Latest News - Page 1536

I'm sure you have either experienced it yourself, or someone you know has -- tried to buy NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition anywhere in the world, and couldn't get your hands-on one.

If you were trying to buy an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 online at launch, retailers websites worldwide were crashing from the massive load of traffic of hungry gamers. I personally had multiple messages from friends here in Australia linking me to local retailers' websites that were dead.

VideoCardz reported the news, also noting that two weeks ago TweakTown had a story -- wait, that's me -- yeah, I said two weeks ago now that there would be low stock of GeForce RTX 30 series cards for the rest of the year. You can read more about that here.

Facebook's Project ARIA is a research device that will set the stage for the future of everyday computing. The data that Facebook collects from this project will give them insights into building the infrastructure necessary to build contextualized, persistent, multi-user augmented experiences.

Facebook Reality Labs has big plans for augmented reality. The company envisions a future where always-on AR glasses could be an integral part of our every day lives. But before we got to that point, there's much research to be done and Facebook's XR research department, FRL Research, is about to take a significant step towards laying the necessary foundations for that future.

During Facebook Connect, Facebook Reality Labs revealed Project ARIA. This research device will enable Facebook to gather much needed egocentric (i.e., first-person) data to help lay the foundational pieces for a world-scale spatial map.

A couple of weeks ago, Qualcomm and Ultraleap announced a multi-year deal that would see Ultraleap's hand-tracking technology integrated into Qualcomm's XR2 extended reality platform. We guessed that the upcoming Quest 2 would take advantage of this technology, but it turns out we were wrong.

Qualcomm's XR2 platform powers oculus Quest 2, but Facebook does not use Ultraleap's technology. Facebook Reality Labs put a lot of time and effort into developing its hand-tracking solution for the Quest headset, and it isn't about to throw that investment out the window.

Quest 2 utilizes the same tracking technology-albeit improved--as the first Quest headset. The new headset has different cameras, and obviously more power to process the hand-tracking data to provide a better tracking experience. Facebook Reality Labs developers and researchers also had more than a year to fine-tune the tracking software.

Sony is making huge progress with PS5's backwards compatibility, and now confirms that 99% of PS4 games are playable.

Back in March, Sony claimed the PS5 would play thousands of PS4 games by launch. Now it's official. Sony confirms the next-gen PS5 will natively support 99% of the PS4's games library. How many games is that? According to Wikipedia, there's about 2,870 PS4 games on the market. 99% of that value is 2,841, which means roughly 29 games won't be playable.

The news was confirmed in a recent Washington Post interview with Sony's Jim Ryan. In another interview with Japanese magazine Famitsu, Ryan confirmed the PS5 won't play legacy PS1, PS2, and PS3 games. The next-gen PlayStation is only backwards compatible with PS4 titles.

Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan re-confirms the PS5 won't support or play PS1, PS2, or PS3 games via backward compatibility.

The PS5's backwards compatibility support only extends to the PS4 era, and the next-gen console won't play legacy PS1, PS2, or PS3 games. Sony's Jim Ryan re-iterated the news in a recent interview with Famitsu:

"We have been building devices with a focus on PS5-specific engineering. Among them, PS4 already has 100 million players, so I thought that I would like to play PS4 titles on PS5 as well, so we introduced PS4 compatibility. While achieving that, we focused on incorporating high-speed SSDs and the new DualSense controller in parallel. So, unfortunately, compatibility with them has not been achieved," Ryan said.

UPDATE:Capcom clarifies the exact performance and resolution modes in Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition on PS5 and Xbox Series X:

Devs are finally talking about the PlayStation 5's ray tracing capabilities in length, and Capcom is putting the console's high-end specs to good use with a new Devil May Cry 5 re-release.

Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition will flex the entirety of PS5's hardware and shows what Capcom's RE Engine is capable of. Capcom confirms the game can hit 120FPS with variable refresh rates over HDMI 2.1 capable displays, and supports ray tracing at 4K 30FPS and 1080p 60FPS.

Sony isn't ready to flip the reset switch on the PlayStation 4's 110 million+ install base, and confirms the console will live alongside the PS5 until at least 2024.

The PS4 is too valuable to retire, and Sony plans to gradually pass the torch over to the successor PS5 in a span of multiple years. Sony's Jim Ryan says the PS4 will remain a big part of the PlayStation business at least until 2024. Previously, Sony said the PS4 would be supported until at least 2022.

