Latest News - Page 2129

Intel has been rumored to use AMD Radeon Vega GPU technology inside of its upcoming mobile CPUs, and now the company has confirmed the news 100% with their new Core processor featuring custom discrete graphics from AMD.

This new CPU will be an "evolution" of Intel's work on the 8th generation Core processors, with the H-series chips to power manage the entire module (that now has a CPU, GPU, and HBM2) in order to squeeze the best battery life out of notebooks. We should expect the first samples to begin shipping in Q1 2018.

Intel said they first approached AMD, with AMD treating their Radeon GPU as a single, semi-custom design in the same way they look at their semi-custom designs for Microsoft and Sony with the Xbox and PlayStation consoles. It's a gutsy move by Intel, and a is-it-even-real moment for AMD and the consumer world that never saw this coming. Seeking Alpha went as far to call it fake news, showing they had no clue what they were talking about, and should now be eating the words off their screen.

Since shifting towards service games and unifying its core Xbox LIVE framework across multiple devices, Microsoft's gaming division makes less and less first-party titles every year (case in point: the Xbox One X's rather paltry launch of exclusive content). But there's a reason for that: the company is focusing more on making recurring revenues from lucrative services (Xbox LIVE, Mixer), selling games on Xbox Store, and simply buying up popular IPs and development studios to make games for them.

When the Xbox One bombed hard in 2013, Microsoft had to change how they played the game to stay competitive against Sony (that's a massively simplified version of events but let's go with it for sake of illustration). Microsoft knew it couldn't be Sony at the hardware game, so it didn't even try. Instead the company unified Xbox LIVE across mobiles, PCs, and consoles by essentially turning it into a billion-dollar service that not only sold games, but also made money from advertising, streaming, subscriptions, in-game purchases as well as monetized engagement.

Microsoft has been playing into its strengths rather than chasing Sony's tail, and it's worked out quite well: the Xbox gaming segment pulled in $9 billion in revenues last year, and almost $2 billion in Microsoft's Q1 period

Ever since Microsoft started Xbox LIVE Rewards years ago I always wanted one thing: to convert my hard-earned achievements into something tangible that directly fueled my gaming library. Sure Xbox LIVE Rewards on its own let you complete objectives to earn MS Points, but there wasn't a direct way to cash in your achievements. That might change in the near future.

Sony recently implemented a feature that allows gamers to trade in their trophies earned on PlayStation Network towards PS Store credit. The measure is a great way to further engagement and keep players active and "sticky" in the subscription network. Frankly I'm surprised Microsoft didn't get to this first--they're the ones that typically find unique ways to engage millions of players with creative additions.

But Microsoft might actually emulate Sony's trophy cash-in program after all. In a recent Tweet, Xbox executive Phil Spencer indicated that he'd like to give the program a try: "Sounds like a cool feature, I'm going to give it a try. Competition is a good thing, keeps us all working hard," Xbox exec Phil Spencer said on Twitter.

Diablo II is one of my favorite games of all time--when Diablo III shipped with so many of its predecessor's features cut out, I was quite frustrated--and I'm always open to the idea of re-visiting the game at some point. There's just a few major problems standing in the way: Diablo II is most fun with at least 2,000 or 3,000 active players on each realm (US West, US East, Europe, etc)...and right now there's just a bunch of hackers and bots.

According to Blizzard, who has been believed to be making a Diablo II remaster for quite some time, a return to the beloved PC game won't come any time soon. Just as hackers stand in the way of a proper userbase to fuel great trading economies and Ladder play, they're actually prohibiting Blizzard from naturally re-vamping the game. As someone who played D2 for a long, long time, I can say that bots do have their advantages (Baal and Chaos runs for instance) but I never personally used them. But spammers and hackers that flood the trading floors with dupes items that poof? That's a huge problem.

