Latest News - Page 2381

Apple changed the entire technology industry with the release of the original iPhone, and then plotted along with some good upgrades through to the iPhone 4, which did it again. Since then, Apple has been behind - and falling more and more behind to the likes of Google's new Pixel smartphone, and Samsung's various, and sometimes explosive, smartphones.

According to Robert Scoble, an entrepreneur and the co-founder of UploadVR (amongst a truly scroll-worthy list of achievements, partnerships, past employers, startups and more) said on his Facebook page: "Just had a source that I trust tell me it is a clear piece of glass. With the compute in a strip at the bottom". He added that translating this talk of it being an all-glass wonderous next level device into saying that the iPhone 8 does mixed reality, VR, AR and AI.

Scoble's source also talked about Siri, asking him "why did Viv.ai sell to Samsung? I know the founders didn't want to do that". He said that Apple showed the Viv.ai founders their new Siri for "mixed reality", and what Scoble said next put shivers up my spine... adding "and the game was over". Viv.ai sold to Samsung, and Samsung continued on into the Galaxy S7 and Note 7, and eventually whatever phones they released in 2017.

EA DICE has done an amazing job on Battlefield 1, which has some super-engaging multiplayer that we've come to expect, but the single-player is done in a very different way, and it's awesome. How am I playing it so early?

Well, for Origin Access members that pay $6.99 per month (which you can still do right now...) you get early access to certain games, and Battlefield 1 is one of them. You only get 10 hours of play time, but that's enough for some multiplayer battles and a quick squizz at the single-player goodness.

I've captured some gameplay footage from Battlefield 1, cranking along at 4K 60FPS on a single NVIDIA Titan X graphics card. I used my VGA benchmarking machine, so we have:

Square Enix has already confirmed Final Fantasy VII: Remake's combat system won't be ATB-based like the original game, instead favoring a new action-oriented system similar to Final Fantasy 15. Now game director Tetsuya Nomura delivers more details about the remake's combat, promising the team will deliver specifics quite soon.

"The battles in [the FF7 Remake] have greatly changed from the original, since they're something with more action in them," Nomura said in an interview with Japanese publication Dengenki PlayStation.

"The battle system in Final Fantasy VII Remake is so vastly different, so I think we need to communicate very clearly just how exactly battles will work. We're currently in the middle of elevating various aspects up to finished quality."

To the gamers who love to bust a move this one comes fresh off the press! The latest announcement for Ubisoft's 'Just Dance 2017' is the unveiling of the brand new song line-up featuring numerous genres and eras of music like never before.

The base game soundtrack will contain 40 songs including smash hits by artists: Queen, Maroon 5, Sia, Justin Bieber, Beyonce and much more. This makes the track list one of the most diverse line-ups for the game with over 200 songs in total with the addition of 'Just Dance Unlimited.'

Gamers who have already subscribed to the Ubisoft service will be happy to know that the company will be continuing its exclusive content and tracks throughout the year via the Unlimited offer. Though this will only be available for current generation consoles, so Xbox 360 and PS3 players will unfortunately, miss out on the extra content. Customers who have registered or are considering will receive a free 3-month subscription to Unlimited for only $5 a month. A pretty cheap way to work out those dance moves.

Video games are one of the most popular forms of entertainment today, they have become a real competitive sport, and the gaming industry is generating billions of dollars. The "boom" of video games started decades ago. Pong and other early arcade games have shown that there is interest in the market for this type of entertainment, which prompted the engineers to develop home gaming devices.

Although it wasn't the first, the Atari VCS/2600 is one of the consoles which popularized home video game consoles and helped cement the video game movement into mainstream culture. It was released on this day, October 14, 1977 as one of the first second-generation consoles in North America, but it took two years for Atari 2600 to become popular in the market.

By 1979, the VCS was the best-selling Christmas gift (and console), due to its exclusive content, and 1 million units were sold that year. Atari Inc. then licensed the smash arcade hit Space Invaders, which greatly increased the unit's popularity when it was released in January 1980, doubling sales to over 2 million units.

The Hubble Space Telescope is being credited for yet another major discovery. Using the data from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have performed to this day the most accurate census of the number of galaxies in the universe. And they came to a remarkable conclusion.

According to the new information, there are at least ten times as many galaxies in the observable universe as previously thought.

The observable universe consists of the galaxies and other matter that can, in principle, be observed from Earth at the present time. The first real insight in the number of galaxies in the observable universe came in the 1990s when it has been estimated that there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies. New data shows the number is at least ten times higher.

A base on the Moon is many scientists' dream because it would set a new milestone in space exploration, but according to new observations from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft that might be much more difficult than previously thought.

According to new data, the Moon experiences a heavier bombardment by small meteoroids than models had previously predicted. By examining the surface of the Moon, scientists have identified about 30 percent more new craters than anticipated by previous cratering models. In addition to discovering new impact craters, the team observed over 47,000 small surface changes, which they call splotches.

