Latest News - Page 1776

In a rare move, EA Access subscribers won't get first dibs on Jedi: Fallen Order.

One of the selling points of EA's Access subscription is early 10-hour trials to all of its biggest games. But EA is apparently breaking this process, starting first with Jedi: Fallen Order. Today EA confirmed Respawn's new Jedi power fantasy game won't have a play first trial. Origin Access subscribers won't get a trial either.

The reason? EA wants to avoid any spoilers. "We've opted not to have early/timed access (Play First Trial), in part to reduce the risk of spoilers. Instead, EA Access members get these exclusive cosmetics!"

Google's new Stadia game streaming service will only have 12 games at launch, including blockbusters like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and Red Dead Redemption II.

Stadia will be available November 19 and comes with a dozen titles upon release, Google today confirmed. 14 more games are slated to launch throughout the end of 2019. Remember that only the paid $10 a month Stadia Pro subscription is available at launch, so Destiny 2 will be free for everyone who pays for the service. The free Stadia version is coming sometime in 2020.

If you want to play Stadia on your TV, you'll need a Chromecast Ultra. Stadia Pro subscribers can also play games on desktop or laptops via a Chrome browser, and use native keyboard and mouse controls or a USB game controller like a PS4 or Xbox One controller to play. Game streaming to mobile phones will be extremely awkward and isn't advised.

Final Fantasy VII Remake's summon system is quite limited, and can only be used against bigger bosses and enemies.

The new summoning system for FF7 Remake is pretty intense. Instead of performing one single attack like in the original 1997 RPG, summons in the Remake will stay on the battlefield for a set period of time and dish out serious carnage. This compliments the new real-time action-based combat system quite well. But this power can only be used during challenge fights and summons won't show up willy-nilly.

In a recent quick interview with Square Enix, game producer Yoshinori Kitase confirms FF7R's summons are quite limited. "Players equip summoning materia, and that materia resonates when fighting bosses, or certain powerful enemies, when certain conditions are met," Kitase said.

Hideo Kojima makes wide sweeping generalizations why Death Stranding's criticism is more stringent in the West, compromising his fanbase in the process.

After years of development, Hideo Kojima's new game Death Stranding is finally out. Reviews are quite divisive. With tons of metaphors and themes (and lots tedium) it's either a love it or hate it type of experience. If you hated it, there's a good chance Death Stranding's deeper meanings just flew over your head--at least that's what Kojima seems to imply.

In a recent interview with TGCom24, Hideo Kojima pretty much aggravated his entire Western fanbase by essentially comparing them to brutes who don't (or can't) appreciate good art.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai said on his last livestream that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is only for "good boys and girls".

If you happened to miss it, Nintendo added Fatal Fury's 'Terry Bogard' to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate last week, and to kick off the launch of the classic character, the game's director sat down for 45 minutes to demonstrate him. Masahiro Sakurai showcased Terry Bogard for quite some time, and when he got to the part about including some of the other Fatal Fury characters, he dropped a joke that was taken out of context.

The local translation for what he said is as follows, "By the way, you may have noticed that a very important character from the Fatal Fury series was not included. Yes, Mai Shiranui. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is for good boys and girls of many different ages, so we decided not to feature her. Please forgive us." An image of Mai Shiranui is found in the entirety of this article, and after viewing that, you can probably understand why Nintendo decided to leave her out.

If you remember back in late June, news sparked off about a popular gaming YouTuber Desmond "Etika" Amofah being found dead in Manhattan's river. Fans have now honored 'Etika' with a beautiful mural.

Fellow YouTuber, Double-A, and web designer Abe Hunter decided to team up to not let Amofah's words that shook fans across the world come true, "I know this world's gonna forget me." It was their mission not to let this happen, and with so many dedicated fans to Amofah, both Double-A and Hunter managed to raise $11,000 for the National Alliance for Mental Illness.

They didn't stop there, though. Double-A and Hunter went on to organise a mural to be painted by local mural artist "BKFoxx", and local graffiti artist "kestaadm". The mural is no small celebration either; it's 40-foot long and is located at 1280 Myrtle Ave. in Bushwick, Brooklyn. From the image, we can see that it includes two pictures of Amofah and his famous catch-phrase, "Take care of yourself. Have yourself a damn good one!"

Just this past week, Hideo Kojima was proud to release the highly anticipated title, Death Stranding. While most people would think that Kojima would be taking some time off to relax, instead, he is accepting some Guinness World Record awards.

Above, we have a Tweet from the official Guinness World Records Twitter account, and it shows Hideo Kojima accepting two individual awards. Strangely enough, these awards are not Death Stranding-related at all and, instead, are for Kojima's social media statistics.

