Latest News - Page 2104

DICE has allowed Battlefield 1 gamers to access their Community Test Environment (CTE) where players can test out in-progress updates before they're pushed into the final game.

The developer has recently announced that the CTEs for the PS4 and Xbox One will no longer be used, with DICE pushing all-in on CTEs for PC gamers. DICE announced the news on Reddit, where they said they won't be updating the CTE servers to the latest version after the improvements they'll release this month.

DICE also said that all of the updates used in the PC CTE are for "developmental feedback purposes" and might not even be released into Battlefield 1. PS4 and Xbox One gamers with the CTE for Battlefield 1 installed can delete the CTE download now, saving some previous HDD space on their consoles.

Broadcom has been going after Qualcomm for months now, which led into US national security concerns and even President Trump standing in and blocking the takeover last week.

The presidential order said there was "clear evidence" of a US national security concern, with Broadcom able to "take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States". Broadcom said in a statement regarding the order that the Singapore-based company "strongly disagrees that its proposed acquisition of Qualcomm raises any national security concerns".

Qualcomm rejected the hostile takeover bid from Broadcom multiple times, while the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) operating under the Treasury Department, investigated the national security threat and determined there were multiple red flags, and now the deal is dead.

AMD celebrated the "One Year Ryzen Anniversary" call yesterday, which saw the company reiterating its success since the release of Ryzen a year ago, and what is coming in 2018 and beyond.

Jim Anderson, SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics at AMD said that the company has near-term goals of reaching the market share levels of the glory days of AMD, the days of Athlon 64, in the early-2000s. Anderson said: "I don't see any reason we can't get back to historical share levels that AMD has enjoyed in the past".

AMD is wanting to see that success again by offering users more CPU cores for less money with Ryzen, all the while adding technology and improvements to their CPU architecture, like the introduction of the Vega GPU architecture on the recent release of Raven Ridge APUs.

Microsoft will eventually allow third-party developers and parties to sell their own avatar creations on a virtual storefront, sources say.

Microsoft is gearing up to test out its new and improved avatar presence sometime next month, sources close to the matter have told The Verge. The company announced the refresh--which includes a huge new selection of inclusive customizations for gamers and a slew of new digital content to buy--back at E3 2017 and I predicted it'd be a big boon for engagement on Xbox LIVE.

Now it appears that third-party devs and creators will be able to directly sell their own unique avatar clothing, props, and other accessories on the storefront. This move hearkens back to the Xbox 360 days where players could earn awards such as full avatar skins for completing in-game objectives. However, this content was free and gamers didn't have to shell out any extra cash.

Gaming's mightiest leader is probably working on a battle royale mode for its strong IP slate, or perhaps a brand new game centered around the phenomena genre.

In a recent report, investment firm Oppenheimer affirmed that Activision is watching the current battle royale craze with rapt attention, which shouldn't surprise anyone: big publishers often follow (and more often set) the industry's most lucrative trends. The attractive point about battle royale is that it perfectly meshes with the company's strong engagement-driven business model, which sees effective monetization across a millions-strong worldwide playerbase.

Oppenheimer conducted investor meetings at Activision's headquarters to discuss the company's future so that the firm could assess its hold or buy stock decision. After the meeting Oppenheimer decided on a firm buy thanks to Activision's continued focus on engagement, and assertion that it's looking at the battle royale genre.

In a move that shouldn't surprise anyone, Bethesda Softworks today announced Skyrim will soon be playable on an HTC Vive headset.

"Last November, Bethesda Game Studios took their epic fantasy masterpiece to the exciting new frontier of virtual reality with the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR on PlayStation VR. Now, Skyrim VR comes to a new platform - PC using SteamVR - on April 3," the dev wrote on a Bethesda.net blog post. Naturally Skryim VR is priced as a full AAA game at $59.99 (how many times has Skyrim been re-released since 2012? We've lost count now...)

That Skyrim VR even came to PSVR in the first place pretty much told everyone it'll come to at least the Vive, and probably not the Rift considering the company's stance on the headset. Bethesda's re-release approach with Skyrim: Special Edition and the new Creation Club mod storefront see the devs branching out even more, and it shouldn't be surprising that their VR ports will come to more than a single platform.

The new Tomb Raider game titled Shadow of The Tomb Raider has had its released date exposed through the official website source code, revealing the game will launch on September 14th.

