Latest News - Page 2

Valve has confirmed that its upcoming Steam Deck portable handheld gaming device will not have any exclusive games; meaning there will be no Steam Deck exclusives that aren't available on the PC or other platforms.

Unlike every other platform which has exclusives like Microsoft with Halo, Sony with The Last of Us or Uncharted, Nintendo with Mario and Zelda, and so on -- Valve will instead not have any Steam Deck exclusives -- and there's a very good reason (from Valve themselves) on why.

Valve explains in its updated FAQ, with a question "Would Valve be interested in having any Steam Deck exclusive titles?" to which the developer answers: "No, that doesn't make much sense to us. It's a PC and it should just play games like a PC".

NASA 360 posted a video to its YouTube that's a part of its Planetary Defense series that is detailing asteroids that are close to Earth.

The video was posted to the channel back in October and was recently shared to the NASA 360 Twitter account, where NASA posed itself the question, "What do we know about the asteroids and comets in Earth's neighborhood?". The video showcases what NASA knows about near-Earth asteroids by the numbers, and explains that while the majority of the potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids have been found, there are still some thousands of undiscovered asteroids still out there in our neighborhood.

For those that don't know, Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that are orbiting the Sun and come within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit. The space agency explains in the description of the video that NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office was conceived to track, study NEOs, and if the situation presented itself, provide guidance into deflecting a potential threat to Earth. Below are the numbers outlined by NASA in the video.

Apple changed the world as we know it over 10 years ago with the introduction of the iPhone, and no one can deny that -- but what about 10 years from now? Apple's new AR glasses will take over the iPhone in the next 10 years according to well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

In a new note to investors, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo teased: "Apple's goal is to replace the ‌iPhone‌ with AR in ten years". It will all begin in late 2022, where Apple will reportedly debut its new AR headset. The first-gen Apple AR headset will work on its own, without needing a Mac or iPhone, with Apple reportedly set to support a "comprehensive range of applications" that will eventually replace the iPhone.

Apple's new AR headset won't only support AR (augmented reality) content but also VR (virtual reality) with a pair of Sony 4K Micro OLED displays, which will require the silicon horsepower that Apple has inside of its M1-style SoC.

Recently, the longest plant experiment in the history of the International Space Station (ISS) came to an end, breaking records for plants grown on the floating laboratory.

A new blog post on the NASA website details the achievements made and states that on November 26 Expedition 66 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei harvested some 26 chilie peppers that were grown from four plants grown aboard the ISS's Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) for 137 days. Hei, along with other crew members, sampled the harvested peppers, which broke the record for feeding the most astronauts from a crop grown in space.

"PH-04 pushed the state-of-the-art in space crop production significantly. With this experiment, we took a field cultivar of a Hatch chile pepper from New Mexico, dwarfed it to fit inside the plant habitat, and figured out how to productively grow the first generally recognized fruiting crop in space - all in a span of a couple years," said Matt Romeyn, principal investigator for PH-04 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Meta, formerly Facebook, has announced that its expanded its cryptocurrency advertising eligibility on Facebook and Instagram.

On Wednesday, Meta announced it will be giving companies much more room to operate by advertising cryptocurrency products and services on its social media platforms. Cointelegraph reports that "effective immediately", Meta will officially recognize 27 different regulatory licenses from advertising companies, which is a significant increase from the three licenses it was accepting before this change.

Very few companies advertise cryptocurrency products and services on Facebook and Instagram as the platform's advertising guidelines were quite narrow, but now that the guidelines have been widened, we can expect to see a larger variety of crypto-related products and services advertised. On top of products and services, a Meta spokesperson told Cointelegraph, "crypto news, education, payment methods, and merchandise can be advertised without prior written permission," writes the publication.

We all want it to happen, and we all fear it will never happen... Half-Life 3 will never come out.

In some fresh news, Valve insider Tyler McVicker talks about the future of the Half-Life franchise and highlights that no new entry in the Half-Life series is in development at Valve right now. Sure, Valve released the VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx, which was one of (if not the very) best game I've ev er played... but it doesn't mean Half-Life 3, or even Half-Life: Alyx 2 are in development.

McVicker added that Valve is full steam ahead on its portable gaming handheld, with the Steam Deck having Valve's full attention so that games work extremely well with most games.

Cyberpunk 2077 is already one of the best-looking games on the PC, especially when you've got the CPU and GPU hardware to handle it maxed out with ray tracing and DLSS enabled. But what about with the unreleased DLSS 2.3 update, and over 50 mods? Check it out:

Digital Dreams is using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card at 4K with DLSS 2.3 enabled on Cyberpunk 2077, as well as adding over 50 mods and turning up every single visual dial to maximum. The result? Absolute pixel beauty. I mean, it looks so damn good it makes me want to properly fire up Cyberpunk 2077 and play it through like this.

It's not completely flawless, but Cyberpunk 2077 has never looked better. It makes all the work developer CD PROJEKT RED put into the game stand out even more, and look far better in some (more so than others, really) and absolutely drool-worthy in other locations and situations in Cyberpunk 2077 as they explore the city in its improved graphical beauty.

Multiplayer is coming to The Witcher franchise, CD Projekt RED has reiterated.

The next Witcher game could have live service elements complete with in-game monetization, such as cosmetic or progression-altering microtransactions. In a recent Q3 earnings call, CDPR president Adam Kicinski reiterates that multiplayer will come "gradually" to both The Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises. This echoes previous statements made in March, but now Kicinski says that Cyberpunk 2077's multiplayer may not come first.

"We're planning to add multiplayer functionality in the future to both franchises, including Cyberpunk, gradually. We're not revealing which franchise will be the first to receive such functionality, but the first attempt will be something we can learn from, and then we can add more and more - so, step and step, we want to open our single-player experiences to mutliplayer, but we want to add such features gradually."

CD Projekt RED plans to start working on two AAA franchises simultaneously as early as Q3 2022, the company has said.

Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch notwithstanding, CDPR is gearing up for big things in the next few years. The developer wants to start working on two big AAA projects at the same time with two main teams working in parallel with one another. This means new Witcher and Cyberpunk games will be developed at the same time, which is a big departure from the years' long dev cycles between Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 titles.

Previously CDPR has said this process will begin in next year, and now company president Adam Kicinski clarifies dual development won't begin until both next-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 are released by June 2022.

CD Projekt RED says it will spend as much time and money as needed in order to fix Cyberpunk 2077 across all platforms.

CDPR is committed to fixing Cyberpunk 2077 for the long haul. The studio has been spending millions on the game's extra development costs, which include new updates, patches, and optimizations to fix the game's disastrous launch performance on PS4 and Xbox One consoles. This spending also includes the next-gen version of Cyberpunk 2077 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S systems.

In a recent Q3 earnings call, CD Projekt Chief Financial Officer Piotr Nielubowicz said this spending will continue as long as it's necessary. "Obviously we'll keep servicing the game for as long as necessary; however I strongly hope it will not take five years."