Latest News - Page 1847

First lootboxes, and now Loot Crates could likewise follow the way of the dinosaur.

Real-life surprise mechanics company Loot Crate just filed for Chapter 11 bankrupty protection. The move comes after years of financial woes that led to warehouse operations closing down, and the axing of over 100 employees. Loot Crate currently wants to sell the company to the highest bidder to pay its debts, but similar to Starbreeze Studios, it's received a cash injection to help keep it alive until the sale goes through.

Investor Money Chest put up $10 million to keep Loot Crate operational until it liquidates its assets. The company says workers will still continue being paid in this period. Geek boxes will still be shipped out as the company functions like normal, all with a Sword of Damocles above their heads. "Daily operations will continue as usual, unique and exciting fan items will be purchased, crates will be shipped, and all aspects of the business will go on as before the Chapter 11 filing. Our employees will continue to be paid as usual during this transaction," said Loot Crate's CEO Chris Davis.

In a rare and candid blog post, Destiny director Luke Smith talks about microtransactions and their place in the Destiny landscape.

I still remember when cosmetic microtransactions came to Destiny. I hoped it'd never happen, but I guess it was inevitable under Activision's leadership. I mean hell, all major online games have them nowadays. But now that Bungie is independent and no longer under Activision's thrall, the studio has no plans to take them out entirely. That doesn't mean they won't change, however.

But how do microtransactions actually affect Destiny 2? Do they even need to be there? Well, yes and no--I guess sort of is the right answer. According to Smith, microtransactions are supplementary instead of primary. Expansions are still the main drivers for funding the biggest content drops like Shadowkeep, seasons, and big transformative shifts like the ones coming with the new spooky Moon-based adventure. But without the steady river of mTX cash, Bungie might not have nifty little extras like the Zero Hour mission and the minutiae of tweaks that go into the game.

Ever the king of monetization, Activision reigns by pulling in $800 million from microtransactions, subscriptions and DLC last quarter.

Activision's three segments--King, Blizzard, and Activision proper--all make for a lucrative money-printing digital powerhouse. Thanks to its immensely replayable online games, the company routinely earns more cash from monetization in one quarter than some publishers earn all year. Its most recent Q2'19 period was no different, and Activision pulled in $800 million from live services from April - June. This represents 66% of the total $1.21 billion in net bookings for the period.

In lieu of big frontline releases, Candy Crush developer King made the lion's share of microtransaction earnings with its free-to-play mobile game. But other segments didn't suffer--far from it. Activision pulled in $268 million in net revenues, driven by Call of Duty Black Ops 4 and Crash Team Racing, and Blizzard is in second place with $384 million, driven by continued monetization and sales across its fleet of multiplayer titles (World of Warcraft, Diablo III, Overwatch, Hearthstone, etc).

New FCC filings confirm Nintendo is making SNES controllers for the Switch, strongly indicating classic SNES games will follow.

Thanks to new FCC filings, Nintendo's plans to bring SNES retro gaming to the Nintendo Switch have been outed. The filings clearly show a wireless SNES controller that likely slides onto the handheld-console hybrid's rail system. Right now only NES games are playable on the Switch, offered for free as part of the $20 Switch Online service. Nintendo previously released special NES controllers for the Switch specifically designed to play these original classics.

Now Nintendo is doing the same thing for the SNES generation. The idea is to use the Switch Online as the paygate for these classic games rather than selling them individually--recurring revenues vs one-off sales--and we should expect to pay extra for SNES games. Nintendo also sells extremely limited controller hardware to compliment the software re-monetization. I'm thinking Nintendo will offer a Switch Online+ subscription for, say, $5-10 more a year that includes SNES games.

Microsoft could be targeting actual 4K 60FPS for games on Project Scarlett.

