Latest News - Page 1294

Disney and Lucasfilm plan to reveal a new Star Wars game shortly before Christmas. Could it be something big?

Lucasfilm just announced a new Bring Home the Bounty campaign, and it's kind of like an advent calendar with a different product reveals planned every week. Most of the reveals are shop items--new action figures, apparel, bundles, etc--but one of them is a games reveal. This is pretty interesting because there's a lot of Star Wars games in development right now.

While it's likely the game reveal won't be something huge, there is a possibility that Lucasfilm could surprise announce a AAA product. Right now a number of studios are working on Star Wars games; Aspyr is tackling a remake of Knights of the Old Republic, EA is working on multiple Star Wars titles, Respawn is developing Jedi: Fallen Order 2, and Ubisoft is even making their own story-driven action-adventure game.

The new Nintendo Switch Online tier will cost $49.99 a year, a hefty 150% increase over the current subscription.

Soon Nintendo Switch will have two subscription tiers: the lower-cost $20 a year Switch Online service that includes NES, SNES games, and online play, and the more premium Switch Online + Expansion Pack, which will offer Nintendo 64, Genesis games, and even DLC content for Animal Crossing New Horizons.

The recent Animal Crossing Direct confirmed the higher Switch Online tier would cost $49.99 a year for a base subscription and a whopping $79.99 a year for family memberships. That's compared to the $19.99 base and $34.99 family costs of the existing Switch Online membership.

Valve has banned all video games that deal with NFTs, cryptocurrency, or blockchain from Steam, game dev behind Age of Rust confirms.

A new Steam rules and guidelines list says that all blockchain games will be removed from the storefront platform. This includes titles like Age of Rust and Dragon's Divide, which rewards players with NFTs via blockchain.

On the list of things that developers shouldn't publish is: "Applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs."

New leaks from Rockstar's mainsite confirms details on the upcoming Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition re-release.

A bit ago Rockstar accidentally posted a support article that outlines some of the GTA remaster trilogy's upgrades. GTA III, GTA Vice City, and GTA San Andreas are all getting re-released in a new enhanced bundle for $59.99 (possibly $69.99 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S) and now we have some idea of what to expect.

According to the page, all of the games in the GTA trilogy remaster will feature high-definition textures (we're guessing 1080p), improved lighting effects and larger draw distances, and modernized targeting and control schemes straight out of GTA V.

A new study has detailed the possible discovery of four new alien worlds located 160 light-years from Earth.

The new study explains that researchers detected shimmering radio flashes of auroras in each of those planets' atmospheres. So what is an aurora? An aurora occurs when solar wind, which is charged particles from the Sun, collides with a planet's magnetic shield. Earth experiences auroras at its poles and in other locations when it's blasted with solar wind.

The researchers behind the study detected bright flashes of radio signals from the auroras on the supposed planets' atmospheres, which could confirm the existence of four new planets with more research. The astronomers discovered these radio signals using the Low Frequency Array radio telescope located in the Netherlands while observing Red Dwarf stars. Out of the nineteen Red Dwarf stars that were observed, four of them seemed strange as they shined bright with radio signals.

Solar eclipses are a thing of beauty that every human should witness at least once during their life as it's one of the many spectacles that the universe we live in offers.

Back in 2017, the Great American Eclipse occurred over North America, leaving millions of onlookers in awe as the Moon completely blocked out the Sun for a small period of time. So, when is the next one going to happen? According to AccuWeather, the next solar eclipse will happen on October 14, 2023, but it won't be a total solar eclipse.

The difference between a total solar eclipse and an annular solar eclipse is that the Moon doesn't completely block out the Sun on an annular solar eclipse, it leaves a "ring" around the outside of the Moon, hence the recently adopted name "ring of fire" eclipse. AccuWeather reports that the solar eclipse in 2023 will be an "appetizer" for the main event that will occur on April 8, 2024, when the Moon will completely black out the Sun - a total solar eclipse.

Since late September, the La Palma volcano has been erupting and judging by reports, the rivers of lava don't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

The eruption began on September 19, and since then, lava has been spewing out of the volcano, causing residents in the area to evacuate. The temperature of the lava is up to 2,264 degrees Fahrenheit and is destroying everything in its path. At the moment, officials are saying that the lava is moving at 1,640 feet to 2,300 feet per hour, and so far, it has destroyed more than 1,186 buildings in the area - covering nearly two square miles of land.

On Sunday, the northern region of the conical crater collapsed, causing new lava streams to form downhill towards the ocean. The volcanic company Involcan posted a video of the lava moving through the industrial park on October 10. The video shows a beautiful yet haunting example of how the lava is moving through parts of the island, destroying everything in its path. If you are interested in reading more about the La Palma volcano eruption, check out the links below.

New reports are indicating that a coronal mass ejection (CME) is heading relatively close to Earth, which may result in an impact.