The awards have been given to Kojima for his follower counts on both Twitter and Instagram. According to the description of the Tweet, Kojima now has the most followers on Twitter for a video game director and the most followers on Instagram for a video game. Death Stranding is now currently available on the PlayStation 4 and will be arriving on PC via the Epic Games Store and Steam in the Summer of 2020.

Back in the middle of October, legendary director Martin Scorsese gave his opinion on the plethora of Marvel movies. Now, Marvel boss Kevin Feige has responded to those comments.

According to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel's chief creative officer Kevin Feige said that Scorsese is entitled to share his opinions on films in any which way he so chooses, but this will not stop Marvel from making more films. According to Feige, "Everybody has a different definition of cinema. Everybody has a different definition of art. Everybody has a different definition of risk, I guess. All I know is, I'm surrounded by people 24 hours a day who live and breathe and love cinema."

He continued and said, "Some people don't think it's cinema. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. Everyone is entitled to repeat that opinion. Everyone is entitled to write op-eds about that opinion, and I look forward to what will happen next. But in the meantime, we're going to keep making movies." For those that don't know, Scorsese said that Marvel films "are not cinema" and that Marvel's films don't contain "revelation, mystery, or genuine emotional danger." Scorsese concluded that Marvel films have "nothing at risk."

The most detailed large-scale simulation has been released showing just after the Big Bang, all the way until the present day.

Scientists have been struggling with the creation of accurate simulations of cosmic-level events due to the limitations of computing power. The computational limitations forced scientists to choose between large-scale designs or fine detail. But now, scientists from Germany and the United States have completed and released the most detailed large-scale simulation of a galaxy forming.

The simulation is called TNG50 and is a state-of-the-art simulation of the formation of a galaxy similar in mass to our neighboring galaxy Andromeda. The video shows a formation of a single massive galaxy, with cosmic gas becoming denser and denser over the course of billions of years. The Hazel Hen supercomputer, located in Stuttgart, created the simulation over the course of a year using 16,000 computational cores. The results are an extremely detailed cosmic visualization that consists of 230 million light-years in diameter and more than 20 billion particles that represent dark matter, stars, cosmic gas, magnetic fields, and supermassive black holes.

Researchers have devised a new way to measure gravity, and they have done this by measuring the differences in atoms while they are in a superposition state.

To give a bit of background on this new way of gravity measuring, we must understand the traditional way of measuring gravity. Currently, the standard way of conducting an experiment to measure gravity is to drop objects down tubes that fly past measuring instruments. Unfortunately, with this method, some of the test results get obscured by stray magnet fields.

The team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has managed to create a new way of measuring that doesn't require any objects to be dropped. Instead, researchers released a cloud of cesium atoms into the air of a small chamber; they then used flashing lights to split the atoms into a superposition state.

Everyday efforts are being made towards the creation of 'quantum internet,' and now a new network protocol has been developed that bring us even closer to its fruition.

UAB researchers have managed to face one of the many problems that are present when designing a quantum internet connection - optimizing automated information treatment protocols to work with quantum data sets. The researchers have created an optimal procedure that has the ability to be able to identify quantum data sets. This is done through a quantum network protocol that can identify common underlying probability distributions and organize them into recognizable patterns.

An example of a classical computer doing this is a simple street microphone test that has multiple sounds occurring at the same time. The computer recognizes patterns and can differentiate the sounds of a conversation, traffic, and cars. What the researchers at UAB were able to do is compare the performance of classic computers and their protocols, versus quantum protocols. The findings were that quantum protocols clearly outperform classical protocols; this was mainly present in large data sets.

MIT can have fun too, and it's not in the same way that normal everyday people would. Instead, it's much cooler as they take they their Mini Cheetah robots out to do flips and kick a soccer ball around.

In a new video that has been posted onto the MIT Biomimetics YouTube Channel, we observe nine new Mini Cheetah robots being taken outside for some testing. The video begins with the robots merely making their way to the testing area, and some are kicking around a soccer ball and others and just enjoying bouncing around in one spot.

The testing also shows some coordinated dancing, body-slams, and a not-so-friendly game of uncoordinated soccer ball kicking. This video proves that MIT has made some leaps and bounds when it comes to robot improvement and range of motion. Eventually, as MIT perfect the designs of the Mini Cheetah's, some could be sent out to hazardous work sites, be used in search-and-rescue missions, and perhaps save some human lives.

Google has updated the terms of service (ToS) to YouTube, and it has content creators and YouTubers very, very concerned -- and rightfully so.

YouTube's new ToS states in a section titled "Account Suspension & Termination" under the subheading of "Terminations by YouTube for Service Changes" that "YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account's access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable".

Yeah, you read that right -- if YouTube isn't making money from your content, it can remove you from its platform at a whim. The new terms of service kick in on December 10, with the current ToS not stating this right now.

