Latest News - Page 2132

Microsoft might be targeting more dynamic engagement interactions with Xbox LIVE users with a new, multi-faceted approach to its avatar system.

In an older article I explained how Xbox LIVE, not Xbox consoles, is the center of Microsoft's gaming division. Rather than compete directly with Sony and try to sell as many Xbox consoles as they can, Microsoft took a more long-term route that you may recognize from the likes of EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Blizzard, and Take-Two Interactive: monetizing engagement and ensuring players remain "sticky" in the network. By adding in tons of social features such as communities and giving players a direct line of contact with one another in a more organic fashion, Microsoft promoted a more personalized and engaging atmosphere for gamers--thus ensuring they'll likely continue subscribing and buying games, thus Microsoft is able to monetize this engagement (advertisements too!).

Microsoft also recently announced Xbox Quests, a new way to engage players by offering tantalizing prizes for completing objectives or "quests" within the network or specific games--ie getting a certain GamerScore in an alotted time, or play X matchmade games, etc etc.

Sony nearly sold 6 million PlayStation 4 consoles in less than a month's time, according to company estimates.

An estimated 5.9 million PS4 units were sold-through (sold, not shipped) to consumers during the holiday season, which was measured from Nov. 20 through Dec. 31, 2017. This spike bumped the total PS4 sell-through to over 73.6 million units globally since its launch in 2013, meaning that 8% of total PS4 sales were made during 2017's holiday timeframe.

Sony also touted that over 55.9 million PS4 games were sold during the period across digital and retail, and total PlayStation Plus subscribers has now reached 31.5 million, meaning Sony now enjoys a 42.7% conversion rate in subs (of course we don't know how many of these were full year/monthly/3 month subscribers).

CES 2018 - DEEPCOOL has revealed its new AIO cooler with RGB lighting at the trade show in Las Vegas - the Captain 240EX RGB.

The Captain 240EX RGB (what a name!) is a closed-loop liquid CPU cooler with (you guessed it) a 240mm radiator and dual fans. The company also launched the TR4 version of the AIO cooler, which can be used with more CPUs including the latest hardware from Intel and AMD.

RGB lighting adorns the Captain 240EX RGB that can be customized and controlled on-the-fly by software or directly with a controller. DEEPCOOL is also offering a custom "Electro Limited Edition" version of the cooler that comes in ivory or ebony, and will be purchasable in May 2018.

CES 2018 - Cooler Master shows off its new range of thermal solutions at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The latest coolers from Cooler Master include the MasterAir G100M air cooler, which uses the company's unified Heat Column design to ensure your CPU stays nice and cool while under load. The G100M is a low-profile cooler that also features smart add-ons like thermal detection and RGB lighting.

Cooler Master with 25 years of innovation in thermal design and production, unveils a wide range of cooling products that is set to redefine liquid and air cooling. There is the revolutionary design in heat transfer with the Heat Column that allows exceptional performance in low-profile coolers. Smart features such as thermal detection and addressable RGB LED in liquid and air coolers offer users many options from Cooler Master. And increase co-development cooling products, puts Cooler Master at the forefront of thermal design.

CES 2018 - Volocopter has designed the worlds first fully electric autonomously manned multicopter which with the use of artificial intelligence can carry people from one location to another in cities.

Volocopters X2 has a very unique design and even appears to be quite confusing at first glance, but rather you should know it is just one large drone with comfortable seats. As you can imagine how an autonomous car ride would work, hop in, choose the destination via an app and enjoy a relaxing ride from point A to B; the X2 model has the very same principal.

Instead, a choice will be made from what can be assumed is a selection of designated landing spots.

The first DLC to hit Call of Duty: WWII is about to be here, with The Darkest Shore continuing the very popular zombie storyline, this time according to Activision, the zombies will be "more cunning, quick, and even more bloodthirsty than before."

As seen in the video, the new map allows for players to make use of various traps that are located around the area, to make things harder it seems that that there is thick fog effects surrounding the entire island which would not only add to the atmospheric feel of the game, but also hinder line of sight.

The Darkest Shore is set to be only days after the last disaster at Mittelburg, as the main antagonist Doktor Straub is found to be on The Darkest Shore island. Players will have to endure zombies coming fourth from the surrounding seas while they traverse the island in hopes to uncover "mysteries hidden within The Darkest Shore."

PUBG Corp seem to be smashing out the updates for their game, just recently the Xbox One version received its first person servers . Now, the PC version has had a new patch pushed out the test servers, which includes a reduced view distance when parachuting, an in-game report within the replay option, and also more cover in the city La Bendita.

