Latest News - Page 1393

Nintendo plans to convert its old manufacturing facility in Uji city, Kyoto to a gallery that celebrates decades of Nintendo gaming.

Nintendo today announced it wants to open its first historical museum in its Uji Ogura Plant. The building will exhibit relics from Nintendo's past and delve into the treasure trove of pristine-condition collectibles, consoles, and products that Nintendo currently keeps carefully sealed in its vaults.

Up until now, the Ogura plant was used to manufacture playing cards and served as a customer service facility. This plant is particularly apt for this conversion seeing as Nintendo got its start in gaming with playing cards, and the building has significant history for the company (Nintendo made $16 million from playing cards and etc., down 50% year-over-year).

Battlefield 4 headlines this month's free Amazon Prime games selection.

Amazon Prime members can now download Battlefield 4 and a smattering of smaller indies as part of the Prime Gaming freebies. You'll need the EA Origin client on PC in order to run Battlefield 4, but the full game is being offered. EA is eager to build up hype for the return of modern-day warfare as it reveals the new Battlefield game on June 9.

"Battlefield 4 standard edition - For a limited time only, get a code to claim the game on Origin for free. This offer is applicable to PC only. Amazon Prime members have the ability to claim one game code for Battlefield 4 Standard edition until June 21st, 2021. The code will be eligible to claim on Origin until July 21st, 2021."

Nintendo announces its E3 2021 plans but there won't be any mention of new hardware during the stream.

Nintendo's new E3 2021 Direct stream will debut on Tuesday, June 15 at 3PM EST, and will exclusively show off 40 minutes of new games coming to the Nintendo Switch. This aligns with recent reports of the company's plans involving a new Switch Pro console as well as new enhanced games.

Nintendo will release a new upgraded Switch model sometime in 2021 that's capable of 4K output thanks to a new DLSS-capable NVIDIA chip. No one knows when Nintendo will reveal the Switch Pro, but sources say the E3 Direct will focus on enhanced gameplay only available on new Switch Pro games.

CD Projekt Group confirms it has no plans to make a new video game based on the Thorgal comic book series.

A visit from comic artist Piotr Rosinski at CD Projekt's Warsaw office kicks off speculations of a possible Thorgal video game. Piotr Rosinski is the son of famed artist Grzegorz Rosinski who worked on the popular Belgian sci-fantasy comic series for decades. The thought was that CD Projekt was in negotiations to acquire IP rights to the Thorgal series in order to make games based on the source material.

CD Projekt now confirms this isn't true, and delivered the following statement to the Polish outlet PPE:

Today Sony confirmed early April reports that Days Gone developer Sony Bend is currently making a new IP, not Days Gone 2.

In a recent PlayStation Blog Post, PlayStation's Worldwide Studios boss Hermen Hulst says that Sony's Bend, Oregon-based studio is now working on a new original open-world IP. This corroborates Bloomberg reports that Sony Bend had pitched Days Gone 2, but it was denied, and the studio moved to a new Uncharted project under Naughty Dog's supervision. Shortly after Sony Bend moved to a new IP of their choosing, the reports state.

"Bend Studio is working on a very exciting new IP that they're very, very passionate about. They're building on the deep open-world systems that they developed with Days Gone. So I'm really happy for Bend Studio," Sony's Hermen Hulst said.

The upcoming God of War sequel has been pushed back to 2022, Sony Santa Monica today confirmed.

The reports were right: The new God of War game won't release in 2021 after all. Both Sony Worldwide Studios and Sony Santa Monica announced God of War (codenamed Ragnarok) is now launching in 2022, which is expected to be the PS5's biggest year yet.

"We remain focused on delivering a top-quality game while maintaining the safety and wellbeing of our team, creative partners, and families. With this in mind, we've made the decision to shift our release window to 2022," the developer says.

Sony's biggest PlayStation 5 games are also coming to PlayStation 4, the company today confirmed.

With 116.4 million worldwide shipments, Sony isn't ready to give up on the PS4 yet (nor should they be). The PlayStation brand's billion-dollar business relies mostly on full game sales and commissions from third-party titles, so reducing software availability to an immature 7.8 million install base of PS5 won't maximize sales. That's why Sony's biggest games will be cross-gen throughout 2022 (and possibly beyond).

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Hermen Hulst today confirmed that three big PS5 titles will also release on the PS4: Horizon Forbidden West, which we already knew about, and two surprising games, Gran Turismo 7, which we previously understood would be built from the ground up for PS5 with high-end optimizations like ray tracing, and the new God of War sequel from Sony Santa Monica.

NASA is taking some unusual astronauts up to the International Space Station this week, and they aren't human.

