Latest News - Page 2338

The Division has received a patch for the PS4 Pro version of the game, which will now natively render at 1080p, while the UI will be displayed in 4K.

Ubisoft Massive notes that the improved 1080p resolution will also include better looking shadows and reflections, but it still won't hold a candle to the high-end PC side of things where you can enjoy native 4K resolution, HBAO+, PCSS, HFTS, and every graphical setting maxed out if you have the PC horsepower to handle it.

Also remember, that DX12 support was recently added to The Division for PC gamers.

Crytek has been going through its fair share of problems, with our last story on the company seeing rumors that the gaming studio wasn't paying its staff - and now comes the news that it is shutting down 5 of its studios in South Korea, China, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey.

The reason? Crytek wants to "refocus on its core strengths of developing innovative games and game-development technology". This leaves just two Crytek studios open, with one based on Germany and the other in the Ukraine, with these studios shutting their doors:

Crytek co-founder and Managing Director Avni Yerli said in a press release: "Undergoing such transitions is far from easy, and we'd like to sincerely thank each and every staff member - past and present - for their hard work and commitment to Crytek. These changes are part of the essential steps we are taking to ensure Crytek is a healthy and sustainable business moving forward that can continue to attract and nurture our industry's top talent. The reasons for this have been communicated internally along the way. Our focus now lies entirely on the core strengths that have always defined us - world-class developers, state-of-the-art technology and innovative game development, and we believe that going through this challenging process will make us a more agile, viable, and attractive studio, primed for future success".

HTC just sent out invitations for an event on January 12th. Weird timing considering it's not even a week after CES, but I guess that's just how HTC rolls.

There is absolutely no information of what to expect, and to my email, HTC diplomatically responded with "More information will be revealed in the coming weeks before the announcement."

The invitation has a sign "For U" with HTC's logo where the letter "C" is also highlighted. The first thing that came to my mind is that HTC might unveil something related to Under Armour, a company with whom they already cooperated on some wearables.

Serious Sam has been around for quite some time, but the VR version made this game even more globally recognizable and popular. Created and developed by Croteam, Serious Sam is one of the best VR games I've tried to date. On Steam, Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope has a 9/10 rating with many positive gamer's comments.

Now, Croteam has released Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter on Steam as an Early Access Game, meaning the game isn't complete and could change in the future.

"Croteam's VR division is delighted to present Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter - our first full locomotion campaign game for the VR market, with all the bells and whistles found in regular (a.k.a. non-VR) Serious Sam games", said Croteam.

HMD Global recently launched their first Nokia phone - Nokia 150. However, we are still waiting for the new Nokia-branded Android smartphone, which should be unveiled in February at MWC.

As we previously reported, the smartphone should come in two versions which will differ in display size and the amount of memory.

The new leak shows photos of the upcoming phones and gives us more details about Nokia phones.

Just last week, Facebook introduced a new camera feature in their Messenger that lets you add special effects and art on your photos and videos. Now, they have launched another feature - Group Video Chat in Messenger.

Group Video Chat is rolling out to Android and iOS devices and the desktop version of Messenger, worldwide.

You can see up to six people at a time, but up to 50 people can join in and choose just to listen in and join via voice, or be on camera. Once more than six people are on the call, just the dominant speaker is shown to all participants.

Samsung won't remember this year as a successful one after the Note7 fiasco, but they are already planning their comeback for next year. Recent reports suggest they postponed the Galaxy S8 launch from February to April, and it remains to be seen what will happen with the Note series.

The Note7 was a great phone, there's no doubt about it, but the exploding batteries harmed the brand, and we will see if they will manage to rebuilt the trust with the users. It appears that Samsung will continue their Note line and they are considering LG Chem company to manufacture the batteries for their Note8 and probably other phones launching after that.

This means that the Galaxy Note8 could become the first Samsung phone to pack in an LG-made battery.

Your music preference is your thing; there is no reason to debate the music taste. So, whether you like it or not - Drake made history with his song 'One Dance'.

Billboard announced that Drake became the first artist to reach one billion plays on Spotify for a single track with his song 'One Dance'. The Canadian singer also dominated Apple Music's year-end charts.

The 'One Dance' track was released in April, and it became the most streamed song ever on Spotify.

