Latest News - Page 2184

If you're still mining Ethereum, you will have notice that the difficulty has just increased by its largest amount ever... with difficulty now sitting at an insane 3TH.

Back in July, I reported that Ethereum difficulty reaching 1.75TH was squeezing out the small miners, as it had just increased from 1.25TH. But in the last 24 hours, the difficulty has risen from 2.3TH to 3TH, which is the largest jump, ever.

Looking at the numbers from June, we can see it was under 1TH... and each rise has been steady, and painful. But the last one was the worse, I mean just look at the leap it did overnight. If you're still mining Ethereum, this will hurt, a lot.

NVIDIA hasn't been able to keep up with the non-stop demand of their GeForce GTX 10 series graphics cards, thanks to cryptocurrency miners across the world gobbling them up for mining.

We reported earlier this month that GTX 10 series pricing was on its way up, with an average of 25% higher pricing according to Mizuho's chief semiconductor analyst. Mizuho reports: "Our checks with the leading GPU and motherboard OEMs indicate SepQ GPU card trends are very strong, with card shipments coming in ~30-50% ahead of flat q/q expectations on strength from cryptocurrency mining. Cryptocurrency demand is driving strength in NVDA's GTX 1060/1070 cards. The GPU/motherboard OEMs also noted GPU pricing was up ~25% in the last six months".

It's not just miners either, but DRAM shortages are going to push us to see a purported decline of GTX 10 series for miners, with China banning cryptocurrencies being a massive driving factor. Mizuho continued: "The OEMs also noted zero inventory of GPUs in the channel and constrained short DRAM supply and pricing also affecting GPU shipments. Coming off a very strong SepQ, there are also expectations in the supply chain that DecQ GPU sales could be muted in pricing and demand on recent cryptocurrency bans and DRAM shortages".

The Chinese Room, the independent developer best known for hits like Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, is taking a break from games development.

"We're going dark for the next few months," creative director Dan Pinchbeck said in an eye-opening blog post. Mr. Pinchbeck says the decision to steer the dev's figurative ship towards the docks and take a long-deserved break was caused by a jolting health scare, which caused him to re-think The Chinese Room's toll on his life. "To cut a long story short, the situation - between financial pressures, trying to keep the lights on for the employed team, the stress of end-of-development, health issues - just wasn't a tenable thing anymore. It was time to take a break, recharge, recover and have a good think about the future," he said.

The development team has since been let go, but Mr. Pinchbeck affirms "this is a pause, not an end." The studio's employee profile page has been taken down. The creative director says that he's working on a new game called the 13th Interior along with composer Jessica Curry and game designer Andrew Crenshaw, but there's no longer a full development team on the project.

To celebrate the upcoming home video release of ''The Walking Dead: The Complete Seventh Season', we have ten Blu-ray copies to give away thanks to our friends at eOne Home Entertainment!

Picking up immediately after the thrilling cliff-hanger, Negan forces Rick and the group to fall under his will, brutally convincing them to live by his rules. To prevent further bloodshed, Rick genuinely believes they can make life under Negan, however terrible, work. But he soon learns that Negan can't be reasoned with, and they must prepare to go to war. Victory will require more than Alexandria, and Rick will need to convince their new allies from the Kingdom and the Hilltop to band together with the common goal of taking down Negan and his army.

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 September 29:

Microsoft has teamed with Facebook and Spanish telco giant Telxis on a new undersea communications cable that is 17,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.

The companies claim that it is the "most technologically advanced subsea cable" with up to 160Tbps of data per second, beating out Google's recent "Faster" cable. The 160Tbps-capable cable spans a distance of 4000 miles from Virgina Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain.

Construction began in August 2016, with Microsoft announcing its completion on Thursday, while the super-fast cable won't be in operation until early 2018. The idea behind the cable started with Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which knocked out the connection between the US and Europe for a few days.

