Latest News - Page 1561

Verizon has teamed up with Marvel and Square Enix to give out thousands of free Avengers game copies to Verizon subscribers.

Marvel isn't playing favorites with just PlayStation. The new Avengers game's marketing plan goes beyond the Spider-Man exclusivity on PlayStation consoles. Today Verizon announced that it will give away 5,000 copies of Crystal Dynamics' new Avengers live game to wireless and Fios customers.

The freebie goes live on August 10 on the Verizon Up rewards platform. Each ticket includes a special key that must be entered on the PlayAvengers.com/Verizon webpage.

Spider-Man is just the beginning. Marvel's new Avengers game has a galaxy of platform-exclusive content and incentives.

Marvel, Sony, and Crystal Dynamics just caught a lot of flak for making Spider-Man exclusive to the new Avengers game on PS4 and PS5. The decision makes a lot of sense, though; Sony has the movie rights to Spider-Man, and Marvel (aka Disney) cares most about sales and digital revenues, so they're attached to the biggest brand in gaming. Marvel doesn't make its own games, and instead licenses them out, so live games represent the ripest earnings fruit.

Turns out this deal goes a lot farther than Spider-Man. Marvel has signed an exclusivity deal with Sony that includes lots of other PlayStation-first content in the new Avengers live game. Spider-man is a permanent platform-exclusive, but other things like cosmetic skins will be 30-days exclusive on the PlayStation ecosystem.

Final Fantasy 14's new ambitious Patch 5.3 update goes live tomorrow, bringing tons of new content to both free and paid subscribers.

Final Fantasy 14's new Patch 5.3 Reflections in Crystal update is the perfect opportunity to try out the game. Free players can now reach level 60 have access to the Heavensward expansion, including new story missions and the Dark Knight, Machinist, and Astrologian classes. The free trial also includes all content leading up to Patch 3.56, and the Au Ra race.

Paid subscribers will get the best benefit. Heavensward is also free for anyone with an active subscription, and Square Enix is boosting storyline progression to ensure speedy content unlocks. Patch 5.3 wraps up the Shadowbringers expansion and sets the stage for the next major installment.

It turns out Cyberpunk 2077's Nomads aren't desert savages, but country folk with strong communities and values.

In a recent Night City Wire lifestream, CDPR reveals new info about the three lifepath origin stories you can pick for V.: Street Kid, Nomad, and Corpo. The most surprising one was Nomad, which we haven't heard much about. The Nomads live in South California on the outskirts of Night City in tight-knit groups. They're desert-people that live in ramshackle RVs that strongly contrast the hyper-tech world of Night City; in a very real sense, the Nomads are stuck in a different time period.

It's a whole other world in the arid badlands. Makeshift muscle cars roar the roadways, held together with mis-matched parts. There's a genuine Mad Max vibe, but it's offset by strong Southern values and principles. The Nomads have a strong undercurrent of conservatism melded with survival, which connects them into strong-bonded families and groups. But there's also the self-described hunger for freedom, the desire to roam the desert and resist the Corpos that present law and order.

The last few months have been some of the most insane months of the GPU industry, between NVIDIA's upcoming Ampere launch and AMD's next stomp with RDNA 2 and Big Navi -- there's no time for a break.

But then a source reached out to me a few days ago and told me something very interesting, something that I think could be a real game changer for NVIDIA's big launch of Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards: custom models will be launching alongside the Founders Edition models... or at the very least, very shortly after the FE cards ship.

I had a source tell me that custom AIB models will be on offer starting in September, so with current rumors of an Ampere GeForce RTX 30 series announcement on September 9 and then a purported launch on September 17 -- custom cards being made available "in September" would be huge.

As we've reported since 2018, Microsoft will release two next-gen consoles this holiday: The Xbox Series X, and the cheaper, digital-only Xbox Series S. Now the Series S has been accidentally leaked.

Microsoft's cheaper next-gen Xbox Series S just got confirmed as real from new leaked controller packaging. More leaks are starting to pop up, including physical video of the controller and box that mentions the Series S.

While there's been no official announcement, the budget-friendly Series S (codenamed Lockhart) will reportedly feature a weaker 4TFLOP GPU that targets 1440p 60FPS, instead of the Xbox Series X's 12.15 TFLOP GPU, which is capable of hitting 4K 60FPS. The Series S will apparently feature the same 7nm 8-core, 16-thread Zen 2 CPU clocked at 3.8GHz, though.