"With Diablo the big one is the botters and the spamming is out of control, [and people are asking] could we please fix that. Keep rolling seasons but maybe eventually be good enough at combating them that you see real names at the top of the leaderboard again," Peter Stilwell, senior producer on the Classic Games team, told PCGamesN in a recent interview.

Bitcoin has been steadily rising every single day for the last couple of weeks, breaking through barriers like $6500, and even $7000 - reaching a peak of $7600 before landing at $7621 at the time of writing.

The market cap of Bitcoin is now an incredible $124 billion, while the total value of all cryptocurrencies flew past $200 billion, largely driven by Bitcoin's near unstoppable charge into notoriety. But, this is where things get exciting.

Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee says that the number of unique Bitcoin addresses has exploded in August, blowing their expectations out of the water, and reaching their mid-2018 expectations, now. Investor interest in cryptocurrency has been mooning lately, and has driven the price of Bitcoin up by 700% from earlier this year when it was under $1000.

The rumors of a Lord of the Rings TV show just won't stop, but now we're looking at the business side of things and just how much money something like this could cost. Rumor has it, Amazon could pay $200-$250 million for the rights to Lord of the Rings alone.

Amazon and Netflix are both reportedly in talks with Warner Bros. TV and the J.R.R. Tolkien estate about the show, with HBO rejecting The Lord of the Rings TV show because of its exorbitant cost. Deadline is reporting that it could cost somewhere as high as $150 million per season, on top of the $200-$250 million to whoever wins the rights to it.

Considering The Lord of the Rings trilogy made $2.9 billion, 11 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director... this doesn't seem that much to spend. But, after 4-5 seasons it would be bumping through that $1 billion cost. Amazon can take it, and so can Netflix... but will they use the same actors, or change it up?

343 Industries have just released a patch that enables crossplay support between Xbox One and PC gamers in Halo Wars 2, with crossplay support in the Campaign, Blitz Firefight, Terminus Firefight, Custom Games, and all unranked playlists.

Halo Wars 2's crossplay feature will be pushed out in phases, so that 343i can keep control over it and make sure it's working properly and not filled with problems. The new patch for Halo Wars 2 also includes one fix for the PC, and a new feature. If you own the Windows 10 version, it will auto-download the patch. As for the patch notes, check them out here.

Halo Wars 2 November 2nd Patch Release Notes

3D Realms is well-known for making excellent classic games like Duke Nukem 3D and the original Shadow Warrior. Now the studio is making a new game using the classic BUILD engine that powered these beloved MS-DOS games.

Game dev 3D Realms is currently looking for gamers to playtest an "unannounced BUILD Engine title," and hopes to select at least 50 playtesters to try it out. If selected, you'll have to sign an NDA. This is really happening folks!

"We're looking for play-testers for the next 3D Realms title. An unannounced game using the classic "Build Engine", used to develop legendary MS-DOS games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior etc. A brand new game built by an amazing crew," the studio said on its Facebook page.

Lenovo announced it will purchase a majority in Fujitsu's Client Computing branch in an effort to bolster its reduced PC market share.

Lenovo and the Development Bank of Japan have coordinated to acquire stake in Fujitsu's computing branch, with Lenovo purchasing a majority share at 51% and DBJ receiving 5% in the deal. Fujitsu will net about $245.45 million (28 billion yen) as part of the purchase contract, of which Lenovo will pay about $156.7 million in cash.

"The joint venture will focus on the research, development, design, manufacturing and sales of Client Computing Devices (CCD) for the global PC market," reads the press release announcement.

During its annual BlizzCon event, Blizzard confirmed that most of StarCraft II's content will be available for free (but not all of it).

Starting November 14, PC gamers can download and play StarCraft II's launch Wings of Liberty campaign as well as a smattering of co-op and multiplayer content for free. Not everything will be available for the low cost of nothing--Heart of the Swarm, Legacy of the Void, and Nova Covert Ops campaigns will be sold separately for $14.99 a piece, or bundled for $39.99.

"In other words, you can now play all of StarCraft II's multiplayer, every Co-op Commander, and the entire first campaign in the single-player story, for free."

