Diablo IV classes and skills revealed, barb may triple-wield

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 1, 2019 3:24 PM CDT

UPDATE: It's been confirmed the barbarian has four weapon slots, not three.

Diablo IV classes and skills revealed, barb may triple-wield

After years of waiting, Diablo is back. Not only did we get a mesmerizing cinematic reveal trailer, but Blizzard also dropped first gameplay footage of Diablo IV, and it looks pretty good.

Blizzard's not messing around with Diablo IV. It's a brutal, gruesome, and supremely horrifying game that embraces Diablo II's old-school visual style and mechnical character builds while building Diablo III's more streamlined combat and graphics engine.

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Diablo IV revealed with haunting and macabre trailer

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 1, 2019 1:37 PM CDT

Diablo IV was finally confirmed today with a visually macabre trailer.

Diablo IV revealed with haunting and macabre trailer

Diablo IV is what Diablo III should've always been. It's a warped mixture of Hellraiser with classic demonic Diablo overtones, but modernized with splendidly haunting and bizarre style that's straight out of Bryan Fuller's imagination. The new trailer confirms Lilith, the Daughter of Hatred and the Mother of Nephalem, as the principal demonic antagonist, and she looks absolutely nightmarish.

The footage shows four miscreant pirates walking into a demonic temple in search of gold. Little do they know they've stumbled upon the summoning grounds for Lilith...and her eldritch revival is so striking that it rivals most horror films.

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Ubisoft to launch 9 big AAA games on next-gen PS5, Project Scarlett

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 1, 2019 7:24 AM CDT

Ubisoft plans to release up to 9 AAA games in the next two fiscal years, including Watch Dogs 3, a new Assassin's Creed game, and possibly even Far Cry 6. All of them should be optimized to push the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett next-gen consoles to their limits.

Ubisoft to launch 9 big AAA games on next-gen PS5, Project Scarlett

Like Electronic Arts and Capcom, Ubisoft is betting big on next-gen consoles with a huge slate of new games.

In its recent Q2'19 earnings call, Ubisoft confirmed an ambitious new line of titles. The company wants to launch as many as 9 big games throughout the next few years. This new slate will be broken up across two fiscal year timelines: 5 new AAA games in FY2021 (April 1, 2020 - March 31, 2021) and 3-4 AAA games in FY2022 (April 2021 - March 31, 2022).

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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate becomes the best-selling Smash Bros. game

Jak Connor | Gaming | Nov 1, 2019 6:33 AM CDT

As apart of Nintendo's quarterly earning financial results, the company shined a light on the sales for their flagship franchise, Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate becomes the best-selling Smash Bros. game

Nintendo revealed that the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate franchise has proudly hit a new milestone with over 15,710,000 units sold, making it the best-selling game in the Super Smash Bros. series. Before Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Smash Bros. For Wii U & 3DS held the title with 14,910,000.

Before Super Smash Bros. For Wii U & 3DS, Super Smash Bros. Brawl held the title with 13,270,000, then Melee followed with 7,410,000 and finally the original Super Smash Bros. with 5,550,000. Judging on the sales of the Super Smash Bros. series, it seems to ever-growing in popularity. Now all Nintendo need to do is officially recognize and push the competitive seen to get more players enticed into participating in some ultimate action.

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Ubisoft: The Division 2 is meaningfully profitable

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Nov 1, 2019 5:24 AM CDT

Ubisoft clarifies mixed signals on The Division 2, saying the game is still a success that simply didn't break the bar set by the company.

Ubisoft: The Division 2 is meaningfully profitable

The Division 2 sold tremendously well on all platforms and markets. The sequel was the best-selling game in the first six months of 2019. But in today's landscape game sales aren't everything. Ubisoft cares a lot more about what it calls PRI or Player Recurring Investment, or cosmetic microtransactions and season/battle passes. Game sales are just the beginning, and the aim is to keep monetizing gamers over time and offering free content in return.

If The Division 2 was a huge sales success, it's not too hard to see why the game missed Ubisoft's expectations. It apparently just didn't monetize as strongly as the company had hoped. A game moving massive units isn't enough for a digital-first developer like Ubisoft. The real money comes in with recurring live service microtransactions, and Ubisoft was counting on much more than what the game delivered.

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Halo Reach on PC at 4K 60FPS only requires Core i5 and GeForce GTX 770

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Nov 1, 2019 5:10 AM CDT

Start saving your money folks for that GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for Halo Reach at 4K 60FPS... I mean, wait -- 343 industries has just released the official PC specs for Halo Reach and they are recommending just a GeForce GTX 770 for 4K 60FPS.

