Latest News - Page 2418

It's been fifteen years since the original 'Shrek' hit theaters, becoming a smash hit for Dreamworks and going on to gross over $3.5 billion worldwide. While the last film 'Shrek Forever After' was released six years ago, it seems that's long enough to justify a complete reboot.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, following the purchase of the Dreamworks Animation Studio by NBCUniversal, the new owners are actively seeking ways to resurrect the Mike Myers franchise. Confirming that 'Despicable Me' producer Chris Meledandri has been handed creative control over the studio, NBCUniversal chief executive Steve Burke told stockholders that Melendandri "is creatively going to try to help us figure out how to resurrect Shrek". NBCUniversal are hoping that DreamWorks can ramp up its output to as many as four films annually - over four times as many as Pixar animation under the Disney banner.

There's no word yet on how far the 'Shrek' reboot might be, but I'm sure it's being worked on as we speak.

E3 2016 - Sony had a smash hit with E3 2016, with a big push into PlayStation VR, a huge reveal of Resident Evil 7, and just so much more that I can't cram into a single news post. But we did just find out that Sony ran all of their E3 2016 content on the current-gen PlayStation 4 console.

This included the reveal of the awesome-looking God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn (which wasn't running too well, IMO), The Last Guardian (finally!), Detroit: Become Human - which is from the makers of Heavy Rain, and Days Gone. PlayStation exec Andrew House said that the Neo is definitely on the way, adding: "It is intended to sit alongside and complement the standard PS4. We will be selling both [versions] through the life cycle".

PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida himself confirmed the E3 2016 games running on the current, standard PS4, where he tweeted: "everything is on a standard PS4". That's actually quite impressive, Sony - running all of these games on the current-gen PS4, and not the new Neo.

While the original plan for the continuation of the 'Independence Day' franchise was to film two films back-to-back, Director Roland Emmerich is keen to return for a third film revealing that 'Resurgence' leaves the door way open.

Speaking to EmpireOnline, Emmerich confirmed that he's keen to return to the world with a third film, saying "If it's successful enough, yes [there will be another] because it's set up for a sequel. In 20 years? No, I wouldn't want to make it with a Zimmer frame!" Sporting a $200 million dollar budget, the film needs to do solid business of at least $700-800 million to justify a sequel. The original film 1996 grossed $817 million worldwide, on it's $75 million budget.

'Independence Day: Resurgence' hits 2D, 3D and IMAX cinemas worldwide next week.

Over the past few days, many of my friends (inside, and outside of the industry) have been asking me "where are all the GeForce GTX 1080s?" and I haven't taken much notice, until now. One of my friends has been eyeing off the awesome MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G, simply because he couldn't find one in retail, or online anywhere in Australia.

Well, the Australian market for enthusiast level hardware at launch is always... bad, very bad. We get a handful (less than 10) on a good launch, and I experienced this first hand for 10 years working IT retail selling these exact cards. So I decided to check Amazon, and lo and behold - the price gouging is HUGE. The big surprise is is the custom card from EVGA in the form of the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0 card, which is freakin' $1999 right now... this is absolute insanity.

Remember that NVIDIA unveiled the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition for $699, but there is a huge premium on the cards right now - and this could be one of two reasons. The first, is that NVIDIA hasn't got enough supply of their 16nm FinFET-based GP104, and that's why the GTX 1080 is so expensive because retailers are wanting as much money as they can, while they can, as the stock levels are low. Second, it could be retailers doing their usual and price gouging - but this price gouging is on another level right now - especially at $1999 for a single GTX 1080 from EVGA.

It's supposed to be 'the happiest place on Earth', but one families trip to Disney World in Florida, Orlando has ended in tragedy after an alligator attack resulted in the death of a 2 year old boy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the remains of the 2 year old boy have been located after the child was dragged into the water and drowned by an alligator at Walt Disney World Resort. The child had been wading in the water with his family at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa while preparing to watch the nightly fireworks. The park's team of animal wranglers is charged with removing wild animals from sites and has "routinely taken out alligators in the lakes and the properties".