According to the source code from the official Tomb Raider website, Shadow of The Tomb Raider will be available for pre-order on April 27th and will be fully released on September 14th.

Here is what the source code had to say: "Shadow of The Tomb Raider is the climatic finale of Lara's origin story. Available September 14th. All pre-order incentives and SKUs will be revealed on April 27, 2018"

The side-scrolling platformer by Team17 and Planet Alpha ApS titled 'Planet Alpha' has received a gorgeous announcement trailer.

Planet Alpha ApS is a small development team location in Denmark and is fouinded by Adrian lazar, a former IO developer. Planet Alpha will be mixing together some classic components of a side-scrolling adventure game, puzzles, stealth and fast paced gameplay.

Lazar has commented on the new partnership been the developers and Team17, here is what he had to say: "I am thrilled to have found in Team17 a partner who can offer us the resources that we need to bring this game to the players, but more importantly I'm excited to have a partner that truly believes in PLANET ALPHA as much as we do. I cannot wait to share our creation with the world."

Don't fear, Google is here. The search engine and everything else giant has announced that it is placing an outright ban on cryptocurrency-related advertising.

Google is updated its financial services-related advertising policies, which will see any advertising for cryptocurrency-related content, will be banned. Google's Director of Sustainable Ads, Scott Spencer, told CNBC that this will include "initial coin offerings (ICOs), wallets, and trading advice".

The new cryptocurrency-related advertising ban will go into effect in June 2018, with Spencer adding: "We don't have a crystal ball to know where the future is going to go with cryptocurrencies, but we've seen enough consumer harm or potential for consumer harm that it's an area that we want to approach with extreme caution".

Warhammer Vermintide 2 released on the 8th of March and the developers are already celebrating the success of the launch with the title selling 500k units already.

The CEO of Fatshark Martin Wahlund, has said that "500,000 games sold was a milestone that we had, but not less than a week after release."

According to Wahlund, Fatshark is overall very happy with the sales of their newest title and the attention it is getting from the public. Here is the full announcement from Wahlund: "We are proud and happy that gamers worldwide have taken Warhammer: Vermintide 2 to their hearts. 500,000 games sold was a milestone that we had, but not less than a week after release."

Warframe is turning 5 years old and to celebrate the aging of the game the developer has announced that game has reached 38 million registered players.

Warframe begun on March 21 2013, since then the title has grown exponentially, reaching a massive 38,083,936 million registered users.

A more impressive statistic coming from in-game, is that players have crafted a insane amount of Warframes - 52,972,344 Warframes and 234,766,197 weapons have been crafted.

The second DLC for Ubisofts Assassin's Creed Origins has had its official launch trailer released ahead of its scheduled debut on March 13th. Assassin's Creed Origins: The Curse of the Pharaohs launch trailer revealed.

Players will have their level cap increased as well as a bunch of new content added as well. New crafting abilities, new weapons, abilities and outfits based on Egyptian mythology.

Ubisoft has commented on the new expansion saying: "The new expansion immerses players in Egyptian mythology, challenging them to battle famous pharaohs and mystical beasts, as they investigate the temples of Karnak and Luxor as well as well the secret tombs of the Valley of the Kings."

I'm sure you remember those delicious high-res/high refresh rate gaming displays that NVIDIA teased last year, both rocking NVIDIA's variable refresh rate technology: G-Sync.

Well, a new report teases that we might see these new 4K 144Hz and 3440x1440 200Hz gaming displays from ASUS and Acer in Q3 2018, in the same period that NVIDIA is expected to throw its next-gen Turing GPU architecture into mass production. They will join NVIDIA's upcoming Big Format Gaming Display (BFGD) that will see 65-inch 4K 120Hz HDR TVs with G-Sync enter the living room.

TFT Central says that the ASUS PG27UQ and Acer X27 will be released in Q3 2018, with both of these displays pushing 4K 144Hz, while the UltraWide 3440x1440 200Hz displays in the ASUS PG35VQ and Acer X35 will arrive in Q4 2018.

SteelSeries has just unveiled two new high-end gaming headsets in a family of "Arctis Pro" products, with the Arctis Pro family consisting of three variants.

The flagship SteelSeries Arctis Pro gaming headset rocks 96kHz, 24-bit "Hi-Res" audio quality if you're plugged into the included GameDAC breakout box. The flagship Arctis Pro gaming headset also includes RGB lighting, and will work on both the PC and PS4.

