Latest News - Page 1646

President Trump has said that the US government is expecting up to 240,000 deaths in relation to COVID-19, with Bloomberg now reporting that the Pentagon has placed an order for 100,000 body bags for FEMA.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested 100,000 body bags, requesting the "Human Remains Pouches" as their known, from the Pentagon. The Pentagon will provide 50,000 body bags from its stockpiles right now, while 50,000 more will be acquired in the coming weeks.

The Defense Logistics Agency's Troop Support unit handles the stockpile of body bags for the Pentagon, with the 94-inch by 38-inch body bags normally deployed into war zones. During his speech at the White House on Tuesday, President Trump said: "This is going to be a painful two weeks. Our strength will be tested, our endurance will be tried".

Can you imagine the COVID-19 coronavirus situation getting any worse? Well, let's hope not -- as the Henan province in central China has just gone into full lockdown.

Politico reports that the Henan province in central China is in a full lockdown as "authorities try to fend off a second coronavirus wave in the midst of a push to revive the economy". Starting yesterday were curfew-like measures in Jia county, which is near the city of Pingdingshan.

600,000 residents were told to stay at home, with special approval required for any movmenet outside of your home, a rule forced by the government on the country's official microblog account. But then there's the question that COVID-19 coronavirus is the "worst cover-up in human history" and that it could've originated in a new biosafety lab (BSL-4) in Wuhan -- where the virus began. You can read more on that here.

It looks like the current COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak is about to be blown wide open, with Rep. Michael T. McCaul, Texas Republican and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee saying "This is one of the worst cover-ups in human history, and now the world is facing a global pandemic".

Well, they're some fighting words. It is being reported that the current coronavirus has mutated from bats that reportedly infected animals and people at a wild animal market in Wuhan, China -- but the origin of the virus itself is still unknown.

There were "conspiracy theories" that COVID-19 coronavirus was a bioweapon, and came from an animal that had the disease tested on them and then sold to local Wuhan markets. From there, it began spreading quickly through Wuhan and then eventually, the world. To the point where the entire global economy has come to a grinding halt, and billions of people are in lockdown or quarantined to their homes.

Borderlands 3 went way over-budget and ate up the big bonus checks employees were promised years ago.

A new expose from Kotaku's Jason Schreier gives a rare glimpse at the inner-workings of games industry deals, particularly Gearbox's internal employee pay policies. Gearbox isn't like other independent studios. Developers make lower wages but Gearbox offers a 60/40% royalty split to its employees. Workers get to take home 40% of royalties, and the rest goes to Gearbox. This incentivizes working hard to make games as profitable as possible; the more a game sells, the more royalty cash flows into worker's wallets.

The should've happened with Borderlands 3, a mega-hit that's sold over 8 million copies to date and stands as the best-selling Borderlands game of all time. But instead of paying out large bonus checks, Gearbox's Randy Pitchford told the workers their bonuses would be a lot smaller than expected. The royalty money is drying up fast.

With E3 2020 cancelled, many publishers are moving towards digital-only streams to replace the June event. Even E3's showrunners are trying to pivot towards some sort of digital venue. But Bethesda says it won't be participating.

Today Bethesda exec Pete Hines confirmed the publisher won't have a digital event in June. The reason is simple: Coronavirus has significantly disrupting Bethesda's plans. That means no Starfield info, no Ghostwire Tokyo gameplay footage, no Deathloop content or an update on the anticipated Wolfenstein 3. And maybe, just maybe, Prey 2. Bethesda will instead stagger its announcements out across 2020 and may not be attached to the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 sizzle reels that may come in June 2020.

"Given the many challenges we're facing due to the pandemic, we will not host a digital Showcase in June. We have lots of exciting things to share about our games and look forward to telling you more in the coming months," Hines said on Twitter.

President Trump's coronavirus task force warns that up to 240,000 U.S. citizens could die from coronavirus exposure--and that's part of the best case scenario.

In yesterday's press briefing, the Trump administration delivered some sobering messages. President Trump warned Americans the next two weeks would be "very painful" as coronavirus deaths are expected to peak in mid-April. The best case scenario for total coronavirus deaths is in the hundreds thousands. The task force expects at least 100,000 people to die from the coronavirus in the United States, and deaths are expected to hit over 2,000 on April 15.

Without mitigation guidelines like social distancing, that number skyrockets to the millions.

The new Viking-themed Assassin's Creed game is coming in 2020, and now we have an idea what period of the Viking Age it'll be set in.

Ubisoft's next Assassin's Creed game might be it's biggest yet. The game, codenamed Kingdom, is an ambitious open-world title set in the brutal age of the Vikings. It's due out this year with cross-gen releases including PS5 and Xbox Series X. Norse mythology offers tons of potential with lots of strange gods and creatures. Now a leaked achievement list could set the game's time setting while confirming big boss battles.

