Latest News - Page 2288

Seiken Densetsu 3, also known as Secret of Mana 2 here in the West, never released outside of Japan. Fans have been clamoring for a localized re-release of the Super Famicom classic on Nintendo's Virtual Console for quite some time, but it's never happened. Now the official Mana series Twitter account gives us fresh hope.

Secret of Mana 2 was recently shown running on a Nintendo Switch console, teasing Western fans pretty bad. Since the game is a Super Famicom game, this could be the first confirmed Virtual Console title for the Nintendo Switch. Remember that the Switch is region-free, so U.S. and European gamers can download Japanese eShop games and play them as long as their profiles are set to Japan as a region.

However, just because Secret of Mana 2 might show up on the eShop, that doesn't mean it'll be localized for regions outside of Japan--ie no English dubs or subs. But we're hoping against hope that all gamers will be able to experience this Super Famicom classic, especially since it features two-player co-op, which is just absolutely perfect for the Switch's dual JoyCon functionality.

Mass Effect: Andromeda releases tomorrow, but it's already stuttering out of the game (like most modern gamers) with a few performance hiccups. BioWare aims to fix these issues with day one patches and updates...but nothing will fix those wacky faces.

PC gamers are reporting glitches and black screens while playing Mass Effect: Andromeda, even after the supposed day-one update that's included with the Origin trial downloads. As we reported earlier, the Origin Access/EA Access trial of ME: Andromeda comes with the day one patch baked in on PC, so if you downloaded the trial and buy the full game on Origin, you'll be playing with the day one update. So...this should be an entirely separate day one update considering the Origin download should have the day one update already installed. Kind of confusing, right?

The bottom line is this: if you plan to play Mass Effect: Andromeda on PC, make sure you always download the latest game updates. Don't skip them or neglect them as they're apparently needed to make the game function properly in certain instances.

As it catapulting the Polish studio to success, The Witcher series is extremely important for CD Projekt RED, but it's "not all that we have to offer," says CDPR President Adam Kicinski. Cyberpunk 2077 is coming, and it's even bigger than they originally planned.

CD Projekt RED is known for delivering juggernaut AAA games that truly exemplify the pinnacle of games development. Titles like The Witcher 3 are massive in scope, massive in size, and best of all, massive in quality. With its ambitious new sci-fi game Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR plans to top The Witcher 3 in practically every way.

"The success of The Witcher 3 influences our planning. It affects what we have to expect from Cyberpunk 2077," CD Projekt RED's Adam Kicinski said in a recent interview with TVN24 Business World.

CD Projekt RED will apparently have "lots of surprises" in store for us this year by the end of Christmas and the beginning of next year, and they could be Witcher-related--or even better, new Cyberpunk 2077 info.

We know that CDPR is making a new AAA RPG alongside Cyberpunk 2077, but the details are less than scarce. Both the new RPG and Cyberpunk 2077 are planned to release by 2021, and now the Polish blockbuster studio has announced they're ramping up a promotional tour in the United States, Western Europe, and Poland for later this year.

And more importantly, the studio says that The Witcher series isn't dead! Could this new promo tour be for Cyberpunk 2077, or perhaps The Witcher 4?

Stephen Hawking, a well-known English physicist, and cosmologist has announced that he has accepted Sir Richard Branson's invitation to fly to space on board Virgin Galactic's new spacecraft.

In an interview on Monday with the British program Good Morning Britain, Hawking said he's been waiting to visit space for a while.

"My ambition is to fly into space. I thought no one would take me, but Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes", said Hawking.

Samsung's virtual assistant Bixby has been rumored for a while, and now the company has officially announced it.

In the official announcement, InJong Rhee, Executive Vice President, Head of R&D, Software and Services, explained that Samsung wants the machines to adapt to customers, instead of the other way around. He went on the elaborate that the interface of the smartphones has to be natural and intuitive, which will enable users easier usage of the phones. This is where Bixby jumps in.

Rhee explained that completeness means that Bixby will be able to complete a multitude of tasks, meaning that the virtual assistant will be able to do almost anything that the user can do via touch. Context awareness refers to Bixby being able to jump in to assist at any point. The virtual assistant will understand the current context and state of the application and will allow users to carry out the current work-in-progress continuously.

Less than ten days before Samsung will officially launch the Galaxy S8 and S8+, famous leaker Evan Blass has unveiled the European pricing and color options of the devices.

