Latest News - Page 2218

Back in March, we reported about a fairly-unknown smartphone manufacturer which pleasantly surprised us with its Noa H10le device. The company has now announced plans to release three new phones.

The first device, named the Noa N5, will be a mid-range phone powered by MediaTek's MT6750. It will have 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.

The phone will feature a 6-inch 1080p display with 18:9, the same ratio as the Galaxy S8 and LG G6. The Noa N5 will come with a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front shooter. The phone will also have a large 5,000 mAh battery.

Huawei's HiSilicon, the producer of chips for Huawei, is gearing up to launch an application processor that combines CPU, GPU and AI functionality into a single chip. 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.

Read also: Mate 10 to feature Kirin 970, Huawei's first 10nm SoC

After weeks of unconfirmed bits and pieces of information about the upcoming Galaxy Note8, as the launch date approaches, we are getting a better image of the phone.

Last week, one of the first images of the Note8 surfaced showing a beautiful Infinity Display, and now, a new set of images shows the phone in its full glory.

The Note8 should feature a 6.3-inch display, slightly larger than the Galaxy S8+. Unfortunately, the images don't show the back of the phone and the rumored rear dual camera setup.

Xiaomi is getting ready to announce the successor to last year's Redmi 4. The Redmi 5 specs and photos along with the price have leaked revealing all the details about the upcoming phone.

The device should come in two different versions, powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 625 or 630 processor, and come in a number of memory configurations.

The Redmi 5 will feature a 5-inch Full HD curved glass display and will run MIUI 9 based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. It is expected to have a 16MP rear camera and a 5MP front shooter.

To celebrate this upcoming release of 'Shin Godzilla' on Blu-ray and DVD, we have five Blu-rays to give away thanks to our friends at Madman Home Entertainment.

A God Incarnate. A City Doomed. From Hideaki Anno, the mind behind 'Evangelion'. The King of Monsters receives a terrifying resurgence.

It's a peaceful day in Japan when a strange fountain of water erupts in the bay, causing panic to spread among government officials. At first, they suspect only volcanic activity, but one young executive dares to wonder if it may be something different - something alive. His worst nightmare comes to life when a massive, gilled monster emerges from the deep and begins tearing through the city, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. As the government scrambles to save the citizens, a rag-tag team of volunteers cuts through a web of red tape to uncover the monster's weakness and its mysterious ties to a foreign superpower. But time is not on their side, and the greatest catastrophe to ever befall the world is about to evolve right before their very eyes.

Alexandre Cazes, believed to be behind the dark web marketplace that mysteriously went offline couple of days ago, has been found dead in Thai jail.

The 26-year-old Canadian was found dead an hour before he was supposed to meet with public prosecutors regarding his extradition to the United States.

The US Embassy in Bangkok stated that Cazes was detained at the request of the US "with a view toward extradition to face federal criminal charges." The police arrested Cazes on July 5th on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering.

AMD is battling Intel all over the place with its Zen-based processors, with Ryzen 7 kicking things off earlier this year, the impending threat of Ryzen ThreadRipper in the HEDT market, and now the new threat of Ryzen 3 in the low/mid-range markets.

AMD is reportedly getting down and dirty with Ryzen 3, with the Ryzen 3 1300X rumored to hit a price of just $129... but the Ryzen 3 1200 processor will be found as low as $109... not bad considering they're both quad-core CPUs. Ryzen 3 1300X is a 4C/4T processor at 3.5/3.7GHz for base/boost, respectively while the Ryzen 3 1200 is a 4C/4T processor at 3.1/3.4GHz for base/boost, respectively.

Intel has had the low/mid-range markets in its hands for years with the Celeron/Pentium and Core i3/Core i5 families of processors, but AMD is looking to disrupt this market in a massive way if it gets the prices of its upcoming Ryzen 3 processors at less than $130. Considering Ryzen-capable motherboards are also cheaper than their Intel-capable counterparts, AMD could be in for one heck of a ride with Ryzen 3.

Kingdom Hearts III will release in 2018, Square Enix has confirmed.

Square Enix and Disney have confirmed a hard 2018 launch for perhaps the most anticipated release in the last five years--Kingdom Hearts III. We originally thought Kingdom Hearts III may not release until 2019, but Disney's D23 event shared the great news along with a brand new in-game trailer.

As per reveals during the event, Kingdom Hearts III will feature all new worlds including Toy Story, seeing Square Enix and Pixar working in tandem for the first time. The Toy Story segment won't follow the movies and will instead feature a "brand new story" that can "only be found" in KH3.

