Latest News - Page 2399

EA has just revealed Battlefield 1's minimum and recommended PC specs, but they're not too demanding.

In order to run Battlefield 1 and minimum spec on PC, you can get away with using some outdated hardware like an AMD Radeon HD 7850 or a GeForce GTX 660, but you'll need at least a newer Skylake-series Intel i5 6600K CPU and 8GB of RAM. Recommended specs still aren't too demanding with DICE advising you to have at least a GeForce GTX 1060 or an AMD RX 480, 16GB of RAM, and an Intel i7 4790 or equivalent CPU.

Read More: EA is centralizing its Battlefield games under a single UI

Yakuza games aren't nearly as big as Grand Theft Auto-style open worlds, but it's still impressive when bigger games don't have any loading screens--especially on non-PC platforms.

SEGA has confirmed that Yakuza 6--which still hasn't been confirmed for localization in the West--will have absolutely zero loading screens when it launches on PS4 in Japan. SEGA describes Yakuza 6 as "completely seamless," but you still shouldn't expect the game to be a massively-scoped open-world endeavor.

"We've worked hard to make this game completely seamless. You can engage in the central adventure, get into battles, watch drama scenes, and go back to the adventure, all without any loading screens. Go into any building or any room or any floor without loading," Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi told IGN.

Microsoft's multiple Skype offices in London are to be no more as the company consolidates them into one while merging engineering roles. In turn, the moves put 220 jobs at risk.

"Microsoft is consolidating offices across London, moving employees to Microsoft's new office at Paddington," the company's statement reads. "As part of this effort, Microsoft reviewed some London-based roles and made the decision to unify some engineering positions, potentially putting a number of globally focused Skype and Yammer roles at risk."

"We are deeply committed to doing everything we can to help those affected through this process. Microsoft will be entering into a consultation process and [it will] offer opportunities where possible."

Tekken 7 has entered the 60FPS realm, and its newest trailer gives us a glimpse of that gloriously smooth chaos we can expect in 2017.

As a die-hard Tekken fan, I'm extremely excited about Tekken 7 for two reasons: one, we'll get to wreak total havoc with our favorite characters in 60 frames-per-second for the first time ever, and two, it's the first fully-fledged Tekken game we've had in almost 10 years (Tekken 6 came out in 2007). Tekken fans have been starved for a continuation for a while now, and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was genuinely awesome, but the game didn't propel the series forward.

Tekken 7 will also see the epic battle against father and son as Heihachi faces off against Kazuya one last time. The game also features a bunch of new characters, with a good portion of our old favorite fighters jumping back into the fray.

Not too many PC games have split-screen co-op, with even fewer console games even supporting it. Interestingly enough, Gears of War 4 will have local co-op for its campaign with the devs describing the addition as a "labor of love."

"From a development standpoint, it is quite difficult to support. We have to deal with multiple inputs, we have to deal with focus, we have to deal with UI placement. Developers have got to put some effort into it to do it right, it's not just something you can tack on." Gears of War 4 Technical director Mike Rayner told PC Gamer.

Gears of War 4 will also support cross-play on Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs for online campaign co-op and co-operative Horde mode, player vs AI gametypes, and private matches. Gears of War 4 even supports LAN multiplayer and co-op on Xbox One and PC, too.

Popular leaker Evan Blass has made it known: Google's Allo app is due to launch this week on September 21.

The company launched its Duo video messaging app last month; users have been anticipating the text messaging complementary app Allo ever since. Allo was originally slated for a summer release; Google has just a few days to technically meet that deadline, lending credibility to the leak.

Allo features deep integration with Google Assistant, and with that comes the standard suite of messaging app features: sticker packs, voice messages, GIF searching, full encryption, private chatting, and more.

No Man's Sky creator Sean Murray hasn't posted anything on Twitter in a full month now, reinforcing the idea that the dev is huddling down amidst the lies and misleading ad campaign.

I've been watching Sean Murray's Twitter account for a bit now, and I'm not really surprised that he hasn't Tweeted anything for a month. No Man's Sky continues getting patched--a new patch rolled out for the game on PS4 today--yet Murray remains completely silent. This is probably one of the worst things he can do right now, and most gamers think he's just laying low to let all the chaos roll over until everyone forgets about No Man's Sky and moves on. Meanwhile the official Hello Games account hasn't Tweeted in weeks either, with its last update on August 27.

