Latest News - Page 1249

Innersloth, the team behind the insanely popular Among Us, made a surprise announcement at the Game Awards. With the help of Robot Teddy and Schell Games, Among Us is being rebuilt into a virtual reality multiplayer experience.

"We are grateful to the community who continues to share our game with friends and family and support us," said Victoria Tran, Community Director at Innersloth. "Schell Games has a legacy of creating award-winning virtual reality titles, and we couldn't be more excited to create a brand new Among Us experience for our existing fans and new players. We can't wait for players to become crewmates in a first-person environment."

"This new 3D experience will place you and our suspicious spacebeans in the heart of the Skeld, with all of the core mechanics of teamwork and betrayal you know and love. The VR edition will continue to support the multiplayer experience too, of course! Now you can really have an emergency meeting together."

The latest release of the Oculus SDK includes experimental access to a new feature called Spatial Anchors, which allows the Quest to use points of reference in your room that persist between sessions. The new SDK also includes the Voice SDK API.

Earlier this week, Meta released the Oculus SDK 35.0, and with it comes two new features for developers to experiment with. The Voice SDK API allows developers to add voice controls to their games and apps. The Voice SDK includes support for automatic speech recognition, has 50 built-in intents, entities, and traits, and comes with a Unity plugin to facilitate integration.

The new Oculus SDK also includes an experimental version of the Spatial Anchors feature, which allows the Quest 2 to retain tracking orientation between sessions. With Spatial Anchoring enabled, the Quest 2 can identify environmental features as persistent marker points to maintain the tracking orientation even after rebooting the headset.

MSI is preparing its new MAG Trident S Mini PC and it looks pretty damn impressive, coming in at a very similar size to Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X console... check it out:

The company teased its new MSI MAG Trident S Mini PC at CES 2021 at the beginning of the year, with the compact PC packing an AMD Ryzen 7 4700G APU, and has support for cloud-streaming game services including NVIDIA GeForce NOW, PlayStation Now, and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Inside, MSI has made some design tweaks -- but nothing majorly overhauled -- in terms of the cooling design, specifications, and features of the MSI MAG Trident S Mini PC. The final version of the MSI MAG Trident S Mini PC won't pack the Ryzen 7 4700G APU, but instead the newer Ryzen 7 5700G which is based on the Zen 3 architecture and has 8 cores and 16 threads of CPU power.

The shit-flinging match between Intel, Samsung, and TSMC is getting hot -- with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) founder Morris Chang having some not-so-nice words to say about Intel's new CEO, Pat Gelsinger.

In some recent comments, the Intel CEO said that Taiwan's geopolitical environment isn't good for the semiconductor industry, given that China has been threatening Taiwan for quite a while now. During the Fortune Business Brainstorm Technology conference, Gelsinger said that the Taiwan situation made the area risky for chip fabrication.

Gelsinger said: "As I was flying down here yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that there were 27 Chinese planes in Taiwan airspace yesterday. How do you feel about having your sole source foundry capability in Taiwan right now? I mean, this is a geopolitical risk. And as we've argued since the beginning of my 10-year, the world needs a more resilient, geopolitically balanced supply chain. So we're seeing a lot of enthusiasm to support us moving into that market".

Something a little surprising has just popped up and flung into the rumor mill: a new series based on the refreshed RDNA 2 architecture known as "Radeon RX 6000S Mobile Graphics".

Yeah, that "S" is really important but for a couple of reasons -- first, AMD has been pumping outs its AMD 4700S Desktop Kit and the more recent and beefier AMD 4800S Desktop Kit -- both with an "S". The new Radeon RX 6800S is expected to use the Navi 22 GPU but on the new TSMC N6 node, down from the N7 node used on the Radeon RX 6800M and its Navi 22 GPU.

TSMC is expecting around 18% higher logic density over the N7 process, with the N6 process fully compatible with the N7 process technology which makes it easier for AMD to transition its GPU onto TSMC's new node. We could expect AMD to unveil its new Radeon RX 6000S series GPUs at CES 2022 alongside its new AMD Ryzen 6000 series "Rembrandt" CPUs in early 2022.

Alan Wake 2 is officially in development, and it's now a horror-survival game similar to Silent Hill.

Remedy announced Alan Wake 2 at The Game Awards, confirming a 2023 release date for the sequel. Details are slim, but we know it's a horror survival action game with dark, psychological overtones.

