Latest News - Page 1497

Sabrent is known for some of the world's very fastest storage products in the world, but now the company is making a gigantic 16TB (yes, 16 terabytes) of 2.5-inch SSD goodness.

You won't be breaching 550MB/sec on it -- from the dizzying heights of 7GB/sec on Sabrent's latest Rocket 4 Plus NVMe M.2 SSDs -- but you will have a huge 16TB of storage, where you just might be able to install Call of Duty -- not once, but twice!

As for what to expect out of the Sabrent 16TB 2.5-inch SSD, we will get up to 560MB/sec writes and 510MB/sec writes. Pricing is unknown right now, but don't expect it to be cheap!

Our DualSense controller is now afflicted with stick drift after 3 weeks of play. We don't know how to fix it, but we can confirm these popular internet "fixes" don't actually work.

The PS5's DualSense controller really is a game-changer...when it works. The haptic feedback, advanced rumble, and new adaptive triggers really add a new level of immersion to play. None of this matters if your sticks start to drift. You simply can't play a PS5 game when you're fighting the camera the entire time, and the DualShock 4 isn't usable with PS5 games. So you're left with two options: send the controller into Sony for repairs, or buy another controller from the store.

Lots of people are reporting DualSense stick drift, and we're one of them. Our DualSense's right stick has started to severely drift, causing most games to be unplayable. Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Black Ops Cold War, and even Spider-Man Miles Morales have turned into exercises of frustration.

Saves made on the PS5 version of Spider-Man Miles Morales are only compatible on PS5, and can't be migrated or imported to PS4.

I recently bought the PS4 version of Miles Morales to get two versions for the price of one. Why not? Grab the PS4 version and get a free PS5 version. Since I own both a PS4 and PS5, I figured I could trade off with my girlfriend; she could play the PS4 version, upload the saves, and I could pick up right where she left off on PS5 (and vice-versa).

Unfortunately that's not possible. Miles Morales supports PS4 to PS5 save migrations, but you can't do the reverse. Any saves you make in Miles Morales on PS5 are locked on PS5. These saves can be uploaded to PS Plus, but you can't download them to the PS4's HDD. The saves simply don't show up on PS4's PS Plus cloud download section.

HP is dealing with a bit of egg on its face after it sent a couple of unfortunate owners for failed Reverb G2 headsets the wrong model to replace the. Somehow something got mixed up in HP's system, and it sent the wrong model as replacements.

At least two people reported on Reddit this week that they received replacements for their failed HP Reverb G2 headsets, but they didn't quite get what they expected. To add insult to receiving a faulty headset through a pre-order, HP support somehow sent these customers the last-generation Reverb G1 to replace them.

Of course, HP isn't going to leave these customers high and dry. HP's VR team is very active on r/HPReverb, and they very quickly dealt with the issue. The first report was escalated directly to Joanna Popper, who's been the face of HP's VR department for some time, and a proper replacement will be sent to the customer.

A research team from the University of Science and Technology of China declared "Quantum Supremacy" when it published new quantum computing research in the journal Science. China's new quantum computer is the fastest ever made.

Google's Sycamore used to be the world's fastest quantum computer on the planet, with 54 cubits of quantum computational power. Google declared Quantum Supremacy with Sycamore in October 2019 by running a calculation in 200s that would have taken the world's fastest supercomputer 10,000 years the execute. (in case you're wondering; Quantum Supremacy is when a quantum computer can complete a task that no supercomputer could achieve.)

The research team at the University of Science and Technology of China ran a similar simulated comparison to its quantum calculation. China's top quantum computer, dubbed Jiuzhang, completed a calculation in 3 minutes that would have taken TaihuLight, the country's fastest supercomputer, and third fastest in the world, 2 billion years to complete.

New Dragon Age 4 content will be shown at The Game Awards 2020 on December 10. Hopefully we'll get some gameplay this time?

Dragon Age 4 is a long ways away and probably won't release before 2022. BioWare did show off a tantalizing glimpse of prototype in-game footage a bit ago, complete with some amazing lighting and motion effects, combat animations, and environments. We could see more of this kind of footage at The Game Awards.

Like all of EA's new games, Dragon Age 4 will be powered by DICE's next-gen Frostbite engine, which includes all kinds of upgrades like lighting/shadows, real-time destructible environments, and more. We expect Dragon Age 4 to be exclusive to PS5 and Xbox Series and not release on PS4 or Xbox One.