In order to salvage the wreckage that is No Man's Sky and Hello Games' public image, Murray needs to shed some light on what went wrong. Why did he lie about the game? Why was the game missing so many features? What happened? These are questions he needs to answer, and I think there's a huge reason why he can't: it'd breach the contract he signed with Sony. Even still, he needs to do something. He can't just pretend nothing happened. I know the devs are likely busting their ass with updates, but the majority of gamers see him swimming in the millions of hype-bucks he conned off of naive gamers. To illustrate Murray's silence, Redditor MasRemap made this infographic:

Samsung has had another incident with a Galaxy Note 7 catching fire in China, after it had said Note 7 units sold in China wouldn't be affected, as the batteries in the Chinese model were sourced from a different supplier - and now, we might have found the reason behind the Note 7s issues.

According to a report from Bloomberg, managers at Samsung started hearing rumors on what the new iPhone would have - and that it wouldn't feature many new innovations. They also knew that the new iPhone wouldn't look any different, which gave Samsung an opportunity to strike - and it did, with a damn mighty fine smartphone in the Galaxy Note 7.

This goal pushed Samsung mobile boss D.J. Koh to launch what would become the Galaxy Note 7, dazzling consumers and capitalizing on the opportunity knowing Apple's new iPhone 7 was going to be more of the same. The Note 7 featured an iris scanner, a beautiful dual edge display, super-fast internals, USB Type-C connectivity, wireless charging and so much more... but it wasn't without error.

Hello Games rolls out a new patch for No Man's Sky on PS4 that fixes a crucial HUD oversight, and now I can actually play the game again.

I've been quite vocal about lambasting Hello Games for their horrible decisions with No Man's Sky updates, namely the previous patch that pretty much broke the game for me. You see, before now the game had a serious problem with its heads-up display: it would mix up places you've been with the places you need to go.

At launch, No Man's Sky only showed you where you need to go and places you haven't discovered. Once you got to an area marked on your HUD, it would disappear after you discover it. Hello Games decided to patch the game and show you where you've been so you could return to those places.

If the $26 billion wiped from its shares and the US government led recall of the Galaxy Note 7 - and that's amongst the countless incidents around the world of Note 7 smartphones catching fire or exploding, the company is now carrying out an "internal review" following a Note 7 catching fire in China.

A spokeswoman reached out to Reuters, saying: "We immediately referred this case to Samsung and they are conducting an internal review". Caixin, a Chinese online financial site reported that a user reported their Galaxy Note 7 they had purchased from JD.com had caught fire. This might not sound any different to the Note 7s blowing up or catching fire around the world, but there's a big difference.

Samsung had previously said on September 14 that any Note 7 smartphones purchased after September 1 were not at risk of battery-related issues if sold in China, as the Chinese versions of the Note 7 had batteries supplied from a different company. Samsung continues to melt into its own pool, T-1000 style.

Another day... another crappy PC port, this time in the form of the latest version of Pro Evolution Soccer, or PES 2016. Konami is behind PES 2016, which uses the Fox Engine, the same engine that powered Metal Gear Solid 5 - and while it looked good in MGS, it doesn't here.

The PC version of the game is especially bad, with it at times looking worse than the console versions of the game - which don't look too good to start with.

The PS4 and Xbox One versions of PES 2016 have a slew of weather and sweat effects, as well as better color and lighting effects.

As I type this, I'm connected to a 100/40Mbps fiber connection with the National Broadband Network (NBN) here in Australia. It's one of the fastest connections you can get, but 1Gbps seems like a distant goal for most people - and now we're already hearing about 1Tbps connections.

Recently, Nokia Bell Labs with the help of Deutsche Telekom and the Technical University of Munich have teased 1Tbps connectivity in a field trial that involved "real conditions" like varying channel conditions and traffic levels. The difference here was a new modulation technique called Probabilistic Constellation Shaping.

Engadget reports that instead of using "all the networking's constellation points (the "alphabet of the transmission") equally, like typical fiber, it prefers those points with lower amplitudes -- the ones that are less susceptible to noise. That helps transmissions reach up to 30 percent further, since you can adapt the transmission rate to fit the channel. It's so effective that the team got close to the theoretical peak data speeds possible for the fiber connection".

Pokémon GO players will have to wait just a little bit longer to discover the famous 'Ditto'. Niantic CEO John Hanke, continues to remain strong in keeping the Pokémon's location a secret, as he was asked a question about it recently at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco days ago.

Hanke's panel response regarding the character's whereabouts: "I can't tell you how to find Ditto, because that wouldn't be any fun when you did find him if you did." He then later did promise to audiences that they would be able to eventually find the Pokémon but, as to how long that may take, we don't know.

Ditto, known for transfiguration, takes on the appearance of other Pokémon, but is still not considered to be a rare or legendary character, hence the questions regarding it's location. Rumors tease that when it does appear, the Pokémon should be an easy one to obtain.

