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Atari makes $12.7 million in 6 months, VCS on track for 2019
Atari today announced its total earnings for the first six-month period of its financial year, and reiterates a 2019 launch for its new Atari VCS console.
Atari is a curious business. It once reigned supreme in the early days of console gaming, but now its massive brand awareness is spent on licensing IPs and releasing games like Rollercoaster Tycoon. The company's earnings don't reflect a titanic industry force, but more so a company that's found its comfortable niche in the market. In the six-month period ending September 30, 2018, Atari made just 10.8 million Euros or about $12.7 million in total earnings, up 27% year-over-year. Operating income is up a mighty 87% YoY to 2.2 million Euros, and shareholder's equity spiked by an astronomical 194% to 23.1 million Euros.
For perspective on these numbers, the company's new crowdfunded Atari VCS generated $3 million on Indiegogo, or about a fourth of its half-year revenues.
Continue reading: Atari makes $12.7 million in 6 months, VCS on track for 2019 (full post)
Fallout 76 sold 1.4 million digital copies, SuperData says
Bethesda's gamble with Fallout 76 didn't exactly pay off in terms of digital launch sales, but EA's Battlefield V was also soft in November.
According to findings from SuperData, both Fallout 76 and Battlefield V saw weaker sales throughout November when compared to previous series entries. The analyst firm estimates that Battlefield V sold 1.9 million units digitally on consoles and PC, whereas the only-only Fallout 76 sold 1.4 million copies. For clarification, EA's shooter released on November 9 and Fallout 76 launched on November 14. Both games are down from Battlefield 1 and Fallout 4, but SuperData didn't say by how much.
Continue reading: Fallout 76 sold 1.4 million digital copies, SuperData says (full post)
Star Citizen's singleplayer is still far away
Star Citizen's singleplayer campaign is still a long ways off and a beta won't be released until 2020 at the earliest.
As Roberts Space Industries adds more muscle to its online-driven space titan, the game's development time grows at the same time. Today the company released an updated roadmap for its upcoming Squadron 42 singleplayer campaign, confirming a targeted Q2 2020 release for a beta test.
Although its been in development for some time, the campaign is quite monumental and features a 28 chapter story with a star-studded cast including Mark Hamill and Gillian Anderson. The chapters are also being worked on at the same time. That 2020 timeline is just for the beta and not the final game, but RSI notes that it's the "final stage of polishing and bug fixing before release."
Continue reading: Star Citizen's singleplayer is still far away (full post)
Enter the Blu-ray giveaway you've been 'Searching' for!
To celebrate the release of 'Searching' on home video, we have ten Blu-ray copies of the film to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment!
After David Kim (John Cho)'s 16-year-old daughter goes missing, a local investigation is opened and a detective is assigned to the case. But 37 hours later and without a single lead, David decides to search the one place no one has looked yet, where all secrets are kept today: his daughter's laptop. In a hyper-modern thriller told via the technology devices we use every day to communicate, David must trace his daughter's digital footprints before she disappears forever.
To go into the running to win a prize, post this article to your social media profiles and send your postal address to ben at TweakTown dot com before the competition closes on December 26th.
Continue reading: Enter the Blu-ray giveaway you've been 'Searching' for! (full post)
Battlefront II concept art channels Ralph McQuarrie
DICE and EA offer a rare glimpse at Battlefront II's concept art to give an idea how imagination is translated to dynamic video game worlds.
I absolutely love concept art, especially video game concept art. There's something magical about these early windows into fabulous worlds: they speak of limitless possibility and potential, fanning the flames of creativity and hope. Quite often I've looked at concept art and been able to capture the overall tone and feel of a game--other times it's been a surprise. But there's always something special about these slices of captured imagination, and Battlefront II is no exception.
With Battlefront II's concept art, the talented artists at DICE have recreated the early works of Ralph McQuarrie to a tee. McQuarrie's original concept art is directly responsible for the iconic aesthetic of Star Wars' favorite characters and locales, from the Cloud City of Bespin to Darth Vader's imposing samurai-esque helmet, and even X-Wing fighters, the Death Star, Star Destroyers and so much more. McQuarrie's talent envisioned what Star Wars is today.
Continue reading: Battlefront II concept art channels Ralph McQuarrie (full post)
Iron Harvest alpha 2 gameplay footage packs new features
KING Art Games, the developers for the upcoming World War I real-time strategy title Iron Harvest have announced a bunch of new features for the multiplayer alpha that has just been released.
