Latest News - Page 2401

With the release of Watch Dogs 2 right around the corner, Ubisoft is going into overdrive with its marketing campaign, or is it?

During Ubisoft's recent Q1 2016 earnings result, company CEO Yves Guillemot said that Watch Dogs was Ubisoft's best-selling IP launch of 2014, selling over 10 million copies in total. According to Ubisoft's own surveys, 85% of Watch Dogs players are interested in Watch Dogs 2.

The Watch Dogs 2 trailer has accumulated over 30 million views, which has Ubisoft leading to believe that it will be one of the best-selling games the company has ever made. When pressed about the number of sales that Ubisoft expects from Watch Dogs 2, they said they expect it to sell as many as the first one did.

We all know just impossibly huge Pokemon GO has been, but with Nintendo struggling against Microsoft and Sony in the console war, Pokemon GO has helped Nintendo surpass Sony in the stock market.

Nintendo is now worth more than Sony, and that is thanks to Pokemon GO. Don't believe me? Look at the chart above, and you'll see the insane spike in Nintendo's market cap since Pokemon GO launched earlier this month. Nintendo's stock has increased by close to $20 billion, a near 100% increase from what it was before Pokemon GO launched.

The numbers are absolutely off the charts, and I'm sure Nintendo is celebrating like crazy right now. It could probably give everyone who plays Pokemon GO a free next-gen Nintendo NX console when it launches and not even feel the pinch on their credit card, and it's all thanks to Pokemon GO - which is a free game. Insanity.

The US government requested a new record of user data from Google in the second half of 2016, with 40,677 requests impacting as many as 81,311 user accounts, reports ZDNet.

From July through to December 2015, the US government requested the 40.677 requests, an 18% increase from the first half of the year. Most of the requests are coming from the US, with 12,523 data requests in the three-month period, with requests impacting 27,157 users or accounts.

Google says it has been reporting the number of user data requests in a 6-month period going back to the second half of 2009, while it has been detailing the users and accounts it has impacted in the first half of 2011. Google notes: "Usage of our services have increased every year, and so have the user data request numbers".

Bandai Namco has revealed it will be unveiling a new IP for the western audience at Gamescom this year.

Not only that, but the company will be presenting Dragon Ball Xeonverse 2 and Tekken 7, with both games being available to play by the public. In regards to the new IP the company will be showing off, they said: "A new IP published by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe for a western audience will be revealed at GAMESCOM 2016".

Bandai Namco didn't say which platforms its new IP would be launching on, but we should be expecting it to hit consoles and PC. As for Gamescom 2016, Bandai Namo's President of IP Strategy, Marketing and PC, Herve Hoerdy teases: "This year, again the world's largest gaming fair will be home to hundreds of thousands gaming fans who gather in Cologne".

Nintendo is still quite secretive when it comes to its next-gen NX console, but that doesn't stop other companies from talking about it.

Ubisoft recently held its financial conference call for Q1 of its fiscal 2016/2017, where company CEO Yves Guillemot talked about Nintendo NX. He said that from what he's seen, the console is really great and that it's going to help the industry grow, as well as bring casual gamers back into the gaming industry.

We don't know much about the Nintendo NX console, but from what we do know, it'll be powered by an unannounced NVIDIA Tegra processor based on the Pascal architecture. We should expect Nintendo to release it in March 2017, which means we should see the company unveil it in the coming months leading up to the holiday season.

Netflix is currently home to 83 million subscribers, adding only 160,000 subscribers in the US and 1.52 million across the world since April.

The company has said that the slow growth is a result of the increase in churn, which could be due to the fact that they ended grandfathered plans for loyal Netflix subscribers. Back in April, Netflix predicted it would have 2 million more international subscribers, and 500,000 in the US - but it has missed that by quite a lot.

Netflix pulled in $2.11 billion in revenue over the quarter, which is what analysts expected from the streaming giant. Investors now want to feel safe with their investments into Netflix, where they want to see continued growth - especially in a world with that changes so quickly. Netflix has some massive shows on its roster like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, but the new Star Trek deal could become quite a big one in the years to come, too.

Google has reportedly been working on a secret VR project that would compete against the likes of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but according to the latest reports the company isn't doing that - and that VR project has been scrapped.

In its place, Recode reports that Google has a small team working on a dedicated headset that "blurs the line between virtual reality and augmented reality", reports Engadget. Recode reports that around 50 people were working inside of Google X lab on a standalone VR headset with a unique operating system, but this project has been scrapped.

Instead, Google has been assigning individual employees to work on a high-end headset, with some people inside of Google being told that Daydream, Google's mobile VR platform, isn't part of the Mountain View-based giants long-term plans for VR and AR. Daydream is a smaller step towards AR and VR dominance for Google, with sources saying the new headset won't require a PC or a smartphone to power it.