NASA's next cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will include more than 5,000 tardigrades, which are microscopic creatures that are commonly referred to as "water bears". Tardigrades are almost indestructible, so researchers are seeing what happens when they are living in zero gravity.

Thomas Boothby, an assistant professor of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming, who is leading the experiment, said, "Some of the things that tardigrades can survive include being dried out, being frozen, and being heated up past the boiling point of water." Adding, "They've been shown to survive and reproduce during spaceflight, and can even survive prolonged exposure to the vacuum of outer space."

NASA has delayed the launch of its highly anticipated replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The James Webb Space Telescope is no stranger to delays, as the initial launch was planned for around 2007. Now that the construction for the new space telescope is almost complete, NASA and the main contractor on the project, Northrop Gunman, are performing extensive testing on it before it's packed up and shipped to the spaceport in French Guyana.

There are many factors that could cause the launch of the JWST to be delayed further. One factor being the Ariane 5 rocket that will take the space telescope off-planet has been grounded since last August due to a problem with the rocket's payload firing. Arianespace has since said that this problem has been resolved with a redesign and that tests for the new rocket are penciled in for July and August.

SpaceX is constructing a brand new spaceport, and this time the spaceport will be out in the middle of the ocean.

The news comes from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who took to his Twitter to announce that construction has begun on the new ocean spaceport, and that rocket launches could begin in 2022. In 2020 SpaceX purchased two oil rigs that would be converted into off-shore launch platforms for future missions to the Moon and Mars. The private space company named the oil rigs Phobos and Deimos, which are Mars' two moons.

Deimos is currently under construction at the Port of Brownsville in Texas. Phobos was recently moved to Pascagoula, Mississippi, from the Port of Galveston as it needs to be altered to accommodate Starship, which is currently in development. If both off-shore launch sites are completed by the end of next year, we could see many more of these types of launch sites constructed all around the globe for SpaceX's rockets. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

On June 8, Amazon will be debuting what it has called "Amazon Sidewalk," which will enable all compatible devices into a brand new service.

Amazon Echo speakers and Ring cameras will automatically be hooked up to the Sidewalk service automatically, allowing strangers to use your Wi-Fi connection. Amazon has said that Sidewalk is being rolled out as a way to increase home security. Here's how it works. If you choose to keep Sidewalk enabled, your compatible Amazon devices will connect to other Sidewalk compatible devices within a mile range.

The connection with surrounding devices will allow compatible devices to use an active internet connection even if your home internet connection is currently offline. Essentially, if you have Sidewalk enabled and your internet goes down, your Ring device will jump from using your home connection to a surrounding connection so the device can remain active, thus keeping the security of your home enabled. If you don't want Sidewalk enabled, you can choose to opt out of it by simply going to Account Settings and looking for Amazon Sidewalk and toggle it off.

A new report from The Wall Street Journal has revealed Elon Musk is receiving some heat from the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) over some unvetted tweets.

Back in August 2018, Musk tweeted that he had "[f]unding secured" to take Tesla private at the stock price of $420 per share. The SEC ended up charging Musk with securities fraud in September, and after both parties settled, Musk agreed that he would have his public communications (tweets) vetted by the company before they were posted.

The following year Musk tweeted that Tesla would manufacture more cars than what the company officially said it would, as a result, the SEC dragged Musk back to court, where Musk agreed that more specific vetting by Tesla lawyers (two are needed to approve a tweet) would take place before a tweet is posted. Now, the SEC is coming back at Musk over an unvetted tweet from May 2020 where Musk said that Tesla's stock price was "too high imo".

In celebration of the 31st year since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA has released an image of a spiral galaxy that's 300 million light-years away.

NASA explains that the spiral galaxy we are looking at is called AM 0644-741, and from the image, you can see a bright blue ring of star clusters circling around a yellowish nucleus which was once another spiral galaxy. NASA explains in its blog post that the blue ring of star clusters is 150,000 light-years in diameter, "making it larger than our entire home galaxy, the Milky Way".

So, what's with all the blue? According to NASA, the ring is blue because of rampant star formation, as stars that are forming are blue in color. Since the majority of the ring is blue, NASA says that this is a good indicator that many stars are forming in this galaxy. If you are interested in reading any more about spiral galaxies or would like to see another awesome image from Hubble, check out this link here.

NASA has announced that a large asteroid is approaching Earth, and it could be as big, if not bigger, than the Eiffel Tower.

