Latest News - Page 2018

After months of strange decisions, Konami might actually be coming around after all...

Konami may be bringing two of the best non-Nintendo Castlevania games ever made to the PS4. I'm talking about the PS1 classic Symphony of the Night and Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, the latter of which was only originally available on the PC Engine CD. The ESRB has rated both games, strongly hinting at an upcoming release on the PlayStation Network or perhaps as a boxed bundle.

Both games are actually somewhat hard to get outside of their original platforms. Symphony of the Night exists on PS1, Xbox 360, and the PS Portable version of Dracula X Chronicles. Thankfully Konami has ported Rondo of Blood to the Wii U as a Virtual Console game--I still haven't beaten Dracula!--and there's the Sega Saturn and aforementioned Dracula X Chronicles.

The screenplay for Geralt's first adventure on the small screen has been penned and finalized, show writer Lauren S. Hissrich today confirmed.

Netflix's new live-action Witcher TV series, which stars Superman's Henry Cavill as The Butcher of Blaviken, is coming together nicely for its 2019 release. The screenplay and script for the 8-episode season has been wrapped up (the finale was finished today) by writer Lauren S. Hissrich, who took a leave from Twitter to double-down on the work.

The series will stay true to Andrzej Sapkowski's original vision in The Witcher books, and I'm curious what he thinks of the script. Sapkowski will help with the show itself, but his official capacity may be advisory and help guide the show's darkly medieval focus.

Rockstar's big new Western game puts strong emphasis on player-driven choice and a world that reacts to said choices, and horses will be a big slice of that experience.

Constantly fleeing from lawmen into the wild frontiers of the old West and leaving a bloody trail, the Dutch Van Der Linde gang know the value of a steed. It's a beast of burden, a quick way to catch or escape, a companion, and even a commodity all-in-one. Your horse--and how you treat it--will be a big part of Red Dead Redemption 2's hyper-realistic immersion.

Everything you do (or don't do) while caring for your horse can change the game. Keeping your outlaw-to-horse relationship healthy is quite important, and typically translates to hunting to sell pelts, buying goods from stores, and taking the time to actually care for your stallion. Feed your trusty mount and it'll respond in kind by offering speed boosts; groom it and it'll raise its disposition towards you and get extra perks and bonuses. This sentiment isn't just for horses, though, and extends to the entirety of the game: take care of your camp by feeding them often and spirits remain high, don't wreak havoc in a town and the law won't come after you, etc.

As a visceral tale of murder, robbery and savagery, Red Dead Redemption 2's survival mechanics will have players hunting game and fishing to survive in a realistic way.

Red Dead Redemption 2 centers around a gang of outlaws who are being chased across the 1899 old West frontier. Not only do they have to cheat and steal, they have to hunt and kill to survive out in the inhospitable wilderness. A man's gotta eat, after all, and the game's protagonist Arthur Morgan actually needs to eat everyday. No matter where you are--in the arid scrublands or the frosty hinterlands--you'll need to regularly hunt and skin animals for their meat, pelts, and parts, all of which are used for a specific purpose in the game.

Rockstar isn't afraid of a little blood, though, and gathering meat will be a huge part of the game. Hunting is quite realistically dynamic and layered in RDR2. Hunting with a gun can actually lower the quality of the meat and reduce how much you get, for example, but a bow offers a cleaner kill. Animals can also smell Arthur, so masking your scent is important. Everything attained from a hunt can be used in some way to fuel your progress, whether it's selling pelts to a trapper or general store, keeping your gang well-fed, or using parts as resources for crafting.

Rockstar and Sony have teamed up to offer a PS4 Pro bundle that comes with a physical copy of Red Dead Redemption 2.

The new bundle isn't a special edition so don't expect any Western-style gold bar finish or inlaid shooting irons on the console, but what's surprising is its cost: it actually retails for the PS4 Pro's base MSRP of $399. So you effectively get RDR2 for "free". Another surprise is that it comes with physical media, especially since Take-Two has been pushing digital so much. It's definitely a nice touch and I hope the 1899 Western shooter comes with an expansive map.

Sadly the base PS4 model won't have any such bundle. But this makes a lot of sense considering Red Dead Redemption 2 was built from the ground up to harness every bit of the PS4 Pro's enhanced power and deliver dynamically-scaled 4K HDR gaming. Rockstar has confirmed it won't run at 60FPS on consoles, though, instead targeting 30FPS (which is par for the course for open world games). Sure RDR2 will play on an older PS4 model, but it'll play and look best on a PS4 Pro (and an Xbox One X).