I'm currently on-board the Ampere Hype Train right now, with NVIDIA officially kicking off the marketing campaign for its next-gen GeForce graphics cards.

As a long time GeForce fan (my online handle has been 'anthony256' right after I got my hands-on the GeForce 256 back in 1999) it makes the hairs on my arms stand up to even write about this. NVIDIA followed up its #UltimateCountdown tease with "21 Days. 21 Years".

Now, 21 days from now is August 31, 2020 -- why is that important?

NVIDIA has officially kicked off the marketing hype train for its next-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards with a simple teaser on Twitter.

All the tweet says is #UltimateCountdown which has got me personally thinking that NVIDIA could change the nomenclature like I've wanted for the new GeForce RTX graphics cards -- I wanted the GeForce RTX 3090 ULTRA, for the return of ULTRA -- but maybe we're looking at the GeForce RTX 3090 ULTIMATE?

ULTIMATE is an important branding for NVIDIA right now, and I'm sure even more so going forward -- they have their G-SYNC ULTIMATE monitors and TVs, so it makes sense to have the "Ultimate Countdown" being a countdown to something Ultimate-related, right?

Well, it seems Microsoft is going to be forced to confirm and announce its cheaper Xbox Series S console now that a new leak was shown on Twitter.

Twitter user 'Zak S' shows off a new Xbox controller that on the side says it is for the Xbox Series X/S consoles, seemingly confirming Microsoft's cheaper "codename Anaconda" console. Xbox Series S is meant to have 7.5GB of GDDR6 versus the beefier 13.5GB GDDR6 inside of the Xbox Series X.

Microsoft is expected to have performance on the cheaper Xbox Series S much lower than the Xbox Series X, and even under the Xbox One X. We're looking at around 4 TFLOPs for the Xbox Series X, while the flagship Xbox Series X will be pumping away at 12 TFLOPs.

NASA has used the famous Hubble Space Telescope to do science that will one day be used as a means of detecting alien life on other planets.

According to a recent blog post from NASA, and the above video, NASA took advantage of the lunar eclipse by using Hubble and the Moon to observe the light reflecting through Earth's atmosphere. As the video explains, NASA used Hubble to observe the light reflecting off the surface of the Moon and beamed back into Earth's atmosphere, and by observing the wavelengths of light, NASA was able to detect Earth's ozone.

So, why is this important? By NASA successfully doing this experiment with Earth, they have proven they could use the same technique with other high-power telescopes that are tasked with finding and examining exoplanets. Here's what NASA said, "Hubble did not look at Earth directly. Instead, the astronomers used the Moon as a mirror to reflect sunlight, which had passed through Earth's atmosphere, and then reflected back towards Hubble."

Viotek has just unveiled its new SUW49DA monitor, a gigantic new 49-inch Super UltraWide with a native resolution of 5120 x 1440 and refresh rate of 120Hz.

The new 49-inch monitor has an 1800R curve which will provide you with a more immersive experience, whether it be gaming or workstation use. The native 5120 x 1440 resolution will be a gigantic win for workstation users, while gamers will get an unbelievable experience -- made better by the super-smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

Viotek is using a VA panel inside of the SUW49DA monitor, with 2 x DisplayPort 1.4 and 2 x HDMI 2.0 ports. We have HDR400 support, HDR support, 121% of the sRGB coverage, 86% of NTSC, 92% Adobe RGB, and 90% of the DCI-P3.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone recently had their Season 5 update, which was a huge installation on the PC as it was -- weighing in at a huge 54.2GB download.

But developer Infinity Ward did say that there would be a "decrease on overall footprint" of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. So it wouldn't turn out to be the already 200GB+ that the game was on the PC, plus the 54.2GB update for Season 5 that would push it over 250GB.

The overall size of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the PC is between 200-212GB, my personal installation size on my PC is 198GB while I've seen 212GB on other systems and everything in between.

As we get closer and closer to November, we'll hear more and more about Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X console, where we'll soon hear more details on the system architecture on August 17.

The news is coming from Lords of Gaming which spotted a presentation by Microsoft that will take place during the Hot Chips convention that takes place between August 16-18. The presentation is being delivered by Jeff Andrews and Mark Grossman, and will kick off on August 17 at 5:30 PT.

That day is going to be very exciting, where between 5:00-6:30PM we'll be getting nerded out details on NVIDIA's new A100 GPU architecture, Intel's new Xe GPU architecture, and then the big Xbox Series X system architecture presentation.

The last we heard on the launch of NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 3000 series was that they were launching on September 17, but now an announcement date is floating around: September 9.

