Latest News - Page 1708

HBO Max is launching in May 2020 and one of its shining beacons that will attract subscribers will be the entire Friends library, something that they paid $425 million for the rights to -- but now there's news of a Friends reunion special.

Deadline is reporting that they hear that Friends stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry have all "reached an agreement in principle with series' producer Warner Bros. TV to do what I hear would be an hourlong special. No one would comment, but I hear each of the six stars will be paid in the $3 million-$4 million range for appearing in the special".

It was just a few days ago that Matthew Perry tweeted something mysterious, sending Friends fans into a flurry. Perry tweeted: "Big news coming..." and nothing else -- a tease to this newly-rumored Friends reunion deal. HBO Max securing this would be a big deal as there are millions upon millions of Friends fans (myself included) that would love to see the stars of the show in an hour-long reunion special.

ZTE has just unveiled the world's first Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 powered smartphone, the new ZTE Axon 10s Pro which is a powerhouse smartphone -- right on the eve of Samsung's new Galaxy S20 family of smartphones.

The new Axon 10s Pro smartphone packs the Snapdragon 865 chip which means it has 5G connectivity, but it also debuts with a delicious 6.47-inch AMOLED curved display but just a 1080p resolution display with a 19:5:9 aspect ratio. There's an in-display fingerprint sensor and water-drop notch, which doesn't stand out too much.

There's up to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage, while ZTE will offer a lower-end 6GB RAM / 128GB storage model. Both of ZTE's new Axon 10s Pro smartphones will roll out with a 4000mAh battery and support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0 technology.

Samsung is days away from its Unpacked 2020 event on February 11 where we'll see the new Galaxy S20 family of smartphones unveiled, as well as our official look of the Galaxy Z Flip foldable smartphone.

The new Galaxy Z Flip smartphone will be competing directly against Motorola's just-released foldable Razr smartphone, but now we have some slick new custom Galaxy Z Flip smartphones from Russian custom smartphone maker Caviar. The new Galaxy Z Flip is receiving some gorgeous Joker & Harley Quinn limited edition love, as well as some high-end luxury Carbon Titanium and Golden limited edition handsets.

First up we have the new Joker & Harley Quinn limited edition Samsung Galaxy Z Flip smartphone, with Harley Quinn on one side of the phone, and Joker on the other. The entire phone is dipped in 24-carat gold, with a deliciously decorated border that has card game symbols in the heart, diamond, clover, and spades.

The internet is an amazing place that I started my journey on back in the dial-up days and 14.4Kbps modems, all the way through to fiber connections and 5G -- but there's not much these days that makes me sit back and think "yeah, holy crap"... but today, is one of those days. Check out this video:

This is 'L'Arrivee d'un train en gare de La Ciotat', a 50-second silent short film that debuted in 1896 (that is NOT a typo), and when it was first showed to cinema-goers, rumor has it that many of them thought the train was going to burst through the screen as they had not (ever) seen video before. The low-quality original film can be viewed in a comparison towards the end, while it is shown in the glorious 4K resolution at 60FPS.

YouTuber Denis Shiryaev used publicly available AI-powered enhancement programs DAIN and Gigapixel AI to upscale the 1896 footage to 4K 60FPS. It looks absolutely awesome in comparison, with the 60FPS side of things really helping smooth the entire video out.

Despite the disruption in its development teams that saw the franchise's studios reduced from three to two teams, Call of Duty will remain an annual franchise.

To no one's surprise, Activision confirms another mainline Call of Duty game will release in Q4 2020. "In Q4, we plan to launch the next premium release of Call of Duty. We can't wait to unveil what our teams have been working on, and we feel great about the content," Activision CFO Dennis Durkin said in a recent earnings call.

No actual information was revealed on the game, but reports indicate Call of Duty 2020 is Black Ops 5 and takes place in the Cold War era. Black Ops 5 is expected to have a singleplayer campaign mode set in the age of Communist scares and atomic bombs. The project is to be developed by a trio of studios collaborating together including Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software.

Thanks to the incredible success of Call of Duty Mobile, Activision-Blizzard will continue doubling-down on smartphone games.

Making mobile games is a big part of Activision-Blizzard's new four-pronged business model. In its recent Q4 earnings call, the publisher discussed its plans for growth and how mobile will be--and currently is--a transformative force.

Call of Duty Mobile is doing tremendously well right now. So well in fact that Activision now sees mobile as its largest platform, and rightly so, because more people own phones than they do gaming PCs or video game consoles. Case in point: Call of Duty Mobile has been downloaded over 150 million times globally, making it a massively lucrative entry point to monetization and engagement (the company's core principals). Activision-Blizzard has taken a big bite out of the $68.5 billion mobile market and now they're hungry for more.

