Latest News - Page 1565

AMD has just released a new set of graphics cards that have support for Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition, which is about to hit the PC.

Not only that, but the new AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2020 20.8.1 drivers include optimizations for Ubisoft's new battle royale game Hyper Scape, and Grounded -- which is pretty much the worlds of battle royale and the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids blended together -- the game has been popular, racking up 1 million players in 48 hours.

If you're gaming on a Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card, the new AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2020 20.8.1 drivers will provide up to 9% more performance in Grounded on the Epic preset over the previous Radeon drivers.

AMD's upcoming Big Navi has been in the rumor mill the entire year, with whispers that it would use 24GB of HBM2e memory with 2TB/sec of memory bandwidth -- but new reports suggest AMD won't be using HBM2 or HBM2e memory on the Navi 2X cards at all.

It has been rumored that AMD would use HBM2 memory or a 2.5D design on Big Navi, but according to the latest information that is wrong. We should see 16GB of GDDR6 (we heard that in a rumor just two weeks ago) on a whopping 512-bit memory bus, which is double the memory and bandwidth offered on the Radeon RX 5700 XT.

This doesn't mean AMD couldn't use HBM2 memory on another Big Navi GPU, so we could expect a higher-end workstation version with HBM2 memory. The consumer Radeon gaming graphics cards, they will be powered by the mainstream GDDR6 standard.

Samsung will be unveiling its new Galaxy Note 20 family of smartphones, the re-branded Galaxy Z Fold 2 foldable smartphone, and the Galaxy Watch 3 at its Unpacked 2020 event on August 5.

Ahead of that though, it seems Best Buy has received their shipments of Samsung's unannounced Galaxy Watch 3 wearable. Android Authority received some photos from one of their tipsters, with some retail package photos of the Galaxy Watch 3 on the sales floors of a Best Buy.

Android Authority reports that the tipster "did try to buy one" but "Best Buy staff refused and moved the locked rack off the sales floor".

SpaceX has said that its satellite internet service Starlink, has received "extraordinary demand" throughout the United States, so much so that it has forced them to have further talks with the FCC to increase the authorized user terminals from 1 million to 5 million.

The US space agency was forced to file a request with the Federal Communications Commission on Friday, where the Elon Musk founded SpaceX asked the FXX to increase the number of authorized user terminals from 1 million, to 5 million.

This is how large the "extraordinary demand" for Starlink has been.

Rumor has it Square Enix will make the new mainline Final Fantasy game timed exclusive to the PlayStation 5. This makes sense on a business level, but it doesn't mean it'll actually happen.

Square Enix might be making Final Fantasy XVI, but Yoshi-P isn't directing it. Tesuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase are leading development of the Final Fantasy 7 Remastered series. Luminous Productions, the team that made Final Fantasy XV, is working on Project Athia for PS5. Another one of Square Enix's division may be working on the next mainline Final Fantasy game.

Now recent rumors say FFXVI will be timed-exclusive on the PS5. This makes a lot of sense for Square Enix and could end up being true, but there's also reasons why the publisher may opt out of exclusivity. The PS4's install base just crested 112.3 million shipments worldwide, and Sony just reported the best-ever Q1 performance in video games history. Square Enix absolutely wants to attach its games to the PlayStation brand (as does any other third-party publisher).

Sony just made gaming history with the best Q1 performance ever in the entire video games industry, driven primarily by software. PS4 hardware sales were down in Q1, but total PS4 shipments have now crested 112 million.

Nearly seven years into its life cycle, the PlayStation 4 console is starting to incrementally slow down. The PS4 shipped 1.9 million units in Q1'20 (-40% YoY), Sony today announced, bringing total cumulative worldwide shipments to 112.3 million.

System sales materially contributed to Sony's gargantuan Q1 earnings by generating roughly $517,000 in revenues, but comprised less than 10% of total quarterly gaming earnings. The bulk of quarterly earnings was from software, which was up an astronomical 82% to over $3 billion.

We heard rumbles of Sony reportedly gearing up to finally unveil the pricing and unload pre-orders of its next-gen PlayStation 5 console on August 6, but now it appears Bloomberg is giving it some weight.

A new report from Takashi Mochizuki at Bloomberg teases something quite big, with an "official at the PlayStation unit" of Sony "who asked not to be identified because the plan is not yet public" told him that Sony's next announcement for the PlayStation 5 is "tentatively scheduled for this month".

