Latest News - Page 2391

Overwatch continues to expand its reach as an eSports champion, with the inaugural Overwatch Open Grand Final taking place last night, and the European eSports team 'Misfits' took out the $100,000 top prize.

Misfits had it rough, with two fill-in players hitting their ranks just three weeks before the grand final against EnVyUs, which had been undefeated since Gamescom in August - but Misfits took them out 3-1. Both teams won a round each before Misfits pushed EnVyUs against the wall in the third round, and then secured their $100,000 payday on the fourth round.

The tournament had $300,000 of prize money up for grabs and was hosted at the Turner Studios' ELeague arena in Atlanta, with 12 teams competing for the $300K prize pool.

As we get closer and closer to the EA/Origin Access Play First Trial of Battlefield 1 on October 13, and its full release on October 21, we're getting hit with more and more footage and details on the game. Today, we have a new 12-minute gameplay video from the single-player missions of Battlefield 1.

The 12-minute video is from the mission in BF1's single-player campaign called Storm of Steel, with a bunch of close quarter combat, and some tank-driving goodness. Storm of Steel is one of the missions included in EA/Origin Access Play First Trial for October 13, but Battlefield 1 does things differently when it comes to the single-player side of the game.

You can choose different characters, which are all spread out across five different "War Stories". EA has said why it used multiple protagonists, explaining: "We felt that to have one character hopping through those different settings wouldn't be as immersive or totally respectful to the setting".

Google is only days away from unveiling its new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, powered by the newly-released Android 7.0 operating system, which debuted on LG's new V20 smartphone. But today, we have the best look at the Pixel and Pixel XL yet, resembling a lovechild of the iPhone and Nexus smartphones.

Rozetked has made some of the most realistic renders of the Pixel and Pixel XL yet, with both of the smartphones looking pretty damn sharp. We should expect four colors on offer: black, silver, gray, and gold. But the varying colors are joined by some design tweaks on the rear - and I have to say, they're looking damn good.

We have rumors that Google will be pricing the 5-inch Pixel smartphone at $649, which is expensive considering previous generation Nexus smartphones were always a cheaper alternative. Google is hosting its media event on October 4.

AMD has so many different great things going on at once, with the upcoming Zen-based Snowy Owl due for consumers early next year on the Zen architecture, but the upcoming Naples CPU is shaping up well and reportedly due for a launch in Q2 2017 for the enterprise market.

The upcoming 32-core processor is based on Zen CPU cores, with 32 of them pumping away, capable of executing two threads simultaneously - so we're talking about a 64-thread CPU for the enterprise market, based on Zen CPU cores. Beasty. Leaked benchmarks of AMD's upcoming monster CPU have arrived, with an engineering sample of Naples teasing some impressive performance.

AMD's upcoming Naples engineering CPU had a base clock of 1.4GHz, boosting up to 2.9GHz, while it features an absolute titanic amount of L3 cache. AMD is throwing 512MB of L3 cache, something that is a first for the CPU industry. But does this translate into monster performance? Well, benchmarks from a few weeks ago have been improved, with the Naples CPU performing 13% better in just a few weeks.

AMD is rounding out 2016 with some big teases of its next-gen APU architectures, with Zen ready to launch in 2017, we've been hearing rumbles about the next step in their APU dominance: Gray Hawk. Gray Hawk is expected to hit the 7nm node using the Zen+ architecture, and will be released on the AM4+ socket in 2019 - but we're now hearing about the APUs that will be released between now and then.

AMD will reportedly launch Snowy Owl early next year, with the APU being aimed at the server market, based on Zen CPU cores and on the AM4 socket. After that, Horned Owl will be released into the mainstream consumer market on the same 14nm FinFET node, but on the FP5 BGA / AM4 packaging, and will arrive in 2H 2017. Banded Kestrel (seriously, these are awesome codenames, AMD) will succeed Horned Owl, and will be released in the first half of 2018 for the mainstream consumer market, using the same Zen cores as Horned Owl and Snowy Owl.

Horned Owl and Banded Kestrel are part of the mainstream APU roadmap, being manufactured by GlobalFoundries and Samsung on the 14nm FinFET process, with the Horned Owl APU succeeding Raven Ridge. Banded Kestrel is a lower tier platform that will have half the specifications and power that Horned Owl will have, but both platforms will be aiming at the embedded market on the FP5 BGA socket.

Xbox division head Phil Spencer says Microsoft isn't trying to beat competitors like Sony--it's trying to be the best place for gamers to play and developers to make money. Wait...what now?

Microsoft was utterly smashed in last console generation thanks to the company's E3 2013 blunders: the PS4 completely dominated sales over the original Xbox One. But now that Sony has damaged their brand image with the new 4K-ready PlayStation 4 Pro, the Xbox brand is on a comeback streak, and gamers are starting to seriously consider the Xbox brand again.

Microsoft has a bunch of aces of its sleeve this time around, with their new cross-platform initiative that melds Xbox consoles with Windows 10 PCs, Xbox 360 disc-based backward compatibility versus Sony's hideously awkward streaming BC service, explosive sales of the new 4K upscaling Xbox One S, and the new native 4K Project Scorpio system is generating tons of buzz.