Ah, Apple... you sneaky devils. When the company announced their new 4K-capable Apple TV, they left out an important fact: you can't download 4K movies to watch them later, you have to stream them.

Apple will let you watch 4K versions of your movies on the new Apple TV, but having to stream them while letting you download HDR and Dolby Vision, and even HD streams, just doesn't sound right. So if your internet connection isn't up to scratch at the time, or there's congestion at certain times of the day - oh well, you won't be able to watch 4K movies because you can't download them before hand.

In Apple's own support document, they state: "You can download a local copy of an HD movie, and you might be able to download HDR and Dolby Vision versions, but you can't download a 4K version". You'll also need a 25Mbps connection in order to stream 4K in the first place.

Oculus and HTC had their time with the Rift and Vive, respectively, but Sony has sold many more VR headsets thanks to the large PS4 install base.

During an interview with Reuters, Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. boss Andrew House said: "I'm not entirely comfortable being the market leader in VR by such a margin that seems to be happening right now. With such a brand new category you want a variety of platforms all doing well to create that rising tide and create the audience".

Sony is really only fighting against HTC and Facebook, as Samsung still dominates thanks to the GearVR. Sony shipped 519,400 PSVR headsets, while Facebook made 246,900 Oculus Rift headsets, while there were 94,500 HTC Vive headsets sold in Q2. Sony has 24.4% of the VR market share in Q2, while Facebook has 11.6%, and HTC with 4.4%.

If you're like me, you've been waiting for the perfect - and massive, DDR4 memory kit for your AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPU. G.SKILL has now unleashed its new Trident Z RGB memory kit, which is fully optimized for AMD Ryzen, and Threadripper platforms.

G.SKILL's new Trident Z RGB DDR4 memory kits arrive in 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB kits. G.SKILL has its current Trident Z RGB kits with an 'X' at the end of their model numbers, so you can see the difference between the current models on the market. We have varying clock speeds, with:

G.SKILL's use of a solid metal heat sink with brushed aluminum textures will keep the DDR4 RAM cool, while looking like it's worth a million bucks. G.SKILL won't have its new Trident Z RGB DDR4 memory kits for Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper until next month.

Bethesda has pledged to support Nintendo's new Switch console-handheld hybrid for the long run, and sees the system as a viable platform for some of their most popular games.

With so many third-party developers and publishers supporting it, the Switch has broken the terrible bonds of the Wii U. After many many years of avoidance, devs like Bethesda, who make the popular Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, see Nintendo as a partner. The publisher has made good on its initial promises to support the Switch by announcing two of the most mature, bloody, and adult-themed games for the platform: id Software's grisly demon-slaying FPS Doom, and MachineGames' upcoming Nazi-blasting Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. And of course there's Bethesda's perennial Skyrim which is also coming to the handheld-console.

But this isn't the end--in fact, these games kick off the beginning of a long-lasting union between Bethesda and Nintendo. The publisher is keen on building a solid business relationship with Nintendo--which in of itself speaks volumes in how much the Japanese games-maker has changed. "We're obviously excited about these two games, but it's not as if we're going to just do these two games and that's it. We want this to be the start of a relationship that we build with Nintendo and Nintendo fans," Bethesda Softworks VP of Public Relations Pete Hines told GamesBeat in a recent interview.

Following PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' massive success, key publishers and developers are chasing the battle royale market--and the indie studio may find itself eclipsed by more powerful games makers quite soon.

Bluehole is finding out sooner rather than later that it doesn't own the battle royale genre, and game developers are starting to cash in on the market. After all, you don't sell 10 million copies of a game without the world's most profitable publishers taking notice. The game has broken record after record, and is now the most popular game on Steam in concurrent players, and sees tremendous engagement via Twitch and YouTube streaming. It's a smash-hit juggernaut that shows no signs of slowing down--until, that is, other publishers step in and wave around big budgets and resources and ultimately flesh out the genre more efficiently than Bluehole can. The recent debacle between Epic Games and Bluehole is just the beginning, and the PUBG dev better get used to more battle royale iterations flooding the market.

