Latest News - Page 2397

Pokemon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara lends even more credence that Nintendo's mysterious new NX system will be a handheld console hybrid.

Pokemon exec Ishihara already confirmed that Pokemon games will be coming to the NX, and it's highly likely that the studio has access to a Nintendo NX devkit. While Ishihara doesn't outright reveal key details about the NX, he does lend even more affirmation that the NX will be a cross between a handheld and a console.

"The NX is trying to change the concept of what it means to be a home console device or a hand-held device. We will make games for the NX," Ishihara said in an interview with Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki.

Microsoft will give developers the freedom to choose how to leverage Project Scorpio's 6TFLOPs of "monster" GPU power, including enhancements for HDTVs like 1080p 60FPS, as well as u native 4K at 30FPS, 4K upscaled 60FPS--or all three.

A bit ago Microsoft confirmed that Project Scorpio will be capable of rendering games in native 4K, and its first-party games would all support native 3840 x 2160 resolution. Now Redmond has stepped in to say that native 4K won't be a requirement for all developers and games--just their first-party studios and titles--and that devs will have tons of options and choices on how to best utilize Project Scorpio's higher-end hardware.

"When we thought about what spec we wanted for Scorpio, we were very clear we wanted developers to take their Xbox One engines and render them in native, true 4K. That was why we picked the number, that's why we have the memory bandwidth we have, that's why we have the teraflops we have, because it's what we heard from game developers was required to achieve native 4K," said Xbox exec Albert Penello in an interview with Eurogamer.

UPDATE: Webdush Securities analyst Michael Pachter claims that his quotes were severely misrepresented in the Daily Star interview, and has given the following statement to Tech Raptor to clarify:

"I am a PC gamer, I like PC gamers, and I merely referred to them as insular. I in no way intended to call them out as 'deplorables', and I think that the reporter overstepped the bounds of propriety in making it appear that I said such a thing with venom. In any case, I've given THOUSANDS of interviews without offending an entire group of people, and somehow this guy ended up with a "gotcha" moment. It's time to move on."

Original story is as follows.

Rumors indicated Apple has been in talks for months to acquire supercar maker McLaren in a bid to accelerate its self-driving electric vehicle developments. However, McLaren, who initially declined comment on the matter, has since denied any such proposition to Reuters.

The deal -- which was never described a sure thing -- was said to be valued at $1.3 billion or more.

Battle.net, the name of Blizzard's online multiplayer service, is no longer called "Battle.net".

Blizzard has made the strange decision to re-name one of PC gaming's most iconic online services in a confusing bid to make things more easily understandable. The Activision-owned publisher won't be calling their online service "Battle.net" any more, and will instead refer to it as "Blizzard tech." At the time of writing, the Battle.net address is still up and the service is still called the same.

Why the company would choose to forgo decades of an instantly recognizable and iconic name still isn't clear to me, and I'm actually concerned about this move--ever since Blizzard moved from the awesome Battle.net servers that powered Diablo 2, Starcraft and Warcraft to the horrible lobby-less "Bnet 2.0" system, I understood how Activision's meddling would affect the future of Blizzard. Now more than ever it seems I was right on the money.

Patch notes for Star Wars Battlefront: Death Star are now available, with the expansion now live for season pass holders and will be avaliable to everyone on October 4.

This DLC expansion feature is fully packed with five additional Death Star-themed maps, a new Battle Station game mode, and character updates such as Chewbacca and Bossk.

Alongside of maps and characters, the Death Star expansion provides the exclusive upgrade of hero vehicles and armory. The TL-50 Heavy Repeater and the K-16 Bryar Pistol blasters, are amongst some of featured weapons. Whilst two new Star Cards, Luke Skywalker's famous Red Five and the TIE Advanced X1 are also new addtions to the pack.

CEO of The Pokemon Company, Tsunekazu Ishihara, has confirmed that they will be developing Pokémon games for the anticipated new, next-generation Nintendo NX console.

During an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ishihara confirmed the information regarding Pokémon Nintendo NX games to be true, putting all rumors to rest. The affiliation between the two companies has allowed Nintendo to obtain the licensing agreement to Pokémon characters, adding to the evidence that NX will see Pokémon games in the future.

However, it's unclear at this point in time as to whether or not the Pokémon games will be brand new adventures, or simple upgrades from the previous original seen on older generation platforms.

Microsoft has just released a new Minecraft Favourites Xbox One S bundle pack. The game themed offer is available now from Microsoft's official Xbox website and comes with a 500GB Xbox One S console, alongside a digital copy of Minecraft: Xbox One Edition and a wireless controller.

