Latest News - Page 2417

E3 2016 -- I'm kind of old school. When someone drops the phrase "music visualizer" I'm reminded of pulling up Winamp on my Windows XP machine, firing up some Crystal Method, and unleashing those full screen trippy visuals. Well, VR is going to change the game for people who like to trip out or just relax with their music, and Harmonix seems a good choice for the company to execute it.

The motivation for Harmonix Music VR was the company's desire to help people better appreciate music through virtual reality. Some of what's waiting for you is passive, and some is interactive.

I had about 30 minutes with Harmonix Music VR during E3 this week, and here are my quick impressions of 4 of the experiences on offer when it releases alongside PlayStation VR on October 13th.

Steam Beta Client users can now grab a special update for Steam Controllers that allows you to bind different types of button presses to different functions, which Valve is calling Activators.

For example, you can bind jump to long press A and grenade to double press X, or even bind both to the same button but different types of presses, as there's no limit on how many functions you can bind to a given button beyond the amount of press types available. You can also do things like set a single press to single fire and a long press to Turbo fire, enable the Start button to switch between button customization profiles on-the-fly, and more.

Boot Steam now to grab the update. If you're not in the beta, navigate to Settings > Account > Beta participation.

E3 2016 - Sony really ramped up its PlayStation VR push at E3 2016 this year, with PSVR launching on October 13, will there be shortages? According to Sony, it looks like there could be.

According to President and Group CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Andrew House, who told CNBC: "We have growing confidence that we'll be supply constrained with this product, but we'll do our very best to meet demand. Virtual reality is a medium that's in its infancy. With such a nascent, very new form of storytelling, it's difficult to predict what user uptake is going to be".

It looks like we could expect stock shortages on the PlayStation VR, but that's to be expected. Both Oculus and HTC didn't have the best roll outs, but HTC has since recovered, promising that it will ship Vive headsets within 72 hours of ordering.

In the midst of NVIDIA experiencing stock shortages of the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 in our exclusive story, news has just broken that AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 480 can hit 1.5GHz, and higher. The Radeon RX 480 is expected to fight directly against the HBM1-based Radeon R9 Nano, and the GTX 980 which just had a $25 price drop.

If we think about AMD hitting the $199 price point with the RX 480, and it being able to be toe-and-toe with the R9 Nano and GTX 980, we're looking at one of the best price/performance video cards ever released. Additionally, with some huge OC headroom included, it could be an even better card - especially if gamers can hit 1.5GHz+. The new Radeon RX 480 will supposedly reach 1.4GHz on its GPU easily, with 1.5GHz not far away and only a little additional tweaking required.

The RX 480 "Beast Mode" cards will include 6+8-pin PCIe power connectors for additional juice and overclocking headroom, and will be able to hit 1.5GHz right out of the box. We should expect the likes of SAPPHIRE, ASUS, MSI and the rest of the AIB partners to really hit these speeds. Considering the Radeon RX 480 only consumes 100W of power under gaming loads, and only hits 60C, we should be in for quite the surprise from AMD in a few weeks time.

NVIDIA is going on the offensive with its Maxwell-powered video cards, cutting the price of the GeForce GTX 970, GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti. Now that the GeForce 10 series is here, it only makes sense for NVIDIA to clear out the inventory of 900 series cards, and that's a big benefit to gamers, too. NVIDIA has dropped the price of the GTX 980 Ti by $125, the GTX 980 by $75 an the GTX 970 by $25 - all priced in USD.

I wrote an exclusive story yesterday that GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 stock will not improve until late-July or even early-August, and now that NVIDIA has dropped the price on the enthusiast level GTX 900 series cards, it begins to make even more sense. The GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards are also way above the $699 price of NVIDIA's own GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition, with the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW ACX 3.0 listed on Amazon for a wallet-busting $1999.

With these price drops, AMD aren't in trouble with their unreleased Radeon RX 480 just yet - as they're pricing that at a very lucrative $199... but it does put the pressure on slightly. AMD need to ensure their stock levels of the RX 480 are far higher than the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, but these new nodes aren't easy. AMD is using the 14nm FinFET process for its new Polaris-based Radeon RX series, while NVIDIA is tapping some of that 16nm FinFET for its Pascal-based GeForce 10 series. These recent price drops on the GTX 900 series however, are going to really spur some sales up, and hopefully keep consumers and gamers happy until the stock levels of the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 improve late next month.