They also concluded that 99 percent of the Moon's surface would be overturned by splotch formation after about 81,000 years, which is 100 times faster than previous models that considered overturn from micrometeorite impacts alone, and ignored the effects of secondary impacts.

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg set his goals for this year. One of them was to build an artificial intelligence assistant that can control his home and help with work, something like J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System), Tony Stark's assistant in Iron Man.

Not even two months ago, Zuckerberg commented he is making significant progress, and his AI assistant is already helping him around the house. He described how he could control the temperature, lights, and gate by his voice.

Now, Zuckerberg is ready to give his AI assistant a voice, and he is asking everyone to help out and suggest who's voice should he use. In the films, Jarvis is voiced by an actor Paul Bettany, which is one of the suggestions Zuckerberg got on his Facebook status where he asked for help.

The gadget surgeons over at iFixit have wasted no time in delving in the guts of Sony's new PlayStation VR headset, slicing open every little nook and cranny to show off its high-tech innards.

Starting at $399, Sony's PSVR has successfully ushered accessible virtual reality hardware in the mainstream market. Now that the headset is out in the wild, it's time to crack it open and see how its internals fare, and how easy it is to repair.

According to iFixit's official PSVR teardown, headset repairs are actually pretty straightforward: the PSVR received a lofty 8 out of 10 in the ease of repairability scale.

Sony's new PlayStation VR headset is already making a profit for the Japanese console-maker, and could end up being a huge success for virtual reality accessibility and the PlayStation brand.

"We're making money on the VR console," President of Sony Interactive Entertainment America Shawn Layden told Polygon. Seeing as stock for the new PSVR headset has been flying off the shelves, with many retailers selling out both the limited $399 headset-only SKU and the $499 all-in-one bundle, it's not surprising that Sony is already raking in cash from their virtual reality gambit.

Sony president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Jim Ryan echoed this sentiment, saying that consumers are "significantly interested" in the PSVR headset, with launch sales projected to hit "many hundreds of thousands."

Nintendo will finally unveil its new NX platform, possibly called Nintendo Duo, sometime next week according to financial investment firm Macquarie Group.

Nintendo is fast running out of time to reveal its purported handheld-console hybrid NX system, but key industry players predict a full-on NX debut is coming quite soon.

The popular consensus is that Nintendo will show off the NX sometime in late October, possibly on October 21, as the Japanese console-maker has a long tradition of big Nintendo Direct reveals during the Fall month. A Nintendo Direct announcement would be the fifth anniversary for the series, and coincide with four years of big first-party announcements.

Windows 10's Xbox Game DVR is crippling performance in games like DOTA 2, and Valve has responded.

Valve has acknowledged that the Xbox Game DVR is causing a number of issues in DOTA 2, including dramatic frame rate drops, crashes, freezing and other hiccups. Now Valve has added an in-game prompt that warns gamers about the Xbox DVR's performance hitches, and even goes so far as to show players how to disable the recorder.

The warning prompt reads: "Your operating system has Xbox Game DVR enabled which has been reported to cause performance problems in games, such as reduced or capped FPS, crashing, or freezing. Would you l ike to learn how Xbox Game DVR can be disabled on your system?"

The teaser for the 'John Wick' sequel got fans all excited earlier this week, and it looks like there's even more revenge planned after that!

Speaking to Collider, Director Chad Stahelski confirmed that talks were underway for a third film which would see 'John Wick' expanded into a trilogy. "The studio has asked us to put our heads together and see if we can come up with something. Winston's [McShane] is a big part of the next one, so is Lance Reddick. We've got some ideas." It seems the crew had no shaortage of ideas for the upcoming sequel either "When it came to coming up with a story idea, we had like ten bad ideas, and they we were like, 'f--k it,' what would have just happened the next day? Once we stopped worrying about ourselves, it was fun".

The upcoming 'John Wick: Chapter 2' sees Keanu Reeves reprise his role as the titular hard ass ex-retired hitman, alongside allies Ian McShane and John Leguizamo, with Ruby Rose taking up the mantle as the female villain. The film will hit cinemas in February 2017.

After rumors that NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics cards were imminent, we can now see this as virtually confirmed - as there are now AIB partners with cards in the wild.

GIGABYTE has teased its got 'something for everyone' and that it's 'coming soon...' without teasing too much - we know it's the GTX 1050 Ti. GIGABYTE's purported GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Xtreme should feature a factory overclock and by the looks of things, the same cooling solution found on their GTX 950 graphics card.

ASUS and GIGABYTE branded GTX 1050 Ti cards have been spotted, with the ASUS Expedition GeForce GTX 1050 Ti rocking a dual-fan cooler, with it looking like a more basic ROG style cooler. The new card features 4GB of GDDR5, but ASUS will also reportedly be launching a GTX 1050 Ti Strix card as well, with an overclocked GPU and higher-end cooler. It seems as though the new Expedition series could be the new mainstream products from ASUS, while Strix continues soldiering on as their premium label.

