Latest News - Page 2225

Monolith is now teasing the PC graphics settings of Middle-earth: Shadow of War, something the team teased during its recent live stream about the game. In the Game settings panel, you'll also see that there's a new 'Photo Mode' that will let you take shots from within the game.

The team were playing Shadow of War at 4K on a single NVIDIA TITAN Xp graphics card - but we're all here to find out what graphics settings we'll be able to tweak in the game.

As you can see, we have a few options to play with, and Monolith didn't even show all of the PC graphics settings. The scroll bar continues underneath what Monolith showed off, but we know that we have Lighting Quality, Mesh Quality, Motion Blur, Anti-Aliasing, Shadow Quality, Texture Filtering, and Texture Quality. I'm sure there are at least 4-5 more settings to play with, but we'll find out more on that soon.

NVIDIA has made quite the strange move overnight, where the company has enabled DX12 support for their older Fermi GPU architecture, enabling DX12 for the GeForce GTX 400 and GTX 500 series graphics cards.

If you've got an older GTX 400 or GTX 500 series card, you'll need their latest GeForce 384.76 drivers, which will enable DX12 support. WCCFTech re-benchmarked their older GeForce GTX 580 with DX12 and thrown it into 3DMark and Battlefield 1, but there is a performance drop with DX12 enabled in BF1. WCCFTech's benchmarks show BF1 hitting 43FPS average or so with the High preset @ 1080p, while the GTX 580 with DX12 enabled drops to just 34FPS average.

Still, DX12 enabled on Fermi is an interesting move for NVIDIA... very interesting.

PlatinumGames and SEGA might be bringing the fan-favorite action series Bayonetta to Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid.

PlatinumGames recently christened its new Japanese Twitter account with some fresh Bayonetta artwork from dev Yusuke Hashimoto that may or may not be teasing something interesting. The artwork, pictured above, clearly has red and blue to match the color schemes of the first and second Bayonetta games. Know what else has a red and blue color scheme? The Neon Red and Neon Blue Nintendo Switch JoyCons.

I have to admit that alone is pretty shaky evidence. But wait, there's more! A fan made the correlation and brought it to PlatinumGames' attention in this Tweet, which the developer favorited. Therein lies the teaser.

Elon Musk has announced that the Model 3 production starts on Friday, with first deliveries starting on July 28th.

It was previously stated that Tesla plans to unveil the final production version of the Model 3 in July, with deliveries starting sometime during the summer, meaning that the company is ahead of the schedule, which is good news for the company and its shareholders.

Musk stated that Tesla Motors will deliver the first thirty Model 3's on July 28th, with production growing exponentially. In August, they plan to manufacture 100 cars, and in September above 1,500. By the end of the year, they should reach 20,000 cars per month.

Phil Harrison, who's watched the console games industry evolve over decades, shares his insights on console exclusives--and why Microsoft's Xbox division has so few of them.

Games industry professional Phil Harrison has enjoyed key leadership positions in both Sony (President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios in 2005) and Microsoft (Microsoft Game Studios in 2012) throughout the years, and is in a qualified position to weigh in on the market's paradigm shift away from platform games exclusivity. There was a time where both Xbox and PlayStation thrived on their respective first-party IPs and franchises, but higher and higher costs have softened the once-essential strategy, leading console-makers like Microsoft to focus more on cross-platform integration, monetization of live services, and third-party support over its own core franchises.

There was a time not so long ago that exclusives were guaranteed system sellers--the Halo: Combat Evolveds and Metal Gear Solids of older eras. But now the console landscape is dramatically different: third-party games from publishers like Activision, EA, and Ubisoft typically dominate, despite being used as content that fills in the spaces between major first-party releases.

Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid transforms into a portable arcade machine with this nifty little custom build.

I've long thought of the Nintendo Switch's Tabletop Mode as "Arcade Mode" simply because it allows owners to simulate an arcade-like experience while on-the-go. But the Switch's kickstand is wonky, and it could use a case--or even a whole miniature cabinet. Maker and tecchie Shea Silverman has created one such miniature arcade cabinet for the Switch...and it's all kinds of awesome.

The Switch's tablet-like display slots into the cabinet, and users can then slide in their own custom-built arcade-style joysticks for authentic Street Fighter arcade action. Silverman's case is, of course, highly customized, but his Thingiverse page shows you how to make your own.

One of the greatest bands of all times, if not the greatest, has been around for decades. Even after the tragic death of legendary Freddie Mercury in 1991, Queen has stuck around, and their songs are still highly popular even with the younger generations.

A couple of years ago, the band started performing again with Adam Lambert, selling out the shows around the world.

Now, the band's fans can experience a live performance by the band in virtual reality. The band has released a virtual reality concert named VR the Champions, which contains Queen's most popular songs, such as We Will Rock You, Radio Ga Ga, and We Are the Champions. Unfortunately, Freddie isn't featured in this VR movie, but let's hope that someday we will be able to see the legend itself in VR.

