Latest News - Page 1640

Phantasy Star Online 2 is coming to PC in May, but it'll launch exclusively on the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft's new promo deal with SEGA extends to PC, too. The long-awaited Phantasy Star Online 2 MMORPG is finally crossing over to the West, but it won't be sold on PC's most popular storefront--at least at launch. The news comes from Gematsu, who confirms PSO2 will launch exclusively on the Microsoft Store in late May, complete with cross-play with the Xbox One version.

It's unclear whether or not the game will stay fully exclusive to the MS Store. It's likely PSO2 will be timed exclusive. SEGA likely wants to release PSO2 on as many platforms as possible to increase visibility and monetization potential (it's a free-to-play game, after all). SEGA also recently pledged to release more PC ports of its games so it's unlikely they'd dodge Steam for too long.

Microsoft is currently discounting the Xbox One X to $299 to clear inventory ahead of the Xbox Series X's launch.

All Xbox One X consoles are now on sale for $299, including bundles and special editions, Microsoft today confirmed. The Xbox One X originally released in November 2017 for $499. This likely isn't a permanent price drop though. Microsoft hasn't adjusted the Xbox One S pricing, and right now the S models and bundles are the same price as the Xbox One X. The website URL hints the sale will last until April 20.

The idea here is simple: Microsoft wants to make way for the Xbox Series X and sell all of its current current-gen models as fast as possible. There's been reports the Xbox One X is discontinued and Microsoft won't make any more units once they're sold out.

That new Crysis game may not be what you think. It's possible Crytek is working on a brand new multiplayer game instead of a fully-fledged remaster of the beloved series.

Crytek has hinted at a new Crysis game for a while now. First we had the not-so-subtle clues in CryEngine 5.6 tech demo trailer, and the recent teases on Twitter. Crytek has also been hiring for a new unannounced AAA project for over a year. Put all those together and you have a recipe for an explosive remaster that could launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC. But there's just one missing piece to the puzzle.

Back in January 2019, Crytek confirmed it was co-developing a new AAA game alongside the multiplayer experts at Improbable. Crytek laid out plans to integrate CryEngine into SpatialOS, Improbable's cloud-based service platform that gives devs more granular control over live games. Crytek plans to christen their CryEngine SpatialOS integration with a brand new game, and it's assuredly a live game. It's likely that these job listings are for the unannounced Crytek-Improbable game.

Lots of surprising games showed up on Amazon France's PC listings today, including Persona 5, Days Gone, The Last of Us Part II, God of War, and even Super Mario Odyssey. These are obvious fakes.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but all of those Amazon France listings that popped up today are fake. Super Mario Odyssey isn't coming to PC (that wouldn't ever happen). Persona 5's PC listing has been confirmed as fake by SEGA. Sony has since confirmed the PS4 exclusive listings are fake, too.

Sony has embraced Steam and plans to release PS4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn on PC, but Sony is careful to say that not all popular first-party PS4 exclusives will come to PC--only some of them.

Grand Theft Auto 6 may not release for a few years more, and certainly won't launch alongside next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles in 2020.

The next big Grand Theft Auto game won't be ready for quite some time, internal Rockstar sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier.

The game is currently still in early phases of development following Red Dead Redemption 2's massive 2018 console launch, and subsequent PC release in 2019. Following the tremendous pressure of RDR2, Rockstar executives are now dialing things back and making conscious efforts to reduce and eliminate crunch at its worldwide studios.

No one likes to take a dumbbell size video recorder like RED, ARRI to travel, gathering, party, etc. In the video-sharing era, shooting a video using a mobile phone has been a prior option for most of the people. Smartphones have completely beaten all other devices in any aspect, such as convenience, size, usage, and more.

But if you film a long video using mobiles, you would be better going for desktop video editing software. The reason is that editing large videos with a mobile app is much more difficult than with a desktop app. Some mobile apps cannot modify footage parameters. And they are likely to reduce video quality dramatically. More so, they would freeze or crash when coping with large videos. You can access our free video editing review if you know little about desktop video editing software.

In this post, I would like to share with you guys an all-in-one but easy to use video editing software - VideoProc.

Since you are stuck inside and are most likely playing some video games to pass your time, then it might be time for a well-deserved upgrade.

Best Buy has your back, and more importantly, so does ASUS with their 15.6-inch ROG Zephyrus G. This gaming laptop packs AMD's 2.3GHz quad-core Ryzen 7 3750H, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q graphics. The display is 1920x1080, but has a refresh rate of 120hz, so you can enjoy games such as Overwatch, Apex Legends, Call of Duty, and many others at those smooth and juicy high framerates.

Best Buy has slashed $300 off this gaming laptop, bringing its total cost down from $1200, to just $900. Most gaming laptops are usually quite heavy, but the Zephyrus G weighs in at just 4.6lbs, which means you could easily throw it into your backpack for gaming on the go. It should be noted that gaming laptops are notorious for their battery life not being fantastic; this is especially true on gaming laptops that are pushing higher frame rates.

