Latest News - Page 1683

Call of Duty: Warzone has been out for 48 hours now, and players have already figured out a way to win games from within the deadly gas.

Originally found on the Call of Duty Warzone Reddit, players in the above video seem to be on the last round of their game. What is interesting is that instead of going for the other team in a guns-blazing fight, they decided to stick to staying in the gas, and while you might think that's a stupid idea, you will be surprised at what happens. Communicating with each other, one teammate gets dropped by the gasses damage, then his teammate picks up him.

Both teammates go back and forth rinse and repeating this same cycle of reviving each other in an infinite loop. The enemy team eventually cannot find the team that is reviving each other and seems to have been caught in the gas but didn't get the revive. This causes the team that was simply just back-and-forth reviving each other to win the entire game. It should be noted, MightyKonsti the user who posted the video to the subreddit, did mention that both he and his teammate had the TuneUp perk equipped, which speeds up revives by 25%.

An announcement from the European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed that the ExoMars mission will be delayed for a further two years as further testing is needed to be done.

According to the announcement, several parts of the spacecraft still need to crucial testing completed before it's given the green light to be sent off to the red planet. Since more testing is needed, the ExoMars mission will miss its launch window for 2020 and will need to wait until sometime between August and October in 2022 for another opportunity. Why do they have to wait so long? Well, that is because of the orbital cycles of Earth and Mars.

Space agencies can only launch spacecrafts to the red planet when the orbital cycles of Mars and Earth are at their closest points to each other. Launching it at any other time would require unnecessary amounts of fuel. The rover is being held back from launch this year to have its parachutes tested, which are used to ensure that the craft lands safely on the red planet. ESA director Jan Woerner said just yesterday, "Launching this year would mean sacrificing essential remaining tests. This is a very tough decision, but I am sure the right one."

Pornhub has stepped up for Italians that are currently in lockdown throughout the country over COVID-19 coronavirus, offering Italians free premium subscriptions for free.

Yeah, Pornhub knows that millions of Italians are sitting on their hands right now -- and wants those hands elsewhere. They won't even need credit cards to get the Pornhub premium goodness, while the company will also be donating some of its proceeds from Modelhub, which is Pornhub's subsidiary that helps creators sell content, to local hospitals.

Pornhub explains: "Pornhub has decided to donate its Modelhub March revenue to help Italy overcome the emergency. To keep you company at home during these weeks, you'll be able to access Pornhub Premium for free for the whole month, with no need for a credit card".

The Division 2 will be Google Stadia's first crossplay-enabled game, with Ubisoft pushing right into Stadia with upcoming releases that include The Crew 2 and Monopoly.

Ubisoft will be including crossplay support with PC gamers on The Division 2, as well as Stream Connect support -- something that lets you check your teammates' gameplay, all on a single screen. Ubisoft is following up with The Division 2 dropping on Google Stadia on March 17 with The Crew 2 and Monopoly.

Here's what to expect on Google Stadia from Ubisoft in the next few weeks:

Bitcoin has dropped by a very dramatic 40% overnight, from its 2020 highs of over $10,000 down to 2020 lows of under $4600 -- but so too is the stock market, and here: Apple.

Apple (APPL) stock has dropped by 11% down to $243 at the time of writing, down from its 2020 high of $327. This means that Apple has dropped from its huge share price highs of $327 on February 12 and a huge $1.432 trillion ($1,432,000,000,000) market cap, to now just $243 and a market cap of $1.065 trillion ($1,065,000,000,000).

Apple isn't the only one experiencing huge drops in their share prices, with most tech giants including Microsoft and Amazon experiencing huge drops and hundreds of billions of dollars wiped away. No tech company is safe, with travel companies and the travel industry in general bottoming out in slow motion right now with most people not wanting to travel over COVID-19 / coronavirus fears.

The world is going through a very scary time right now, with global markets in a complete panic -- with freefall events happening, which have pushed Bitcoin and virtually all other cryptocurrencies off a cliff.

Just overnight, Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a 40% change in its price -- where it enjoyed 2020 highs of just over $10,000 -- but overnight it has dropped to its knees and down to $4564 (at the time of writing) -- representing a 40.72% drop in its price. Even when Bitcoin was down 26% it represented the largest sell-off of BTC in over 7 years.

Altcoins aren't safe from this, with cryptocurrencies like Ethereum (ETH) dropping by an even larger 44%, down to just $105 from its 2020 highs of $284.

The new Super Mario Lego lineup is basically like a real-life Mario Maker...just a lot more tame.

