Latest News - Page 2323

343 Industries, the dev team responsible for the Halo franchise, has just lost one of its key guiding forces. Would this high-ranking exec jump ship mid-project, or does this departure signal that Halo 6, 343i's next major triple-A Halo game, is already finished and ready for a release on Microsoft's next-gen Project Scorpio console?

Project Scorpio needs a big hit game to compliment it's release. I've talked about the system's sparse launch lineup, and I still contend that Microsoft has some surprises in store for us...and based off of recent news, I think that Halo 6 will be a launch game on Microsoft's "monster" 4K-ready Project Scorpio console. Why do I think this? It all has to do with the departure of Matt McCloskey, 343 Industries ex-Chief Operating Officer.

Matt McCloskey just left 343 Industries to join Twitch as vice president of commerce. According to his LinkedIn profile, McCloskey was a huge transformative force for the Halo series.

Foldable phones are coming: LG will roll out flexible OLED panels to use in its next-generation phones, and Samsung will follow suit with its own foldable phone. Now it looks like Microsoft wants in on the action: Redmond has filed a patent for a very unique transforming foldable mobile device.

We've seen Microsoft's Surface lineup meld ultrabooks and desktops with the Surface Book, and now it looks like the company will use flexible displays to make a mobile phone that transforms into a tablet. The company has filed a patent for a very specific foldable phone that can essentially swap between a tablet and a phone at will.

According to the patents, the device can fold in half longways like a piece of paper via a special hinge on the underside. It's two halves can be laid flat to make a larger display to simulate a tablet mode, and then fold in half to simulate a mobile phone. The patent also shows a three-sided triangular form factor which uses three displays, hinting Microsoft has a ton of different ideas about this technology.

Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid is about a core concept: being able to take the system anywhere on-the-go and being able to play with anyone you meet.

The Nintendo Switch is a revolutionary system. It combines multiple facets of gaming--mobile, handheld and console gaming--together in a tightly scaled ecosystem that easily swaps between multiple form factors. It can be taken on-the-go as a handheld, or docked in TV Mode for traditional console play. But it also does something more, something that will make it a sure-fire success: the Switch's detachable controllers make it a portable two-player arcade machine, essentially making it more accessible than most products out there today.

In the past, gamers could only play together on Nintendo's handheld hardware by swapping said hardware or if two players both owned the systems. The Switch changes all that; gamers can detach the JoyCons and hand one to a friend in Tabletop Mode.

Valve co-founder and current bigwig Gabe Newell (GabeN) will be holding an official Ask Me Anything session on The GabeN Subreddit tomorrow at 3PM PST/ 6PM EST.

GabeN may address the recent interview with an anonymous Valve employee that declared "Half-Life 3 is dead and never existed".

I'm sure Gabe will be absolutely flooded with questions about Half-Life and whether or not Valve is still a games developer or not, but that doesn't mean we'll get official answers. All we know is that Gabe will indeed show up, it'll really be him, and he'll answer a few questions. With any luck, we'll drop some huge bombs on the PC gaming community...but don't be surprised if he avoids 99% of Half-Life 3 questions.

The Nintendo Switch's included JoyCon Grip accessory recharge your JoyCon controllers--you'll have to shell out another $30 for that extra bit of convenience. This poses some problems for console-owners, and will lead to interrupted play in TV Mode--and here's why.

Nintendo's new Switch console has two different kinds of JoyCon Grip accessories: the stock JoyCon Grip that comes in the box with the Switch that doesn't recharge your JoyPads, and the JoyCon Charging Grip, a $30 peripheral that recharges the JoyCon Grips as you play.

Eurogamer reports that the basic JoyCon Grip that comes with the Switch won't have an internal battery nor a USB Type-C port to recharge your JoyCons, and we've corroborated that information via the official Nintendo Switch Fact Sheet that I've included below.

Samsung will reportedly launch their flagship in April, but there are already many rumors and leaks suggesting what should we expect from the Galaxy S8.

The newest leak shows a beautiful edge-to-edge display and no physical buttons on the device which could mean that Samsung has removed the physical home button and flanking touch buttons, pushing the fingerprint sensor into the display itself.

There were also rumors that Samsung plans to remove the headphone jack. However, the newest rumors from Sammobile and Android Police suggest that Samsung might stick with the headphone jack after all. That decision shouldn't surprise anyone since the users reacted pretty strongly when Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 and this feature is one of the advantages of the Korean company.

HTC unveiled their latest smartphones last week, the U Play and U Ultra, but there is more to come.

While we are still waiting for the worthy successor of the HTC 10, which may or may not be named the HTC 11, the President of the Smartphone and Connected Devices Business Chialin Chang said in an interview that the company is aiming to launch half as many smartphones this year than they did last year.

Chang explained that the company wants to focus on quality instead of quantity and that their main focus is "smartphones' core features."

Croatian Rimac Automobili has already shown their supremacy against Ferrari's LaFerrari, but now they have decided to show what the electric Concept One can do against a Bugatti Veyron, which is still considered the world's fastest production car.