The report comes from SpaceWeather.com, which states a magnetic filament connected to the sunspot AR2882 erupted on October 12, and that the debris from that eruption are expected to near-miss Earth. Now, this CME isn't like the one that happened earlier this week where Earth took the impact head-on that resulted in minor-moderate geomagnetic storms. This new CME is much less severe, and may not cause any impact at all due to its position.

The publication states that the near-miss CME that's expected to pass close to Earth on October 15 may cause Arctic auroras, with minimal chance of a geomagnetic storm. As for the CME that caused a geomagnetic storm on October 12, the impact caused Northern Light-like auroras across select regions of the planet. If you are interested in checking out images of those auroras, or would like to learn more about CMEs, check out the below links.

NASA has released a new incredible image of a supernova remnant that looks an awful lot like a cosmic Pac-Man munching its way across the galaxy.

The supernova remnant is called N 63 A, and its located in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. While the image certainly does look like the iconic video game character Pac-Man, it's actually the remains of a violent supernova explosion that happened when a star's life came to a tragic end. The remains of the star are located some 163,000 light-years away from the Milky Way galaxy and inside what is referred to as a stellar nursery (a region in space that contains large amounts of gases that condense into baby stars).

NASA explains that when N 63 A went supernova, it appears to have stalled star formation for other stars in its region, which is the opposite of what usually happens when a supernova occurs. However, NASA says that N 63 A is relatively young, and once it begins to settle, it will likely start to trigger its own star-forming region in space. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

NASA researchers have detected the presence of persistent water vapor on one of Jupiter's icy moons using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Jupiter has many moons, and NASA is planning on exploring them as they could hold secrets about the evolution of Jupiter and Jupiter-like exoplanets that may be found in other parts of the Milky Way. According to a new post by NASA, Hubble's observations from 1999 to 2015 have led researchers to believe that one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, is showing signs of water vapor being present in the moon's atmosphere, which is only one-billionth the surface pressure of Earth's atmosphere.

Europa is scared by cracks and fissures and averages -275 degrees Fahrenheit, but researchers believe that life could be present in a vast ocean beneath its icy crust. Hubble previously observed 60 mile-high plumes of water vapor being shot into the atmosphere, which is very similar to a geyser on Earth. These results suggest a "long-term presence of a water vapor atmosphere only in Europa's trailing hemisphere," writes NASA. The results from these observations will assist NASA in its upcoming mission to Europa called the Europa Clipper mission.

Earlier this year astronomers detected what could be the largest comet ever discovered, and it's the first comet on an incoming path with our solar system.

The comet is named Bernardinelli-Bernstein after the astronomers that detected it, Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein, from the University of Pennsylvania. The comet was originally thought to be a dwarf planet due to its immense diameter of 62 - 124 miles, but after further analysis researchers found that it wasn't a dwarf planet, but a large comet travelling from the Oort Cloud.

The researchers performed heavy analysis on the newly discovered comet with data sets from multiple observations. What the researchers found was the comet made its previous closest approach to the Sun around 3.5 million years ago, coming in at a distance of 18 AU (1 AU = the distance between Earth and the Sun - 93 million miles.) Additionally, the researchers were able to predict when the comet will make its closest approach to Earth, and according to the results, Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein will approach the Sun in 2031.

NASA is working towards getting humans on multiple planets in an effort to protect the species from extinction and expand our knowledge. But when will this happen?

According to a team of NASA scientists who published a paper on the pre-print server arXiv, humanity entered a "window of peril" when the first nuclear weapons were developed and deployed close to the end of World War II. The paper states that this "window of peril" will not be closed "until robust off-world colonies become a reality." The paper explores the timeline of when humans will be able to get off Earth and spread out amongst the stars.

The team of researchers concentrated their efforts on predicting the future of advanced computing power, which would be a major factor in allowing humans to reach far into space and colonize other planets. According to the results of the paper, NASA researchers estimate that humans could land the first humans on Mars by 2038. Additionally, the researchers predict that humans could reach the Asteroid Belt sometime around the year 2064. Lastly, humans could venture to the nearest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, by 2254.

I still remember owning the Nokia 6310 and it being the defacto indestructible phone, but did you know it has been 20 years since its release, and now Nokia is re-releasing the Nokia 6310 to celebrate the anniversary.

The new Nokia 6310 has some upgrades under the hood for 2021, with a new color display, rear camera, and then we've got access to news channels and radio stations. Nokia has thankfully retained the look of the 6310, but includes an upgraded larger curved display, and those same weeks-between-charges battery life.

Nokia's new 6310 is available in two colors: yellow, and black while inside we have 16MB of RAM, 8MB of internal storage (LOL) and 32GB microSD card supply. These specs sound so pathetically low, but that is what is inside the Nokia 6310 alongside the Unisoc 6531F processor and S30+ operating system.

The new ASUS ROG Strix Z690-I Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard has been leaked, teasing the new Mini-ITX motherboard ready for Intel's new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs.

ASUS is ready for the worlds of DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technologies on its new ROG Strix Z690-I Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard, with 2 x DDR5 DIMMs ready for up to 64GB of DDR5 memory. There's a single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot ready for any graphics card on the market, and those of the future that are PCIe 5.0-capable.

