Latest News - Page 1568

Rumor has it EA is interested in buying A&T's Warner Bros. Games division, which includes top-tier dev talent like Netherealm, Rocksteady Studios and Avalanche Software. This is exactly the kind of thing EA wants to get more of.

EA wants to make new acquisitions, but the company is more interested in buying new talent than it is new IPs. Case in point: EA didn't buy Respawn to acquire the Titanfall IP, but to secure the dev team behind the game. The same could be true for the rumored $4 billion Warner Bros. Games division sale.

So is EA buying Warner Bros. Games? No one knows for sure, but EA CFO Blake Jorgensen says they've looked at the buyout potential in a recent Fiscal Year Q1'21 earnings call.

UPDATE: 343i today confirmed Halo: Infinite is indeed free-to-play, and that it'll support optional 120FPS modes on Xbox Series X and PC. No graphics details were discussed.

New leaks suggest Halo: Infinite's campaign and multiplayer will be separated into two parts, and multiplayer will be free-to-play for everyone.

Halo: Infinite might actually two games in one. There;s the huge open-world campaign that's basically a living sandbox combination of Spartan Ops and Firefight, complete with objectives, RPG-esque upgrades, a huge overworld map, and co-op play. This will be the paid version. Then there's multiplayer, which according to info from Retailer Smyth's Toys, will be free-to-play on PC and Xbox.

For a next-gen system-selling game, Halo: Infinite has been criticized for its lackluster and rather current-gen graphics. Now 343 Industries delivers an official comment on the matter, promising to take all feedback very seriously.

Mechanically, Halo: Infinite looks like a great game. But the visuals are bogged down by the new dynamic lighting system, which takes the definition out of textures and models that're in shadowy areas. Will this change before launch? Possibly.

343 Industries says they'll release a ray tracing update post-launch, which will add much-needing lighting to make the high-end textures really pop. But now the devs talk more about their plans.

COVID-19 has closed down practically every major worldwide sporting event, delaying and cancelling leagues and seasons. Now fans are turning to big EA games like Madden and FIFA for their fix.

EA, like other games companies, is benefiting tremendously from COVID-19. Consumers are staying at home and buying more games to play in their off time. This goes double for EA. As the world of sports is put on hiatus, gamers are recreating seasons of their own in EA's billion-dollar sports franchises.

In a Q1'21 recent earnings call, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen brought up a good point. Now that football and soccer seasons have been suspended, the only real way to continue engaging with these sports is through EA's games. This has led to a massive surge in digital revenues like game sales and microtransactions.

If you played the Hyper Scape open beta, you probably would have noticed that there were some balancing issues with the game.

These balancing issues ranged from hacks (abilities), to some guns feeling just a little bit too strong. Disclaimer - personally, I have been smashing Hyper Scape, and at the current time of writing this I have already maxed out the Battle Pass (Tier 30), and because of the time I have spent playing the game I believe I have a decent understanding of how the title feels and plays out.

Ubisoft says in its patch notes found on the website that this patch is directly aimed at what is "Time-to-kill (TTK)", which is exactly what it sounds like - the time it takes to kill someone once combat is engaged. Ubisoft says that the community voiced concerns about the TTK being too slow, and because of that, they have decided to buff the damage on many guns, while simultaneously nerfing most hacks across the board. Most notably, Ubisoft has nerfed the Protocol V, Mine Hack's overall power level, and the Invisibility Hack.

Elon Musk is a man of scienec, but he's also a man of memes. Tesla Motors stock is pumping like an all-night party and it's only 4:20AM, and now Musk tweets that aliens built the pyramids.

Musk tweeted it a few hours ago, saying: "Aliens built the pyramids obv" out of nowhere.

The billionaire entrepreneur and real-life Elon Musk isn't shy of tweeting out what some people would think is ridiculous, but "aliens built the pyramids" is a pretty big thing to say when you're the founder of companies like SpaceX and Tesla.

Ubisoft has taken to its social media to announce that its new battle royale shooter will be leaving open beta and enters its first official season.

According to the Hyper Scape Twitter account, the free-to-play battle royale will be leaving open beta on PC on August 2nd. The Ubisoft website says that all progression made throughout the open beta will be crossed over to the full release of the game. Additionally, Ubisoft has also announced that Hyper Scape will be making its way over to the PS4 and Xbox One on August 11th.

