Latest News - Page 2230

SpaceX has successfully completed its second launch and landing this week. The two Falcon 9 launches and landings in 48 hours show the strength of SpaceX rockets, previously stating that the company intends to up the pace of its launches.

SpaceX's rocket took off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 1:25 PM Pacific Time, and launched ten satellites to low-Earth orbit for Iridium, a global leader in mobile voice and data satellite communications.

This is the second set of 10 satellites in a series of 75 total satellites that SpaceX will launch for Iridium's next-generation global satellite constellation, Iridium NEXT.

Nintendo could double its forecasted fiscal year profits due to strong Switch and 3DS hardware and software sales, analysts predict.

Nintendo expects to pull in $404.38 million in (45 billion yen) in profits in the fiscal year ending March 2018, but due to the strong demand and performance of the Nintendo Switch and the 3DS handheld, analysts predict that the Japanese games company could more than double its FY2018 profits. The Japanese games-maker recently reported a massive 521% boost in profits for the fiscal year ending March 2017.

According to Nikkei Asian Review, analysts predict Nintendo could make as much as $836.62 million (93.1 billion yen) in profits this fiscal year.

Nintendo's new first-party ARMS game is a big hit in Japan, selling over 100,000 copies in its first week of availability.

ARMS is a new IP for Japanese games-maker Nintendo, and from critical reception and strong sales, the company's bet into the online multiplayer fighter appears to be paying off. According to the latest data from Media Create's weekly sales list, ARMS has sold over 100,000 units in its first week in Japan.

This sales volume is quite high and dwarfs first-week sales of recently released fighting games like Tekken 7, Ultra Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, and Guilty Gear Xrd: Rev 2--in fact, Nintendo's new fighter sold more copies than all of those games combined in their respective first weeks of availability.

Titanfall 2 is getting a performance enhancement update for Xbox One X, and from the sound of it, Respawn is having some surprising results with Microsoft's new $499 high-end box.

Respawn Entertainment recently confirmed that its most recent shooter, Titanfall 2, will receive an enhancement upgrade to leverage the new Xbox One X's 4K-ready 6TFLOP GPU for better in-game visuals and performance. "Titanfall 2 will support Xbox One X. This means 4K resolution for increased fidelity as well as support for dynamic super scaling," the developer said in a recent DLC announcement post.

Now a purported Respawn developer has taken to NeoGAF to expand on Titanfall 2's dynamic super scaling on the Xbox One X, saying that they were actually push Titanfall 2's new War Games DLC past 4K resolution to 3200p (~6K resolution) on the Xbox One X...but at full 100% workload on the console's beefy graphics processor.

It appears the "war on GTA mods" is over: thanks to Rockstar Games, Take-Two has relented and will no longer pursue legal action against singleplayer mods. OpenIV has been updated, and the publisher has also issued out some new rules for singleplayer modders.

A bit ago Take-Two Interactive kicked the hornet's nest by forcing OpenIV, a popular modding tool used to mod GTA IV and GTA V, to go offline. After countless days of negative press, strong words from millions of fans, a huge petition, and the absolutely destruction of the game's Steam reviews, the Rockstar parent company relented. As of now OpenIV has been updated but the mod still isn't available for public download. Rockstar told Motherboard that it and Take-Two will work with OpenIV's creator to resolve the issue.

Rockstar has since delivered a new public statement affirming that singleplayer mods aren't being targeted by Take-Two--only those that affect Grand Theft Auto Online will get the axe. Interestingly enough OpenIV developer Yuriy "Good-NDS" Krivoruchko said that OpenIV could actually be used by some modders to disrupt GTA Online, but he never intended for the modding tool to be used in such a way.

Almost half of the world's total video games playerbase will spend money while they play games in 2017, according to analyst firm Newzoo.

In-game purchases such as microtransactions, add-ons and expansions are a lucrative part of the video games industry, and modern games typically ship with some sort of digital online component to facilitate long-term revenues.

For example, more and more games in the console sector are switching to models with online multiplayer with free updates and content paid for by in-game spending, such as EA's new Star Wars Battlefront II and Activision's new Destiny 2. These specific games mimic the successful revenue models of mobile games while charging a $59.99 premium for the base game, but consoles also offer numerous free-to-play experiences like SMITE.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has become an early access sensation, selling 4 million copies in its first three months of availability.

Reverb Inc today confirmed that Bluehole's massively popular multiplayer shooter PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has sold 4 million copies, massing $100 million in revenue in just 13 weeks of availability.

