Latest News - Page 2211

Almost a year after its price hike in North America, Sony will raise the cost of its PlayStation Plus online subscription service to £49.99 a year in Europe.

Sony today announced that it will hike PlayStation Plus subscription costs by £9.99 for annual subscriptions, bringing a full year's cost to £49.99. This 25% price hike comes months after Sony raised the cost of PS Plus from $49.99 a year to $59.99 a year in North America.

The Japanese console-maker reports that 26.4 million users have subscribed to PlayStation Plus in 2016, representing 43.7% of the total 60.4 million strong PlayStation 4 install base, and 37% of the total 70 million monthly active PlayStation Network users are subscribed to the premium service. Sony Corp President Kazuo Hirai intends to grow PS Plus subscribers by "further enhancing the content of the service and making it more appealing."

Google's Pixel smartphone was one of the best phones of last year, and the company has already confirmed that its successor would come this year. As the launch date approaches, we are getting a better image of the phone.

We recently learned that the Pixel 2 should be the first phone to feature Qualcomm's yet-to-be-announced Snapdragon 836 platform. We saw the same scenario last year when Qualcomm debuted the Snapdragon 821 with Google's Pixel.

Read also: Qualcomm's Snapdragon 836 will debut with the Pixel 2

Meizu has launched its new flagship smartphones - the Meizu Pro 7 and Pro 7 Plus. Both devices use AMOLED display tech both on the front, and the back since the phones come with a secondary display which can be used to check notifications, control the music or snap selfies.

The Meizu Pro 7 features a 5.2-inch Super AMOLED 1080p display and runs Flyme based on Android 7.0. The phone is powered by MediaTek's Helio P25 processor and comes with 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage.

The device comes with a dual rear camera setup (12MP + 12MP) while the selfie shooter has 16MP. Other features include a 3.5mm headphone jack, fingerprint sensor, and a 3,000 mAh battery. The Pro 7 will be available on August 5th at a price of $430.

EA re-commits to FY19 release timeline for Visceral Games' new action-based Star Wars game.

Long ago Electronic Arts confirmed Dead Space developer Visceral Games' new unnamed Star Wars game would release in 2018, and the company has reiterated that release timeline. In its Q1'17 earnings call, the company confirmed that Visceral's Star Wars project will be part of its Fiscal Year 2019 slate, which is held from April 2018 to March 2019. EA Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen hinted that its Star Wars games would coincide with major theatrical releases, and the new Han Solo anthology series is set to kick off in 2018.

The big headlining games for EA's FY2019 timeline will be the new Star Wars title as well as BioWare's massively ambitious new IP Anthem, the company confirmed in its earnings call.

We've only just reported about the new Vega 10/11/12/20 leaks, but now VideoCardz is reporting on the first official renders of Radeon RX Vega.

Interestingly, the new Radeon RX Vega 64 (cool name, AMD) is based on the reference design of the Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series, with 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, 3 x DP and 1 x HDMI output. I'm loving that tweaked 'R' logo on the fan.

This card looks ridiculously awesome, with a different style cooler - but it's still the same card underneath. I'm loving the Vega logo on the front and red/black 'R' in the corner, just like the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition.

AMD might be on the precipice of releasing Radeon RX Vega, but we're now hearing about a slew of Radeon Vega products - from Vega 10 through to Vega 20. We've heard about some of these cards before, but now we have much more details on them.

The Euroasian Economic Commission (EEC) is a regulatory body that is like the FCC in the US, with any and all products needing to be certified before they can be released into the market. Our friends at VideoCardz were alerted to these new details which have emerged on Reddit.

This is a beast... Vega 20 with a whopping 32GB of HBM2, now imagine a few of those alongside Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950X. Vega 20 rocks four HBM2 stacks, providing up to 32GB of HBM2. This won't be a consumer card, with EEC noting that this is a GL variant, so expect a Radeon Pro or new Radeon Instinct accelerator.

Intel reports record second quarter earnings of $14.8 billion in revenues, and adjusts its total year earnings to reflect strong segment growth.

Intel today reported its fiscal Q2'17 earnings of $14.8 billion, up 14% year-over-year with impressive growth in client computing, which was up 12%, and an increase of 16% in data-centric businesses like its Data Center, Internet of Things, and Programmable Solutions Groups. The Santa Clara-based tech titan reported operating income of $3.8 billion, representing a massive 190% jump year-over-year. Earnings per share (EPS) was $0.58 during the three-month quarter, up a mighty 115% YoY.

