Latest News - Page 2159

Electronic Arts has once again made good on its promise to consistently balance Battlefront II's features around gamers' preferences, and has now made the second major change to the game before release (the first change dealt with Star Cards).

Battlefront II originally caught lots of flak from its lootbox monetization scheme, which is something we predicted months before confirmation. Now just yesterday EA was hit with a fresh wave of backlash due to the high credit costs of in-game heroes like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. The previous costs were about 60,000 credits and ensured players had to grind quite a bit before unlocking their favorite characters for play in the game. EA has once again relented and has dropped the costs of heroes to better suit players' needs.

This new change sees hero unlock prices dropping by 75%. Popular characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are just 15,000 credits now, and other heroes have been dropped too. This adjustment highlights the versatility of service-based games as EA can simply roll out a quick hotfix and make a dramatic change to the game's progression path.

Blizzard has now confirmed that Overwatch will be running at the glorious 4K resolution on the new Xbox One X, but it will take them a little more time to prepare the first-person phenomenon for the Xbox One X.

During a chat with WindowsCentral, Blizzard said: "Overwatch team is excited with great possibilities Xbox One X opens. The team is currently exploring how the game experience can be enhanced on this platform to leverage the console's incredible hardware, and is working on implementing 4K resolution in the game on Xbox One X. It is very important for the team to make sure the user interface looks natural on a truly big screen. We will share more details about our plans for 4K support on Xbox One X later".

4K isn't new for the PS4 Pro version of Overwatch, but Sony's beefed up console only renders the UI at 4K, while the actual game is rendered at 1080p and features improved depth of field and anistrophic filtering.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has reached a new peak 2.5 million concurrent gamers on Steam, breaking another record: being the first and only game on Steam to breach the 2.5 million concurrent milestone.

PUBG has continued to break records since its release with over 20 million copies sold, making developer Bluehole over $600 million in the process. The company has had so much success from Battlegrounds that it formed PUBG Corp. to handle everything PUBG.

It's an incredible milestone to reach for a PC-only game, with the Xbox One receiving Battlegrounds on December 12 these numbers will only skyrocket, and even more so as we reach Battlegrounds v1.0 towards the end of December.

AMD's partnership with Bethesda on fine tuning their massive library of games is really coming into effect, more so on the AMD-powered Xbox One X that was released last week. The new Xbox One X is capable of 4K gaming with much higher-end graphics and sustained 50-60FPS performance in some games, especially the Xbox One X optimized ones.

Digital Foundry has completed its awesome work (as usual) on their Wolfenstein II content, comparing the PC, Xbox One X, and even PS4 Pro versions of the game against each other.

On both the Xbox One X and the PS4 Pro, Wolfenstein II runs at a dynamic resolution of up to 4K on the Xbox One X, and up to 1440p on the PS4 Pro. During Digital Foundry's testing, they were able to get Wolfenstein II to reach its lowest recorded pixel count on the Xbox One of 2944x1656, while the PS4 Pro Pro drops to 2304x1296. This means the Xbox One X is pumping away at 63% more pixels, while maintaining higher fidelity graphics. DF notes that PS4 Pro version "starts to look just a little too blurry for our tastes".

SAPPHIRE is getting closer to the release of their first custom Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics card, with HardwareBattle getting some eyes-on time with the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX Vega 64 NITRO graphics card.

The first thing you'll notice is the RX Vega 64 NITRO is a massive card, with not just a triple-fan cooler, but 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors that will provide the card with a total of 525W of power (150+150+150+75W). We don't know what performance the super-powered Radeon RX Vega 64 NITRO will be capable of, as the sample HB received was using reference GPU and HBM2 clocks.

SAPPHIRE should be able to squeeze everything AMD has inside of the Radeon RX Vega 64, especially with all of the power on tap with the custom NITRO offering.

CD Projekt RED has frequently affirmed Cyberpunk 2077 will be beyond anything it's ever done before: the game is above ambitious and should have incredibly complexity and dynamism that ushers in a new era of next-gen gaming. But just how far is the team wanting to go?

Besides dreams of a massive game far and above The Witcher 3, we don't know much official info about Cyberpunk 2077. But CD Projekt RED President and Joint CEO Adam Kicinski recently discussed the team's aspirations for the game and says it will ideally be better than The Witcher 3 in every single way. CDPR has a history of consistently one-upping itself with its games releases, but the jump between 2015's amazing The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 should be a leap that spans oceans.

When asked how Cyberpunk 2077 should or may be better than The Witcher 3, Kicinski replied: "Everything. Every time we make a game we want to make a better one than before. We want to experiment in new fields, of which were not yet explored in The Witcher. I can't say much about Cyberpunk, but our ambitious are set really high because that's our style of work. We want to go even higher, and especially seeing how we're having a business chat, we're interested in Cyberpunk being even more commercially significant [than The Witcher 3]," the company president said in a recent interview.

EA is doing its best to stem the tide of backlash over Battlefront II, but the dam is breaking and the gaming community presses back.