SteelSeries has a base Arctis Pro model that doesn't include the GameDAC breakout box, and knocks the audio from 96kHz down to 40kHz, but still includes the Hi-Res audio side of things.

It looks like VR displays about to leap into the future, with a new report from Android Police that Google and LG will be unveiling a totally next generation VR display at the Display Week 2018 trade show in late May.

A new advanced program for the expo has been released, teasing that Google will have a presentation that will detail new "18 Mpixel 4.3-in. 1443-ppi 120-Hz OLED Display for Wide-Field-of-View High-Acuity Head-Mounted Displays". First off, we have a huge 18-megapixel display with a whopping 1443 PPI, OLED panel, and huge 120Hz display. OMG, I'm gushing.

Android Police says that with a display size of 4.3 inches and huge 1443 PPI, we should expect the resolution of the OLED display to reach somewhere around 5500 x 3000, which is absolutely mammoth. Mix in the 5500 x 3000 resolution with the super-fast 120Hz refresh rate and the NVIDIA TITAN Xp graphics cards that cost $1200 each will be needed in SLI.

It seems AMD is in some deep trouble, with an Israeli security firm publishing details on 13 critical security flaws, with CTS-Labs reporting that it affects Ryzen Workstation, Ryzen Pro, Ryzen Mobile, and EPYC processors.

These newly found vulnerabilities have some interesting codenames: Masterkey, Ryzenfall, Fallout, and Chimera. CNET reports that the security researchers gave AMD just 24 hours to look into what they found before they published their report, which is definitely an eye-opener. This seems very suspicious in its timing (new Ryzen CPUs are around the corner, and the fact that this report was thrown together, and even involves some fake CG backgrounds).

Researchers normally give the chipmakers months ahead of time to fix the vulnerability before announcing it publicly, and while AMD is most likely aware of Masterkey, Ryzenfall, Fallout, and Chimera, it'll be months and months from now that they'll have a patch ready.

We all know that Battlegrounds is massive, but Gabe Newell himself has come out and said that PUBG is the third highest-selling game of all time on Steam, which is a big deal.

During a presentation over the weekend, Newell said: "You can have a relatively new game like PUBG, and [...] they can capitalize on all the other multiplayer games, and all of the technology, [and] the fact that China is now a huge market for anybody who does PC game development".

"So PUBG can come out of pretty much nowhere and become the third largest selling game on Steam's history. Their gross revenue over all-time is already number three in fairly short order".

Obsidian's upcoming ARPG sequel has been pushed back a month to ensure it's polished enough for gamers.

Today Obsidian Entertainment announced that Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire will be delayed from its original April release to May 8 on PC. The game is also coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and, surprisingly, the Nintendo Switch sometime later this year.

"As you have probably guessed, Deadfire is a huge game - significantly larger than the original Pillars of Eternity," the devs said in a recent email to backers and fans. "Obsidian has been working harder than Abydon himself to make every inch of it awesome, as well as incorporating all the great feedback we have been getting from everyone playing the Backer Beta"

Twitch and Amazon formulate yet another big subscription-engaging strategy by giving out a slew of free games every month.

Following in the footsteps of its subscription competitors, Twitch Prime, which is included in Amazon Prime subscriptions, has now become more like PlayStation Plus and Xbox LIVE Gold by doling out a monthly allotment of free games. Sure these games will likely just be indie titles, but the streaming giant thrives on engagement and one of the main ways to entice new subscriptions and keep current subscribers is through freebies. The new initiative kicks off on March 15 and includes five indies, and is a major extension of the recent Indie Amplifier program.

The free games for March include:

Atari is looking to make a splash at GDC 2018 with a slew of games and hardware.

Back in the '80s Atari ruled the world, and I'm told the brand penetration is still absolutely insane. Everyone knows who Atari is, but since the company has fallen to the fringes of the current gaming world, not everyone knows what Atari actually does anymore. But that, the company hopes, will change with the arrival of the Ataribox, a fully-fledged new console with AMD Radeon graphics, all-in-one streaming/app functionality, and most importantly: nostalgic merged with modern gaming. I still think the $250 Ataribox is very risky business, though.

Gamers, developers, and GDC 2018 attendees will get their first in-person look at an Ataribox prototype, Atari has announced. The games-maker will also reveal a slew of new IPs, Nintendo Switch games, and VR releases to boot--which heavily hints that classic Atari games will come to the Switch probably in boxed retail form for around $29.99 or so instead of a la carte on the eShop.