Microsoft's new Project Scarlett console supposedly "eats monsters for breakfast." It'll feature a Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU for next-gen performance, and is four times as powerful as the Xbox One X, hinting at roughly 24TFLOPs of raw power. But how far can it push games? Microsoft might be targeting 4K 60FPS in every Scarlett-optimized game, using the heavily customized AMD SoC and clever tricks to pull it off.

In a recent interview with Gamespot, Xbox boss Phil Spencer discussed Scarlett's design points. "I think the area that we really want to focus on next generation is frame rate and playability of the games. Ensuring that the games load incredibly fast, ensuring that the game is running at the highest frame rate possible. ...People love 60 frames-per-second games, so getting games to run at 4K60 I think will be a real design goal for us."

PC players who are waiting to get their hands-on Borderlands 3 will have to wait just that little bit longer as the game won't have support for pre-loading.

According to Tim Sweeny, Epic Games' CEO, Borderlands 3 will not have support for pre-loading. For those that don't know, pre-loading is when players can download the game before it officially releases so when the game does release they can jump straight into the action as soon as possible.

This news has been confirmed via a fans question to Sweeny on Twitter, Sweeny replied saying "I'm sorry, we won't have support for preloading in the Borderlands release timeframe." When asked why this is the case for Borderlands 3, Sweeny said that since Borderlands 3 is a timed Epic Games Store exclusive, the Epic Games Stores infrastructure isn't "It's Complicated. We've released support for file preloading which is sufficient for some games, but we aren't certain it's up to the demands of a blockbuster like Borderlands."

THQ Nordic has revealed two collectors editions that Destroy All Humans! players will be able to pick up when the game releases. Prepare your wallet because it isn't cheap...

Above we have the Destroy All Humans! - Crypto-137 Edition, which contains a real-life backpack of the games protagonist Crypto, a 60cm statue of Crypto, a keychain, six lithographs, an eye-popping anti-stress squeeze toy, a large "premium" box and in-game skins for Crypto. This bundle is priced at a staggering $400.

If the above bundle is out of your price range, THQ Nordic has provided a second option that doesn't cost as much. This edition is called the DNA Collectors Edition and will retail for $150. The contents of this pack include; a 23cm Cypto'N'Cow figurine, a keychain, six lithographs, eye-popping stress toy, a different "premium" box, the in-game Crypto skins, and of course, the playable game. These collectors editions will be available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC users and if you are interested in purchasing one head on over to the THQ Nordic website here.

Remember Tumblr? Well, a recent acquisition has been announced for the once extremely popular microblogging website. The acquisition comes from WordPress' parent company Automattic.

In May of this year, Tumblr owner Verizon announced that they are looking to sell off the microblogging website, after they acquired it from Yahoo in 2017 for $350 million. Verizon has extremely good reason to look for a buyer as Tumblr is undoubtedly on a downwards spiral of return-of-interest. Luckily, Verizon has sold off Tumblr to WordPress' parent company Automattic and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg told the Wall Street Journal that this is his companies biggest purchase in terms of "price and head count."

While we don't know how much the acquisition was actually worth, Axios says that the "price tag is well bellow $20 million". If that assumption is correct, Tumblr's value has dropped astronomically as back in 2013 Yahoo purchased it for a staggering $1.1 billion. WordPress's parent company purchasing Tumblr does make sense as they could somehow implant Tumblr's social foundations into their already well established WordPress platform.

In this day and age with so many devices being adopted by users across the world, many users are worried about their safety with this ever-evolving technology, and they have every right to do so.

According to researcher lead Matt Wixey, for the PwC UK Cyber Security practice, a doctoral student discovered an exploit in speaker and volume controls through a range of different devices. This exploit allowed for researchers to hack into the devices and access the volume controls to produce sounds at volume levels that would be detrimental to human hearing. The researchers also found that these sounds that could be produced by the device could not only damage the victims hearing, but also the device itself.

