Latest News - Page 1516

NVIDIA has just released its new GeForce Game Ready 457.09 WHQL drivers, which support the new GeForce RTX 3070 (our review on that here) and Ubisoft's just-released Watch Dogs: Legion.

The new GeForce Game Ready 457.09 WHQL drivers have Game Ready support for Watch Dogs: Legion, but also have optimal day one support for DiRT 5, Ghostrunner, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered, and Xuan-Yuan Sword VII.

NVIDIA also add in support for 4 new G-SYNC compatible monitors, with the Acer XB323U GX, ASUS VG279QL1A, Dell AW2521HFLA, and GIGABYTE AORUS FI25F monitors.

Microsoft announced that it would transition its Windows Mixed Reality platform exclusively to OpenXR in future game engine releases.

This year, Khronos Group released the OpenXR 1.0 specification, which saw immediate support from the biggest names in the XR space. Oculus and Microsoft quickly released OpenXR compatible runtimes, followed by SteamVR and HTC shortly after that. Now that Unity and Epic Games are on board, Microsoft is preparing to move away from its WinRT API and shift exclusively to OpenXR.

The idea behind Khronos Group's OpenXR specification is that developers can write code once, which would be compatible with all OpenXR devices. That means developers could build one application that would run on OpenXR-compatible VR or AR hardware.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is right around the corner, but you'll need to prepare your storage for a huge 250GB installation if you want the entire experience with 4K ray traced graphics.

At a minimum you're going to need an Intel Core i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300 processor, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon 7950 graphics card. You'll need 50GB of storage minimum for the multiplayer, and 175GB for all game modes in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

The recommended specs see you needing a higher-end Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X processor, 12GB of RAM, and then an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 / GTX 1660 SUPER or an AMD Radeon R9 390 / RX 580 graphics card.

Immersed pushed a new update for its virtual workspace application, making it far easier to type in VR. With the Virtual Keyboard Overlay, putting a headset on no longer hides your keyboard.

Immersed is a VR application that integrates wirelessly with your PC to give you an expansive, private workspace wherever you are. Immersed offers multi-screen computing, multi-user shared environments with shared displays or whiteboards, and a virtual webcam so you can join zoom meetings as a virtual avatar.

Today, Immersed solved one of the most significant limitations of its system. Now you can see your keyboard while you have your headset on. Previously, you had to use your motion controllers to type or fumble to find your keyboard blindly. Now with Virtual Keyboard Overlay, you'll be able to see it on screen.

NBA 2K21 is shaping up really, really well on next-gen consoles with 2K Games unleashing a new trailer showing gameplay footage from the game on one of the next-gen consoles. Check it out:

You can see that there's tons of graphical improvements, but those instant load times are out of this world good. 2K Games says that it has next-gen lighting, textures, physics, animations and more than push the "visual presentation to the bleeding edge" in NBA 2K21.

NBA 2K21 drops on Xbox Series X and S on November 10, and on the PlayStation 5 on November 12 in the US and November 19 in Europe.

Sony has significantly boosted its FY2020 gaming sales revenue projections by nearly $1 billion as software sales continue to spike.

In its latest Q2'20 earnings report, games titan Sony has raised its total fiscal year Games and Network Services sales earnings targets by 100 billion yen ($945 million as per Q2 exchange rates). Sony now expects gaming to earn 2.6 trillion yen ($24.57 billion) in FY2020, a rather sizable 35% increase over FY2019's performance.

This substantial increase will be driven by strong software sales, Sony predicts, as well as in-game purchases in titles like Genshin Impact, the latest free-to-play Chinese sensation that's now generated nearly $250 million in its first month.

As more gamers eye the next-gen PS5, Sony's PS4 shipments are starting to dwindle.

Sony's PlayStation 4 console has now shipped 113.8 million units worldwide since its launch in November 2013, the company reports in its latest earnings filings. Overall, console shipments are dropping considerably in the PS4's seventh year. The PS4 sold-in 1.5 million units in Q2'20, Sony reports, a 46% year-over-year reduction. This is the lowest Q2 for PS4 shipments since the system launched all those years ago.

Sony has currently shipped 3.4 million PS4s throughout FY2020, which is likewise the lowest performance in combined Q1 and Q2 sales since the console's initial 2013 release. PlayStation 4 console hardware sales made up 20% of the gaming segment's Q2 revenues, or $960 million (101.586 billion yen), a revenue decrease of roughly 20% year-over-year. This makes sense given the lower hardware shipment drop.