The thought of someone being able to influence your dream while you are asleep is an unsettling one, but it's completely possible regardless of how you feel about it.

In fact, MIT researchers and scientists have already successfully done it. According to OneZero's Tessa Love, who revealed that MIT scientists are currently working on a Dream Lab that can "hack" people's dreams through sounds and smells. The MIT scientists are concentrating on hypnagogia, which is the experience of the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep. The scientists believe through their research that they can influence our sleeping minds so that when we wake up, we feel we are "better".

Dream Lab researcher Adam Horowitz said, "People don't know that a third of their life is a third where they could change or structure or better themselves. Whether you're talking about memory augmentation or creativity augmentation or improving mood the next day or improving test performance, there are all these things you can do at night that are practically important."

If you thought the fear of coronavirus was bad, think again: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that coronavirus can travel through the air by at least 13 feet -- twice as far as current social distancing guidelines.

The research was conducted by a team from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, and was recently posted in the CDC's own Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal. The report reads: "The aerosol distribution characteristics ... indicate that the transmission distance of [COVID-19] might be 4 m (more than 13 feet)".

The CDC's new report is also pretty scary, warning that coronavirus can linger on shoes and acts like a carrier for COVID-19. Researchers talked about samples taken from the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan, China -- where they said: "Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive. Therefore, the soles of medical staff shoes might function as carriers".

Sony officially unveiled its new DualSense controller for its next-gen PlayStation 5 console, but now BossLogic has an awesome new concept design for a Cyberpunk 2077 themed DualSense PS5 controller.

I think that hands-down CD Projekt RED and Sony need to team up and make this happen, it is one of the most beautiful controller designs I've ever seen. It completely melts into the theme of Cyberpunk 2077, with a gorgeous bullet that glows in the center of the touchpad with 'SAMURAI' imprinted above it and the PS icon below it between the thumb sticks.

While browsing BossLogic's Twitter, I came across another design that I also fell in love with -- check this one out:

I really want to see this happen and it seems as though Crytek is moments away from announcing a new release in the Crysis franchise, where we could see a reboot or remaster of Crysis.

It was only yesterday that the official Twitter account for Crysis tweeted: "RECEIVING DATA", to which the official NVIDIA GeForce Twitter account replied with a shock face emoticon and "**turns on supercomputer**" followed by Falcon Northwest saying "Player One is Ready" and ORIGIN PC tweeting with a Fry meme.

Crytek is on the hunt for a bunch of new staffers to work on an "Unannounced AAA" game, which I would guess is the new Crysis remaster. The developer is looking for an FX artist, someone who can "develop cutting edge particles and onscreen effects". Crysis was one of the best looking games of its time, and hell it's still one of the best-looking games now in 2020, so someone to work on next-gen visual and onscreen effects comes as no surprise, but hypes me up.

Capcom instates a work-from-home policy for its developers as Japan locks down against COVID-19 spread.

A little over a week ago, Capcom reported one of its employees tested positive for coronavirus. Now the company has decided to lock up its doors and transition to remote work. From now until May 6, all of Capcom's employees will work from home. This could interrupt critical development cycles of upcoming games, including the rumored Resident Evil 8 and other next-gen games set for 2020.

"Considering the current situation surrounding the spread of COVID-19 in Japan, Capcom Co., Ltd. will implement a general policy of work from home or stay at home for employees from Monday, April 13 through Wednesday, May 6," reads a press release issued out yesterday.

Nintendo's latest Switch model could include a mixed reality headset with its own dedicated screen and internal SoC components. Or it could be a new 3DS-like folding Switch revision.

References to a new Switch model were uncovered in the latest 10.0.0 firmware patch, igniting tons of speculation on the internet. Hacker Mike Hestin discovered the designation after datamining the update. The new model, nx-abcd, hints at a new form factor revision with a second screen, and it could mean a Switch console + dedicated mixed reality headset combo.

So far, Nintendo has only toe-dipped into VR by using the Switch tablet screen as a slot-in display in makeshift cardboard Labo kits. The results are disorienting to say the least. Nintendo is clearly interested in VR, and recently exposed aspirations to explore AR too. It's possible this new Switch model could be a Switch handheld-console hybrid that comes with a special Nintendo-branded mixed reality headset with customized internals.

Sony today announced the Play At Home program that gives out free games to every PlayStation 4 owner.

As gamers worldwide stay at home to curb coronavirus spread, Sony is doing its part to keep us sane by releasing two free games to all PlayStation gamers. Starting tomorrow, April 15 at 8PM PST, Journey and The Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection will be available as free downloads until May 5. China and Germany will get Knack 2 instead of the Uncharted Collection. This collectively means PS Plus subscribers get four free PS4 games this month, including Dirt Rally 2.0 and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

"As a thank you to all who are doing their part to lessen the impact of this pandemic, Sony Interactive Entertainment is pleased to announce the Play At Home initiative," Sony wrote on the PlayStation Blog.