G.Skill today announced that its high-end TridentZ DDR4 RAM modules will soon be infused with brilliant RGB chromatic hues, culminating in the "world's most revolutionary RGB lighting DDR4 memory kit."

G.Skill's new TridentZ RGB Series features a full-length RGB lightbar fastened to the module's heatspreader that fluxes and wanes in vibrant hues, adding stylish illumination and glows to any high-end rig. The TridentZ RGB modules have color profiles and lighting effects that can be customized and tailor-made to compliment specific builds via software.

These colorful modules rock high-end frequencies of up to DDR4-4266MHz, and feature the same efficient and high-performance specs of the TridentZ lineup that's optimized for extreme overclocking: quality ICs, a customized 10-layer PCB, XMP 2.0 profiles for easy overclocking and BIOS setup.

NVIDIA is wanting to get more people into the PC gaming space, with a tease of something it is calling the PC Gaming Revival Kit - and it includes a graphics card, SSD, PSU, and even a game.

Inside, you'll get an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB graphics card, a 240GB SSD from Corsair, and a 450W semi-modular PSU - as well as a free copy of Gears of War 4. The only thing is, if you purchased all of these products and Gears of War 4 separately, it would be cheaper - NVIDIA is just making it much more convenient to buy the gear in one place, at one time, in a single box.

The upgrade box will cost 399 EUR, which converts to around $415.

Suicide Squad was a mess of a movie, and I doubt it would've been any better in game form - so to read the news from Kotaku that Warner Bros. Montreal have canceled their long-rumored Suicide Squad game, shouldn't come as a surprise.

Kotaku reports: "Executives at Warner Bros. decided to axe the Suicide Squad game earlier this month following a long period of turbulence at WB Montreal, according to three people familiar with the studio. The game, which would star DC Comics' eponymous band of anti-heroes, had been in development for at least two years. Hints of its existence had been floating around for just as long. I've heard it was a co-op game-and that it failed to impress Warner Bros. management during greenlight meetings-but not much else".

WB Montreal are now reportedly focused on their new Batman game that will be centered around Damian Wayne, and for those who don't know who that is, he is the son of Batman and Talia al Ghul - and as Wikipedia points out to me, that makes him the grandson of Batman villian Ra's al Ghul.

DICE is now teasing Battlefield 1's first DLC package 'They Shall Not Pass' with a single teaser image - that you can see below.

EA DICE will release the paid DLC for Battlefield 1 in March 2017, providing at least two new armies in the game - something that will include the French and Russian empire. If you've got Premium pass, then you'll receive two weeks early access to each pack. EA DICE explain:

Battlefield 1 Premium Pass members will be granted two-week early access to each pack, starting with Battlefield 1 They Shall Not Pass in March 2017 that will bring the French army into the battle in multiplayer.

Capcom has unleashed the Resident Evil 7 demo teaser "Beginning Hour" onto Steam, weighing in at just over 3GB - and I've played it. It's awesome, and you need to check it out. As for the PC requirements, here's what you'll need:

MINIMUM:

RECOMMENDED:

Resident Evil 7 has enjoyed a mostly positive buzz throughout 2016, but now we have our hands-on the PC version of the game - at least in its demo form, with some more details on the game now released.

Capcom is tweaking the game as you play, so that your experience is changed depending on how well you're playing Resident Evil 7. This was teased by Resident Evil executive producer Jun Takeuchi in an interview with the Official PlayStation Magazine UK, where he said: "Let's say you're playing a section and you die because you weren't able to react in time. Well, if you die a few times in that particular scene the game will adapt a little bit and bring the difficulty down a touch to give you the opportunity to proceed".

He continued: "But we want to make a game where people don't see dying as a negative thing because it's a horror game. It just isn't like a shooter where dying is a case of losing a life or losing your progress. In a game like this, the fact that something comes out and kills you outright is all part of the horror experience. We're trying to smooth the process of getting back into the game after dying, rather than limit any of the possibility of dying, because making the game too easy would also detract from the horror experience. Survival horror has to have a certain volume of player deaths to occur in order for the horror to be effective; you're scared of the idea that your character died, not of the mechanic of dying".

