Latest News - Page 1254

Sony has been caught up in a huge pedophile sting, with the Senior Vice President of Engineering for Sony, George Cacioppo, fired after he was busted in an amateur pedophilia sting video. Sony said in a statement: "We are aware of the situation and the employee in question has been terminated from employment".

Cacioppo was busted after he prepared to have a 15-year-old boy come to his house to have sex with him, but it turned out to be an amateur pedophilia sting video. The cameraman approached the house and talked to Cacioppo, but he was calling the PlayStation executive "Jeff" -- as he's obviously changed his name to not get caught.

Once the cameraman gets closer to the door, Cacioppo realizes what has happened and retreats back into the house after he finds out it's not the 15-year-old boy he was going to have sex with. The cameraman continues asking questions, shouting in the end that the PlayStation executive had hired a 15-year-old boy to have sex with.

Fortnite has flipped, literally... Epic Games have launched Fortnite Chapter 3 and boy does it have a lot in store for gamers. Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 1: Flipped is here, check out the trailer:

The original island in Fortnite has been turned upside down, revealing an entire new world for Fortnite players to explore, destroy, and enjoy. Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 1 is an entire new beginning, with developer Epic Games explaining: "a perfect starting point for new players and a perfect returning point for those who haven't played in a while. Witness the wintry new island thaw, discover new locations plus a few surprises, seize victory crowns, and complete new quests".

There's totally new sliding mechanics in Fortnite now, where you can slide down hills and take out the enemy sliding down like you're... well, in Call of Duty: Warzone. Not only that, but you can swing around the new map in Fortnite with the Spider-Man featured in the game and his web-shooters (which can be used with any skin). You can also now pick stuff up when you're down, which is going to be a huge change to the meta in the game, as well as crawl around faster when you're knocked down.

Grand Theft Auto V is a great-looking game on its own, but with the help of some mods it can look better than most games on the consoles, and even on a high-end gaming PC.

But in this new video from German modder Digital Dreams, Grand Theft Auto V has never, ever looked better than this. Digital Dreams is running Grand Theft Auto V with the Reshade ray tracing mod, as well as the QuantV, GTAV Real Buildings, and Realistic Traffic mods all enabled.

On top of all that modding goodness, Digital Dreams is running Grand Theft Auto V at the Grand Master resolution of 8K (7680 x 4320) which is 4x the pixels of 4K, and 16x the pixels of 1080p. It's an incredible load on any gaming system, and even watching the video in 8K on YouTube will require a 100Mbps+ internet connection if you don't want buffering.

Diablo II Resurrected has received its new Update 2.3 which along with a bunch of balances, improvements, and fixes -- but most of all, NVIDIA DLSS support has been added to the game.

There are gameplay improvements, as well as accessibility and graphical improvements but the inclusion of NVIDIA DLSS is magical. Sure, you might not need 120FPS+ in something like Diablo II Resurrected, but on slower systems, you can crank up the DLSS setting to "Quality" and enjoy even better-looking graphics without a performance hit.

You can update your Diablo II Resurrection now, and enable NVIDIA DLSS in the graphics settings.

November is gone, there's the Big 12 12 Online Sale coming right up in December! 12.12 or Double 12, a day popularly recognized as South East Asia's version of Single's Day & Black Friday.

If you've missed out something from the 11.11 Single's Day sale or Black Friday Sales then there's really no best time to get your desired items than NOW in the upcoming 12.12 Online Sale. Starting from now on at GoDeal24.com, it pays to start browsing all your favorite software now so that you won't miss out any item on your wish list again. This week, GoDeal24 just launched the Big Double 12 Sale, up to 62% off full price and sale products!

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Fortnite is now powered by Epic's next-gen Unreal Engine 5 technology which offers significant texture, graphics, and effects upgrades.

The first UE5 game is now on the market, and to no one's surprise, it's Fortnite. After all, Epic Games promised they'd bring Fortnite over to UE5 this year (although it took a lot longer to execute).

Fortnite's big Chapter 2 The End finale event actually ran in UE5 and this explains the decent in-game visual boost on Switch and PC, as well as some extra physics additions like the crazy weather effects (tornadoes!), combat sliding, web-slinging with Spider-Man's new slingers, and widespread environmental destruction across the all-new Island. It also explains the sizable multi-gigabyte update with Patch v19.00, which clicked in at up to 14.8GB on Switch.

