Latest News - Page 1875

We are on the precipice of Season 2 for Apex Legends and to build that hype we have new teasers to salivate over. Is it possible that a mother dragon exists?

Above we are looking at a post from the official Apex Legends Twitter account. The post features a gif video of a player flying down to what can be assumed is the map below, but he is accompanied by dragons (flyers) and what seems to be much larger mother dragon in the background.

In my first post about players finding the dragons, I speculated that Respawn could be creating a dragon looting area that would be guarded by a mother dragon. I also speculated that dragons will eventually fight players back, which would force players to choose between compromising their position on the map, or loosing potentially valuable loot.

In May, Pokemon Detective Pikachu starring Ryan Reynolds hit cinema's. The movie was met with large amounts of fan support and now those fans will soon be able to own their very own copy of the film.

The above Twitter post has been found on the official Pokemon Detective Pikachu Twitter page and has revealed that on the 23rd of July, Pokemon Detective Pikachu will be available to digitally download.

For fans that would prefer actually being able to gold the movie in their hands (physical form), Pokemon Detective Pikachu will become avaialble on Blu-ray on the 6th of August. If you wish to pre-order the film, head on over to the Pokemon Detective Pikachu website here.

During E3 2019 we heard about a secret Nintendo Switch project brewing in PlatinumGames' development labs. We then learned this project was ASTRAL CHAIN, and that the release is not far off from us at all.

Now things have been really turned on its head. Originally, fans were more than happy to get their hands-on a new PlatinumGames title, but now we have learned that ASTRAL CHAIN is just part 1 in what has been planned as a trilogy for the franchise.

According to an interview with IGN Benelux, and director of the title Takahisa Taura, ASTRAL CHAIN is being made with a trilogy of games in mind. For this reason there, ASTRAL CHAIN has no plans for DLC content and instead what would of been DLC content will arrive in the sequel. The sequels for ASTRAL CHAIN will only be created if the sales of the first title meet the studio's expectations. ASTRAL CHAIN will release exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on August 30th, 2019.

With all of the Age of Empires Remasters that are in Microsoft's pipeline, some fans have wondered whether or not the company has forgotten about one of their other popular spin-off titles, Age of Mythology.

We already have the remaster for the first Age of Empires and now we are currently waiting for the remaster of the second game, Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. At the moment, Microsoft are conducting an Insiders Program that will allow lucky fans to get an early taste of Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. The program is invite only and can be signed up for here, and the release is scheduled for sometime this fall.

With all this news swirling around Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, some fans wondered whether or not Age of Mythology would be getting some love. In a recent interview with Eurogamer at E3 2019, ADam Isgreen, the Creative Director for the Age of Empires franchise at Xbox Game Studios mentioned that Microsoft hasn't forgotten about the title. Here is what he had to say: "It's great to see how much love there is for Age of Mythology, 'cause I love it too - it's more of a... less accurate history. It's super loose, people just have fun, and I love that too."

Yesterday it was confirmed that the missing YouTuber Desmond 'Etika' Amofah has been found dead in Manhatten's East River. Fans of the YouTuber/streamer have now started a petition to reinstate his once deleted YouTube Channel.

If this is fresh news to you that Etika has passed, here is quick summary of the events. Etika had a history of mental health issues and expressed his struggle with internet fame and the negativity that comes with it many times in the past. Last October, Etika's channel was terminated due to him uploading pornography to it, effectively he was sabotaging himself.

Amofah's last communication with people was on June 19, and on June 20 the New York Police department declared it a missing persons case. On Sunday night Amofah's belongings was found on Manhattan Bridge and his body was found a day later near the South Street Seaport. Fans are now rallying a petition together to get his channel reinstated so they can enjoy Etika's past content. The petition already has 380,000 signatures as of the time I'm writing this.

Microsoft already taps semi-custom silicon from AMD for its current-gen Xbox consoles, and its next-gen Project Scarlett consoles that will soon expand the Xbox family in 2020... but what about AMD silicon inside of Surface products? That seems like it could happen, soon.