Arkane has rolled out Dishonored 2's free NewGame+ mode, and rather than just letting you replay the game as either Corvo or Emily, you get to play as both: well, kind of at least.

If you're already beaten Dishonored 2, you'll want to give the game another whirl: trust us. Your NewGame+ playthrough will let you combine both Corvo and Emily's powers together to create some amazing customizable combos.

"Dishonored 2 offers the freedom of choice to play and improvise as you like. With this new mode, combine Empress Emily Kaldwin's abilities with Royal Protector Corvo Attano's signature powers to create any custom combo of multiple powers that you can imagine.

When 'Blade Runner' originally hit cinema screens in 1982, the ambitious sci-fi adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's novel sank under a wave of negative reviews and poor box office However, the intervening years have rehabilitated popular opinion such that its revered as the modern masterpiece that it is, culminating in the 2007 'Final Cut' which allowed Ridley Scott to fix some niggling issues. Now some 35 years later, the film is finally getting a sequel and after watching this first footage - we're pretty damn excited.

'Blade Runner 2049' sees Harrison Ford return as replicant hunter Rick Deckard, alongside Ryan Gosling and Robin Wright. While Ridley Scott won't behind the lens this time around, with 'Sicario', and 'Arrival' director Denis Villeneuve stepping in, he will serve as a producer. Those worried by the potential to screw-up one of the best films of the 20th century shouldn't be overly alarmed - the script written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green has been described by Ford as "the best thing he's ever read".

'Blade Runner 2049' will hit 2D, 3D and IMAX screens worldwide on October 6 2017.

AMD teased their next-generation CPU architecture not too long ago at their annual AMD Tech Summit 2016 event in Sonoma, California - benchmarking the new 8-core/16-thread version of the Summit Ridge platform, better known as Ryzen.

Now we have some new benchmarks that have been leaked, with Cinebench R15 results that pit Ryzen against Intel's new Kaby Lake-based Core i7-7700K processor.

AMD's new Ryzen CPU clocked at 3.4GHz (it will be faster than this when it launches) against the Core i7-7700K, with Ryzen coming out on top - but a fair margin, too. This is to be expected however, as the 7700K is a 4-core/8-thread CPU against the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen CPU.

BioWare is apparently focusing on their efforts on optimizing Mass Effect: Andromeda for PC and Sony's new 4K-ready PlayStation 4 Pro instead of thinking about enhancements on Microsoft's upcoming "monster" native 4K Project Scorpio console.

Although Microsoft's next-generation Project Scorpio Xbox console will release in holiday 2017 and deliver 6TFLOPs of performance to usher in a "new era of 4K gaming," devs like BioWare haven't even begun the planning process for game upgrades and enhancements on the console.

That could signify something specific: Project Scorpio devkits aren't ready because AMD has yet to ship its Zen CPU and Vega GPU Raven Ridge APU combo that should power Project Scorpio, or it might mean that Microsoft isn't handing out scaled emulation devkits to anyone outside of its first-party studios.

Just days before Christmas, the upcoming sequel to the 2014 shoot-em-up 'John Wick' has released a new trailer confirming once again that he's not a man to be messed with.

'John Wick: Chapter 2' features Keanu Reeves reprising his role as the ex-retired hitman, as well as returning allies Ian McShane and John Leguizamo. Ruby Rose joins the cast as a female assassin, while Reeves' 'Matrix' co-star Laurence Fishburne will have a small cameo appearance (presumably not as Morpheus).

John Wick 2' is set to explode into U.S. cinemas on February 10, going up against the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' sequel.

Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid now officially supports Vulkan and OpenGL 4.5 APIs in its new customized OS.

The Khronos Group has certified the Nintendo Switch as conformant to the Vulkan 1.0, OpenGL 4.5 and OpenGL ES 3.2 graphics APIs for modern high-efficiency graphics. The Switch's OS is formally called the "Nintendo OS," and meets the Vulkan CTS 1.0.1.0 requirements.

As NVIDIA officially confirmed the Switch will use a highly customized Tegra processor, possibly a second-gen 20nm Maxwell iteration or a brand new 16nm FinFET Pascal variant, the inclusion of modern API support isn't exactly a surprise. The Nintendo Switch wasn't found conformant to any other Khronos Group APIs, including OpenCL.