Jacquee Wahler, vice president of Walt Disney World Resort told media that "Everyone here at the Walt Disney World Resort is devastated by this tragic accident. Our thoughts are with the family. We are helping the family and doing everything we can to assist law enforcement."

Unveiled earlier this week, the upcoming Xbox One S revision is set to be the cheapest 4K UHD Blu-ray player on the market, pipping the market leading Samsung player by $100.

Microsoft's inclusion of a 4K UHD Blu-ray playback is significant for the format and will no doubt help the fledgling format make bigger inroads to the market, in the same manner that the PlayStation 3 was the cheapest (and most stable) Blu-ray player on the market when releases in late 2006. The console will also embrace HDR playback for 4K UHD Bluray, games and video streaming from Netflix and Amazon Video. The future PS4K Neo is also expected to match Microsoft's console and also feature 4K UHD Blu-ray playback. Sony have yet to produce a standalone 4K UHD Blu-ray player, but is expected to unveil a player in the first quarter of 2017.

The Xbox One S launches in August at $299USD for the 500GB model ($549 in Australia), $349 for the 1TB SKU, and $399 for the 2TB variant.

Twitter earlier this year invested $70 million into SoundCloud, both companies have confirmed. Combined with other investments, the audio-sharing service is expected to value at an estimated $700 million.

"Earlier this year we made an investment in SoundCloud through Twitter Ventures to help support some of our efforts with creators," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. "They've been great partners of ours over the years and their community-supported approach mirrors ours in many ways."

Meanwhile SoundCloud says the investment will help them with new initiatives like its subscription service SoundCloud Go.

E3 2016 - Furthering its plan of integrating console and PC, Microsoft Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has made it known that keyboard and mouse support are on the way for Xbox One.

"I keep talking about it in the press and my platform team keeps shaking their head, because they... Truthfully in our dev kit modes now keyboard works, mouse support is a little bit further away," he said, explaining how Play Anywhere will work. "I say it because I know it's not years away, it's more like months away, but we don't have an exact date yet."

Spencer also said he hoped gamers would play PC-centric games on their console as a result of the support.

E3 2016 - Nyko is known for video game accessories, but starting today they're venturing down the virtual reality path as well.

Its first VR product is the VR Guardian, a "boundary system" that lets you set a safe zone for gameplay so that if you're about to trip over something or hit a wall, sensors and wristbands (chargeable) will tell you so. Powered by Bluetooth, Guardian will ship this autumn and sell for $100.

Then there's the VR Motion Band, a set of wristbands that alleviate muscular tension and stress and promote circulation so the side effects of long VR sessions -- nausea, dizziness, and headaches -- aren't an issue (or at least less so). The Band should be especially useful for those prone to nausea on car rides, boats, rollercoasters, and so on. Like the Guardian, it will ship in autumn, but will only cost $10.

E3 2016 - Microsoft has been on a roll when it comes to hardware, announcing the new beefy Xbox Scorpio console with 6TFlops of performance - and ready for both 4K and VR gaming. But the company has just sliced the price of the Xbox One down by another $20, too.

Just two weeks ago Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox One to $299, and now the company has done it again, dropping the price to just $279. The $299 promotion was for a "limited time" and by limited time, they must have meant - after that limited time, we'll just drop it lower than that, permanently. The basic 500GB Xbox One bundle is now $279, with Microsoft most likely dropping the price to remove any remaining inventory of the Xbox One before the refreshed, more powerful Xbox One S console drops later this year... for $299.

The new $279 price on the Xbox One runs through to October 1, but once the Xbox One S is out, you probably won't want to buy the current Xbox One. The Xbox One S is 40% smaller, has an internal power brick, supports 4K video, and HDR gaming.

E3 2016 - Sony is expected to deliver a bunch of new details about its 4K-ready PlayStation Neo (aka PS4K, PS4.5) at this year's Tokyo Game Show, with a finished console reveal at Paris Games Week.

Although Sony has officially confirmed the existence of its powerful new upgraded PlayStation 4K, the hot new system was entirely absent at the Japanese gaming giant's E3 2016. That was to be expected, of course, as Sony told us the PS4K wouldn't show up. But Sony doesn't plan to keep us in the dark for much longer: according to Macquarie Securities analyst Damian Thong, Sony will drop key details on its "hardcore" new PS4K at this year's Tokyo Game Show on September 19-20.

