Latest News - Page 2139

Microsoft has posted a tweet that was an ad for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on the Xbox One X which has caused much controversy surrounding the image, as it appears to be stolen, or at least heavily influenced from a Redditor's concept art.

The company is currently being accused by many people for 'stealing' Redditor Macsterrs concept art as his own image is almost identical to that of the one posted by Microsoft. As seen in the above image we can see that there is very strong resemblance between the two pictures, as both consist of an Xbox One X with a Battlegrounds character placed in the middle huddling in some grass.

The only differences or changes that Microsoft have done to the image is that they have changed the camera view of the image as well as added an Xbox One X controller and a small loot crate located to the right of the character. These small additions to the already highly popular image circling Reddit had has caused people to say that even if Microsoft did steal the image that they should of at least given credit to the artist that designed the idea.

Just over a week ago now, Instagram rolled out a new update that allowed for its users easily comment on videos/photos throughout their main feed. To accompany this update, Instagram has decided to implement their 'recommended' posts into users' main feeds in hopes of attracting a more widespread option of what you might like.

The 'recommended' section into Instagram's main feed will show posts of accounts that users do not follow but instead show accounts/posts that Instagram thinks you might like. It has been made explicit that this section will be different from that of the typical main feed, by doing this, it gives users the visual option of disregarding these posts.

Unfortunately for those that desire to remove this option entirely this is not going to be possible but instead when users come across one of these 'recommended' posts they can locate the three dots and choose the 'hide' option. 'Hiding' the posts will not permanently remove them from the main feed but it will hide them until the user has gone through all of the posts from accounts they are actually following.

It's not just Facebook that want to show you what you've done over the course of 2017, but now social media powerhouse Snapchat has their own 'Your 2017 Story'.

Snapchat being one of the largest social media platforms on the planet has a very wide-spread audience, most users utilizing and enjoying the predominantly visual platform will now be rewarded through what is called "Your 2017 Story."

Snapchat has given its users the option of viewing a story which ranges the entirety of 2017's best moments. Snapchat has done this by accessing saved memories across users phones and uploaded them into one video that summarizes the 'best moments' of 2017.

A San Jose-based startup named Energous, has announced that it has been granted approval by the FCC for their power-at-a-distance wireless charger that uses the WattUp Mid Field transmitter.

WattUp Mid Field transmitter converts electricity to radio frequencies which then are beamed to nearby devices that support wireless charging and have a corresponding receiver. This new technology brings forth a new wave of wireless charging, as previous generations of the idea required physical contact with the wireless charging device, Energous' product can be used in a 15 feet radius from the station.

The WattUp will have the ability to be able to charge multiple devices at once, from phones to tablets, keyboards and any other piece of technology that is fitted with a corresponding charging receiver. Just like Wi-Fi, the WattUp is manufacturer-agnostic meaning that no matter what brand receiver users may have the wireless charging will still be available to use.

Qualcomm blew me away with their announcement of their next-gen Snapdragon 845 processor, which is like a technology beast wrapped up in a beautiful 10nm FinFET chip.

But it looks like we can expect the new Snapdragon 845 processor to power some of the best 2018 flagship smartphones, including Samsung's much-touted Galaxy S9/S9+, LG's next-gen G7/G7+ smartphones (and their V40 handset), HTC's upcoming U12/U12+, the Google Pixel 3 (XL, too), and even Samsung's next-gen Galaxy Note 9 smartphone.

The new tease is coming from a leaked image from China, which shows what smartphone will be powered by the Snapdragon 845. It could be fake, but we know the Snapdragon 845 is real - and we also know most of these smartphone are coming out next year. Now I want all of them, gosh.

Apple has found itself in hot water after being busted slowing down previous-gen iPhones in the grand gesture of helping the batteries inside of their smartphones, but now main competitors in Samsung and LG are trolling Apple.

First, Samsung came out and said: "We ensure extended battery life of Samsung mobile devices through multi-layer safety measures, which include software algorithms that govern the battery charging current and charging duration. We do not reduce CPU performance through software updates over the lifecycles of the phone".

Now remember, Samsung isn't innocent when it comes to battery-related drama as they went through explosive times in 2016 with a global recall of their flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. I personally purchased one and regrettable returned it after Note 7s around the world were exploding.

DEEPCOOL has unveiled what they're heralding as the world-first smart PC case that allows gamers to customize RGB lighting and heat dissipation systems through an app you can load on your smartphone.

The new QUADSTELLAR case not only rocks a super-stylish design, but it can house some of the highest-end PC compeonts in the world, including a huge E-ATX motherboard and multi-GPU set ups. It'll also handle high-end PSUs for all those graphics cards and cooling components, with four independent compartments to "eliminate inter-compartment heat dissipation interference to achieve maximum cooling efficiency".