He added: "I think the core of Sony PlayStation early-adopters will snap up the first several million units quickly. With backward compatibility, their existing game library will work with the new console, so the new machine would be usable right away".

If you happened to miss what could be considered the biggest news for human space travel in a while, here's a quick update:

SpaceX successfully completed its round mission of taking NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station. This mission was historic, as the last time an American crewed space capsule launched and splashed down off the US coast was in 1975 from the Apollo-Soyuz joint U.S.-Soviet Union space mission. Overall, things went quite smoothly, but there were a few hiccups in retrieving both astronauts.

Those hiccups weren't technical, but more so, social, as what seems to be a dozen or so boaters came to check out the landing site for Crew Dragon. While everyone can probably understand a certain level of curiosity is justified, but to approach the craft itself is something else entirely. Things that arrive from space aren't automatically safe because they are back on Earth, and an example of that is the Crew Dragon capsule as the recovery team detected nitrous tetroxide, which is used as a propellant for the Dragon's maneuvering rockets and is also toxic when inhaled.

What gamer doesn't love a good sale? In my long years of gaming, I haven't come across a gamer that doesn't love to see prices slashed for popular games.

This time around, Humble has decided to slash the prices on a large range of Ubisoft titles, calling the discounted bundle "Ubisoft Hits". The discounts aren't something to ignore either as most of the titles have been discounted by more than half, some even as much as 80%.

So what Ubisoft titles are currently on sale? Well, as you may have expected, the latest Assassin's Creed game - Assassin's Creed Odyssey and all of its respective downloadable content are on sale. Humble has whacked on a 67% discount for the standard, deluxe, gold, and ultimate editions, as well as a 50% discount for the Season Pass. Below I have listed out some other Ubisoft titles that are on sale, but if you want to check out the discounts for yourself, a link to the Ubisoft Hit Sale can be found here.

We're hours away from Samsung's upcoming Unpacked 2020 event where we'll be introduced to the new Galaxy Note 20 (you can read all about those phones here) and the new, re-branded Galaxy Z Fold 2 smartphones.

Samsung's new Galaxy Z Fold 2 foldable smartphone is right around the corner, but before it's big unveiling we've got leaker Ishan Agarwal providing the world with the official Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 wallpapers. If you've got an original Galaxy Fold, you might want to check them out.

You can grab the official photos in higher quality from this Google Drive link, but expect more Galaxy Z Fold 2 wallpapers when Samsung announces the new phones (and I'm sure much more) at Unpacked 2020 on August 5.

Epic Games has been teasing cars in Fortnite for a while now, and while we all knew they were probably coming anyway -- now it's official. Fortnite is getting cars on Wednesday with its new "Joy Ride" update.

The developer confirmed the news on the official Fortnite Twitter account, where it explains "It's not just a name. It's a warning". The cars will be coming to Fortnite in the upcoming Joy Ride update, which will arrive on gamers' systems on Wednesday, August 5.

It's a strange move for Epic in Fortnite, and it will change the entire meta of the game. Fortnite is all about that fort building and resource gathering, and while the water is a different way to travel -- on-ground transport through cars is going to change things up in a big way.

Sony has confirmed its State of Play event for August 6, but the company has squashed rumors that we'd see pricing and more details (like pre-orders opening) on the PlayStation 5.

The company made a large point of "no big PS5 announcements" at the State of Play event, instead the company will spend time detailing third-partty published PS4 and PlayStation VR titles. We will see a "a few quick check-ins on third-party and indie games from June's PS5 showcase".

We can expect Sony's upcoming State of Play event to run for around 40 minutes, while "there will be no PlayStation Studios updates in Thursday's episode. There won't be any updates around hardware, business, preo-rders, or dates either".

Project CARS 3 is right around the corner, with publisher Bandai Namco and developer Slightly Mad Studios detailing the PC system requirements. Oh, and they released a new trailer... check it out:

Slightly Mad Studios requires an Intel Core i5 3540 or AMD FX-8350 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 50GB of storage at a minimum. They're asking for an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or equivalent, while the recommended specs are a little higher.

Project CARS 3 recommended specs are much higher, with Slightly Mad Studios asking for an Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and 16GB of RAM. You'll need the same 50GB storage, but the recommended GPU is much higher: GeForce RTX 2070 or Radeon RX 5700.

