Latest News - Page 2262

MSI is continuing to add to its roster of custom GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards with the announcement of the GTX 1080 Ti Sea Hawk EK X, the first custom GTX 1080 Ti with a full-cover water block.

MSI's upcoming GTX 1080 Ti Sea Hawk EK X features a custom PCB, 8+2-phase power design, and 8+8-pin PCIe power connectors.

EK Water Blocks designed the water block, which features a gorgeous MSI dragon and logo, as well as NVIDIA's now-required GeForce GTX logo on the front. There's also a nickel-plated base cover on the GPU, memory, and VRMs.

AMD is preparing Radeon gamers for Prey with the release of the new Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.5.1 beta drivers, which even include some performance optimizations for the just-released Radeon RX 580 graphics card.

The new drivers feature a decent 4.7% performance boost for the RX 580 in Prey, but they also provide multi-GPU support for CrossFire owners who want to see additional performance from their RX 580 CF rig. There are the usual bug fixes and improvements in these new drivers as well, and AMD has also patched their auto updater so it no longer fails.

You can grab the new 17.5.1 drivers right here.

Vicarious Visions, the team behind Activision's myriad Skylanders games, will help ensure Destiny 2 has a steady stream of post-release content, expansions, and updates.

We've known for a while now that has Bungie enlisted the help of Vicarious Visions and other devs to work on the new Destiny sequel--after all, Destiny 2 is releasing on PC and will include a slew of new features and a dynamic storyline.

But up until now we weren't exactly sure what role these devs would have in the juggernaut shared-world FPS. As it turns out, the Skylanders devs will work alongside Bungie on Destiny 2's expansions and post-release content to facilitate maximum engagement--which drives active users and subsequent microtransaction earnings.

Activision affirms that Destiny 2 will come with many of the features PC gamers expect...but leaves out specifics for the upcoming stream showcase.

It's been a long time since Bungie has made a PC game, but with Destiny 2 coming to PC this September, it's critical the devs are able to harness the wide spectrum of graphics cards and PC hardware while maintaining proper features befit a triple-A shooter. In fact, Bungie is pressured on two different fronts: console gamers expect a fully-fledged campaign with better expansions, and PC gamers expect a proper port that's optimized for higher- and lower-end rigs.

According to Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg, Destiny 2 will impress PC gamers.

Overwatch is a smashing success for Blizzard, and the company has big plans for its global FPS sensation.

Blizzard has yet another billion-dollar franchise under its belt: Activision-Blizzard's latest Q1 2017 earnings confirms that Overwatch is now officially the company's 8th billion-dollar franchise, joining the ranks of Diablo, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, StarCraft, and World of Warcraft. Overwatch achieving stellar net sales, earnings, and record engagement levels--all in less than a year's time. In fact, Blizzard says Overwatch accrued 30 million registered users faster than any other franchise in the company's history.

Activision's Q1 2017 earnings were led by Blizzard games, which pulled in a strong $441 net revenues (almost half of the company's $1.7 billion total). Microtransactions are up 25% with Overwatch's skins and loot boxes and World of Warcraft's tokens and pets pulling the lion's share of in-game revenues.

As Blizzard's revenues soar from engagement and in-game purchases across its entire portfolio, the company is quite comfortable just releasing strategic content updates instead of new games. In fact, the company won't release a new full game in 2017, but will offset this with a ton of new content updates across all of its current games.

Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime confirms the company's shift: "This year for Blizzard is a different kind of year for us, a year that isn't necessarily built on full game launches but content title updates for our games," Morhaime said in a recent Activision earnings call. "This quarter we have meaningful new updates for every franchise in our portfolio. In fact, we set a new DAU record last quarter thanks to title updates."

This push towards updates instead of costly full game releases makes a lot of sense, and is the current trajectory for many games-makers including EA and Ubisoft. While EA and Ubisoft indeed make new games, they rely heavily on tactical updates and seasonal events for earnings, especially in titles like Battlefront, Destiny, The Division and Rainbow Six: Siege. Microtransactions, online engagement via multiplayer, and the potential for eSports are the main building blocks for AAA games these days.