Not only do we have rocket-powered hardware support between the worlds of DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technology, we have Intel's new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPU and the ASUS ROG Strix Z690-I Mini-ITX motherboard, for even the flagship Core i9-12900K processor inside of a tiny SFF gaming PC.

We are getting closer and closer to Intel's big reveal and release of its next-gen 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs and with it the 600-series chipset, and more specifically the flagship Z690 chipset that will power the just-leaked AORUS Z690 Master motherboard.

The new AORUS Z690 Master motherboard has had its official marketing picture leaked, with the new ultra-premium motherboard ready to rock and roll with Intel's flagship Core i9-12900K processor. You can see those delicious next-gen DDR5 DIMMs and PCIe 5.0 here, but we don't know if there's just 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and 2 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots just yet.

There's dual 8-pin EPS power connectors, the LGA1700 socket that's ready for Intel's new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs, and a huge M.2 slot thermal guard that will keep those 7GB/sec+ NVMe M.2 SSDs. It's a beautiful looking motherboard, that's for sure.

Corsair has just unveiled its next-gen Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 memory modules, ready for the world of DDR5 RAM and Intel Alder Lake CPU architecture... and AMD's next-gen Zen 4 CPU architecture when it launches in 2022.

Corsair's new Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 memory will be offered in speeds up to DDR5-6400, while Corsair will use the same look and style it used on its Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4. There's a high-end heat spreader, 12 ultra-bright and fully addressable CAPELLIX RGB LEDs that can be tweaked with Corsair's own iCUE software.

The company only just unveiled its new Vengeance DDR5 memory kits barely over a week ago now, and were light on details -- the same goes here for the Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 memory. We don't know much about it apart from the look and style, and that it'll be compatible with Intel's new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors when they launch in November.

The original Quake holds a very special place in my heart, spending hundreds and hundreds of hours playing the game in both single-player and multiplayer -- especially on LAN -- and then its sequels Quake II and Quake III Arena.

The new Quake remaster is receiving its next-gen upgrade which delivers support for the delicious 4K 120FPS on the next-gen Microsoft Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles, as well as Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 console. The PC version doesn't get an upgrade, because it could always do 4K 120FPS -- even back in the 90s the PC could do 120FPS.

PlayStation 5 owners get something special with the next-gen upgrade for the Quake remaster, with DualSense controller support. The adaptive triggers and built-in speaker will get a work out in Quake on the PS5, especially with the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. On PS5 you'll need to download the upgraded version of Quake on the PlayStation Store, or through the game's hub.

ViewSonic has just announced its new ELITE XG320U gaming monitor, with native 4K resolution, super-fast 144Hz refresh rate which is overclockable to 150Hz, and HDMI 2.1 connectivity.

ViewSonic's new ELITE XG320U gaming monitor seems to have it all: 4K 144Hz and 1ms response time with HDMI 2.1 connectivity which means you can easily plug right into the Microsoft Xbox Series X/S and Sony PlayStation 5 next-gen consoles.

Jeff Muto, business line director at ViewSonic explains: "The ViewSonic ELITE XG320U is the epitome of what the company continues to bring to high-end gaming. This monitor is packed with the latest technologies so gamers can have the ultimate gaming experience through complete immersion between incredible color accuracy, responsiveness and ultra-smooth textures. It's the perfect combination of features, power and speed that ensures it can be used with next-generation consoles".

Blizzard has explained Diablo 2's server issues and says a fix will take some time to roll out.

Today Blizzard published a lengthy blog post detailing what's going on with Diablo 2's servers. Apparently D2R uses the same server structure as the original game, with minor alterations and tweaks--these tweaks are becoming more plentiful thanks to these issues. The devs explain that the server issues the past four days were caused by a perfect storm of massive concurrent user spikes and a game-improving update. Both of these combined knocked the servers offline. Datacenters have simply been overwhelmed every day--too many people are trying to play Diablo 2 Resurrected at once.

The global servers were also trying to continually reconnect and back themselves up, an automated process that caused lots of headaches. So Blizzard has optimized and released fixes with server downtime. The devs also say that the biggest fix will take some time to roll out.

Call of Duty's new advanced RICOCHET anti-cheat tool has already been leaked out into the wild, and coders are currently investigating ways on cracking it.

Yesterday Activision announced RICOCHET, a new innovative kernel-level anti-cheat solution aimed at decimating cheaters in Warzone and the upcoming Vanguard. Gamers were wary of yet another kernel-based anti-cheat (these programs technically get access to the most sensitive parts of your computer) and this kind of security is only ever deployed to combat the most stubborn threats.

Now it looks like RICOCHET could be rendered obsolete before it's even launch. Hackers have obtained and leaked RICOCHET out into the wild and P2C (pay2cheat) coders are already reverse-engineering the driver in an effort to exploit it and circumvent the measures. This means Activision's work may be useless even before it launches.