According to Blass, the devices will come in black, gray, and silver. Earlier rumors suggested that the phones would be available in gold and purple, but even if those colors aren't available at the launch, it is possible that Samsung could introduce them in the following months.

As for the pricing, Blass claims that the Galaxy S8 will start at 799 euros (around $860) while the Galaxy S8+ will be priced at 899 euros (around $966).

Last week, HTC teased an "unexpected" announcement. Many jumped to the conclusion thinking that we would see the new HTC 11, but as we reported, the chances of that were almost non-existent.

HTC has announced their surprise today, and it may leave some a bit...disappointed. The Taiwanese company has unveiled a limited edition of the U Ultra with a sapphire glass screen, something that they had already mentioned in the past.

The limited edition also comes with 128GB of internal storage.

Qualcomm recently announced a major strategy shift with its Snapdragon branding, and we're seeing the first results of those big changes with the new Qualcomm 205 Mobile Platform.

The new Qualcomm 205 Mobile Platform is designed to deliver 4G connectivity and 4G services to entry-level feature phones, yeah - not smartphones, but the more basic handsets. The new Qualcomm 205 Mobile Platform is powered by the Qualcomm 205 (which you'll now notice it's not Snapdragon, but Qualcomm 205) - featuring 4G baseband, RF front end, Wi-Fi, power management, audio codec, speaker amplifier, and software - all inside of the one chip.

Qualcomm's new processor will provide 4G and other advanced features to emerging markets like India and Southeast Asia - providing 4G technologies and more to small businesses, meaning they can offer tech-based financial transactions in-store. It's something we take for granted, but in emerging markets, Qualcomm can rapidly change the everyday things in India and Asia - thanks to the new Qualcomm 205 Mobile Platform and its entry-level feature phone market.

To celebrate this week's release of 'Underworld: Blood Wars' on Blu-ray and DVD, we have 15 Blu-rays to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment.

The next installment in the blockbuster franchise, UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS follows Vampire death dealer, Selene (Kate Beckinsale) as she fends off brutal attacks from both the Lycan clan and the Vampire faction that betrayed her. With her only allies, David (Theo James) and his father Thomas (Charles Dance), she must stop the eternal war between Lycans and Vampires, even if it means she has to make the ultimate sacrifice.

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

We reported back in January that AMD was gunning after LG, Vizio, MediaTek, and Sigma Designs - but now the US International Trade Commission has agreed to begin an investigation in alleged GPU patent infringement.

The four companies have allegedly used visual processing in their various products, including smartphones, TVs, and mobile processors - that infringe on AMD's concepts for unified graphics shaders and parallel graphics pipelines. If AMD is victorious in the USITC's investigation, it could see product sales bans on LG devices, and Vizio TVs.

Uber has been experiencing some serious issues in the last few months, but now Recode is reporting that Uber President Jeff Jones is leaving his position, just 6 months after joining the ridesharing giant.

Uber has been fighting law enforcement, sexual harassment allegations, one of its self-driving cars running a red light in San Francisco, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick leaving Trump's newly-formed advisory council, and then Kalanick busted raging down one of his own drivers about rumors of reduced income for Uber drivers. This has all happened in the last few months, and it's now reaching boiling point where executives seem to be jumping ship.

And now... Uber President Jeff Jones leaving has an Uber spokesperson saying: "We want to thank Jeff for his six months at the company and wish him all the best". Jones arrived to Uber after leading Target's new business model, and was a big score for Uber. Right now, Uber is in huge trouble - leaving many wondering what their future now holds.

We've been hearing rumbles of the Radeon RX 500 series for a while, but now we're getting more specific news on what GPU the refresh will use. We're still looking at the Polaris GPU architecture, but they're using a new node process, known as 14LPE and 14LPP.

AMD shifting its new Radeon RX 500 series to the 14LPE/14LPP nodes won't be the same as the larger shift from 28nm to 14nm FinFET, but it will be a nice little bump. Inside of the Radeon RX 580, we're now expecting the higher-clocked Polaris 20 XTX GPU, with 2304 stream processors, 144 TMUs, and 32 ROPs with 8GB of GDDR5 RAM at 8Gbps.

We've been hearing rumors of AMD competing in the HEDT space with a monster 32C/64T processor, possibly based on its Naples platform, but now we're hearing more information on Intel's next-gen Xeon E5-2699 v5 processor.

