Latest News - Page 1481

A newly published Sony patent uses unique AR sensor technology to create controllers and peripherals out of everyday objects--including bananas.

Sony's new patent is rather bizarre and incredibly innovative. The patent is quite technical, but the gist of it is centered around VR/AR sensor device that essentially scans an object and uses machine learning not only to identify it, but use six-dimensional pose estimation to translate it into a peripheral. Theoretically this would allow gamers to use everyday household things like bananas to interact with and control video games.

FIG. 3 shows schematically an example of a video image of a banana being used as a video games controller;

Halo Infinite is basically a first-person shooter/RPG mashup with lots of replayability, but it thankfully won't feature any crafting systems.

Halo Infinite isn't just a game, but a platform that sets up the future of all Halo games. Infinite isn't just a name--it's a description of the game's emphasis on near-infinite replayability. That's why the sequel features open-ended exploration with a map screen straight out of a Ubisoft game, as well as upgrades. 343i wants to focus on engaging players and that means certain hooks are added, including online co-op, replayable missions, and discoveries in an open world. There's just one element that won't be included: crafting.

In a recent Halo Waypoint post, creative director Joseph Staten confirms Infinite won't have crafting. You won't spend time killing creatures in a never-ending quest for materials. The gameplay loop is predicated on action, not inane tedium or upgrade paths similar to Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

We've been reporting on Cold Iron's new Alien game for years now, and today it was finally revealed. Introducing Aliens: Fireteam, a new third-person co-op shooter that combines Left 4 Dead survival with Gears of War-style combat.

Aliens: Fireteam is a co-op third-person shooter where you take on hordes of merciless xenomorphs across four interwoven story arcs. Gamers can make their own marine across five different classes (Gunner, Demolisher, Technician, Doc and Recon) complete with special class abilities, RPG-style perk unlocks and buffs, 30+ weapon types including the iconic pulse rifle and 70+ modifications to adjust your strategies, and other customizations. Cold Iron previously reported the game would be an MMO, but the new trailer suggests co-op sessions are locked to up to 4-player fireteams.

Combat looks enthralling and mirrors Gears of War's brutal third-person shooter action. The devs promise over 20 variations of enemies, including 10 different xenomorph breeds like facehuggers, Praetorians, spitters, warriors and bursters , the creepy Weyland-Yutani synths from Alien Isolation, and other surprises. This is a live game with a strong emphasis on replayability and will have lots of recurring missions and objectives alongside a mainline campaign.

Square Enix is always on the forefront of next-gen technology and has showcased its prowess with some amazing tech demos. Now with the advent of PS5 and Xbox Series X console power, their talent can finally be unleashed, and we should see some big jumps in performance and quality with future games like Project Athia, Final Fantasy 16, and the anticipated Final Fantasy 7 Remake's second chapter.

Although Final Fantasy 7 Remake is getting re-released for the PS5 with upgrades like faster loading times, improved 4K textures/lighting, and a 60FPS mode, the game was built for the PS4 first. Square Enix didn't build the game from scratch specifically for the PlayStation 5. That'll change with Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2.

The developer confirms the next chapter will be made specifically for the next-gen PS5 and will push the hardware to new heights, likely with new optimizations like ray-traced reflections and lighting. Since FF7R was made in Unreal Engine 4, it's possible the second game could utilize Unreal Engine 5's new Lumen lighting and Nanite texture technologies.

Sony today announced it will stop renting and selling movies and TV shows on the PlayStation Store in 2021, one of the most widely-accessed digital marketplaces on the internet. It's possible Sony is preparing a new subscription-based streaming service for its own content brand.

In August, PlayStation owners will no longer be able to rent or buy TV shows or films on the PlayStation Store. On-demand content purchases will be discontinued. Sony says its closing this part of its business because most consumers are using subscriptions and streaming. This is a strange move considering Sony has its own entertainment production group (Sony Pictures Motion Group), and its content is sold on the PS Store. Removing this avenue of sales potential strongly hints Sony is following the consumer shift towards recurring subscriptions with its own bundled streaming offering.

