Latest News - Page 1657

When the Nintendo Switch launched, fans were upset to know that the charging dock didn't include built-in GameCube controller ports, but there's now a simple mod fix for that.

Reddit user i_AM_hank took it upon himself to solve this issue and judging by the photos and Hank's comments, it certainly seems he has found a reliable fix. Hank decided to mod his Nintendo Switch dock with the external GameCube controller adapter. More specifically, the GameCube controller adapter is a third-party product from Mayflash, and according to Hank "turned out to be a good choice because the controller ports are on a board separate from the main circuitry which ultimately allowed it to slip between the inner and outer casing of the dock".

This mod would be particularly useful for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate players who would like not to have to carry around an external GameCube adapter. While the process to get the adapter integrated with the Switch dock seems a little difficult, there's a step-by-step guide that can be followed for anyone who is game enough to give it a go. I wish Nintendo included the GameCube controller adapter with the Switch dock. It would have saved a lot of players some considerable transportation trouble.

If you didn't know, The Witcher will be getting a prequel film, but it won't be live-action it will be animated. Now, the writer behind the film has dropped some teasers about what we can expect.

The animated prequel is called 'Nightmare of the Wolf', and will hone in on the events of Geralt becoming a Witcher and his relationship with Vesemir. The writer for the prequel, Beau DeMayo, spoke to ComicBook and dropped some major teasers regarding the film's production. According to DeMayo, the prequel film will feature a story in The Witcher universe that just couldn't be told if the producers decided to go down the live-action path, instead of animation.

Here's what DeMayo said, "There's a grace and an art form to animation, and especially anime, that allows a different flavor. So I think from Lauren and I's perspective when we came at it, was what is the type of story we can tell? Which, I can't tell you the story, but what is the type of story that we could tell that we could never tell in our live-action scope?"

You can't escape hearing or seeing news and videos about COVID-19 / coronavirus, so why not track it using available data inside of a web browser?

John Hopkins University have created an interactive web-based dashboard that secures data from the WHO, CDC, and China CDC in order to "visualize and track the reported cases on a daily timescale". John Hopkins University staff explain that the purpose of the coronavirus tracker is to "provide the public with an understanding of the outbreak situation as it unfolds, with transparent data sources".

You can visit the website right here, with some really interesting data on coronavirus cases around the world. At the time of writing there were over 126,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4630 deaths worldwide. The countries with the most confirmed cases of the disease are China with over 80,000 confirmed cases, and Italy with over 12,000.

Halo: Infinite is currently in development for the next-gen Microsoft Xbox Series X console, and while mere mortals like us haven't played it -- some of those in the industry have been lucky enough to play it, and now we have an early report on it.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker's Creative Director at Owlcat Games, Alexander Mishulin, was interviewed by Wccftech at PAX East 2020 and had some interesting things to say. He was asked about what his thoughts were about Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X consoles were.

Mishulin talked about seeing Halo: Infinite on the Xbox Series X and said: "I would definitely get those. I set aside a hefty sum of money for that. I really like the fast loading times. For example, I played Marvel's Spider-Man, it's a great game, but eventually when hopping between the regions, I was getting tired of [riding] the metro. I don't expect a great difference in terms of graphics because when Microsoft was presenting the newest Xbox and new Halo, I actually caught myself thinking that I personally don't see a difference now. For our artists, there is a great difference, but not for me".

NVIDIA's next-generation Ampere GPU architecture should be announced in the coming months, and was meant to be unveiled at its GPU Technology Conference -- which was made all-digital, then canceled altogether.

But now, we have a juicy new rumor on Ampere and some delicious specs to salivate over. NVIDIA is reportedly using TSMC's fresh 7nm node for its HPC (High Performance Computing) products (think Tesla GPUs) while the GA10x GPUs will be made on Samsung's new 10nm node.

KittyCorgi on Twitter has tweeted that there will be 5 different Ampere GPUs on offer, with the GA102 sitting at the top of the heap -- the GA102 will succeed the Turing-based GA102 GPU that powers the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and TITAN RTX. Following that is the GA103 (which doesn't succeed any Turing GPU), then GA104, and then GA106 and GA107.

CD Projekt RED plans to work on a new Witcher game after Cyberpunk 2077 ships this year.

It turns out CDPR has been working on a new Witcher game all along, and once Cyberpunk 2077 is released, the company will shift towards full production on the next game in the gritty medieval series. We should also expect it to be fully optimized for next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

"We have already been working on another single player game, we have created a relatively clear concept that is waiting for further development," CD Projekt Group President Adam Kicinski said in a recent press event in Poland.

Activision hires ex-Google sales whiz Daniel Alegre as its new president and chief operating officer, the company today announced.

Activision is shaking up its senior leadership. The company just made a very interesting hire with Daniel Alegre, a former Google executive with strong background in ecommerce and sales. Coincidentally, Activision just signed a huge multi-year deal with Google to use its servers to host its online games. Alegre is basically second in command and will report directly to Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. The way Kotick talks about Alegre gives lots of clues in what we should expect from the new president's leadership:

"I was deeply impressed by Daniel's entrepreneurial drive and broad and deep experience in driving global growth across a variety of businesses in a rapidly changing industry," Kotick said.

