Latest News - Page 2372

We've been bombarded with teases of Nintendo's next-gen Switch console, but we don't know much about the launch, its games that are in development, or the pricing on the codename NX console that is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra processor.

Nintendo has now announced it will be livestreaming an event for Switch on January 12, 2017 - with Nintendo saying in its press release: "This will be an event for invited media, financial analysts, and trade partners in Tokyo that will be globally livestreamed on Jan. 12, U.S. time. The presentation will include the launch date and pricing for Nintendo Switch, as well as a look at the lineup of games currently in development".

Nintendo will be providing an exact start time "in the coming weeks" for the event, but it will be hosting Switch "sampling events" for media, partners, and consumers in the US and Europe at later dates. Nintendo added: "There will be opportunities for the public to participate in other hands-on events around the same time, details of which will be announced later".

The surprise inclusion of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray playback on the Xbox One S which effectively made it the cheapest 4K player on the market was lauded by gamers and video geeks alike, but when the console came to market it quickly became clear that it wasn't quite as proficient as a stand-alone player. The lack of support for bitstream audio means that the console doesn't quite meet the full spec, making immersive audio standards such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X not possible. But in the case of the former at least, Microsoft is promising an upcoming fix.

According to Engadget, the company has committed to providing owners with a free update to enable bitstream audio from the HDMI port "sometime in the future". Of course, to get the full benefit you're also going to need a reciever that supports Dolby Atmos, as well as at least another two height speakers, but the company's promise will be welcomed by audio fanatics.

As a PS4 owner, I can attest to the console's heat, and how it can get pretty toasty while playing a game for an hour or so. But what happens when you slap a watercooler onto the APU?

Linus Tech Tips aimed to find out, and succeeded by making a highly-customized watercooled PS4. And just because they can, they threw in a $2,000 3.84 TB Samsung PM863 SSD to tally up the console's total worth to an insane $3,000, making it "possibly the most expensive PlayStation 4 ever." Yes, really.

The insanely expensive, ultra-cool PS4 actually has an entirely separate chassis to hold the radiator, pump and reservoir, making an external water cooling box. So how what kind of temps does a watercooled PS4 hit?

Disney/Pixar's announcement that a fourth 'Toy Story' film would be released in 2017 was met with equal measures of curiosity and trepidation after the pitch-perfect 'Toy Story 3' seemed to round out the franchise perfectly. Last year's delay to 2018 suggested that perhaps development on the film wasn't going to plan and today the studio has announced yet another delay for the film.

According to Variety, Disney/Pixar has switched the dates for the upcoming 'Incredibles 2', which was due for release in 2019, for 'Toy Story 4' which was due in 2018. The sequel to the 2004 Brad Bird superhero comedy will now go head-to-head with 'Transformers 6' and 'Jurassic World 2' during the 2018 summer blockbuster series.

'Toy Story 4' will now hit cinemas worldwide on June 21, 2019 - unless it's delayed again.

UPDATE: Nintendo has announced that it will reveal Switch pricing, specs, and more during a special presentation on January 12, 2017.

Nintendo has also confirmed that the Switch will have special hands-on preview events for the public and media across the United States and Europe:

"Kimishima also announced that Nintendo Switch sampling events for invited media, partners, and consumers will take place in the U.S. and Europe after the presentation at later dates. There will be opportunities for the public to participate in other hands-on events around the same time, details of which will be announced later," reads the press release announcement.

Nintendo projects to sell at least 2 million Switch consoles on the system's launch in March 2017.

Nintendo today held its latest investor relations meeting, laying out financial forecasts for the last quarter of FY 2016, which ends in March 2017 and coincides with the launch of its new Switch handheld-console hybrid. According to Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima noted at the IR meeting that the company expects to sell 2 million Switch consoles by the end of FY2017.

The company has already confirmed it won't reveal Switch pricing info until 2017, meaning it will only have three months to accrue pre-orders and launch sales totaling up to 2 million units.

Microsoft is pushing for more sales of its Xbox One S console, offering a bunch of bundles and other deals that include 3 months of Xbox Live Gold membership.

Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb , announced that for every Xbox One S sold between now and October 29, Microsoft will be adding in a three-month Xbox Live Gold membership free of charge with each purchase.

It gets better! Up until November 11, customers who don't want the membership have the option to switch and receive a $20 discount off Gears of War 4 instead.

At its Windows 10 event, Microsoft today announced a partnership with third-party tech giants to make cheap and accessible VR headsets. Could this be the starting point for VR gaming integration on Microsoft's new 4K-ready Project Scorpio Xbox console?

Microsoft is currently taking the initial steps to plot out VR support for its upcoming "monster" Project Scorpio console, which will support VR gaming experiences. We originally predicted that Microsoft's Project Scorpio would be compatible with the Oculus Rift headset for VR gaming, especially given the company's partnership with Oculus.

