Latest News - Page 2389

We are seeing more and more substantial investment into eSports, with 2016 bringing in some big money and even bigger deals for professional gaming, and now DJ Steve Aoki has invested in Overwatch and CS:GO pro team Rogue.

ESPN first reported on electronic dance music star Steve Aoki announcing at TwitchCon over the weekend that he invested into Rogue, with Aoki explaining: "As many of my fans know, I've been a gamer all my life and have been getting more and more involved in eSports. I can finally take my love for gaming to the next level as an owner of Rogue, the professional esports team. As an avid player of Overwatch, their dominance caught my eye, and after getting to know them, I realized that we shared the same goals and interests in team building and competition".

Aoki will be hands-on with the managerial and brand development of Rogue, with the eSports team only forming in May, getting investment this early and guidance for brand development could be something to keep an eye on.

It has been five years since the world lost one of the most recognizable faces in the world of technology - Steve Jobs. Known as the founder of Apple, Jobs was one of the most influential people in the world of computer and mobile technology. The iPhone isn't just one of the most popular mobile phones, it's also one of the most popular devices of all time.

Together with Steve Wozniak, Jobs made the first home computer - Apple, the same name the duo called its company that became one of the most recognizable brands worldwide. Jobs' charisma and persistence had a lot to do with it.

Jobs began his career as a teenager. He worked at HP and designed video games for Atari. Then he met Wozniak, with whom he made the Apple I. A year later the duo made the Apple II computer that started the revolution in the personal computer industry.

For those who were brave enough to play the original Outlast game, you might be happy to know that the demo for Outlast 2 is here, available on the PC through Steam, and also on the Xbox One and PS4.

Outlast 2 will be arriving in Q1 2017, but the developer is providing a nice surprise for Halloween, with the Outlast 2 demo available through to November 1. Outlast 2 is described as:

Samsung just can't catch a break. After the whole exploding batteries on Galaxy Note7 fiasco and the global recall of the devices, we witnessed many, and I mean many, memes and GIFs making fun of the poor Note7. Clearly, that wasn't enough.

While Samsung is trying to soften the blow, a GTA 5 player HitmanNiko created a mod that replaces the sticky bomb with a Galaxy Note7. As you can see in the video below, the virtual Note7 can cause a lot of damage.

Samsung continued the sale of the Galaxy Note7 in South Korea after a successful exchange program, and other countries will see a relaunch in the upcoming weeks. But now they have a new competitor to worry about - Google's Pixel.

Facebook has introduced Marketplace, an online destination where you can buy and sell items with people in your community, on Monday. However, it didn't take long for the users to start exploiting this tool.

Drugs, animals, sexual favors, weapons and a whole range of forbidden items were listed on Facebook's Marketplace. Those items clearly violate the terms of service.

Mary Ku, Director of Product Management, apologized to the users stating that the technical problem prevented them from recognizing and removing posts that violate the rules.

Fans of TV's 'Archer' got a boost earlier this year after the FX Network greenlit the show for a further three series, but according to creator Adam Reed that's the end of the road.

Speaking on the Murmur podcast, Reed confirmed that "the plan is to end Archer after season 10. I don't know that anybody has talked about that, but that is definitely my plan - to do 8, 9, and 10 and they're gonna be each shorter seasons of just eight episodes - and then wind it up." Still, it's better than the previous plan was going to end much sooner. "I was gonna end it after 8, but then I had sort of a brain explosion of a way that I could do three more seasons and really keep my interest up. So the three seasons that are coming up are gonna be pretty different from what has come before, and they're gonna be different from each other."

'Archer' season eight is set to air early in 2017.

Everyone knows that Disney loves the green back, but news that the studio is moving to remake yet another one of its animated classics is just getting a little too much. Even for me.