Doom Eternal's new id Tech 7 engine allows for insane 1000FPS performance on PCs, but it'll also provide smooth high-FPS gaming on consoles too.

id recently confirmed Doom Eternal's perf targets on current-gen consoles. Doom Slayer's new bloodthirsty shooter will hit a consistent 60FPS on all platforms (even the 2013 launch console models), but it'll predictably run best on PlayStation 4 and Xbox Series X. Doom Eternal won't hit native 4K on either system, though, which is to be expected given the insane GPU power needed to pull that off in a high-octane FPS.

On Xbox Series X, Doom Eternal will upscale 1800p 60FPS to 4K on UHDTVs, and also supports HDR to boot. On the PS4 Pro, the game upsamples from 1440p 60FPS to 2160p. Oddly enough the game won't hit native 1080p 60FPS on the Xbox One S, and instead upscales to 1080p from native 900p resolution. id basically dropped the resolution roughly 17% to keep the frame rate locked at 60FPS.

Want to transform into a demon-smashing brute with insane 22-inch biceps? Introducing Spicy Doom'ade, the new G Fuel energy drink that inspires you raze hell.

Doom Eternal is so hardcore that it apparently has its own official energy supplement. Today the gaming-oriented G Fuel line announced Spicy Doom'ade BFG Edition, a drink mix with an insane 300mg of caffeine per serving.

It gets even more extreme though: The Doom Slayer's personal energy drink adds in some lava-hot cayenne pepper to the mix. Yes, this is a real thing. Doom'ade isn't pre-workout, but it'll definitely give you a nice jolt to keep you focused in whatever you're doing, whether it's pumping iron or pumping enemies full of shotgun shells.

E3 2020 has been cancelled, but Microsoft will continue as planned with a digital showcase. Expect big next-gen Xbox Series X hardware announcements and demos, as well as a bunch of exciting game reveals.

Xbox's Phil Spencer today confirmed Microsoft will still hold an E3 press conference as a digital stream. "E3 has always been an important moment for Team Xbox. Given this decision, this year we'll celebrate the next generation of gaming with the Xbox community and all who love to play via an Xbox digital event. Details on timing and more in the coming weeks."

Like many publishers and games-makers, Microsoft is planning big things for E3 2020. All eyes will be on the Xbox Series X during these streams, and the next-gen system will be the star of the show.

E3 2020 has been cancelled due to coronavirus health concerns. Big publishers like Ubisoft now plan to hold their own digital online streams instead.

Ubisoft's E3 2020 stage show would've been tremendously exciting. Sources say that Ubisoft plans to release three big heavy-hitters as part of this year's slate: A new Far Cry game, the Viking-themed Assassin's Creed codenamed Kingdom, and the ambitious Watch Dogs Legion. Based on Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot's enthusiasm for next-gen consoles, all of these games should be optimized for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. And both Assassin's Creed and Far Cry would've likely been revealed at the show.

Ubisoft is now pivoting towards a digital venue rather than an on-stage event, but the reveals should be just as tantalizing.

E3 2020 has been cancelled and will not proceed as planned in June, the ESA today confirmed.

For the first time in decades, gaming's popular annual trade show isn't happening. E3 2020 has been shuttered due to the looming threat of coronavirus contagion, and publishers are pivoting towards digital Nintendo Direct-style streams to show off their games.

The ESA plans to fully refund all tickets and is reaching out to exhibitors. Luckily the ESA is exploring options for a digital showcase of sorts.

HBO Max has a new show in the works and this time around, its going to be focused around the actor Mark Wahlberg and his life.

Variety has reported that HBO Max has ordered an eight-episode series, which is titled "Wahl Street" and will follow Wahlberg and his life as an actor and a businessman. According to the shows official description, "viewers will learn about his successes and failures and glean powerful business and life lessons while also getting to know the cast of colorful characters that make up Wahlberg's real-life entourage."

While the show will be focused around the life of Mark Wahlberg, every episode will feature entrepreneurs pitching business ideas to Wahlberg. Wahlberg also commented on the new show, saying "We're documenting the ups, the downs, the hits, and the misses. It's all the real stuff that's happening while I'm growing my businesses. We're pulling back the curtain, and hopefully, it's an opportunity to inspire other entrepreneurs."

One of the biggest cybercrime bot networks has been attacked by Microsoft and its partners and is now facing massive disruption in its day-to-day activities.

According to Microsoft's blog post, just yesterday, Microsoft and its partners from 35 countries conducted a coordinated legal and technical attack on one of the world's most prolific botnets called Necurs. Necurs is reported to have infected over 9 million computers around the world, and the disruption that Microsoft and its partners have been coordinated has taken eight years of researching, tracking, and planning.

Microsoft explains that a botnet is a network of computers that are designed to infect computer users around the globe with malicious software or malware. Once those computers are infected, the cybercriminals control those computers remotely from a secure location and use them to commit crimes. Necurs botnet is one of the largest networks in the spam email threat ecosystem, and Microsoft says that "we observed that one Necurs-infected computer sent a total of 3.8 million spam emails to over 40.6 million potential victims."

