just earlier today. This corresponds to the surprise that Nintendo was teasing just yesterday for the 20th anniversary. More info will likely be available tomorrow during the Nintendo Direct, an we'll be watching along side you for all the juicy bits of info.

Continue reading: Pokemon Sun and Moon trademarks slip out, announcement tomorrow? (full post)

GIGABYTE has new 17.3' gaming laptops on the way with Skylake

Jeff Williams | Laptops | Feb 25, 2016 10:58 AM CST

GIGABYTE has some new 17.3-inch gaming focused laptops coming to market soon with the latest round of Skylake mobile processors.

The new laptops are in the P57 family, which has at its core, an Intel Core i7-6700HQ under the hood that runs at 2.6GHz and can boost to 3.5GHz. It's on Intel's HM170 chipset and can have up to 32GB of DDR4-2133 memory installed along side it. There are currently two different variants of the laptop, the P57K and the P57W.

They both share a 1080P IPS matte screen but the P57K powers that screen with an NVIDIA GTX 965M whereas the P57W has a more powerful GTX 970M with 3GB of VRAM. For storage they're using a 512GB M.2 SSD that uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface for some blistering fast speeds. In the front of the massive laptop is a Blu-Ray RW drive that's situated just under the trackpad, a strange and new location for the drive, which can also be swapped out for more storage if you so choose.

Continue reading: GIGABYTE has new 17.3' gaming laptops on the way with Skylake (full post)

Report: PS4 and PlayStationVR is 60% more powerful than PC equivalent

During a recent AR/VR presentation, Sony's Dr. Richard Marks revealed more details on Sony's PlayStation VR headset. According to one of the slides, the PS4 is actually 60% more powerful than equivalent PC hardware.

Report: PS4 and PlayStationVR is 60% more powerful than PC equivalent

"This isn't my number, this is some middleware people that said that the PS4 console is 60% more powerful than a same-spec PC. This is because of all that direct access you have and knowing every piece is exactly what it should be, and not having any variability. You can just tune things and effectively get about 60% more performance," Dr. Marks said during the talk. Other details include a 120Hz refresh rate, Unity integration, always-on reprojection to reduce latency, 100-degree FOV, and less than 18ms latency with no "screen door" effect.

A PSVR developer corroborated the slide in a recent Reddit post, saying: "PSVR is extremely close to being on par with Vive and the Rift w/ a gtx970 based on the tests I've done. The team from Epic (Nick & Tom) have also stated the same in at least one of their VR Twitch streams. If your app runs at 90Hz on a PC with a gtx970 then you should be very close to 60 on the ps4. And with the 120Hz reprojection applied it's glassy smooth."

Continue reading: Report: PS4 and PlayStationVR is 60% more powerful than PC equivalent (full post)

Ori and the Blind Forest dev says Nintendo too secretive over NX

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 10:06 AM CST

Nintendo has a great opportunity in front of them to leap head-first into the market, delighting with their upcoming console with a lineup of games that show just why they should be chosen over all others. The secrecy around their new console, even among developers, might hurt Nintendo's chance at making the substantial wave their business needs.

The CEO of Moon Studios, the developer of Ori and the Blind Forest, sees the folly in keeping their plans so secretive and said as much on NeoGaf. He was very critical of all console makers and how they tend to even keep developer kits until the last minute to prevent leaks from happening.

"This is actually the single most annoying thing for every dev out there," Thomas Mahler wrote, "Every hardware manufacturer is treating their dev kits and unreleased consoles like they're the second coming and are insanely secretive about it to a stupid degree in today's time." And really, he's right. Without those developers being able to actually make their games and optimize as far out as possible, then the starting line-up can diminish the initial value.

Continue reading: Ori and the Blind Forest dev says Nintendo too secretive over NX (full post)

Fallout 4's new Survival Mode adds weighted ammo, diseases and more

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 9:32 AM CST

If this list of leaked features is genuine, Fallout 4's new Survival Mode overhaul is going to be pretty punishing.

Fallout 4's new Survival Mode adds weighted ammo, diseases and more

Players aren't too impressed with Fallout 4's so-called Survival Mode. There's really not much to say about the game's hardest of hard mode other than increased enemy health and damage output. Bethesda has heard our cries and is preparing to add some serious bite to the Commonwealth. Along with its huge Fallout 4 DLC roadmap, the studio plans to completely tweak Survival Mode to keep endgame players busy and add new depth to the experience.

According to data found in the game's code, the new Survival Mode changes include weighted ammunition, disabled fast travel, and the need to eat, drink, and sleep. Running around while over-encumbered drains Agility and Endurance, and you can also get infected with diseases like the Elder Scrolls universe. I'm hoping one of these diseases turns you into a fully-fledged ghoul if left untreated. Check below for the full list of details uncovered by dedicated dataminers.

Continue reading: Fallout 4's new Survival Mode adds weighted ammo, diseases and more (full post)

Rockstar and 2K Games gearing up for something 'big' at E3 this year

Jeff Williams | Gaming | Feb 25, 2016 9:04 AM CST

Rockstar Games and 2K Games are headed to E3 this year "in a big way", the CEO of 2K, Strauss Zelnick told MCV. That means newly announced IP's or a huge celebration of what we know is coming.

Probably not the announcement we'll actually see

And they already have some good titles on the way. Battleborn is an exciting new addition from 2K's own Gearbox, though they've been featuring that quite a bit lately, so it logically doesn't make sense to see that at the forefront. It was last year. So perhaps they'll have a number of other new and interesting working titles to talk about, things we may haven't seen yet, or at least in full form.

Continue reading: Rockstar and 2K Games gearing up for something 'big' at E3 this year (full post)