Latest News - Page 1649

Remedy is working on something big for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, as well as PC.

Control, our favorite game of 2019, was just the beginning. Remedy has just signed a huge multi-year deal with Epic Games to publish two new multiplatform titles on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC: a smaller-scale game that's like related to its new live service Vanguard team, and a substantially ambitious new AAA game set in a fresh IP. The studio now owns both publishing and IP rights for the Alan Wake franchise (hint hint).

"We're working on something exciting, something big. With Epic Games as our publisher, we have incredible resources and full creative freedom. Thrilled about this opportunity. That said, for now that's all I can tell you," Remedy's Sam Lake said.

The US Space Force is about to launch its first National Security Mission. The mission will put a next-gen military communications satellite in orbit.

The satellite is a Lockheed Martin Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF-6), and will be launching into orbit on the back of a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. According to Lockheed Martin, the satellite will provide "vastly improved global, survivable, protected communications capabilities for strategic command and tactical warfighters operating on ground, sea and air platforms."

The AEHF-6 satellite will orbit Earth at about 22,200 miles above the planet and will be providing vital information to the US military force, as well as international partners such as Canada, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The AEHF-6 is one of six satellites that are currently circling Earth; the first five were launched in August 2010, May 2012, September 2013, October 2018 and August 2019. If you are interested in more information regarding the satellite, check out this link here.

The Folding@Home project has now reached a new power level, as both the public and companies have given their spare compute power to the project in an attempt to combat the coronavirus COVID-19.

If you don't know what Folding@Home is, it's a project run by Stanford University that allows the public to donate spare GPU/CPU compute power into a single force to be reckoned with. Just last week, Folding@Home received donated compute power from more than 400,000 volunteers, bringing its power level to an astonishing 470 petaFLOPS of computing performance.

To put that number into context, the world's most powerful supercomputer, IBM's 'Summit' has a peak compute of 200 petaFLOPS. Now, a recent announcement from the Folding@Home Twitter page has revealed that the project has hit another milestone - "Thanks to our AMAZING community, we've crossed the exaFLOP barrier! That's over a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second making us ~10x faster than the IBM Summit!" In fact, according to the stat page for Folding@Home, the project has crossed over to 1.5 ExaFLOPS, or 1,500,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second. The power of Folding@Home is being aimed directly at uncovering the mysteries of the coronavirus COVID-19.

Nintendo has just closed out its Nintendo Direct Mini, and throughout the presentation, it was revealed that Nintendo Switch users would be getting some classic 2K franchises to enjoy.

Nintendo has confirmed that they will be bringing three massive franchises from 2K games over to the Nintendo Switch. Those franchises are none other than all three of the remastered BioShock games; BioShock Remastered, BioShock 2 Remastered all apart of BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition. This marks the first time BioShock has been playable on the handheld console, and it is no doubt a welcomed surprise for Nintendo Switch users.

2K and Nintendo have also confirmed that XCOM 2 Collection, which contains XCOM 2, four DLC packs, and the War of the Chosen expansion, will also be arriving on the Nintendo Switch. The final franchise might be the one everyone is excited for - Borderlands Legendary Collection. Yep, that's right. Borderlands is heading over to the Nintendo Switch. The Legendary Collection contains the following titles; Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. All three 2K franchises will be arriving on the Nintendo Switch on May 29th.

AMD has announced that a hacker has stolen some of its graphics IP, and is demanding that the company pay them $100 million for its return.

Back in December 2019, the company says it was contacted by someone who said they had access to "test files" for AMD's current, and future graphics products. A handful of these GPU "test files" were then uploaded to the graphics forum GitHub, but AMD quickly reacted and slapped it with a DCMA takedown notice.

No, the AMD GPU IP leak cannot be used as a source code to build, and deisgn some custom RDNA graphics solution -- don't go expecting that at all. It can't be used to build products, it can't be used to reverse engineer a Radeon GPU design, or anything close to that.

Not content with challenging Steam's reign, Epic Games is now taking on titans like EA and Take-Two with its own games publishing division.

Epic Games today made a megaton announcement: The Fortnite giant will start publishing games from indie studios. And no, they won't be exclusive to the Epic Store on PC--they'll be multi-platform games.

The initiative begins with new projects from Remedy Entertainment, Playdead, and Gen Design. These new games will be 100% funded by Epic's Fortnite billions, and the company isn't making devs surrender rights to their IPs. Epic wants to shake-up the industry and disrupt the status quo on games publishing, and has a radical idea of giving developers 50% of the earnings. For contrast, Remedy only earns 45% of every copy of Control sold.

The creator behind Rick and Morty have teased a brand new show 'Solar Opposites', which will be released on Hulu on the 8th of May.

The above teaser has been released on the official Hulu YouTube channel and introduces viewers to a family of aliens who is attempting to integrate onto a strange new world called 'Earth'. The new Hulu series is from co-creator of Rick and Morty, Justin Roiland, and judging from the trailer, if you like Rick and Morty, you will definitely like Solar Opposites when it releases.