DEEPCOOL built the next-gen QUADSTELLAR gaming PC case for enthusiasts, with their new app letting people enjoy dynamic management of the lighting inside of the case, heat dissipation, and active thermal control components.

Just like last year, Blizzard is giving away five free lootboxes for just signing into Overwatch...and here's why that's a big deal in the gaming realm.

For service games, engagement is a major driver for success. Big-name publishers like Take-Two Interactive, EA, Ubisoft, Activision and, of course, Blizzard, all have nearly mastered the art of engaging players with a number of multi-faceted plans. One of the main strategies used to achieve this is giving away free in-game content to stimulate--and ideally grow--the playerbase. This content varies widely from huge free patches that add loads of new quests, items, characters and most importantly, new optional content to buy. These updates are extremely strategic and the publishers will typically roll them out every two months or when the playerbase dips--new content will almost always push lapsed players to jump back in.

So what better way to get Overwatch players back into the mix, outside of new maps and characters? Give them a smattering of "free" lootboxes that will likely fuel their progression grind, and thus keep them playing. And that's just what Blizzard is doing: the games-maker is giving away five free lootboxes to everyone who signs into Overwatch as part of its Winter Wonderland event, which ends on January 1. This limited timeline is also strategic and prompts players to jump in and grab their items, and once doing so, they're likely to keep playing to show off their skins if they get something they want (or something they like).

To ring in the New Year, Unikrn founder and eSports fan Rahul Sood has announced that UnikoinGold (UKG) is now available on Bittrex.

This is a big deal as Bittrex is the fastest and most secure digital currency trading platform, where countless cryptocurrencies are available. This move is significant, as it means millions of crypto traders can now trade UKG which will only spread the gaming-focused crypto into the mainstream.

UKG will soon be launching on Braveno and CoinHub, which Sood said on his Medium post "it's coming - stay tuned. The problem is not on our end, it's their end setting up for scale".

After the whole big Battlefront II and now the Destiny 2 lootbox/microtransaction fiasco, the topic of digital in-game purchases has become much more prevalent. But what do big players have to say about the issues? The founder of Bethesda weighs in.

Like them or not, Bethesda Softworks is a big part of the games industry. Panned for their overuse of an outdated games engine for titles like Fallout 4 and re-releasing Skyrim for the nth time, the games-maker commands a signficant place in the gaming sphere. In the wake of the online service game lootbox monetization strategy, Bethesda is ironically seen as one of the last major bastions of publisher-made singleplayer games (look at Prey, Dishonored 2, and Wolfenstein II, for example). Now Bethesda founder Christopher Weaver weighs in on lootboxes, microtransactions, and service games, and his remarks align with the company's singleplayer focus.

"This nickel and dime approach to payment may well backfire as it interferes with the flow of a game and disallows for players to lose themselves in its play-world," Weaver said in an interview with Rolling Stone. The publication reports that Weaver thinks the best answer to off-set microtransactions is to up the $59.99 price of games to a new standardized cost.

Blizzard is taking players back to the olden days of Diablo I again with its special timed seasonal event.

When I first heard about The Darkening of Tristram, I was beyond excited: being able to play a recreation of classic Diablo I within the new and improved (well somewhat) Diablo III? What ARPG fanatic couldn't love that--especially if you're like me and you grew up with the original game on PC and PlayStation. But alas the event came and disappointed, essentially adding up to Diablo III with old-school pixellations.

That event is actually coming back this new year, so starting on January 1 (and ending January 30) you can jump into the Retro-Vision-enhanced adventure if you missed it last year. Unfortunately it doesn't look as if Blizzard is adding any new real content to the game, and the rewards for playing the event are typically cosmetic items and the like. I was hoping for more effort this time around but it doesn't appear we'll be getting it.

Following the Switch's strong performance in 2017, Nintendo wants the handheld-console hybrid to double its current to-date sales mark.

Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima recently expressed that the company would like to sell 20 million Switch consoles through the fiscal year ending March 31, 2019. "We would like to be over 20 million units," Mr. Kimishima said in an interview with Kyoto Shimbun, representing about a 43% increase in sales from the current 14 million target for the current fiscal year's end.

The Nintendo Switch has sold 10 million units throughout its first nine months, and would likely have sold much more if supply had been readily available throughout the year. The games-maker has replenished supply for the holiday season, just as we predicted, and Mr. Kimishima affirms that new games will bring new ways to play the on-the-go slash console device. "It's a momentum that exceeds your expectations, while analyzing the factor, while being a stationary machine, there are other ways of playing that can be carried outside as well," he said.