Battlefield 1 is one of the most gorgeous games ever made, but it's also super fun - and most important of all, fresh. It's not 'yet another Battlefield shooter', as there seems to be enough new from my couple of hours with it so far that it feels different.

So different in fact, that you get the chance to play as a pigeon - and we're not joking at all. During the single player mission which recounts the 1918 Battle of Cambrai, you're looking through the perspective of chauffeur turned tank operator, Edwards. Edwards drives the tank towards Cambrai, destroying field gun positions before getting stuck in the mud. Once the enemy surrounds you, the crew release a messenger pigeon to signal for help - which is something that happened during the early wars.

You get to control the pigeon for a little while, soaring over the battlefield which as Kotaku explains 'gives a very stark sense of the war's scale', with trenches and scorched earth for as far as you can see. Battlefield 1 has been depicting the war in a way we've never seen before, and with touches like this - you have to commend them.

GIGABYTE has been nailing its GeForce GTX 1080 graphics cards, with my review on their GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming leaving me very impressed, but now they've gone and gotten me interested in their beasty new GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming Waterforce WB graphics card. Their new card rocks a fully custom waterblock, which should allow for some serious overclocks.

The new watercooled GTX 1080 from GIGABYTE rocks base and boost GPU clocks of 1759MHz and 1898MHz, respectively - but there is an OC mode as well which bumps the GPU clocks up to 1784MHz and 1936MHz for base and boost, respectively. GIGABYTE has a custom GTX 1080 capable of 2000MHz+ on the GPU, packing a 12+2 phase power design, with GIGABYTE using the same capacitors and chokes that NVIDIA used on its new Titan X.

It's a great looking card as well, with GIGABYTE outfitting it with LEDs that will look great once water is pumping at the top of it, and 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

Shadow Warrior was a more quotable game than Duke Nukem 3D for me, with Wang being a super-crass 'hero' that was just an awesomely fun game to play - both in singleplayer, and multiplayer where things used to get heated back when I played the game on a LAN with friends.

Well, developer Flying Wild Hog has gone the whole hog with Shadow Warrior 2, which is now out on the PC. Shadow Warrior 2 features open-ended levels that can be explored in detail, as well as the ability to double jump and climb walls. There are story-related missions as well as randomly generated missions, with different enemy placement and weather conditions. This means that replayability should be pretty high, which is something we don't see much of in single-player games these days.

Better yet, is that Flying Wild Hog has used a procedural damage system in Shadow Warrior 2 that lets you cut, or blow off enemy parts or limbs - depending on the weapon and playstyle used. In a throwback to the 90s, the developer has included cooperative play which allows you and up to 3 friends play the single-player campaign together.

Out of all the Xbox 360 games that have yet to arrive on Xbox One's backward compatibility, gamers have rallied behind a single title: Black Ops II. But Microsoft doesn't call the shots, and it's ultimately up to publishers whether or not the game gets backward compatibility support or not.

That's what Xbox division head Phil Spencer said in a recent Tweet. When asked for the probably millionth time if Black Ops II would ever come to Xbox One BC, Spencer replied by saying he eventually wants the full Xbox 360 games library available on Xbox One via the BC program, but publishers make the call.

"I like the progress on backward compatibility. We'd like to have all [games included] and work on third-party games is always a partnership with publisher."

To celebrate Ubisoft's 30th anniversary, the Ubisoft Club has been offering one special game to registered users each month, starting back in June this year. The games are kept anonymous until the date of release when the titles then become available to keep.

Ubisoft has recently revealed for the month of October, the classic action-adventure game 'Beyond Good & Evil' available in the Uplay game store now. The classic title was originally released back in 2003 for Sony PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, Nintendo GameCube and PC.

Those interested in the game need to if not done so already, you'll need to register for a Uplay account.

A few months ago some of my industry sources said that AMD were working on making its Polaris GPU more efficient, with some magic found in the PCB and power delivery systems - something that was broken when AMD launched the card, with Radeon RX 480s using more power than they should have.

AMD is supposedly tweaking their latest revisions to Polaris 10 and Polaris 11, with over 50% more performance per watt, which would really help the Radeon RX 480 and Radeon RX 470 stand out more than they do now.

We recently tested AMD's Radeon RX 480 in Gears of War 4 running on DX12 at a crazy 8K (7860 x 4320) resolution, and it still offers half the performance of the Titan X which costs $1199, while the RX 480 sits at $279. The Titan X is 91% more powerful, but costs 344% more money - this comes down to AMD's excellent DX12 capabilities and efficiency with Asynchronous Compute on the Polaris architecture.