Latest News - Page 1172

Elden Ring is a smash success with 12 million sales. Bandai Namco and FromSoftware and taking advantage of the spotlight by adding new content to the landmark RPG.

Yesterday's Elden Ring patch signals two big things: One, FromSoftware is committed to the game and should continue to roll out new content, and two, the core meta will shift and change similar to a live game. Patch 1.03 brought some big changes to the game by hamstringing endgame builds with heavy nerfs; Much to the vexation of Elden Ringers, the Tree Guardian Shield, Mimic tear, Hoarfrost Stomp, and the Sword of Shadow and Flame have all been downgraded and forced new shifts towards specific builds.

This creates an interesting flow and with the right adjustments of other gear--or the introduction of new items--FromSoft has created a unique kind of live game meta within what's mostly a communal singleplayer title. There's also tons of buffs to things like cracked pot throwables, boosted damage for other craftables like poison spraymist, and damage upgrades for the collapsing stars sorcery.

The horror mavens at Supermassive Games have revealed The Quarry, the latest thriller in their macabre video games lineup.

Like all good 80's splatter flicks, Supermassive's new game The Quarry has a simple premise: A bunch of kids try to survive the night at a spooky campground where all hell breaks loose. It looks like a fun romp that includes some of the most well-known horror alums in the business like David Arquette of Scream fame, Lance Henriksen, Ted Raimi, Lin Shaye, and even Sarah Palmer herself Grace Zabriskie.

Similar to Until Dawn, Supermassive's breakout success game, The Quarry is a cinematic experience where everything you do (and say) has a repercussion later on in the game. Players inadvertently choose who lives and who dies as nine camp counselors are killed off in what we can only imagine is creatively disturbing ways. It's like an interactive Friday the 13th choose-your-own-peril adventure game.

Bethesda details new features coming to their new space epic RPG Starfield, complete with origin stories and more.

Starfield looks to be a culmination of every big RPG Bethesda has made to date. The studio recently posted up a roundtable discussion of content, features, and mechanics found in the new spacefaring game. Starfield is made for wanderers, Bethesda promises.

The update outlines some interesting mechanics, including some borrowed from Cyberpunk 2077. Starfield will allow gamers to chose different origin stories, which will affect their starting location, factions, and overall attributes. There's even one faction, Ryujin Industries, that's similar to the corpos in CD Projekt RED's sci-fantasy game.

The first season of the Halo TV series had a multi-million budget similar to a major AAA game.

The new Halo TV show from Paramount+ was quite an expensive series and according to Variety, the Halo TV show cost roughly $10 million per episode to produce. That's roughly $90 million, which is around the production budget of a AAA video game (excluding marketing costs, which can typically cost multiple times more than a video game's development costs).

The news comes at a time when Halo Infinite, the latest mainline game in the franchise, is apparently suffering from lower playercounts due to a myriad of reasons including lack of content, netcode issues, and steep competition from newer games (like Elden Ring). According to SteamDB, Halo Infinite had 10,615 concurrent players in the last 24 hours.

Reports indicate that the President of Ukraine has signed a new law that ushers in regulation for digital assets.

According to announcement the new law signed in by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy launches a legal market for virtual assets across Ukraine, and this new market will be regulated by the National Commission on Securities and Stock Market as well as the National Bank of Ukraine.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine took to Twitter to write that Ukraine believes there is a bright new future with cryptocurrency, and that this legalization is a step towards bringing that future closer to reality. "We believe that crypto industry offers new economic opportunities. We will do our best to bring the bright new future closer as soon as possible," wrote Fedorov.

NASA has given an update on the progress of the James Webb Space Telescope that was launched back in December, 2021.

The world's most powerful space telescope is currently located 1 million miles away from Earth in a specific point in space called a Lagrange point. The $10 billion dollar mission has been more than 20 years in the making and is now in its final steps before science observations can begin.

NASA has taken to its blog to announce that Webb is making its way through its calibration, with it recently hitting a major milestone called "fine phasing", which is a successful calibration of every optical parameter on Webb's Optical Telescope Element. NASA has confirmed that Webb is able to successfully gather light from distant objects, with tests results indicating that Webb's optical path is working perfectly.

South Korean military has reported a missile launch from the capital of North Korea that ended up failing completely.

According to a report from Fox News on Wednesday, North Korea launched a missile from near its capital city which soon after launch exploded. South Korea's military has reported the missile making this North Korea's 10th missile launch of its kind for 2022. Under anonymity, a South Korean military official said that the launched missile only exploded at an altitude of 20 kilometers or less, adding that the exact cause of the missile's explosion is currently unknown.

Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute, predicted that the missile would have exploded less than a minute after being launched. Geun also stated that there is a possibility that the toxic fuels from the missile could cause a health impact if they were to land on North Korean residential areas. As of writing, there is no current outside report of missile damage near North Korea's capital.

It was only last week the sun released a coronal mass ejection (CME) blast towards Earth, causing moderate geomagnetic storms.

Now, observatories have honed in on an active sunspot region that has produced two solar flares on March 15, at M.1 and M1.6, respectively. Dr. C. Alex Young, a NASA heliophysicist, or sun scientist, announced that the solar flares caused shortwave radio blackouts over the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, followed by a predicted R1 warning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA).

The below image was captured by a Solar Dynamic Observatory that showcases the sunspot region AR12965 on March 14. This sunspot region caused most of last week's solar activity with geomagnetic storm activity and an increased chance of auroras. EarthSky reports that this active sunspot region still has the potential to produce more solar flares. SpaceWeather.com reported that a filament of magnetism located on the sun's southern hemisphere snapped and exploded, which may cause a CME to impact Earth on March 14.

Previously, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck Fukushima, Japan, leading to the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The latest 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck at 11:30pm local time on March 16th, off the coast and 36 miles (60 kilometers) below sea level, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The agency issued a tsunami warning, suggesting a 3 foot (1 meter) high wave could hit the Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, but has since scaled the warning back to reflect milder sea-level changes along the coast.

The 2011 earthquake led to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, destroying the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) still manages the defunct Fukushima plant and has since sent workers to investigate the plant. No abnormalities have been found, nor has any damage been reported at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture, according to the Tohoku Electric Power company.

Netflix claims it's responding to popular demand by bringing back the sitcom.

The satirical comedy series titled "Servant of the People" stars current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The series began in 2015, running until 2019 before Zelenskyy became president of Ukraine, mirroring his rise to the presidency in the show. The political party Zelenskyy is the head of is even named after the showed, also called "Servant of the People," which was formed in 2017.

The show consists of two full seasons and a short third season, and had a film released in 2016 as a sequel to the first season named "Servant of the People 2". Netflix is returning the series to its library thanks to "popular demand," likely due to Zelenskyy's significantly increased exposure amidst the Russian war into Ukraine at the forefront of current events.

Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has been embroiled in a Twitter feud with the head of the Russian space agency.

In Russian, Kelly has used Twitter to jab at Dmitry Rogozin, the Director-General of Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, translating to: "Dimon, without those flags and the foreign exchange they bring in, your space program won't be worth a damn. Maybe you can find a job at McDonald's if McDonald's still exists in Russia." The tweets came following Rogozin's tirades on Twitter since the beginning of the Russian invasion into Ukraine, including thinly-veiled threats against the International Space Station (ISS).

Now, Kelly has been asked by an unnamed NASA official to exercise restraint in his dealings online with Russian authorities. According to CNN, the email read: "As Americans, each of us enjoys freedom of speech, and you are all empowered to speak your mind. However, please know that as former NASA astronauts, your words carry additional weight, and attacking our Russian partners is damaging to our current mission."

A recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that three-quarters of Americans would prefer not to have to switch back and forth between standard and daylight saving time (DST).

Eighteen states have already moved to adopt DST permanently, but they cannot do so without congressional approval. Now, the U.S. Senate has passed legislation to make the change nationwide. However, this is not a first for the nation, as, in 1973, President Nixon signed a bill to put the U.S. on DST for two years, going into effect on January 6th, 1974.

Like now, the public wanted to avoid changing their clocks year-round. However, the price they paid was sunrises at 8 a.m. and as late as 9:30 a.m. in certain places and deeper into winter months, according to David Prerau, an expert and author on DST. Public approval of the change quickly dropped from 79% in December 1973 to 42% in February 1974, the New York Times reported, and lawmakers reversed course subsequently.

Hackers have attempted to spread disinformation by deep-faking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The video shows Zelenskyy requesting his country's army to surrender to Russian forces and was displayed on the website of a Ukrainian television channel, Ukraine 24 after it suffered a hack. A transcript of the video was also displayed briefly on the channel's televised broadcast. The video is not among the most convincing deep-fakes out there but marks one of the first uses of the disinformation tactic in the current conflict.

AMD is about to launch its new Radeon Adrenalin GPU drivers, and with it comes a new teaser video that shows off what the new drivers will include: including Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) technology.

AMD Radeon Super Resolution is the latest spatial upscaling technique based on FidelityFX Super Resolution technology, which was meant to drop in Q1 2022 -- which ends March 31, 2022 -- and will drop inside of the new Radeon Adrenalin GPU drivers tomorrow.