According to an announcement by the studio, Disney is set to bring the 1998 animated hit 'Mulan' to the big screen in 2018, with Disney "launching a worldwide casting search for a Chinese actress to play Mulan" (hint: look in China). Disney have madly been rushing to convert its back catalogue to the screen, with a number of films in active development, such as 'The Lion King, 'The Little Mermaid', 'Dumbo', 'Beauty and the Beast', 'Aladdin' and 'Cruella'.

That's all well and good, but can we please get a third Tron... I'm begging.

A new patch is out now for Forza Horizon 3 on both Xbox One and PC, though it mainly focuses on the highly publicized PC issues, particularly performance.

Apart from fixing the stuttering and stability, it disables mouse move detection while driving, and adds a variety of control options, including steering wheel sensitivity, center spring scale, and damping scale. Additionally, it includes a ton of fixes for wheel controls, so if you had any issues with yours before, they should be fixed.

Playground and Team 10 are said to be working on force feedback issues and yet more wheel support, as well as further stability and performance improvements, so if you're still not satisfied after this update, hold tight.

Following its second attempt at a fitness tracker, the Microsoft Band appears to be dead. Both iterations of the product have been removed entirely from the official store, and Best Buy is no longer selling them, although Amazon still has some remaining stock up for grabs. As well, the software development kit has been removed.

Sources indicate the software team intended to bring Windows 10 to Band has been, well, disbanded, and that hardware team members have been moved elsewhere. Additionally, Microsoft is said to be phasing out the devices, with no plans for a Band 3.

The company offered a somewhat vague statement on the matter.

Google has made its new Pixel smartphone official, teasing it will rock a 12.3MP camera that Google calls the "best smartphone camera ever made" - a huge claim, for a company pushing into a hardware in a new way.

The new Pixel smartphone features the 12.3MP sensor with f/2.0 and HDR+ technology, with some beautiful images taken on Pixel shown during the unveiling. Google said that the speed of the camera app is 'really important', with a smaller capture time than any other smartphone Google has tested.

Pixel has some incredible video stabilization technology, with some amazing results shown by Google. It was actually pretty incredible to see, almost like a 3-axis stabilization system.

Media streaming on Xbox One might get a whole lot better thanks to Microsoft's new universal platform.

VLC has been submitted to the Xbox One's UWP app storefront, and if approved, users will be able to reap all the benefits including expansive playback support. Right now the Plex app is currently meeting the needs of media streamers, but VLC supports UPnP network share browsing, HTTPS streaming, and a galaxy of codecs for all kinds of different media files.

I don't see Microsoft standing in the way of VLC showing up on the Xbox One app store, and I hope to see tons of other useful desktop apps arrive on the console to add even more functionality to the system. UWP, after all, is one of the Xbox brand's major benefits and Microsoft would be wise to take full advantage of all the apps they can muster.

Google has finally made its new Pixel smartphones official, with their new Google Assistant at the heart of the new Pixel smartphone, the first smartphone on the market with Assistant built in. Pixel will be completely unlocked on the Google Play Store.

Google is putting a big push behind Pixel, with the industrial design to the user experience has been designed by Google. The rear glass provides 'personality and character' to Pixel, with a subtle edge from t op to bottom keeping the smartphone thin where your hand grips it - oh and no camera bump, with Google making a dig at the iPhone.

And yes, Pixel rocks a headphone jack.

Google boss Sundar Pichai is on the stage right now talking about Google, its past and its future - teasing that the company is 'very excited' about moving towards an AI first world.

Where are we now? We're in a mobile-first world, but Google is wanting to change that up with artificial intelligence. Google has just unveiled the Google Assistant, which you can ask questions - it seems like a more powerful Google Now, and that's not a bad thing at all. Google Now is one of Google's best secret weapons.

On stage, Google Assistant was used with near instant replies and information - providing details on some plays at a local theater, taking in contextual information from the screen through an SMS message. The voice that Google Assistant uses is much more organic, feeling like an actual person replying versus a robotic human voice.

Facebook is shifting in a new direction with its introduction of Marketplace, a new place where Facebook users can buy and sell goods in their local communities. The social network says that 450 million people usually utilize buying or selling groups in order to buy stuff.