Today Lego and Nintendo announced a new round of interactive Super Mario Lego sets to be released later this year. Unlike traditional Legos, these let kids (and a bunch of adults) make their own little Mario stages straight out of a Mario game.

The Mario figure has built-in speakers and even tiny LCD screens that allow him to change expressions, and Mario that interacts with special sensors on the bricks. You can literally create your own real-life version of a Mario stage complete with goombas, obstacles, helpful buddies like Yoshi, and time limits. Mario can even collect coins.

System Shock remake developers Nightdive Studios are working on a new remaster: An enhanced edition of 1997's beloved Blade Runner PC game.

Westwood's old-school Blade Runner game was MIA for a long time before popping up on GOG.com, but now it's about to be reborn altogether. The new Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and Steam sometime in 2020, complete with remastered graphics, visuals, and effects for modern hardware.

Using their proprietary KEX engine used in the System Shock remaster, Nightdive will revitalize the classic with upgraded textures, environments, and character models. The team even plans to use AI machine learning to upscale in-game cutscenes. All the new bells and whistles won't betray the original gameplay, though, and Nightdive will ensure the remaster remains authentic.

The composer behind The Last of Us video game has been announced to also be working on the coming TV show.

The legendary composer behind both The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II, Gustavo Santaolalla, has been confirmed to be doing the soundtrack behind the coming The Last of Us HBO series. The series' co-creator, Neil Druckmann recently took to his personal Twitter account to confirm the news, saying "Well this is exciting! Beyond lending his incredible musical talent to The Last of Us Part II, Gustavo Santaolalla is joining us to bring over The Last of Us to HBO!".

At the moment, there's no word on when HBO will be releasing The Last of Us series, but judging on how long it takes for a normal high-budget TV series to produce, I'd say we can expect a release either closer to the end of this year/start of next year. As for the video game franchise, the second installment in The Last of Us series, The Last of Us Part II will be launching on PlayStation 4 on May 29th.

Twitter has announced that all employees must work from home until further notice in an effort to help slow down the spread of the now rampant coronavirus.

Twitter had already strongly encouraged workers that can work from home to stay home and do so, but now the company has announced that it's a requirement. This goes for all Twitter workers across the world and has thrown a wrench in some people's lives who are unable to do so. Luckily, Twitter has said that they will continue to pay employees, contractors, and hourly workers their expected wages if they are unable to work at home.

Twitter will also be supplying workers with reimbursements for workers who purchase home office setups to continue working. On top of that, Twitter will also be reimbursing employees who have to pay for additional daycare services to continue working. Twitter is now on the growing list of other tech companies that have ordered their employees to work from home. Amazon, Google, Apple and now Twitter are on that list.

Astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to discover a new exoplanet that is so hot that it rains iron instead of water.

The planet is called WASP76b, and is an ultra-hot giant exoplanet that's dayside temperature of more than 2,600 degrees Celsius (4712F). This temperature is high enough that it can melt metals such as iron, but what happens is that strong winds push the iron vapor to the other side of the planet where it is cooled and turns into tiny droplets of iron. According to David Ehrenreich, "One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron."

So why does this happen on this planet in particular? Phys.org explains that 'iron rain' occurs on this planet because it only ever shows one side of the planet to its neighboring star. This means that the other side of the planet always remains in darkness, much like how our Moon is tidally locked to Earth. Since the dayside side of the planet is so hot, molecules separate themselves into atoms, and metals such as iron begin to evaporate into the atmosphere. Winds then carry the iron vapor to the other side of the planet where it's then cooled, and iron droplets are formed.

Call of Duty: Warzone released yesterday, and since its debut players have flocked to the new battle royale shooter.

According to the official Call of Duty Twitter account, the new game mode has already amassed a staggering 6 million+ players just within its first 24 hours of being live. That number is definitely still growing as more and more players finish their downloads. Speaking of downloads, if you have already begun playing Warzone, then you know there is a hefty download of anywhere between 18-22GB, depending on the platform you are downloading on.

So, if there are already 6 million players playing Warzone, that means that 6 million players have downloaded a minimum of 18GB each, which equates to 108,000,000GB, or more accurately - 108 petabytes. That is a ridiculous amount of data that has been downloaded from Activision's servers in just 24 hours. It should also be noted that 108 petabytes is the minimum that has been downloaded as different platforms have a different required download totals. So, the true number is much higher and likely exceeds 150 petabytes of data in 24 hours.

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.