The achievement list originates from 4Chan and could easily be faked. But if it's genuine, the list points at an 9th century setting for the game. We originally predicted Kingdom would take place during Charlemagne's conquest of Europe under the Holy Roman Empire. Now it looks like the game could take place shortly after Charlemagne's death in the 9th century.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood's co-op play might've been a test run for MachineGames' next big Wolfenstein sequel.

A new MachineGames job listing could hint at a return to classic deathmatch multiplayer with the next Wolfenstein, or maybe an online co-op mode similar to Youngblood. The job listing calls for a level designer that has experience with creating multiplayer levels, strongly hinting Wolfenstein 3 will have some sort of MP action. Bethesda confirmed Wolfenstein 3 was in development as far back as 2018, but MachineGames has yet to make a formal announcement.

Up until Youngblood, which introduced online co-op and microtransactions, all Wolfenstein games have been over-the-top singleplayer-only campaigns with tons of violence, action, and massive production values. But ZeniMax, the parent company of Bethesda, has made a marked shift towards monetization and adapting core IPs into replayable live service-esque titles.

It has finally happened, Adult Swim has released the launch date for the last five episodes of Rick and Morty Season 4.

The trailer was released onto the official Rick and Morty YouTube Channel and teased the release of the highly-anticipated final five episodes of season 4. If you didn't know, Adult Swim decided to cut Rick and Morty Season 4 into two parts, and after the announcement of the division, the news went quiet on when we would be getting the final five episodes.

In the above trailer, we see multiple never-before-seen scenes of the final five episodes of season 4, and it seems that the end-half of season 4 will be extremely similar to the first half of season 4. What I mean by 'similar' is that the back half of season 4 will have all that fun, random, scientific hilarious stuff that we saw throughout the first half. So, basically, everything you want with Rick and Morty will be there in the final five episodes of season 4.

Astronomers have released a paper revealing that they have discovered the exact diameter of the Milky Way galaxy.

The paper has been released by astronomers from Durham University in England, and more specifically, astrophysicist Alis Deason and her colleagues released the paper on arXiv.org. According to the paper, the Milky Way's exact diameter is 1.9 million light-years, with a margin of error of 0.4 million light-years. Rosemary Wyze, a fellow astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, spoke to ScienceNews in regards to the Milky Way's new diameter measurement.

Here's what was said, "help astronomers tease out other galactic properties." The new measurement of the Milky Way should help astronomers gain a much more precise understanding of how many more galaxies are revolving around the Milky Way. At the moment, there are about 60 known galaxies surrounding the Milky Way, but since this new measurement has been made, that number is likely to grow. If you are interested in reading more on this discovery, check out this link here.

Valve has been extremely quick at updating Half-Life: Alyx considering it was released just a week ago, with the first patch (v1.1) adding in Continuous Turn as an option -- and now, v1.2 has been released.

The new 1.2 update for Half-Life: Alyx lets you switch movement controls between the left and right hand -- no matter what hand is being used to hold your weapon. You'll need to visit the in-game menu, then the SteamVR controller setup to choose which hand you'd like as your default for a weapon.

Half-Life: Alyx also gets the usual bug fixes and less crashes in the new 1.2 update, while performance has been improved just a bit with "better detection of low-memory situations". Half-Life: Alyx will update automatically through Steam.

Pokemon GO developer Niantic has just acquired 3D mapping startup 6D.ai, where the acquisition will see them building out "planet-scale" augmented reality, or AR.

6D.ai will infuse into Niantic and use its 3D environment reconstruction and persistent AR objects that will advance AR-based games and apps in a big way. Niantic burst onto the scene with Pokemon GO, but imagine planet-scale Pokemon GO where you see dragons and other creations flying around and landing on buildings, right in front of you -- in augmented reality.

Niantic said it knows "better than anyone" about this type of AR, while 6D.ai boss Matt Miesnieks said there "couldn't be a better team" for 6D.ai to join. Niantic is ramping into the future of AR, when everyone is allowed back outside after the global COVID-19 quarantines and lockdowns lift.

We've got the United Nations warning us that they are concerned of global food supply shortages, and now the Federal Reserve estimates that the worst of the job losses to Americans could get much worse.

According to estimations by Federal Reserve's St. Louis district project that total employment losses would mount to 47 million, which means the US would see a 32.1% unemployment rate. St. Louis Fed economist Miguel Faria-e-Castro wrote in a research paper last week: "These are very large numbers by historical standards, but this is a rather unique shock that is unlike any other experienced by the U.S. economy in the last 100 years".

Faria-e-Castro had some what he calls "back-of-the-envelope" calculations: these numbers don't add in the workers who will drop out of the work force. This means that the dizzyingly high unemployment estimations could be a tiny bit better, as well as fact that they don't estimate how the recently passed government stimulus will help.

D-Wave Systems has announced that it is offering immediate, and free access to its quantum computers to anyone who is working on responses to COVID-19.