RSR will benefit in a huge way in the fact that game developers don't need to integrate anything in order to have the benefits of RSR, versus FSR needing compliance, meaning that Radeon Super Resolution should work in thousands of games. The loss here? RSR has lower image quality than FSR, as RSR upscale the whole frames (including the UI and menus) and should provide more mixed results over FSR.

AMD's nifty new Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor is now here, with its next-gen layer of 3D V-Cache on top -- but because of that -- it's not overclockable.

The news is coming directly from the horses mouth, with AMD's Director of Technical Marketing, Robert Hallock, confirming that there's no overclocking the Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor because of a few reasons. First, the CPU voltage does not scale past 1.35V, and AMD has said it hasn't had time to test the large 64MB of AMD 3D V-Cache on top of the 8-core chiplet with overclocking, and instead has dumped it out without testing (and just disabling OC because of it).

I guess we'll get a refreshed CPU in the future with 3D V-Cache that will be overclockable, because AMD will have time to tune the CPU for overclocking. The stack of L3 cache through AMD 3D V-Cache is impressive, and very cool from a technological achievement perspective, too. We have the same 8-core, 16-thread CPU but slower clocks than the Ryzen 7 5800X (non 3D V-Cache) at 200MHz slower, but the 3D V-Cache provides up to 15% more performance and bringing it up to the level of the Ryzen 9 5900X.

We all know that GDDR6X memory temperatures can really get crazy, where the 24GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X memory inside of a GeForce RTX 3090 can even hit 110C... well, what about with some mods to the VRAM chips?

But now those insane 110C memory temperatures have been reduced down to nearly half, with YouTuber 'DandyWorks' modding his ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card. He ripped the card apart and replaced the thermal pads with copper pads -- which isn't easy -- and the GDDR6X memory temps dropped from 110C to 64C.

You'll need a few things before you can reduce your GDDR6X memory temperatures inside of your expensive, and probably very hard to get, GeForce RTX 30 series graphics card. You'll need copper shims, non-conductive Kapton tape, and thermal paste with an applicator to get it onto your GDDR6X memory chips. You might also need 400 grit sandpaper, so that you can smooth over those beautiful copper shims.

Take-Two Interactive is confident that Zynga could bring cross-play to its major franchises following the merger between the two companies.

The Take-Two/Zynga merger will bring tons of benefits to both companies. Zynga will have the might of a publishing giant behind it, and Take-Two will have the power of Zynga's mobile prowess and advertising platform under its banner. The cross-synergies are particularly interesting. Take-Two has noted that Zynga could create mobile versions of its top franchises--on a selective basis, of course--and utilize the company's budding cross-platform focus to help fill out its current games.

The biggest game without cross-play is Grand Theft Auto Online, which has been a billion-dollar powerhouse since its release in 2013. In a recent S-4 SEC filing, Take-Two suggests that Zynga will help create "cross-platform experiences" for its blockbuster IPs.

Detroit: Become Human has sold more than 6.5 million copies on consoles and PC, and Quantic Dream confirms it's working on three new games.

Paris-based studio Quantic Dream is ramping up its workforce for a myriad of new games. The developer is currently developing three new projects including the anticipated Star Wars Eclipse, however details on the two remaining projects are scarce (job listings reveal some tidbits, more on that below).

"Our very good financial results are explained by the robust sales of our back catalog titles, and in particular Detroit: Become Human, which surpassed the symbolic one million copies sold on Steam during the year 2021. This title is now Quantic Dream's biggest commercial success, with over 6.5 million copies sold on PC and PS4 worldwide."

Quantic Dream confirms its workforce has increased by 50% throughout 2021, which seemingly refutes recent reports that it's having trouble recruiting game developers.

A bit ago Tom Henderson published a report surrounding Quantic Dream's issues with hiring new developers, which stems from allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct at the studio. Sources told Henderson that QD was having problems recruiting new devs for its ambitious Star Wars Eclipse project.

Interestingly enough, Quantic Dream now says its employee base has jumped by 50%. The studio now employs roughly 229 people according to its LinkedIn page.

BioWare is hiring 23 new developers to work on multiple projects. Two of these job listings are for Dragon Age, and one position could shed light on what to expect from the game.

Previous reports have said Dragon Age 4 is a singleplayer-driven RPG. The project has gone through three phase-shifts: the first iteration was codenamed Joplin and was a small game focused on Tevinter spies. Then it morphed into projected Morrison, a live game with shifting, evolving content. Now in its current iteration, which was formed in 2021, Dragon Age has shifted back to its roots and become a singleplayer-driven RPG.

A new game economy job listing strongly suggests that Dragon Age 4 will indeed be singleplayer and it might not have any multiplayer elements at all.