The race took place in Croatia, near the Rimac factory and although the Veyron has 1200 HP and can go up to 431 km/h (268 mph), the Concept One won.

The weather conditions weren't exactly perfect since it was -5 C, so the Bugatti had a hard time to launch properly, and the Concept One was at 20% battery State of Charge, so it didn't have full power available.

After the tragic death of 'Star Wars' star Carrie Fisher last month, Lucasfilm CEO Kathy Kennedy and Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow met for high level talks to discuss the plans for the upcoming film. While leaks suggested that the company was making initial contact with Fisher's estate to potentially return the actress to the screen, following the precedent set by 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story', which resurrected Peter Cushing (and a 19 year old Carrie Fisher) with CG magic, but the studio has confirmed that no such plans current exist.

In a statement, Lucasfilm said that "We want to assure our fans that Lucasfilm has no plans to digitally recreate Carrie Fisher's performance as Princess or General Leia Organa." The studio stopped short of providing any further details. Prior to her death, Fisher had completed principal photography for Episode 8, but had not filmed scenes for the 2019 finale.

The as-yet untitled Episode 8 hits theatres in December 2017.

To celebrate this week's release of 'Pete's Dragon' on Blu-ray and DVD, we have 10 Blu-rays to give away thanks to our friends at Disney Home Entertainment.

Some secrets are too big to keep.

For years, old wood carver Mr. Meacham (Robert Redford) has delighted local children with his tales of the fierce dragon that resides deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. To his daughter, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), who works as a forest ranger, these stories are little more than tall tales...until she meets Pete (Oakes Fegley). Pete is a mysterious 10-year-old with no family and no home who claims to live in the woods with a giant, green dragon named Elliot. And from Pete's descriptions, Elliot seems remarkably similar to the dragon from Mr. Meacham's stories. With the help of Natalie (Oona Laurence), an 11-year-old girl whose father Jack (Wes Bentley) owns the local timber mill, Grace sets out to determine where Pete came from, where he belongs, and the truth about this dragon.

Nintendo's brand new Switch handheld-console hybrid will launch on March 3 with only 11 games, and half of them are Japanese. Is this enough games? Why aren't there more? We put this launch line up into perspective, and talk about why people are upset--but more importantly, we discuss what the Switch actually is and why it's launching with these specific games.

Like the PS4 and Xbox One before them, the Nintendo Switch's launch games are rather...sparse. But the Switch has major advantages those consoles didn't have--unique, innovative hardware, and games that fully leverage said hardware. But gamers are upset, and rightly so.

A huge portion of the rumored games just didn't make an appearance at Nintendo's reveal event...but was that Nintendo's fault, or our own for believing the console would launch with Smash 4, Mother 3 VC, Gamecube Virtual Console support, and a new Monster Hunter game?

The eagerly awaited second season of the acclaimed series 'Stranger Things' is coming up fast, and producer Shawn Levy has given a few hints as to where the show will go next.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Levy, who will also directed a number of the season two episodes has promised that "Season two is bigger and potentially darker in its stakes. The threat, which in Season one was to Will Byers, has grown. That's all I'm going to say! But, I will say Season two has a bigger cast and is definitely loyal to the kind of magical storytelling that we established in the first season. It's character-based and still about our core group of characters."

Joining the 'bigger cast' for the nine episode season are 'Lord of the Rings' star Sean Astin and Paul Reiser, as well as the majority of cast members from the first season. Filming is currently underway for an expected release in the third quarter of this year.

Samsung is months away from launching its new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 edge smartphones, and we're finally seeing some leaks that seem to indicate that the South Korean electronics giant is really pushing towards the edges of the ultimate flagship smartphone.

The new Galaxy S8 looks to feature a beautiful edge-to-edge display that is sure to be the best display ever on a smartphone when Samsung releases its new handsets, with renders of the phone showing we have next to no bezel, and no physical buttons. Yes, that means that Samsung has possibly removed the physical home button and flanking touch buttons, pushing the fingerprint sensor into the display itself.

In the new video for the latest display from Samsung, we're looking at 100% color gamut coverage, and compared to a traditional non-AMOLED display - the results are striking. OLED technology also allows for a much thinner display, thanks to layers of LCD technology that aren't required courtesy of the OLED tech.

President elect Donald Trump was serious when he discussed manufacturing goods in the US, pushing Apple to make the new iPhone into the US - this stirred Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn to think about the prospects of moving its manufacturing to the United States.

Apple suppliers could be in for a big shift, with the Chairman of Softbank group, Masayoshi Son, recently meeting with Trump in New York. Masayoshi Son, whose group has an alliance with Foxconn, promised Trump that they would consider investing in manufacturing goods in the US, to create jobs. There's even been a Sharp executive who spoke with Nikkei Asian review who said that the idea is Mr Son's idea.

Foxconn is thinking of building a manufacturing plant in the US, as the country has a large market for TVs and other consumer electronics - with Foxconn rumored to be considering a huge $8.6 billion investment in US manufacturing.