343 Industries official PC requirements for Halo Reach see you needing a mix of low-end CPUs in the 1080p 60FPS range with an AMD FX-4100 or Intel i7-870 processor, 8GB of RAM and either an AMD Radeon R7 360 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card. Yeah, that's not a typo -- an AMD Radeon R7 360 or GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

If you want to crank things up to 4K 60FPS then 343i recommends only modest PC specs as well, with an older and very much previous-gen AMD FX-6350 or Intel Core i5-3450 processor, the same 8GB of RAM, and either an AMD Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 770. Once again, that's not a typo -- you need only a Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 770 to run Halo Reach at 4K 60FPS.

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Leaked images show revived Motorola RAZR model as new foldable phone

Jak Connor | Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones | Nov 1, 2019 4:39 AM CDT

Remember when the Motorola RAZR was first announced back in July of 2004, and then hit the market closer to the end of the same year? I do, and so do 50 million other customers.

Leaked images show revived Motorola RAZR model as new foldable phone

At the time of release, the Motorola RAZR V3 had the thinnest profile of any clamshell handset, it even went onto to be the best selling clamshell phone to date at 130 million units sales during its lifespan. It now seems the RAZR V3 model will be returning but this time as foldable device that has multiple screens.

According to a leak by evleak, Motorola's foldable V3 will have two displays; a main 6.2-inch OLED display, and an 800 x 600 secondary display. The rumored specifications are: Snapdragon 710, 4/6GB RAM, 128GB ROM and a 2730mAh battery. Other rumors put this phone at an extremely hefty price point of $1500. Motorola will be holding a media event on November 13th, which is probably when we will hear if this phone will become a reality or not.

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'Superhuman' AI beats pro players & hits Grandmaster Starcraft II rank

Jak Connor | Artificial Intelligence | Nov 1, 2019 4:13 AM CDT

An artificial intelligence developed by Google's AI firm DeepMind has managed to achieve the highest level of ranking in Starcraft II.

'Superhuman' AI beats pro players & hits Grandmaster Starcraft II rank

According to the results which were published in Nature, DeepMind's AI was released onto the European Starcraft II servers and placed within the top 0.15% of the regions 90,000 players. Jon Dodge, an AI researcher at Oregon State University in Corvallis was shocked at the progress the AI made, saying "I did not expect AI to essentially be superhuman in this domain so quickly, maybe not for another couple of years."

The AI is called AlphaStar and before it was released onto the European servers its speed was reduced to make a fairer contests. The researchers wanted players to also not know they were versing an AI, David Silver, who co-leads the AlphaStar project said "We wanted this to be like a blind experiment. We really wanted to play under those conditions and really get a sense of, 'how well does this pool of humans perform against us?'"

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Breakthrough battery design charges electric car in 10 min + 200 miles

Jak Connor | Electric Vehicles & Cars | Nov 1, 2019 3:34 AM CDT

Battery technology has always been one of the main things that hold back technology advancement, but now a new breakthrough has happened from scientists out of Pennsylvania State University.

Breakthrough battery design charges electric car in 10 min + 200 miles

The scientists have claimed that they have developed a new battery design that is said to have the capabilities of being able to take in 400 kilowatts of energy. The scientists reported that it takes 10 minutes of charging to add 200 miles of driving range. It should be noted that current generation electric vehicles are definitely not capable of this amount of energy being pushed into the battery, as it risks the integrity of the battery and the lifetime of it. This

Scientists out of The Pennsylvania State University raised their test battery temperature to 60 degrees and then slowly lowered it while it was being used, this ensures that battery isn't going to be cooked by the amount of energy put into it. Senior author Chao-Yang Wang, a mechanical engineer touched on that, saying "limit the battery's exposure to the elevated charge temperature, thus generating a very long cycle life."

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Witcher TV show gets 'main' trailer with naked Geralt, Dec 20th debut

Jak Connor | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | Nov 1, 2019 1:11 AM CDT

Netflix has finally released the full main trailer for their highly anticipated Witcher TV series. The full trailer shows a reference to bath tub Geralt from CD Projekt Red's Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Witcher TV show gets 'main' trailer with naked Geralt, Dec 20th debut

Netflix have released the above trailer onto the official Netflix YouTube Channel and what we can see from it really gets your blood pumping for December. From the trailer we finally get to see some action as in the previous trailers we saw nothing of the such. We get some sword fight combat, spells and even an Aard from Geralt.

Henry Cavill playing Geralt looks great, and even from the small bits of action we see in the trailer it seems combat in the show isn't going to boring in the slightest. Most importantly though, Cavill seems to have managed to slide right into Geralts fighting style which is a massive deal for Witcher fans. The trailer finishes off with a final release date, you can expect Witcher TV show to release on December 20th, 2019.

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