Intel generated $4.7 billion in operational cash flow during the quarter, and as a result of two strong quarters of revenue growth, the company has adjusted its full-year outlook by $1.3 billion to $61.3 billion, and raised its EPIS outlook to $2.66, up 15 cents over previous forecasts.

When the news broke that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was coming to the Xbox One X, most - including myself, wondered how the performance of the game would be on the console.

But PlayerUnknown himself, Brendan Greene, said during an interview with Eurogamer that the current Xbox One X developer kit is running Battlegrounds at 30-40FPS on 100-player servers. He said: "Using Unreal first, it's a fantastic engine, it makes moving to different platforms relatively easy. There's optimisation that we need and we have a partner in Anticto, in Spain".

He continued: "There's about four or five of them working on the console version at the moment. They're very clever guys. They've helped us with a lot of features on the current game mod and for console. It's great, we have them working on that and the main team is still focused heavily on the PC version. We have a version running on the Xbox One X prototype in the office which can plug into the online servers. We were playing on live servers on the console at about 30 or 40 FPS. So it works on 100 man servers".

AMD has officially launched its new Ryzen ThreadRipper CPUs alongside the new X399-based motherboards, with OEMs now able to sell ThreadRipper-powered PCs.

There are a bunch of companies selling Ryzen ThreadRipper PCs, including Alienware, Origin PC, MAINGEAR, iBUYPOWER, Cyberpower PC and more. The new Ryzen ThreadRipper PCs start at just $1699, which coincidentally is the same price as the Intel Core i9-7960X on its own, which costs $1700.

$1700 will get you the Ryzen ThreadRipper 1920X (12C/24T @ 4GHz XFR) with 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 1TB HDD, and more. It's not a crazy high-end system, but the main guts of the PC (CPU/X399) are powerful as hell for the money.

AMD seems to be firing on all cylinders right now, with the launch of Ryzen ThreadRipper taking place right next to AMD returning to the high-end graphics card market with Radeon RX Vega.

Now we're hearing about AMD's new quad-core APU with Vega GPU technology, the Ryzen 5 2500U. AMD is expected to launch its new Raven Ridge APUs in the coming months, but it looks like the first Ryzen 2000 series processor has already been tested and rocks 4C/8T of CPU goodness, and looks like a mobile SKU.

The purported Ryzen 5 2500U is a 4C/8T processor with Vega GPU tech, but it's not something that's going to be a mobile gaming powerhouse. What's interesting here is that we're already seeing Vega GPU tech in AMD's upcoming APUs... now show me a higher-end one that handles 1080p 60FPS in a single package.

EA today reported its first quarter earnings for Fiscal Year 2018, kicking off the new year with some impressive digital growth.

Live services like its mega-earning Ultimate Team sports game drivers are the heart of EA's massive billion dollar empire. In the first quarter of FY18, EA actually made more money from live services than it did from actual digital game sales. Live services, which include extra content/DLC/microtransactions from Ultimate Team and all subscription earnings, are up 22% year-over-year raking in $420 million or a whopping 61.67% of EA's first quarter digital net sales earnings. Digital full game sales pulled in $111 million, up 32% year-over-year and representing just 16.29% of digital net sales. Mobile is up too, increasing by 6% YoY to $150 million of digital net sales.

Total net revenue for fiscal Q1'18 is $1.449 billion, up 14% year-over-year from fiscal Q1'17. Total digital net revenues for the quarter sit at $879 million, up 27.57% year-over-year and representing 60.66% of total net revenues for the period. Packaged goods pulled in $570 million, or 39.33% of total net revenues for fiscal Q1'18, down 2.06% year-over-year. EA made a gross profit of $1.29 billion in the three-month period ended June 30, 2017.

Xiaomi's flagship, the Mi 6, was launched back in April and now, the company has announced that they will soon launch a Mercury Silver Edition of the device. We saw a glimpse of the Mercury Silver Edition in April, but now we finally have more information.

There will be a limited quantity of only 100 Mi 6 Mercury Silver variants for sale globally. The limited edition of the Mi 6 will carry a $592 price tag.

Other than the super flashy chrome finish, the phone will come with the same specs as the original device.

Samsung revealed that they would launch the Galaxy Note8 in a month, on August 23rd. The Note8 is one of the most anticipated phones of this year, and therefore there are many rumors and leaks surrounding the device. Many people were eagerly awaiting the Note7 last year and had to either give theirs up or never get one due to the recall.

The latest Note8 rumor comes from a reliable leaker who claims that along with the regular version of the phone, Samsung has decided to launch an 'Emperor Edition.'

