Latest News - Page 1713

In its recent quarterly results briefing, Nintendo made one point clear: They're taking the iterative approach with hardware, and will stretch the Switch's longevity across many more years. Essentially the Switch breaks the conventional hardware lifecycle and changes how Nintendo thinks about overall cadence of system releases--the same way the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are extensions of current-gen.

As such, Nintendo isn't ready to replace the existing models. Nintendo currently has no plans to eclipse the Switch or Switch Lite with a souped up 4K-ready Switch Pro in 2020.

"Regarding Nintendo Switch, we believe that it is important to continue to communicate the appeal of both Nintendo Switch systems and expand the installed base. Please note that we have no plans to launch a new Nintendo Switch model during 2020," Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said in the briefing.

EA plans to release 14 games total in Fiscal Year 2021 (April 1, 2020 - March 31, 2021), and 8 of them will be big non-sports releases.

EA's recent Q3'2020 earnings call was jam-packed full of info on the company's future plans. We know a new Battlefield game is set for FY2022, and that EA is now open to making more singleplayer Star Wars games. Now we have insight into it's upcoming pipeline for next-gen console launches in 2020.

The billion-dollar publisher plans to release no less than 14 games total in Fiscal Year 2021, which folds into the PS5 and Xbox Series launches in Holiday 2020: four sports games, including Madden and FIFA, four mystery titles, four published indies, and two mobile games. It's the mystery titles in the middle that piqued our interest.

Jedi: Fallen Order's performance surprised EA, and now the publisher is open to a wider scope of Star Wars games instead of just online live service titles.

Jedi: Fallen Order is doing so well that it's changed how EA is approaching Star Wars games. Well, Respawn's singleplayer Jedi fantasy isn't singehandedly responsible for this shift--Battlefront II's massive lootbox controversy helped grab EA's attention--but the game's tremendous sales reception is turning EA's head. The publisher originally expected Jedi: Fallen Order to sell between 6-8 million copies by March 2020, but the game's already beaten that forecast, so they've raised it to 10 million.

Now EA says they're looking to explore the full spectrum of Star Wars gaming experiences, which is PR-speak for "we're open to making more singleplayer experiences."

The release of The Outer Worlds was met was great support by fans, as the Obsidian Entertainment title was enjoyed on consoles and PC, it's time for the Nintendo Switch to get some love.

The Outer Worlds was released back on October 25th, 2019, and while the space adventure title did receive some criticism for its length, it was regarded as an overall decent release. The single-player RPG title only had about 20 hours of the campaign, but Obsidian does plan on releasing a DLC that will add some more enjoyable hours.

Nintendo Switch users will soon be able to enjoy those 20+ hours in portable mode as the Private Division Twitter account has announced that on March 20th The Outer Worlds will be coming to the Nintendo Switch. According to the post seen above, there will be no game card available. Instead, The Outer Worlds will be a fully digital purchase. The Outer Worlds on Nintendo Switch will debut on March 20th for $60.

NASA has today announced that they would be officially saying goodbye to the Spitzer Space Telescope. As a new telescope is on the brink of completion, Splitzer's time is unfortunately up.

The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched back in 2003 and has provided scientists, astronomers and researchers alike with some of the most influential discoveries to date. Spitzer is an infrared telescope that gave researchers discoveries such as finding some of the oldest stars in the galaxy, as well as being able to detect the light reflected off distant exoplanets.

The Spitzer Space Telescope worked hand-in-hand with the Hubble Space Telescope as Spitzer was able to detect light rays from distant objects, then Hubble was able to capture glorious images of them. This gave scientists and astronomers a better understanding on what is out there in the abyss of space. As the James Webb Space Telescope nears its delayed completion, NASA decided it's time to decommission the Spitzer Space Telescope, read more on that here.

GMC has announced a Tesla Cybertruck competitor, and its none other than an all-electric Hummer. The company has teased the reveal of the new truck on their website.

GMC's new project is called the Hummer EV, and according to the companies website/teaser trailer, the vehicle will have up to 1,000 horsepower, be able to go from 0-60 mph in just 3 seconds and have 11,500 lb/ft of torque. This new Hummer variant represents the revival of the brand and will most likely stand as a direct competitor to Tesla's Cybertruck that has recently made waves in the news.

Unfortunately, GMC won't be revealing the new Hummer EV until May 8th, 2021. So, there's going to be quite the wait before we can lay eyes on their new project. Until then, if you want to read up more on the new vehicle, head on over to the official website here.

Just this past Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed a fine to a man who did 6,000 robocalls that were both politically and racially charged.

In a filing by the FCC, it's explained that a single man conducted an astonishing 6,000 robocalls in six different states (California, Flordia, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Virginia). These phone calls used an online tool that can mask the caller's voice and number. According to the FCC, the intention behind the calls was for the man to acquire "notoriety/ publicity" for his website and brand.