The developers for Iron Harvest have launched the multiplayer alpha on Steam today and to celebrate the launch they have released the above 'Alpha 2 Gameplay' trailer. Since the release of Alpha 1, KING Art Games took all of the feedback from players and funneled it back into the game, implementing new features to the title such as; 1v1, 2v2, co-op, five new mechs, a second weapon system and much more.
Not only have weapons and multiplayer seen an upgrade, but buildings have also gotten some love. In alpha 2, players can enjoy upgrading their buildings through new build options, some of these options even include additions to the fortification and bunker systems. Many more features have also been added and they have been listed in the entirety of this post. Iron Harvest is currently available for pre-order, visit the official website here. In other news about Iron Harvest, the developers started a Kickstarter campaign and that ended with a whopping $1.5m+, more on that story here.
Continue reading: Iron Harvest alpha 2 gameplay footage packs new features (full post)
Warframe for Switch update: camera controls fixed/smoother
Warframe recently released on the Nintendo Switch and since then Warframes developers, Digital Extremes have issued a hotfix to the Switch version of the game. The update brings changes to the camera controls and more.
The update has been announced on the official Warframe Twitter page and also has been detailed on the Warframe forums. The hotfix has been titled 'Mask of the Revenant (23.5.0) Hotfix 3' and brings changes to volumetric lighting, motion controls, ambient occlusion, crashing and camera movement. Within the forum post, it is detailed what specific changes were made to the camera movement.
What was also detailed in the forum post was the specifics for aiming being fixed, the developers coded "deadzones to allow for more refined, precise aiming and removed the inherited velocity when shifting directions." Digital Extremes says that players "should now notice an immediate falloff in camera movement once input is no longer applied to the control sticks." If you are interested in checking out the full patch notes they can be found in the entirety of this post, or a direct link to them can be located here.
Continue reading: Warframe for Switch update: camera controls fixed/smoother (full post)
Fire Emblem Spirits take over Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Right on queue, Nintendo have detailed the next event to come to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it's titled 'The Fire Emblem Fest' and will be arriving on December 20.
Last weeks event was titled "A Spectacle to Behold!" and just like this event will run for a total of three days. Throughout those three days, Fire Emblem characters will take over the Spirit Board and appear much more frequently. Players that fight these characters throughout the time frame of the event will be rewarded with bonus SP.
It should be noted, Nintendo have detailed that the spirits that players encounter at the beginning of the event could be subject to change in part 2. The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Fire Emblem Spirits event will commence on 20th of December 10pm, and will finish on the 23rd of December, 10pm.
Continue reading: Fire Emblem Spirits take over Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (full post)
Hellboy Reboots just for the hell of it, trailer released
Stranger Things star, David Harbour goes down to the depths of hell and comes back in the form of Hellboy for a reboot. The first trailer has already been released.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly the actor gives some explanation toward what to expect in the story. Harbour says that this reboot is "not an origin story, but it's his coming to terms with where he came from. He's been Hellboy for a long time, but there's a new turn of events at the start of the film, where people start to bring up the fact that he might bring about the end of the world, and it's really the first time he's heard anything like that. The question that comes up in the movie is where does he really belong?"
The other actors that will be featured around Harbour will be Resident Evils Milla Jovovich as the Blood Queen, Ian McShane as Professor Broom, Daniel Dae Kim as Ben Daimo and Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan. The director for the reboot is Neil Marshall and he has previously done work for HBO's Game of Thrones, Netflix's Lost in Space and movies such as Dog Soldiers and The Descent. The reboot for Hellboy is planned for release in theaters on April 12th, 2019.
Continue reading: Hellboy Reboots just for the hell of it, trailer released (full post)
RTS: 'Conan Unconquered' will have gameplay 'next year'
The new upcoming real-time strategy game 'Conan Unconquered' from developers Petroglyph Games, and published from Funcom have confirmed that next year we will be getting some gameplay footage.
For those that don't know, Petroglyph Games are the developers behind Star Wars: Empire at War and Command & Conquer. Last week, Petroglyph Games and publisher Funcom announced that they will be bringing gamers a new real-time strategy game based in the universe of Conan the Barbarian.
We have already seen a cinematic trailer which you can check out here, but more importantly we can now expect some gameplay footage for the title sometime next year. In a reply to my above Tweet to the official Conan Unconquered Twitter page, we have confirmation that that "Sometime next year" we will be receiving some brand new gameplay footage. Hopefully its sometime in the early year that we get this new gameplay footage for Conan Unconquered, as this upcoming real-time strategy game looks very promising. To check out the official Steam listing for the title, click here.