The early access game, which sells for $29.99, has attracted a considerable number of players on PC storefront Steam, with 230,000 concurrent peak users and over 100,000 game sessions being played every day. Reverb also notes that spectatorship on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds remains quite strong at 350,000 peak viewers, and affirms that 15% of all Twitch users--or 120,000 spectators--watch streams of the game every day.

SpaceX has successfully launched and landed another Falcon 9 rocket. This mission marked the second reflight of a Falcon 9 first stage, having previously supported the Iridium-1 mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in January of this year.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the BulgariaSat-1 satellite into orbit - the first geostationary communications satellite in Bulgaria's history.

Following stage separation, the first stage of Falcon 9 successfully landed on SpaceX's East Coast droneship 'Of Course I Still Love You,' stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Samsung should announce the Galaxy Note8 this summer, and although we heard bits and pieces about the phone earlier, Evan Blass has now completed the image.

According to his latest report, the Note8 will feature a 6.3-inch AMOLED display with 18:5:9 aspect ratio.

Blass also claims that the phone will be unveiled in the second half of September, which is a month later than expected.

Nintendo's total market cap has risen above one of it's major competitors in the games space: Sony Corp.

Thanks to consistent climbing share values, Nintendo's total market capitalization is now valued at 5.5 trillion yen ($48.98 billion), according to the latest Google Finance listings. Nintendo is now ahead of its Japanese rival Sony Corp who's market cap sits at $48.28 billion, or 1.14% less than Nintendo's current market cap.

But what is market capitalization, and why is it important?

LG has shown off the world's first 77-inch flexible OLED display that is not only transparent, but has a native 4K resolution.

The impressive display is super-thin, with 40% transparency and flexible, so it can be rolled into a tube that is just 6 inches across. Considering the 77-inch display is close to 6.5-foot tall (diagonally), this is impressive. For marketing and display purposes, a tall 4K-capable flexible OLED is great - imagine walking past it in retail, it would catch your eyes no matter what.

For marketing on the go, people can roll it up and take them away with them easily. Shows like CES and Computex would be a boon for flexible, rollable displays - with E3, PAX, and other trades shows making perfect sense for these huge flexible displays.

AMD launched its new EPYC 7000 series processors last week, and now GIGABYTE is one of the first to unveil its new MZ30-AR0 motherboard that supports AMD EPYC 7000 series processors, and has a ton of awesome, server-grade features.

GIGABYTE's new MZ30-AR0 packs 8-channel DDR4 support with 16 x DIMMs, supporting up to 1TB of RAM through LRDIMM/NVDIMM modules, while 64GB of DDR4 support is provided through RDIMMs. GIGABYTE includes 2 x SFP+ 10Gb/s LAN ports, M.2 with PCIe 3.0 x4 ports, and more. Storage wise we have 16 x SATA 3.0 ports, 4 x SAS, 7 x PCIe 3.0 x16, and 1 x M.2 capable of 32Gbps. The board supports CPUs with up to a 180W TDP, eating up the new EPYC-based CPUs with 32C/64T of power.

We are living and breathing for everything we can handle on Radeon RX Vega, but now the latest tease is that AMD will have "excellent" pricing on Radeon RX Vega.

According to the Bits And Chips Twitter account, which tweeted: "Forget about VEGA in Enterprise market. Next AMD game changer will be NAVI (EPYC:CPU=NAVI:GPU). However, VEGA price will be excellent". I have personally heard that Navi will be a game changer from my own sources, but haven't heard anything about cheap pricing on Radeon RX Vega. This is because HBM2 isn't cheap, especially compared to GDDR5 that's used on the Radeon RX 500 series.

If AMD could price the GTX 1080 Ti competitor in the new Radeon RX Vega family at $499, this is a game changer. $599 and it better beat the GTX 1080 Ti and have a large amount of stock to sell against the $699+ on GTX 1080 Ti... but if there's only a few thousand, NVIDIA will continue to win because it has massive numbers of AIB partners with multiple GTX 1080 Ti models on the market already. $699 is the price of the GTX 1080 Ti, so AMD really can't price Radeon RX Vega here without shooting themselves in the foot.

It looks like PC gamers should begin getting excited for optimizations for the PC that Bungie and Activision are promising for Destiny 2, which is finally coming to the PC later this year, after Destiny being a console exclusive.

Destiny 2 Project Lead, Mark Noseworthy, said that the PC version of Destiny 2 will not only include a FOV slider, but the guns will have no recoil on the PC because the "controller feels good". In what I take away from that, console gamers have slower reactions because of the input delay of joysticks on a controller through to the TV and sub 60Hz displays, where the PC is instant one-for-one with mouse and keyboard to 60Hz through to 240Hz displays.