It seems that wasn't his only intention either as the FCC details that 827 calls were made to people in Brooklyn, Iowa "following the murder of a local college student and the arrest of an illegal alien from Mexico for the crime". The calls made racist remarks to people on the other end, such as "brown horde" and "kill them all". The robocaller even called the parents of the victim. It's unclear whether the FCC will be able to acquire the full amount from the man, but it's unfortunately doubtful.

California Institute of Technology (CalTech) filed a lawsuit against Apple and Broadcom back in 2016, claiming that the Wi-Fi chips made by Broadcom and used in a range of Apple's products are infringing on filed patents by CalTech.

CalTech has since been in court against Broadcom and Apple for damages, and now recent news has surfaced from Bloomberg that has claimed that Apple and Broadcom have been ordered to pay a combined $1.1 billion to Caltech. According to Law360, the jury sided with CalTech by saying the patented technologies were "key to keeping Apple competitive in the cellphone market."

Apple has been ordered to pay CalTech $838 million, and Broadcom has been ordered to pick up the rest of the bill - $270 million. According to CalTech's lawyer, William Price, "Caltech's damages expert used a hypothetical royalty negotiation that would have occurred in 2010 - when Broadcom allegedly started selling Apple the infringing Wi-Fi chips - and came up with a rate of $1.40 per device for Apple and 26 cents per device for Broadcom. The jury's verdict aligned with those figures."

Chicago Police are using an artificial intelligence that could be in clear breach of people privacy online, as it scans everyone's social media.

The artificial intelligence is called Clearview AI and it is a massive database that includes 3 billion photos taken from social media and other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Users of the AI feed an image of the person they want to look for into its system then the AI will cycle through its database and present the users with a bunch of different images from different platforms that 'match' the fed image. At the moment the AI is being used by the FBI, Homeland Security and the Chicago Police Department (CPD).

While this AI system would definitely save law enforcement some time in tracking criminals, many privacy advocates have said that it is in complete violation of peoples privacy rights. New Jersey's attorney general Gurbir Grewal, said "Until this week, I had not heard of Clearview AI. I was troubled." According to ACLU of New Jersey, Grewal "put a moratorium on Clearview AI's chilling, unregulated facial recognition software."

2020 will be the year of emojis as the Unicode Consortium has revealed that 117 new emoji are heading to platforms.

According to their website, Emoji 13.0 update has been finalized and will implement 62 new emojis that include things like smiling face with a tear, polar bear, bubble tea, pickup truck, fondue, teapot, Pinata, and the transgender flag. The announcement will also add 55 gender and skin-tone variants, as well as new gender-inclusive emojis.

An example of gender-inclusive emoji is the veil, the tuxedo, and feeding baby emoji. At the moment, those emoji's only represent a man in a tuxedo, women in a veil, and man/woman feeding a baby. The new set of emojis will add women in a tuxedo, a man in a veil, and a 'person' feeding a baby. If you are interested in checking out what other new emojis are arriving this year, click this link here.

Respawn has just unveiled the new Season 4 trailer to Apex Legends, and with it has teased what looks to be an awesome new hero in Revenant. Check it out:

Revenant is a new assassin which hasn't been totally detailed yet, but he has "unnatural" abilities where he will use them on the battle (royale) field to "haunt his enemies and defy death". He seems literally unstoppable in the trailer, but in the game he will take a few shots and be downed and require assistance from a team mate to get up. Still, Revenant looks like he could be a blast to play.

The original trailer for Revenant makes me want full length versions of this stuff from Respawn and EA, as it really is kick ass work that they do.

An interesting new rumor has surfaced onto the World Wide Web today, with Samsung reportedly talking with the team at Xbox on getting UltraWide aspect ratio support onto the Xbox -- and I'm sure more specifically, the next-gen Xbox Series X console.

PCGamesN is reporting that Samsung is "pushing and talking" to Microsoft to get UltraWide resolution support on Xbox, with the site saying that Samsung says it has worked with Microsoft in the past to "implement ultrawide gaming on an ad hoc basis. However, the functionality has never seen the light of day in a public release".

I think UltraWide support on next-gen consoles would be great, as I'm a huge 21:9 and 32:9 monitor fan myself. The new consoles will have the additional CPU and GPU grunt required to drive the new aspect ratio, and with FreeSync support built-in, it just makes sense. Come on, Microsoft -- do it, add UltraWide aspect ratio support on the Xbox Series X.

NVIDIA seems to be positioning themselves to kick ass on the cloud gaming front this year, with VideoCardz teasing a new GeForce NOW Founders tier that would offer some amazing cloud gaming at just $4.99 per month.

The tweet was mysterious, but detailed -- teasing that GeForce NOW would offer standard access for FREE, giving gamers an hour of gaming for free. But if you wanted more than that, the new GeForce NOW Founders tier is just $4.99 per month and offers you priority access, 'extended session length', RTX ON (big surprise), a free 90-day introductory period, and would be a limited time offer.

NVIDIA's free tier offering a 1-hour gaming session makes sense if you wanted to jump into a quick game, but if you wanted to play through a single player game or multiple back-to-back matches of Apex Legends, Fortnite, or Overwatch for example -- well that's when the GeForce NOW Founders tier would come in handy at just $4.99 per month.

