Latest News - Page 2220

Oculus might have lit the VR world on fire with its recent Rift and Touch bundle price drop to $399 for the next 6 weeks, but Amazon is joining in on the bundle price bonanza with their new Xbox One S Halo Wars 2 bundle.

Amazon's new Xbox One S bundle is part of their Prime Day sales, which is for Prime members only - at just $289.99 for the 1TB Xbox One S Halo Wars 2 bundle that comes with a Play & Charge kit. It also arrives with an additional white wireless controller, and digital versions of Forza Motorsport 6, Halo 5: Guardians, and ReCore - representing a huge 31% discount, saving $127.91.

If you don't want the Halo Wars 2 bundle, there's the 500GB Xbox One S console with the same digital games for just $239, which is an even better deal if you didn't want HW2. This is a larger savingsf of 35%, or $128.93. Not bad at all. This deal runs out tomorrow, so jump in now.

If you are old enough, you'll remember the days of the Pentium brand being the strongest CPU in the consumer world - but now, it's been pushed into the budget world while even the Core i3 is considered a budget CPU. Intel shifts into the mid-range with its Core i5 and even slower Core i7 processors, while we have higher-end Core i7 and even the new Core i9 in the enthusiast market.

According to the latest report from DigiWorthy, Intel is effectively killing the Pentium G4560 after great reception from consumers by scaling production down that will make it harder to find in the market. This method is something I'm sure Intel is hoping will push people into the arms of the more expensive Core i3-7100 processor, which is nearly double the price of the Pentium G4560.

The only difference between the Pentium G4560 and the Core i3-7100 is 400MHz in the favor of the Core i3, but it costs twice as much... doesn't make sense, really.

AMD's upcoming Radeon RX Vega is so close I can almost smell the PCB, and now we have news of 3 versions of Radeon RX Vega that gamers will have to choose from, something that we've heard previously. The names being used from 3DCenter are: Vega XTX, Vega XT, and Vega XL.

The cut-down Radeon RX Vega XL product reportedly has 3584 stream processors and a 285W TDP, with what I'm sure will be 8GB of HBM2, and I'm going out on a limb by saying this will be the GTX 1070 competitor. I'm hoping that AMD will release a Radeon RX Vega Nano, similar to the Radeon R9 Nano, but my sources said earlier this year "there will be no Nano-like RX Vega card". Boo.

There's no 16GB HBM2 model listed here, but I would say AMD will save the HBM2 chips for a dual-GPU card with 8GB HBM2 per GPU, for 16GB HBM2 total and 2 x Vega XT GPUs. This would be a monster, but I don't think AMD has the Vega or HBM2 yields to pull this off. I think we'll see Vega 20 with a dual-GPU offering later this year, or early 2018... before we start to float towards Navi.

AMD has released a new set of drivers ready for mining cards, with the new Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.1 drivers. The new drivers also include some fixes for games and applications.

There have been new AMD Radeon RX 470-based mining cards released in the last few weeks, with the new 17.7.1 drivers supporting both the RX 460 and RX 470-based mining cards. There hasn't been a RX 460-based mining card announced, but there's support for it in the driver, so expect an announcement any minute now.

The new 17.7.1 drivers also include official support for the Radeon RX 550 and RX 560, cards that were launched in April. There are some issues fixed with Adobe Lightroom CC 2015 10, as well as some improvements to games like the crashing errors with Radeon 300 series cards running Final Fantasy XIV, and Little Nightmares. Radeon R9 380 series owners shouldn't have any issues with Tekken 7, either.

Ex-Gears of War designer's new arena FPS Lawbreakers may have gravity-defying combat, but it could still crash to the ground.

Blizzard's Overwatch typically dominates today's class-based shooters. 2K and Gearbox tried to squeeze into the sidelines with Battleborn only to be crushed and forced into free-to-play territory just to stay alive. If recent beta stats are any indication, Boss Key Productions' new shooter Lawbreakers could follow the same unfortunate path as its now F2P forebear.