The comedy seems extremely similar, and even some of the characters remind me of Rick, Morty, Summer, Jerry, and Beth. The teaser trailer says that Solar Opposites will include the following; man caves, recreational drugs, bullying, animal rights, zombie teenagers, magicians, black holes, gooblers, and the pupa. All of what was just mentioned feels like its a random channel on inter-dimensional cable in an episode of Rick and Morty. All episodes of Solar Opposites will release on Hulu on the 8th of May.

Valve unleashed Half-Life: Alyx on March 23 and it quickly became the best gaming experience I've ever had, it also became the #1 most-played game on VR on its launch day.

But now Valve has pushed out the first update to Half-Life: Alyx with v1.1, which fixes a bunch of stuff in the game and adds a new "Continuous Turn" option. The new Continuous Turn option is closer to how Boneworks reacts to turning, which is what some people prefer over Half-Life: Alyx and its 3 options of movement in VR.

Valve has now renamed Quick Turn to Snap Turn, which the developer says "to make its functionality clearer". There are some other fixes that Valve has done to Half-Life: Alyx with its v1.1 patch, which I've got listed below:

Ndemic Creations has been enjoying the explosive popularity of its disease outbreak management simulation Plague Inc., where you design a disease and try to infect, and kill, as many people on the planet as possible.

Yeah well, that's not going down so well right now with the current coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak and its worldwide hysteria. So, the developer has pushed out an update that adds a new mode that lets you do the opposite: save the world. Ndemic Creations is working hand-in-hand (from a safe social distance I hope) with the World Health Organization (WHO), the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, and other groups on creating an "informative experience".

The developer is also donating $250,000 towards fighting the coronavirus outbreak, where the money will be split between the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the World Health Organization's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.

NVIDIA was all systems go for its Ampere GPU architecture (which I exclusively unveiled all the way back in April 2018) unveiling at its own GPU Technology Conference (GTC) last week, but it was canceled over the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. This meant the Ampere announcement was also delayed.

But now Bloomberg's Tai Kim has written a new article titled 'NVIDIA's Biggest Pleasant Surprise May Be Yet to Come', where he goes into the fact that NVIDIA is kinda flourishing over the coronavirus outbreak. In positive news about coronavirus, more gamers are at home, and more games are being played right now than pretty much ever before in the history of gaming.

NVIDIA's gaming segment (GeForce graphics cards) represents close to half of its revenue, so with more gamers playing games at home that is only a good thing for NVIDIA. Kim writes that NVIDIA management said they've seen a 50% surge in "total gaming hours from its installed base as many students and workers were staying-at-home".

There are more gamers sitting at home right now than ever before in the history of gaming, and NVIDIA is noticing that trend -- and benefiting from it now, and will do so even more in the future.

But now Bloomberg's Tai Kim has written a new article titled 'NVIDIA's Biggest Pleasant Surprise May Be Yet to Come', where he goes into the fact that NVIDIA is kinda flourishing over the coronavirus outbreak. In positive news about coronavirus, more gamers are at home, and more games are being played right now than pretty much ever before in the history of gaming.

NVIDIA's gaming segment (GeForce graphics cards) represents close to half of its revenue, so with more gamers playing games at home that is only a good thing for NVIDIA. Kim writes that NVIDIA management said they've seen a 50% surge in "total gaming hours from its installed base as many students and workers were staying-at-home".

I've taken a short break from Half-Life: Alyx to interact with the real-world again, as I have two kids staying home from school right now, and a job to do -- and that job, is to write more news about Valve stuff. Check out my Half-Life: Alyx Buyers Guide right here.

Now that Half-Life: Alyx is in the wild, Valve is returning to talking to the media in a big way, where Chris Remo and Robin Walker from Valve sat down with IGN. They talked about all things Half-Life: Alyx, Portal VR, Left 4 Dead 3, and more. Left 4 Dead is another game close to my heart, as it was just pure 4-player mayhem in an amazing setting when it was released.

Fun fact: Left 4 Dead was the first game I played with NVIDIA's 3D Vision glasses at the time, and utterly loved it. This was in the days before VR, and it was one of the driving forces of making me believe VR would take off eventually -- and now it has, with Half-Life: Alyx.

Just like Doom Slayer smashes demon skulls, his new pivotal hell-razing FPS sequel has likewise smashed franchise sales records.

Doom Eternal is the top-earning Doom game of all time at launch, Bethesda today announced. "Doom Eternal has quickly broken the franchise record for opening weekend sales, doubling the launch revenue of DOOM (2016). DOOM Eternal was the best-selling game on Steam for the week and immediately soared to over 100,000 concurrent players on the platform," reads a press release issued out by the publisher.

It's possible the recent coronavirus outbreak gave Doom a popularity boost. As if it needed one, though: Doom is household name in any gaming corner. But consumers are more likely to buy video games now that they're working from home thanks to COVID-19 quarantines.

Some would argue Nintendo has already done enough for coronavirus relief by releasing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. But the Big N isn't done yet.