The first major patch for Overwatch since its launch has gone live, and it's a doozy. Apart from adding support-sniper Ana Amari (our impressions here), it includes a ton of balance and feature changes that are sure to shake things up.

First up: Overtime stalling is now going to be pretty much non-existent. If a given Overtime exceeds 20 seconds, the fuse will burn more quickly, preventing those sometimes several minute long late games.

Second: one hero limit is enforced for Competitive Play (you'll still be able to do double Pharah or whatever in Quick Play as much as you want), which will drastically affect the meta. Among the popular strategies that will no longer be available: double Reaper to deal with tanks, double Lucio to take advantage of constant AOE speed and AOE healing, and double Winston, double Tracer, and double Lucio in overtime to cheese objectives.

Uber has hit a new milestone, with over 2 billion rides through its app - which is pretty crazy considering the ride-sharing giant had 1 billion rides just 6 months ago now.

The company added $4.7 billion to its war chest a few weeks ago, reports Reuters, with the 2 billionth ride milestone reached on June 18. It took Uber around 6 years to hit the first 1 billion rides, but only 6 months to rack up another 1 billion rides.

Uber has been spending money on recruiting drivers and passengers, thanks to the huge $13 billion in funding it received from investors. Uber boss Travis Kalanick said that there were 147 simultaneous Uber rides at the exact same second in 16 countries on June 18, all tying for the 2 billionth trip. Uber is bleeding $1 billion per year in order to compete against its rivals, but the company operates in 450 cities across the world right now.

Blizzard has its new expansion for World of Warcraft due soon, which will see the introduction of new gameplay mechanics, and many changes to the MMO.

Legion will introduce a new transmogrification system that "unlocks the look of an item account-wide once it's bound to you", reports GameSpot. There's also a bunch of class-specific changes, with changes to specializations - where Blizzard adds that it will be making it easier to change between specs, as well as not needing to worry about swapping gear so much.

World of Warcraft's graphics will be receiving a new dab of paint, with the maximum draw distance "extended greatly for all world content". Not only that, but the new Legion patch for WoW will also include three higher settings past the Ultra preset in the game. Fog will look much better, with Blizzard using "modern techniques for rendering colors and other post-effects".

Square Enix have unveiled five new screenshots of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which is only a few weeks away now. Check out the new screenshots, below.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will have support for both NVIDIA and AMD technologies, with AMD's PureHair technology included, as well as NVIDIA's PhysX and APEX technologies. The game will support Asynchronous Compute for the DX12 side of things, so we should expect AMD to have a good advantage in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The game will also feature a built-in benchmark, so expect us to roll Mankind Divided into our GPU benchmarks as soon as it's released.

With the eagerly anticipated 'Star Trek' Beyond opening worldwide this week smack-bang during the series 50th anniversary, attention has turned to if and when the series will return for another adventure. Paramount have indulged fans by announcing that the studio has already greenlit a fourth adventure and in a twist, a long dead character is set to return.

Despite dying in the opening moments of the first J.J. Abrams rebooted 'Star Trek' film back in 2009, George Kirk (aka Captain James T. Kirk's father) will return for the next Trek adventure, played once again by Chris Hemsworth. According to Paramount's press release, Chris Pine's Captain Kirk "will cross paths with a man he never had a chance to meet, but whose legacy has haunted him since the day he was born: his father". While it's not exactly clear how that event will coalesce, but I'm sure J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay's script will be full of surprises.

CD Projekt RED has enjoyed massive success with The Witcher 3, with nearly 10 million copies sold, but what studios does CDPR look to with respect?

During an interview with CD Projekt RED boss Marcin Iwinski, he said that the world's top three game developers are Blizzard, Rockstar and Bethesda. Iwinski said: "Yeah, I actually think I said the best. The goal for the last five years was to be among the best three roleplaying game developers and I think we got there, The Witcher 3 is the proof".

He continued: "For the top three, this is our perception, I'd definitely put there Blizzard, I'd definitely put there Rockstar and I think I would put them at number 1 and probably Bethesda as well. We want to get there, so one will have to go".

It looks like a game adaptation of Dmitry Glukhovsky's newest Metro 2035 book may be underway.

4A Games, the development team behind the excellent Metro: 2033 and Metro: Last Light games, are working on "two exciting new projects." Admittedly we know next to nothing about the new projects--they could be brand new IPs, or we could see 4A Games continuing their long tradition on focusing on Glukhovsky's landmark post-apocalyptic universe.

"The burning question that you are all going to be asking (and have been asking) is: What are you doing or working on? Well today I have the honour, nay the privilege to tell you: nothing at all about either of the 2 exciting projects that we have underway .... Sorry for the troll :D"

The much maligned 'Ghostbusters' reboot has gotten off to a reasonable start with a $44 million opening weekend, but still has a long way to go to reach profitability - especially now it's been barred from entering the Chinese market. But that hasn't stopped Sony Pictures from forging ahead with more crap-tacular films.