We've been hearing some big things about Apple's new iPhone, but now there's been a new patent that was picked up by Apple Insider which sees Apple attempting to build a phone that slaps a bunch of OLEDs on a flexible surface, with small gaps between them.

These gaps could be quite useful, as they would let information be transmitted through to a light sensor, or camera that could be placed under the screen - better yet, they could allow for speakers, notification lights, or even a second screen underneath the first display. They could even let a window form that would let you look directly through the phone and into another object, while information is displayed on the screen - something we've heard before.

If Apple were able to push the boundaries this much, it really would be a big deal when it announces the iPhone 8 later this year. We've previously heard that the new iPhone would be a "clear piece of glass" with AI built in, according to nerd mega star Robert Scoble, and it looks like he could be right - which excites me, greatly.

Google it utilizing the near unlimited power of artificial intelligence in order to reduce the amount of data consumed with images online, using new image compressions technology called RAISR (Rapid and Accurate Super Image Resolution).

Google's Alphabet subsidiary has been tapping AI to save data on high-res images, but and it's already here - except, it's limited to Google+ for now. Using the new RAISR technology, up to 75% of mobile data can be saved - all without any change in the image quality. How does RAISR work? The technology takes the image, analyzes it, and creates duplicates of the images using fractions of the pixels from the original image.

The company talked about RAISR in a recent write up, where it explained: "Doing so reduces the data cost of each image by up to 75 percent. The technique is currently being applied to more than a billion images a week, and the company says doing so has reduced users' total bandwidth by about a third".

Nintendo has officially confirmed that its new Switch console-handheld hybrid will support the SDXC specifcation's maximum capacity, meaning memory cards up to 2TB in size will be compatible with the Switch.

The Switch tablet only has 32GB of on board flash memory, and a single game--Zelda: Breath of the Wild to be exact--can take up half of the console's memory. But Nintendo gets around this obvious storage shortage by allowing users to slot in a Micro SDHC or SDXC card to boost storage space. This is a blessing, but it could also end up being a curse for gamers who want max storage--these cards can be pretty expensive, especially the 2TB options that aren't even out yet.

Now Nintendo has given Game Informer an official statement, saying: "Nintendo Switch is compatible with the SDXC standard, which supports up to 2TB. (Note that 2TB cards are not yet on the market, but the system will support them when they are.)"

I was in denial about this particular subject. I thought for sure that Nintendo wouldn't lock online voice chatting on its new Switch console to a smartphone app--I thought it'd be optional, and you'd still be able to hook up your dedicated gaming headset to the Switch's 3.2mm headphone jack while it's docked or in handheld mode and use it to chat. And I was wrong.

As it turns out, the smartphone app is absolutely required for online voice chatting. The app is described as the "Online Lobby and Voice Chat App" and is only accessible by paid subscribers of Nintendo's new online service.

Read Also: Nintendo Switch hardware specs revealed

Now that I'm back home and at my desktop, I'm sinking my teeth into everything GPU related that has happened over the last couple of weeks. First, we've had the official unveiling of the Vega GPU architecture that will be launching in May. Second, leaked decks of AMD's upcoming GPUs have appeared online, teasing Vega 10 and its dual-GPU brother, Vega 20 - and even Navi 10, oh and the dual-GPU version of Navi 10.

If you thought Vega 10 was going to be it, you'll have to wait for the dual-GPU version expected in late-2017 with 1.5x the performance. Right now, Vega 10 will consume around 225W according to the leaked slides and my industry sources. We might see this reduced if AMD keeps its reference card to under 200W, allowing AIB partner cards to clock the hell out of the Vega 10 GPU and leap up to 250-300W.

The dual-Vega 10 graphics card will most likely arrive as a reference only card from AMD, featuring a 300W TDP and dual Vega 10 GPUs. The clocks will be reduced as all dual-GPU cards experience, so we should see it drop from 1465MHz on the estimated GPU clocks of Vega 10, to 1000-1200MHz. This will let the card scale well, to around 1.5x the performance of a single Vega 10 graphics card, while hitting the 300W ceiling on power consumption. I'm expecting a heftier cooler, and 16GB of HBM2 on the dual Vega 10 graphics card.

We expected Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid to at least come packed with a game or two, but the company decided to nix the plans and sell the console separately from all games. Here's why they made that decision.

As a gamer, I always love it when console-makers give me a free game when I buy a system. This practice has certainly been culled since the NES days of yore, but Nintendo has somewhat kept it alive--during the Wii golden era, every console came with a free copy of Wii Sports, a game that totally exemplified and showcased the system's unique motion controls. The Nintendo Switch is very much like its past systems, including the Wii with its motion-controlled JoyCons, but 1-2 Switch, which is basically the Switch's own Wii Sports, doesn't come with the console. But why?

As Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told GameSpot, Nintendo had to cut any pack-in games to ensure the Switch kept its $299 launch price.