Right now Google is letting everyone try Stadia Pro free for two months. But should you even bother? The short answer is: Not really.

Even as a free trial, Stadia just isn't there yet. It's not really worth your time. Free is free, and there's really no risk if you cancel your sign ups before the two month period is over (yes, Google makes you put in credit card info and Stadia Pro is $10 a month after the trial ends in May). But there's a very valuable cost--your time. Honestly if you're not a gamer I don't think Stadia should be your entry point into gaming. You should simply do something else with your time.

Is Stadia horrible? No, it's not. But it's definitely not the ideal way to play games. Instant access is great at first, but as you play it becomes clear why convenience doesn't beat performance when it comes to Chrome gaming. We didn't try Stadia on our phones, just on a desktop PC via Chrome.

The Switch has been out for over three years and is just now getting button mapping options. Better late than never, right?

Nintendo Switch's latest 10.0.0 firmware update adds one of the most-requested features: Button remapping. With the exception of the home and screenshot buttons, all of the buttons and triggers can be re-configured and swapped out. Nintendo even lets you swap the analog stick movement schemes just in case your left or right JoyCon is drifting, and you can also lock the controller in vertical or horizontal orientation.

Users can save five different presets with different mappings, and right now the feature only works with official Nintendo-branded devices. Access and customize the JoyCon or Switch Pro controller layout by hopping into System Settings-> Controllers and Sensors-> Change Button Mapping.

The coronavirus is undoubtedly a terrible thing to have happened to everyone, but out of the world's misery shines fantastic examples of humans coming together for one common cause.

One of those common causes is Folding@Home, which is a computing project run by a team at Stanford University. The whole premise of Folding@Home is that the public can donate spare computation power from either their GPU or CPU to the project, and then the project aims that computational power at calculations that give scientists more understanding about a topic, or subject. At the moment, Folding@Home is aiming its power at understanding the coronavirus, and it has recently hit a new power level - 2.4 exaFLOPS.

In the above Twitter post from the official Folding@Home Twitter account, it's stated that the collective power of the Folding@Home project is almost at 2.5exaFLOPS, which is "faster than the top 500 supercomputers combined!". The Twitter post also contains a graph, and as you can see, Folding@Home is clearly exceeding all competing supercomputers, even to the point that it's "15x faster than any current supercomputer". It's absolutely fantastic to see the technology community rally together under one great cause. If you want to check out more about Folding@Home, or would like to donate some of your own computation power, check out this link here.

Call of Duty Warzone was set to break records when it was released, and now it's doing that very thing with millions of players flocking to the battle royale.

According to a new post by the official Call of Duty Twitter account, Warzone how now surpassed the 50 million player mark as of April 11th. It should be noted that Warzone only released just over a month ago on March 10th, meaning that the new battle royale shooter has amassed a staggering 50 million players in just a month. As of March, 2019, Fortnite is reported to have 250 million players in total, which means Warzone has almost reached a quarter of Fortnite's total players in just over a month.

To keep new players happy and engaged, Infinity Ward recently rolled out a new content update that includes a bunch of new weapons and skins. This content update comes under 'Season 3', and also added four-player squads for Warzone, or 'quads'. Not only do Warzone players get to enjoy the carnage with three of their friends, but they also get a bunch of new weapon blueprints and more. Infinity Ward didn't forget about the Modern Warfare players either, content such as 6v6 maps was released, more on that can be found here.

A social media post that has been doing the rounds showed Italian medical scrubs dead on the operating room floor, mid-operation, killed by COVID-19.

The social media post has a caption that reads: "some bodies among the 200 doctors in Italy who died yesterday of coronavirus". Italy has been slammed by coronavirus, so it has caused quite the stir... except its a total fabrication. The photo was reverse image searched and found to be a still from Grey's Anatomy.

Yeah, the COVID-19 death photo was from a 2007 episode (S3E14) called 'Wishin' and Hopin'. On the left of the image is the Italian medical scrubs that "died from COVID-19" on the ground, the right is the still image from the Wishin' and Hopin' episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Zack Snyder's Justice League star Henry Cavill and Superman himself, is like us right now -- stuck inside of their homes on COVID-19 coronavirus lockdown.

But the Superman star is a gamer (and a PC gamer at that) as well as a huge nerd, so during his lockdown Cavill showed off on his personal Instagram that he is a huge fan of Total War and Warhammer. Cavill posted a picture of himself painting an Adeptus Custodes helmet, and said: "One of my almost life long hobbies, that I've been following but not actively doing, is this. A company called Games Workshop... or plastic crack as 'we' call it".

Kal-El continued: "Genuinely can't get enough of the lore they have built over the decades. They have been some of my most enthused reads! If you were in denial about me being a geek before, you can't hide from it now".