Amazon today announced Twitch Prime, a new initiative that allows Amazon Prime users to get ad-free Twitch streaming for free.

Twitch Prime is included with the annual $99 per year sub as well as the $11 per month Amazon Prime subscription, and also includes monthly freebies like ad-free viewing, games, skins, and add-ons. For example, this month Twitch Prime subscribers will get a new Hearthstone hero, a free indie game, and skins for Paladins and SMITE.

Amazon promises that Twitch Turbo will still be available to those that already have it, but new Turbo subs won't be offered. So if you want the benefits of Twitch Turbo, you'll have to sign up for Amazon Prime to get it. Amazon Prime already has gamer-centric benefits in itself, including 20% off new game pre-orders as well as free Prime shipping on certain games.

NVIDIA has been using Gears of War 4 in its latest marketing, with a free copy of the game for anyone purchasing a GeForce graphics card or GeForce-powered system or notebooks through to October 30.

The company has recently showed off Gears of War fans favorite map, Gridlock, with it being the first total reveal of Gears of War 4's newly imagined Guardian game mode. The new Gridlock mode is explained as:

"Gridlock is a fan favorite map from the original Gears of War that made a return in Gears of War 2 and Gears of War 3. This version of Gridlock has a 'Reclaimed Beauty' look, with overgrowing foliage beginning to take over the buildings. The back part of Sniper Tower is slowly being eroded into the sea, while the two towers now have a Hotel and Café look to differentiate the environment. The classic 'Gridlock bell' in the tower is back as well".

Ubisoft has provided a tease of Nintendo's next-gen NX console, with company CEO Yves Guillemot saying that "Nintendo will be back in the race with the NX" during Ubisoft's recent annual meeting.

Guillemot has been praising the NX, with plenty of enthusiasm for Nintendo's new console lately, and just last week the Ubisoft boss called Nintendo NX a fantastic machine. Ubisoft EMEA executive director Alain Corre said earlier this year: "And they are addressing the family market in a very different way, their own way, which we appreciate. We have done a lot of products and successes with Nintendo in the past, and we believe that the NX will recapture a lot the lapsed Wii players. So we will see when they release it, but we are confident".

Ubisoft has multiple NX games in development, with "Just Dance" and "some other projects" confirmed to be in development for NX.

Twitchcon today yields three new games from an unlikely source: Amazon. The online retail and other stuff company's newish gaming division is currently working on a unique sports title, a sandbox MMO, and a survival MMO.

Breakaway is the sports title and features the basic 'put the ball in the hole' premise, except players can fight each other, place structures, and use various abilities and items along the way. As well, the ball will behave differently depending how long you hold it. Amazon is giving it the eSports push, too -- it will be exciting to see if it takes hold or not.

Next is New World, a sandbox MMO with a supernatural 17th century theme. In it, you work with others to build societies or lone wolf it while fighting off monsters and bandits; dynamic weather, time of day, and different seasons keep it interesting.

The expectations Microsoft had for the Xbox One seem to be impossibly high, according to Xbox boss Phil Spencer saying that they had hoped for 200 million sales of the [at the time] next-gen Xbox One.

Stevivor recently spoke with Spencer, where he said: "The goal that the team had was to figure out how could we sell 200 million game consoles. We've never seen a console sell that many units. The biggest individual console, the PS2, did 120 million or something like that. The approach the team took was people are moving to OTT Video Services [over-the-top, like Netflix and Stan] and television's getting disrupted--and if we could build a console that could be at the center of this transition and really embrace not only people playing video games, but also people with the changing habits in television, you really take the console market and the gaming market and you expand it potentially".

Microsoft had an original vision for what would become the Xbox One, where it was to "start up building TV content as a first-party capability", said Spencer. Xbox Entertainment Studios was a division Microsoft created for TV and film content on the Xbox One, but once Spencer replaced Don Mattrick - who left for Zynga, he repositioned the Xbox brand with gaming, and Xbox Entertainment Studios was closed.

An Apple customer in Dijon, France was apparently so unhappy with the company's customer service that he decided to smash equipment in his local Apple Store this morning.

In the video below, you can see him in the store using a steel ball like the one used in the French game Pétanque to destroy Macs and iPhones, while talking about his rights as a customer and how poor Apple's customer service has been in his case. It doesn't take long before security shows up and escorts him out, at which point he becomes difficult and later, tries to escape.

It's said police have since taken the man into custody.

Battlefield 1 is my most anticipated game of 2016, but my obsession of Overwatch will have to stop... at least for a few days. EA has released some new screenshots of the single-player campaign for Battlefield 1, days after that awesome new trailer.

DICE has also detailed each of Battlefield 1's new unique War Stories campaign structure, with each having an anthology-style setup with different perspectives and nations throughout the war. Sadly there's only five campaign missions--our original estimates put it at six.

The five War Stories include:

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is looking better and better as new screenshots are released, but the latest ones are the best ones yet. The developer also announced its new distribution plans, with the news of Deep Silver stepping up and joining Koch Media to distribute Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Koch Media has been, and will continue to handle the worldwide distribution channels and main publishing of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, while developer Warhorse Studios is "solely responsible for worldwide PC digital distribution", leaving Deep Silver to handle the physical PC versions of the game.