The real problem that Bluehole is facing is that it literally can't keep up with its playerbase. PlayerUnknown himself Brendan Greene said that PUBG is expanding too fast and the team can't keep up with its millions upon millions of players that step into the game every day. In fact, if it weren't for Microsoft's massive team and monetary investment, PUBG wouldn't be coming to Xbox for quite a while.

Microsoft has formally changed the name of the Windows Store to the "Microsoft Store," which hints at bigger things.

The storefront's name change was made in the latest update for Windows Insiders who test out pre-release Windows 10 updates, who noticed the name and the shop's icon getting a new shape. Outlets like Windows Central are curious if Microsoft will start selling content other than the storefront's current digital fare--apps, games, music, videos, etc.

Others wonder if Microsoft will actually start selling non-digital content through the onboard storefront as well, considering the "Microsoft Store" matches up with the company's website storefront and traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. All in all the shop shouldn't change all that much, and Microsoft has yet to formally announce the change--or what it actually means.

Blizzard has formally revealed the full roster of teams in the Overwatch League, and an official season kickoff date for the big-money competition.

The Overwatch League is an incredibly important milestone in the franchise's rapidly expanding history. The shooter, which became Blizzard's most recent billion dollar franchise in May of this year, has been a transformative force in the games industry in terms of monetization strategies, engagement, and monthly active users. And like the dragons in Blizzard's World of Warcraft, the FPS juggernaut is set to grow to leviathan proportions thanks to eSports initiatives like the Overwatch League. The games-maker even created its own stadium-like venue to host the event, further adding a real sports-like feel to the experience. Fans and viewers will also buy tickets to watch the experience at the arena.

Blizzard has announced the Overwatch League will begin on January 10, 2018 with twelve global teams competing for the seven-digit grand prize. The pool will likely be funded with exclusive in-game loot purchases made by consumers to support their favorite teams, similar to Valve's prize funding for DOTA 2 competitions. The Overwatch League teams are:

PlatinumGames' tech-infused action RPG has enjoyed strong acclaim and sales across the globe, so much that Square Enix is committing itself to the franchise.

NieR: Automata has shipped and digitally sold more than 2 million units worldwide across PC and PlayStation 4, Japanese games publisher Square Enix today confirmed. Back in April we reported the grim action role-playing game hit 1 million shipments and sales, and now the game has more than doubled that milestone in the span of five months.

"NieR:Automata, which we released in February 2017, has proven a global hit far in excess of our expectations. It has not only reminded the world of the high quality of Japanese games, but also demonstrated significant potential for future franchise development," said Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda in the company's recent Annual Report 2017 filing.

Rockstar Games today posted up a simple advertisement promo for Red Dead Redemption 2, promising more content updates coming next week.

New info on Rockstar's massively anticipated Western sequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, will be announced and showcased next week on Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 11 AM EST, the developer announced today. In a very cryptic Rockstar fashion, no specifics accompanied the simple picture billboard, but it's possible the team will finally reveal the game's exact release date in 2018.

Red Dead Redemption 2's absence at E3 2017 and successive games industry trade shows was marked by gamers and industry figures alike, but Rockstar Games typically moves at it's own pace and doesn't need big showcases to draw millions of viewers. In fact, it's extremely simplified social media presence is enough.

France's Florange Law may arm Vivendi with enough shares to forcibly take over French games-maker Ubisoft.

The long-standing battle between Vivendi and Ubisoft's founding Guillemot family may conclude in November, the Financial Times reports. Vivendi, who currently owns 26.6% of Ubisoft's share capital and 25.2% of voting rights, may see its stake in the company doubled under France's Florange Law, thus boosting the company's stake in the games-maker past the 30% needed for a takeover.

Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot warns Vivendi that an aggressive takeover would be very risky. "The question is whether Vivendi will then make a tender offer or not. We feel it wouldn't be in the best interests of their shareholders because buying a company in our industry aggressively is actually very risky," Mr. Guillemot said during Ubisoft's Annual General Meeting of shareholders yesterday. The CEO goes on to say that being a part of a big conglomerate like Vivendi would essentially cut it's Achilles heel and significantly stifle agility--which Mr. Guillemot calls "a death sentence in our industry."

AMD just unleashed their new Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.9.2 drivers which add 2-way multi-GPU support to Radeon RX Vega graphics cards, but now the latest rumor has the company preparing 13 new graphics card on their Vega 11 GPU.

The Vega 11-based graphics cards should replace AMD's current-gen Radeon RX 400 and Radeon RX 500 series cards, which are based on the Polaris 10 and Polaris 20 GPUs. The naming system that AMD is reportedly going to use makes sense, as it continues the way that they launched RX Vega: using the compute unit count (in this case 32 and 28 CUs) to name the card.

This is where Radeon RX Vega 32 and Radeon RX Vega 28 nomenclatures come from, with the Vega 11 XT expected to rock 2048 stream processors, with 4GB of HBM2 and a 1024-bit memory bus. Vega 11 Pro should feature 1792 stream processors, with the same 4GB HBM2 on a 1024-bit memory bus.

AMD has released their latest Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.9.2 drivers, with a surprise feature: 2-way multi-GPU support for Radeon RX Vega graphics card.

CrossFire support isn't center focus for AMD, something that the company has been very forward with for a while now. They will be pushing out multi-GPU support for their Radeon graphics cards in the future, but they're definitely pulling out of sheer beasty multi-GPU gaming PC rigs.

However, the new 17.9.2 drivers only support 2-way CF setups, with 3- and 4-way RX Vega setups simply not possible right now. I'm just installing the new drivers on my Ryzen Threadripper 1950X machine, with my 2 x RX Vega graphics cards and 8K display... we'll have results of RX Vega 64 CF over the weekend.

Intel has been reacting to Ryzen for most of the year, but one of the bigger surprises could be that Chipzilla is working on a new dual-core Core i3-7360X processor.

Intel's purported Core i3-7360X processor will be a HEDT version of the current Core i3-7350K, which will be replaced by the Core i3-8350K.

The new Core i3-7360K will be a dual-core CPU with a turbo clock of 4.3GHz, while the TDP is a massive 112W. Great tech for a dual-core processor, which will be around 1.25% faster than the current-gen Core i3-7350K, let alone the new Core i3-8350K.

Razer has been rumored to be working on a new mobile device for a while now, but the company has now officially teased it is working on a new mobile device.

Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan was interviewed by CNBC, where he explained: "One of the most hotly rumored things about Razer is that we're coming up with a mobile device. And I can say that we are coming up with a mobile device specifically geared toward gamers and entertainment. We're hoping to have it come ... by the end of the year, so that's something we're working on".

The gaming peripheral giant isn't releasing a new product into the mobile market 'just because', it has been planned and it's made for gamers, with Tan continuing: "The mobile market is one of those that we've taken a long-term view to look at ... We realized that a lot of our gamers are also passionate about the mobile gaming market, so we've done a couple of moves".

EVGA just announced their new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 ELITE graphics card with its 11GB of GDDR5X clocked at 12Gbps, but now MSI has outed its upcoming GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X TRIO graphics card.

What's the difference between the MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X and the new TRIO variant? It rocks a triple-fan cooler over the dual-fan cooler on the normal GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X, coming in as a 2.5-slot graphic card with an RGB LED bar on the backplate.

MSI has the clocks on the GTX 1080 Ti GAMING X TRIO at 1569MHz base, 1683MHz boost, and the 11GB of GDDR5X clocked at 11124MHz. MSI requires 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, but we don't have any solid photos of the PCB just yet.