According to the latest rumors, Microsoft is working on a new AMD-powered Surface laptop that would drop the proprietary Surface Connect with the much more open USB-C port. Inside of the new Surface laptop is reportedly an AMD Picasso SoC on the 12nm node which will see Microsoft reduce its dependency on Intel for CPUs inside of its Surface products. The AMD Picasso SoC would feature Zen+ CPU cores (not Zen 2, and not 7nm) with Vega GPU cores.

On top of that, Microsoft is also reportedly working with Qualcomm on custom ARM-based silicon for codename Excalibur, a new Surface Pro that the silicon sounds like the Snapdragon 8cx, and some. Expect full 5G connectivity, and so much more on Excalibur. We'll keep you up to date on the new AMD silicon inside of the new Surface laptop as it happens.

AMD is just over a week away from launching its new Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards based on the new Navi GPU architecture, and while we'll see the Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 -- there won't be any high-end flagships to compete against the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti.

According to new leaks stumbled upon by Komachi on Twitter, it looks like SAPPHIRE is working on a bunch of new Navi-based Radeon RX 5000 series cards including some purported flagship models we haven't heard about yet. We're looking at the Radeon RX 5900, RX 5900 XT, RX 5950 and RX 5950 XT as the new high-end Navi-based graphics cards to be excited for -- but are they based on Navi 10 or 20? That we don't know.

We could expect a dual-GPU variant in the Radeon RX 5950 XT which would be really cool, but I can't imagine the power numbers on that thing.

VESA has just announced the fresh new DisplayPort 2.0 standard that drives supported resolutions right up to 16K, which comes in at an eye-weltering 15360x8460, and DP 2.0 can do it at 60Hz.

DisplayPort 2.0 can also do dual 8K monitors both at 120Hz which is astounding, considering DP 1.4-based 8K monitors use dual DP cables to hit 8K60. This is the first update to the DisplayPort spec since 2016 with DP 1.4a, which compared to that DP 2.0 has 3x more bandwidth which is the driving force behind the huge uptick in resolution support. VESA Board Chair Alan Kobayashi explains: "DP 2.0 represents one of our most significant milestones in the history of DisplayPort, and is the culmination of several years' effort and major enhancements to this ubiquitous standard".

DP 2.0 supports multiple high-res, high refresh rate displays with the increased bandwidth allowing for 2 x 8K 120Hz monitors, or 2 x 4K 144Hz monitors which is just incredible. Not only that but we'll have support for 10K monitors as well. This is all thanks to that increased bandwidth that the new DP 2.0 standard is capable of, speaking of which here are the raw bandwidth and effective bandwidth numbers:

Twitch gives creators a new way to reward subscribers with exclusive content.

Today Twitch announced Subscriber Streams, a new feature that essentially locks specific streams behind a paygate. Only users who enlist in a creator's subscription plan can view the streams as they go live and on VOD. Subscriptions start off at $4.99 a month, then rise to $9.99 in the second tier and $24.99 for the third tier. Amazon Prime users can subscribe to their favorite content creators for free, but only the first time is free.

The idea here is to reward fans while actively incentivizing paid recurring subscriptions to access broadcasts. It's billed as a way to give back to fans and supporters with specific streams not available to everyday users, creating a kind of club that gives more direct exposure to a creator. All Subscriber Streams are marked as such on the main Twitch page, and anyone can see a 5-minute preview of the footage before they buy in.

After a falling-out with Activision, Sledgehammer Games co-founder Glen Schofield has found a new home full of chicken dinners.

Today PUBG Corp announced it's opening a new game studio called Striking Distance, with Dead Space producer and Call of Duty veteran Glen Schofield at the helm.

Striking Distance will evolve PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds beyond a multiplayer shooter and into the realm of narrative-driven story campaigns. "Schofield is building a world class development team from the ground up to create an original narrative experience within the PUBG universe," the announcement reads. Schofield's past work in games like Dead Space and Call of Duty WWII hints the PUBG story will be quite visceral and gritty.

A new expose from Kotaku reveals the harsh working conditions Treyarch employees face while making big Call of Duty games like Black Ops 4.