Even during its free open beta test, Githyp notes that Lawbreakers failed to attract a strong flow of users on Steam. Over its eight-day period the Lawbreakers open beta saw a peak of 7,500 users per hour when it kicked off on June 28, and the player count steadily declined over the next seven days to an average of about 3,500 players per hour. On the last day of the beta there were about 1800 peak PPH.

As the sales rift between Oculus' VR headset and its competitors continues to widen, Facebook slashes price in an attempt to spark sales growth.

Facebook-owned Oculus recently slashed the price of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset for the second time in three months. The Oculus Rift now comes bundled with its Touch controllers for $399, down 33% from the headset's current $599 MSRP. Oculus asserts the price drop will last six weeks.

Although the company hasn't said so publicly, the consensus is that the price drop, which puts the Oculus Rift square up against Sony Corp's console-powered PlayStation VR competitor, will boost flagging sales and pull more gamers into the Rift ecosystem.

Capcom's new massive Monster Hunter MMO looks like a living, breathing world replete with dynamic environments, enemies, and so much more.

Monster: Hunter World might be Capcom's most ambitious game in recent memory. The new entry brings the Monster Hunter series into an incredibly vibrant open world that may even rival Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Hyrule in its dynamic interactivity, and matches this robust backdrop with a drop-in/drop-out online co-op system that unites Japanese and Western players for the first time. In many ways the game resembles MMO-style worlds with a staggering level of depth, allowing players to really interact with and user their surroundings to take down fearsome monsters.

As a Monster Hunter fan, I'm beyond excited to see a mainline MonHun come back to consoles, especially one that has cross-play on consoles and PC. But the sheer depth of the world itself is massively impressive: creatures roam across the wilderness as you lead a giant fearsome dino into traps strewn throughout the jungle, using the very environment as a tactical weapon. The game gives us all the tools to make the flora and fauna into deadly assets for our hunts.

Square Enix and developer PlatinumGames admit they can't fix NieR: Automata's PC port alone, and need the help of video card makers like AMD and NVIDIA.

NieR: Automata has gone almost four months without an official patch to fix its myriad of issues on PC, including frame rate drops, crashes, and other bugs. Despite releasing excellent PC ports of its classic games like Bayonetta and Vanquish, PC gamers thought that developer PlatinumGames has given up on NieR: Automata's PC flavor...but the developer says otherwise.

As it turns out, NieR's PC woes aren't something that PlatinumGames nor Square Enix can fix on their own. The issues are apparently hardware-related meaning AMD and NVIDIA must be involved in the updating process. AMD has already issued a set of Crimson drivers that fixed crashing, but more hardware-based updates are needed to get the game in a pristine state.

On the back of its major QLC 3D NAND flash breakthrough, Toshiba today announced yet another milestone with the world's first 3D NAND flash memory powered by TSV technology.

Toshiba will leverage TSV (Through Silicon Via) technology to further boost data transfers and lower power consumption of its 3D BiCS VNAND TLC flash memory line. TSV's highly efficient vertical-based technology aligns with the stacked flash memory dies of Toshiba's BiCS flash line. In fact, the Japanese storage titan assets that TSV allows up to 200% more power efficiency of BiCS flash memory outfitted with traditional wire-bonding architecture.

The Tokyo-based company notes that TSV BiCS flash will enabled 1TB storage devices with 16-die stacked architecture in a single package.

Viking Technology has just announced their new Silo Sold State Drive, with two new SSDs arriving in both 25TB and 50TB capacities. 50TB is a new world record for the industry's highest capacity SSD, with the UHC-Silo SSD able to hold years worth of data for high-end datacenter deployment.

The new drives are built with energy efficiency in mind, with idle power consumption of less than 10W, and active power consumption of only 16W... not too damn bad for 50TB of SSD. Viking Technology adds that by increasing the overall storage capacity per rack, while decreasing the power required per TB. Viking's new UHC-Silo SSD will have datacenter customers saving in power, space, and cooling by up to 80% per terabyte.