Jump Force, the upcoming anime fighter from Bandai Namco has had its collectors edition and pre-order bonuses revealed. Will you be paying $260 for a 30cm tall diorama?

From the released images we can see that Bandai will be bringing players that pre-order Jump Force three exclusive in-game costumes. The three costumes will be from the three biggest anime franchises, One Piece, Dragon Ball and Naruto. Players will also get a Frieza Hover Pod which can be used to cruise around in the lobby.

For players that want to step it up a notch there is the collectors edition. Users that get the collectors edition will have to throw down a total of $260, they will receive a 30cm tall diorama of Goku, Luffy and Naruto. Players will also get a physical copy of the game, a steel book case and three art boards that feature Goku, Luffy and Naruto. Jump Force is planned for release on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC sometime in February 2019. If you are interested in picking up either the Collectors Edition or just a standard pre-order, visit the Amazon listing here.

During the Tokyo Game Show 2018, Square Enix has showcased a gameplay video of their upcoming third-person mech fighting title Left Alive. A 10 minute video has been release.

At the Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix showcased to participates Left Alive, the above video has been taken fromn the livestream so unfortunately it is quite low quality. Regardless of the quality we can see some very cool mechanics mixed with some cutescenes, the video goes for about 10 minutes and the mech combat begins at exactly 3:20.

Toshifumi Nabeshima from Armored Core, Yoji Shinkawa from Metal Gear Solid and Takayuki Yanase from Ghost in the Shell are developing Left Alive. At the moment the title has its planned release window for February 2019. For further information regarding the title, visit the official website here.

A brand new gameplay video released in a new episode of the PlayStation Underground has revealed a boss in FromSoftware's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, introducing the Corrupted Monk and her extremely fluid animations.

Before we get to the Currupted Monk Boss battle, the gameplay video begins with us diving into some common enemy killing, we are subjected to a great deal of carnage as we learn that players will have to utilize attachments to the protagonists prosthetic arm. An example of this would be players changing to the axe to deal with enemies that have a shield, as they are weak to the axe modification.

Once we are introduced to the Corrupted Monk and immediately we can see that this boss has extremely fluid and graceful animations. I completely agree with the commentators of the video, FromSoftware has done a fantastic job with this bosses animations, it is almost as if the monk is dancing with the player. Future players may want to take note that this boss has a second phase that makes her intangible and un-focusable. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will be arriving on PS4 on the 22nd of March, 2019. If you are interested in more information regarding Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, visit the official PlayStaion listing here.

News has surfaced regarding an animated series being in development at Netflix, IGN and Variety have reported that officials from both companies are in the "final talks" about the show.

BOOM! Studios Co-founder and writer Andrew Cosby has taken to his Twitter with a now deleted tweet to confirm his involvement in a new Diablo animated TV series project with Activision Blizzard and Netflix. The tweet has now been removed but luckily someone managed to grab a screenshot of it before it was removed, it reads as follows "I guess I can confirm I am indeed in final talks to write and show-run the new Diablo animated series for Activision and Netflix. It's very exciting and I hope to the High Heavens it all works out."

IGN reached out to Netflix for a comment on the matter and Netflix responded with "no comment", the reaction of both Activision Blizzard and Netflix showcases that the deal isn't at 100% completion as of yet, but I'd say it is most likely going to happen sometime soon. Video game fans may have already noticed the animated Castlevania TV series that is on Netflix, the success of that show may have sparked an idea with the universe of Diablo and the already very loyal fan base that follow it. In other news about Diablo, the Diablo III Eternal Collection is on the way to the Nintendo Switch, check that story out here if you happened to miss it.

Are you a fan of the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller? or do you prefer the classic GameCube controller? Well, PowerA are releasing brand new wireless versions for both and they are officially licensed by Nintendo.

According to the press release from PowerA, the new controller looks identical to the standard Pro controller, but will feature an additional two mappable advanced gaming buttons on the backside. The controller will also be featuring button mapping, player number LED's for power and a low battery warning. Unfortunately the controller does not have rechargeable batteries but will instead use two AA batteries, which estimates around 30 hours of charge.

