Latest News - Page 2248

Intel has been on the CPU offensive since AMD launched their new Ryzen platform, and now we're hearing about their next-gen Xeon Scalable Platform, otherwise known as Cascade Lake.

Cascade Lake was shown off during the SAP Sapphire conference, with Intel teasing that its next-gen platform will arrive in 2018. Cascade Lake-SP is the Skylake-SP refresh, with Intel tapping the 14nm+ node. Cascade Lake will support up to a mammoth 6TB of Optane DIMMs, which is a huge plus for Intel.

Intel has teased: "Intel persistent memory will allow users to improve system performance dramatically by putting more data closer to the processor on nonvolatile media, and do it in an affordable manner. This will truly be a game-changer when it comes to the way applications and systems are designed".

Facebook Live continues to evolve, with the social networking giant making some big changes to Live video that will make it much, much more social.

Facebook has announced Live Chat with Friends, and Live With features for Facebook Live videos. As TechCrunch points out, comment streams on popular Live videos are a gigantic mess, especially when there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of people typing comments at once, with Facebook saying there are ten times as many comments for Live videos than there are on normal videos.

There is a better way of dealing with this, so Facebook is getting you chat with friends while you're both watching Facebook Live videos. You can create a private chatroom where you can invite whoever you want, which is a great way of Facebook making Live video a much more personal experience. There's also a new feature that lets you go live with another person side-by-side, which is going to be great for interviews and collaborations.

It has been rumored for a while now that the upcoming OnePlus 5 would be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, but now we finally have an official confirmation.

Although the phone hasn't been launched yet, the company's CEO, Pete Lau, has confirmed on the company's official blog that the OnePlus 5 will come with a Snapdragon 835.

Read also: OnePlus 5 prototype caught on camera

Larian Studios today announced that its new RPG sequel Divinity: Original Sin 2 will release on September 14, 2017.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 features a massive upgrade of features and content over 2014's original release, including a sprawling story arc set 1,000 years after the first game, tons of new tactical and strategic tweaks to give players different opportunities in battle, new mechanics like the spellcrafting system which lets players combine spells, and a wide variety of new skills and abilities. Divinity: Original Sin 2 even offers dueling: players can challenge others online in arena-based PvP matches.

"Divinity: Original Sin 2 features five playable races and a new tag system that lets players shape the background and motivations of their characters, from noble elven cannibals to swarthy dwarven outlaws. Each choice you make shapes the world, impacting how you complete quests, solve problems, and build relationships - go anywhere, take anything, and kill anyone, but be careful of the repercussions!" Larian said in an official press release.

Following its most recent $400 million investment, Unity Technologies is now valued at $2.8 billion.

Unity, whose video games toolset and engine powers countless games across all platforms, has boosted its value by 86% since last summer by securing more investment capital, The Wall Street Journal reports. This means the San Francisco-based games technology company is now valued at a total of $2.8 billion.

Like Crytek with its CryEngine, Unity's games-making tools, assets, and engine are much more lucrative and profitable thank the company's actual games. In fact, Unity affirms that its engine powers "one-third of the current 1,000 top-grossing free-to-play games" across mobile, consoles and PC. That means Unity powers about 333 out of 1,000 of today's most popular F2P games, including Pokemon GO.

I originally predicted that BioWare's new Dragon Age game would be a spinoff like a Dragon Age Tactics spinoff or maybe even a card game like Gwent, but signs point to the new project being a fully-fledged triple-A sequel RPG instead.

I've been reporting on BioWare's new Dragon Age game for over a year now, and throughout that time my speculations and predictions have changed. Now with Eurogamer's recent interview with Sunless Sea writer Alexis Kennedy, who's helping BioWare write a portion of the new Dragon Age game, my predictions have changed again.

Kennedy affirms that the new Dragon Age game will have full voice-acting like traditional games in the series, as well as quests, and he'll actually be writing dialog and plot points for the quests in his "particular section of the game." Seeing as Dragon Age is typically separated in multiple acts with different regions as the stage for continued quests, this serves as possible evidence of a full Dragon Age game.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer LeEco has announced that they will cut over 300 jobs at its US business, which is around 70% of its local force.