On the heels of Warcraft 3: Reforged's colossal failure, Activision-Blizzard confirms it has plans to remaster more old games. Diablo II could be next on the chopping block.

In its recent Q4'20 earnings call, Activision-Blizzard announced that more remasters will release in 2020. No games were explicitly confirmed, but Diablo II could be the next classic franchise to be torn apart and glued back together for the sake of reselling nostalgia.

"In addition, our business units will continue to tap into our portfolio of beloved IP to bring several remastered and re-imagined experiences to our players in 2020, which we will announce closer to launch," Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said in the earnings call.

More than seven years in, Grand Theft Auto V simply won't stop making money. GTA Online is just as successful and is breaking records left and right.

In its latest Q3'20 earnings report, Take-Two revealed some not-so-surprising stats: GTA V is still selling tremendously well, and GTA Online is still making serious cash. Rockstar's landmark crime simulator has now sold-in more than 120 million copies to date (that's a 5 million jump in a quarter) and saw a huge 54% spike in microtransaction revenues in GTA Online. Active players are also up to an all-time high thanks to the massive engagement from the new Diamond Casino Resort updates.

Take-Two Interactive reiterates its massive new pipeline of games, which includes some big surprise projects from Mafia dev Hangar 13 alongside established IPs.

Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive is working on more games than ever before. Today the publisher once again teased its slate of projects, slightly changing the vocabulary; the pipeline is now the "largest and most diverse" in Take-Two's history, a lineup that includes new unannounced games from Hangar 13, who's rumored to be working on a new Mafia set in Las Vegas.

And yes, it also includes a new title from Rockstar Games.

Take-Two's latest Holiday 2019 quarterly revenues show more of the same trends: Digital reigns in earnings split, microtransaction revenues are up, and total net revenues are solidly driven by sports and catalog games.

In the Fiscal Year Q3'20 quarter ending December 31, 2019, Take-Two Interactive earned $930.1 million in total net revenues, down roughly $300 million from last year or a tremendous 25%. The main driver for the YoY loss was the absence of Red Dead Redemption 2, which launched during the Holiday 2019 quarter to thunderous success.

Recurrent consumer spending (microtransactions and DLC) accounted for 37% of total net revenues during Q3'20, or roughly $344.13 million. Take-Two notes this is a sizable 15% spike in player spending over 2018. NBA 2K20 led the charge in microtransaction earnings as per usual, followed closely by GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Secretlab continues to show why it is the king of gaming chairs with its latest limited edition chair, with the gaming chair leader collaborating with Warner Bros. and DC on a new Birds of Prey gaming chair.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) releases in cinema today, so Secretlab have worked with Warner Bros. Consumer Products and DC in a new chair in the DC-based chairs -- the first was the Secretlab Dark Knight Edition gaming chair. But this new one, is for the girl gamers of the world.

The new Secretlab Birds of Prey Limited Edition gaming chair is splashed in exactly what you'd expect from a Harley Quinn themed chair, with a cream color base and gold diamond-motif leatherette on the backrest accents, and on the inside of the seatbase. Quinn's signature is on the front of the back wrist, while Secretlab has a pop-art twist of her iconic lipstick kiss on the back, some "graffiti-ed" hearts, and XOXOs all over the chair.

Tesla is well-known for their out-of-the-box thinking, and while sometimes those kind of ideas can fall flat of their face, sometimes they don't.

More often then not, I think Tesla's unique ideas have worked as the company has forced the hand of other car manufacturers such as Porsche, BMW and now GM to jump into the electric vehicle game. For this reason, it's a great idea to keep an eye on what the company decides to patent as it can give clues towards what it might have planned for future vehicles.

Electrek noticed a new Tesla patent for a steering wheel, and according to the patents description "An interactive user interface for a steering wheel is provided. A user interface is provided on one or more portions of the steering wheel. The user interface recognizes gesture movements made by a user thereon. The user interface allows navigation of a set of controls associated with a menu provided through the user interface based on the recognized gesture movements."

Just this past Thursday, NASA's Christina Koch made a safe return back down to Earth's surface after breaking the spaceflight record for a female astronaut.

Christina Koch was aboard the International Space Station for almost 11 months, she returned back down to Earth and touched down at precisely 0912 GMT. Koch spent a total of 328 days in space, accompanied by Luca Parmitano from the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian Space Agency, who also touched down with her.

Back on December 28th last year, Koch beat the previous record for a single spaceflight by a women of 289 days. This record was set by Peggy Whitson during her stay between 2016 and 2017. Koch is now scheduled to return back to NASA's headquarters for a medical examination. The results will be extremely important as NASA will use them to design future plans for elongated missions to Mars.

It was only last week I reported on some law enforcement adopting a new artificial intelligence to assist them in investigations. Now, the company behind that artificial intelligence has been asked to cease and desist by multiple social media platforms.