The games industry and its major players have a severe problem with crunch, or the practice of accelerating development on games way beyond normal time frames. In the months leading up to a game's release, developers work long, arduous hours at the cost of their personal lives and psychological well-being. The paychecks are good--or at least bigger than normal--but the workloads, lack of communication, and reboots typically grind morale into dust. Treyarch, one of the leading studios behind gaming's most lucrative shooter franchise, has been particularly affected by this practice. One dev even described the studio as a "nightmare" during crunch its periods.

Black Ops 4's massive success came at a real cost for Treyarch. Speaking to Kotaku, one dev said they endured "perpetual crunch" to get the game finished. Contractors, who make the bulk of the dev team for these projects, were treated as ancillary workers, almost interlopers, who fed the human-chomping machine of game crunch. Q&A testers were slammed with insane hours. Big development shifts exacerbated things considerably. Like most big AAA games, Black Ops 4 was quite different at the beginning. The team originally envisioned an interesting-sounding new 2v2 campaign mode that shifted into a normal, linear singleplayer endeavor.

If U.S. President Trump's proposed Chinese tariffs aren't amended to exclude games consoles, the entire precious console industry could come unraveled.

Today Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony issued a thorough letter to the U.S. government that exhaustively details just how badly tariffs will disrupt the console games industry. The missive warns the tariffs will cause console prices to rise well past their current MSRP, and dramatically interrupt the critical supply chains needed to facilitate the market.

In short, the tariffs could permanently alter the $47.9 billion console games industry by throwing a wrench in the finely-oiled gearworks. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will have to delay manufacturing as they find new facilities and make big multi-year deals for component creation, shipping, and hardware assembly. As costs rise, they'll in turn pass those costs to consumers, which will lead to lower sales. And lower sales means the companies will make less money, and pay less taxes on consoles sold in the United States. No one wins here.

Rick and Morty season 4 is being craved by fans, and the release of the fourth season is not even that far away for the mainstream. But for attendee's of the Adult Swim Festival, they will get a special early sneak peak.

According to an announcement from Deadline, the long-awaited fourth season of the hit TV show Rick and Morty will have a special showing at the Adult Swim Festival in Los Angeles. The Adult Swim Festival will be held across two days and run from Friday, Nov. 15 (Saturday) to Nov. 16. Deadline says that there will be a "never-before-seen screening" on the second day of the festival.

While Deadline doesn't mention whether or not this will be an early screening of the first episode of season 4, I have a sneaky suspicion this might be an early screening. Adult Swim has described this years festival event attractions as a "one-of-a-kind 360 degrees fan experience". Rick and Morty season 4 will debut sometime in November.

A new batch of gameplay footage has been released for The Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening, this time round we can see a cameo of Ocarina of Time.

The new footage has been released onto the GameXplain YouTube Channel and is a combination of the E3 2019 demo, and some new areas which weren't shown off in the original demo. We also get a great cameo of Ocarina of Time as well as some brand new music to enjoy.

While some might think that The Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening is just a simple remake of the classic title, that just isn't the case. The remake will add some brand new features which can't be found in the original game. Some of these new features include the new Chamer Dugeon which gives players the opportunity to create and play their own dungeon levels.

A very well-known gaming YouTuber has been found floating dead in Manhatten's East River yesterday evening, police have confirmed the body is Desmond 'Etika' Amofah, age 29.

Etika began his YouTube career back in 2012 and gained quick popularity over the seven years he was active. He was known for his reaction videos towards new game announcements such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and some other large Nintendo titles. Etika amassed quite the following around 800,000 fans who he referred to as his JoyCon Boyz - this number is an approximation of all of his social media channels such as YouTube, Twitch, Twitter and Instagram.

After sometime being in the social media spotlight, Amofah announced his struggle with mental health last October when he self-destructed his own YouTube Channel. Amofah then went on to make references to suicidal tenancies and in April police had to detain him in his apartment. Police told Kotaku that Amofah's urges were due to his "psych history".

A new announcement from Bandai Namco has revealed that the iconic anime fighter One-Punch Man will soon be getting his very own fighting game. How boring for him if there is no challenge...

The above trailer has been released onto the official Bandai Namco YouTube Channel and depicts the popular over-powered fighter in a brand new setting. the game is titled One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody is a 3v3 fighting game developed by Jump Force developers Spike Chunsoft.