Soon you'll be able to play Holochess and swing Luke Skyalker's lightsaber in AR.

Disney today revealed at its D23 event that it's making a smartphone-powered Augmented Reality (AR) headset that plays Star Wars games. The headset is being developed in conjunction with tech-maker Lenovo, who has built its AR skillset up while working alongside Microsoft on its fleet of Windows 10-powered Mixed Reality headsets, and works just like Samsung's best-selling Gear VR headset. Users will download games and apps to their smartphone, and slot in their mobile phone into the headset.

"We've been working on our own version of Augmented Reality. We teamed up with Lenovo and Lucasfilm to build our very own Augmented Reality headset. This device will let everyone experience their favorite moments from Star Wars like never before," said Mike Goslin, VP of Advanced Development for Disney.

According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, Faraday Future has said that they are walking away from their planned $1 billion electric car manufacturing facility in North Las Vegas. They will instead seek an existing building to build their vehicles in, instead.

By starting production in an existing facility, the company can prove its own viability and now the company is looking for a place with 1 million square feet to build their cars in either California or Nevada.

Read also: Faraday Future unveils their first production vehicle

Nintendo today released its 2017 Annual Report that highlights financial earnings and other interesting data, including total research and development costs for last fiscal year.

According to the report, Nintendo spent $527 million on research and development costs in Fiscal Year 2017 (April 1, 2016 - March 31, 2017), down 13.06% year-over-year, for both hardware and software endeavors across its entire platform ecosystem. The Kyoto-based console-maker notes that this R&D spend was used to help launch the new Nintendo Switch handheld-console hybrid along with a library of titles including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as well as a number of accessories and peripherals.

This investment also brought 14 Nintendo 3DS games to market, including Pokemon Sun and Moon and Super Mario Maker, along with a number of new 3DS hardware variants. The company even confirmed a new Quality-of-Live (QoL) device is in the works.

Oculus has confirmed that its premium Rift VR headset is getting a permanent price drop in a bid to fill out the headset's install base and pull more gamers into the Oculus ecosystem.

After the Oculus Rift's big $399 sale ends in six weeks, the Facebook Inc.-accelerated headset and its accompanying Touch controllers will be sold in a bundle for $499. Oculus affirmed this price drop is permanent, and the bundle includes: Rift headset, two sensors, Touch controllers, cables, and six free titles when you activate Touch-Lucky's Tale, Medium, Toybox, Quill, Dead and Buried, and Robo Recall. We reached out to Anshel Sag, Associate Analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, for further insight on the Rift's price drop.

"Dropping the price to $499 indicates that Facebook isn't happy with sales (and they shouldn't be). They also desperately need to reach at least 1 million users so they have a compelling user base size to attract more developers. They can't pay for all the content on oculus home, so they're going to need to attract unpaid developers," said Moor Insight's Mr. Sag, who analyzes key trends in the technology sphere such as VR and AR.

Jotun, the celebrated Norse-themed indie from Thunder Lotus Games, is now available 100% free on GOG.com.

Today Thunder Lotus Games and GOG have teamed up to celebrate the pre-order debut of Sundered, the developer's new Lovecraftian Metroidvania scroller complete with hand-drawn animation just like Jotun. All GOG.com users can pick up a free copy of Jotun without any strings attached--just sign in and grab the game from the front page or the official title page.

All pre-orders for Sundered get 10% off as well as a free copy of the game's soundtrack. Sundered is slated to release July 28, 2017, and you can find more about the game below.

Nintendo today published its 2017 Annual Report in English, highlighting various financial data and giving consumers, investors, and gamers a better look at the company's current market situation.

Nintendo's latest annual report is filled to the bring with interesting data. The brief chronicles Nintendo's performance across four different fiscal years in key metrics like net sales, operating income, total profits, profit per share, net assets, and more. FY17 was a successful year for the Kyoto-based console-maker, and the new Nintendo Switch handheld-console hybrid helped rally shares, net sales, and total profits to new heights. The Nintendo 3DS also did well throughout the year--to date the handheld has more than 66 million units sold.

I've prepared a series of graphs that illustrate Nintendo's year-over-year performance compared to three past fiscal years, and you can check them out below.

If you're playing EVE: Valkyrie on your VR headset with your PC, you might want to know that NVIDIA has just annoucned its VRWorks Ultra graphics setting for EVE: Valkyrie.

