Latest News - Page 1661

Covidsafe has now launched Down Under, with the Australian government unleashing its coronavirus tracking app -- which is powered by Bluetooth, and millions of Australians who will download it.

How does it work? Covidsafe is an app that you can download from the Australian Apple App store and Google Play store, and once installed it'll use Bluetooth to record anyone else (that has the Covidsafe app installed) that gets too close to you. Covidsafe will be scanning Australians that are within 1.5 meters (5 feet) of you, for 15 minutes or more.

Covidsafe will transfer anonymized IDs between Australians' phones over Bluetooth, gets cycled every 2 hours, and then the government promises that the data is encrypted on your phone and deleted after 21 days.

I don't know how the developers and staffers at Naughty Dog feel right now, but it wouldn't be good -- news is breaking over the weekend that the entire story for The Last of Us Part 2 have leaked online.

A video was posted up on YouTube which Sony must've orders its lawyers to have removed, but then the internet did what it does best -- spread The Last of Us Part 2's entire story. If you do not want any spoilers to The Last of Us Part 2 then I would suggest not continuing to read this news.

I'm not going to write about or quote the leaks to The Last of Us Part 2 so that I'm not responsible for spoiling what should've been one of the best games ever made.

The first ever geologic map of the Moon's surface has just been released, showcasing what kind of structures are on the Moon's surface.

United States Geological Survey (USGS) in partnership with NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute have posted the first detailed map of what the Moon's surface looks like from a geological standpoint. The map is was created using data from satellites such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Japan's SELENE as well as some Apollo-era maps.

The idea behind this map is double headed. Firstly, it can definitely influence future Moon missions as scientists and the astronauts will have a much more thought out and accurate representation of the Moon. Secondly, releasing the geologic map to the public will allow for scientists and the general public around the world to further study the surface of the Moon.

The Avengers: Endgame was met with some extreme popularity, but how extreme exactly? Well, it had enough backing that the movie is now the most commercially profitable movie in history.

According to a new report by Deadline, Endgame made a whopping $2.79 billion at the global box office, with $890 million of that being in profit, setting the new record for any future movie that will try and beat it. The report also states that Endgame cost $356 million to produce, additionally $175 million went towards paying the cast and staff, and $155 million went towards marketing the movie on the global stage.

In total, Endgame cost $899 million to produce, which includes all of the costs such as staff/actor payments, marketing, budget, and any other hidden costs. In just the first weekend of release, Avengers: Endgame made $1.2 billion at the worldwide box office, which covered all of the costs and even left a surplus of money.

We know that the next-gen consoles will handle 60FPS with ease, as well as finally delivering console gamers native resolutions like 4K (but with fluid 60FPS frame rates) -- but what about 21:9 aspect ratio UltraWide support?

It seems they will have these features, as Philips have just unveiled their new 345M1CR Momentum, a new 34-inch UltraWide gaming monitor made not for PCs... but for consoles. The new monitor supports up to 3440 x 1440 at 144Hz, with a 4ms response (1ms with Philips' motion blur reduction mode).

Philips is asking gamers to buy their new monitor, so that they can "take your console gaming experience to a new level".

There are many reasons why I love the internet and Reddit, but gamers in particular -- like 'Ninjakilla_X' on Reddit, who chopped the additional game footage from CD Projekt RED's Q&A video on Cyberpunk 2077, are the real heroes. Check it out here.

The video shows much more of the Cyberpunk 2077 world which is dripping in atmosphere, and it isn't centered around shooting and killing -- it is walking around and experiencing the world, interacting with characters towards the end. I think I prefer some of this world-exploring side of Cyberpunk 2077 as much as the action, the world feels so... cyberpunk.

Hell, the top comment on the video from 'Cloudless_Sky' says: "I'm gonna be spending so much time just walking around and looking at things". Cloudless_Sky, whoever you are -- I totally agree. Walking around in this game is going to be absolutely epic in its own right. I want to set up my entire gaming setup for Cyberpunk 2077 when it comes out and just go in for a few weeks or months and experience it in all its glory.

In news that began spreading nearly 3 weeks ago now, it has been confirmed that hospitals are indeed getting paid more if they list patients with COVID-19... and up to 3x that amount if the patient is placed on a ventilator.

The news was reported by The Spectator on April 9, and "fact checked" by USA Today on April 26 -- where it was said that hospitals are being paid a lump sum payment of $5000 if they have a patient with COVID-19. If the patient has COVID-19 pneumonia then the payment increases to $13,000 --- but if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient gets put on a ventilator, that payment skyrockets to $39,000.