Speaking to The Wrap, president of worldwide distribution at the studio Rory Bruer declared "The 'Ghostbusters' world is alive and well... I expect 'Ghostbusters' to become an important brand and franchise. While nothing has been officially announced yet, there's no doubt in my mind it will happen."

Expanding the 'Ghostbusters' franchise has always been the end goal for Sony Pictures, with previously announced plans to launch a number of films off the back of the reboot. But based on the quality of this film (review coming this weekend), I think that's quite premature.

Following a failed $1.2 billion takeover of Opera Software by a group of Chinese internet firms, the company has decided to instead attempt to sell off parts of its business to get around US government concerns over privacy.

The new deal -- which is still pending approvals from authorities -- proposes $600 million for its browser business, performance and privacy apps division, technology licensing business, and its investment in Chinese joint venture nHorizon, which the group in question (Kunqi) has agreed to.

Opera will retain its advertising and marketing business, TV operations, and game-related apps.

Microsoft is acting upon yet another coercive and pushy strategy in order to sell its new 40% smaller Xbox One S. These weird tactics include most of Microsoft's usual suspects: conflicting statements, misinformation, a stuttered release schedule that ensures you buy the most expensive variant first, and going back on its promises.

When the Xbox One S was revealed at E3 2016, Microsoft pushed the console's $299 starting price really hard. 4K UHD video playback, 4K gaming, 40% smaller, more power efficiency--you name it, the Xbox One S looked like a big improvement over the Xbox One, and it only cost $299! Fast-forward to the present and Microsoft is singing a different tune. By only releasing the 2TB Xbox One S models on August 2 before any others, and further promising the 2TB versions will have limited availability, Microsoft is really pushing gamers to buy its most expensive variant. And it'll work, too. That's the disappointing part. After all that press and bluster, they haven't even told us when the highly touted $299 model is releasing, promising that it'll release in August and they'll have "more to share later on."

What astounds me the most is the misinformation around the Xbox One S. It seems Microsoft is keeping some of the console's most attractive capabilities extremely vague and not telling us the whole picture, especially when it comes to 4K game upscaling and hardware upgrades. Xbox exec Mike Ybarra said that the mini Xbox would upscale 1080p games to 4K resolution for the benefit of UHDTV owners, but Major Nelson said absolutely nothing about 4K upscaling in the console's recent release date announcement.

The upcoming Star Trek TV series will be available for almost anyone anywhere to watch on Netflix. The online video streaming company has signed an exclusive agreement with CBS that will see the show broadcast weekly on its service to users in 188 countries, which is to say all of them except for the US and Canada. Each episode will release within 24 hours of the US premiere.

If you live in North America, you'll have to watch the show the old-fashioned way (or through CBS All Access), at least until CBS eventually releases the show to all Netflix regions.

Star Trek, which is based on the original series, will begin production in Toronto as of September and will premiere in January; it is created and produced by Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller, who combined have worked on Deep Space Nine, Voyager, the Star Trek Movie, and Into Darkness.

Developer DICE is in a unique position with Battlefield 1 as it will be the first serious portrayal of World War I in pop culture. While far from authentic, the studio is showing what is possible with the setting (particularly the single player), and DICE general manager Patrick Bach says in an interview with Metro that he hopes it will influence future portrayals.

"I want us to be able to set the tone for World War I stories from here on," he says. "Because no one has really done it. And it kind of annoys me when you have all these facts on what it was. Because it was in many ways a more fascinating and more interesting war from almost any aspect."

"World War II was 'good' from the point of view that it was very clear. It was, like, two sides, this versus that, and it was clear who won. Everyone knows the iconography from the war even if post-war it has been tweaked to make it even more clear. I don't think it was as clear at the time. So to me, I see it as a huge opportunity to make, hopefully for the first time in gaming history, to set a target for all other media."

Xiaomi has slowly been cementing itself into the world stage with quality products, but its upcoming laptops might be flying closer to the Sun than ever before.

The Chinese giant has two new laptops on the way, with 11-inch and 13-inch models that look identical to Apple's recent MacBook Air. Inside, we should see them feature Intel's new Skylake-based Core i7-6500U processor (2-core/4-thread CPU with a base clock of 2.5GHz with Turbo of up to 3.1GHz) and 8GB of RAM.

The specifications above should apply to the 11-inch version of Xiaomi's new laptop, while the 13-inch model could feature similar internal specs while the I/O could change. Both notebooks will reportedly not include a touchscreen, which will be a cost-saving measure, but they will both rock Windows 10.