EA recently made some big changes to Battlefront II's monetization strategy. Now that review copies have been sent out, information on how long it'll take to unlock heroes like Darth Vader and Boba Fett is starting to drip out...and it's bad news. Gamers will need to grind quite a bit to unlock each of the game's 14 iconic heroes and spend 60,000 credits to unlock certain characters. Pre-release review copies lower the hero cost to just 10,000 units for press convenience.

Electronic Arts' community team responded to the backlash with a specific quote telling players that the grind is there to add a sense of accomplishment, and that the credit costs were balanced out based on per-day credit rates. This quote has now apparently become the most downvoted post in Reddit's entire history, earning Battlefront II yet another wave of bad press.

Square Enix and Bandai Namco have partnered to bring an unexpected Final Fantasy x Tekken crossover to the latest fighting game.

Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, Final Fantasy 15's main character, is coming to Tekken 7 as a playable fighter. Noctis' moves incorporate his special Armiger attacks and a nice variety of Royal Blades to slice and dices foes, along with the classic Engine Blade. All in all Noct looks pretty svelte and his moves are a very faithful recreation of the base game that seem to expertly fit into the Tekken series.

Noctis will be a playable character as part of Tekken 7's third DLC pack, which is included in the $24.99 season pass. The pack launches in Spring 2018.

Global entry! We have teamed up with Rosewill to give away an awesome Cullinan MX Mid-Tower Computer Case to one lucky winner!

You can buy the Cullinan MX now over at Newegg. For a limited time, it also comes with a free 550W 80 Plus Platinum Modular power supply.

How to Win

Obsidian Entertainment is known for making great RPGs like Icewind Dale, Planscape: Torment and the beloved Fallout New Vegas. Now the studio recently teased a new project, and we've a few clues on what it could be.

When Twitter upped the character limit to 280 a number of developers and publishers took the opportunity to make jokes and tease a few things. In Obsidian Entertainment did the latter by affirming a new game was coming after Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. While this shouldn't come as a surprise--developers have to keep making games to continue operations--things get pretty interesting once we combine our reports with the news.

Anonymous sources familiar with the matter told us in May that Fallout creator Tim Cain is working on a new project for Obsidian, and the project will essentially be Obsidian's own version of Fallout. Next to nothing is officially known about the project. Sources say that Obsidian is pushing more towards creating its own IPs rather than adaptations of publisher-owned franchises in an effort to have full creative control over the content.

Hasbro has reportedly made an acquisition offer to buy Mattel, according to sources of The Wall Street Journal, a deal that would make for quite the toy story... pun intended.

The massive collaboration between companies would see a conglomerate that owned franchises like Hot Wheels and My Little Pony under one roof, but the deal has Hasbro attacking Mattel while its weak. Hasbro is buffed right now after the massive sales of its Disney-themed toys, with the Star Wars franchise mixed in for good measure, as well as licenses for massive franchises in both the movie and TV markets.

Mattel on the other hand, isn't doing too well as physical toy sales are down. Hasbro was smart and closed their manufacturing facilities a while ago, but Mattel hasn't because physical toy sales (that need to be manufactured) are their bread and butter. The deal between Hasbro and Mattel would ignite some flames with a US antitrust lawsuit, as they would truly become the kings of the toy market.

Apple isn't having a good time with its new iPhone X smartphones, with a bunch of customers on Apple's forums and Reddit complaining that their new iPhone X has an annoying green line that runs down the side of the screen.

The green line on the display looks like an entire row of bright pixels, like you would get on a faulty display and in this case an OLED display manufactured and supplied by Samsung. You can simply swap over your new iPhone X with a new one at any Apple Store, but it's still a huge hassle after you might have set it all up and now have to wipe it and do it all over again.

On top of that, we have 'cold weather responsiveness' issues with the iPhone X, and FaceID not working with some users' faces when they're wearing glasses.

GDDR6 will be the successor to GDDR5, which already rips up the memory bandwidth game, even in the face of HBM2. But now news has us excited, teasing that Samsung had expected 14Gbps of bandwidth from GDDR6 but will instead reach 16Gbps.

Samsung announced the news as part of their 36 products that have been recognized as Innovation Awards, ahead of CES 2018 in January. Samsung's new 16Gb GDDR6 memory is joined by their Galaxy smartphones and new 8TB NGSFF NVMe SSD.

As for GDDR6, Samsung teases: "It processes images and video at 16Gbps with 64GB/s data I/O bandwidth, which is equivalent to transferring approximately 12 full-HD DVDs (5GB equivalent) per second". Yeah, you got that right - it can handle 64GB/sec of bandwidth, enough for future 4K/8K gaming.

The rumors of a Qualcomm takeover started a week ago with a huge $103 billion deal from Broadcom, but now Reuters is reporting that Qualcomm's board is planning to reject the offer.

Broadcom will reportedly offer $70 per share, which Reuters' sources say "undervalues the company and does not price in the uncertainty associated with getting the deal approved by regulators". Qualcomm is said to announce news of the $103 billion any minute now, but it might take a few days to trickle down to us in the real-world where $103 billion is unimaginable.