Senator Scott Jensen, R-Minn, who is a physician in Minnesota, was interviewed by The Ingraham Angle by host Laura Ingraham on April 8 on Fox News. He claimed that hospitals were being paid if they listed patients with COVID-19, where he said:

Epic Games has broken yet another record in Fortnite, with its recent in-game Travis Scott event seeing a gigantic 12.3 million concurrent players joining in for the insanely huge event.

The developer took to Twitter (above) to boast about the 12.3 million concurrent players in the Travis Scott event, which was an insane event in its own right. You can read more about that here. There were crazy lightning storms, dancers on fire, gravity flips, and a journey through space. Yeah, all in Fortnite, and all for a Travis Scott in-game concert. Awesome stuff.

The last time Epic Games reached a huge record was with 10.7 million players tuning into Marshmello's in-game concert. That was back in early 2019, but now Travis Scott appears and breaks the record in April 2020 with 12.3 million concurrent users -- no stadium in the world can host 12.3 million people at once so this is pretty damn insane when you sit down and think about it.

Epic Games has announced its huge new FNCS Invitational for Fortnite, throwing a huge $2 million of prize money into the mix.

The new FNCS Invitational will happen across 3 weekends starting on Saturday, May 9 -- with Epic inviting "the best of the best" in each region. This includes:

Epic Games will be kicking off the Open Qualifier for Champion ranked players on May 2, with 100 players in each region capable of earning an invite to the huge FNCS Invitational. This will give you the chance to play against "some of the biggest names in Competitive Fortnite" and more excitedly, possibly win a share in the $2 million prize pool.

If the reality of our world with COVID-19 coronavirus wrecking havoc left, right and center wasn't bad enough -- GTA Online is now art imitating life with its new missions.

A new update for GTA Online adds a bunch of new missions with one of them focusing on Gerald, a character that has received a myriad of missions over the years -- but his latest one involves him preparing for a recession. As the player, you will need to prepare for a recession which Gerald fears will destroy the criminal ecosystem.

Gerald needs to prepare for the worst, so you'll need to line up a bunch of drug deals and make a bunch of green with your green, before things go into the red. Rockstar Games most likely made these missions months ago, so there are (unfortunately) no jokes about toilet paper, cleaning stuff, or COVID-19 coronavirus.

One of the best-looking games on the horizon would have to be Microsoft's upcoming Flight Simulator, which has been shown off in some utterly gorgeous new screenshots. Check them out:

Microsoft is really showing the world what Flight Simulator can do when it can flex its graphical muscles, with some beautiful bokeh depth of field effects, gorgeous volumetric clouds and huge (real) worlds on display and running in real-time.

Seriously, how good does this game look?

NVIDIA has pushed out its new GeForce hot fix drivers in the form of the new 445.98 drivers, which fix up some of the issues that weer in the GeForce 445.87 Game Ready drivers.

Those drivers were released with optimizations and support for games like Minecraft RTX beta, Saints Row: The Third Remastered, Snowrunner, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered. The new drivers fix up problems with the shadow cache that was being purged incorrectly, brightness problems with HDR-enabled games, and more.

Overwatch fans might enjoy some more "improved game stability", while F1 2019 gets an issue with randomly crashing to the desktop with the new drivers.

If you missed the epic Travis Scott concert in Fortnite, check it out in its game-changing glory below. If you didn't know about it, well you should read on.

Epic Games isn't a stranger to having in-game concerts in Fortnite, but yesterday there 100s of thousands of people attending a virtual in-game Travis Scott concert in Fortnite. The one-time event was played inside of Fortnite, with Travis Scott's awesome 'Astronomical' concert available to gamers in Unreal Engine.

Scott dropped a brand new track as well as playing some of his biggest hits, with a bunch of insane explosions and shenanigans taking place during his Astronomical concert. Epic only had a few times that the Astronomical concert with Travis Scott actually take place, so if you missed out you'll have to keep an eye out for the next one if you want some of that exclusive loot.

If you are a steamer, or are interested in streaming, then you have most likely heard about a dual PC setup. But have you ever seen a dual PC setup as crazy as this one?

Introducing ORTHRUS, a custom water-cooled dual-system PC that is rocking most of the best hardware you can get right now. This build was done by Harris Heller, a well-known Twitch streamer and a full-time content creator on YouTube and other platforms. Harris decided to take his original dual system streaming set up and jam all that delicious hardware into one convenient case.