During its annual BlizzCon 2017 event Blizzard announced a bevy of new announcements for its slate of games, including a fresh expansion for its landmark MMORPG World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft's new Battle for Azeroth expansion sees the fantasy world once again riven by the Alliance vs Horde conflict, and gamers must scour the farthest reaches of Azeroth to find new allies in the boiling war. The expac will bring a ton of new changes including a new 120 level cap, two new kingdoms to explore--Zandalar for the Horde and Kul Tiras for the Alliance--as well as new areas across uncharted islands, and the ability to infuse your armor and gear with the new resource Azerite. New dungeons and vaults will also be included, and everyone who purchases the expansion will jump to level 110 instantly.

"Conflict is at the heart of the Warcraft saga, and in Battle for Azeroth, tensions that have been simmering for a long time escalate into all-out war," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "World of Warcraft players are incredibly passionate about the characters and factions they identify with in the game, and this expansion will make them prouder than ever to declare their allegiance to the Horde or to the Alliance."

After months of negotiations, the monumental Sprint-T-Mobile merger has been cancelled.

According to latest reports from The Wall Street Journal, Sprint and T-Mobile won't be combining forces after all. Japan's SoftBank consortium, which serves as Sprint's parent company, has made good on past reports of calling off the deal. T-Mobile recently proposed new terms in a bid to keep the deal active

"Sprint and T-Mobile Calling Off Merger," The WSJ reports. "SoftBank To Buy Additional Shares of Sprint in Open Market."

Runic Games, the developer behind games like Torchlight and Hob, has been shut down.

After nine years of developing games, publisher Perfect World Entertainment has shuttered the doors of Runic Games. Runic was acquired by Perfect World in 2010, and is most famous for its excellent ARPG series Torchlight, which was seen as a true successor to the Diablo franchise--not coincidentally many of Blizzard North's veteran developers shifted to Runic to work on the game. The publisher says it shuttered the studio so it can focus on games-as-a-service.

"Perfect World Entertainment recently closed the Seattle office of Runic Games as part of the company's continued strategy to focus on online games as a service," the company said in a statement to Kotaku.

Qualcomm is one of the biggest, and most innovative companies in the world, with rumors now circling that Broadcom is interested in acquiring Qualcomm in a deal worth over $100 billion.

Bloomberg is reporting that Broadcom would purchase Qualcomm at around $70 per share, in a deal that would include both cash and stock options. Broadcom is said to make the offer to Qualcomm in the next few days, but nothing is on paper just yet.

If this deal does come through, it'll send some large shockwaves through the industry as Qualcomm is in legal battles with Apple. Qualcomm has its technology and IP in billions of devices across the world, with a finger in everything cellular (3G, 4G, 5G, etc) and has as huge stranglehold in the mobile market with their Snapdragon line of products, as well as Quick Charge technology.

Now that the Xbox One X is rolling out onto the market with some early reviews, Remedy Entertainment has pushed out its new Xbox One X update for Quantum Break.

Quantum Break's new Xbox One X patch is a huge 50GB, but with the additional patch that enabled 4K support, on top of the 102GB initial install, we're looking at a 178GB installation. Remedy were smart with original Xbox One owners, offering Quantum Break players to stream the video portion of the game to their Xbox. If you wanted the high quality files, you'd need 75GB of HDD space.

But this new Xbox One X patch and the video file for Quantum Break using 178GB of the 1TB HDD space inside of the Xbox One X patch. As an Australian, I know the problems of having low-speed internet connections, so a 178GB installation will take many Xbox One X gamers weeks and weeks to download. 178GB is absolutely mammoth, even with the likes of Forza Motorsport 7 using 100GB of HDD space.

To celebrate the upcoming home video release of 'Cars 3', we have ten Blu-ray copies to give away thanks to our friends at Disney Home Entertainment!