Sony will likely unveil key specifications of the console, possibly confirming the leaked specs (8-core Jaguar CPU at 2.1GHz, 8GB GDDR5 memory at 218GB/s, and a 14nm AMD Polaris GPU), and clear up any confusion surrounding the system--but the console won't show up. As for an actual unveiling of the finished PlayStation 4K console itself, renowned games insider Shinobi602 predicts Sony will debut the system at Paris Games Week on October 27. Shinobi has been accurate many times in the past, and was right on the mark when he said the PS4K would skip E3.

It may be a World War game, but developer DICE won't be including every relevant nation in Battlefield 1 multiplayer. British, German, Austro-Hungarian, Italian, Ottoman, and American forces are confirmed, leaving 21 nations by the wayside. Among those not included: France, which played a pivotal role in World War I.

DICE's Director of Product Strategy Julien Wera explained to French media the exclusion isn't a slight to the country, but rather a compliment in a way, as they want to give them full treatment in the form of DLC.

"The French army is present in the single player campaign," he said to Le Monde. "For multiplayer, the French army had such an important role in the first World War that we wanted to give them special treatment, which required more time, so it will be playable, but after the launch of the game in an expansion that will be dedicated to them."

E3 2016 - Microsoft announced its new super-powered Xbox Scorpio during E3 2016, with the new console being both 4K and VR-ready. Microsoft boss Phil Spencer said that the company could've shipped a next-gen Xbox this year, but it would not have been 4K-capable.

Spencer said during an interview with Eurogamer: "We could have done a new update this year. We actually looked at it. We went all the way to, we had the spec in front of us, should we ship something that's less than Scorpio this year, but in truth you can't do a true 4K console this year. And I just didn't think anything between what is effectively a 1080p console and the 4K console, like, from a consumer television standpoint there's nothing in the middle. So let's go focus on 4K and next year was the right year to do that".

He continued talking about the hardware inside of Scorpio, saying that it would not have been possible to have a true 4K-capable console with all of the right hardware this year. Spencer said: "Balance in the design of the system is really important. So when you think about the CPU and the GPU that are on the SOC, the optical disc drive and the speed of that, which we haven't talked about too much, but I'll just say that, the speed of RAM, all of these things when you're designing the system, making sure they're all in balance, so one piece doesn't get overpowered relative to the other, or you've got a lot of GPU but you're not able to feed all of the assets to it out of the RAM fast enough, all of those things were critical for us when thinking about the design. All of this is why we picked the design point we did of 4K and the date we did. Like I said, we looked at other designs that might be coming earlier, and we don't think they really delivered on a full point".

E3 2016 - With this year's E3 being one of the most exciting in recent years, Square Enix decided to tease some gameplay footage from the PC version of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

But ugh, the 'PC footage' was captured from the PC version of Mankind Divided, but with an Xbox controller. You can see it in the gameplay, where you can use 'X' to action something. Disappointing to see, as I would've loved to have seen true PC gameplay footage, on you know - the mouse and keyboard. At least the graphics look beyond awesome because it's powered by an actual AMD Radeon-powered gaming PC, but now I need mouse and keyboard gameplay footage!

E3 2016 - When Microsoft announced the Xbox Scorpio, I have to admit, I was a little shocked. I didn't expect the company to pump that much horsepower into a console, with 6TFlops of performance - compared to the piddly little 1.32TFlops offered on the current-gen Xbox One console. Microsoft's Xbox Scorpio console is 4K-ready, and waiting for VR gaming, too.

During an interview with Wired, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that Microsoft wants to "enable many hardware manufacturers to make progress there", in regards to VR. He said that HTC could have their Vive headset, and others like Oculus with their Rift headset, have it work on the Xbox Scorpio. This is great news, and I'm actually proud of Microsoft for this, as the reason is because the company is "not focused on a first party VR hardware device right now".

Spencer said that the PC is the best place for VR right now, saying: "The best place for VR innovation is the PC. I think developers should still go focus on the PC, because I think that's a great place to innovate. What we're doing... is we're able to take some of the PC innovation that we see... and bring it to the console space, to enable those magical experiences on Scorpio when it launches".