So what kind of hardware are we looking at here? First off, the case is the Phanteks Enthoo 719. Inside of that case is two motherboards, a full-size ATX for the streaming PC, and a mini ATX for the gaming PC. The streaming PC is running a Ryzen 7 3800X with an RTX 2080 SUPER, and the gaming PC is running an Intel i9 9900K with an RTX 2080Ti. Water-cooling wise, Harris decided to go with EK Water Blocks for water blocks and NZXT for the AIO coolers. If you are interested in more about how Harris built this PC, check out the above video and his channel.

Hello Games teases more sizable No Man's Sky expansions for 2020, and might be working on another game set in the signature IP.

No Man's Sky has evolved tremendously since 2016. It now has VR support, active online multiplayer, freighters, an actual campaign with objectives, base building, and even exosuits. So what's next? No one knows for sure, but Hello Games is far from done with its sci-fi universe. Big things are coming in 2020, possibly even a brand new major expansion like Beyond or NEXT.

"In addition to these content updates, we are working up some more ambitious additions to the universe, and have so much more planned for 2020 for us to feel excited about," Hello Games' Sean Murray said in a recent blog post.

Thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment, we have ten Blu-ray copies of the new release action blockbuster 'Bad Boys for Life' to give away to our readers.

The original Bad Boys, Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence), are back. After a string of assassinations and an attempt on Mike's life, he convinces a hesitant Marcus to hold off retirement and partner one last time. Together, they team up with AMMO the new hotshot division of the Miami PD, to take down the merciless head of the Aretas Cartel.

To go into the running to win a prize, post this article to your social media profiles, send your postal address to ben at TweakTown dot com and correctly answer the following question before the competition closes on 1 May.

Zenimax recruits seasoned game dev Colin Cambpell (Mass Effect, Jedi: Fallen Order) to help with its big new AAA game.

The Elder Scrolls Online developers at Zenimax Online are making a brand new AAA IP, and based on an old job listing from October 2018, it's likely an MMORPG. Official details are scarce and Zenimax has mostly been tight-lipped on its new game plans, but we can glean the scope of the project based around the talent involved.

Case in point: the games-maker just recruited Colin Campbell as a level designer for its new AAA team. Campbell has quite the CV, and has a ton of projects under his belt. He worked as producer on Jedi: Fallen Order at Respawn, was the lead narrative designer of Battlefront II's singleplayer campaign, and served four years at BioWare designing levels for the Mass Effect series. Now he's working on Zenimax's unannounced game.

The huge Nintendo account hacking spree is much worse than we thought: Nintendo now confirms up to 160,000 users accounts may have been compromised.

Earlier this month, Nintendo confirmed user accounts were getting hacked left and right, leading to credit card fraud and access to sensitive data. Now the games-maker says as many as 160,000 users could've been hijacked across the globe. Hackers were able to glean sensitive data from users like name, date of birth, gender, country / region, and email address.

Nintendo has turned off legacy Nintendo Network ID sign-ins to help curb the infiltrations, and also manually reset passwords. The company advises consumers to use two-factor authentication to protect their data.

What would Ocarina of Time look like completely remade in a modern games engine? Skilled developer CryZENx and his team delivers an answer with their eye-opening project.

Ocarina of Time has been reborn in Unreal Engine 4 as an enchanting high-FPS experience. There's higher-end PC effects that mesh perfectly with the old-school polygonal style; Link is rendered in perfect detail, grass sways in the wind, real-time weather effects illuminate the world, light catches in the fog, mist rises from crashing waterfalls, etc. But some of the inside environments have that old-school look and feel. The result is a perfect blend of nostalgia and modern gaming that makes you hope Nintendo is paying attention and remaking OoT.

The fan project was made by CryZENx in tandem with a 10-person team of devs, programmers, and 3D artists of incredible talent. The footage above is from the sixth major update to the project, and the remake is still in development and isn't 100% finished...but it looks damn good for something that might have a ways to go. There's even a little nod to Etika at the 49 minute mark.

DICE is just about finished with Battlefield V, which suits fans just fine--a lot of them have moved on too.

Right now the Battlefield V community isn't too happy with DICE. There's progression issues, cheating, and an overall lack of care to the live service game, and honestly, that's to be expected. These games are designed to rotate out of EA's big picture a year or so after release to make room for the Next Big Service Game (with the exception of Battlefront II, which has been elongated out of necessity to fill the huge gap in Star Wars games).

Now DICE confirms what everyone's long suspected: The studio will soon be done with Battlefield V. In June 2020, Battlefield V will get its last update. After that it'll be retired into maintenance mode--the servers will still be live, but the overall content will remain static.