Latest News - Page 1682

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.

Today PlatinumGames announced a new proprietary games engine that will help developers streamline their workflows on next-gen games.

Now that PlatinumGames is a developer-publisher that owns its IPs, it's time the company create a new future-proofed games engine for the new console generation. The new games engine, dubbed the PlatinumEngine (name not finalized), is being made from scratch. The engine has been in development for the past two years and has many goals, including high res graphics, but it's mostly focused on simplifying development.

"Our goal with this new engine is to reduce, as much as we can, the amount of effort that goes into game development. The idea is to take all the unnecessary work away from our game development teams," said R&D group leader Tsuyoshi Odera.

343 Industries could reveal bits and pieces about Halo: Infinite's matchmaking system during two multiplayer-focused GDC 2020 talks.

343 Industries engagement lead Josh Menke will hold two developer talks during the new GDC 2020 Twitch livestreams. The first, which goes live on Tuesday, March 17 at 12PM PST, focuses on the lessons the studio learned when developing Halo 5's multiplayer. Expect a deep dive on Halo 5's matchmaking infrastructure, probably including TrueSkill 2 optimizations and discussions, and maybe even hints or brief tidbits on Halo: Infinite's systems.

"What should matchmaking worry most about? Latency? Skill? Streaks? Wait time? There are several commonly held best practices on how to matchmake for engagement across the industry, some of which contradict each other, but little to no data-driven evidence to support them. The following will show how to effectively test matchmaking approaches and show real examples and data from a popular first-person shooter. The results show that not all practices are actually important, while others are critical."

The games industry's biggest publishers are gearing up projects for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, and Square Enix in particular teases big things for the systems.

Next-gen is an exciting time for the industry. Every developer is eager to show off new games to push the boundaries of what's possible. Devs want to take advantage of the PS5's and Xbox Series X's raw power, flexibility, and new feature sets like variable rate shading, ray tracing, and 120FPS gaming. Square Enix will be among these devs and the company has some big games set for 2020 and beyond.

In a Tweet revealing its plans to host a digital-based E3 stream, the Final Fantasy dev says their 2020 and next-gen lineups are "stronger than ever," asserting there's more next-gen games in the works that haven't been revealed yet.

The PS5 and Xbox Series X are likely to be delayed outside of 2020 due to coronavirus disruption, analyst firm DFC Intelligence predicts.

Analyst firm DFC Intelligence just sent out an email newsblast that updates their 2020 gaming hardware forecast to reflect the world's current economic disruption. The firm expects COVID-19 to force Microsoft and Sony to delay their next-gen systems in 2021 as critical supply and manufacturing chains are disrupted. These predictions reflect the delay prediction I made in February.

"The conclusion is that coronavirus is likely to have a major short-term impact on the delivery of both systems. There is a strong likelihood one or both systems will not make a 2020 launch. If the systems do launch supply will likely be constrained and initial pricing could be higher than expected," the firm wrote in the email.

One ex-Naughty Dog animator exposes just how intense the studio's crunch can get, including hospitalizations from overwork.

The games industry is kind of like a vampire that drains those who work in it. Many studios suffer from hostile work environments with fatigue runs rampant. To get a game shipped, developers have to work months of ruthless crunch time, leading to mental and physical breakdowns, emotional outbursts, and general malaise and depression. Naughty Dog is one such studio.

In an eye-opening expose, sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier about Naughty Dog's culture of crunch. It's a brutal one. The general consensus among workers is a simple question: "How long can we keep doing this?" Crunch takes a serious human cost, and making games often requires prolonged periods of overwork. Those amazing AAA interactive experiences that blow us away demand sacrifice from the all-mighty Crunch God. Developers have to give up their time, their soul, and their minds for the billion-dollar games industry.

If you thought 150-player matches in Call of Duty: Warzone was big, then you are about to get a big shock as that number will soon be increasing.

Call of Duty: Warzone currently has one of the bigger battle royales with 150 players dropping into one map to wreak havoc on each other. But what if 150 isn't enough? Do we want more players? The answer comes from the developers of the game, Infinity Ward, and they certainly do want more players as they are planning on upping the anti very soon. According to Infinity Ward co-head, Patrick Kelly, soon players will be experiencing matches with 200 players.

Kelly spoke to USA Today, and said the following "Actually, I can tell you we are already playing with 200 players. We are going to release that a little bit later." On top of adding more players to a single match, Kelly also reveals that the development team is also testing larger squads. Here's what he said, "I can tell you we have four-and five-player squads we are already playing with. But we want to launch with something we know works really well and we have tested to the nines and then play around with these different team sizes."

If you are into battle royales, then you have most likely heard about Call of Duty's newest installment into the genre -- Call of Duty: Warzone.

If you have already heard about it and are wanting to jump into the action, then I must tell you to be prepared for a large download. The standalone Warzone client weighs in at anywhere between 80gb - 100gb, depending on your platform. The download can be smaller than that if you already have Call of Duty Modern Warfare installed as Modern Warfare shares some of the same assets as Warzone. But why is the new mode so large in general?

According to Production Director, Paul Haile who works at Infinity Ward, the developers for Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Warzone, the reason behind the file size being so large is because its "just a tone of content". Haile went into more detail behind why the file is so large, and partially blamed the size on Infinity Ward's production pipeline. Here's the full quote, "And also in this case since Warzone shares progression with MW every weapon and character asset from MP needs to also work in Warzone. Our pipeline isn't perfect but even if it was it's still a mountain of data to ship."

This probably won't be surprising to anyone who has been keeping up with the news recently, but the coronavirus has caused The Walt Disney Company to announce the closure of Disneyland.

The announcement was made this past Thursday, and according to the statement, there have been no cases of COVID-19 at the park, but the company has decided to close it anyway in the people's best interest. The closure will be for Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure and will begin on March 14th until the end of the month. It was also mentioned that Disneyland Resort Hotels would remain open until March 16th so guests can sort out the proper travel arrangements.

According to New York Times reporter Brooks Barnes, this is the fourth time in the history of the park that it has closed down. The previous times the park has experienced a close was on September 11th, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Northridge earthquake in 1994. At the moment, there is no word on whether or not The Walt Disney Company will be deciding to close Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. If the news is announced, I will be sure to update you in a follow-up post.

Researchers and scientists have just make a major breakthrough when it comes to amputee patients and prosthetics.

Scientists at the University of Michigan have just had a breakthrough in mind-controlled prosthetics being used by patients. The new discovery has closed the gap between amputee patients thinking about moving a prosthetic limb, and the limb actually moving. According to Paul Cedena, a professor of biomedical engineering and Robert Oneal Collegiate Professor of Plastic Surgery at the U-M Medical School, "This is the biggest advance in motor control for people with amputations in many years."

Cedena continued, "We have developed a technique to provide individual finger control of prosthetic devices using the nerves in a patient's residual limb. With it, we have been able to provide some of the most advanced prosthetic control that the world has seen."