E3 2016 - Microsoft's ultra-powerful Project Scorpio may be the first console to push into native 4K gaming.

Microsoft has made it clear that its new 4K-ready Project Scorpio console is a huge step forward, saying things like the console will sport "the highest res at the best frame rates without no compromises." We've speculated that the high-end Xbox Scorpio will be powered by "the most powerful console GPU ever" in a new semi-custom SoC based on AMD's powerful 14nm Polaris GPU and Zen CPU, and now Microsoft may have just confirmed native 4K gaming support for the console. This effectively means Microsoft is bringing enthusiast-grade console hardware to gamers, and for the first time we'll be getting a true next-gen console.

"Scorpio is for the person who's got a 4K television, who's really focused on 4K gaming. This is really a six teraflop console built to support 4K and the power of high fidelity VR. It's going to be a premium price over what we're selling [Xbox One S] for, and both of them will exist in the market at the same time. Scorpio is for your 4K gamer. And that's what we designed it for," Xbox division head Phil Spencer said in a recent interview with Eurogamer.

It wasn't long ago when we found out that AMD's new Radeon RX 480 would run at 60C under load, drawing just 100W. Well, now we have the PCB shots of both the Radeon RX 480 and RX 470, and they're a sight to behold.

The Radeon RX 480 and RX 470 are shorter cards with a single PCIe power connector, and 4 x display outputs consisting of 3 x DP 1.3/1.4 HDR ports and a single HDMI 2.0 port. We're expecting 2304 stream processors on the RX 480, and both a 4GB version that will cost $199, and the 8GB version set at $229. All three of the Radeon RX series cards are based on the new Polaris architecture, baked onto the 14nm FinFET process from GlobalFoundries.

E3 2016 - After news broke out yesterday that the Xbox One S performs better than vanilla Xbox One consoles, Microsoft has jumped in to emphatically insist the Xbox One S hardware tweaks have absolutely zero impact on in-game performance.

Although the 40% smaller Xbox One S rocks GPU and CPU boosts from AMD's new semi-custom SoC, Microsoft says these tweaks are only for HDR support and will have "literally no impact" on in-game performance. Fergusson originally claimed the Xbox One S allowed smoother in-game frame rates and "reduced the resolution penalty" over current Xbox One systems.

"When we made changes to the box for 4K we unlocked a little bit more processing power to enable HDR. That's it. It's exactly the same architecture as the existing one," Xbox exec Albert Penello told Eurogamer. "To support HDR, we give people access to a little more CPU and GPU. That's it. It is so insignificant. I promise, it won't even show up. It will have no impact on games at all. Literally no impact. They will be identical. It's nothing, it is literally nothing.

E3 2016 - Nintendo has done it. They've revealed the official game trailer to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I don't want to write anymore and get in the way of you watching the trailer, so check it out below:

Nintendo explains The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in their YouTube description as: "Step into a world of discovery, exploration and adventure in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a boundary-breaking new game in the acclaimed series. Travel across fields, through forests and to mountain peaks as you discover what has become of the ruined kingdom of Hyrule in this stunning open-air adventure".

Nintendo has built a gigantic world for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is 12 times the size than the world in Twilight Princess... incredible. Nintendo has said that if you see something in Breath of the Wild, you can reach it - thanks to Link's new abilities of jumping and climbing cliff faces and buildings. You can explore throughout the world, through plains, forests and mountains - and everything else your eye can see.

E3 2016 - With more details now available on AMD's range of Radeon RX series cards, we've stumbled across some Steam VR benchmark results on the Radeon RX 480, which scores just 6.3 in the Steam VR benchmark.

How does 6.3 on the Steam VR benchmark stack up? Well, considering the Radeon R9 390 scores around the same, AMD are positioning themselves incredibly well for VR. The Radeon R9 380 in comparison scores only 3.6, so AMD are comparing the RX 480 against it, and it really shines. The RX 480 should deliver R9 390 level performance, with it being compared to the HBM1-based R9 Nano in a recent story of ours, with the RX 480 set to consume 100W of power and run at 60C under load.