Sony could replace this video storefront with its own Netflix-style all-you-can-streaming service. The company has a wealthy vault of content it could bundle into such a service. Sony Pictures Motion Group commands over 4,000 films, and Sony Pictures Television has roughly 270 shows in its catalog. Sony also has PlayStation Productions, a new label that will adapt key video game franchises into TV shows, starting with Twisted Metal.

Epic Games has bought Fall Guys developer Mediatonic for an undisclosed sum, solidifying the gaming titan's stable of talent.

Like Embracer and Microsoft, Epic Games is making big power acquisitions. First they bought Rocket League dev Psyonix in 2019, snapping up one of the most lucrative free-to-play games in the industry. Now they've bought Fall Guys, a massively strategic purchase that'll deliver untold engagement and monetization across multiple platforms.

For Epic , the timing couldn't be better. Fall Guys is about to cross over to every major games platform on the market, offering lots of microtransaction earnings potential. On the developer's side, nothing is changing at Mediatonic: Everyone will keep their jobs, and the devs now get the backing of a $17 billion dollar company. Fall Guys isn't being removed from Steam (yet?) and free content is still on the way.

Palit has just registered 12 new P106-based mining cards with the EEC (Eurasian Economic Commission) where they will be bringing the Pascal GPU architecture and the P106 back to market as crypto mining cards.

It looks like Palit is working on a few different models with varying amounts of CUDA cores and VRAM counts, with the higher-end P106-100 GPU packing 1280 CUDA cores and 6GB of GDDR5 memory while the cut-down P106-90 packs 640 CUDA cores and 3GB of GDDR5 memory.

The lower-end Palit P106-90 mining card wouldn't be any good for Ethereum mining as the DAG is 4.11GB and there's only 3GB of GDDR5 available. This doesn't mean it's useless for crypto mining, far from it -- it's just useless for mining Ethereum.

Last week, Andrew "Boz" Bosworth hinted that Oculus could be building a higher-end version of the Quest that would come in at a higher price but with better specifications.

Facebook has been a leader in the VR industry ever since it threw down billions of dollars to buy Oculus in 2014. Mark Zuckerberg is famously bullish on VR, indicating on multiple occasions that he believes VR is the next great computing platform. He has also repeatedly stated that he's going after the mass market, which means focusing on lowering the barrier to entry and making VR devices affordable for the masses.

When asked about the possibility of making a Quest Pro that sells at a higher price point, Bosworth said he thought the idea was "interesting" and gave a bit of a smile and a wink. While that is far from a confirmation, the idea that Facebook could be building a higher-end Quest falls in line with Mark Zuckerberg's comments during a recent Facebook earnings call about his company's current work on headset development.

The Oculus Quest could be getting a new update this month that enables the screen to run at up to 120Hz. That would mark the second time Oculus increased the refresh rate of its mobile VR device.

Oculus released the Quest 2 in October 2020, and when it hit the market, the displays in the device operated at 72Hz. At launch, the company said that 90Hz would be supported, and true to its word, the 90Hz update rolled out in time for Christmas. At the time, John Carmack gave developers are warning that they should not set their games to operate at the highest refresh rate available, as future increases were on the table.

As recently as mid-February, Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, Head of Facebook Reality Labs, gave a literal thumbs-up to a question about Oculus Quest getting 120Hz support that he received during an Instagram-based Q&A session. Facebook's Quest development roadmap reveals that the feature is scheduled to roll out later this month.

ASUS is cooking up its next-gen ROG Phone 5 gaming smartphone, which we last heard rumors it would pack 16GB of RAM but now new rumors suggest it will cram a record-breaking 18GB of RAM.

The new ASUS ROG Phone 5 would be the world's first smartphone to feature 18GB of RAM, with a new model turning up on Geekbench 5 suggesting the 18GB of RAM in the ROG Phone 5. The new Geekbench 5 entry of the purported ROG Phone 5 has it featuring 18GB of VRAM versus previous entries with 16GB and 8GB but there are other reports that suggest we'll also see a 12GB version of the ASUS ROG Phone 5, too.