For those who don't know who One-Punch Man is, the characters actual name is Saitama and he is a trained fighter who defeats most - if not all his foes in one simple punch. One-Punch Man's persona revolves around of how bored Saitama is fighting due to him not being able to find a challenging opponent. Once you understand this you will get why he looks so calm and not bothered by all of the foes that challenge him.

Nintendo Switch fans can rejoice as a Terraria will be soon be coming to the handheld console in only a few days. Venture the world of Terraria on the Switch on June 27th.

According to a recent forum announcement on the official Terraria website, the Nintendo Switch version of Terraria is due for an imminent release. The post reads as follows; "Terraria Switch will be live to the world for digital download in 2 days!" The post also mentions the physical release for the game, saying "It will take us a bit more time to get out the physical retail version, but until then we hope you will enjoy the full game available for download via Nintendo eShop".

To celebrate the launch on the Nintendo Switch, developers Re-Logic will be hosting daily events for prizes on their Discord channel. Prizes will also be given to fans who drop into content creator Twitch livestreams. For those who wish to attend an AMA meeting with Terraria Switch developer, Pipework Studios on their Discord at Wednesday June 26 at 12:00PM PST.

Nokia's exciting Bell Labs division has possibly solved one of the largest issues of smartphones today... battery life. Bell Labs has solved the issues surrounding limited recharge cycles on lithium ion and lithium polymer technology, using something exciting and new that could provide up to 2.5x the battery life we have today.

According to Paul King who is one of the lead investigators on the new battery project as well as being a Member of the Technical Staff of Nokia Bell Labs: "By packing more energy into a smaller space, this new battery technology will have a profound impact on 5G and the entire networked world. The combination of Nokia Bell Labs industry and device knowledge and AMBER's materials science expertise allowed us to tackle an extremely difficult problem involving multiple disciplines. Our results were achieved through the deeply collaborative mode in which we work, underscoring the value of engaging with AMBER as part of our global research strategy".

Nokia Bell Labs has created a lithium nanotube-aided battery that boasts up to 2.5x the battery life of the best batteries on the market now, while staying as thin as smartphones are now. We don't want more battery life with much thicker phones, which is where the researchers at Trinity College Dublin's AMBER center have hopefully created something that could well and truly change the battery game for smartphones.

The on-going tensions between the US and Iran have extended to the world of gaming, with League of Legends now blocked in both Iran and Syria at the request of the Trump administration. The game can't be accessed "due to US laws and regulations" according to an in-game message when loaded up in Iran or Syria.

An Iranian gamer screenshotted the message, which read: "Due to U.S. laws and regulations, players in your country cannot access League of Legends at this time. Such restrictions are subject to change by the U.S. government, so if and when that happens, we look forward to having you back on the Rift". Pretty crazy move, seeing League of Legends banned in these two middle eastern countries.

It seems that developer Riot Games didn't have much to do about the decision of banning League of Legends in Iran and Syria, as it was pushed onto them by the US government. As the source DOTesports says: "Multiple Iranian and Syrian players have expressed despair about this situation. A common theme is that this won't hurt the politicians or those with the power to do something, but instead, it'll affect the civilians whose lives in a war-torn country already offer little comfort and access to video games". I totally agree with that, very sad to see for gamers wanting an escape.

Microsoft blew gamers away with its surprise reveal of a new Flight Simulator game at E3 2019, which is due out on both the PC and Xbox One in 2020 and now the company has confirmed some great news.

Flight Simulator will work with third-party content as well as community-created add ons, with Microsoft saying it is aware of the issues surrounding the current ecosystem and that the team is working on it. Microsoft has said they want to work closely with the community during the development of Flight Simulator, adding: "Whatever your abilities are, if you want to fly, we are going to do whatever we can to make that happen. Yoke and pedals, mouse and keyboard, controller, etc. No pilot should be left behind".

The company has promised that we'll hear more about Flight Simulator in the coming months, with updates to the preview build as well as insider programs kicking off in August. If you're a Flight Simulator fan, you'll want to keep on top of this news -- as the game simply looks freaking incredible. Day one for me on a big screen TV and kick ass gaming PC.