As we previously reported, Qualcomm is set to unveil their newest mid-range Snapdragon 660 on May 9th.

The 660 will follow the footsteps of Snapdragon 652, but according to the sources, it will be much closer to their flagship chipset.

Although it won't be built on a 10nm process like Snapdragon 835, but rather 14nm, it will use an octa-core CPU with Kryo 280 cores, the same cores as the 835. The GPU tagged with the SoC should be an Adreno 512.

As we earlier reported, it seems that OnePlus intends to skip the OnePlus 4, since the number 4 is considered unlucky in China, and name their new flagship OnePlus 5.

OppoMart has listed the OnePlus 5 on their website, complete with specs and a price of $449. Since the phone still hasn't been officially unveiled, take this with a grain of salt, but the specs seem to match the previous leaks.

The OnePlus 5 is expected to be powered by Snapdragon 835, and it should come with 6GB of RAM, and 64GB or 128GB of internal storage.

Nothing stays protected forever, and now it looks that hackers have compromised the AACS 2.0 copy protection scheme from the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format after just a year on the market.

According to Torrent Freak, release group UltraHDclub has boasted of released the "First Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc in the NET!", with a 53GB copy of 'The Smurfs 2'. The torrent suggests it is a bit-for-bit copy of a genuine 4K Blu-ray, rather than a recompressed HDMI capture. The AACS 2.0 copy protection scheme is touted as a heavily evolved version of the first iteration found on the Blu-ray format, developed by a collection of industry heavy weights such as Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel. If this is indeed true (and we wouldn't be surprised to have it confirmed), it spells big trouble for the fledgling format.

One of the biggest surprise hits of 2017 would have to be the amazingly fun PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a PC exclusive that hit Steam's Early Access a couple of months ago - and has now reached 2 million copies sold.

Just 72 hours after the game went into Early Access it had made $11 million, but now that 2 million copies have been sold, developer Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene along with publisher and co-developer Bluehole Inc., would be happy. This is why the two are hosting the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Charity Invitational event, with a target of $100,000 to raised for charity.

Considering the game went on Early Access on March 24, the 2 million copies sold milestone is considerable - and even in its Early Access state, it's the most fun I've had in a first-person shooter in a very long time. If you haven't already purchased PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, you really should - and if you have, comment below and tell us what some of your best battle experiences have been so far!

General Motors is playing ahead of the game with its latest expansion into the "freelance mobility economy" with Maven Gig, which lets you rent a vehicle at even a week at a time, and then use it to be an Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Rodie, or GrubHub driver.

The vehicle you get for $229 per week is the Chevy Bolt, an electric vehicle that will let people "get their side hustle on", but don't own a car - I'm loving the side hustle angle, it's very Gary V. GM adds that 43% of America's workforce will be "made up of workers who freelance".

Maven is already providing vehicles for ride sharing use in 11 areas, which cover 9.3 million miles. GM will be able to get more Bolt's onto the roads, and people behind Chevy wheels - with Maven Gig launching in San Diego immediately, and slowly into San Francisco and LA by the end of the year.

Facebook has plenty to smile about for the first 3 months of 2017, with the company releasing their first quarterly earnings for the year.

The social networking giant now has 1.94 billion monthly active users, which is around 300 million more people on Facebook since this time last year. There are now an average of 1.28 billion people who use Facebook each and every day.

On the money side of things, Facebook raked in a sizeable $8 billion in revenue, a 49% increase from the same period of 2016. Facebook made just over $3 billion in net profit, representing a massive 76% increase in profits. Most of this comes from mobile advertising, which represents close to 85% of Facebook's advertising revenue.

Eager not to repeat Dishonored 2's disastrous launch performance on PC, Arkane's new Prey game runs quite smooth on the platform.

Arkane appears to be making good on its promise that Prey will be "really flawless when it ships." According to PC Gamer, Prey has consistently smooth frame rates on specific AMD and NVIDIA cards. Prey is able to hit 1440p 100FPS with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 on a G-Sync enabled monitor at Very High settings, and the game never dropped below 90FPS.