Rapper Travis Scott, Sony's new creative partner, introduces a dramatic new advertisement for next-gen PlayStation 5 gaming.

Sony rolled out its new PlayStation 5 launch ad that makes some pretty big claims. There's talk about pushing boundaries past current-gen gaming as part of the new Play Has No Limits tagline. Admittedly the footage feels more like a motivational video on YouTube than an ad for a new console.

The biggest takeaway from the trailer is how Sony is pushing a new era of gaming with hardware and peripheral innovations. The PS5's DualSense controller opens new doorways to sensory interaction and play, giving games more immersive feedback in all types of games from shooters to racing games. The PS5's ultra-fast SSD ensures instant loading, and its higher-end Navi RDNA 2.0 GPU enables 4K 60FPS gaming. In short, console gaming will now look, play, and feel better than ever--something that's really dramatized in the latest ad.

Tilt Five, the AR tabletop gaming platform led by former Valve engineer Jeri Ellsworth, just secured millions of dollars to bring its product to the market.

Tilt Five launched a Kickstarter campaign last year to help bring its augmented reality tabletop gaming platform to life. The company secured $1.7 million, which gave it an excellent runway to develop its AR gaming system, but it will need a bigger team as it prepares to launch its product.

In a new Series A funding round, Tilt Five secured an additional $7.5 million, which will help the company prepare for its product launch in the coming months. SIP Global Partners led the investment round, for which Jeffrey Smith, a General Partner at the firm, will assume a position on Tilt Five's Board of Directors. BITKRAFT Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Logitech, and Ken Birdwell also pitched in.

Joanna Popper, HP's Global Head of Virtual Reality for Location Based Entertainment, revealed on Reddit that the Reverb G2 VR headset is now in full production. The company recently signed off on the final production design and the first units are already out the door to partner warehouses.

The HP Reverb G2 is HP's latest entry in the consumer VR space. The headset features 2160x2160 per-eye resolution, inside out tracking provided by Microsoft's Windows Mixed Reality platform, and creature comforts pulled from Valve's Index headset, such as the lenses and the over-the-ear headphones.

HP previously announced that the Reverb G2 would begin shipping in November. Popper's announcement confirms that plan is in full motion, and it may even speed things up a little bit. Popper said that the first customers could expect to see their headsets in early to mid-November.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer wants to embrace any and all successful gaming business models and help push new innovations in the industry space.

Xbox has transformed dramatically into a multi-platform ecosystem of hardware, games, and online services. The kind of forward-thinking that led to Game Pass, console-PC unification, and interwoven services isn't going to stop. According to Phil Spencer monetization, xCloud, free-to-play, premium games, Game Pass...all of these things will still converge to innovate and push the Xbox brand.

In a recent interview with Game Reactor, Spencer outlines where Xbox is and where it's going vis-a-vis business models. Spencer also says Microsoft doesn't mandate monetization in first-party games, which is interesting considering mTX is a big part of the live service/Game Pass symbiosis.

Sabrent is throwing a huge sale today on Amazon -- where you can get yourself a super-fast new NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD with some serious discount.

Sabrent's kick ass 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 SSD is just $199, down from $319 -- a large 38% discount. You can read Jon's review on the Sabrent's Rocket NVMe 4.0 PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 SSD. In the review, Jon gushed on Sabrent's delicious Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 x4 M.2 SSD where he said: "Looking back at our benchmark results leads us to conclude that Sabrent is serving up Gen4 SSD goodness at the same level as the competition, but at a better price than we've seen so far".

He added: "The drive is a quality piece that looks as good as it performs. Even the packaging is of high quality. When you factor in the included copy of Acronis True Image, and five-year factory warranty, you have one of the best values in solid state storage".

Intel teased its next-gen Rocket Lake-S family of processors were coming in Q1 2021, but the company has taken the time in the 24 hours after AMD's new Zen 3 processors were unveiled, to detail their new 11th Gen Core CPU architecture.

Intel details its new 11th Gen Intel Core S-series desktop processors as bringing a new desktop architecture known as Cypress Cove to the table. The company says that Cypress Cove was "designed to transform hardware and software efficiency and increase performance".