The new VRWorks Ultra setting improves the quality of the cockpit lighting in EVE: Valkyrie, increases the quality of lighting and shadowing in every single area and level of the game, increases the fidelity of reflections and shadows, and even projectiles receive dynamic lights.

NVIDIA's press release says: "A lighting model developed by NVIDIA and incorporated by CCP for EVE: Valkyrie uses high-quality, physically-based lighting effects from NVIDIA Volumetric Lighting to add immersive, awe-inspiring shafts of bright light (God rays) to many scenes and levels, transforming their appearance. EVE: Valkyrie also includes a new anti-aliasing technique developed by NVIDIA called Multi-Sample G-Buffer Anti-Aliasing which improves anti-aliasing by further reducing visible aliasing of geometry edges and specular highlights, giving players a superior visual experience".

The biggest smartphone of the year could be the release of the Galaxy Note 8 from Samsung, which could be the golden kick to the guts that hurts Apple when it launches the iPhone 8 later this year gimped, lacking its wireless charging function that's causing a "sense of panic" at Apple.

Well, according to a new tease from notorious mobile leaker Evan Blass, who now writes for VentureBeat, the Galaxy Note 8 will be announced on August 23. Samsung's new Galaxy Note 8 will reportedly rock the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 or Samsung's own Exynos 8895 processor, but have its RAM bumped up to 6GB.

Blass adds that the Note 8 will be the first Samsung smartphone with a dual-camera set up, both being 12MP with independent optical image stabilization for the lens. The fingerprint sensor will stay in the same spot as the S8, which is a real let down if it's true.

Japanese games-makers like DeNa, who's partnered with Nintendo to make games like Super Mario Run, are spending more and more to develop mobile games.

The cost of mobile games development is rising in Japan, says Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Japaneses games consultancy Kantan Games. According to Dr. Toto's analysis of recent Japanese developer filings and reports for three major games-makers, the costs of mobile games development has risen from $3.5 to $9 million per game.

Nintendo-partnered mobile dev DeNA reports that each game costs about $4.5 million to develop, excluding marketing and other costs. DeNA CEO Isao Moriyasu noted during the company's Q4 earnings results briefing that the costs for mobile games development in Japan has jumped.

EA today announced that Mass Effect: Andromeda's full game trial is now available on all platforms, allowing players to try the game out before they buy.

All of EA's biggest games typically come with a "first play" trial mode that's more like a locked off full game rather than a demo. Mass Effect: Andromeda's first play trial was our first glimpse at the unfortunate glitches and facial animations that plagued the game, turning the then-massively anticipated spin-off into a laughing stock. Now that trial is back, and it's just as big as ever.

The Mass Effect: Andromeda trial is simply the full 43GB game with a 10-hour countdown timer attached. EA is betting that after you download the full game (which is almost 1/10th of the PS4's base 500GB hard drive, mind) and play the game for 10 hours, you're much more likely to buy the full version to continue your progress.

Nintendo has ceased production of the New 3DS handheld in Japan due to lackluster sales.

While Nintendo has no official plans to retire the full 3DS family of handhelds, the Japanese games-maker says it will no longer produce its base New 3DS handheld variant. While Nintendo hasn't said so outright, the logical reasoning behind this move is twofold: the company is making room for the accessible $149 New 2DS XL is currently slated to release later this month, and the New 3DS XL has sold more units than the base New 3DS handheld in Japan.

The Kyoto-based console-maker recently confirmed the 3DS handheld line will live alongside the new Nintendo Switch handheld-console hybrid, and that the new Switch hardware won't cannibalize its predecessor. Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima says that the Switch and 3DS "do not compete directly in terms of price point or playstyle," and that the company will "run these businesses separately and in parallel."

Microsoft is bringing its new high-end 4K-ready Xbox One X console to Europe's premiere gaming conference.

Today Xbox spokesperson Major Nelson confirmed that Microsoft will showcase its new hardware and games at Gamescom 2017 in Cologne, Germany. Over 27 games for Xbox and Windows 10 PCs will be playable at the show, including major first-party exclusives like Crackdown 3, Sea of Thieves and Forza Motorsport 7. European gamers will also be able to try out the new $499 Xbox One X in all of its native 4K glory.

The games-maker will also host an Xbox FanFest event during the show. Just like at E3 2017, the company will give away goodies and games for users who tune in via the Mixer streaming service on PC or mobiles--at E3 the company gave out copies of Rare Replay on Xbox One to Mixer viewers.