Continue reading: RTS: 'Conan Unconquered' will have gameplay 'next year' (full post)
Elon Musk delivers 6 different FARTING NOISES for Tesla cars
Elon Musk has just unleashed a Christmas surprise for Tesla owners, with a few new Easter Eggs included in the latest over-the-air update to its fleet of electric vehicles. One of them includes the ability to fart, yes fart, on-demand.
As you can see from Kevin Pereria's tweet, one of the Easter Egg's in the new update are called Emissions Testing Mode, which gives drivers six different fart noises to choose from. This is an awesome troll for people who haven't read this news, or don't own a Tesla as you'll get a Tesla vehicle owner driving their friends around trolling them with fart noises... coming from THE CAR. Hat tip, Mr. Musk.
The six different fart sounds are themed around Musk's companies and marketing, including:
Continue reading: Elon Musk delivers 6 different FARTING NOISES for Tesla cars (full post)
Lenovo's new Z5 Pro GT smartphone: Snapdragon 855, 12GB RAM
Qualcomm announced its new Snapdragon 855 processor during the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii, and now we know what smartphone will be the first to use the new Snapdragon 855 processor: Lenovo.
Lenovo announced its new Z5 Pro GT smartphone that is powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, and is joined by a whopping 12GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of storage. Lenovo is using a cool pop-up selfie camera, meaning the display can stretch across the screen more, now taking up 95.06% of the front of the phone with its large 6.39-inch display.
The new Z5 Pro GT smartphone rocks Sony's impressive IMX576 sensor that sees the phone featuring a dual-camera rig that is split between a 24-megapixel and 16-megapixel sensor. Inside, there's a large 3350mAh battery, and Android 9.0 Pie pre-installed with Lenovo's own ZUI 10 custom launcher on top.
Continue reading: Lenovo's new Z5 Pro GT smartphone: Snapdragon 855, 12GB RAM (full post)
AMD will power new supercomputer with 400,000 CPU threads
AMD made its next-gen EPYC 'Rome' CPU official during the huge Next Horizon event in San Francisco, and when I was on the ground the energy there was nothing but a buzz. The new 64C/128T processor was announced, the world's first CPU to be made on the exciting new 7nm node, and it crushes anything Intel has in its Core and Xeon lines of CPUs.
The new EPYC 'Rome' CPUs will be used in new supercomputers, with Atos announcing its new BullSeqyuana XH2000 supercomputer that will be using a huge 3125 of the new EPYC processors. 3125 of these new 64C/128T processor means Atos will have a total of (and wait for this) 200,000 cores with 400,000 threads of CPU performance at its disposal.
Atos' new supercomputer will be joined by another machine that will use Intel Cascade Lake CPUs while the GPUs will be NVIDIA Tesla cards in a new supercomputer called BullSequana X400 and will be made next year. The AMD EPYC 'Rome' powered BullSequana XH2000 will be delivered in 2020, as AMD's new 7nm CPUs will be made available in 2019.
Continue reading: AMD will power new supercomputer with 400,000 CPU threads (full post)
Samsung has 93% of the smartphone OLED display market
Samsung is ramping up towards the launch of the world's first foldable smartphone which is meant to launch as the 'Galaxy F' that could cost over $2000, as well as the launch of the new flagship Galaxy S10 smartphone that will feature a 5G-capable variant.
It's not just smartphones where Samsung dominates but it is in mobile display production, where the South Korean giant commands a huge 93.3% of the smartphone OLED market. Over 61% of the smartphones shipped in the last 12 months featured an OLED panel of some sort, with Samsung taking 93.3% of the OLEDs in those phones in Q3 2018.
The entire smartphone display market has seen revenues of $10.7 billion in Q3 2018, with OLEDs commanding $6.6 billion of that, or 61.1%. This is because more and more flagship smartphones are rolling out with OLED displays, with Samsung, Huawei, and Apple all out in the market with beautiful OLED displays inside of their flagship handsets.
Continue reading: Samsung has 93% of the smartphone OLED display market (full post)
NVIDIA's new TITAN RTX already watercooled, kicking GPU ass
NVIDIA announced its new TITAN RTX in a push by influencers who pretended they didn't know they received an NDA, a new unreleased graphics card from the largest GPU company in the world, and then went live with videos in a 'oops, did I do that' push.
Well, that new $2499 graphics card has now reached the hands of people who are pushing them to their limits with PC enthusiast 'Death' posting on Twitter about the new TITAN RTX, and the overclocking adventures of the card when watercooled. The card belongs to 'jbn1010' from South Korea, with a Bykski waterblock and LCD installed onto the TITAN RTX it was then overclocked and benchmarked.