The company is promising the new Rocket Lake-S family of CPUs will profit double-digit IPC improvements over the previous generation, as well as beefier integrated graphics with Intel UHD graphics featuring the new Intel Xe Graphics architecture.

AMD's big exciting reveal of their next-gen RDNA 2 graphics architecture is here, with one of the shining stars of the reveal being the new Infinity Cache. But what is it?

The new revolutionary Infinity Cache technology allows AMD to use a smaller 256-bit memory bus and slower GDDR6 memory on its Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards, but it will offer some tremendous memory bandwidth with even more impressive power savings with Infinity Cache.

There's not much known about it so far -- but we know that ALL of the Radeon RX 6000 series cards -- Radeon RX 6800, Radeon RX 6800 XT and the flagship beast Radeon RX 6900 XT all have 128MB of Infinity Cache, 16GB of GDDR6, and a 256-bit memory bus.

If you are about to build a new gaming PC then you would be crazy to not be buying a new Zen 3-powered AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPU.

AMD's Smart Memory Access gives the new Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series processors get full access to GPU memory if you have the Zen 3 chip on an X570 chipset with the new RNDA 2-powered Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card.

Before that, there's "RAGE" mode -- a throwback to the old ATi days for the old school gamers in our audience. RAGE mode is AMD's new one-click overclocking for the Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards -- something I will be experimenting heavily with when my samples arrive.

The wait for RDNA 2 is nearly over, with AMD detailing its new Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards and a couple of teases of what is growling underneath the hood of Big Navi.

RDNA 2 has an incredible performance uplift that is 2x over the previous RDNA-based flagship Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card. Not only that, but we have 50% generational performance-per-watt improvement goals being hit by AMD, too.

AMD explains that during the development of RDNA 2 it wanted to build a high-performance architecture that could scale into many products. Not just the flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT, but up and down the stack with high performance.

AMD officially unveiled their new RDNA 2 architecture with the new Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards in the last 24 hours, and now Microsoft is coming out big noting its next-gen Xbox Series X and S consoles.

Microsoft posted a blog on its Xbox Wire website, written by Technical Fellow Andrew Goossen and Director of Program Management Jason Ronald that congratulate AMD on the RDNA 2 unveiling and dive a little into how it powers the next-gen Xbox consoles.

In the post, Microsoft explains that the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles "are the only next-generation consoles with full hardware support for all the RDNA 2 capabilities AMD showcased today".

AMD has just unveiled its new Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards based on the new RDNA 2 architecture, but more excitedly -- AMD is projecting forward with the new RDNA 3 architecture.

RDNA 2 is not even here yet, but AMD has said that they have RDNA 3 teams in execution and that the next-next-gen GPU architecture is doing "very well". AMD adds that it is "really excited" on the trajectory of the new RDNA 3 architecture.

We should begin to hear more from AMD on the RDNA 3 architecture sometime in 2021, after it begins to knock things around considerably with the release of the RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards.

NVIDIA has reigned supreme so far without any competition from Team Red, but AMD has come out swinging with the new RDNA 2 architecture and the mainstream 4K gaming card with the Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card.

AMD is cramming 72 compute units into the Radeon RX 6800 XT, a drop down from the 80 compute units on the flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT. The GPU will reach up to 2015MHz game clock, while GPU boost clocks will see the RX 6800 XT (at least in reference form) reaching 2250MHz for $649 -- $50 cheaper than the $699 for the GeForce RTX 3080.

It retains its large 16GB of GDDR6 with the same 128MB of Infinity Cache that delivers some far-above-its-class memory bandwidth on its 256-bit memory bus.

AMD has a serious ace up its sleeve with the Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card, which is the very best SKU of the entire Big Navi family of RDNA 2-powered graphics cards and it'll cost $999.

We have 80 compute units, a GPU game clock of 2015MHz while the GPU will boost up to around 2250MHz. AMD uses 16GB of GDDR6 on the Radeon RX 6900 XT, which falls in between the GeForce RTX 3080 (10GB) and GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB).

AMD is really going for the throat with the Radeon RX 6900 XT, with it competing and even beating NVIDIA's very best -- and $1499 in price -- GeForce RTX 3090. We have better performance at 4K with games like Battlefield V, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Gears of War 5, and more. I want to do my own testing, but these results from AMD are beyond promising.