Warzone is an absolute money-making juggernaut for Activision, and the F2P battle royale has now surpassed 80 million players in less than a year's time.

Today Activision confirmed some epic stats for Call of Duty. The franchise has made over $3 billion in sales and mTX so far in 2020, and Warzone has hit 85 million active players on all platforms. It took Warzone 269 days (or roughly 9 months) to hit the 85 million player milestone.

Warzone remains an extremely important part of Activision's new tethered business model. Warzone will be the connective tissue that links all mainline Call of Duty games going forward, offering a free-to-play entry point with cross-progression, cross-saves, and cross-play. More importantly, Warzone is also another microtransaction avenue for Activision.

Activision's new four-part plan has created one of the most powerful billion-dollar revenue models in the industry. This is the future of Call of Duty, and the future of major Activision-Blizzard games moving forward.

The Call of Duty franchise has raked in an incredible $3 billion in combined sales and monetization revenues throughout 2020, Activision today confirmed. These monumental earnings are made possible by the new Call of Duty ecosystem that connects four microtransaction-driven points together: CoD Mobile, two simultaneously-updated mainline premium games (Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare), and Warzone, the F2P battle royale that links the premium games.

Warzone and mainline CoD games are now strategically interwoven with cross-play, cross-progression, cross-saves, and cross-monetization, making Warzone the most important thing Activision has ever done.

Star Wars and X-Men star Oscar Isaac with portray the iconic and gruff Snake in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid film adaptation.

According to Deadline, Oscar Isaac just landed his dream role. Isaac is slated to play Solid Snake in Jordan Vogt-Roberts' new Metal Gear movie--a role that Isaac publicly expressed interest in. The film may be a long ways away, though. Isaac is currently working on a laundry list of films and adaptations, and will star in Marvel's new Moon Knight movie.

Jurassic World writer Derek Connolly will pen a script cemented in Hideo Kojima's vast, espionage-driven story arc. Avi Arad, who has been attached to innumerable Marvel and Spider-Man projects, will produce. There's no official details on which game the film will adapt, or who will play which characters alongside Isaac.

Dreams do come true: 8-year-old Joseph Deen just became one of the youngest esports pros in history.

esports group Team 33 just spent $33,000 to add 8-year-old Fortnite pro Joseph Deen, aka Gosu33, to their roster. Gosu actually started training with Team33 when he was just six years old (when I was six I was getting tormented by NES games, not competing against high-level competitors) and built up skills in the last 2 years.

"It's a dream come true!" says Joseph Deen, when asked to comment on his new signing. "While many other teams didn't take me seriously due to my young age, Team 33 scouted me through Fornite games and let me train and learn with them daily. I couldn't be happier today to become an official member of the team."

Sea of Thieves has broken another big milestone and now has more than 11 million pirate adventurers logging in worldwide.

2020 has been a big year for Microsoft's online swashbuckler Sea of Thieves. Between Steam, Windows 10, and Xbox consoles, Sea of Thieves now has 11 million people playing across the globe. RARE didn't give exact figures on how many of these are Game Pass players, but the devs did outline what's next for the game.

"2020 has had more players so far than 2019, and 2019 had more players than 2018. It's been great to see this continued grow of the game as more people come in from all over the world," said executive producer Joe Neate.

Magic Leap's new CEO, Peggy Johnson, spoke to CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on December 3 and laid out her vision for turning the struggling company around and it doesn't involve the consumer market for at least three to four years.

Peggy Johnson left her leadership role at Microsoft over the summer, where she was the head of the company's business development efforts, to take the helm at Magic Leap. She joined the company at a rough time in its history, but she believes she can turn the ship around.

Over the last year, Magic Leap has taken a big tumble. Investors lost faith in the company, which forced it to lay off half of its staff, and spur Rony Abovitz, the company's founder, to step down as CEO. Johnson said she saw the potential in the company and stepped up to the plate. She told CNBC that she "intentionally raised [her] hand" for the job.

The latest Steam Hardware survey from Valve shows that Oculus has a massive foothold on the VR consumer market, with more people using Oculus headsets to play SteamVR content than every other brand combined.

The Oculus Quest is really changing the game in the consumer VR space. For over five years, VR adoption has been steady but very slow. Although with the launch of the Quest 2 in September, consumers seem to have warmed up to VR. According to the November Steam Hardware Survey results, the number of Quest users increased by 5.53%. There are now more Quest owners on Steam than there are Valve Index owners on Steam.

