Latest News - Page 1655

Iron Man and The Avengers star Robert Downey Jr. has been spotted with the unreleased OnePlus 8 Pro smartphone, but there's something important to remember: he's a brand ambassador for OnePlus. Robert Downey Jr. was recently deepfaked into Back to the Future with fellow MCU actor and Spider-Man, Tom Holland.

The actor recently "spotted" in a photo on a photographer's Instagram account, with the new OnePlus 8 Pro smartphone in his hand. But then a Robert Downey Jr. fanpage account re-posted the photo, which shows off the new OnePlus 8 Pro that the actor "accidentally" (in reality: paid endorsement) of the new smartphone.

We're expecting the OnePlus 8 Pro smartphone to rock a 6.5-inch display with a super-slick 120Hz refresh rate, new Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, and 5G connectivity. The rear-facing camera system, now thanks to the photo from Iron Man, shows a quad camera setup. We're expecting a high-end main sensor, telephoto lens and ultra-wide lens that will be joined by a Time-of-Flight sensor.

Like its predecessor, Doom Eternal will come with a built-in FPS and CPU/GPU performance overlay that shows you real-time metrics.

Doom Eternal's new id Tech 7 engine offers tons of new improvements like enabling insane 1000FPS gameplay on PC, but some familiar features are coming back too. Today Doom engine lead Billy Khan confirmed Eternal will have an in-game FPS overlay that tracks and relays GPU usage, per-core CPU load, VRAM usage, and of course frame rates. We're not sure if Doom Eternal's overlay will be more robust than Doom 2016's, but it's likely. The original game was missing vital stats like GPU and CPU temps.

Khan suggests gamers use the built-in id Tech 7 overlay and warns gamers to disable any other FPS counters while running the native overlay. "The performance metrics are back. You can display FPS, CPU time, GPU time, and much more. For optimal performance, use the idTech7 metrics over external overlays. External overlays introduce bubbles, often decreasing performance slightly."

On the heels of recent Silent Hill news, an old rumor from January that Sony wants to buy some of Konami's biggest franchises has resurfaced. But Konami is very unlikely to sell.

Sources tell Rely On Horror that Sony is funding two new Silent Hill games: A Silent Hill reboot with original series devs at the helm, and a remake of Silent Hills with Hideo Kojima as director.

Now gamers are connecting an old 4Chan rumor (now deleted) that Sony wants to buy Castlevania, Silent Hill, and Metal Gear Solid from Konami. After all, the original post did predict two new Silent Hill games, leading to others like Dusk Golem to report the same.

As studios like Naughty Dog impose merciless crunch that's hospitalizing its developers, id Software didn't crunch while making Doom Eternal.

Doom Eternal's core development team--at least the higher-ups--didn't crunch long hours readying the game for release. At least that's what creative director Hugo Martin said in a recent podcast with Joe Rogan.

"It's not really crunch. It's like a lifestyle. I live and breathe this. No one makes me stay at the office, and even when I come home I see my kids, I do my thing, and then I just do research. It sounds ridiculous but my research is that of a 13 year old. I play video games and read comic books and engross myself in pop culture because essentially what we do is make pop culture content," Martin said.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is reportedly producing and funding two new Silent Hill exclusives for PlayStation: A Silent Hills remake with Kojima Productions at the helm, and a reboot of the classic original game.

Rather than spend big on new Silent Hill games, Konami will license the IP out to Sony, sources familiar with Konami's plans tell tell Rely On Horror. Sony has two projects in the works including a Silent Hill reboot and very tentative plans for resurrecting Silent Hills with original director Hideo Kojima at the helm. Silent Hills was originally cancelled in 2015 and Konami hasn't released a big-budget game in its original IPs since then.

The sources say original Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama will lead the reboot, alongside other series vets like creative designer Masahiro Ito, and Akira Yamaoka, who composed Silent Hill's soundtracks. Back in January, Ito confirmed he's currently working on a new project.

Rockstar Games is the latest AAA games dev to mandate employees work from home due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

The offices of all of Rockstar's eight international game dev studios from Rockstar North to Rockstar Bangalore are now on lockdown. The billion-dollar games-maker has enacted remote work policies to safeguard against COVID-19. The studio has actually created robust tools and hardware to ensure game devs can continue their work without disruption--which is critical considering Grand Theft Auto VI is on the horizon. Rockstar titles get delayed enough as it is.

"In the interest of reducing the possible impact of COVID-19, Rockstar Games has implemented work from home policies across our international offices and studios. After significant research and consultation with our teams around the work, we began rolling out remote work solutions worldwide across the past week, and we are confident we have a robust system in place for our teams to continue their work with a minimum disruption," Rockstar said in a statement on Twitter.

