Latest News - Page 2370

To no one's surprise, Riot Games' MOBA League of Legends has hit astronomical popularity.

Everyone knows that League of Legends is a celebrated PC game--over the past seven years, the MOBA has risen to become one of the most renown titles in history of the platform (and gaming in general), surpassing Valve's own mega-famous DOTA 2. Riot has become a juggernaut in the industry with an estimated worth of $1 billion. But up until now, we didn't really know just how popular the game was.

Riot Games' co-founders Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck now reveals that League of Legends pulls in roughly over 100 million players each month. "It's hard to parse, but at the end of the day, those things don't even feel real. The coolest thing is actually when we're at the live events and get to meet fans face to face. Only then does it start to feel real. Otherwise, they're just numbers on a screen all over the world,"Beck told Polygon in a recent interview.

Destiny, one of the PS4's best shooters, won't harness the power of Sony's new 4K-ready PlayStation 4 Pro console.

One of the best things that Sony could do to sell PS4 Pro consoles is to work with Bungie to upgrade Destiny to native 60FPS. I could care less about 4K support or HDR, just enable 60FPS and I'll be happy. Destiny is an extremely competent console shooter that clearly carries forth everything Bungie's learned from the Halo series, but there's just one problem: the game is locked at 1080p 30FPS.

Sadly, Bungie has no plans to upgrade the current form of the game, Destiny: Rise of Iron, to enable native 1080p 60FPS on the PS4 Pro. Speaking to Gamespot, Destiny executive producer Scott Taylor said Bungie has no plans to upgrade the game on PS4 Pro right now, but that could change in the future. "No, we're not planning on any support for PS4 Pro. Not for Rise of Iron. Maybe as far as the future, but we have nothing to announce today. But I mean we'll be looking at [PS4 Pro upgrades]."

BioWare and other key EA talent gets lumped together in a new label, complete with new management.

EA has announced its new Worldwide Studios, which groups BioWare, DICE, Maxis, and EA Mobile together. EA CEO Andrew Wilson says that this decision was made in order to "strengthen our studios and technology platform," but I'm a bit concerned about the new chain of command.

Patrick Soderlund will lead EA's Worldwide Studios as the main boss. BioWare now has a very distinct chain of command, and will be led directly by Samantha Ryan, who will oversee the studio above Aaron Flynn, BioWare's current GM. It's true that big publishers always have a very real chain of command, but this move could be problematic for future BioWare games, especially if the bosses clash with one another.

MSI is celebrating its 30th anniversary with the announcement of an exclusive limited edition graphics card, featuring a unique custom-designed EK waterblock and the GeForce GTX 1080 at its core.

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 30th Anniversary graphics card features an exclusive closed loop liquid cooler from EK Water Blocks, with the newly designed EK-XLC Predator 120 All-In-On, with EK Water Blocks' R&D boss Niko Tivar explaining: "EK Water Blocks is very proud to be part of MSI 30 th Anniversary celebration and exclusively for this project, we engineered and designed EK-XLC Predator 120 All-In-On liquid cooler, that is not available anywhere else".

As you can expect, MSI has tweaked the GTX 1080 Anniversary graphics card, with the GPU clocked at 1721/1860MHz for base/boost clocks, respectively. The same 8GB of GDDR5X is found on the card, and cooled by the full cover EK Predator liquid cooler.

NVIDIA is positioning themselves for a huge show at CES 2017, teasing that it will have major announcements on gaming and VR products, as well as the usual development updates in AI and autonomous car technology.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will be on stage for a keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, with NVIDIA teasing: "When Huang takes the stage, you can be sure he'll break news in some of the areas we're focused on: artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, virtual reality, and gaming".

What could NVIDIA unveil? We could expect a big reveal of their next-gen Volta architecture, but I think this is something we'll see at NVIDIA's own GPU Technology Conference later a few months after CES 2017, but what about VR and gaming? NVIDIA could unveil the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, a new Shield, or the Shield VR - which I've been saying for years that NVIDIA is working on a Shield-branded VR headset.

Fans of Cartoon Network's 'Regular Show' will be disappointed with today's news that the upcoming eighth season will be its last.