Valve doesn't distinguish between the Quest and Quest 2. It lumps all the Quest owners into one group for the report. The survey does distinguish between Rift and Rift S owners, though, and Rift S is the reigning champion of headsets right now. Rift S alone holds a sliver more than 25% of the market. Pretty impressive for a device that will be discontinued in a few months.

NZXT has issued a warning to owners of its H1 mini-tower case that they should stop using their computers and contact support. There's a flaw in the case that could cause a fire.

NZXT's H1 case got great reviews when it launched earlier this year. We gave the chassis a 96% overall rating when we looked at it in February. However, there seems to be a fatal flaw in the GPU riser card system design that could cause a severe hazard.

NZXT has identified that the screws that hold the riser PCB to the case can, in some cases, cause a short, which could cause sparks and potentially a fire. The company is taking the situation quite seriously and has paused all sales of H1 cases, including its own pre-built systems. NZXT has also communicated with its reseller network that sales of the case should be put on hold until the problem is rectified.

Google quietly announced that it would be shutting down its low-polygon 3D asset distribution platform, Poly, next June. The platform has been around for three years.

It's tough to rely on Google products these days. It seems like every other month that the company announces that it will kill off yet another product or service. There's even a website that tracks these things.The most recent Google service to hit the chopping block is Google Poly, a 3D asset repository for low poly-count models for mobile projects.

Google Poly first launched while Google's Daydream VR platform was still a thing that existed. Google killed off Daydream recently, and without its mobile VR platform to drive the need for Poly, the company is no longer keeping the service around.

Vodafone announced that it would distribute the Nreal Light mixed reality smartglasses in its European markets next year. The company will first focus on Germany and Spain, followed by other European Vodafone markets later in the year.

The Nreal Light is a lightweight, compact smartglasses device, which resembles a pair of sunglasses. Nreal kept the device compact by forgoing include computational hardware. The headset consists of cameras and sensors for tracking. It also features a pair of waveguide displays along with speakers and a microphone. But the headset relies on a tethered Android smartphone for its processing power.

"Nreal Light is a breakthrough product and we are excited to announce that Vodafone is bringing Nreal's cutting-edge glasses to Europe," said Phil Patel, Vodafone Group Director Products & Services. Nreal Light combined with Vodafone's high speed, ultra-low latency Gigabit 5G network will give consumers and businesses an affordable, accessible way of experiencing the latest augmented and mixed reality experiences and brings the future a little closer for everyone."

Global entry! We have teamed up with Sabrent to give away two of its awesome new Rocket 4 Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs to two lucky winners.

One winner will take home a Rocket 4 Plus 2TB and the other winner a Rocket 4 Plus 1TB. If you are looking for an epic speed upgrade for your PC, this is one prize you want.

Next Level SSD

Cyberpunk 2077 is right around the corner, with CD PROJEKT RED detailing the pre-load times for gamers across the world.

If you are playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the PC then you will be able to pre-load the game earlier if you ordered the game from GOG -- on December 7 at 3AM PST (6AM EST, 11AM GMT). Steam players will have their pre-loads begin on the same day, but later at 9AM PST, 11AM EST, 4PM GMT.

Xbox gamers can pre-load now, while PlayStation pre-loads start "two days prior to the release date".

Ever wonder why Cyberpunk 2077's main advertisements, game cover art, and assets are yellow? CD Projekt RED's senior designer answers.

CDPR senior graphic designer Irina Moraru recently designed two snazzy Cyberpunk 2077 skins for Alienware's m15 and m17 gaming laptops. We got ahold of a Q&A session with Moraru that revealed some interesting details around Cyberpunk 2077's main design process, especially when it comes to the hero art (main cover art used in promos, videos, and games). Moraru says yellow is the developer's "most important element" that catches your eye right away.

"Besides the logo, yellow is our most important brand element. It grabs people's attention and creates an immediate association with Cyberpunk 2077," Moraru said in the Q&A.

After 23 years with BioWare, Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah is leaving the studio alongside general manager Casey Hudson.

Casey Hudson and Mark Darrah are leaving BioWare. Both say new projects like Dragon Age 4 and the next Mass Effect are "in good hands".

Darrah, who had been with BioWare for 23 years, served on executive producer on the Dragon Age series and helped course-correct troubled games like Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Darrah's departure is an end of an era for BioWare, and his departure punctuates others like James Ohlen, who left BioWare in 2018 after 22 years with the studio, and creative director Mike Laidlaw, who left in 2017 after 17 years of Dragon Age games.