Warhorse Studios said: "we stand behind the vision of Kingdom Come: Deliverance and retain freedom in the development of our game. We will keep our communication as open and honest as we did from day one of our Kickstarter campaign".

When the news broke that there was movement on a Portal movie two years ago now, gaming fans began letting themselves quietly excited, and now that excitement ramps up with J.J. Abrams teasing there will be a Portal announcement "fairly soon".

When speaking with IGN at the red carpet premiere of Westworld, the Star Wars: The Force Awakens director said: "We have a meeting coming up next week with Valve, we're very active, I'm hoping that there will be a 'Portal' announcement fairly soon". IGN asked if the upcoming Portal movie would be a continuation of the world in the game on the PC, with Abrams not wanting to spoil anything, he said that he's working with writers who understand and love the world of Portal, and will "get" the game and storylines.

Abrams continued: "We are having some really interesting discussions with writers, many of whom...once you said you're doing a movie or show about a specific thing that is a known quantity you start to find people who are rabid about these things. As someone who loves playing Half Life and Portal, what's the movie of this, it's incredible when you talk to someone who just 'gets' it, it's like, oh my god, it's really the seed for this incredible tree you're growing".

So after a bunch of our readers and Facebook fans told me to get Forza Horizon 3 for testing my extensive range of PC hardware, and just finding the damn game in my library after I purchased it was more hassles than I've had since the DOS days of PC gaming.

Seriously. Once you find the damn game, it takes so long to load after you're logged into, and approving 50 different accounts. This is how long it takes to load into Forza Horizon 3, on a Core i7-6700K, 16GB of G.Skill 4000MHz DDR4 RAM, and a super-fast Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB PCIe-based M.2 SSD. Ridiculous.

It throws up a message to let me know my drivers aren't the latest set, too.

Microsoft has been making big inroads into the laptop and tablet markets with its Surface brand of products, but now it looks like the company is making a move for your desktop with an all-in-one Surface desktop PC.

It makes sense, since Microsoft is the creator of Windows - so a Windows 10-powered Surface-branded desktop PC would be an eventuality. According to The Verge, Microsoft is going to announce its Surface AIO PC imminently, as soon as late October at a launch event in New York City.

Microsoft will announce its all-in-one Surface PC alongside various Surface-branded accessories, like the purported Surface Ergonomic Keyboard that turned up on a listing for the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). The Surface Ergonomic Keyboard makes more sense with an AIO PC, versus a new keyboard for the current Surface.

We all know how superior the PC is to console hardware, with even future consoles from Microsoft and Sony not being able to begin a thumb war against PC hardware, let alone beat them - and now Microsoft has admitted it, too.

Microsoft's Senior Director of Product Management & Planning, Albert Penello, recently spoke with The Guardian about PC gaming's renaissance, and the huge leap in technology happening on PC. Penello said: "In the last five years, there's been a real renaissance in PC gaming, and that's happening with NVIDIA and AMD investing in really high-end performance - to the point where PCs have eclipsed consoles much more significantly than ever before. In fact consoles used to lead PCs and it would take a while for them to catch up".

Well yeah - duh, Microsoft. You're putting APUs into consoles that are slower than mid-range PCs from 5-6 years ago, and even Xbox Scorpio with all of its 'power', can't compete against a new mid-range card. This is all without the next-gen GPUs launching in 2017 that promise a good leap in performance over the current-gen cards, which already stomp all over the consoles.

Spotify could swell in size significantly if the reports of the company looking to acquire SoundCloud, with rumors that Spotify is in "advanced talks" to buy the company.

If the acquisition of SoundCloud goes ahead, Spotify would need to throw a pretty hefty amount across the table, but the deal makes sense from a business perspective. Spotify has been expanding constantly, from just albums to wider ranges of catalogs of DJ sets, demos, and other rough tracks, reports Engadget.

Spotify acquiring SoundCloud would give it a considerable edge against competitors Google, Tidal, and Apple Music that are always trying to get you into their services with artist exclusives (which sucks, by the way). Spotify's new acquisition of SoundCloud would allow for a future where you would listen to in-development songs, and then scope out the artist's commercially available music right away.

We're finally starting to see the performance of NVIDIA's purported GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, with the leaked information teasing that we're to expect GTX 960 like performance, without a PCIe power connector.

NVIDIA is expected to pack its GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 768 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. We should see the GP107 GPU clocked at 1318/1380MHz for base/boost, respectively - a 250MHz increase over the GM107 GPU that powers the GeForce GTX 960. The texture fill rate on the GTX 1050 Ti is nearly doubled over the GTX 960, hitting 84 GTexel/s, while 4GB of GDDR5 at 7Gbps will be placed on a 128-bit memory interface providing around 112GB/sec memory bandwidth.

A post on Chiphell teases GTX 960 performance in 3DMark 11, but it'll be the price that determines if the GTX 1050 Ti is a winner. If it's priced at $149, it could be a great card for mid-range gamers, especially with a TDP of just 75W and no PCIe power connector required.