Marketplace is an easy-to-use extension of Facebook through a simple shop icon in the bottom of the tab of Facebook, this tab will display the items that people are selling, near to where you live. You can also run a search for a specific item that you're after, with the items sorted in various categories like Household, Electronics, and more.

Tapping a listing of a product will display more details on it, with photos and a description from the seller. If you want to keep an eye on a product, you can save it for later, but you'll need to personally contact the seller for payment details. You'll also need to work out the delivery of the item yourself, too.

Many of us have used one of Nokia's phones at one point in our lives. The Nokia 3310 is still mentioned as an indestructible phone with amazing battery life. The popularity of Nokia phones is best shown in the sales numbers - both the Nokia 5110 and Nokia 3210 have been sold more than 160 million units.

Compared with today's luxury smartphones, these old models look very modest. Especially if we compare the size of the screen and its resolution. In less than two decades, we have witnessed major changes in the dimensions and quality.

Apple's iPhone 7 Plus has a 514 times higher screen resolution than the Nokia 5110, which was launched in 1998.

Tens of thousands of cyber attacks occur every second, but it's hard to imagine and visualize the number of attacks. Norse, a company from California that provides intelligence to many different companies, has created an interactive map where users can watch the cyber attacks in real-time.

The attacks are shown with colored lines that connect the source and the target of the attack. Norse tracks these attacks with the help of more than 8 million sensors located in 47 different countries.

The map looks really impressive, but also worrisome considering how much of our personal information and financial records are stored online.

It's just hours before Google's big new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphone reveal, and we've received even more fresh leaks on the potent handset duo.

Thanks to recent leaks, Google's new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphone announcements have been spoiled and we already know most of the important info, including the duo's beefy specs--4GB of onboard RAM, Snapdragon 821 processors, roomy storage, etc. But Google still has some surprises up their sleeves, and they could be, well, magical.

A new bit of info from a now-pulled Verizon listing mentions something called "Google Magic," which could refer to Pixel-exclusive software or unique gesture-tracking features. Google is expected to unveil its new Daydream mobile VR headset at today's reveal event, so I'm thinking "Google Magic" has something to do with Daydream.

Facebook has announced a "lite" version of its Messenger app - Messenger Lite. The app is designed for older phones that run on slower internet connections.

Messenger Lite will initially launch in Kenya, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Venezuela, but it will come to other countries as well. The app will have basic Messenger features like sending messages, photos and stickers but compared to the official Messenger app some features will be left out.

The app will be available for Android devices and there is no information if a version of Messenger Lite will be launched for iOS.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided launched back in August without a huge impression left on gamers, but now the console versions of the game have been updated with support for HDR.

HDR support for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has reached the Xbox One S, PS4 and the upcoming PS4 Pro. The full patch notes:

The following features have been added:

Sony is set to launch its new PlayStation VR headset in just 10 days time, while its faster and more capable PS4 Pro goes on sale in around a month from now. Before that, we're finding more details out on the upcoming PSVR headset, and it kinda sucks.

The upcoming PS4 Pro will be capable of HDR, which is a big deal for Sony's refreshed console, but if you've got your PSVR headset plugged into your console, you'll need to unplug it for your HDR-capable TV to work. This is because the PSVR headset hooks up to the PS4 through an external box called the Processor Unit, which acts as an HDMI splitter. This allows the PS4 to output images to a second screen, like your TV - and it also handles the audio processing for 3D sound.

This means the PSVR headset is hooked up to the PS4 through USB, connecting to the Processor Unit with a hybrid HDMI and auxiliary cable, and then that box connects to the PS4 and TV with separate HDMI cables. Blurgh. The big issue here is that Sony has confirmed the Processor Box's passthrough functionality does not support HDR, at all. If you want to play HDR content from your new PS4 Pro console, you'll need to unplug the Processor Unit, and thus your PSVR headset, completely.