When CD Projekt Red released The Witcher 3 back in 2015, gamers were stunned at just how gorgeous the game was, and you'd probably think that after five years it wouldn't give that same 'wow' reaction. Well, take a look at this...

Above is a video released onto the Halk Hogan YouTube Channel that reveals a gorgeous new mod for The Witcher 3. It completely overhauls all of the current textures The Witcher 3 has and adds in some gorgeous new ones. The mod is called 'The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project,' and the mod offers high-quality 4K resolution textures that unlock more sharpness and overall increase object detail.

So what does the mod actually rework? Basically, everything. Terrain, rocks, water, vegetation, NPC's, animals, and much more. In the above video, you can see a side-by-side comparison of The Witcher 3's stock graphics versus the mod. If you are interested in trying this mod out for yourself, head on over to the official website and download it here. In other Witcher news, CD Projekt Red will be working on a new Witcher title after they complete Cyberpunk 2077, more on that here.

The world is being shutdown over COVID-19 coronavirus, and even the greatest detective ever isn't unaffected -- production on The Batman has been halted.

Warner Bros. announced the news that production on The Batman will go on 'hiatus' effective immediately, with the studio telling Deadline: "Warner Bros. Pictures feature production of The Batman will be on a two-week hiatus starting today. The studio will continue to monitor the situation closely".

Matt Reeves along with Batman himself in this new outing in the franchise in Robert Pattinson had been shooting in London, but was expected to see production shift locations to Liverpool. No one from the cast or crew of The Batman has been diagnosed with COVID-19.

It was recently confirmed that Sony would be bringing one of its best PlayStation-exclusive titles over to PC -- Guerrilla Games' Horizon Zero Dawn.

While PC fans rejoiced at the news of a one PlayStation exclusive title coming over to PC, some PC gamers were wondering what kind of support the port would be arriving with. On the Horizon Zero Dawn Steam Community Forums, a representative for the development team confirmed that the game would be arriving with ultrawide support.

At the same time, as confirming that Horizon Zero Dawn will be coming to PC with ultrawide support, the representative also confirmed that there would be Steam Achievements. The representative also teased that more details about more features will be coming soon. At the moment, the PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn is planned for release sometime in the Summer of 2020. If you want to check out the Steam listing, a link can be found here.

The Xbox Series X's new proprietary SSD was custom-built by Microsoft for fast loading times, intuitive functionality like expanded Quick Resume, and a virtual RAM memory cache for developers.

Microsoft has confirmed our suspicions: The Xbox Series X will use a customized solid state drive tailor-made for the console. The next-gen Xbox's SSD is specifically designed to massively boost in-game load times and asset fetching speeds first and foremost, but it has some unique memory capabilities that enable new expansive features. Thanks to the new SSD, Quick Resume on the Xbox Series X will let you keep save states for multiple games at once. These save states also survive a hard system reboot.

In a recent Major Nelson podcast, Xbox director of program management Jason Ronald confirmed the next-gen Xbox will indeed use specially-made storage.

As the coronavirus rampantly spreads across the globe, whole countries are hitting the pause button on everyday life. People are staying indoors, working from home, and distancing themselves from others. And they're playing video games. Lots and lots of video games.

According to Steam DB's metrics, Counter-Strike: GO just broke over 1 million concurrent users in the last 24 hours. CS:GO is now the third Steam game to break 1 million players online at once, topped by DOTA 2's 1.2 million and PUBG's titanic 3.2 million. At the time of writing, CS:GO has over 930,000 active players. To put this number into perspective, roughly 1/9th or 11% of Steam's 90 million MAUs are playing Counter-Strike right now.

Valve might owe a lot of those numbers to the coronavirus outbreak as gamers and consumers stick indoors, especially in overseas regions like China and Italy, both of which have instituted mass shutdowns of businesses, gatherings, and social events.

Activision may release a remastered Tony Hawk Pro Skater game later this year on all platforms.

According to a fresh leak, a new Tony Hawk games is coming in 2020. Art punk band The Death Set, who's providing songs for the new Tony Hawk Pro Skater's soundtrack, accidentally outed the game in a now-deleted Facebook post. But not before someone captured a screenshot.

It's very likely the new game will be a remaster or even a reboot for the franchise. Activision recently teased a bunch of new remasters and re-releases for 2020, and after the disastrous performance of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5, the publisher may not jump right into another sequel.

The legendary former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime just joined Gamestop's board of directors, prompting lots of industry fanfare. The general consensus is Reggie will save Gamestop from its careening trajectory towards financial ruin. Sadly, he won't have a direct impact on the business.

Reggie Fils-Aime won't really save Gamestop. That's not saying he can't, because he probably could. With 13 years at Nintendo, Reggie knows the industry inside and out. He could help Gamestop shift towards a digital model. Just look at Nintendo's digital presence, which has made 124 billion yen from digital so far this year.