"The PS4 community will continue to be incredibly important to us for three or four years. Many will transition to PS5, we hope, if we do our job well. But tens of millions will still be engaged with the PS4," Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan told The Washington Post.

Sony's new PlayStation Plus Collection is a golden ticket for subscription retention, and will anchor a new generation of console owners to the digital service.

The new PlayStation Plus Collection is a goldmine for retention, which is something Sony has struggled with. The PS Plus Collection is a vault of PS4 games included free with all active PS Plus subscriptions that mimics Microsoft's Game Pass. The addition adds tremendous value to the service, but it's exclusive for PS5 owners, and for good reason. PS Plus Collection is specifically designed to do many things at once--but all of them aim at keeping subscriptions active.

The PS Plus Collection only includes 18 PlayStation 4 titles. It's almost like an Xbox Game Pass lite. But unlike Game Pass, which includes a ton of live service-oriented games with microtransactions and monetization, the PS Plus Collection mainly serves up long-winded singleplayer-driven games (only 4 out of the 18 games have microtransactions).

If you happened to miss the news, it was only yesterday I reported about scientists finding traces in a planet's atmosphere that indicates life could be present.

That planet is Venus, and according to a study recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy, scientists researching Venus have found traces of phosphine gas, which is a life signature sign. The researchers believe that phosphine gas is an indicator of life because microbes that live in animals have been found to produce the gas in the intestines. An author of the study said that the researchers couldn't find any other reason than possible life for the detection of phosphine gas.

Now, NASA is considering approving two planetary science missions to uncover the truth of the gas. At the moment, there are four possible missions under review by NASA, and one of those is called DAVINCI+, which would launch a probe into Venus' atmosphere to perform testing. David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist working on the DAVINCI+ proposal, told Reuters on Tuesday, "Davinci is the logical one to choose if you're motivated in part by wanting to follow this up - because the way to follow this up is to actually go there and see what's going on in the atmosphere".

I don't know about you, but the world of storage interests me just as much as GPUs and CPUs -- with Sabrent coming out and slaying everyone every couple of months with a record-breaking drive.

Their recent Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus offers a huge 7000MB/sec (7GB/sec) transfers, which are the fastest you can get from a single drive -- but now GIGABYTE has unveiled its new AORUS Gen4 AIC 2TB and 8TB SSDs.

The new AORUS Gen4 AIC 2TB SSD packs 4 x 500GB pre-installed NVMe M.2 SSDs directly to the AIC (add-in card) that detects as one single 2TB drive. The 8TB model is the same, with 4 x 2TB drives that show up as one beyond-ultra-fast 8GB SSD.

NVIDIA revealed its super-insane 8K gaming graphics card in the GeForce RTX 3090 not too long ago, priced at $1499 -- but man, custom cards are going to be expensive.

Best Buy has listed the ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 ROG STRIX variant for $1799, a $300 premium over the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition. We should expect similar, and maybe a little more (or a little less) performance over the RTX 3090 FE -- so you'd be paying for the style and thermal performance.

I'd also expect this to be wave one pricing, with prices to surely tip over $2000 once the first wave of ASUS RTX 3090 ROG STRIX graphics cards to sell out. $1800 is a big pill to swallow, especially if the performance over the RTX 3080 (which will start at $699) isn't a huge leap.

Watch Dogs Legion is just over a month away from release, with Ubisoft now detailing what you'll need to run the game on your PC. Check out the PC requirements:

You don't need much to get the game running at 1080p on Low or High settings, with an Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400 processor required at a minimum -- alongside 8GB of RAM and 45GB of storage space. Ubisoft recommends an NVIDIA GeForce 960 or AMD Radeon R9 290X at a minimum when it comes to graphics.

The High settings at 1080p doesn't require much more grunt, but the 1440p High settings do jump the CPU up to an Intel Core i7-7700K or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 while system RAM goes up to 16GB and the GPU requirements increase to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER or AMD Radeon RX 5700.

Oculus just announced the Quest 2 standalone VR headset, and alongside the headset reveal, the company also announced that it would sell a collection of accessories for the new device.

Out of the box, the Quest 2 includes a compact fabric head strap, which is sufficient for most people. Facebook also designed a pair of rigid straps that offer a sturdier fitment and better weight balance for those who want something more robust.

The Elite Strap is a basic rigid strap that cups the back of your head for more support. You can also get an Elite Strap with Battery, which includes a battery pack in the rear to double the Quest 2 headset's runtime. The battery pack also acts as a counterweight in case you find the headset front heavy.