According to the release notes, the patch will help stem the big problem with hackers, as it lets Battlegrounds' players to report players directly from replays, meaning that players will not have to die to a suspected hacker for them to report them.

Also included in this patch is the reduced visible view distance while parachuting down into the map, this was implemented in order to help client performance and add to optimization of the server in the early stages of the game. Other content added to the game is more cover in the deathtrap we call La Bendita and two new crates. PUBG Corp has given players the ability to fully preview the crates contents and the percentage chances of receiving each of the items, a full list of the clothes and patch notes can be found here.

PUBG Corp. has taken to their forums to announce that Battlegrounds on the Xbox One will be receiving first-person servers in North America and Europe.

The update will be pushed out today at 2PM KST/7PM PST/ 4AM CET and will feature duo and squad servers for gamers to experience as PUBG Cor.p keep an eye on player data before they decide to add any more game modes to the console version of the game.

Taken from the patch notes that were released yesterday, we saw that PUBG Corp. rolled out the servers to NA/EU but were not available to play as the servers were closed as the Battle royal shooter waited for gamers to download the update as well as monitor player feedback.

A new gameplay video has been released by Milestone showcasing the weather effects as well as a Wild Rush mode for their upcoming off-road racer Gravel.

Gravel is powered by Epic Games's Unreal Engine 4 and will be the first four-wheeled racing game released from Milestone. The use of UE4 has provided quite a significant increase in the games graphics as from the above video you can see that the snow environment shown is quite visually aesthetic.

Not only does the video show off the beautiful snow environments but also the Wild Rush mode is being played throughout the video so fans of the upcoming game can get a quick taste of what the game mode has to offer in terms of intensity.

CES 2018 - In 2016, Matrix Industries announced a smartwatch that they claimed could be powered from just the heat radiating from your body. The watch used a thermoelectric energy converter that powered the clock-piece, but due to technology limitations the PowerWatch X didn't live up to the full claims the company made, but this year the watch has been upgraded.

The first generation of the watch was basically limited to only fitness tracking but to be fair was still quite the achievement to have it powered merely from just body heat. An updated version of the watch has been showcased by Matrix at CES 2018, and this second generation of watch can has had support added for smartphone notifications over Bluetooth, as well as the standard fitness tracking.

From the below image we can see that the PowerWatch X is quite chunky but according to The Verge the watch was actually quite light and comfortable once attached to the wrist.

GALAX has surprised with a quick tease of its upcoming GeForce GTX 1070 Ti HOF graphics card, which will include its unique one-click button to increase the OC on the card.

GALAX will be deploying its chunky-but-cool triple-fan RGB cooling solution, with 8+8-pin PCIe power connectors (down from the 8+8+8-pin PCIe connector rig on the GTX 1080 Ti HOF variant).

The company even teased the card in SLI with Hyper Boost OC enabled, which is very impressive - and that SLI bridge, wow.

Ethereum has truly exploded in the last month or so, breaking down every single wall it has reached: $1000, $1250 and now it has reached a peak of $1417.

Putting this into comparison, Bitcoin is worth $14,395 at the time of writing, down 5.68%. Ethereum is like a wrecking ball right now, and so it deserves to be. Bitcoin's network can't handle the pressure, and people are beginning to see the future of blockchain technology and Ethereum, so the money is flooding in.

I think we'll see Ethereum at $8000-$10,000 before the end of the year, and at this rate that number could be much higher. Except, I won't eat my own d*ck if it doesn't, sorry John.

CES 2018 - MAINGEAR has unveiled their beautiful and beyond beasty new F131 Gaming Desktop with exclusive APEX Cooling, which looks absolutely delicious.

The company has packed the new F131 gaming PC with some of the latest and greatest technology from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and others. MAINGEAR has included support for the latest GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA, while supporting AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper (up to 16C/32T) and Intel's best Core i9-7980XE with 18C/36T.

Don't worry if you're a multi-tasker or serious workstation user, MAINGEAR provides plenty of storage options alongside up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM.

CES 2018 - Samsung has just pushed all-in with the future of artificial intelligence, with the company announcing it has a new consumer product strategy for AI during its CES 2018 keynote speech in Vegas.

The news comes directly from Samsung Research boss H.S. Kim who said that every product Samsung makes in 2020 will have built-in AI and would connect to the Internet of Things cloud, making everything the South Korean giant sells a smart product that will learn from everything you do.

Kim said this plan from Samsung would happen in a 3-fold pillar that would simplify its product stack, pushing them into a single-cloud approach that would include connectivity, cloud, and intelligence.