The bundle will set customers back $300, and will also include numerous DLC packs, character skins, updated maps and more! Those who purchase the Xbox One S console bundle will also be given a fee download code for Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta, and a 14-day Xbox Live Gold trial membership.

North America can purchase the Favourites bundle now, whilst Europe will see release on October 11, and Australia and New Zealand on November 1.

The electric car market is heating up, but the mainstream market needs to adopt them, and won't do that until they begin appearing for less than $50,000 - and much less. Chevrolet's upcoming Chevy Bolt electric vehicle will be priced starting at $29,995 after a federal tax credit of $7,500.

General Motors announced the news that its first electric car will be capable of over 200 miles on a single charge, for under $30K. Future owners of the Chevy Bolt will have to pay at least $7,500 in federal income tax in order to be eligible for the full tax credit, as it's not a refundable purchase, reports The Verge.

Before the credit, the Chevy Bolt will cost $37,495 for the LT trim model, while the higher-end Premium trim starts at $40,905. The base trim features a bunch of standards like 10.2-inch touchscreen, a 60kWh battery that should have you driving around 238 miles, and a powertrain that pushes out 200 horsepower, and 266 pound-feet of torque.

UPDATE: Forza Horizon 3 can run with an uncapped frame rate beyond 60FPS on PC if you switch V-Sync off. So, uh - just don't look at the original article!

Forza Horizon 3 launches in the next few hours on the Xbox One and PC simultaneously and the PC version of the game is locked at 60FPS. There's no reason for a frame rate cap in games these days, and especially not from big developers like this with the backing of Microsoft Studios - you know, a subsidiary of Microsoft that made Windows and owns Xbox.

Microsoft has been for years attempting at winning back PC gamers, and with one of their biggest launches of the year in Forza Horizon 3, a brand exclusive to Microsoft's platforms: Xbox and PC, with an even bigger stake in the market with Windows not just being for gamers. Although, Microsoft is pushing Windows 10 onto gamers in a big way with lots of promises from a much more improved API in DirectX 12, but they're gimping nearly every single game in some way.

Ever since Pokemon GO was released, people have been injuring themselves by not looking where they're going - with people even dying while playing, and now someone in New York City was mugged while he was playing, and live streamed the entire thing.

RickeyBot was walking through Central Park in New York where he was attacked from behind, and his live stream you could hear Rickey pleading with the attacker, before the camera moves and we see the criminal run off with his device, which was still streaming.

While the mugger had the phone, people in Rickey's live chat were saying whether they should call the police, how to record the stream, and if anyone knows if the thief had been caught. The stream eventually goes dark, without us knowing the outcome of the mugger. Rickey himself is okay, taking some damage to his jaw - forcing him to drink through a straw for a few days.

Samsung SSD Summit 2016 - Samsung has been unveiling a bunch of new storage goodies at its SSD Summit 2016, with some new enterprise-class drives, the super-quick EVO 960, and now the PM1633a.

Samsung's impressive PM1633a might not sound so impressive by its name, but it's a new 2.5-inch SAS-based drive for enterprise environments, which utilizes the impressive V-NAND 3bit MLC from Samsung. Not only that, but it rocks the REX controller, and has some decent read/write speeds of up to 1.35GB/sec and 1.3GB/sec, respectively.

It's the capacity that Samsung's PM1633a is available in that blows me away, with 480GB/960GB/1.92TB/3.84TB/7.68TB and finally... a massive 15.36TB. Yeah, 15TB of SAS storage goodness all in a single 2.5-inch drive. Crazy stuff.

We've just heard some juicy details on AMD's next-gen Vega 10 and Vega 20 graphics cards - with 16GB of HBM2 and 32GB of HBM2, respectively. But it's the news on Navi that has me even more excited, and simultaneously disappointed.

VideoCardz.com's source says that Navi 10 and Navi 11 are "currently planned for 2019", meaning that AMD has delayed Navi by 12 months from its original 2018 release, and now into 2019. We haven't confirmed this yet, but I've sent some emails and will update this post when we hear back from someone at AMD.

We just reported on the first details of AMD's next-gen Vega 10 graphics card, but it seems as though that's the mid-range model, while the higher-end Vega 20 is shaping up to be a damn monster.

AMD's upcoming Vega 20 graphics card will feature 32GB of HBM2 memory with 1TB/sec of memory bandwidth, up from the 16GB of HBM2 with 512GB/sec bandwidth offered on Vega 10. Not only that, but the Vega 20 chip will reportedly support the upcoming PCI-Express 4.0 standard.