Variety has confirmed with the network that the show will end early next year, with over 250 episodes under it's belt. Cartoon Network chief content officer Rob Sorcher eulogized the soon-to-disappear show, saying "Our sincere thanks to this talented crew and cast for their incredible dedication, and I'm proud that they all agreed to go up in space together for one hilarious final journey." The creator of the show, and voice artist behind Mortdecai kept it strictly professional stating "Making 'Regular Show' has been so much fun. We got to tell all of the stories we wanted to tell, and making the choice to go out exactly how we want to go out. We're so proud and excited for people to see how we're wrapping things up in a big, big way. We're bringing everything full circle."

'The Regular Show' season eight will premier later this month and run until January 2017, where the series will exhaust the last episodes.

To celebrate next week's release of 'The Angry Birds Movie' on 4K UltraHD, Blu-ray and DVD, we have ten Blu-ray copies to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Home Entertainment.

Why so angry? In the 3D animated comedy, The Angry Birds Movie, we'll finally find out why the birds are so angry. The movie takes us to an island populated entirely by happy, flightless birds - or almost entirely. In this paradise, Red (Jason Sudeikis, We're the Millers, Horrible Bosses), a bird with a temper problem, speedy Chuck (Josh Gad in his first animated role since Frozen), and the volatile Bomb (Danny McBride, This Is the End, Eastbound and Down) have always been outsiders. But when the island is visited by mysterious green piggies, it's up to these unlikely outcasts to figure out what the pigs are up to.

Featuring a hilarious, all-star voice cast that includes Maya Rudolph (Bridesmaids), Bill Hader (Trainwreck), and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), as well as Kate McKinnon (Ghostbusters), Sean Penn (Milk), Tony Hale (Veep, Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele), Hannibal Buress (Broad City), Ike Barinholtz (Sisters), Tituss Burgess (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Jillian Bell (22 Jump Street), Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street), Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black), YouTube stars Smosh (Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla), Latin music sensation Romeo Santos, and country music superstar Blake Shelton, who co-writes and performs the original song "Friends." The film also features brand new music from Demi Lovato, Charli XCX, Matoma, and Steve Aoki.

Crytek seems to be happy about the new PlayStation 4 Pro (check out my rant on that here) and Xbox Scorpio consoles from Sony and Microsoft, respectively, with some new comments on the refreshed consoles where the studio says the additional horsepower helps remove some of the limitations of current-gen consoles.

In a post on Crytek's official blog, Crytek Game Designer Niklas Walenski said that developers are limited to some extent. This limitation is normally due to various hardware limitations in consoles, but the additional horsepower inside of the new PS4 Pro and upcoming Xbox Scorpio will remove some of these limitations.

Walenski said: "We are always limited to some extent in videogame development, and we have to work within certain constraints that are usually related to the power of a system versus what we would like to do. But new hardware inevitably removes some of the limitations. We can create bigger worlds, render much more, and have more complex systems running our ideas".

Apple is pushing out its new iOS 10 update with some users reporting that their iPhones and iPads received over-the-air updates to iOS 10, and have been completely bricked - needing to be restored through iTunes.

Gizmodo reported that there are plenty of Twitter results with people experiencing iOS 10 update problems, where the over-the-air update is causing it, versus updating it over their computers. In a statement to Recode, Apple said that they had found the problem, saying: "We experienced a brief issue with the software update process, affecting a small number of users during the first hour of availability".

Apple continued: "The problem was quickly resolved and we apologise to those customers. Anyone who was affected should connect to iTunes to complete the update or contact AppleCare for help".

A few days ago I sat in front of the camera and talked about Sony's new PlayStation 4 Pro in a FB Live video, and for the first 20 minutes or so, I went on a huge rant about it. I had a few people tell me to make it into a separate video, and here it is.

In the video I point out that Sony Interactive Entertainment's President and CEO Andrew House said: "I saw some data that really influenced me. It suggested that there's a dip mid-console lifecycle where the players who want the very best graphical experience will start to migrate to PC, because that's obviously where it's to be had. We wanted to keep those people within our eco-system by giving them the very best and very highest [performance quality]. So the net result of those thoughts was PlayStation 4 Pro - and, by and large, a graphical approach to game improvement".