CES 2018 - I don't think I know a person that wouldn't at least like to try out seeing a concert or sports game in VR, which is something NextVR is advancing in leaps and bounds.

NextVR wants to bring concerts and sports games to VR, where it has just unveiled a new six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) movement to their on-demand VR services. This means that if a player or referee is in the way of something specific you want to see in a game, you can just lean to the sides to see what's going on.

You don't even need a VR headset for some of NextVR's tricks, with the company preparing a new augmented reality feature that will deliver content to your smartphone, and have it play out in your environment. This won't be coming until later in the year, but it will have NextVR on many more devices when it happens.

CES 2018 - Samsung has announced its new Flip digital whiteboard, or as it likes to refer to it - an "interactive digital flip chart", because that's so much better.

Samsung's new Flip is a 55-inch 4K display that acts as a digital whiteboard, allowing for up to 4 people to draw and/or add content at once, whether that's from using the touchscreen or a dual-sided pen. The display can be flipped vertically, which is perfect for details and lists, and if you want it in a permanent state it can be wall-mounted.

If you want to connect devices up to the Samsung Flip digital whiteboard, you can go wireless or through USB so that you can connect to a smartphone or PC.

CES 2018 - Digital Storm's new Project Spark is the company's smallest mighty PC yet.

Project Spark might be small, but it can pack some serious enthusiast-grade power. The system comes with a customized liquid cooling solution that can optimize heat levels for discrete graphics cards up to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 and an Intel Core-i7 8700K CPU.

Interestingly enough, Project Spark utilizes a new Micro STX platform to ensure a small footprint (Digital Storm says the build can deliver "the performance of a full-size desktop at a quarter of the size.") The small-yet-beefy Project Spark also comes with three M.2 storage slots, an MXM slot for discrete graphics cards, and a SATA 6Gb/second port.

CES 2018 - Razer has revealed a very strange mix of laptop and mobile phone hardware in a bid to utilize its new Razer Phone.

Project Linda is quite...weird. The device is essentially a 13.3-inch laptop that somewhat follows Nintendo's playbook with the Switch dock; instead of a tablet, users dock their Razer Phone into the Project Linda laptop for Android-powered gaming. The device is clearly aimed at the massively popular smartphone gaming market, and aligns with Razer's coin-based microtransaction business, especially in regions like China that embrace both mobile and browser-based gaming.

"Razer's Project Linda laptop seamlessly docks the Razer Phone inside its chassis where a touchpad would normally reside, and connects with the press of a button. The phone's Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile platform and 8 GB of RAM deliver responsive performance, instantly transforming Project Linda into an Android laptop," reads a press release from Razer. "The Razer Phone 5.7-inch display can be used as a touchpad, or as a second screen for access to apps, tools, and more."

CES 2018 - NZXT is mostly known for chassis and cooling solutions, but starting with the new N7 Z370, the company is getting into motherboards.

NZXT's first jump into the motherboard market comes with the N7 Z370, a $300 motherboard built on the Z370 chipset that sports a digital fan controller, RGB colors, and an all-metal frame that's specifically designed to compliment snazzy builds. The N7 Z370 comes in both black and white, and its full suite of profiles can be controlled by NZXT's CAM software, including RGB effects, fan curves, and more.

"Leveraging our years of experience as professional PC builders, we've designed the N7 motherboard with a completely new approach. In the face of increasing complexity in the PC gaming market, we want to make building easier and more enjoyable, with the N7 as a cornerstone for this new experience. Everything you need--from easy layout and obvious connections to digital fan control and RGB lighting--is included. We've also designed a completely unique motherboard cover so it's both beautiful and powerful. You can't build a quieter, better-looking system as easily as you can with our new N7 motherboard." says Johnny Hou, NZXT's founder, and CEO.

Nintendo Switch being the fastest selling console for 2017 has added some amazing titles to its library of games, now Damon Baker, Nintendo's head of partner management has taken to Twitter to tease a future 2018 line-up for the Switch.

With games such as Rocket League and Skyrim already on the Nintendo Switch there is no doubt that the hybrid console is getting great support for third party games coming to the new platform.

Damon Baker replied to a Tweet that was a screenshot of a Nintendo Switch users homepage showcasing Rocket League, L.A Noire, Skyrim, DOOM and Resident Evil: Revelations. The screenshot was titled "imagine this leaking last year", Baker replied by saying "I know, right?! I think you're going to like 2018 as well!" which suggests that more third-party titles of last year's caliber will be coming to the Nintendo Switch as the year progresses on.