Inside, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip will be powering the ASUS ROG Phone 5 offering up some incredible performance I'm sure. We should see the new ROG Phone 5 packing the highest-res and highest refresh rate display available, something I'm sure we'll hear much more of in the coming weeks.

Bitcoin has been in the headlines countless times throughout the first two months of 2021 alone, but now Citi is coming out and saying Bitcoin is at a "tipping point" and it could soon "become the currency of choice for international trade". It seems Citi is hella bullish on Bitcoin.

Citi's own global perspectives and solutions team explained in a note on Monday: "There are a host of risks and obstacles that stand in the way of Bitcoin progress. Bitcoin's future is thus still uncertain, but developments in the near term are likely to prove decisive as the currency balances at the tipping point of mainstream acceptance or a speculative implosion".

Why the fuss over Citi and its open-armed approach to Bitcoin? Well considering major financial institutions like banks have been saying Bitcoin is worthless as its not hacked by anything and it's all just hype and memes, but with legitimate world-leading companies like Tesla, Apple, MasterCard, and others accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies then it marks a big change for a conglomerate like Citi to praise Bitcoin and say it could turn into the "currency of choice for international trade".

2021 is starting off as probably the worst year ever for PC gamers looking to upgrade their graphics card, but it's not just gamers that are getting the wrong end of the stick -- NVIDIA's own AIB partners are in a bit of a twist, too.

According to @harukaze5719 the AIB partners don't want to produce more GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards, and would rather make custom GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards to "maximize profit in this chip shortage situation". The tweet continued, adding: "NVIDIA did warn. Some says rumors from Feb that NVIDIA will not supply GA102 GPUs are actually due to this reason".

It was a few months ago where GamersNexus explained that NVIDIA's AIB partners said the targeted MSRP of $250 to $300 was too unrealistic, and that "they'd be bankrupt if they sold it at those prices". In order to get their custom GeForce RTX 3060 Ti cards to be priced at under $300 the AIB partners would have to cut down in every single area: a sub-par cooler, and ignoring the GDDR6, VRM, and other PCB components from being sufficiently cooled.

The Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board confirms E3 2021 has been cancelled and the show will no longer be open to the public at the L.A. Convention Center.

The annual E3 tradeshow will once again skip a public venue, L.A. city officials reveal. As previous reports indicated, E3 2021 will now be a digital event and the ESA plans to pivot towards streaming for the first-ever remote E3 showcase. Although the public can't attend, the city of Los Angeles is working with the ESA to broadcast events from the LACC for June 15-17.

The report says that although E3 2021 has been cancelled, ESA may renew their license for E3 2022 or E3 2023, but nothing's been announced just yet. "Cancelled live event in 2021. Working with production team on broadcast options at LA Live/LACC. Working on 2022 & 2023 license."

We all know how cryptocurrency mining is huge again, with reports quickly surfacing that Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 console has been hacked to support crypto mining and that it can crank out 99MH/s of mining power... well, the reports are totally fake.

The rumors of course began on Chinese forums that claimed the PS5 was hacked to support NBMiner, an Ethereum mining algorithm that was reportedly capable of 99MH/s. This would've been an incredible feat considering a tuned AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card sits at around 60MH/s mining.

The reports stated the hacked PS5 was pulling 99MH/s with the console drawing around 211W while it mined which would be impressive compared to the RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6000 series flagship graphics cards. You can tune and overclock the Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards but you'll find it impossible to bump over 60MH/s mining crypto.

Bandai Namco follows SEGA in pulling out of the volatile arcade business, and plans to sell all North American-based facilities to third-parties.