VideoCardz.com does note that the details were from AMD's internal server roadmap, so things might change for the consumer market. 32GB of HBM2 would be insanely expensive, so I would dare say these are higher-end cards not meant for the consumer market. Alternatively, maybe we will see these cards in the consumer market, as AMD will be needing to prepare for NVIDIA's next-gen Volta architecture in 2017.

2K Games is thankfully listening to PC gamers that the PC port of the recent BioShock remasters is a pile of crap, with the studio taking to the Steam forums detailing their plans for an upcoming patch.

The company is working on an FOV slider, improved mouse controls, support for 21:9 displays, and "general stability improvement to reduce instances of game crashes". The complete list is a little more detailed:

Samsung SSD Summit 2016 - Samsung is hitting some major home runs at its SSD Summit 2016, with our storage god Jon Coulter on the ground sending us back some golden nuggets of storage news - like the new PM1725a, which is a beast NVMe-based SSD.

Samsung's new PM1725a arrives in the 2.5-inch form factor, based on NVMe and uses V-NAND 3bit MLC alongside Samsung's new Epic controller. The PM1725a comes in 800GB/1.6TB/3.2TB/6.4TB capacities, with some pretty impressive read/write speeds of up to 3.3GB/sec and 2.9GB/sec, respectively.

It also arrives in an HHHL version, using a PCIe x8 slot, with the read/write speeds scaling up to an insane 6.4GB/sec and 3GB/sec, respectively.

Microsoft surprised everyone today and announced a new Nokia phone - the Nokia 216, a feature phone with dual SIM capability that will be available in India and Pakistan by the end of October.

For a mere $37 you get a 2.4-inch QVGA screen, 1020 mAh replaceable battery and two 0.3 MP VGA cameras. 16MB of RAM is enough to run the Series 30+ OS, Opera Mini browsers and other pre-installed apps. Storage is basically your memory card which can be up to 32GB.

Microsoft also points out that you can store up to 2,000 contacts.

Antec has announced its new Cube case, designed by Razer in an "extensive collaboration" between the two companies. Antec's new Cube chassis is a mini-ITX gaming case designed for gamers who want a SFF gaming PC.

Inside of the new Antec Cube is 1 x 3.5-inch bay, up to 4 x 2.5-inch bays, 3 expansion slots, and it can take graphics cards that are up to 350mm. The Razer-designed Antec Cube also goes above and beyond most mini-ITX gaming cases, with a separate compartment for the pSU, allowing for improved cable management.

On the outside, Antec's Cube chassis features a hybrid structure consisting of 3mm aluminum and 0.8mm of cold-rolled steel with Razer's iconic Triple-Headed Snake logo on the front. On the left and right of the Cube we have LED under glow strips with the signature Razer green color, with a green LED on the rear exhaust fan, power button, and USB 3.0 ports.

While fans of the 2013 monster action flick 'Pacific Rim' still have a way to go until the sequel hits theatres, at least they have one more event to look forward much, much sooner... so long as they have a 4K TV and an UltraHD Blu-ray player.

Starting next month, 'Pacific Rim' is set to be released on 4K UltraHD Blu-ray combo pack across the world, which includes the film remastered for 4K with HDR and Dolby Atmos audio, alongside a standard 1080p Blu-ray, director's commentary and an hour of extra features. Unfortunately, the film's 3D presentation will be absent from the pack, as well as the second Blu-ray disc of extra features - so you might want to hang onto those.

'Pacific Rim 4K' hits stores in the U.S. on October 4 in the U.S. and on October 19th in Australia. Look for our in-depth TweakTown review later next month!

Samsung SSD Summit 2016 - Samsung has once again redefined consumer solid state drives with its new 960 EVO and 960 PRO M.2 SSD duo, offering lightning fast transfer rates with high-capacities and optimum reliability.

Samsung's new 960 PRO is now the world's fastest consumer SSD, hitting peak sequential reads of 3,500 MB/s and write speeds of 2,100 MB/s as well as random read and write IOPS of up to 440,000 and 360,000 respectively. The 960 PRO also packs in an amazing 2TB of data thanks to Samsung's vertically-stacked VNAND memory technique. The 960 PRO SSD is also available in 512GB and 1TB capacities along with the 2TB model.

Armed with Samsung's new Intelligent TurboWrite tech, the 960 EVO SSD blazes with peak read speeds of 3,200 MB/s and 1,900 MB/s write speeds, and comes in more diverse capacities like 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. The 960 EVO also features random read speeds of 380,000 IOPS and random write speeds of up to 360,000 IOPs, and comes with a three-year limited warranty and up to 400 TBW (whichever occurs first) for the 1TB model.