Call of Duty WWII's monetized supply drops will be cosmetic only, Sledgehammer Games' Michael Condry confirms.

Activision Blizzard are arguably the kings of microtransactions, and nearly all of the company's live games are monetized with in-game purchases in the style of random loot crates or packs.

The publisher's next Call of Duty game, Call of Duty WWII, will also be monetized in this way via "supply drops", or purchasable content packs that unlock random rewards. Developer Sledgehammer Games says that Call of Duty WWII's supply drops won't actually affect weapon and armor stats and will instead be totally cosmetic, meaning there won't be a pay-to-win element.

Destiny 2 isn't just a sequel: it's a hard reset for the Destiny franchise. It's an opportunity to do all the things Activision and Bungie wanted to do with the original, including a captivating story arc, a fully-fledged release on PC for the first time, and a strong, steady stream of new content for gamers to consume for months after release.

Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg wasn't happy with Destiny's post-release content roadmap. Destiny released two expansions--The Dark Below and House of Wolves--in the months after launch, but players quickly gobbled up the new goods as per the game's addictive nature. At it's core Destiny is a kind of MMO that rewards players for continually grinding missions and slaying foes, and as such, Bungie and Activision drastically dis-proportioned the DLC's lifespan. What was meant to stretch multiple months was chewed up and spat out in a week after release, and Destiny players wouldn't get another major injection until a full year after the game's release with The Taken King mega-expansion.

Activision doesn't want to repeat the same mistakes. The publisher knows Bungie has its hands full maintaining Destiny 2's development on all platforms (not to mention PC) so it has conscripted key developers like Vicarious Visions and High Moon to assist with additional content. While Destiny 2 will follow the original's dual-expansion roadmap, company CEO Eric Hirshberg affirms that the sequel will have a "robust pipeline of content."

Samsung has quietly relaunched the Galaxy Note7 under the name Galaxy Note Fan Edition.

The phone is identical to the original but comes with a different name and a smaller battery. The original Note7 came with a 3,500 mAh battery, while the refurbished one comes with a 3,200 mAh one.

The company stated that the Galaxy Note Fan Edition's battery goes through the same rigorous safety tests that the company started with the Galaxy S8.

Sledgehammer Games' new boots on the ground WWII shooter won't make the jump to Nintendo's new Switch handheld console hybrid, the developers have confirmed.

Although the Nintendo Switch has incredibly strong demand, and Nintendo expects to have a 12.74 million console install base by March 2018, some major AAA publishers aren't ready to bring their biggest properties to the handheld-console combo. Activision's Call of Duty WWII is one such game. The developers at Sledgehammer Games have officially confirmed the shooter won't arrive on the Nintendo Switch, shooting down hopeful speculation.

Last month Sledgehammer Games exec Michael Condry said that it wasn't really the studio's decision, and that "Activision business guys" would be the ones to ask. As it turns out, Activision isn't ready to take that risk just yet, especially due to the Nintendo Switch's constrained supply shortage, which is expected to last throughout 2017.

Mass Effect: Andromeda's planned add-on singleplayer content has been cancelled, sources tell Kotaku.

A few days ago a Facebook post from a specific company called "Sinclair Networks" claimed that Mass Effect: Andromeda's DLC has been scrapped. BioWare has since confirmed the post was a hoax and led many to believe that the game could receive its planned add-on singleplayer content.

Unfortunately, BioWare Montreal won't be bringing any more singleplayer additions to the game: three key sources have told Kotaku's Jason Schreier that the game is essentially done insofar as campaign content.

Tomasz Gop, project lead on the original Lords of the Fallen and the upcoming sequel, has left CI Games for good, Polish website Graczipospolita reports.

The fate of Lords of the Fallen 2 may be in jeopardy as producer Tomasz Gop has been let go from Polish developer CI Games for the last time. According to recent reports, Gop is now working with Destructive Creations on its new RTS game Ancestors, a historical real-time strategy game set in the Middle Ages.

"I was released from CI Games. Probably [because of] the reduction of the so-called 'fixed costs'. In any case, the world at Gamescom will see Ancestors in action. Working on RTS is a huge challenge for me, because I do not know much about it," Gop told the Polish website.

We might be seeing the likes of 7nm coming soon, while the latest and greatest graphics cards are made on the new 14nm and 16nm nodes with some seriously power efficient GPU technology from NVIDIA and its Pascal architecture at 14nm.

Now, we have researchers from UC San Diego developing a new temperature sensor that uses 10 billion times less power than 1W, at just 113 picowatts. Hui Wang is an author on the new study, telling Scientific Reports: "We're building systems that have such low power requirements that they could potentially run for years on just a tiny battery".