PowerA will also be releasing a wireless and wired GameCube controller to coincide with the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in December. Players will be able to choose between different color schemes that "offer an old-school vibe with all the modern bells and whistles." The PowerA Enhanced Wireless Controller for the Nintendo Switch is currently available for pre-order for $49.99. The wireless GameCube controller will be available to pre-order for $49.99 and the wired version will be available for $29.99.

Bitmain will be launching its next-gen Antminer soon, with the company announcing at the World Digital Mining Summit in Georgia its next-gen ASIC chip 'DM1391' that will mine cryptocurrencies on the SHA256 algorithm.

Bitmain will be one of the first to use the 7nm process with its new ASIC SHA256 algorithm acceleration chip, with over 1 billion transistors and optimized for maximum efficiency. Bitmain's new 7nm built ASIC chip is the most powerful and power efficient ever made, something that Bitmain CEO and co-founder Jihan Wu saying the new ASIC can reach a ratio of energy consumption to the mining capacity that is as low as 47J/T.

The new 7nm chips are being made by TSMC and have already entered mas sproduction, so expect new Antminer's to blow away previous-gen mining performance, with even more impressive power efficiency in the near future. Bitmain isn't new to developing world-leading ASICs with current-gen 16nm designs used in the popular Antminer S9 miner, and many other ASIC-based miners from Bitmain.

NCIX is in some big effing trouble with a story breaking over the weekend that someone had access to their old servers that went for auction and were purchased, after the Canadian retailer went bankrupt in 2017.

The servers that were previously owned by NCIX somehow ended up on Craigslist, with Travis Doering from Privacy Fly access the servers and pretending to be someone called "Jeff" for privacy (fly) reasons. Doering was after the data on the NCIX server, making is clear he was after the contents of the HDD alone and not the juicy server hardware. Doering met with the seller multiple times, confirming that they were ex-NCIX servers and that they indeed had NXIC user and business data on it.

The used servers were sold because NCIX reportedly didn't pay their warehouse storage bills in late-2017 with over $115,000 owed, where the servers were given to the warehouse owner to sell to recoup costs. Yeah well, the NCIX servers weren't wiped and millions of customers private detailed were exposed, as well as business customers who used to buy many millions worth of goods.

Global entry! We have teamed up with ADATA to give away an awesome SPECTRIX D80 DDR4 3000MHz 32GB Memory Kit to one lucky winner!

Meet the world's first RGB DDR4 memory with a hybrid liquid-air cooling system, the SPECTRIX D80. It utilizes a combination of a liquid heat sink that's hermetically sealed with non-conductive fluid and an aluminum heat sink to deliver effective thermal cooling. What's more, the liquid heat sink is illuminated with RGB lighting to give your rig a distinctive flair.

How to Win

There were a few glaring issues in the Battlefield V open beta such as the ridiculous length of dying in the game, but the developers at DICE have been tweaking the game leading up to its now-delayed launch.

DICE recently posted about some of the tweaks they've been working on with Battlefield V, with one of them tied to making "a tighter death experience". DICE addresses this by bringing up that if you played the open beta you "might have found it took a while to get back into the action after having been downed by an enemy. This has been tweaked; bleeding out now goes much faster than before. Also, the time spent in the squad follow camera - AKA the "parrot camera" - will be reduced. The revive icon and audio for revive shouts will be polished to make it easier to see and hear squad mates calling for help".

The bleed out time on the Battlefield V open beta was so bad, but the developers at DICE have been improving that. DICE said: "When shot down, the length of your bleedout time will be taken into consideration when you get to the squad follow camera screen. If you've spent a lot of time bleeding out, the waiting time in the squad follow camera before spawning will be shorter. This will make for a tighter experience and benefit Medics, since players won't hesitate to shout out for help".

The foldable smartphone race will begin later this year, with both Samsung and Huawei fighting to be the first to market with the world's first foldable smartphone. Huawei is now back in the news with Huawei deputy chairman Ken Hu confirming that a new foldable smartphone with 5G connectivty will be in consumers' hands in 1H 2019.

During the World Economic Forum panel, Hu said: "In our first [5G] smartphone we're going to introduce a foldable screen".

5G will usher in a new world of connectivity that isn't just blistering speed, but it will be 4K and beyond video streaming, more smartphones used during dense events without speed loses (think concerts, sports matches, etc), cloud-based AI with low latency, streaming 4K and beyond games, 10x increased cloud usage thanks to super-low latency and super-high speeds, and so much more.