Nintendo of America is donating 9,500 N95 respirator masks to its local Eastside Fire & Rescue division to help protect responders against the growing coronavirus pandemic. North Bend, Washington's official community site reports Nintendo rep Jerry Danson initiated the donation. The company stockpiled a surplus of masks for its employees in case of a crisis, but now that everyone's working from home, the highly sought after masks are better used for health workers on the front lines.

Eastside Fire & Rescue plans to dole out the masks to the community as needed to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, including hospitals, doctor's offices, and more. Nintendo's generosity hasn't gone unnoticed and the community of North Bend is thankful for the billion-dollar games-maker's donation.

Since everyone is staying home due to the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, many forms of entertainment are seeing surges in popularity, and to no one's surprise, Facebook is one of those forms of entertainment.

Since millions of people around the world are being forced to stay home, Facebook is seeing millions of more people being active on its platform. In Italy, Facebook has said they have seen a 70% increase in traffic and a 50% increase in messaging. This increase in traffic is happening globally, and Facebook has now said that this new level of traffic is straining the companies resources.

VP of Analytics, Alex Schultz, and VP of Infrastructure, Jay Pareikh, wrote a joint statement, saying, "The usage growth from COVID-19 is unprecedented across the industry, and we are experiencing new records in usage almost every day. Maintaining stability throughout these spikes in usage is more challenging than usual now that most of our employees are working from home."

Pornhub has announced that they are encouraging social distancing between people, and through that social distancing, many people are deciding its better to just stay home. But what are they going to do while they are home?

Pornhub has an idea to encourage people to stay home, the adult content website has announced a special "stay home" landing page that allows all users to enjoy premium porn videos completely free for the next month. Corey Price, Vice President of Pornhub, said the following in a press release, "With nearly one billion people in lockdown across the world because of the coronavirus pandemic, it's important that we lend a hand and provide them with an enjoyable way to pass the time." The free service starts on March 24th.

He continued and said, "We hope by expanding our offer of free Pornhub Premium worldwide, people have an extra incentive to stay home and flatten the curve." Not only is Porhub giving out free premium porn to those who are staying at home, but they are also giving 100 percent of the video sales after the processing fee of 15 percent back to the performers. Pornhub is also donating large quantities of surgical masks to many different health officials.

Half-Life: Alyx is the most amazing gaming experience I've ever had, so expect a full review or a detailed article from me once I've finished the game. It is truly amazing, so it doesn't surprise me that it is breaking Steam records. Here is a Half-Life: Alyx Buyers Guide, where I recommend PC hardware and VR headsets to play the game.

Valve launched Half-Life: Alyx barely 24 hours ago on March 23, and it quickly broke the concurrent user record for a VR game on Steam. Half-Life: Alyx hit a peak concurrent player count of 42,858 -- absolutely smashing the record of Boneworks, with a peak of 8717 when it launches in late 2019.

Remember that Half-Life: Alyx is a VR exclusive title, so that is a really big deal -- 43,000 people playing at once, all wearing VR headsets for a game made in VR only. It also doesn't mean that VR users were able to enjoy the next chapter in the Half-Life saga, as there were a huge 300,000 people watching on Twitch at its peak.

We knew it was going to happen, but now the day is here -- the Toyko 2020 Olympics have been postponed, the first time an Olympics has been disrupted by a pandemic: coronavirus COVID-19.

The world is being rocked to its core over coronavirus COVID-19, and while International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Dick Pound said it would be making its final decision regarding the postponing of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics with the World Health Organization (WHO), the decision has been made: the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been officially postponed.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been postponed until summer 2021 at the very least, which is another big deal -- it is the first time in history that the Olympics have been delayed or postponed in peacetime. The last time this happened was during the world wars, a much more violent and tumultuous time.

It's very likely the next-gen Xbox Series X console could be delayed due to coronavirus' significant worldwide economic disruption. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella finally comments on the system's possible delay.

The games industry is booming right now thanks to stay-at-home COVID-19 quarantines. But gaming is far from safe. The virus is expected to force game delays as well as push back 2020's new console hardware generation, which depends on overseas Chinese factories and critical international shipping routes to function.

Will Microsoft delay the Xbox Series X? Maybe.

What if consoles could let you suspend and resume a custom save state? Sony's PlayStation 5 might actually revolutionize how save states are handled.

A recently published Sony patent could hint at a new era of save states, customization, and overall user control on the PlayStation 5. The new feature is kind of like the Xbox Series X's Quick Resume functionality with a twist: Instead of the OS automatically bookmarking the segment you last played, you can actually set the save states yourself.

The patent, which is titled Dynamic Interfaces For Launching Direct Gameplay, refers to the save states as "templates" and basically outlines a new kind of save that's not just limited to gameplay. Users can set the console to boot to a multiplayer menu, for example, or directly into the last-played game segment that's been marked. Imagine being able to boot up right into a boss fight without having to run through the entire level again, or get another try at a tough puzzle.