But as all big stories of $100 billion plus deals, Broadcom is said to be prepared to increase its bid to acquire Qualcomm according to Reuters' sources. It can get dirty from here, with Broadcom hoping to choose its own directors for Qualcomm's board, and if shareholders wants a deal, they can vote in new board members and force Qualcomm to negotiations.

It has been nearly a week since Microsoft released its Xbox One X console and while the 4K/HDR upgrades to some games have already been pushed out into the world, Destiny 2's upgrade is still in the works and planned for release on December 5.

Destiny 2's update will be available for both the Xbox One X and the PS4 Pro, and will launch side-by-side with the Curse of the Osiris expansion. Microsoft's new Xbox One X will run Destiny 2 at native 4K while Sony's upgraded PS4 Pro will run it at an "adaptive" 4K resolution. Both consoles will support HDR in Destiny 2, which is something PC gamers have enjoyed since release.

Bungie explained in a post on their website:

NVIDIA shouldn't be showing off any new GPU technology during CES 2018, which is only 6 weeks away now, but now rumors are swirling that NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce graphics cards will use the 'Ampere' architecture.

Heise.de reports NVIDIA's next-gen GPU architecture is called Ampere and it will be unveiled during GTC 2018. NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference is not an event that GeForce graphics cards get unveiled at, so it would be a strange move - but remember, this is just a rumor.

We could see NVIDIA use its Volta GPU architecture for the datacenter/AI/cloud computing markets while the new Ampere GPU architecture will succeed Pascal on the consumer GeForce side of things. But a GTC 2018 unveiling? I don't think so. I think we'll see NVIDIA host another Editor's Day in March-May, leading into Computex in June with its next-gen GeForce GTX series, and I can't wait.

To celebrate the home video release of 'Atomic Blonde,' we have one a huge giveaway for a lucky fan, which includes a copy of the source material graphic novel 'The Coldest City,' signed by author Antony Johnston and a Blu-ray copy of the film. 14 runners-up will all take home a copy of 'Atomic Blonde' on Blu-ray, courtesy of our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment.

An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents. Oscar winner Charlize Theron explodes into summer in Atomic Blonde, a breakneck action-thriller that follows MI6's most lethal assassin through a ticking time bomb of a city simmering with revolution and double-crossing hives of traitors.

The crown jewel of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, Agent Lorraine Broughton (Theron) is equal parts spycraft, sensuality, and savagery, willing to deploy any of her skills to stay alive on her impossible mission. Sent alone into Berlin to deliver a priceless dossier out of the destabilized city, she partners with embedded station chief David Percival (James McAvoy) to navigate her way through the deadliest game of spies.

To celebrate the home video release of 'The Walking Dead: The Complete Seasons 1-7,' we have one huge Blu-ray boxset to give away thanks to our friends at eOne Home Entertainment.

After waking up from a coma in an abandoned hospital, police officer Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), finds the world he knew has gone - ravaged by a zombie epidemic of apocalyptic proportions. Nearby, on the outskirts of Atlanta, a small encampment struggles to survive as the dead stalk them at every turn. Based on one of the most successful and popular comic books of all time, written by Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead vividly captures the tension, drama, and devastation following a zombie apocalypse.

To go into the running to win, 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 17.

OFM have extended their product range into the gaming market with their new RESPAWN range. OFM have decades of experience in ergonomics and quality furniture, using this experience and knowledge to design their PC gaming chair range to cater for the long and intense gaming sessions. This experience provides gamers with everything they require- ergonomic comfort, 4D adjustability, beautiful aesthetics and premium materials that is backed with a limited lifetime warranty.

"Gamers have specific ergonomic and aesthetic needs that aren't met by standard office chairs, and many of the seating options out there are outrageously priced or offer features that don't provide comfort in a stylish way," said Blake Zalcberg, CEO of OFM, Inc. "We knew that there was a need in the market that we could fulfill based on our 20 years of experience at OFM, and decided to create the RESPAWN brand. RESPAWN delivers an affordable and durable product designed specifically for gamers."

The RESPAWN series features eight gaming chairs in a variety of colors to suit each individual's preferred comfort, style and functionality. You can view the entire RESPAWN range here and is available now.

Silicon Power have added the A75 portable hard drive to their Armor series, this follows their recent release of the impressive Armor A62 portable hard drive. The Armor A75 is finished in a beautiful aviation-grade aluminium, crowning this slim-portable hard drive the world's thinnest hard drive in its category.

To say the A75 is slim is an understatement, the A75 measures 124.4 x 82 x 12.2mm in size, weighs only 169g and is shockproof up to 1.22m. Unfortunately, Silicon Power's latest portable hard drive is only available in 1 and 2 TB variants, but the gorgeous exterior of the A75 more than makes up for the limited capacity when compared to the A62. Other features include USB 3.1 Gen 1, Free SP Widget software and a slim "L" shaped LED status light that can be seen from top and front view.