The cuts are being made to increase the company's investments in its home market. Last year, Jia Yueting said that the expansion to the US market had been too quick and costly.

The company made a bold entry into America, but they failed to market itself appropriately, which resulted in this situation. Additionally, they failed to secure additional funds to continue growing the US operations at their current capacity which led to the layoffs.

Bandai Namco has revealed Tekken 7's PC spec requirements, and they're pretty interesting.

Tekken 7 marks the very first time the fighting franchise crosses over to PC, and Bandai Namco has put lots of effort into ensuring the game runs smoothly on the platform. While we're not sure if Tekken 7's frame rates will be uncapped, we do know the game will have native 4K textures and can at least run at 4K 60FPS on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. If you hadn't noticed, Bandai Namco has teamed up with NVIDIA for Tekken 7.

Tekken 7's PC requirements are a bit strange and indicate the Unreal Engine 4-powered fighter is quite RAM intensive. You'll need at least 6GB of RAM to run Tekken 7, but you can skate away with an Intel Core i3-4160 and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or GTX 750Ti with 2GB of VRAM. Tekken 7 will be a DirectX 11 game and it takes a whopping 60GB of installation space. Recommended specs aren't too harsh either: Bandai Namco wants you to have 8GB of RAM, an Intel Core i5-4690, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 equivalent.

A day after the Honor 6A launch, Huawei has announced another affordable smartphone - the Y6 2017.

The Y6 2017 is the successor to the Huawei Y6, announced two years ago. The low-end phone is equipped with a 1.4GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6737T processor and comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, expandable with a microSD card.

Read also: Huawei announces affordable Honor 6A smartphone

Ubisoft has released Far Cry 5's official box art, showing us the game's main villain and confirming the religious-based plotline.

Far Cry 5 was officially confirmed days ago, and Ubisoft is set to reveal the game in a trailer this Friday. Ahead of Far Cry 5's official showcase, the publisher dropped new key art for the game to give us our first glimpse at its main characters. No information was released about the game--only the picture--but the image tells us quite a bit. In fact, Ubisoft threw in some extra blasphemy by recreating The Last Supper with Far Cry 5 characters, outright confirming the religious aspect.

For instance, we already know Far Cry 5 takes place in modern-day Montana, and is heavily based on a religious cult held in check by armed guards. Now we get a good look at the villains we'll no-doubt be taking down: the main baddie in the center who's likely in charge of the cult in Hope County, Montana, alongside his henchmen, which includes an Army vet with a pet direwolf.

Sony has indicated its new Project Field technology, which allows consumers to use physical trading cards to play against other users digitally, may be released this year.

Following Nintendo's push towards mobile gaming, Sony is making its own earnest effort to embrace smartphone games and get a cut of the lucrative industry. Sony Interactive Entertainment started its own proprietary mobile games company called ForwardWorks, which will adapt the company's popular IPs--as well as key third-party partners' IPs such as Square Enix--into mobile games.

Upcoming mobile titles include entries from the Arc The Lad and Wild Arms franchises, as well as Parappa the Rappa and Disgaea.

NASA has published an artist' concept of the Mars 2020 rover, which should join Opportunity and Curiosity rover on the Red Planet in 2020.

The Mars 2020 rover is intended to investigate an astrobiological relevant ancient environment on Mars, investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and a potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials.

The Mars 2020 rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside on the surface of Mars. A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth.

Microsoft's key first-party publishing arm has received a name change, and may embrace deals with foreign developers abroad.

Microsoft Studios is now officially named Microsoft Studios Global Publishing, which may indicate a monumental shift towards publishing games across the globe instead of titles based in North America. The branch has a widespread focus that includes development and publication of key first-party and third-party titles, and the name change should signify that developers from other countries are now aboard.

Xbox division head Phil Spencer recently took a trip to Japan to gauge interest in the Xbox platform, which was a big success: Spencer affirms that many developers want to make games for the Xbox platform. We're betting that Spencer's trip has a lot to do with the production company's new focus, and that we'll see lots of Japanese third-party games quite soon.

Tesla Motors now has a Messenger chatbot to help you manage your car, so called TeslaBot.