Jim Handy from Objective Analysis explained: "Some system administrators are looking for a way to extend the useful life of existing hardware, since it may function perfectly but support too little overall capacity,. With ultra-high-capacity SSDs, not only can they reach beyond the capacity limits of enterprise HDDs, they can also cut power and improve performance without having to replace the entire system, by implementing a simple media change".

One day we could all be The One, if the US military has its way with us, that is. The US military has revealed its $65 million funding for a Matrix-like project that sees them working on a 'brain chip' that would let you plug yourself into a computer.

The new system would give soldiers supersenses, and could double as treatment for the blind, those with paralysis, and speech disorders. DARPA officials said that their goal was "developing an implantable system able to provide precision communication between the brain and the digital world". DARPA has selected five recipients for its funding for the Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program, which started earlier this year.

DARPA's multi-million grants will be going to Brown University, Columbia University, The Seeing and Hearing Foundation, the John B. Pierce Laboratory, Paradromics Inc and the University of California, Berkeley, with a DARPA official adding: "These organizations have formed teams to develop the fundamental research and component technologies required to pursue the NESD vision of a high-resolution neural interface and integrate them to create and demonstrate working systems able to support potential future therapies for sensory restoration".

DICE has laid out their plans for Battlefield 1 for the rest of the year, with the developer calling it a "revolution". The start of this begins with providing maps for BF1 in the Premium Pass, with DICE launching their new free Premium Trials initiative for Battlefield 1.

The newly updated roadmap for Battlefield 1 includes the first Premium Trials maps as Prise de Tahure, Nivelle Nights, while the other four maps from the 'They Shall not Pass' DLC. Premium Friends will stay with BF1 through to Gamescom, while the roadmap kicks off with 'In the Name of the Tsar' which is due in September. The third DLC pack will be Turning Tides, something that will throw naval battles into the mix alongside land and air battles.

I'm sure you've heard about EA DICE pushing Battlefield 1 into the world of EA Access (for Xbox One) and Origin Access (for the PC)... which means if you subscribe to either of those services, you'll get everything Battlefield 1 has to offer as long as your subscription is live.

I thought it was a troll at first... but Valve has released an update for the original Half-Life, yes the original Half-Life.

Half-Life received its last update in 2013 with Valve releasing a beta patch for the game, but now there's a new minor update that fixes up some random crashes and bugs. The new patch for Half-Life will be auto-downloaded from Steam, with a full changelog below:

Project CARS 2 will be one of the biggest releases of the year, and another fact for that is that the team is including 60 'living' tracks that will feature 4 seasons of weather with full day/night transitions and I'm sure, beautiful weather effects.

Last week we wrote about Project CARS 2 having over 180 cars to select from, with developer Slightly Mad Studios teasing that Project CARS 2 will have the largest track roster for any console, with 60 tracks and 130 layouts. The official website for SMS states: "Whether it's running your classic Group C at period-specific Hockenheim, or one of the over-a-dozen modern GT3s at the Circuit de la Sarthe, gunning your IMSA GTO around the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca or taking your IndyCar through Turn 1 at the Indianapolis Speedway, sliding your Honda Civic Coupé GRC rallycross through the mud at Lydden Hill or simply taking one of the world's Holy Trinity of hypercars to the scanned Nordschleife for a dawn run through the mist, Project CARS 2 has your passion covered".

Better yet, Project CARS 2 will feature full day/night transitions, with 4 different seasons of weather: rain, wind, snow, ice, and mist. Project CARS 2 launches on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 on September 22.

AMD surprised the world with EPYC, but we all knew Intel would have a response, and that response will reportedly be in the form of the new Skylake-SP platform.

VideoCardz has the exclusive, without any comments and provided the slides on their own. The new Skylake-SP processors will arrive with up to 28C/56T, up to 38.5MB of last-level cache (LLC), and up to 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes. There will be support for 6-channel RAM with 2 x RDIMMS, LRDIMMs, or 3DS LRDIMMs at up to 2666MHz, while the TDP will float somewhere between 70W and 205W.