But now it looks like Microsoft could be going off on a tangent, and laying out plans to have another hardware giant build its VR headset. At the very least, though, Redmond is laying out the underlying software that will bind Project Scorpio's VR headset together with the Universal Windows Platform, and its Augmented Reality HoloLens will be along for the ride.

Microsoft has announced they are partnering with top PC makers, such as HP, Lenovo, Dell, ASUS, and Acer, to build VR headsets. Although some of the listed companies have made their VR devices, none of them is a major player in the virtual reality are, where the market is run by HTC's Vive, Facebook's Oculus Rift, Samsung's Gear VR and Sony's PS4-powered PlayStation VR. Interestingly, Microsoft worked closely with Oculus in the past, but that company isn't listed as one of Microsoft's partners for the new VR headsets.

Microsoft was a bit stingy with the information regarding their new VR headsets, but we do now the VR headsets' prices will start at $299, and they will come to the market in 2017. The headsets will ship with 6-degrees of freedom sensors, which also includes inside-out tracking.

The headsets will work on Windows 10's Creators' Update, coming in early 2017. This free update will bring a lot of 3D features and represents companies push into augmented and virtual reality.

The World of Warcraft patch 7.1, Return to Karazhan, is now live! The patch is bringing back the iconic Karazhan, initially introduced as a ten-player raid instance in the Burning Crusade expansion, in the form of mythic five-man dungeon. The players will have to face eight bosses in Karazhan, on a mythic difficulty, so don't expect it to be easy.

The new patch also introduces a new raid, Trial of Valor, which has three bosses - Odyn, Guarm, and Helya. The raid itself will be available shortly after the launch of Patch 7.1.

The Patch 7.1 also brings new world quests, a new world event - Alcaz Isle, new battle pets inspired by Wrath of the Lich King raid bosses and much more.

Microsoft today revealed the Surface Studio, an ultra-thin transforming all-in-one aimed at transforming your desk into a fully-fledged workstation studio.

As we reported, Microsoft's new transforming all-in-one is called the Surface Studio, and is aimed at 3D artists and businesspeople who need a sleek, versatile and powerful PC.

The Surface Studio is incredibly thin and flexible, and sports a forge aluminum body. Apart from its power, the all-in-one's selling point is its unique transforming display, which can mold into a number of different form factors including a traditional PC setup to a slanted artist's canvas or even completely flat like a tablet. The Surface Studio is stationary, however, unlike the Surface Book.

After much want and discussion by players, Blizzard has listened with the announcement of the reward system for World of Warcraft, with a new update coming to us in just a few days.

Starting next week the PvP mode will become more interesting, as Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan, introduces new Battlegrounds, Skirmishes, Arenas and featured extras such as weapons and equipment. Between increased Artifact Power, First Victory of the Day bonus and story modes, which have all been updated for better gameplay, it's no wonder that WoW gamers are excited.

The official World of Warcraft patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan will be released on October 25th for the US and 26th in Australia. For further information log onto the official World of Warcraft website to find out more.

According to the newest report from IDC, the worldwide smartwatch market experienced a round of growing pains in the third quarter of 2016, resulting in a "year-over-year decline in shipment volumes." To put that in numbers, the sales dropped by 51.6 percent, aka from 5.6 million sold last year in this quarter to 2.7 million this year.

It is noted that Apple had the biggest drop - almost 72 percent, although they still maintained their position as the overall leader of the worldwide smartwatch market. Interestingly, the highest growth among the leading companies was Garmin, who has tripled its sales to 600,000 watches in 3Q 2016.

However, we also have to have in mind that last year we had more new smartwatches in the market. In the Q3 2015, Apple's Watch had widespread retail availability after a limited online launch. Meanwhile, the second generation Apple Watch was only available in the last two weeks of 3Q16. Samsung has yet to release their Gear S3, and Pebble 2 sales started in September.

You better get into all of your games and save them, do your back ups and run into your doomsday bunker - because scientists writing in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific have found unusual signals coming from a group of stars that are "signals probably from extraterrestrial intelligence".

The scientists said that these signals "have exactly the shape of a signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this [extraterrestrial intelligence] hypothesis". Their paper is called "Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars," which talks about their hypothesis that these signals are from some form of ETI, or alien intelligence.

E.F. Borra and E. Trottier, the paper's authors, write: "The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis". They added: "At this stage, this hypothesis needs to be confirmed with further work. Although unlikely, there is also a possibility that the signals are due to highly peculiar chemical compositions in a small fraction of galactic halo stars".

Intel has announced its two new Atom processor lines, with the E3900 series aimed at connected devices and wearables, while the A3900 series is for smart auto apps, reports Engadget.