The company said that its partners and customers in Kyocera Corporation, NEC Solution Innovators, Menten AI and Volkswagen and others will also be providing engineering teams that will assist researchers in using the quantum computers, in order to formulate problems and hopefully find solutions to COVID-19.

D-Wave Systems will be providing access to its quantum computers through tis Leap 2 quantum cloud service, offering it to anyone working on COVID-19 response in the United States, and across 35 countries throughout Europe and Asia. D-Wave Systems explained: "Leap 2 includes the hybrid solver service designed to bring both classical and quantum resources to quickly and precisely solve highly complex problems with up to 10,000 fully connected variables".

Valve has just announced Half-Life 4, which is a direct sequel to Half-Life 2 and the events of Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two, as well as continuing the events after the amazing VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx (which is now the best PC game of 2020 on Metacritic).

Half-Life 4 will have VR support that will exceed the top-rated work in VR that the developer did with the recently-released Half-Life: Alyx, with Valve promising it won't screw over the PC gaming community that have supported the company for decades. Half-Life 4 will not be a VR exclusive like Half-Life: Alyx.

Half-Life 4 will come out on 3/3/2023 as it seems Valve can count to 3 when it comes to release dates, just not game titles. Valve hasn't yet confirmed whether we'll see Team Fortress 3, Portal 3, and Left 4 Dead 3 -- but their announcements could be right around the corner.

If you had to be on lockdown during a quarantine, I couldn't think of a better place than a $590 million superyacht -- but would you really boast about it on social media? Probably not.

Except, that's what billionaire David Geffen did. The DreamWorks co-founder posted a picture on his personal Instagram, saying he was on "quarantine" on his $590,000,000 superyacht with the caption: "Sunset last night... isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus. I'm hoping everybody is staying safe".

It wasn't long before social media tore Geffen a new one, saying that his post on Instagram talking about being quarantined on a $590 million superyacht was "tone deaf" considering the hardships people are going through right now. Even The View co-host Meghan McCain chimed in, saying: "David Geffen is worth 8 billion dollars! For God's sake help this country get ventilators, our health workers masks and the medical supplies they need! Or no, just stay on your f---ing yacht instagramming. This is just shameful and grotesque".

If you thought the fight for toilet paper was bad, just imagine if there was a global food shortage. This is something the United Nations (UN) has been thinking about, forcing them to issue a "battle plan" to make sure the worldwide food supply chains aren't destroyed.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture division said last week that it had "already seen signs" of this in the global food supply chain, caused by all the lockdowns worldwide that are impacting supply chains. Chief Economist Maximo Torero Cullen explained: "Disruptions, particularly in the area of logistics, could materialise in the coming months".

The International Agri-Food Network, which also acts as the UN Committee on World Food Security explains: "While the immediate problem has been access to food and the need for shelf stable foods, disruptions at borders and in supply chains may cause an echo in the food system with potentially disastrous effects".

For the first time in 25 years, QuakeCon 2020 has officially been cancelled.

Today Bethesda announced QuakeCon 2020 has been cancelled due to significant coronavirus disruption. Although the event would've been several months away in August, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has completely interrupted the critical planning phases for the event. Even if the coronavirus was under control by August 2020, Bethesda says it wouldn't be able to properly prepare a quality show with the industry's current state of disarray.

"In recent weeks we have spent a lot of time discussing how we might still move forward with QuakeCon this year, particularly given it's the 25th year of the event.

Activision teams up with Sony to launch Modern Warfare 2 remastered first on PlayStation 4, but this doesn't actually matter much for Activision.

To no one's surprise, Activision today officially announced Modern Warfare 2 remastered. There's a catch, though: The game is only available on PS4 today, and is coming to other platforms on April 30. This really isn't that big of a deal for the publisher. In fact, MW2R is a low-risk release.

The remaster is campaign-only (no co-op, no spec-ops, just campaign) so it won't interfere with the billion-dollar monetizable multiplayer market that Activision thrives on. That also means the game's gated-off accessibility doesn't matter as much as it would if MW2R had multiplayer. In short, this timed exclusivity won't hurt Activision in the long run because MW2R is just an extra piece of game sale downloads and doesn't affect what it cares about most: Live service microtransactions.

Doom Eternal has sold an estimated 700,000 copies on Steam in its first week alone, making it the best-selling Steam game of 2020 so far.

According to the latest data estimates from PlayTracker, Doom Eternal sales on PC are absolutely destroying console sales. The firm reports the rip-and-tear sequel has amassed over 700,000 in its first week on Steam compared to the 250,000 - 400,000 sold on PS4 and Xbox One. That's a pretty huge variance range and we're guessing the lower side of that is Xbox One due to the system's smaller 40 million install base. Also remember this doesn't include Bethesda.net sales and may be digital-only.

The sales-tracker says Doom Eternal has beaten Half-Life: Alyx's sales, which also isn't surprising considering the new Half-Life requires a hefty PC-powered VR headset to play.