The new Intel C620 series chipset will have up to 14 SATA 3 ports, up to 14 x USB 3.0 ports and up to 10 x USB 3.0 ports. There will be some motherboards with up to 4 x 10GbE ports, if you need some serious networking performance, too.

Prime Day is July 11th and Amazon is planning to celebrate its annual Prime Day for its customers with secret in-store deals at their physical book store locations.

While Amazon doesn't have many book store locations, we found out that they will be having some secret unadvertised sales in store that won't be available on Amazon.com's own online Prime Day celebration.

These in-person deals include:

Samsung smart 4K TV owners can now stream Steam games from their PC right to their TV.

Samsung has rolled out an app that will enable PC-to-TV game streaming similar to Valve's Steam Link peripheral. The app, which is currently in its beta stage and only available to owners of Samsung's smart 4K UHD TV lineup, enables 1080p 60FPS game streaming across a Wi-Fi or wired home network. Valve notes that every game on Steam can be streamed in this way (users tapping the might of their desktop PCs to power remote Steam gaming), but 5GHz networks are advisable for demanding games.

This latest move is a result of Valve's partnership with Samsung to conveniently bring PC gaming into the living room space without any extra costs--a partnership that was announced at Steam's Dev Days event in 2016. A global release of the app is currently planned for a Summer launch.

Psyonix's mega-popular Rocket League has just celebrated its second birthday, and the developers celebrate with some impressive metrics.

Rocket League is a prime example of an indie that has the envy of major publishers. In just two years, an estimated 33 million gamers have bought copies on all major platforms including PS4, Xbox One and PC, and are responsible for 1.5 billion matches played. Even after an explosive first year with $110 million in earnings, Pysonix's speed sports racer shows no signs of slowing down.

According to developer metrics, Rocket League has a massive weekly, monthly, and daily average players of 1.6 million, 3.3 million, and 6.1 million respectively. That's right, an average of 6.1 million users play Rocket League on consoles and PC. PS4 users make up most of that number with 47% of active players, with Xbox One behind at 32% with PC seeing 27% of the total active playerbase--given the PS4's massive 60 million strong install base this shouldn't be surprising.

Massively popular PC game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is getting an exclusive weekly showcase on Facebook.

Social media titan Facebook is making a stronger push into games-based streaming in an effort to pull more viewers away from Twitch and YouTube. The company today announced that it has signed an exclusive deal with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer Bluehole to host a weekly live three-hour stream centered around the hit game. Key Bluehole developers will showcase exclusive in-game content on the weekly Facebook show, while discussing and highlight features for new viewers. The show will be hosted by both community members and top content creators as well as Bluehole devs.

"Facebook and the Bluehole team have a shared belief in the power of gaming communities, and PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS is a stunning example of a hit game guided directly by its fans," said Leo Olebe, Director of Global Games Partnerships at Facebook. "BATTLEGROUNDS is just as much fun to watch as it is to play, and we're excited to see some of the best PUBG creators bring exclusive content to Facebook to help fuel its growing community on the platform."

Hackers have accessed the Nintendo Switch's OS kernel and will soon be able to jailbreak the system.

Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid has taken the world by storm with its transforming dual form factor: the Switch can play games both on-the-go as a handheld as well as at home as a console. The Switch has been a prime target for hackers for many of the same reasons--being able to load up ROMS of classic games and emulators and unlock hidden features of the device essentially makes the Switch into a veritable treasure trove of potential.

Now hackers are apparently one step closer to cracking the console and opening the doors to homebrew emulation on the device. Hacker and exploit-finder Derrekr6 claims that hackers now have access to the Switch's kernel. The Switch runs on a customized operating system based on the FreeBSD kernel, similar to the PS4, and shares elements of Android to boot. With access to the Switch's kernel, hackers can manipulate the console in key ways. The kernel acts as a middleman between applications and hardware, and manages communication between software and hardware.