Wixey has now taken his findings to a range of different device manufactures and some of these manufactures have updated their firmware so the attacks weren't possible. Unfortunately, Wixey mentions that despite the firmware changes, sound attacks such as these are still open on a plethora of different devices (which he didn't name for obvious reasesons). He also mentions that instead of hackers hacking into devices for data foraging, they could hack into devices with the intent of possible physical harm.

Every owner of a car knows that feeling of when they have misplaced their car keys, well now that worry is over as a Tesla owner has implanted her keys into her own arm so she never looses them again. Will you follow her lead?

A software engineer going by the name of 'Amie DD' has taken key utility to the next level by implanting her Tesla keycard RFID tag into her own arm. Amie DD spoke to The Verge, saying that the implantation actually works and that her arm needs to be about an inch away from her vehicle to successfully unlock it.

Originally, Amine DD attempted to transfer the Tesla keycard software to an existing RFID tag she already had implanted in her arm, those efforts were unfortunately fruitless. Moving on to beat this issue, Amie decided to dissolve the Tesla keycard in acetone and encase the recovered chip in bio-polymer. She then visited a body-modification studio to get the card safely implanted in her arm.

AMD posted a blog detailing the way that the GPU boosting algorithm and thermal management systems work on the new Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards, just as the custom Navi cards are dropping.

There has been some mystery with how it all works but Mithun Chandrasekhar -- senior manager, product management, Radeon Technologies Group at AMD posted a lengthy and detailed blog on the official AMD website.

In the post, Chandrasekhar writes that with AMD taking its extensive network of thermal sensors spread out across the Navi GPU on the Radeon RX 5700 series cards to "intelligently monitor and tune performance in response to granular GPU activity in real-time".

NASA scientists have finally captured the first viewings of something they have been searching for years, solar 'Interplanetary Shock'.

NASA launched their Magnetospheric Multiscale mission back in 2015, the goal of the mission was to observe and study how the Sun's solar winds impact the Earth's magnetic fields. In January 2018, NASA scientists managed to capture this space phenomenon using the four launched spacecrafts, this phenomenon was an interplanetary shock.

An interplanetary shock is the transferring of solar energy (solar wind), this phenomenon occurs when a faster patch of solar wind overtakes a slower patch, resulting in the previously mentioned energy transfer, or 'shock'. Since a first time recording of this transfer has now been captured and saved, scientists hope that with this new information that they will be able to develop a better understanding of how it all works, while also hoping to be able to capture other space phenomena.

Minecraft will be staying rugged and pixelated after a new announcement on the official website detailing that the game will not be receiving its 'Super Duper Graphics Pack'.

Back at E3 in 2017, Minecraft developers Mojang announced the Super Duper Graphics Pack which was basically a massive graphics overhaul for the entirety of Minecraft. The graphics update has since been in development for the past two years and has provided extremely challenging for the developers, as numerous delays have had to go underway.

Now, an announcement has been posted via the Minecraft website, saying that the "Super Duper was an ambitious initiative that brought a new look to Minecraft but, unfortunately, the pack proved too technically demanding to implement as planned." This decision was due to the pack not performing as desired across a range of devices and "For this reason, we're stopping development on the pack, and looking into other ways for you to experience Minecraft with a new look."

Creative Assembly are rumored to be stepping onto the shores of the Trojan War as a filled trademark has been found revealing what is to be believed as the next Total War Saga game.

The filing has been found on UK's Intellectual Property Office website and showcases what is assumed to be the title of the next game "Total War Saga: Troy". Before we dive into how awesome of an era this is, I firstly must say that since no official announcement has come out of Creative Assembly regarding "Troy", that is this purely a rumor at this stage.

If Creative Assembly do choose to build a game around the Bronze Age and more specifically the Trojan War, this could be one of the best Total War Saga games ever made due to how rich this era in time is with history. For those that don't know, the Trojan War is predominantly based off two books - The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer. It is still debated how accurate Homers poems are to what actually happened in real-life, but regardless of specifics, this era in time is filled with amazing legends, characters, locations and more.