Halo Infinite is so controversial that the official Halo subreddit has been forcibly locked down to curb abuse.

Like Cortana, the Halo Reddit has gone rampant. Mods have temporarily quarantined the subreddit like a sick, wild animal to prevent any more doxxing and death threats breaking out--and to relieve some of the extraordinary amount of pressure that 343 Industries is currently facing for Halo Infinite's widely-contested features.

"On all sides this has absolutely gone on long enough and spiraled out of control," r/Halo mod -343-Guilty-Spark said.

In a recent Reddit post, Halo community director Ske7ch gives transparency on what led up to Halo Infinite's development and where 343i currently stands.

Halo Infinite has divided the franchise's faithful, and some Halo fans joke this is the second Great Schism for the community. Based on recent posts on the Halo Reddit, they're not too far off the mark. Halo Infinite's F2P structure has been widely criticized across the board, and gamers have issues with the intense monetization and challenge-based progression systems.

Community director Ske7ch has had a lot to say about Halo Infinite on Reddit. Ske7ch admits that the studio has a lot of work to do with Halo Infinite and confirms bigger changes will take some time due to the "complexity" of the game.

343 Industries could use freebies as a way to keep players interested in Halo Infinite's multiplayer.

Halo Infinite currently has big problems with progression, customization, and monetization. It's a big reason why the F2P multiplayer is only in a beta phase (and a reason why it'll probably stay in beta for a long time). While 343i is planning evolutions, changes, and updates to the game, they're also experimenting with engagement-boosting models like free items.

Microsoft recently confirmed that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers would get a few free items for Halo Infinite, including an AR skin and extremely valuable XP boosters and challenge swaps. While these things are created as a means of monetization--e.g. creating a problem and selling gamers a solution or a shortcut to that solution for real money--a steady flow of freebies might be a great avenue to spark both player retention and Game Pass subscription retention that may keep gamers playing Infinite for the long run.

Quake just got its first major content update after 25 years, a new trend that could resurrected old-school classics in exciting new ways.

Following the big RTX update for Quake II and re-release of the original on next-gen consoles with 4K 120FPS support, MachineGames and Bethesda just added a new co-op horde mode to Quake.

This expands the legendary 90s FPS in a brand new way with survival co-op action, and could set a new precedent that sees Bethesda going back and upgrading other classics in its wide catalog, maybe even the original Doom and Wolfenstein games.

Final Fantasy XIV's latest expansion is the most popular of all time and has pushed Steam players to an all-time new high.

Endwalker is one of the most important expansions for FFXIV. Not only does it mark the end of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga, but it marks the beginning of the next era of the beloved MMORPG. It's also capitalizing on a massive surge in players that started in 2020 and has now reached a new peak on Steam.

According to new figures from Steam DB, Final Fantasy XIV hit a record 95,540 concurrent players since Endwalker's release. That's up 42% from July's previous high of 67,000+ users on Steam, and this significant jump in players has also packed Square Enix's datacenters so much that users have to wait in thousands-long queues in order to get in.

The next Dragon Age game is still primarily a singleplayer RPG, BioWare has re-confirmed.

As part of its Dragon Age day celebration, BioWare tells fans that Dragon Age 4 will retain the beloved singleplayer-first formula that its games are known for. It sounds as if things haven't changed since the next-gen Dragon Age was rebooted back in February, which saw the game shifting from a live-based online experience with evolving content to a more traditional singleplayer adventure.

"Speaking of building new worlds and stories for you to explore, we want to let you all know that we're still hard at work on building the next single-player focused experience for Dragon Age. We're excited for next year when we can talk more about what we're working on," the studio said.

Battlefield executive producer Aleksander Grondal is the latest to leave DICE following Battlefield 2042's launch.

Battlefield 2042 has proven to be a contentious turning point for DICE. The game has released to middling reviews and has been blasted by the community for its myriad of issues, leading to two big patches from DICE. Now publisher EA and DICE are making big transitions for the future of the franchise which has led to a changing of the guard.

The changes see Respawn boss Vince Zampella taking over the franchise and multi-year veterans like DICE general manager Oskar Gabrielson leaving to make room for a new GM, Other departures include Aleksander Grondal, who has spent 14 years at DICE producing games like Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, and serving as executive producer on Battlefield 2042.

Geoff Keighley responds to and clarifies controversial statements he made to the Washington Post about speaking out on Activision-Blizzard's harassment issues live on stage at The Game Awards 2021.