Yeah, well I wasn't about to take that lying down. I had a personal rant in the original story, and continued in the FB Live stream from a few days ago. It's truly ridiculous that Sony think a Radeon RX 470 level graphics card inside of a constrained console can pump out 4K games - and that gamers will buy the new PS4 Pro over the PC if they want "the very best graphical experience".

Samsung recently announced a global recall of all Galaxy Note 7 phones cause of its battery issues that already led to some pretty tragic events. A 6-year old boy who burnt his hand while using the Galaxy Note 7 is just one of many reported accidents caused by this phone.

Samsung reacted pretty fast and appealed to all of its customers to return the Note 7. Regardless, some users seem pretty stubborn and are still using potentially harmful devices. To encourage users to return the devices, Samsung now plans to issue a software update for the Galaxy Note 7 that will prevent them for overheating. Their plan is to limit the battery charging to 60 percent which will certainly have an impact on the users.

AP reports that Samsung advertised the patch, which should roll out on September 20th for South Korean users, on the front page of Korean newspaper Seoul Shinmun. It is unclear weather or when the patch will go global.

Actor Jake Lloyd, best known for appearing as the young Anakin Skywalker in 1999's 'Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace' has had a rough few years, which has seen the 27 year old admitted to a South Carolina psychiatric facility.

According to TMZ, the former child actor was arrested last year after leading police on a high-speed chase, driving without a license and resisting arrest, and has been in jail since. But now his mother Lisa has revealed that Jake has since been moved to a psychiatric ward after developing schizophrenia.

Lloyd, who now goes by the last name Broadbant was last seen in the 2005 limited release feature 'Madison', but has reprised his role as Anakin Skywalker in a number of 'Star Wars' video games.

AdBlock Plus has launched its new Acceptable Ads Platform, which acts as an optional filter of sorts to let advertisements show up on specific websites.

The Acceptable Ads Platform is now available in beta form, and is described as "an interactive platform that lets publishers and bloggers choose from a marketplace of pre-whitelisted ads that they can drag and drop onto their sites." According to info from AdBlock Plus, you'll be able to turn off the program at any time: "Users can still turn off the Acceptable Ads feature completely if they choose."

"The Acceptable Ads Platform contains ad placements that abide by the Acceptable Ads criteria for size and labeling; and it allows ads to be positioned only in spots deemed appropriate by the Acceptable Ads rules for ad placement. An intuitive drag-and-drop editor gives publishers the ability to place readymade ads directly onto their site in real-time, and be instantly viewable to millions of Adblock Plus users who have agreed to allow non-intrudisve ads to support their favorite websites," reads a recent ABP press release.

Co-creator of Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft franchises Chris Metzen has retired at age 42. Starting his career as an animator and artist at the then-startup company, he rose the ranks and eventually found himself the senior vice president of story and franchise development.

Metzen says his decision was motivated by a desire to spend more time with his family, including his newborn baby. In a farewell forum post on Battle.net, he speaks fondly of his 22-year history with Blizzard, describing it as "the time of my life" and says his fellow employees were a "second family" (complete with all the ups and downs).

Valve is applying some major changes to Steam's review system in an effort to thwart fraudulent and misleading reviews, and everyday gamers will be affected.

Steam's review system is being overhauled once again, this time to counter the rampant problem of fake reviews. Valve found that developers have been manipulating aggregate review scores of specific games by providing free copies of the games as incentive for favorable feedback--and some devs go so far as to make dummy accounts and redeem their own game codes to write fake positive reviews.

To counter this, Valve has taken a simple approach: if you buy a game outside of Steam or use a free product key provided by a dev, your review will no longer count towards that game's aggregate review score on Steam.

Sony's new 4K-ready PS4 Pro may be a pretty impressive deal at only $399, but that's only half of the equation: to get the most out of the console, Sony wants you to annihilate your bank account with an expensive 60-inch+ 4K HDR UHDTV.