Google announced 3 new Pixel smartphones today, but only one of them was unveiled in full: the new Pixel 4a.

The new Google Pixel 4a smartphone shows that the company is serious about dominating the budget smartphone market, pricing the Pixel 4a at just $349. Google had everyone happy with the $399 pricing on the Pixel 3a, but the Pixel 4a is an even better phone at an even better price.

Pixel 4a is powered by a lesser-powered Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G SoC, compared to the Pixel 3a and its higher-end Snapdragon 855. We do have the same great 12-megapixel camera experience, as well as the same RAM and storage capacity as the Pixel 3a.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone's new Season 5 is nearly here, with Activision and Infinity Ward unleashing a new trailer for Season 5. Check it out:

What you can immediately see is what most people expected: gigantic changes to Verdansk, the map played in Warzone. First of all, the infamous stadium in Verdansk has had its roof completely blown away and the inside of it totally changed.

Not only that, but the developers have added in a train to Verdansk and Warzone -- similar to how Respawn Entertainment (founded by ex-Infinity Ward developers who made the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare) and their free-to-play battle royale smash hit Apex Legends.

Activision and Infinity Ward must be in some form of conspiracy with storage companies, pushing the boundaries on just how much storage space a game can take up with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone is currently requiring over 200GB of storage space on gamers' systems, but now that Season 5 is upon us it'll need just a little bit more. The new Season 5 update weighs in at 36GB on the PlayStation 4, but requires 90GB of free storage space to even kick the download off.

But this time around, the developer knows the download size is huge and have said that they are "optimizing" their asset packs. This means that the download size might be large, but he overall size of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will actually shrink on your console post-patch. Nothing has been said about the PC version of the game just yet.

Microsoft will be launching its next generation powerhouse Xbox Series X console in November 2020, where it will be able to run select titles at something PC gamers have had for many, many years: 120 glorious frames per second.

But which games have been announced so far, are going to work at up to 120FPS? Well, that's where this list comes into play. You will of course first need the new Xbox Series X console, as well as a 120FPS-capable TV.

There are now more models of 4K 120Hz TVs on the market, where they're not really gaming monitors anymore but gaming TVs. You're going to want a new TV with HDMI 2.1 (you can read more about HDMI 2.1 here), which might be limited to just a few TVs right now but this is changing over the next few months and more so into 2021 and beyond where most TVs will offer HDMI 2.1 connections.

Capcom just kicked off its Fiscal Year 2020 with the best Q1 quarter in its 41-year history.

Capcom is on a roll. As of FY2019, the company is on a three-year streak of record earnings. Now they've just reported all-time highs for first quarter earnings that beat any other period in its entire lifetime. Capcom's net sales, operating income, and profits are all up double digits and have increased beyond 30% across the board.

For the period ending June 30, 2020, Capcom earned $219.81 million in net sales, up 32% YoY, driven by the landmark success of Resident Evil 3 and back catalog games like Monster Hunter World. Operating income sits at $99.25 million, up 39% YoY, and Capcom pulled a mighty $72.41 million in profits, representing a 44% spike.

Grand Theft Auto V simply won't stop growing, and has now shipped nearly 135 million copies worldwide.

According to Take-Two Interactive's latest Q1'21 earnings, GTA V has sold-in 135 million copies on all platforms, up 5 million units from last quarter. GTA V also had a strong impact on the company's mighty $915 million in quarterly earnings, contributing to both sales and digital monetization via GTA Online.

"Nearly 7 years after launch, Grand Theft Auto V continues to exceed our expectations. The title has now sold in almost 135 million units and remains the standard-bearer of the current console generation,"Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a recent earnings call.

NBA 2K20 has made more than $1 billion in combined sales and microtransaction revenues worldwide, Take-Two Interactive today announced.

NBA 2K20 is a monster. It's right up there with GTA Online, Take-Two's other billion-dollar darling, and has significantly materially impacted quarterly earnings since its launch. The big difference is NBA 2K20 has managed to rake in over $1 billion in total earnings and 14 million copies sold in less than a year.

"In the first quarter, NBA 2K20 significantly outperformed our expectations, and recently achieved a franchise milestone of $1 billion in net bookings since launch," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a recent Q1'21 earnings call.