Hideo Kojima is in the headlines for a couple of reasons, first he came out and said he has nothing to do with the new Metal Gear Survive game - and now he's teasing his mysterious new game: Death Stranding.

Death Stranding would have to be one of the most unique games teased in the last decade, with Kojima being asked during the Tokyo Game Show if Death Stranding would be released before the 2020 Olympics being held in Tokyo. He said: "To go a little further, there is a movie called Akira, and it will be out before the year in which Akira is set".

Kojima added that the online side of Death Stranding would be a "different kind of online play than anything we've seen before", adding that there will be a female protagonist that will join The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus - but I need to know, will she be naked, like Reedus is in the small teases we've had of the game so far? Kojima added: "This game will show a different side of Norman Reedus than fans of The Walking Dead might expect".

Jurassic World stomped through the box office last year, pulling in over $650 million in the US, and over $1 billion in foreign box office numbers for a total of $1.67 billion - all done on a budget of around $150 million.

Now there are reports that Jurassic World 2 will have an even bigger budget of $260 million, an additional $110 million over the original. Considering Paramount would've made a hefty profit on the original Jurassic World movie, the sequel is set to be even bigger - and remember, this is the second movie in a planned trilogy, so expect Jurassic World 3 to have a similar, if not bigger budget than Jurassic World 2.

Jurassic World is currently the third biggest movie to hit cinemas with its $1.67 billion haul, with Jurassic World 2 dropping into cinemas on June 22, 2018.

Does your PC or laptop have a front-facing webcam? Put tape over it immediately, and treat it like locking your doors or setting up an alarm system, says FBI boss James Comey.

During the Center for Strategic and International Studies conference, Comey said: "There's some sensible things you should be doing and that's one of them. You go into any government office and we all have the little camera things that sit on top of the screen. They all have a little lid that closes down on them. You do that so that people who don't have authority don't look at you. I think that's a good thing".

We shouldn't be surprised of this warning, as Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg was pictured with the camera on his laptop taped over. Comey has also admitted that he uses tape on his webcam.

The latest leak on Google's upcoming smartphones is here, with the purported Pixel and Pixel XL smiling for the camera from their display assemblies and cases.

Starting with the display assemblies, we have 5- and 5.5-inch displays for the Pixel and Pixel XL, respectively. We don't know what differences there'll be on the front of the Pixel and Pixel XL that will make them different, so we have to wait for Google's official unveiling in October.

There were also some cases for the new Pixel smartphones that surfaced, with the rear of the cases lining up with previous reports that we'll see a rear-placed fingerprint sensor, with Google and HTC using a unique rear design on the Pixel and Pixel XL handsets.

If you've seen anything on Konami's upcoming Metal Gear Survive, you'll know why the internet cast it into flames - it doesn't look like anything we've seen from the Metal Gear franchise so far... but did series creator Hideo Kojima have anything to do with it? Of course not.

During an interview with IGN, Kojima said: "That's nothing to do with me", with Yoji Shinkawa - a former designer on the Metal Gear series adding: "If I had worked on that game, it would have mechs in it". Kojima then added: "The Metal Gear games are about political fiction and espionage. Where do zombies fit in with that?"

Destructoid makes a good point in their article, saying that "Metal Gear Solid V had zombies in it, so what is the difference?" - yeah, what is the difference, Kojima?

Upgradeable consoles would be a huge change to the current console slate, but according to President and Global CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Andrew House, isn't going to happen on his watch - at least not yet.

House recently talked with DigitalSpy about the upcoming PS4 Pro and Sony's goals with the PlayStation VR headset - which launches next month, where House was asked if he could see a future where the PlayStation would be upgradeable, like a PC. House replied: "It's very tough for me to envisage that at this point".

If we rewind to just last week, I wrote an article where House himself said that one of the driving reasons behind the beefier PS4 Pro consoles was that so gamers didn't jump to the PC for 4K gaming goodness. House said: "I saw some data that really influenced me. It suggested that there's a dip mid-console lifecycle where the players who want the very best graphical experience will start to migrate to PC, because that's obviously where it's to be had".

Cloud Imperium Games have shown off a new video of Star Citizen, with its newly implemented Vision Stabilization system. The results? Freakin' gorgeous, check it out:

Star Citizen's new vision stabilization system was displayed at 1080p 60FPS, looking ridiculously smooth. It's a massive change to the head bobbing issues that some gamers haven't, and still don't like about the game - but it seems the team has pulled off the vision stabilization system perfectly.

It looks super smooth to move around, but it feels like they're preparing for a console release with this... or is it just me? But hot damn, do those graphics look good... my gaming PC is screaming already.