Now that Red Dead Redemption 2 is here, modders can get to fixing up some of the things developer Rockstar Games didn't spend time on.

One of those things is a field of view (FOV) slider that has been added into the game with a new mod, which also removes the black bars that Red Dead Redemption 2 features in its in-game cutscenes, cinematic cameras, shops, and other areas.

Keep in mind that Rockstar Games doesn't officially support mods, so only use it in the single-player version of Red Dead Redemption 2. The mods creator explains: "I'm not aware of reports of people getting banned over the use of Flawless Widescreen in GTA V, but use the tool provided here at own risk and ideally avoid playing RDR Online without restarting the game after applying the hack".

AMD will soon be launching its Navi 14-based Radeon RX 5500 series graphics cards, with more details arriving before its big launch.

The official marketing material for AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 5500 series has surfaced, showing that the company has labeled it as a "Performance" card. AMD's new Radeon RX 5500 competes directly and easily beats NVIDIA's mid-range GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card.

Navi 14 will offer up 22 RDNA compute units for a total of 1408 stream processors, 4GB/8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit memory bus which will provide 224GB/sec memory bandwidth. AMD will clock the Navi 14 GPU at 1670MHz game clock, and up to 1845MHz boost clock.

Showtime has announced production on the Halo TV series is "about to begin" while using the time to announce 3 new cast members that have joined the ranks.

The upcoming Halo TV show will now also star Danny Sapani (from Doctor Who and Star Wars: The Last Jedi) who will play Jabob Keys who is a "dedicated military man". Olive Gray (from Fleabag and Eastenders) will play UNSC Commander Dr. Miranda Keyes while Charlie Murphy (from Peaky Blinders) will play Makee, an orphan raised by the Covenant.

Halo won't hit TV screens until at least 2021, whereby that time Microsoft will have its next-gen Xbox Scarlett console out and hopefully, a next-gen Halo game. Until then, get hyped for the new Halo TV series which is now finally, in production.

The rumors of a next-gen Superman game have been flying around for a while now, but it seems like something is brewing when it comes to Kal-El and getting his own game.

Now we have an industry insider that has revealed a slew of details on Warner Bros. plans to release an open-world Superman game and that it has been actively trying to make it happen since 2013, the year Man of Steel was released.

The new details add that one of the Superman games pitched to WB was an open-world game similar to how Spider-Man ended up on the PS4 recently. It would've had a Metropolis that would've been huge, and featured a bunch of infamous villains ripped directly from the comic book pages of DC.

GIGABYTE hasn't had an AORUS-branded Radeon since the Radeon RX 580 (they skipped the RX 590) so it is high time that we get a custom AORUS-branded Radeon.

The latest in AORUS' custom line up appears to be a custom Radeon RX 5700 XT in a huge triple-fan, triple-slot beast. We are expecting AORUS to release the custom Radeon RX 5700 XT sometime in the next month or so, perfect for the holidays and the latest games out like Red Dead Redemption 2.

In a statement from 'GBT-Brian' who is a GIGABYTE Community Manager, he explained: "You guys asked for it and we are delivering! Going into mass production next week and should be available 2-3 weeks after. I'll post more pics as soon as the product hits our warehouse".

ASRock had a solid first entry into the world of custom Navi graphics cards with its Radeon RX 5700 XT Taichi OC+ which I reviewed here, but now the company has announced its upcoming Radeon RX 5700 Phantom Gaming series family.

The new ASRock Radeon RX 5700 Phantom Gaming series graphics cards will offer up custom versions of both the Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700, each with overclocked GPUs and 8GB of GDDR6.

Starting with the flagship Radeon RX 5700 XT Phantom Gaming series graphics card we have the Navi 10 GPU at 1690/1835/1945MHz for base/game/boost GPU clocks, respectively. ASRock's second Phantom Gaming series card in the Radeon RX 5700 will have 1610/1725/1750MHz for base, game, and boost GPU clocks respectively.

Since we first broke the story about the possible upcoming fate of Silicon Valley-based retail chain Fry's Electronics, not much has changed within the stores. Shelves are still empty with what limited product they have in stock being spread out across as many isles as possible.

After our story, numerous other news outlets including CBS, San Jose Mercury News, and PC Gamer have begun to speculate, as well as obtain denials from Fry's Electronics spokesperson Manuel Valerio that the company has no immediate plans to go out of business. Even though it is closing its Palo Alto store, the company insists it has no plans to close its other 33 stores in nine states.

One store manager commented to us that they are clearing out the existing product to make room for new vendors. We specifically asked what vendor was replacing copies of Microsoft Windows, which at that point, the manager refused to make any additional comments. On recent store visits to Bay Area and Southern California stores, not only have we seen little to no new products arriving, but employees have told us that what new products we are seeing are mostly inter-store transfers.