Intel's new E3900 will be the main member of its IoT products, aimed at applications in many different industries, which is capable of prioritizing which processes to perform itself and which to send over to the datacenter, a strategy that's called fog computing. Intel will have its Atom E3900 series in quad-core form at up to 2.5GHz, and these chips will handle graphics on up to three screens at once.

The A3900 series has Intel aiming at the automotive industry in wide-ranging areas from in-car entertainment, digital instrument clusters, and even advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Intel won't be launching the Atom A3900 series until Q1 2017.

After a pretty successful rollout of uber-fast internet access, Google has announced it has plans to "pause" the expansion of its Fiber rollout into 10 more cities, as well as a 9% cull in Fiber staff.

Google's current Fiber customers will not be affected, but those that were expecting the high-speed Fiber goodness to hit their neighborhood will not want to even read the end of this sentence. The confirmed rollouts in San Francisco, Irvine, Huntsville and San Antonio are all unaffected, but the planned Fiber rollout for Chicago, Dallas, Portland, Tampa and San Diego will have residents disappointed.

The reason behind Google's sudden "pause" in its Fiber rollout? Google said it needed to "stay ahead of the curve" in providing gigabit internet service, with the company recently acquiring high-speed wireless ISP, Webpass. If we end up seeing Google push into providing high-speed internet access wirelessly, it would explain why it stopped the future Fiber rollouts because physical hardware being installed all across the US is expensive compared to a new wireless system.

The ongoing WikiLeaks data dump continues, all without proof of life of Julian Assange after the Ecuadorian embassy had its internet line severed - new information has surfaced on Apple and just how much it cares for its consumers' privacy.

In a purported leaked email from December 2015, Lisa Jackson, Apple's VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives sent an email to John Podesta, the Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign - Lisa said: "Please know that Apple will continue its work with law enforcement. We share law enforcement's concerns about the threat to citizens and we work closely with authorities to comply with legal requests for data that have helped solve complex crimes".

But it was the next paragraph that was highlighted by WikiLeaks, and for good reason: "Thousands of times every month, we give governments information about Apple customers and devices, in response to warrants and other forms of legal process. We have a team that responds to those requests 24 hours a day. Strong encryption does not eliminate Apple's ability to give law enforcement meta-data or any of a number of other very useful categories of data".

ZOTAC has made its VR backpack official during its unveiling event in Hong Kong, announcing the new VR GO backpack, which features an awesome design, more user-friendly functionality, and enough CPU and GPU horsepower to play every VR game on the market.

ZOTAC was showing off the VR backpack at Computex 2016 earlier this year, but it wasn't in its final form. The official VR GO backpack is lighter, more durable, and easier to use - something you can see from ThinkComputers' video above. Inside of ZOTAC's new VR GO backpack is a full NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card, and a hot-swappable battery for longer-lasting VR gaming on-the-go.

Ther's also HDMI and USB ports at the top of the VR GO backpack, so you won't be fumbling down the sides or at the bottom to get your VR headset plugged into it.

ZOTAC has unleashed a plethora of new products to celebrate its 10-year anniversary, with a new GeForce GTX 1080 ArcticStorm and Magnus EN1080 mini-PC - but they also announced the ZOTAC 10 Year Anniversary Special Edition Sonix SSD.

The new ZOTAC Sonix PCIe arrives with a 480GB capacity, 512MB of DDR3 used as DRAM cache, and arrives on the NVMe 1.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and rocks some serious read/write speeds. We're talking about sequential reads of up to 2800MB/sec and writes of up to 1500MB/sec, not bad.

ZOTAC has included LED lighting on the back of the Sonix 480GB PCIe SSD, with a slick black heat shroud that will keep the SSD cool.

ZOTAC held its 10-year anniversary event in Hong Kong over the last 24 hours, where it unveiled a new graphics card that it collaborated with Thermaltake on: the new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 ArcticStorm Thermaltake 10 Year Anniversary Edition graphics card. It comes watercooled with Thermaltake powering the cooling side, and ZOTAC's custom PCB and high overclock goodness we've come to love about their cards.

Well, the exciting new 10-year anniversary celebration included the new ZOTAC Magnus EN1080 10 Year Anniversary Edition mini-PC, which features NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 inside - not bad for something the size of a BRIX or NUC, huh? The rest of the specifications are just as good, delivering desktop gaming PC power inside of something much smaller. The entire system will draw up to 180W, which means this is a portable gaming and productivity powerhouse.

The entire Magnus EN1080 10 Year Anniversary Edition is completely liquid cooled, with ZOTAC's engineers pulling off some magic on the Magnus EN1080 with a "specially designed liquid cooling thermal system" that cools both the CPU and the GPU.