Intel's new Xeon E5-2699 v5 will be based on Skylake-EP, with 32 physical CPU cores, and 64 threads thanks to SMT/Hyper-Threading. Performance wise, expect it to be an absolute monster - with some new technologies being baked into it from Intel.

Chris Roberts teased DX12 support for Star Citizen a while ago now, but after the disappointing DX12 games so far - the developer has changed gears, announcing that it will only focus on using the Vulkan API for Star Citizen.

Cloud Imperium Games' Director of Graphics Programming, Alistair Brown, announced through the official Star Citizen forums that CIG will be pushing Vulkan into Star Citizen, making it the second large AAA game to drop DX12 in favor for Vulkan, the other being DOOM from id Software. Brown explained: "Years ago we stated our intention to support DX12, but since the introduction of Vulkan which has the same feature set and performance advantages this seemed a much more logical rendering API to use as it doesn't force our users to upgrade to Windows 10 and opens the door for a single graphics API that could be used on all Windows 7, 8, 10 & Linux".

He continues: "As a result our current intention is to only support Vulkan and eventually drop support for DX11 as this shouldn't effect any of our backers. DX12 would only be considered if we found it gave us a specific and substantial advantage over Vulkan. The API's really aren't that different though, 95% of the work for these APIs is to change the paradigm of the rendering pipeline, which is the same for both APIs".

HDR monitors are the next big push for 2017, but 4K and HDR? Oh yeah. LG teased its 32-inch 4K HDR-capable 32UD99 monitor previously, but now it is confirming a March 28 release for $999.

The official website for LG's upcoming 32UD99 monitor says it's "coming soon", but a listing on B&H says it's coming on March 28. What should we expect from the 32UD99 other than 4K and HDR? I'm guessing a 60Hz refresh rate, especially for the $999 price - considering ASUS will be launching its 4K HDR-capable G-Sync monitor with its game changing 144Hz refresh tech for north of $1500. Still, 60Hz and HDR is still going to be great for productivity, HDR/4K content, and light gaming.

The official specs are tasty:

AMD has shaken up the consumer CPU market with its new Ryzen processors, led by the Ryzen 7 1800X flagship CPU - offering 8C/16T @ 4GHz for $499. This disrupts Intel's market in a big way, because AMD is offering performance similar to, or better than the Core i7-6900K, a processor that costs $999.

The latest rumor is that AMD is ready to hit Intel in the HEDT market even harder, offering a new 16C/32T processor for the $1000 mark - beating out Intel's current flagship Core i7-6950X, which costs $1600+. AMD would reportedly unveil this new Ryzen CPU behemoth at Computex, in just two months time - while Intel launches its next-gen X399 chipset and new flagship Core i7 processor. The rumor is floating over from the ChipHell forums, picked up by Overclock3D.net.

According to the rumor: "Public knowledge by now but AMD has a new HEDT platform coming out in a couple of months. You'll see more of it at Computex I believe. It's a 16 core /32 Thread, quad channel behemoth. And it is insanely quick in the tests that Ryzen is already excelling at. So Cinebench, and all other related productivity programs. The gaming issues that were causing the Ryzen AM4 CPUs to behave erratically to say the least have been ironed out. It's akin to a newer revision on a newer platform. This should be competing with the Xeon and of course 6950X Intel offers for $1700~$1800USD, but at about $1,000 USD if not less for some Skews. Coming soon".

If you've played the Mass Effect: Andromeda 10-hour trial on PC or Xbox One, then you have a pretty good idea of how it'll play when it finally ships.

via GIPHY

EVGA has revealed its powerful new 17-inch gaming laptop in the SC17 1070, which is powered by Intel's previous generation Core i7-6820HK processor, but NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card.

Inside, we are also joined with 32GB of RAM, a 256GB M.2-based NVMe SSD, and a 2.5-inch larger 1TB HDD. EVGA has also included Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 2 x USB 2.0 ports joined by a USB 3.1 Type-C port.

EVGA also says it has tweaked the hell out of the features on its SC17 1070, with the company giving the laptop a "full BIOS" implementation of overclocking abilities. If you push your EVGA SC17 1070 too far, there's even a hardware clear CMOS button that'll return you to factory defaults. EVGA also claims the SC17 1070 is bloatware-free, which is a great thing to see.

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