Season 1 will come with a slew of new changes, some of which include a new gun, the Dragonfly, a new hack, and a Magnet. Season 1 is titled "The First Principle", and will be adding new limited-time game modes, as well as new features for Crowncast (Hyper Scape's interactive Twitch extension). Season 1 will also come with some lore insight into how the world of Hyper Scape came about. If you are after more information on the first season of Hyper Scape, check out this link here.

With hundreds of millions of people across the world stuck inside thanks to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, social networking giant Facebook couldn't be happier.

Facebook reported their Q2 2020 earnings, smashing analyst expectations and seeing FB shares spiking 7% in extended trading. We now know that Facebook revenue for Q2 2020 was a bold $18.69 billion for the three-month period, up 98% year-on-year.

As for the amount of people using Facebook, that has also been boosted in a big way -- with 1.79 billion daily active users (DAUs) while the monthly active users has reached a gigantic 2.7 billion monthly active users MAUs.

NVIDIA has been slowly adding more and more games to its GeForce NOW game streaming service, but there's some new news that is exciting.

The company has now made it possible to synchronize your entire Steam game library with GeForce NOW, by turning the option on in Settings > Sync Game. Once you've got your Steam account synced with your GeForce NOW account, you can then identify all of the games that have support for GeForce NOW.

Once it has scanned the GeForce NOW compatible games, the new games will turn up in the My Library section of GeForce NOW.

We should expect some solid confirmation and an announcement of NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards in the next month or so -- but until then, all we have are leaks:

The one today is from KatCorgi once again, who has tweeted: "RTX 3090 may up to 50% PERFORMANCE INCREASE in TimeSpy Extreme". We've heard that the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or GeForce RTX 3090 (sort that naming out before launch, NVIDIA) could be up to 60-90% faster in previous rumors.

But remember that AMD's next-gen Big Navi / RDNA 2-based flagship Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card, which has been seen around as the purported Radeon RX 6900 XT -- being 40-50% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. If this is true, then AMD will indeed have a new card that could meet the performance of NVIDIA's best Ampere GeForce RTX 30 series card, at least in 2020.

NVIDIA is bundling copies of Rainbow Six: Siege Gold Edition with their GeForce RTX 20 series graphics carrds, as part of their Frames Win Games bundle.

Rainbow Six: Siege launched back in 2015, and has over 50 million people playing the game as of September 2019. The game has recently had its Year 5 pass launch, with a bunch of DLC included in the Gold Edition -- and thus, for free when you purchased an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series graphics card.

You can buy any GeForce RTX 20 series card between the regular GeForce RTX 2060 and GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, right through to the flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card.

We had our first look at Samsung's purported Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G smartphone last week, which has reportedly been re-branded from the Galaxy Fold 2 to the Galaxy Z Fold 2, which will be unveiled at Samsung's upcoming Unpacked 2020 event on August 5.

Now we have our first real look at the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G smartphone thanks to MySmartPrice, which shared the first official press renders of the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G in both its colors: Mystic Bronze and Mystic Black.

Samsung looks to have beefed up the Cover Display, which is the smaller display on the front of the phone before you unfold it. As a personal owned of the first-gen Galaxy Fold, this is going to be a much welcomed upgrade over its predecessor.

COVID-19 hasn't stopped tech sector growth, and Apple's third quarter 2020 performance is the best June of all time.

Apple today reported record Q3 performance across range of services and products. The company made $11.25 billion on $59.7 billion in total revenues, with a sharp 18% EPS jump to $2.61. Products made 77% of total net revenues, or $46 billion, up nearly double-digit percentage points over last year. Services pulled in $11.25 billion and saw a 15% jump over Q3'19.

While iPhone sales drove the quarter's total net sales ($59.68 billion), iPad saw the biggest uptick with 31% growth to $6.58 billion in sales. Wearables were also up 16.7%.

Star Wars Squadrons is a $40 game for a number of reasons, and it looks like EA is changing how it sees Star Wars games.

Typically when a game with online play is lower priced that means it'll have in-game purchases. mTX is a way to offset the lower retail price tag. On the surface, Star Wars Squadrons has the potential to be a big live service game monetized with microtransactions.

It has a grindy upgrade-based gameplay loop complete with cosmetic and game-affecting content, online multiplayer, and a campaign. It also fills a void left by Battlefront II, which has now been sunset.

While other publishers like 2K Games are eager to charge $70 for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of their games, EA isn't sure on how to proceed.