According to GamersNexus, NVIDIA will be revealing its next-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000 series cards on September 9. If this is the case, I'd expect tech media -- including myself, to start hearing official news from NVIDIA, NDAs will be signed, and samples will begin to arrive in the next couple of weeks.

If NVIDIA did announce the new GeForce RTX 3000 series cards on September 9, and then launched on September 17 -- that makes sense. It also means NVIDIA will begin the hype train for its new cards very, very soon.

New reports from Dusk Golem says the Resident Evil VIIIage gameplay demo Capcom showed at Sony's PS5 event barely hit 1080p 60FPS on the next-gen PlayStation.

AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem is back with more reports from Capcom. Golem, who typically has inside knowledge with Capcom's in-development plans, says the choppy RE: VIIIage footage during Sony's PS5 event was caused by temporary issues with game optimization on the PlayStation 5.

Sources tell Dusk Golem that REVIII was having trouble hitting 1080p 60FPS on the PlayStation 5, which led to noticable frame issues during the reveal. The Xbox Series X version, however, runs perfectly, no-doubt facilitated by Microsoft's flexible Xbox SDK that lets all PC versions run like-for-like on Xbox consoles. These issues will be smoothed out before launch, though, especially if Capcom is to meet its lofty 28 million game sales target for FY2020.

Fighting legend Yoshinori Ono has left Capcom after 22 years of Street Fighter.

Today marks an end of an era at Capcom. Yoshinori Ono is leaving the company after almost 30 years spent making games. Today Ono announced the news that 2020 will be his last year and thanked fans for their appreciation for the Street Fighter brand--a franchise he's been involved with for over two decades.

"I've been with the Street Fighter brand for a long time, experiencing good times, bad times, and even non-existent times. My heart is filled with appreciation to those players who've been giving warm and king support on the brand especially little over the past decade or so as tall the activities on the Street Fighter brand regained sunshine and grew its liveliness," Ono said.

Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 is expected to help boost total FY2020 yearly earnings to $23 billion.

The PlayStation 5 is forecast to strongly boost Sony's yearly games earnings to $23.23 billion, up 26.4% from the $18.19 billion earned in FY19. Based on the numbers, Sony doesn't see any problem selling all of the PS5 consoles it makes available for the holiday period.

"Sales are expected to increase significantly year-on-year mainly due to an expected significant increase in sales of game software and hardware as a result of the launch of PS5," Sony said in its recent Q1'20 earnings report.

Sony Santa Monica is currently dissecting the PlayStation 5's hardware and architecture for its new games, and teases big advancements from the next-gen system

Like all first-party Sony developers, God of War dev Sony Santa Monica is currently experimenting with the PS5's hardware and software environments. The goal is to learn new tricks while trying to transition old PS4-era iteration, tools, engines, and know-how over to the new generation. According to creative director Cory Barlog, the cross-gen transition between PS4 to PS5 will be a lot smoother, and the high-end 5.5GB/sec PCIe 4.0 SSD will supercharge everything for developers.

"We're inside the guts of the PS5 like a surgeon. It's pretty exciting actually. There's a lot of stuff we've been messing around with, and seeing," God of War creative director Cory Barlog said in a recent interview on the Animal Talking podcast.

Ubisoft has confirmed that high-level exec Tommy Francois has left the studio for good following sexual abuse allegations.

Ubisoft is slowly recovering from sex abuse scandals that've rocked the highest level of the company. Sources say Ubisoft's top brass culture is rife with misconduct, alleging creative forces behind hit franchises like Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, and Rainbow Six took part in sexual harassment and abuse.

Ubisoft has cleaned house since the news broke out, and now confirms that another accused exec has left. This time it's Tommy Francois, who previously helped lead Ubisoft's editorial team, a group that controlled and gate-kept big IPs. This team held all the power over creative decisions.

Halo: Infinite gets demade with old-school Nintendo 64 graphics, and looks absolutely awesome.

What if Halo: Infinite was released in 1996 on the N64? YouTube Hopolee answers the question with a glorious new gameplay demo that channels the early age of 3D polygons. The Halo: Infinite demake recreates the initial Halo: Infinite trailer, complete with a Star Fox dropship and ties to Mario 64.

The gameplay is surprisingly well-made. Chief shoots some grunts with an old-school AR, and the warthog is totally drivable. Turns out Master Chief is playing the Craig's Crash Site map--a nod to the infamous Craig brute meme--and flies out of a painting of the glorious brute, Mario 64 style.