COUGAR have released a new FPS gaming mouse that is designed at maintaining customizations for gamers without the use of drivers.

The new gaming mouse comes with on-board memory to save gamers setting and customizations. On the mouse, two dedicated button which are found at the base of the mouse that allow for control of the mouse's DPI setting which increase in increments of 50, ranging from 50 - 7200DPI.

To make this DPI customization easier on gamers COUGAR have installed a built-in LCD screen under the mouse so users that desire to change their DPI settings have the freedom of simply turning their mouse over and adjusting their setting while viewing the number change on-the-fly.

Paramount Home Media Distribution has partnered up with Bigscreen to showcase the first screening of Top Gun in a virtual reality cinema, the screening begins at 6PM EST on December 29th.

Bigscreen hope to bring a different feel to the cinema world but without taking away from the luxuries of actually being inside a cinema. The idea is to bring the cinema experience to home audiences, where users will be able to interact with each other in virtual lobby and watch videos on a virtual movie screen which is equipped with complete immersive surround sound and lighting effects.

Bob Buchi, President Worldwide Home Media Distribution, Paramount Pictures said "Bigscreen's virtual reality platform offers a new way for fans to experience films in their homes" and "We're excited to be a part of this experiment using cutting-edge technology to give fans a new entertainment option."

Wu Xiangyang, a local Chinese man has been seized by authorities for running a unauthorized VPN service which bypassed China's 'Great Firewall.'

The Great Firewall is a system that has been employed by the Chinese government to block sites and services that the Chinese government has not authorized, examples of this are YouTube, Facebook, Google and many others.

Due to internet users only being able to access government authorized sites privacy activists have come fourth explaining that this is a violation of online human rights. They say this because under the Chinese government laws they have the ability to save and store logs from each authorized service.

Christmas Eve was celebrated quite uniquely for Overwatch as the director Jeff Kaplan decided it was a good idea to sit in front of a livestream on Twitch for 10 hours just staring blanking into the camera while occasionally moving to open a present and having to deal with a boom mic in his face.

This quirky livestream began to slowly attract attention as people in the chat began to discuss if whether this was in-fact Jeff Kaplan live or just a looped video to just to fool everyone of an announcement for Overwatch over Christmas. From the random blinking and movements of Kaplan it is believed that is was not a loop and that he actually did do a 10 hour live stream of mostly looking into the camera.

Twitter users that were viewing the stream captured some unique moments of Kaplan interacting with the environment and proceeded to post them onto Twitter proving that it was not a loop. Kaplan opens a Christmas present on stream which turned out to be a framed photograph of Genji captioned "I need healing," and also Kaplan gets hit with the boom mic at one stage throughout the stream.

One of the biggest companies in the world was busted intentionally slowing down their products, and in retaliation to this news, they've come out with a pathetic apology. That company is Apple, and that product is a little known smartphone; iPhone.

Apple has officially apologized to its customers, explaining how iPhone batteries age, and that the company has a plan to workaround unexpected device shutdowns, and how it will move from here on out. The company explained: "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize".

Apple continued: "There's been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we're making. First and foremost, we have never-and would never-do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades".

The South Korean government is tightening its grip on Bitcoin, where the government has proposed legislation that would limit how conventional banks interact with not just Bitcoin, but all cryptocurrencies.

This new law would stop South Korean companies from providing settlement services for cryptocurrency-based transactions, something that is at the heart of credit and debit card transactions. Earlier this month, a fresh set of rules restricted financial firms from investing heavily into cryptocurrency, with rules levied capital gains tax on any money conventional investors made from buying and selling crypto.

South Korea's new ruling would stop companies from selling Bitcoin anonymously, with their new "Know Your Customer" rules pushed as anti-money laundering rules with banks across the world.

The PC version of Battlegrounds is being updated with 'PC update 1' that will fix performance in the game, with servers being offline for a couple of hours.

PUBG's new patch will not just improve server performance, but we should see fixes to in-game lag, and character position readjustment issues. Bluehole explains: "Creating a smooth playing environment to allow our players to fully enjoy Battle Royale was one of our top priorities for PC 1.0 launch".

The developer continues: "However, a multitude of causes have triggered the in-game lag issue to become worse or happen more frequently in the last few weeks. In the process, we were not able to implement the measures to visibly address the issue more quickly".

Wargaming Fest 2017 just passed over the weekend and what we learned is that World of Tanks will be upgraded to 1.0 in March 2018. The update will give a full graphics overhaul through a new engine, as well as redesigned maps and sounds.

World of Tanks will have its graphical engine updated to a new engine called Core. Since this is a full graphics overhaul, the in-house developers which have designed this new engine have provided a performance test for players to see if their PC will be able to handle the new game.

The test can be found on their official website.