"We've been iterating on the concept, we've been a bit protective. We knew it was a pretty scary experience and we're convinced everyone is ready," Sam Lake said at the show. "We're definitely breaking new ground, it's our first ever survival-horror game. It's our take on the genre."

AMD will be introducing its next-gen CDNA 2-based Instinct MI200 series cards in the coming months, with some more news on the Instinct MI210 with a single graphics compute die.

The new AMD Instinct MI210 has been teased with the new CDNA 2 architecture and next-gen "Aldebaran" GPU, which will pack some serious GPU horsepower. The new AMD Instinct MI210 in BabelStream with HIP is around 40% faster than the MI100.

This is according to George Markomanolis, an Engineer working on the upcoming LUMI supercomputer & lead HPC scientist at CSC, who got remote access to the AMD Instinct MI210. The single GCD (graphics compute die) features 104 of the 128 CUs that the full Aldebaran GPU packs with 6656 stream processors, while the higher-end MI250X features 110 CUs per GPU die for a total of 7040 stream processors.

STALKER 2 is still months away but developer GSC Game World has teased 5 new screenshots from the game.

In the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, we get some juicy new STALKER 2 screenshots, with the Unreal Engine 5-powered game looking mighty fine in the new stills. STALKER 2 isn't the first to use Unreal Engine 5, with Epic Games' own Fortnite recently receiving its UE5-based update.

The new screenshots show us that the world GSC Game World is building in STALKER 2 is much more colorful and full of nature, versus the barren wasteland of the original STALKER. We do get to see an anomaly to see, with a tunnel that gives me those eerie STALKER / Metro vibes.

Activision-Blizzard workers are close to forming the first-ever union for games developers in the United States.

The $128 billion games industry is at a crossroads. Workers are now collectively banding together in an effort to unionize against unfair practices and toxic workplace culture. The developers behind one of gaming's top-earners, Activision-Blizzard, are currently on a company-wide strike in protest of the allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment, and discrimination surrounding the company, and have expressed interest in unionization.

Reports from The Washington Post indicates that Activision-Blizzard worker unions could happen soon. Employee collective group A Better ABK is working with labor union Communication Workers of America (CWA) to disburse union authorization cards to developers in an effort to spark widespread interest and discussions. This could lead to a formal vote of unionization.

Microsoft's new Halo: The Endless trademark should also include a novel tie-in.

Halo: The Endless should be the name of a new Halo Infinite campaign DLC. Microsoft filed the trademark in June, and it's specifically classified as gaming software:

Starfield's PC version will be available on at least three platforms: Steam, the Microsoft Store, and the Bethesda.net launcher.

Starfield's Steam page just went live today confirming that, yes, the game will be sold on the platform. This is great news for gamers who plan to mod and alter Starfield, considering modding games isn't too easy on Game Pass PC titles. The storefront page doesn't reveal any new information about the upcoming singleplayer space RPG, but it does further solidify the game's November 11, 2022 release date.

This really isn't much of a surprise. Microsoft has regularly released its first-party games on Steam in an effort to maximize sales and Bethesda's huge new RPG should be no different. Starfield is the biggest game Bethesda Game Studios has ever made, and merges science with techno-fantasy complete with interstellar exploration and new game mechanics.

Actor Pablo Schreiber is working out like a bodybuilder to become as big as possible in order to play Master Chief.

At over 7 feet tall and 287lbs, supersoldier Spartan 117 is larger than life. How do you step into Master Chief's Mjolnir boots? A lot of training with even more calories. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, actor Pablo Schreiber, who is playing Master Chief in the new live-action Halo TV show from Paramount+, discusses his intense training and workouts.

Schreiber says he works out twice a day--not unlike immortal bodybuilding star Arnold Schwarzenegger--and is eating in a big calorie surplus to feed muscular growth.

Here's a guaranteed fix for the annoying gaming services glitch for Halo Infinite on Game Pass PC.

Having trouble booting up Halo Infinite via Game Pass on PC? Is the installer telling you to download Gaming Services but not actually giving you an option to do so? This step-by-step fix will get you back into that challenge grind in no time.

To get around the Gaming Services issue you simply need to reset the Halo Infinite app:

What if Nintendo recreated Zelda Ocarina of Time on the next-gen Switch Pro (Super Switch, Switch 4K)? It might look something like this.