Casinos and arcade centers have been hit particularly hard by COVID-19, forcing renowned quarter-mavens like SEGA to sell off these once-profitable businesses. Today, Bandai Namco announced it will also sell its amusement operations business in North America:

"After careful examination of the Amusement Facilities Business in North America, the Company decided to transfer the business and withdraw from the business, as it expects that the difficult business environment would continue into the future and achieving cooperation between each business is difficult at present. The Group will still continue to engage in the business of selling arcade games in North America," reads a press release announcement.

Recent company documents and reports hint games publisher Deep Silver may be gearing up big games for 2021-2022, possibly including Saints Row V and even Dead Island 2.

While reporting on the recent news of Dead Island 2 possibly becoming next-gen exclusive, I found some interesting tidbits surrounding Deep Silver, its parent company Koch Media, and the Embracer Group. The info strongly suggests that big games are coming from Deep Silver in the 2021-2022 period.

First, let's take a look at what Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors said in a recent Q3 presentation. The company expects FY2022 to be its best yet because of "numerous significant releases towards the second half of the year." This aligns with what Koch Media, the parent company of Deep Silver, said in another presentation:

New job listings hint Dead Island 2 could skip current-gen PS4 and Xbox One consoles, and exclusively launch on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

UK studio Dambuster Studios may have resurrected Dead Island 2 from development hell, but official news is still dead in the ground. The only real info we've gleaned is from presentations and job listings, the latter of which may hint at a next-gen focus for the zombie-survival game.

Multiple listings on Dambuster's career page are recruiting for an "established AAA title for next-gen consoles and PC." Many have assumed this is Dead Island 2, and it's pretty easy to see why considering one listing says the next-gen project is a sandbox game. Other listings confirm Dead Island 2 will have DirectX Raytracing support and that it's built in Unreal Engine 4 (which could be scaled to UE5 later on or even during mid-development).

Battlefield 6 will be EA's most important game of 2021 and the publisher wants to make a big splash in the next-gen market. That's why multiple teams are helping with the larger-than-life shooter.

EA wants to make a statement with Battlefield 6, and on paper, the game looks to be the publisher's biggest game of 2021. It'll have real-time unscripted destruction physics, next-gen enhancements and visuals optimized for higher-end PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles (and PC, of course), and 128-player multiplayer.

The shooter, which EA promises will deliver "all-out military warfare," is due out in holiday 2021 and is expected to help push EA's FY2022 earnings to high points. To make good on these promises, EA has conscripted multiple internal studios to help work on various parts of the game. This is par for the course for EA games--for example, EA Motive helped make Battlefront II's vehicle combat--but Battlefield 6 is a much bigger investment.

Footage of FromSoftware's anticipated new open-world RPG Elden Ring has leaked out, but it's apparently quite old.

Right on the heels of the rumored Elden Ring event for March, some leaked internal footage of the mysterious game has surfaced and gives players an idea of what actual gameplay could be like. The video is off-screen footage and quite blurry, showing what looks like Witcher 3-esque horseback riding in a medieval fantasy world.

According to VentureBeat's Jeff Grubb, who previously hinted Elden Ring news could drop this month, the footage might be a year old and may not represent the current state of the game. The internal reel is also much longer than the brief seconds-long clips being passed around on social media.

It looks like NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards with blower-style coolers are very silently being discontinued, with VideoCardz reporting that RTX 3090 blower-style cooled cards are being removed from AIB partners' websites.

NVIDIA partners are now removing pages with blower-style GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards from their websites, but there are still blower-style custom GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards. There's no reason behind the discontinuation of the RTX 3090 blower-style cards, but there are a few theories.

First off, VideoCardz is on the money with saying that board partners "might have simply decided to use this type of coolers for their CMP HX models, which will be available through AIBs exclusively starting next month". I even said in my post for the EMTEK GeForce RTX 3090 Blower Edition graphics card: "The daugherboard is a separate PCB that is there solely for the two PCIe power connectors, which is a lot of work for EMTEK to do for a single SKU of the GeForce RTX 3090. Interesting design though, I can see plenty of these being used in crypto mines".