MSI had its turn just before with their new Z390 motherboards led by the flagship MEG Z390 GODLIKE motherboard, but now it's time for ASUS to shine in the light with their Z390 motherboards and the flagship Z390 ROG Maximus XI.

The new ASUS Z390 ROG Maximus XI CODE motherboard with an absolutely huge heat sink that spreads from the first to second x16 PCIe port and over the Z390 chipset, edging to the 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots. It looks glorious as well, with some awesome RGB-lit start/reset buttons next the DIMMs. It requires an 8+6-pin power at the top, and is ready for the flagship Core i9-9900K processor.

This motherboard is the new ASUS Z390 ROG Maximus XI, and you can see that there's some EK Water Blocks cooling above the CPU, with the same behemoth of a heat sink on the board. Looks great IMO, even in black and white as a preview image.

Intel is getting its new 9000-series CPUs ready for launch in the next month, with motherboard makers preparing their Z390 motherboards. MSI's new Z390 range has now leaked, led by the flagship MEG Z390 GODLIKE which looks so damn awesome.

MSI's new flagship MEG Z390 GODLIKE features an M.2 expansion card as well as something else - it seems to be a streaming-related card with an HDMI port on the back so maybe this is for gamers who want to game on their Core i9-9900K as well as stream to Twitch, etc. The MZI MEG Z390 GODLIKE motherboard sports four PCIe x16 ports, three M.2 slots (and another two with the M.2 expansion card), and a larger E-ATX form factor.

Next up we have the new MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard that has tons of RGBs coming out of it - hell, all of these new Z390 motherboards from MSI do.

Kojima Productions dropped a new Death Stranding trailer at this year's Tokyo Game Show...and we're as lost as ever.

Death Stranding is a giant cryptic puzzle with tons of interlocking layered mechanisms, and gamers everywhere are keen on trying to solve it. In typical Kojima style, the latest gameplay trailer gives us more questions than answers to fuel the wild speculation. The footage was quite brief and revealed Troy Baker's very playful and bantering character (aka the Man in the Golden Mask) who appears to be with a villainous rogue outfit somehow affiliated with ancient Egyptian lore (or maybe that's just the style, who knows). What's even more interesting is Baker's skull mask is infused with eldritch magic that can collect the weird phantom darkness and manifest it into shapes. In this case, the Man in the Golden Mask summons a terrifying shadow lion to take out Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus).

There's a lot to dissect here, and the Death Stranding Reddit has been busily connecting threads together. Do note that Baker's fetus-tank glows a baleful red, hinting at malevolence or perhaps some sort of corruption that allows for manipulation of the shadow-monsters. And of course he teleports away like a mischievous trickster.

Using valuable lessons learned from the Final Fantasy XIV MMO and the unique Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix will focus more on live games to make recurring revenue and tailor-make its games for fans.

Alongside its thriving MMO business, Luminous Productions will lead the charge into Square Enix's live service plans. The new studio was born from change and strife, and is made up of key FFXV developers including game director Hajime Tabata who iterated, crunched, and took on insurmountable hardships to develop not only the game itself, but the new engine that powered it. Now the team is bringing their hard-earned expertise and powerful Luminous Engine to help push boundaries and blur singleplayer and multiplayer gaming. We've seen threads of this focus with Final Fantasy XV's unique merging of a expansive singleplayer-driven story arc with its MO-style Comrades gametype, both of which have transformed the game into a mini-franchise within itself. In short, FFXV is a gift that keeps on giving, and Square Enix wants more.

Ultimately this means Luminous Productions aims to blend live services with engaging stories--an evolution of what it did with FFXV. The studio is working on AAA games alongside other projects, and we spotted a job listing in March that hinted microtransactions and live services would be included in these games.

The mini-console war is in full pelt, and Nintendo might swing back at Sony's new PlayStation Classic with a new (old school) system of its own.

Back in July 2017, Nintendo filed a trademark for an Nintendo 64 controller image. The trademark's style closely resembles those used on Nintendo's mega-hit NES and SNES Classic Edition micro-consoles, signalling a new low-cost retro system is on the way. On August 30 that trademark was approved and published on the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

Scouting the trademark yielded some interesting results that strongly support an N64 mini is in the works (and maybe something else). The EUIPO partially objected to the registration back in January because it didn't look enough like an actual Nintendo 64 controller. The trademarked image is missing the left and right bumpers, for example, and doesn't have the embossed "Nintendo" logo on it.