The asteroid has been dubbed 2021 KT1, and according to NASA, it will make a "close approach" with Earth on June 1 at about 10:24 am EDT. 2021 KT1 will whiz past Earth at 40,000 miles per hour, or around 20 times the speed of a bullet shot out of a rifle. Additionally, NASA says that the asteroid could be anywhere between 491 feet and 1079 feet in diameter. For reference, the Eiffel Tower is 1062 feet in height.

If you are wondering if the asteroid warrants any concern, NASA's Center for Near-Earth object Studies has said that "No one should be overly concerned about an Earth impact of an asteroid or comet. The threat to any one person from auto accidents, disease, other natural disasters and a variety of other problems is much higher than the threat from NEOs (near-Earth-objects)." For more information on this story, check out the NASA report here.

TSMC hit a masterstroke with 7nm... the right place, right time, the right partners, the right products... while its competitors (mainly Intel and NVIDIA at least for consumer technology) lagged behind so badly.

The company announced during its 2021 Online Technology Symposium event, TSMC shared more details on its future N6, N5, N4, and N3 nodes and also announced that it has shipped over 1 billion chips manufactured on its 7nm process node.

Most of the 7nm chips were for AMD designs across Ryzen, Radeon, EPYC, and the next-gen consoles are all using TSMC 7nm chips. AMD was truly in the right place and right time as well, but their competitors didn't fair so well and won't for the next few years either.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are already years ahead of the competition, leaving Intel in its proverbial dust and Samsung not able to catch up until 2030 according to recent reports.

But during TSMC's 2021 Online Technology Symposium which started today, alongside Computex 2021, we found out more details about TSMC's upcoming N6, N5, N4, and N3 process nodes. TSMC provided the world with new details on their defect densities, yields, and production timelines -- as in when you can expect to find these next-gen chips in your favorite products (CPUs, GPUs, game consoles, smartphones).

TSMC's senior vice president of research and development, Dr. Yuh Jier Mii, explained that the 3nm process node will have power consumption and performance improvements over the new 5nm node, which the first-gen N5 chips just went into production.

NVIDIA announced its new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, with its GA102 GPU and 12GB of GDDR6X memory costing $1199 -- and then there's the flood of custom AIB cards.

COLORFUL announced its new iGame GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Vulcan OC-V graphics card, which as always is individual and stands out from the crowd with the inclusion of its LCD display. The LCD display on the iGame GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Vulcan OC-V graphics card can be tweaked 90 degrees, so if you've got the card vertically mounted in your gaming PC then you'll still see the LCD display.

The new COLORFUL iGame GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Vulcan OC-V has a triple-fan cooler with a 13-blade cooling fan design, and COLORFUL's in-house iGame Vacuum Copper Plated Technics which provide "superb cooling to achieve high and stable overclocks".

NVIDIA announced its new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards during its all-virtual Computex 2021 keynote, with some special gaming surprises with RTX and DLSS technologies.

Ubisoft's huge hit Rainbow Six: Siege will soon have NVIDIA DLSS technology, which will boost performance even more -- and it's already a game that runs incredibly smooth on a decent GPU. This means that you can easily hit 4K 120FPS on the right hardware (GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3090) and maybe even usher in some 8K 60FPS gaming with Rainbow Six: Siege + DLSS.

NVIDIA also announced DLSS upgrades coming to DOOM Eternal (which will also have ray-traced reflections) and Red Dead Redemption 2. The RTX + DLSS update for DOOM Eternal drops later this month, but the DLSS update for RDR 2 is "coming soon" along with the DLSS update for Rainbow Six: Siege.

NVIDIA has just announced two new members to its Ampere GPU lineup with the recently announced GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards. Alongside that launch was news of major AAA games getting RTX ray tracing and DLSS technologies injected into their game.

One of those was Rockstar Games' super-successful Red Dead Redemption 2, which will be receiving an update that will add DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) support. RDR 2 is already a decently optimized game with fantastic performance across the board, but DLSS will only amplify that.

Red Dead Redemption 2 with DLSS will allow gamers with lower-powered graphics cards to enjoy higher-fidelity graphics and resolutions while allowing those with higher-end cards to play at even higher levels of details or with DLSS set to Quality mode.

DOOM Eternal is already one of the best-looking games on the market, but now it looks even better with its just-announced RTX ray tracing and DLSS update that is coming later this month. Check it out:

NVIDIA's newly-announced GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card with its 12GB of GDDR6X and $1199 pricing is powering DOOM Eternal with RTX ray tracing and DLSS technologies in the trailer above, in the glorious 4K of course.

The new update will add ray-traced reflections and a super huge performance improvement through Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology. 8K wasn't playable before, but I'd say 8K 60FPS won't be an issue for DOOM Eternal and the new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards thanks to the magic DLSS update.