AMD cards should fare well, at least higher cards like the Fury X: Prey ran at 1440p 60FPS at Very High with V-Sync enabled on an AMD Radeon R9 Fury X.

Nintendo recently revealed the New 2DS XL, a $149 handheld that mimics the New 3DS' better processor, games library, and clamshell foldability--all without the gimmicky 3D function. But why would Nintendo reveal this product so close after its new Switch handheld-console hybrid?

If you've read my New 2DS XL article, then you already know why Nintendo announced the handheld, and why the Japanese games-maker isn't giving up on the hardware. But Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime took to TIME to explain the move to everyday fans.

"The Nintendo 2DS really focused on that entry-level gamer, the four-, five-, six-year old that is just getting into gaming, but wants to play Mario Kart, wants to have a Super Mario Bros. experience, wants to play Pokémon," Fils-AIme told TIME. "And we feel with Nintendo 3DS XL at $199 that it's a fully-featured product, that it is, if you will, the Cadillac of handheld gaming. And then we heard from consumers, 'Boy, I wish there was something in between.'"

After launching the F3 Plus back in March, Oppo has launched another 'selfie expert' - the Oppo F3.

The phone is powered by Mediatek MT6750 chipset with octa-core CPU and comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, expandable with a microSD card.

What makes this phone a 'selfie expert' is a dual front camera setup - a 16MP unit with f/2.0 aperture plus an 8MP F/2.4 wide-angle. The rear camera has 13MP.

Valve has made some key changes to Steam's gifting system in an effort to standardize the feature, a move that hurts key resellers like G2A...but also harms overseas gamers.

The major change to Steam's gifting system is that gamers can no longer gift a game to users in other countries if there's a huge price difference between the two regions. For example, games are typically cheaper in the U.S. than in Australia, so many overseas gamers ask their U.S. friends to buy a game at a cheaper price and gift it to them and remunerate the buyer via Paypal. That option is no longer available if the games have a price difference of 10% or more across regions.

This move specifically harms key resellers in two ways. Resellers typically buy tons of games from overseas regions at a discounted rate via sales, and then sell them in other countries for profit via gift codes. Valve no longer allows gifting via email, so you can't send a gift Steam game code to someone via email. Plus Steam now restricts overseas purchases in the aforementioned way.

Sony's new God of War game will likely be a major highlight of its E3 2017 showcase, and we could see the game release this year.

According to a listing found on Portuguese website Gaming Replay, Sony's new Norse-themed God of War game will release on September 14, 2017, just days after Bungie's high-profile Destiny 2 sequel.

We expect God of War to be a huge spectacle of Sony's E3 presence, joining other big games like The Last of Us 2 and the new Spider-Man title.

After launching their latest top-tier chipset in January, Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm is all set to unveil their newest mid-range Snapdragon 660 on May 9th.

The 660 will follow the footsteps of Snapdragon 652, but according to the sources, it will be much closer to their flagship chipset.

Although it won't be built on a 10nm process like Snapdragon 835, but rather 14nm, it will use an octa-core CPU with Kryo 280 cores, the same cores as the 835. The GPU tagged with the SoC should be an Adreno 512.

Back in March, Facebook introduced Reactions for Messenger, and now the company has added ability to respond to Facebook comments with like, love, haha, wow, sad and angry.

"We've heard from people they'd like more ways to show their reaction in conversations on Facebook, so we're rolling out the ability to react to comments," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

It appears that this feature isn't available to everyone yet, but is slowly rolling out globally.

Much like any modern game, Arkane's new Prey game will release with a day-one patch.

Prey's day-one patch isn't so bad and only tallies to 1.3GB in size. But size isn't nearly as important as what it fixes, and according to the patch notes, the update smooths out quite a bit of things including frame rate bugs, audio issues, saving and loading bugs, and other problems across the board.

The patch also addresses NPC interactions and UI, as well as enemy behaviors, powers, player issues, and much more. Since Prey is slated to release this Friday, we thought it pertinent to roll this info out to give gamers a better idea of what to expect from the final game, especially anyone who's interested in the PS4 version.