Noseworthy noted: "For instance, there's no recoil on guns on PC because recoil on the controller feels really good. 'I'm firing, I'm firing, I'm firing, oh, I'm losing control of my gun a little bit.' That feels great, especially with magnetism and all the magic in the controller that makes you feel it. With a mouse and keyboard, you don't want the mouse moving without you moving it, so recoil doesn't feel good, so there is no recoil on PC".

Project CARS 2 is shaping up to be one of the best-looking games of 2017, but even the new and powerful (at least for a console) Xbox One X is coming in November, can't run Project CARS 2 at 4K, let alone 60FPS.

Dutch website GamersNet had some words with Slightly Mad Studios' Game Director, Stephen Viljoen, said that Project CARS 2 would be running at 4K and 60FPS on Xbox One X. But it looks like this was a big of a fluff, and something SMS' Ian Bell said was a "misquote". We don't know what Sony's refreshed PS4 Pro will run the game at, but I'd say 1080p 60FPS would be a safer bet.

Slightly Mad Studios' Ian Bell posted on GTPLanet's forums, where he said: "Yup, this was a misquote. We're running sub 60 FPS at 4K and we'll probably always be unless we drop livetrack and a host of other things... We'll probably upscale from something very reasonable". Bell wouldn't comment on locked 60FPS at 4K on Xbox One X, adding: "We don't like the term 'locked'. It would put us in first party territory where chest beating is more important than a great experience. We'll be 60 most of the time in normal racing and we'll push the consoles to and beyond their limits for more interesting racing. Even if that means dropping a few frames".

For over 30 years, Lian Li has been a staple in the computer hardware industry as a supplier of premium PC chassis. During Computex 2017, we had the opportunity to interview Jameson Chen, who is destined to take the reins from his father and lead the company into a new era.

Lian Li chassis have always embodied quality materials and craftsmanship, and their future plans are going to stay on that path while also offering a bit more variety. Instead of extremely expensive brushed aluminum chassis, Jameson has a vision for well-built cases constructed with steel, with integrated RGBs, and tempered glass. He wants to focus on the needs of gamers as well as premium builders.

I think most people have known for a while that AMD's upcoming Radeon RX Vega will use a lot of power, with the new Radeon Instinct MI25 accelerator delivered with a 300W TDP.

Now we have an MSI marketing director saying: "I've seen the specs of Vega RX. It needs a damn lot of power. We're working on it, which is a start so launch is coming closer :)". We should expect the air-cooled version of Radeon RX Vega to use up to 300W, while a watercooled version could use a little more - but hopefully offer some more OC headroom. Still, I'd rather have a card that uses maximum power, if the performance is warranted, versus GPU Boost 3.0 restricting Pascal-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10 series cards.

What do you think?

Respawn Entertainment today confirmed that Titanfall 2's userbase is still strong and healthy, despite comments on the game's underwhelming launch sales from publisher EA.

Titanfall 2's free post-launch DLC plan is turning out to be a boon for the game's playerbase. Titanfall 2 receives regular free content updates in exchange for microtransaction earnings gleaned from optional cosmetic in-game purchases. While announcing yet another free content update with new maps, developer Respawn Entertainment says that Titanfall 2 enjoys over a 1 million monthly active users.

"Since launch we've released 5 content drops, free for all players, and continue to see a vibrant, engaged playerbase with currently over a million active players a month," Respawn said in the post.

Warner Bros. Interactive has opened a new studio in New York that will bolster its live services.

Publishers today are strongly investing into live services to power their games and ensure long tails of revenue. But these investments often come at a cost of manpower, servers, and other technologies. Today Warner Bros. Interactive has announced that it will open a new studio in New York to help buffer the live services that power features such as online multiplayer in games like Injustice 2.

According to Gematsu, the studio will be called Warner Bros. New York and will host cloud-based backend technology to power online and live services of key games.

Koei Tecmo today revealed a brand new trailer for Dynasty Warriors 9, confirming some big changes for the landmark Musou series.

Omega Force confirms that it will bring Dynasty Warriors 9 to a dynamic open world setting, complete with new combat mechanics and exploration content across impressively beautiful environments. As Koei Tecmo states, the new Dynasty Warriors features new combat systems that are built off of the "signature one vs thousands style gameplay," starting with the new State Combo System. Players can dish out destructive chaos in three different attack styles including Trigger Attacks, Flow Attacks, and Finish Attacks--all of which contribute to an interesting combo system.

"Trigger Attacks allow players to create the start of an explosive combo, leading to Flow Attacks, which adapt to the enemy's current state," the publisher said in a recent press release.