Samsung will be unveiling its stack of new Galaxy S20 smartphones including the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+ and what should be a monster new flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra on February 11 at its Unpacked 2020 event, but there will also be a surprise Galaxy Z Flip revealed, too.

The new Galaxy Z Flip is a foldable smartphone that we now have a purported price on: $1400. Samsung will make its Galaxy Z Flip available on $1400 and reportedly exclusive to AT&T, but according to XDA Developers' Max Weinbach, it will be a "timed exclusive" to AT&T, and it will be made available unlocked.

Samsung's new Galaxy Z Flip smartphone will be similar to Motorola's new foldable Razr smartphone, except it will fold up much smaller than the Razr. The Galaxy Z Flip will have a smaller display on the front that will be used for battery information, notifications, and other quick things you need to see -- while it will pack "Ultra-Thin Glass" with a Dynamic AMOLED display inside.

Blizzard is hard at work on what should be some massively popular games being released in the (hopefully) near future, with the likes of Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 -- but what about after that?

The developer looks to be building a new game engine, with Blizzard looking for a new Associate Software Engineer, Graphics for a new Shared Game Engine. The company explains in the official job listing on its website: "Blizzard Entertainment is developing a modern, cross-platform game engine to share across all of Blizzard and power the future of Blizzard games".

Blizzard is looking for someone that has skills in "modern graphics backends" including DirectX 12, Vulkan, and Metal. The low-level APIs are good for games made by Blizzard, which are never the most graphically intensive games, nor are they the most graphically demanding. We could even expect that this engine is being used in games like Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4, but that remains to be seen.

DICE is currently experimenting with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X devkits in prep for its next big mainline Battlefield game, which is still due out in 2021 or early 2022.

In a recent earnings call, EA reiterates its plan to release a new Battlefield game on next-gen consoles by March 31, 2022. The idea is that EA plans to skip the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X console launches in Holiday 2020 and give DICE more time to develop their Frostbite engine for next-gen, and wait until the playerbase and install base matures. This also makes sense as a lot of EA's internal studios use Frostbite.

"We expect live services to continue to drive growth in Fiscal 2021 and for growth to accelerate in Fiscal 2022, led by a new Battlefield," said EA's Blake Jorgensen.

Nintendo earnings soar on the back of strong Switch hardware and software sales, with the Kyoto-based games-maker pulling in over $1 billion profit in the Holiday 2019 quarter.

Today Nintendo announced stellar results for its Fiscal Year Q3'19 period. In the October - December 2019 quarter, Nintendo made $1.23 billion in total profits, up nearly 30% year-over-year, driven by a 10.8 million Switch hardware sales spike. Software also saw a jump with the release of Pokemon Sword and Shield, which generated 16.06 million sales in a single month's time.

The Switch platform makes up the bulk of Nintendo's total earnings (Switch represents 93% of Nintendo's nine-month figures) so the company's results are inextricably tied to the system's performance.

Today the Electronic Software Association made some lofty promises about E3 2020, and pledges to protect that private data of journalists, exhibitors, and attendees this time around.

When you register for E3, the ESA asks you for a lot of info; phone numbers, address, email, and even a scanned copy of your driver's license or ID. Basically stuff you don't want anyone to really access unless there's a good reason. A bit ago the ESA accidentally published the sensitive info of thousands of registered attendees from E3 2004 and 2006. The move was seen as the nail in the annual showcase's coffin and caused a big wave of distrust in the media--the very people responsible for creating E3 buzz ever year.

Now the ESA says things have changed. The company has rebuilt its website from the ground up with new security tools and plans to host any personal info off-site.

The Outer Worlds is coming to Switch on March 6, 2020, but it won't have an actual physical release.

Obsidian's amazing Fallout New Vegas in space RPG is the latest Switch game to ship as a download-only title. If you buy the game at a retail store, you'll get an empty case with a redeemable download code inside. An actual game cartridge isn't included in the box. This makes sense considering it's technically a AAA indie game funded by Private Division, a new indie publishing label of Take-Two Interactive.

Sadly we don't know how big The Outer Worlds will be on Switch. The port is being handled by Virtuos, and apparently runs pretty well on the Tegra X1-powered handheld-console hybrid. Obsidian was actually impressed that the game could run on the Switch at all, and even more surprised at how well the system handled their RPG creation.

Pokemon Sword and Shield is 16-time platinum hit, selling over 16 million copies during the holiday 2019 quarter.

Nintendo is doing tremendously well right now. The Switch selling huge numbers (lifetime Switch sales just broke 52 million) and software is likewise exploding thanks to a particular billion-dollar pocket monster IP. To no one's surprise, the first mainline Pokemon on Switch moved an astronomical number of copies during the holidays and helped propel Switch sales to 10.8 million units.

The new Pokemon Sword and Shield duo managed to sell 16.06 million copies combined worldwide in a single month, putting it instantly onto the Switch's top five best-selling games of all time. In little over a month, the Pokemon duo is almost beating lifetime sales of hits like Zelda Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.