I've been quite vocal on the new PlayStation 4 Pro over the past week or so. I think it represents a tremendous value for what it does, leveraging a Polaris GPU at 4.20 TeraFLOPs to hit up to 1080p 60FPS native gaming and 4K 30FPS with HDR and tons of other graphics/environment settings to boot, all for just $399. But you won't hit the console's full potential unless you grab a 4K TV that's equipped with High Dynamic Range (HDR), and as you'd expect, these TVs are pretty expensive. In fact, Sony wants you to get a 4K HDR TV that's at least 60-inches, so a $399 purchase just turned into a $1,500+ purchase.

"Unofficially, the staff of PlayStation.Blog has observed good results in average living rooms with 4K TVs sized 60'' and up. If you're in the market for a new 4K TV for PS4 Pro, we strongly recommend selecting a model with HDR10 compatibility, which will enable increased image vividness and contrast in HDR10-enabled games and movies," Sony wrote on its official PS4 Pro FAQ.

The collector's edition for Sonic Mania has been revealed, and it's an amazing throwback to Sega's golden days of 16-bit glory.

Nowadays, video game collector's editions are quite dull: we get stickers, patches, artbooks, "lithographs", socks--you name it, and companies have likely thrown it in the box. But Sega's new Sonic Mania collector's edition is something new: it's a retro explosion of radical awesomeness that makes you feel like a kid again.

Following a leak just hours prior, Sega has announced the new Sonic Mania Collector's Edition on PS4, Xbox One and PC, which comes with a 12-inch Sonic replica standing on a Mega Drive that makes the infamous console siren song Sega fans know and love, a download code for the game, and a cartridge affixed with a golden ring that resembles those golden games of yore. And the best part? It only costs $69.99. The worst part? It's only available for North American fans, and won't be coming to Europe.

Pokémon GO fans can now suit up and take their buddy along for the ride with the latest Pokémon system update, allowing users to assign a Pokemon as their buddy as they walk alongside your avatar.

The new feature is available now for Apple and Android users with Niantic's latest update that lets the likes of Pikachu, stand on the ground beside the trainer avatar in the details screen. The cuteness overload factor comes into play after accumulating 10km, the little yellow mon hops onto your shoulder, replicating the bond and friendship that character Ash experienced in the original TV series.

Other Pokémon such as Jigglypuff, Charmander and Evee are amongst the available mon for the update. The advantage of having an active Buddy Pokémon while walking earns candy for that particular species, which can then be used to increase status.

Team Ninja's hard-as-nails action survival game NiOh will launch in February of next year on PS4...but the studio has no plans to bring the game to PC.

At Sony's pre-Tokyo Game Show 2016 extravaganza, Team Ninja finally revealed a concrete release date for their celebrated sadistic samurai slasher NiOh. Sadly the game won't be launching in 2016, and Koei Tecmo has announced that NiOh will instead launch on February 9, 2017 exclusively to the PS4.

The game itself incorporates elements from Ninja Gaiden and Dark Souls while mingling feudal Japan into the mix for some Japanese mythology and mysticism, providing an interesting--if not extremely difficult--mix of gameplay mechanics. After trying out NiOh's early alpha and demo test, I can say without a doubt the game has staggering potential to become one of strongest PS4 exclusives available today: the swordplay is extremely satisfying, and you have a huge array of RPG upgrades and weapons to choose from--all of which have different stances and functions in battle.

For the upcoming release of Battlefield 1, Microsoft has created a new bundle pack for customers purchasing the latest Xbox One S console. The new look is for the Xbox One S (1TB) bundled with Battlefield 1 Special Edition , which is available for pre-order from various game stores, and Microsoft itself.

Gamers wanting to purchase this exclusive model, won't have to wait too long as it will be available 13th October. The Battlefield 1 themed Xbox One S console will be setting gamers back around $449 from the Microsoft store, depending on the region.

One of the biggest changes made is the appearance. The obvious colour difference is in keeping with the army/battle theme from the game. The dark, military green console comes with a matching controller and stand. The bundle pack also includes Battlefield 1 Early Enlister Deluxe Edition, which comes pre-installed on the console. The Deluxe Edition also provides the Hellfighter Pack, Red Baron Pack, Lawrence of Arabia Pack, and a new visual appearance of the Behemoths