The Galaxy Note8 Emperor Edition should come with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, expandable up to 512GB with a microSD card. According to the same report, this version of the phone should come with three color options - Black, Blue, and Grey.

UPDATE: Stuntman and actor Tim Neff has confirmed the resume was a fake. In a recent statement to PCGamesN, Neff said:

"That isn't my page, account or résumé. I don't even know that website. I worked on GTA 5 a long time ago and haven't done anything since. Sorry for the confusion. It seems I'm being trolled online really badly."

Earlier this morning stuntman Tim Neff's resume stated he's working on motion capture for Rockstar's new Grand Theft Auto 6 game, triggering tons of speculation on the net.

Musk recently started a new project named The Boring Company, which will hopefully, solve the problem of traffic in LA, and possibly later in other cities. Elon's idea is to build tunnels underneath the city which would allow you to skip the traffic and get from point A to point B much faster.

At a recent TED conference in Vancouver, Musk showed a video of his futuristic underground transportation tunnels. The video shows a Tesla car getting on a platform called a car skate which then lowers into the underground tunnel. The car then travels at a speed of up to 130 mph (around 210 km/h) in a single vehicle lane. Other cars can also be seen traveling through the tunnel in the same and opposite direction.

Although Musk said that he's treating The Boring Company as a side project, the company is progressing, and Musk has revealed the first working car elevator which should lower the cars into underground tunnels.

With its new TR200 SSD line, Toshiba is bringing its potent TLC BiCS Flash 3D NAND memory to the retail market for the first time.

Toshiba's new TR200 SSD brand is the first to ship with the company's state of the art 64-layer 3-bit-per-cell TLC BiCS Flash memory, which enables massive power efficiency with 1.6W of power usage and speedy transfers over SATA. The TR200 line will be the only SATA drives Toshiba releases from now onward, and is targeted at first-time upgraders and value-oriented PC gamers and DIY enthusiasts.

The TR200 SSD line can deliver up to 550MB/s reads and 525MB/s write speeds over the 6Gbit/s SATA interface, with 80,000KiB read IOPS and 87,000KiB write IOPS. The line comes in 2.5-inch SATA drives with capacities from 240GB, 480GB and 960GB, and pricing has yet to be announced.

Apple ordered millions of OLED displays from Samsung for the iPhone 8, which will be the first iPhone with an OLED display. We also heard a report from an industry source that Apple is planning to use OLED displays in all the new iPhone models launched in the second half of 2018, meaning that panel makers might not be able to meet the demand if Apple goes through with their plans.

However, Apple has another solution. The company has purchased chemical vapor deposition (CVD) machines from Korea-based Sunic System to build a 2.5G OLED panel line to develop related technology and products in Taiwan, according to a Korea-based ET News report.

Apple's move would grant them independence from Samsung which is currently supplying them with OLED displays. It would also match Apple's continued desire to supply themselves with components for the iPhone and not to be dependent on outside vendors.

Huawei should soon start producing its latest chip, the Kirin 970. According to recent reports, Huawei's first 10nm SoC will go in mass production in September, just in time for Mate 10's launch in October.

This chip will likely be based on the new processors that ARM introduced at Computex earlier this year that have a focus on AI. ARM's new A75, A55 CPUs, G72 GPU and DynamIQ architecture are all designed to deliver the best possible performance while also being designed to accelerate AI workloads and do faster inference.

There is currently no known AI accelerator that Huawei plans to use in addition to the A75, A55 and G72 cores, but its possible they could be developing their own to work with these new processors.

Xiaomi has launched two new devices, the Mi X5 and the Mi AI Speaker.

Xiaomi's AI speaker includes a six-microphone array for echo cancellation and voice control and is designed to be the hub for all of Xiaomi's smart home products. The speaker works like Amazon Echo, meaning you can ask it questions, play music, or set reminders.

Using a companion app, you will be able to install add-ons to bring additional features to Mi AI over time.

AMD's new Radeon Software 17.7.2 drivers are nearly here, with the company including their Enhanced Sync technology - an alternative to Vsync. This will result in no more tearing and lag, with all of the goodies that Vsync provides without the latency.

ReLive will also be capable of pushing 100MB/sec, something that will let Radeon owners recording gaming footage at a higher bitrate. The new ReLive in 17.7.2 will also be capable of driving a webcam on the stream, and boosting the volume on the microphone all from the Radeon panel.

Radeon Chill also receives some love, where it can now be enabled on mobile graphics cards, multi-GPU setups, and even external graphics cards. We will have a link to Radeon Software 17.7.2.