The soft projections of the 'Warcraft' U.S. opening have come to pass, with the film making barely $30 million - basically a disaster for a summer blockbuster. But thanks to strong international interest, the film is barely keeping its head above water.

According to BoxOfficeMojo, the feature film adaptation has grossed $280 million at the international box office - the vast bulk in China - which represents 90% of the film's $310 million worldwide gross. 'Warcraft's failure in the U.S. market is a huge disappointment for Universal Studios and Legendary Pictures, especially considering its $160 million budget and extensive marketing campaign.

'Warcraft' continues to roll out in the international market, hitting screens in Australia today.

E3 2016 - After dropping a metric ton of new Final Fantasy 15 gameplay footage and content, Square Enix delivers a closer look at the game's "airship"--the flying Regalia car.

What Final Fantasy game would be complete without an airship? Final Fantasy 15 is taking a more unconventional approach with its in-game airship--in fact, it's not really an airship, but a car that converts into a streamlined jetliner to soar the heavens. We got our first look at the Regalia's flying mode a few months ago, but Square Enix has blown the lid off of the svelte transforming speedster in a new clip.

The Regalia is the ancestral royal "ship" of the Lucian kings, and belonged to Noctis' father Cor Leonis--and his father before him. The car-airship is more than just a vehicle--it ties Noctis to his heritage, his bloodline, and serves as the main locomotion for the game's party members--Noctis, Prompto, Ignis and Gladiolus. The Regalia's flying mode only unlocks "pretty far into the game," and can be customized--the clip we saw is the Type F version. The ship will also transform depending on the altitude, and yes, you can control the ship freely just like in other games.

E3 2016 Hideo Kojima has opened up about his enigmatically grim new game Death Stranding, revealing key details about what we can expect with the PS4 exclusive. Technically an action game, Kojima promises that Death Stranding will be unlike anything we've ever seen before.

Quite some time ago, Hideo Kojima helped give birth to the "stealth action" genre with the immortal Metal Gear Solid series--but MGS wasn't just stealth action, it was so much more. Kojima is confident that his new PS4 game, Death Stranding, will do the same. Although it's technically an "action" game, Death Stranding will turn everything we know on its head--and it all starts with using "ropes" instead of "sticks". Kojima explains in a very thought-provoking manner:

"A strand in psychology is often used to refer to ties or chains. So how all the crabs [in the trailer] have this weird umbilical chord and how the baby is tied to Norman [Reedus' character] is a representation of this. There's a Japanese author I am a huge fan of called Kobo Abe. He has a short novel called 'Rope' in which he makes a definition, a statement: the first tool mankind made was a stick. It was made to keep away bad things. It's a weapon. The next tool created by mankind was rope. The rope is not to keep away bad things. On the contrary, it's a tool used to keep good things close to you, to tie good things close to you. Sticks and ropes are some of the tools most used by mankind even these days."

E3 2016 - Nintendo America President Reggie Fils-Aime may have confirmed the new Nintendo NX won't rock over-the-top specs in a recent interview with Bloomberg.

When asked how the NX will stack up against Microsoft's new powerful Xbox Scorpio and Sony's new PlayStation 4K, Reggie Fils-Aime said: "You know for us, it's not about specs, it's not about teraflops, it's not about the horsepower of a particular system; for us, it's about the content. Nintendo is a content-focused company. We create entertainment that makes people smile. So for us, we're focused on bringing our best entertainment to both the Wii U as well as the NX in the future," Nintendo exec Reggie Fils-Aime said in an interview with Bloomberg West.

Fils-Aime's responses are particularly interesting because we have it on good authority that the Nintendo NX will be powered by NVIDIA's new powerful Pascal-based Tegra chip rather than an AMD APU. This would open up the doors for some impressive performance boosts across the board. But on the other hand, we've also heard the NX's power is comparable to an Xbox One and won't "blow away current consoles."

E3 2016 - Bethesda has confirmed that old Skyrim mods will "basically" work in the new remastered 64-bit special edition version, opening up a new door for new and old mods alike. Pete Hines also confirms Skyrim is being remastered on PC, too, and chimes in to give us some clues about older mods being playable on consoles.

Not everything will be compatible right from the start, though. Renowned Skywind modder MicahGhost also says that any mod using the Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) won't work until the tool is updated to support the new 64-bit framework. "I do not believe it will take long at all," the modder said, "because the same team has already done a script extender for fallout 4(FOSE) which uses a 64 bit engine most likely almost identical to the new engine Skyrim Special edition most likely uses."