The team worked on reducing power in two areas, with the first being the power source, where they used something that other researchers in their field are trying to move away from. This is where transistors come into play, as they have a gate that stops the flow of electrons in a circuit, but transistors also keep getting thinner and thinner, introducing new problems. As transistors get smaller, the gate material becomes thinner, which is where "gate leakage" comes into play.

I'm sure that most of you how just how addicted I am to technology, so when I find a YouTuber streaming 8K gaming at 60FPS, it begins to have weird effects on my body.

YouTuber 'ThirtyIR' runs an absolute beast of a gaming PC, powered by Dell's new UP3218K display with its native 8K resolution - a huge 7680x4320, the only 8K monitor on the market. Inside, ThirtyIR runs a huge 4 x TITAN Xp graphics cards, all powered by an Intel Core i7-6950X processor, ASUS Rampage V Extreme, and 64GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR-3200 RAM. It's all run with a Corsair AX1500i PSU, plenty of power to handle the 4-way GPUs.

His latest stream was of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, running it at 8K on his 4-way TITAN Xp graphics cards, and it looked beautiful. You can playback 8K content on YouTube, which takes a damn lot of CPU horsepower to run on Opera and Chrome, but Microsoft's own Edge browser in Windows 10 has better GPU scaling in the browser, making it a useful switch - at least for when you're watching 8K video on YouTube.

It has been like this forever: PC gamers love their graphics and being able to turn every single in-game visual option to the maximum, and it's only just now getting to the point where consoles can push the kind of graphics we've enjoyed on PC for years and years.

With the upcoming Xbox One X, it looks like Microsoft is finally discovering that gamers do in fact enjoy high fidelity graphics. Xbox Director of Program Management, Mike Ybarra, said: "I always say to my game teams, 'Look, if you provide Dolby Atmos spatial audio, high-dynamic range, 8-million pixels on the screen, people will lose track of time because they'll be having so much fun. That immersion is really what we're after. When we created this box it was really about immersion more than anything else we wanted to do. I mean, you played Forza Horizon 3 on Windows at 4K, and we saw those images, and those things are breathtaking. When we set out, we started talking about these effects and how they impacted us. That's immersion; it is part of the magic of the entertainment industry that we're in".

Xbox boss Phil Spencer agrees with Ybarra, adding: "I was on the EA stage talking to Patrick Söderlund about Madden, and one of the things he commented on was how the grass looks, and how it moves. He said if you had somebody circle 10 things on the screen that are different about running on Xbox One X, nobody would ever pick up on that, but subconsciously, as visuals get more lifelike your brain notices when stuff like that isn't quite right. 4K can be just about the physics, maybe even just the way the trees move".

I've always found 4K gaming to be so 'meh' on the PC, unless you can hit 60FPS which isn't so easy - even on a super-fast NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. But, visual fidelity wise it's great - and 8K is even better thanks to its mammoth native resolution of 7680x4320.

YouTuber 'Thirty IR' have shown off videos running a few games at 8K 60FPS, including Assetto Corsa, Mad Max, Get Even, and The Witcher 3. You're going to need a pretty baller internet connection to load them up, as they struggled even on my 100Mbps fiber connection. Check them out below.

Thirty IR also has some 8K screenshots on his website, if you want some delicious 7680x4320 goodness.

To celebrate this week's release of the 2017 animated hit 'The Smurfs: The Lost Village' on Blu-ray and DVD, we have 10 Blu-rays to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment.

They were never alone. In this fully animated, all-new take on the Smurfs, a mysterious map sets Smurfette and her best friends Brainy, Clumsy and Hefty on an exciting and thrilling race through the Forbidden Forest filled with magical creatures to find a mysterious lost village before the evil wizard Gargamel does. Embarking on a roller coaster journey full of action and danger, the Smurfs are on a course that leads to the discovery of the biggest secret in Smurf history!

To go into the running to win a prize, simply correctly answer the following question:

The launch date of the refurbished Galaxy Note7 has been rumored for a while now, with the latest rumors claiming that the phone will make its return on July 7th.

Now, a Korean carrier LG Uplus (part of LG Corporation) has posted an image on its Facebook confirming July 7th as the launch date. The photo was taken down, but in the meantime, someone managed to snag a screenshot, and now we have confirmation.

The image shows the Galaxy Note7 under its new name - Galaxy Note Fan Edition, and the date of the launch.

China's launch of the heavy-lift carrier rocket Long March-5 Y2, carrying its heaviest ever satellite, has failed on Sunday, China's official news agency Xinhua said.

The rocket lifted off at 7:23 PM local time, but 40 minutes after the launch, the state-run Xinhua news agency announced that the launch was a failure, without providing any further details.

"Anomaly was detected during its flight, and further investigation will be carried out," stated the agency.