Make your move. Blindsided by a new generation of blazing-fast racers, the legendary Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) is suddenly pushed out of the sport he loves. To get back in the game, he will need the help of an eager young race technician, Cruz Ramirez, with her own plan to win, plus inspiration from the late Fabulous Hudson Hornet and a few unexpected turns. Proving that #95 isn't through yet will test the heart of a champion on Piston Cup Racing's biggest stage!

To go into the running to win a prize, post this article to your social media profiles and send your correct answer to the following question (along with your postal address), to ben at TweakTown dot com before the competition closes on November 10.

Ubisoft has been quick to squash rumors that the massive CPU usage in Assassin's Creed: Origins is not because of the anti-tamper solution they've used on the PC version.

In a statement, Ubisoft explains: "We're confirming that the anti-tamper solutions implemented in the Windows PC version of Assassin's Creed Origins have no perceptible effect on game performance In order to recreate a living, systemic and majestic open world of Ancient Egypt, where players can witness all of its stunning details, its beautiful landscapes & incredible cities, in a completely seamless way with no loading screens, Assassin's Creed Origins uses the full extent of the minimum and recommended PC system requirements".

The company has also just released a patch for Assassin's Creed: Origins, which provides "improved stability and performance". So if the CPU usage is fixed, it's all just a coincidence that the new patch arrived just now, right... Ubisoft?

One of my biggest concerns about the Xbox One X's enhancement patches is file size. While developers have free reign to use the console's beefy specs as they see fit, some games like Microsoft's first-party and exclusive lineup, typically become storage-gobbling behemoths with these patches installed.

According to a recent post on Reddit, Quantum Break's Xbox One X patch pushes the game's file size to 102GB (didn't Halo 5 get this big even without enhancements?). The patch itself includes various tweaks and upgrades, but even with the extra content, the game won't run at native 4K on the console.

It gets a bit worse though: the long-winded tie-in TV-show like videos--which are needed to give the full scope of the game and the choices you make--tack on more than 70GB of extra data. Thankfully these portions can be streamed online and there's really no reason to download them unless you want to play offline.

Activision's latest third quarter financials are filled to the brim with interesting tidbits of data. While it's important to note how much net revenue is earned in a quarter, it's also vital to discuss how much Activision spent on costs and expenses like game development and marketing.

According to the company's Q3'17 earnings report, Activision spent a sizable $750 million on product development in the last nine months, up 11.44% year-over-year. This costs represents roughly 15% of the publisher's total net revenue for the nine-month period. It also spent $717 million on game operations and distribution, highlighting retail costs and upkeep in live service games such as Overwatch, Hearthstone, Destiny and World of Warcraft. In the three-month quarter ending September 30, Activision spent $273 million on development, up 9.63% year-over-year and representing about 17% of total Q3 net revenues.

What's more interesting is how much money Activision spends on costs and expenses to power its billion-dollar empire. Understanding how much companies are spending gives key insight on current industry trends such as recurring revenues via lootboxes and microtransactions. While Activision raked in $1.618 billion in net revenues in Q3, it spent 84% or $1.361 billion of these earnings on expenses, with sales and marketing costing the most, followed by product development and game operations and distribution costs.

So I'm sitting at my PC playing some Battlegrounds, and I get an email from NVIDIA's PR agency with the heading 'It's Coming' and a link to a YouTube video. It's a 13-second clip of a new graphics card, days after NVIDIA launched their GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, and it's a new TITAN X.

NVIDIA's new graphics card is teased at the 11 second mark as 'TITAN X Collectors Edition' and that's all we know. At the time of viewing the video had just 440 views, so this is fresh as hell. Now I want to know what it is. TITAN Xp isn't that old and is the 'full-fat' Pascal GPU, so what the hell is this new card?

It looks like NVIDIA is bringing some major styling to the TITAN X range with this shot, with some clear RGB LEDs on show - in both green and red. A nice touch to AMD/NVIDIA and the Red/Green battle. BRING IT ON.