On Twitter, Keighley points out that Activision-Blizzard will not be involved in the actual The Game Awards 2021 show. There will be no reveals, trailers, or content showcasing Activision-Blizzard games and products during the show itself--instead, the problematic publisher will only be included in the listed nominees.

Halo Infinite is 343i's ambitious idea for a game-as-a-platform, but this vision won't come to reality any time soon.

Like Fortnite, Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer will likely stay in beta phase for the foreseeable future. The reason for this is simple: the game simply isn't ready yet and needs a lot of work. Infinite's progression and monetization systems have stirred up mass controversy among Halo faithful and gamers want answers as well as changes to what's described as a "predatory drip-feed" business model predicated on "nickel and diming" consumers.

343 Industries has responded to criticisms saying that changes are coming. More immediate updates include more XP doled out for challenges and promises of upcoming playlist options. More significant changes--like those to the progression and monetization mechanics--will take a lot longer to implement, hence why we think this will stay in beta for a while.

BioShock 4 will reportedly take place during the 1960s and set in a brand new frozen city in the South Pole.

The next BioShock game will take place in the glacial surface of Antarctica, sources have told VideoGameChronicle and Sacred Symbols' Colin Moriarity.

BioShock 4, which is believed to be called BioShock Isolation, will trade the sunken city of Rapture in the Atlantic for the cold wastes of Borealis in the Antarctic. Sources also say it's set in the 1960s era which opens up all sorts of possibilities for pop culture references, and will be tied to the original BioShock games' storylines.

In a new paper published in Space: Science & Technology, a team of researchers have created a new lightweight robotic arm with precision controls.

As missions in space increase in scope and variety, so to will the tools necessary to accomplish them. Robots are already used throughout space, but robotic arms used on Earth do not translate well to space. A flat plane relative to the ground enables Earth-bound robotic arms to articulate freely in a three-dimensional coordinate grid with relatively simple programming. However, with constantly changing environments in space, a robotic arm would struggle to orient itself correctly.

Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology's (HIT) School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation have developed a robotic arm with the ability to adjust its position and speed in real-time based on its environment. The arm weighs 9.23 kilograms (20 pounds) and can move almost a quarter of its weight.

Researchers have found a way to trap a single photon in a cavity to aid in further research involving new quantum technologies, publishing their findings in Science Advances.

Previously, trapping photons in a cavity has involved using materials with an extremely large optical nonlinearity. Adding one photon from a laser significantly alters that cavity's resonance frequency, preventing another photon from entering. For this mechanism to work, extremely large optical nonlinearities are needed in conjunction with very low dissipation, which is extremely difficult to achieve.

Professor Aashish Clerk from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago, alongside graduate students Andrew Lingenfelter and David Roberts, devised a system with significantly weaker nonlinearity and two separate photon sources. With precise tuning, destructive interference between the two sources creates a "wall" that blocks photons from entering the cavity once the selected number has been captured.

A collaboration between researchers of Princeton University and the University of Washington has resulted in a tiny new camera the size of a grain of salt.

Traditional cameras use curved glass or plastic lenses to focus light rays onto a sensor, while this camera uses a "metasurface." The metasurface measures half a millimeter wide and is covered with 1.6 million cylindrical posts, each approximately 0.1 micrometers in diameter. Each post has unique geometry to allow the best capture of an optical wavefront yet. Using machine learning-based algorithms, computing the interaction of light with all posts generates images with the most detail and widest field of view of any full-color metasurface camera to date. The new camera produced images comparable to a conventional compound camera of more than 500,000 times the volume.

Arianespace's launch of two Galileo FOC (Full Operation Capability) global navigation satellites has been temporarily delayed.

The VS26 launch was 8 minutes and 22 seconds from lift-off but was scrubbed due to the risk of lightning in poor weather. It has been rescheduled for 21:19 local time in Kourou on December 4th (00:19 UTC on December 5th).

The rocket used for the mission is a four-stage Soyuz ST-B Fregat and will be launching from the Guiana Space Center, the first Soyuz rocket from there in 2021. Soyuz rockets have been used to launch Galileo satellites before. The first two test-bed Galileo satellites were launched aboard a Soyuz rocket in December 2005 and April 2008, respectively, and were ultimately retired in July 2012. Other Galileo launches have also involved Soyuz, but they can only carry two at a time, so Arianespace has also used its Ariane 5 ES to carry four at a time for multiple launches.