The truth is Reggie just isn't in the capacity to save Gamestop. He won't have that kind of clout. But he'll certainly influence GameStop's management.

The Xbox Series X's beefy 8-core, 16-thread Zen 2 CPU will enable it to hit 4K 60FPS in bigger AAA games, says 3D Realms co-founder Frederik Schreiber says.

Next-gen consoles like the Xbox Series X is set to transform the games market, complete with enthusiast-grade hardware powered by AMD's ultra-synergized new 7nm SoCs. The console's 12TFLOP Navi 2X GPU will enable 8K gaming, hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, and insane graphics with its RDNA 2 architecture, complete with a custom-designed Zen 2 CPU to enable high FPS. Finally we have both a console GPU and CPU that've been built from the ground up to complement each other. When the two are paired together, magic like 1080p 120FPS, 4K 60FPS, and high-perf 1440p gaming is made possible.

But the question remains: Will the Xbox Series X really be able to hit 4K 60FPS in most games? Maybe, with some trade-offs like dynamic resolution scaling. The potential to hit that kind of perf is available now more than ever, at least that's what 3D Realms says.

Call of Duty: Warzone keeps breaking player records, amassing an insane 15 million players in just three days time.

Call of Duty's new free-to-play Warzone battle royale is growing faster than Apex Legends and Fortnite. Thanks to a tremendous signal boost from streaming titans like Ninja and Dr. Disrespect, the 150-player BR has attracted 15 million players in 3 days. The BR was at 6 million downloads in its first day. Warzone has now grown by an incredible 9 million players sequentially in just two days.

To put those numbers into perspective, Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad delivered some quick figures. Warzone is beating other free-to-play battle royale games in comparative timelines: Apex hit 10 million in three days, compared to Warzone's 15 million in three days. At its current rate, the Call of Duty BR is accelerating 50% faster than Apex Legends.

AMC is the largest movie theater chain in the United States, and has just announced plans it is pushing forward with social distancing plans -- cutting down theater attendance by 50% to reduce the chance of COVID-19 coronavirus spread.

The company will now only sell half the tickets per theater that it does now, with any theater that can seat over 500 people to be capped at 250. AMC will also be complying with local and federal restrictions on large social gatherings, where it will be limiting ticket availability and screenings in some of its auditoriums, too.

AMC Theaters boss Adam Aron, said in a statement: "The health and safety of our guests and theatre teams are of the utmost importance to AMC. Therefore, AMC is proactively taking action to cut in half the number of tickets that we will make available at all our US theatres. With this action, who still want to see movies on a big screen".

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) was postponed over COVID-19 coronavirus fears, but the show will live on through streamed conferences that be blasted onto Twitch.

GDC 2020 organizers Informa Tech announced on the official Game Developers Conference website that they will be streaming conferences directly on Twitch, replacing the physical live sessions that were planned (as they are every year).

During the 5-day GDC 2020 week, the official GDC Twitch channel will be streaming the planned conferences between 9AM and 5PM PST.

Blade Runner was a classic game on the PC when it was released back in 1997, requiring some nightmare specs at the time -- and now we can expect a remastered edition.

The developers at Nightdive Studios have been busy with making classic games like System Shock and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter in remastered goodness, and now it is time for Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition. Nightdive has teamed with film company Alcon Entertainment for the remaster.

Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition will be powered by the KEX Engine, with Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick explaining that the graphics engine will help "elevate the gaming experience in a way you've never seen before" while keeping the work that Westwood Studios did with Blade Runner in terms of their vision and gameplay.

If you want to use the power inside of your GPU and CPU at home to help researchers find a cure for COVID-19 / coronavirus, then Folding@Home is where you'll want to go.

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project spearheaded by Stanford University, and has been around for what feels like forever. Instead of a single gigantic supercomputer, the premise of Folding@Home will use regular computers owned by regular people, building the computing power up into a single, much more powerful force -- towards a single effort, which in this case is coronavirus.

Your unused computational resources from your CPU and graphics card/s can be used to help researchers that are working on understanding the structures of potential drug targets for 2019-nCoV (COVID-19 / coronavirus) that will help "aid in the design of new therapies".

Bill Gates has just announced he is stepping down from the board of directors at Microsoft, with co-founder and ex-CEO of the company pushing more into his philanthropic efforts.

Back in 2008, Gates walked away from his full-time position at Microsoft in order to pursue his philanthropy wishes, but has now stepped down from the board of directors in a similar way. In a press release over the news, it stated Gates will "dedicate more time to his philanthropic efforts".

Bill Gates will stay on with Microsoft as a "technology advisor" to the current CEO, Satya Nadella.