SmartCar introduced this feature and named the virtual assistant none other than Elon. You will have to connect your Messenger to your Tesla account, and then you can use Messenger to complete simple tasks such as locking your car or getting information about where your car is located.

Unfortunately, if you don't own a Tesla, this Chatbot is pretty useless.

The Nintendo Switch's rumored Mario x Rabbids crossover game is real, and it's called Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle...but the game represents a big missed opportunity for Nintendo, and here's how.

Accord to recent leaks, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a tactical turn-based RPG with squads that's somewhat in the vein of XCOM, and merges Ubisoft's Rabbids with Nintendo's beloved Mario franchise. The crossover game will feature 8 different characters (4 Rabbid impersonators alongside Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and Yoshi) each with their own playstyles and tactical abilities. But unlike XCOM, the new Nintendo Switch tactical RPG is local co-op only and has no online component.

This is a huge missed opportunity for the Japanese console-maker, and the Switch system as a whole. The Nintendo Switch's paid online subscription service is the foundation of the system's future in regards to big hit franchises, and the industry's top publishers like EA, Ubisoft, and Activision will not bring their biggest games to the Switch unless it has an appealing online framework.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is blowing up on Steam right now, with the Early Access game doing big business selling over 2 million copies so far. But for me, the most impressive thing is that the developer is continuously patching the game, bringing more performance, optimizations, and features in what feels like every week or two.

Bluehole's latest patch for Battlegrounds is called the Early Access Month 2 Update, with the team "currently in the middle of profiling the servers to attempt to track down the cause of the lag, but as I have said before, this will take us time to complete, so I ask for your patience while we work to improve server performance for all players". Next month, the update will be "focused on improving server performance, the optimisation process won't stop there, and we will continue to improve performance of the servers all the way through Early Access".

Battlegrounds' latest update will drop to the Stable Servers today at 5PM KST/1AM PDT/8AM UTC, and will take 1 hour to complete.

Corsair has just unveiled its upcoming Commander Pro system controller, something that will take care of all of your RGB LED lightstrip controllers and fans.

The new Commander Pro is a little black box that requires a SATA power connector, along with a USB 2.0 internal header for data.

Corsair's Commander Pro can handle four temperature sensors, six PWN fans, two LED lightstrips, and two more USB 2.0 internal headers.

In one of those 'I wish I had that in school' moments, Google is now selling its 4K digital whiteboard, with the Jamboard costing $5000. It's not for everyone, but it has its market.

Jamboard is like a gigantic tablet made for the workplace, school, or meeting room and has similar features to a tablet, but features some other collaboration tools.

Jamboard is capable of letting multiple people work together on the digital whiteboard with G Suite, all in a single location - even including remote employees.

If you've been waiting for Acer's new Predator Z35P, the company is now taking pre-orders of its latest and greatest, and biggest gaming monitor. Acer's upcoming Predator Z35P sports a native 3440x1440 resolution at up to 100Hz, and is backed up by NVIDIA's G-Sync technology for a smooth 21:9 gaming experience.

Acer's new Predator Z35P costs $1099, but does offer the slightly larger 35-inch size against the current roster of 34-inch panels.

AMD Radeon owners might want to look at the FreeSync-powered Samsung CF791. Samsung uses their impressive Quantum Dot technology on a 34-inch panel at 3440x1440 at up to 100Hz on FreeSync, and even on NVIDIA GeForce cards - albeit without G-Sync or FreeSync enabled. Samsung sells the CF791 on Amazon for $849.99 - $250 cheaper for the same 3440x1440 @ 100Hz panel, but 1-inch smaller at 34 inches.

Crackdown 3 has been officially confirmed for the PC, after being teased for the PC - but not confirmed, the news was delivered directly from the official Crackdown Twitter page.

They tweeted "Crackdown 3 will indeed be a Play Anywhere title," meaning you'll be able to play on your Xbox and PC systems, with Crackdown 3 to surely be made available through the Windows Store for Windows 10 gamers. Reagent Games has previously confirmed Crackdown 3 for 2017, and I'm now hoping for new information on the game, and hopefully a tease of it on the PC, at E3 next month.