Nintendo is working on a new higher-powered Switch capable of 4K performance gaming, but what kinds of upgrades can we expect? As more developers move to Unreal Engine 5 and harness the power of its new transformative Nanite geometry technology we might see some surprising higher-end games running on NVIDIA's Tegra SoCs.

YouTuber and Unreal Engine animator RwanLink gives us an idea of what could be possible for the Zelda franchise. The creator put together an amazing-looking The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time demo running on Unreal Engine that shows what a new OoT remake could look like from Nintendo.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla owners will soon have to re-download the entire game with a new content update.

Valhalla is getting a bunch of new expansions in 2022, and Ubisoft is taking measures to prevent the game from getting too big. Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which is already 95GB+ on PlayStation 5, is receiving a new data restructuring update that will reduce the file size on all platforms. The catch is that you have to re-download the entire game again.

"In order to continue supporting Assassin's Creed Valhalla with future content and game updates, Title Update 1.4.1 will require players to re-download the entire game as part of a data restructuring," Ubisoft said.

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick thinks NFTs can A) provide more value to in-game goods, and B) opening up a trade platform in games. But Zelnick is only interested if NFTs are "regulated and honest".

Right now gaming is at a crossroads. We're at yet another new frontier where publishers are jumping into crypto, the metaverse, and even NFTs. It's a Wild West situation and everyone's trying to establish something--Ubisoft, for example, has woven cosmetic armor/weapon skins into NFTs in its new Quartz platform and plans to sell NFTs and make money from NFT trades on third-party marketplaces. The NFT market is another microtransaction market and everyone wants a slice--EA, SEGA, Square Enix, and Ubisoft want in.

It looks like Take-Two Interactive could be on that list soon. We could see NFTs come to GTA Online and other big-name Rockstar titles, as well as NBA 2K, a series that has made billions from randomized in-game microtransaction packs. If, and only if, the market is well-regulated, fair, and non-speculative.

Third-party PlayStation 5 controllers are now coming to the market...but they're very expensive.

SCUF Gaming is the first company to bring third-party PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers to the gaming world, but there's just one catch: Their minimum retail price is nearly half of a PS5's $499 retail MSRP. SCUF has three PS5 controllers available that range in price, form, and function. The models include:

Each of the controllers features SCUF's patented four-paddle design for custom programming, and the most expensive controller, the Reflex FPS, actually replaces Sony's tactile triggers with their own Instant Trigger design, which is much more lightweight and provides "instant mouse-click" precision.

Hydras are a group of small aquatic animals capable of regenerating their heads, the mechanism for which has been uncovered in a new paper published in Genome Biology and Evolution.

Hydras come from the same family of animals consisting of roughly ten thousand species that fall into two major groups, Anthozoa and Medusozoa. Anthozoa comprises sea anemones, corals, and sea pens, while Medusozoa comprises sea wasps, jellyfish, and hydra. Hydras live in temperate, tropical environments, and their stem cells have the capacity for unlimited self-renewal, lending them biological immortality.

Researchers have found multiple genes associated with head regeneration for hydra but have yet to understand the regulatory networks responsible for regeneration in hydras and other regenerating species. Researchers found that epigenetics, changes in gene expression in response to environmental changes, were responsible for regeneration.

A new study published in the journal Developmental Cell has revealed how a cell nucleus can repair itself when ruptured to prevent DNA spilling out into the rest of the cell.

A cell's nucleus has a nuclear envelope encompassing the DNA within to separate it from the rest of the cell. The nuclear envelope is a phospholipid membrane, which interacts with the cell's cytoskeleton, a network of fibers that help stabilize the structure of the cell. However, the cytoskeleton can sometimes exert excess pressure on a cell's nucleus, leading to a rupture.

A series of 3D images of this one thousand-year-old supernova have been captured, unveiling details about the elements ejected from a star when it explodes.

The supernova is SNR 0540-69.3 and was the subject of a new study led by Josefin Larsson of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, collaborating with researchers from Stockholm University, the University of Warwick, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Using data from the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) and X-shooter at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), they could glean new insight into how a star self-destructs.

Now, they have uncovered a large ring of oxygen surrounding the innermost regions of the supernova's remains, a clump of hydrogen unlike anything seen in other supernova remnants. The researchers were able to map the distribution of the elements ejected from the supernova in three dimensions, allowing them to test theoretical models of the progenitor star's explosion to understand its mechanism.