Google's Chromecast Ultra is already a fantastic device to have from the living room TV, but what would be the next-generation of Chromecast, and why would you buy it?

According to a reliable source close to 9to5google, Google's next-generation of Chromecast Ultra will be coming with an additional physical remote. This remote will be extremely similar to Apple TV's remote and will feature a microphone and a dedicated Google Assistant button for curating content via the users' voice. 9to5google also reports that the source said to them that the remote would be programmable to users' TV as well.

The new Chromecast Ultra is expected to come with 4K HDR support, as well as give users access to in-built apps such as YouTube TV, Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and more. Visually, Google's new device will look a lot like the third-generation Chromecast but with some minor tweaks such as softer and rounder finish. At the moment, there is no pricing or release date mentioned, but it can be assumed that Google was planning on revealing the device at their I/O event that was recently cancelled over the coronavirus.

Electric vehicles are becoming all the craze right now, but some long-term car enthusiasts don't want to make the jump because they will loose out on that precious engine rumble that they love so much.

While electric vehicles do have the more modern technology, they don't quite have that satisfying engine sound that a V12 or a V10 has when you press down hard on the accelerator. That sound is what keeps a lot of car enthusiasts using traditional motors, but what if that sound could be added to an electric vehicle? Would that be enough for some people to make the jump to EV's?

U.K based Milltek Sport, a company who is known for its work on high-end exhausts is taking that chance, and might even have the solution that everyone is after. Milltek has created a new system that mimics the sound of an internal-combustion engine both inside and outside the car. The sound that is emitted is so well done that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if you were blind tested. In the above video the new system is demonstrated on a Tesla Model 3 Performance, and judging by what is heard in the video and the hosts reaction, it sounds fantastic.

SpaceX's venture to connect everyone around the world to the internet is slowly being achieved, but once the project is complete, what kind of specifications will adopters be using?

During a conference a few days ago, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk sat down to reveal some details about the ambitious 'Starlink' project. According to the CEO, Starlink should provide users with a latency of about 20ms, which is enough for "fast-response" gaming at a competitive level. Obviously, some competitive gamers could argue that 20ms is still too high for competitive gaming, but Starlink isn't aimed at already established competitive gamers, its aimed at people who are yet to connect to the internet.

Musk didn't touch on what kind of bandwidth Starlink would provide, but he did say that Starlink adopters would be able to watch "high-def movies", play games and do "all the things" you would want to do without noticing a delay. This would mean that Starlink would be more than suitable for the average internet user, and definitely more than suitable for someone who has yet to experience a ridiculously fast connection.

Following up on yesterday's post regarding the announcement of Command & Conquer, EA, the publisher behind the title, has revealed the games release date.

According to the above video, which was released onto the Electronic Arts YouTube Channel, the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection will be arriving on Steam and Origin on June 5th of this year. The collection will feature the following games; Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, and their three expansion packs - Covert Ops, Counterstrike and The Aftermath.

The remastered collection will feature a boost in graphics all the way up to 4K, as well as audio upgrades, tweaked user interfaces, and a full multiplayer rework. The multiplayer rework will come with one-on-one quick matches, elo-based matchmaking, leaderboards, and replays so players can take another look at the havoc they have caused other players. The original Command & Conquer's soundtrack composer has also returned to work on the remastered collections audio, which is a massive bonus for those hardcore Command & Conquer fans out there.

Google and a Dutch startup company called Envision have teamed up together to create a new pair of smart glasses that have the potential of making many people's lives a lot easier.

These new glasses are called the Envision glasses, and they are powered by artificial intelligence that has the capabilities of reading out loud what the user is looking at in the environment. The glasses are aimed at making blind people, and the lives of visually-impaired much easier, and they can do this by extracting large quantities of visual information and describing it back to the user. Examples of this include reading a recipe from a cookbook, analyzing friends, and describing immediate surroundings such as hazards.

Envision claims that the glasses have the fastest and most accurate optical character recognition technology available at the moment, and that the glasses are capable of reading any text from more than 60 different languages from any surface. In a way, if blind people or the visually-impaired are having the world described to them in real-time, then they are 'seeing', but just not with their eyes. Instead, they are using pieces of information to accurately organize their imagination together of what the world would look like if they could see. While it might not be the same as seeing with eyeballs, it is certainly a start.

Apple has already asked its Silicon Valley based staff to work from home over coronavirus / COVID-19, but now the company has reportedly delayed an event over the outbreak.

Cult of Mac is reporting that a source of theirs at Apple has said that the iPhone giant has postponed an event that would've introduced a new, cheaper iPhone (a successor to the iPhone SE) and iPad Pro with a triple-lens camera rig, has been postponed. The company became "concerned" about people gathering at Apple Park in late-March, so they postponed the event.

Not only that, but the Santa Clara County (which is where Apple Park is located in Cupertino) has banned all gatherings of over 1000 people. The ban will be running between March 11 and April 1, so even if Apple wanted to host the event -- they can't. As for the event itself being canceled, Apple will probably announce the products through a regular press release versus an event where people could get coronavirus -- or spread it.