The artificial intelligence we are talking about here is from Clearview and is a facial recognition software that uses public personal images scraped from multiple social media platforms to identify people. This AI has been fed over 3 billion publically available images and can now identify almost anyone at the drop of a hat. Clearview, the company behind the AI, has been pushing into government and law enforcement as they believe what they have created can assist in investigations.

According to a Facebook spokesperson who spoke to Buzzfeed News, Facebook has sent "multiple letters" asking Clearview to cease and desist scaping "data, images and media" from Facebook and Instagram. Facebook isn't alone in asking Clearview to 'please stop', as back in late January, Twitter also sent letters to Clearview. YouTube and Venmo are also in the same letter sending boat as the other social media platforms.

Firstly, what isn't Elon Musk capable of? He is pioneering both space travel with his SpaceX company and also electric vehicles with Tesla. Now, he is also a musician...

Musk took to his personal Twitter account to share the above post of his track "Don't Doubt ur Vibe" reaching SoundCloud's top 10 most played. At the time of writing this, Musk's track has reached the seventh place, and I can also say that while I'm writing this post, I'm also listening to the track, and it has a major 'space' feel to it.

At the moment, Don't Doubt ur Vibe is sitting at 2.78 million plays and is still growing. It also has to be mentioned that Musk commented in the Tweet thread, saying, "Putting that on my LinkedIn for sure". Honestly, I hope Musk keeps making tracks for SoundCloud because this is awesome! Have a listen to it here.

A renowned Nintendo leaker has claimed that Nintendo will be hosting a Nintendo Direct dedicated to the new Animal Crossing Horizons this month.

According to Spieltimes journalist and known Nintendo leaker, Sabi, who took to Twitter to say that throughout the month of February, Nintendo is expected to hold a Nintendo Direct. In Sabi's Tweets, it's said that one of the Direct's will be circled around the newly announced Animal Crossing Horizons, and another could be dedicated to a Nindies Showcase.

Sabi says that the Nindies Showcase might happen mid-March and that both of the Direct's won't be happening this week and instead happen within the next three weeks. Since this isn't an official confirmation from Nintendo, please take this news with a hint of salt as it's not 100% confirmed. Rumors are rumors until Nintendo announces something.

The Matrix 4 is currently being shot, with Keanu Reeves spotted on the streets of San Francisco on February 5. It looks like Keanu is shooting some scenes as Thomas Anderson and not Neo, as he's not in his iconic trench coat.

The behind the scenes shot from The Matrix 4 could tease that the Matrix itself has been rebooted, as Neo is back to being plugged in and running through his life as Mr Anderson once again. We don't know anything about the movie whatsoever, with Lana Wachowski behind the camera for The Matrix 4 with Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell co-writing the script with the Wachowskis.

Keanu has seen the script for The Matrix 4 and called it "very ambitious".

Bill Murray is enjoying another run at Groundhog Day, where during Super Bowl 2020 he starred in a new Jeep commercial where they were showing off their new e-Bike. Check out the clip below:

Jeep partnered with QuietKat on the new e-Bike, which they are touting as the "most powerful" off-road mountain bike. The new e-Bike rocks a pretty monster 750W motor, 4.8-inch tires and "Fire-Link" suspension, with up to 40 miles of range. Inside, the motor is a Bafang M620 with up to 1.6kW of power but could see its beastiness watered down so it doesn't ruin the bike chain and/or throw riders from the bike.

The new e-Bike will be on sale sometime after June 2020, but Jeep has been shy about pricing for now. I wouldn't expect it to be cheap, but it won't be super expensive either. Jeep is hoping to see the new e-Bike sold as a companion vehicle for Jeep owners to go off-roading on, similar to the Cybertruck and its all-electric Cyberquad ATV.

Activision's latest earnings show a steep $800 million drop in microtransaction earnings, but it still made over $3.3 billion from in-game spending.

Photographer: Troy Harvey/Bloomberg

Activision-Blizzard is a titan of monetization but it's game is slipping a bit, at least when compared to its 2018 highs. The publisher earned $3.366 billion from in-game microtransactions in 2019, down a whopping $837 million from last year. This represents a sizable 20% drop from 2018's mTX earnings.

A new BioShock game is in development at the newly formed 2K studio Cloud Chamber, but it won't release any time soon.

In its recent Q3'20 earnings report, Take-Two Interactive confirms BioShock 4 isn't releasing for at least a few years. The publisher also confirms the game has just started development, hinting the original 2017 iteration has been scrapped or rebooted.

"In addition, 2K announced that Cloud Chamber has started to work on the next iteration of the globally acclaimed BioShock franchise, which will be in development for the next several years," reads the press release.