EA may not charge $70 for next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X SKUs of its games. In a recent Q1'21 earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson commented on raising prices of next-gen games. EA will offer free next-gen upgrades of Madden 21 and FIFA 21, and is more focused on the smooth cross-generation transition instead of trying to capitalizing on full $70 next-gen titles.

"We start with the player motivations, the expectations the players have around depth and breadth of live service, and we go from there," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said.

Like pretty much every games company, EA is benefiting tremendously from COVID-19 lockdowns, and their recent Q1'21 earnings reflect strong spikes in overall earnings.

Today EA reported record first-quarter results for Fiscal Year Q1'21 that far exceeded the company's expectations. In the quarter ended March 31, 2020, EA generated $1.459 billion in total revenues, up 21% from last year. Net bookings were up tremendously by 78% YoY to $1.390 billion, outperforming EA's forecast by $390 million, driven by astronomical growth in full game sales and live service monetization. Free cash flow is up 286% to $340 million on these strong results.

Full game sales are up triple digit percentage points to $287 million (+202% YoY), which were driven in part by EA's fusillade of re-releases on Steam and strong console purchases. This reflects increased consumer purchases during COVID-19 quarantines. Q1 is typically EA's slowest period for game sales.

Halo: Infinite will run at 4K 60FPS on the Xbox Series X and PC, but will gamers play it if the shadows still look bad?

Right now Halo: Infinite has an issue with visuals, and everyone's noticed. The culprit is the game's new dynamic lighting that blankets the open-world setting. Things look great in the light, but in shadows, we see models lose their definition. The result is textures and models of guns, buildings, and characters look very last-gen.

343 Industries can fix it with global illumination techniques like hardware- or software-based ray tracing, which the Xbox Series X conveniently supports. But this fix comes at a performance hit. Halo: Infinite may not run at the advertised 4K 60FPS with ray tracing enabled; in its present state, with the dynamic lighting and shadows obfuscating details, it could hit a dynamic (or possibly even native) 3840 x 2160 with a steady 60FPS. With ray tracing turned on, it could drop to 1080p 60FPS.

Rocket League is already immensely popular, but now it'll grow even more by going free-to-play. There's a catch, though. It's easy access is gated off by the Epic Games Store.

Psyonix recently confirmed Rocket League is going F2P on PC, but only on the Epic Store. This follows Psyonix's full buyout from Epic in May 2019. New Rocket League PC players will have to download the chaotic auto sport indie from the Epic Store.

When Rocket League goes free-to-play it'll be simultaneously de-listed from Steam. Anyone who already owns the game on Steam will be able to keep playing, and Pysonix is preserving cross-play between Steam and the Epic Store versions as well as PS4 and Xbox One. The game will also support cross-progression on every platform so your unlocks will carry over wherever you go.

NASA has formally announced when the launch window for the Mars 2020 mission will be, and when we can expect to see Perseverance sent off to the distant red planet.

According to NASA, the launch window will be at 7:50 EDT, and it will be open for two hours. Throughout this time, NASA will be working out any potential problems that could hinder the launch, and then once checks are made, they will be buckling up with the rest of us as the Atlas 5 rocket from United Launch Alliance will begin its launch from Cape Canaveral.

NASA will be landing its latest-and-greatest rover, Perseverance, on the Martian surface on February 18th, 2021. The primary goal of the mission is to land the rover in jezero crater successfully. This is where the rover will be conducting numerous experiments in an attempt to discover whether life ever existed on Mars. Above you will find a link to the NASA YouTube Channel where they will be streaming the historic launch.

The coronavirus pandemic has taken the wind out of many people's sails, but luckily NASA has still found a way to get its historic mission underway. Finally, news that isn't COVID-19 related.

NASA has officially penned the launch date for the Mars 2020 mission, which will take the space agency's brand new rover and helicopter to our distant red planetary neighbor. The coronavirus, along with other technical delays, caused the space agency to have to delay the launch, but now things seem to be set in order, and as a result, a launch window has been set.

The Perseverance rover will be launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Atlas 5 rocket from United Launch Alliance. NASA says that it will take a matter of months for Perseverance to reach Mars, and has said that it will arrive on February 18th, 2021. Perseverance will be taking the latest and greatest scientific instruments to the red planet to conduct scientific experiments on Mars' surface in an attempt to discover if the red planet was ever home to some form of ancient life. The mission launch window opens at 7:50 a.m. EDT, this Thursday.