But what about console mods? One of the biggest selling points for the new remaster is allowing console gamers to experience the massive galaxy of Skyrim mods. Given all of the details Pete Hines has revealed so far, we can speculate that console owners will get to experience older Skyrim mods, too. As long as they can be converted using the new Skyrim: SE Creation Kit, they can be uploaded to Bethesda.net for console players to enjoy.

E3 2016 - Up until now we thought all old Xbox One games will run at 1080p 60FPS on Microsoft's new Project Scorpio powerhouse console. Xbox division Phil Spencer confirms not all original Xbox One games will benefit from Project Scorpio--only newer Xbox games and older games with dynamic resolution like Halo 5 will tap the console's new hardware.

"Scorpio's 6TFLOPs will impact the games and the way they play. ['Upcoming games,' Giant Bomb's Jeff Gertsmann broke in, 'you're not necessarily going to get better performance out of any disc you put in the system.'] You know, that's a great question. If you look at a game like Halo 5 that implements dynamic scaling--as scenes get more complex, in order to maintain 60FPS, it will actually change the resolution. So if you run [Halo 5] on Scorpio, you're actually going to be at that max frame-rate more often," Spencer said during Giant Bomb's E3 2016 broadcast.

Microsoft has affirmed that its Polaris-and-Zen powered Xbox Scorpio won't have exclusive games, but only newer, specially-made games specific older Xbox One games will harness the console's beefy 6TFLOPs GPU processing power. "Some of the existing games will actually run a little better, if they're using dynamic scaling. But I wouldn't buy Scorpio to run your existing library of Xbox One games."

SpaceX has been on a roll lately with three consecutive successful rocket launches and landings. It all came to an end yesterday though when its Falcon 9 rocket failed to land on a floating drone ship at sea and promptly exploded (or suffered a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" as founder Elon Musk puts it), but not before it successfully launched two satellites into orbit.

Musk says the explosion was caused by low thrust in one of the rocket's three primary engines, and that the company is now working on upgrades to the rocket in order to handle the same situation in the future.

SpaceX has a carg resupply mission for the International Space Station next month, followed closely by a Falcon 9 ground landing in Cape Canaveral, Florida and a satellite launch in August.

E3 2016 - Anyone who purchases Ensemble's upcoming Halo Wars 2: Ultimate Edition ($79.99) on Xbox One or PC will be treated to a remastered version of the original Halo Wars.

Halo Wars: Definitive Edition will feature improved visuals over its original incarnation, as well as new achievements, and all previously released DLC.

And of course, this means the debut of the game on PC. Halo Wars did pretty well as far as RTS on console goes, but there was that nagging feeling it would've played better on PC, so we're curious to see how the controls have been optimized for the old keyboard and mouse.

E3 2016 - Microsoft promises that it will ship some of its games on Steam's mighty PC gaming storefront, but also retain its focus on its own first-party Windows Store.

"We will ship games on Steam again," Phil Spencer said on Giant Bomb's E3 2016 livestream. "I look at Steam today, it's on an incredible growth trajectory. It's a massive force in gaming; a positive force. I look at Valve as an important [independent software vendor] for us on Windows. They are a critical part of gaming's success on Windows. I don't think Valve's hurt by not having our first-party games in their store right now. There's going to be areas where we cooperate and there's going to be areas where we compete. The end result is better for gamers."

But which games is Phil Spencer talking about? Almost every game shown off at Microsoft's E3 2016 press conference was proudly labeled as a "Windows 10 and Xbox One exclusive", and the company isn't about to give up on its Universal Windows Platform-powered Windows Store anytime soon. That being said, Microsoft knows it absolutely cannot take on Steam--if it wants to sell PC games, it has to work with the PC gaming giant. Locking high-profile AAA PC games into the Windows Store effectively cuts off a huge portion of your audience.

Exclusive: It was only yesterday that we reported on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 cards selling above the $699 price of the Founders Edition, where we asked if there were supply issues on the GP104.

Now we've had an industry source tell us that there won't be a huge flood of GeForce GTX 1080 cards, from all partners, until late July or even early August. This makes sense, but it also means that the price gouging that is happening now, will continue - and could even get worse. The EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW ACX 3.0 is selling for $1999 on Amazon right now, which is absolutely nuts.