16-year-old Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf would be riding a huge high right now after won a huge $3 million by winning the Fortnite World Cup, and last night had his home "swatted".

Kyle was live streaming Fortnite at the time and mid-match his Dad comes to his door and says that armed police were at the door, looking for him. Kyle leaves the stream leaving his team mates questioning where he went, but after 10 minutes he returns.

Once he returns, Kyle said: "They come in with guns, bro. They literally pulled up, holy shit". Kyle streams daily to his audience of over 640,000 followers, so being swatted at this level is kinda crazy.

A handful of UK-based dark web drug dealers have been busted selling cocaine (or a Class A drug) on the dark web, dealing with Bitcoin. The group sold the drugs on the dark web under the brand 'Project4'.

Thames Valley Police said that Colin McCabe, 39, Toby Woods and Robert Price, both 36 made over £1 million ($1.2 million) selling Class A drugs on the dark web. The FBI discovered the trio, who were using Bitcoin to hide from authorities and selling drugs as far away as Australia.

McCabe was the leader of the dark web gang, jailed for 12 years after he admitted conspiracy to supply drugs that included cocaine, cannabis, and ketamine. Price was jailed for 9 years and 9 months after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply drugs, while Woods was sentenced to 14 months after confessing to entering into, or being concerned in the acquisition or control of criminal property.

Gears 5 has just gone gold, with Microsoft and The Coalition announcing the news ahead of Gamescom 2019 next week, with Gears 5 to be detailed on August 19.

The developer has teased that it will show off the new Horde Mode in Gears 5, as well as a deeper glimpse into the Gears 5 campaign. The Coalition boss, Rod Fergusson, said: "From all of us at The Coalition, we couldn't be more excited to share Gears 5 with the world. I want thank the team here who has worked so hard for our fans, and we all hope you are all as excited as we are to play Gears 5".

He continued: "This is furthest we have ever taken the franchise, living our studio mantra of 'if you want to go far go together'."

SAPPHIRE launched its new Radeon RX 5700 XT PULSE OC graphics card today, one of the first custom Navi cards to be released and a kick ass offering for Radeon gamers. You can read my review on it here.

The new SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 5700 XT PULSE OC has more performance than the reference RX 5700 XT, runs significantly cooler (16C cooler in my testing), and much quieter than the reference model. It offers performance roughly 5-10% better than NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, and all for $409.

SAPPHIRE also includes a new feature in TriXX Boost, which reduces the rendering resolution and upscales it using Radeon Image Sharpening resulting in up to 10-15% more performance in games.

Control is right around the corner with its release on August 27, with the pre-load for the game now kicking off on the Xbox One for those who pre-ordered the game.

Now that the pre-load has started we're finding out about the download size of Control, at least on the Xbox One, which is chiming in at 35GB. We don't know the download sizes for the PC or PS4 versions just yet.

I'm curious on the PC version of Control and its size since it will have loads of RTX features included with it, and how much they'll add to the download size. It shouldn't be too much bigger, but it'll be the most loaded RTX game released so far which has piqued my interest.

PUBG Mobile is dominating monthly player spending in battle royale games, with a gigantic spike that started in March and hasn't stopped rising. Fortnite is down in that same time, and doesn't even come close to the numbers from PUBG Mobile.

The big difference here for PUBG Mobile is when it reached China two months ago when it was released as Game for Peace, with monthly player spending going from just over $60 million in April to over $160 million in July. Fortnite on the other hand slipped under $40 million per month.

So when people laugh at these gaming phones like the Razer Phone II and ASUS ROG Phone II... tell them just how huge mobile gaming is and how much money is involved. We're looking at over $2 billion in monthly revenue from just three battle royale games on mobile devices, in a single year. This is just three games out of the sea of mobile games, but they push the boundaries of mobile hardware.