Sony isn't ready to leave the PlayStation 4's 100 million-strong playerbase behind, confirms marquee PS5 games are also coming to PS4.

There's lots of life left in the PS4 platform and Sony isn't ready to give it up just yet. Sony's already confirmed the PS4 will live alongside the PS5 until 2022, and new PS4 titles are coming. Now Sony's Jim Ryan confirms a handful of PS5 games are also launching on the PS4 too.

Big games like Spider-Man Miles Morales and Horizon Forbidden West are also releasing on the PlayStation 4. Spider-Man will be available on both PS4 and PS5 on November 12, whereas Horizon Forbidden West is coming out sometime in 2021. Anyone who buys a PS4 version will also get a free upgrade to the PS5 version.

Sony today announced PlayStation 5 pricing and availability, and now they've confirmed pre-order dates.

Sony's next-gen PS5 will be available for pre-order as early as tomorrow, September 17, 2020 across select retailers. SIE exec Jim Ryan confirmed the news on the PlayStation Blog, and also announced a staggered release for the system. North America, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and South Korea will all get one-week early availability to the console:

The new Harry Potter RPG has finally been revealed, and it's a prequel set in the 1800s Wizarding World where you help write the history of the series.

Today WB Games announced Harry Potter: Hogwarts Legacy, a new next-gen game coming to PS5 in 2021. The game is a prequel and doesn't necessarily follow any established story arcs; instead gamers will make their own wizard and write their own story and help fill out the periods before the book series.

The combat is action-based and features spells and combos. You'll be facing off against rival wizards and gigantic bosses like dragons and other fantastic beasts. The game also lets you explore well outside of Hogwarts with open-world style roaming, complete with flying on pegasuses. We're not sure if there's multiplayer but that could be included too.

It's official: The PlayStation 5 will cost $499 for the standard edition, and $399 for the digital edition.

Sony today announced the PlayStation 5's price points, and the digital edition is $100 cheaper:

This is an aggressive price point that pushes the digital edition, and Sony is prepared to weather the production losses by locking gamers to its digital ecosystem. The digital-only system forces gamers to buy titles directly from Sony, which nets a premium for them, especially first-party games that give Sony 100% of all revenues.

Square Enix today announced Final Fantasy XVI with ultra fast-paced action combat that evolved from Final Fantasy XV.

The rumors were right: Final Fantasy XVI features a grand medieval fantasy style and scope (magitek is gone), but the familiar mainstays are there: Summons are now called icons, and the mother crystal oversees all things. The story is mysterious and centers around a blood rivalry against Joshua Shield, who may be the son of a king or a lord, who has the power to summon an icon. These summoners are apparently marked by strange tattoos.

The combat itself is stylish, fast, and resembles Devil May Cry mixed with Final Fantasy XV. It's obviously a pure enhancement of FFXV and likely has strong emphasis on combo attacks.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Masahiro Wakasugi predicts Sony could price the digital-only PlayStation 5 at $399, and the full disc-based system at $449 to counter Microsoft's Xbox pricing.

In a move that would likely conquer the 9th generation, Sony could prepare for a sizable loss on PlayStation 5 console hardware in exchange for more units sold. Bloomberg's own analysts echo the variable pricing scheme that sees the PS5 base model dropping as low as $449 and the digital-only model reduced to $399, the base price of

Sony is expected to sell as many PlayStation 5 units it makes available. That expectation is especially true at this price point. The prediction is centered around Sony once-again besting Microsoft's console prices. This worked out well for the 8th generation, which Sony dominated early on with a $399 PS4 compared to the $499 Xbox One.

Facebook just revealed the Quest 2, which is a major step forward for standalone VR headsets. It's also a far superior PCVR headset than the company's current Rift S product. Rather than compete with itself for market share in two segments, the Oculus brand is stepping away from dedicated PCVR in favor of its hybrid approach.

The shift to standalone shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to the direction of VR advancements, but it still represents a significant change for a company that can trace its roots back to the PC enthusiast community.

So, what does this mean for the Rift S? Well, its days are numbered, to be sure. Oculus plans to phase out the Rift S by the spring of 2021, which would put its lifecycle at right around two years. There's no reason to believe that Facebook will discontinue support for the headset any time soon, though. The Oculus Rift CV1 still works with all Rift content, and the discontinued Oculus Go will remain supported for at least two more years.