The new TITAN RTX was overclocked to 2070MHz on the GPU and 2025MHz on the memory, with 3DMark Fire Strike the only benchmark shared so far. The card achieved 31,862 points in Fire Strike, and 41,109 for the graphics card. This isn't bad considering a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in our Core i7-8700K test bed scores 34,910 total and a graphics score of 26,760.
Continue reading: NVIDIA's new TITAN RTX already watercooled, kicking GPU ass (full post)
Final Fantasy VII Remake is still 'going smoothly'
Progress on Square Enix's massively anticipated Final Fantasy VII: Remake is going smoothly, but it could be a while before it's released.
Although it was announced in 2015, it's been a while since we've heard anything about the Final Fantasy VII: Remake. Gamers are worried development has stalled due to the massive overhauls the team is making. But now key game devs Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura say new updates are coming in 2019, and that the game is being built at a steady, smooth pace.
"Development on Final Fantasy 7 Remake is progressing smoothly! I would like to try hard to meet the expectations of fans," Kitase said in a recent interview with Famitsu.
Continue reading: Final Fantasy VII Remake is still 'going smoothly' (full post)
343i accepts Halo's Mantle of Responsibility
343 Industries admits its made a few mistakes with the Halo franchise, but it pledges to do better with Halo 6.
Following my frustrations with Halo 5, I've been pretty critical on 343i and how they've handled the sci-fi universe I grew up with. The franchise has such promise, such possibility for interesting stories and content...and it feels like it devolved into a live service shooter aimed at the billion-dollar microtransaction market. But that could change with Halo 6 as 343i says they're not shrugging off the Mantle of Responsibility any time soon.
In a recent interview with GamesBeat, 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross affirms the studio will take its role more seriously than ever. "Honestly, we have made mistakes along the way. The community has helped us by creating good learning experiences for us. But I think that when I look at Halo, the universe is the most important character and we are stewards of the universe."
Continue reading: 343i accepts Halo's Mantle of Responsibility (full post)
Halo 6 may have RPG mechanics
Not much is officially know about Halo 6 (aka Halo: Infinite) but a recent job listing paints an interesting picture of the game's future.
Halo 6 could be a hybrid that merges first-person shooter with RPG mechanics in some way, a new Microsoft Senior Systems Designer job listing hints. The ad, which describes Halo 6 as a systems-driven game, calls for the candidate to have "familiarity with RPG and Shooter game mechanics." Combined with Microsoft's strong focus on live service games, this opens the doors for all sorts of possibilities.
Sony launched 5x more IPs in 2018 than Nintendo & Microsoft
In an effort to bring vibrance and uniqueness to the PlayStation 4 platform, Sony continues doubling down on new IP creation.
Creating new IPs can be a risky gambit. There's no guarantee a new IP will pay off--many are hit and miss--which is why we see companies throwing out sequels rather than making original projects. But with a huge install base of consoles and a wider focus on smartphones, Sony is all too eager to take that risk with first-party exclusives to drive up software and services revenue. Diversification is key in this business, especially if you're a platform-maker, and Sony wants to make PlayStation a spectrum of new content.
According to new data gleaned by GamesIndustry.biz, almost half of Sony's new releases in 2018 were new IPs. The company released 19 games this year, of which 10 were new IPs. This means Sony released five times more new IPs this year than its competitors Nintendo and Microsoft, who both had two new IPs.
Continue reading: Sony launched 5x more IPs in 2018 than Nintendo & Microsoft (full post)
Razer's Xbox mouse & keyboard costs more than an Xbox One S
RGB lighting, actuated switches, and PC-level DPI has finally made its way to consoles...but the entry fee is steep.
Razer's new wireless Xbox keyboard and mouse is called the Turret for Xbox One, and is designed to bring PC gaming control to the console-based living room. But it's essentially a higher-end variant of the existing Turret lapboad combo that includes extras like a dedicated Xbox button, RGB flair, mechanical switches, and advanced DPI sensors for more sensitivity.
At a glance the Razer Turret Xbox One Edition looks pretty snazzy and should give players a new way to enjoy their games with enhanced precision. There's just one problem: the cost. The combo is available for pre-order for $249 on the Microsoft Store, effectively exceeding the current price of an Xbox One S by $50 or about 25%. You do get a $25 gift card for pre-purchasing though.
Continue reading: Razer's Xbox mouse & keyboard costs more than an Xbox One S (full post)






