But where to from here? If NVIDIA is going to have stock shortages on the GP104-powered GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, then that means that AMD could come in and really fling things around with the release of the Radeon RX 480. The reason being, is that the RX 480 is going to cost just $199 - but then there's a huge issue here. For AMD to be successful for that month of NVIDIA's low stock, they need to have plenty of RX 480s to go around, and not have shortages of their own. This is only going to result in a price war between NVIDIA and AMD, and it could lead to NVIDIA releasing the GeForce GTX 1060 earlier than anticipated, to fight off the RX 480.

E3 2016 - If you haven't heard about Obduction yet, and loved playing Myst in the 90s, then you'll want to quickly Google what 'Obduction' is, because it's going to be a huge game when it's released later this year.

NVIDIA's own GeForce website has detailed Obduction with some VR gameplay, and an interview with Rand Miller from Cyan. Obduction is only a month away, with a release date of July 26, with the game transporting players into an "all-new, real-time, first-person adventure filled with puzzles, exploration, and discovery, harking back to the themes and spirit of Cyan's previous titles".

Obduction will have both PC and Oculus Rift releases, with NVIDIA working with Cyan on the technology side of the game. Obduction will include support for the Pascal architecture, including Ansel, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection, VR, HDR and more.

It was only a few days ago that we reported Croteam, the developer of Serious Sam VR, was approached by Oculus with an undisclosed sum of money to make the game an exclusive for the Rift. Well, the community went ape sh*t, and it has created enough of a storm that Oculus has now officially addressed it.

Oculus said in their statement: "We regularly offer developers financial grants to help fund early development of new titles to accelerate development or expand the scope of the game. In some cases, we exchange funding in return for launching on the Oculus Store first, with the expectation that the game will go on to launch on other platforms. In the case of Croteam, at no time did we request that they stop development for other platforms, and we look forward to seeing Serious Sam be successful across the entire VR".

Croteam CTO, Alen Ladavac added: "I want to clarify some of the inaccuracies about our relationship with Oculus. Oculus did approach us with an offer to help fund the completion of Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope in exchange for launching first on the Oculus Store and keeping it time-limited exclusive. Their offer was to help us accelerate development of our game, with the expectation that it would eventually support all PC VR platforms. We looked at the offer and decided it wasn't right for our team. At no time did Oculus ask for, or did we discuss total exclusivity or buyout of support from Vive. We look forward to supporting Rift and Vive".

Due to current manufacturing limitations, all 4K UltraHD Blu-ray movies released thus far have been mastered to dual layered 66GB discs which has put limitations on video bitrates and the length of movies available - but that's about to come to an end.

Warner Bros. is set to be the first mainstream manufacturer of larger capacity UltraHD Blu-ray discs, introducing the format for next month's release of 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice'. The disc is set to feature the 3 hour 'ultimate cut', which the studio deemed too long to squeeze onto a 66GB disc. The triple layered format ensures optimum picture quality through more generous bitrates, and allows longer length movies to come to the format without sacrifice to quality. With the triple layered discs being part of the UltraHD Blu-ray specification since inception, no compatibility problems are expected.

'Batman v Superman' hits 4K UltraHD, Blu-ray and DVD on July 19 in the U.S. and July 20 in Australia.

E3 2016 - Gears of War 4 will be shipping on both the Xbox One and Windows 10, with more details on the game being made available during E3 2016. One of these includes what resolution it'll run at on the Xbox One, and an unlocked frame rate on Windows 10.

Inquisitr talked with The Coalition's Technical Director, Michael Rayner, who said: "On the Xbox we're running at 30hz, 1080p for the campaign, 60hz, 1080p for multiplayer. On Windows 10, PC gamers will run as fast as your hardware will support. So you can lock it to your Vsync or your monitor refresh rate, or you can run it fully unlocked, you know, 120 frames or whatever your system can support. Because of the way the engine works, at the core it supports a variable time stamp. The way that the network updates happen between co-op [or] two players, we can have the PC game running at the higher frame rate against the Xbox One at a fixed frame rate. And everything works".

So there you have it, 1080p 30FPS on the Xbox One for the campaign, and 1080p 60FPS for the multiplayer side of things.

E3 2016 - Battlefield 1 is shaping up much better than I thought, with a new screenshot appearing on Twitter thanks to DANNYonPC.

The screenshot displays the customization menu of Battlefield 1, which has a bunch of details and information that players will have at their finger tips before beginning a mission. The customization options seem extensive, with plenty of information on tap.

When it comes to Battlefield 1's multiplayer reveal, gamers asked where the French army was... as they were one of the most important aspects of the Great War. Well, Julien Wera from DICE confirmed that the French army will be part of the main campaign, but they will be included in greater detail in some upcoming DLC.