Latest News - Page 2438

Two weeks ago it was Battlefield 4's Dragon's Teeth DLC and Battlefield Hardline's Robbery DLC that were free on Origin. Now, you can grab Battlefield 4's Final Stand DLC for the low, low price of zero dollars.

Final Stand originally launched toward the end of 2014 and was the game's last major DLC. It features four large, distinct maps, a hovercraft, a futuristic Rorsch X1 rifle, and more, and while it doesn't rank among the best DLC the game has to offer, it's not the worst either.

Hit the source or boot Origin to grab it. As always, do it quick as the offer will expire soon.

Microsoft has at long last released what's effectively Windows 7 Service Pack 2 (SP2): a "convenience rollup" of updates that makes a fresh install or format of the beloved operating system much simpler than it has been. Until now, you'd have to install tons and tons of separate updates and reboot approximately a bajillion times in order to keep the OS current, but this update changes all that.

It's still not nearly as convenient as it could be: you can't download it through Windows Update for some ungodly reason and must download it manually instead, but not before installing the April 2015 servicing stack update for Windows 7. Also, you still need to install any updates that came out after April 2016.

On the bright side, non-security Windows 7 updates (and 8.1 updates) are now on a monthly schedule. Also, you can slipstream the rollup into Windows 7 install media to make the process easier.

Why was the new Star Wars: Battlefront game released half-finished without a campaign? So it could leech from the insane hype generated from The Force Awakens, of course!

After watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the theater, I wanted to continue my experience with a game. Publishers know this; that's why they've always served us with countless direct movie tie-in games, for better or worse. The new Battlefront game was yet another offering in this long tradition, and EA finally admits why the game shipped half-finished without a campaign.

"We made this choice due to time and being able to launch the game side-by-side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact," EA Studios' head Patrick Soderlund said at the company's Investor's Day meeting. Ah, so that's the trade-off: either ship a fully-finished game and miss the huge sales generated by the Star Wars frenzy, or ship it early and half-finished and take the hit in credibility but rake in tons of cash.

By 2020, EA's DLC and season pass content will more than double, with physical disc-based games shrinking by half.

Based on EA's new Investor's Day slides, the company is making a big push to "leveraging digital to drive growth and profitability", meaning digital game downloads and DLC/season pass content will be a major focus for the company moving onward.

In about four years time, EA's physical games will be far overshadowed by full digital game downloads, and "extra" content like DLC, season passes and microtransactions will rise dramatically. EA's most lucrative "extra content" is FIFA Ultimate Team, which is expected to only increase in value. Subscriptions will hike up a bit, bolstering services like EA Access/Origin Access and "live services" like Star Wars: The Old Republic, with mobile pushing up some too.

Introducing Ludens, the official mascot for Hideo Kojima's new Kojima Productions studio.

Hideo Kojima recently unveiled Ludens, the official icon for his newly resurrected games development studio Kojima Productions. Now that KojimaPro is free of Konami, it's important they establish an iconic symbol to rally behind. Ludens--which is Latin for "game"--is a rather striking and interesting figure, and could deliver some key details on Kojima's new "big and extremely edgy" timed PS4 exclusive.

Ludens wears what looks like an astronaut suit, which is actually called an "Extra-Vehicular Activity Creative Suit," topped with his distinctive futuristic knight helm that ensconces his trademark skull. Kojima teased a while back that Ludens holds an important secret for the upcoming game, which will actually be a trans-media experience told across video games and possibly anime. Ludens represents Kojima Pro's future: "We'll deliver THE NEW PLAY in THE NEW FUTURE with the cutting-edge equipment, technology, & the frontier spirit," Kojima said in a Tweet.

BioWare's new mysterious IP may be action-based instead of an RPG, fitting neatly into EA's new action-oriented focus.

A new slide from EA's Investor's Day presentation may hint that BioWare's new unannounced IP is rooted in the action genre.

The slide examines the genres of today's current games, with EA affirming its commitment to the action genre. BioWare is listed under the action genre, which is curious considering Mass Effect: Andromeda is an RPG game. Now this all depends on how EA defines ME: Andromeda and whether or not they see it as an "action RPG" or just an "RPG". If it's the latter, then BioWare's brand new IP could be set in the action genre.

EA plans to fold in its own player-centric brand of competitive gaming into its business model, with features like "pay to spectate."

Over the next three years, EA will build its own competitive gaming sector that will bolster the company's revenue streams. The publisher makes it clear that competitive gaming is not eSports; instead of building up individual teams, EA wants to "make all stars out of all our players". Naturally this is accompanied by a whole new stream of money-making schemes, including monetized spectating and a heavy emphasis on in-game micro-transactions.

That's right: EA really wants to make people pay to watch competitive matches. The publisher claims that spectating isn't just about entertainment, but also teaching players new skillsets, which is actually true--and the company sees lots of opportunities in monetizing this. The competitive gaming arm is set to flex in the next 18 months and be fully established by FY 2019. EA will start with three major foundation goals: organize under a dedicated leader (likely an EA-branded competitive gaming sector), build core game features and platform, and establish partnerships with the biggest brands, devs, and names in gaming.

Mirroring announcements made by 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros and Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios has become the latest studio to announce titles for the 4K UltraHD Blu-ray format with three titles coming in August.

The Tom Cruise sci-fi actioner 'Oblivion', the Scarlett Johansson techno-thriller 'Lucy' and Mark Wahlberg's 'Lone Survivor' become the studios first 4K titles which hit the U.S. market on August 9. All titles include immersive audio and a standard Blu-ray disc with accompanying extra features. The support from the studio is exciting, with the studio boasting some of big blockbusters in its back catalogue, including the 'Back to the Future Trilogy', 'Jurassic Park', 'Fast and the Furious' and 'Despicable Me' movie franchises.

Ubisoft has detailed the upcoming v1.2 patch for The Division, something that has its own 'Conflict' trailer which you can check out below.

The official v1.2 patch for The Division will have a new Incursion known as Clear Sky, which will have Division agents playing against Rikers. This will have gamers trying to take back a LMB-controlled anti-air site. The new Conflict Incursion isn't the only new thing in the v1.2 patch, as we'll also be introduced to high-value targets, modifications to the Dark Zone, gamers having the ability to hijack loot, new gear sets and more.

Ubisoft explains: "Another new feature coming in the Conflict update is high-value targets (HVT). The HVT officer inside your base of operations will provide you with a list of these targets, along with a description, their level, and the recommended gear score you need to engage them. You'll have a limited amount of time and only one chance to take down these targets. The Dark Zone will see some changes that are going to make extractions even more intense than they were before. Specifically, Agents will now have the option to hijack your loot. This means that a player can run to an extraction rope and cut it, causing all of the loot to fall to the ground".

According to the latest rumors, Intel has secured itself a big contract with Apple for the next-gen iPhone. DigiTimes reports that Intel will be supplying Apple with half of the modem chips required for the next-gen iPhone launching in September.

Intel will reportedly package the modems for the new iPhone, but have tapped TSMC and tester King Yuan Electronics (KYEC) to manufacture the chips. Right now, Qualcomm is the supplier of LTE modems chips for the iPhone, but Apple is wanting to shift having all of its eggs in one basket.

There's not much new with the next-gen iPhone, but a win is a win for Intel in the smartphone game. Now imagine if the iPhone was truly powered by a mobile processor from Intel... that would change, everything.

NVIDIA has been dominating discrete GPU market share for a while now, but AMD has made a comeback in the last few months with its Radeon R9 300 series and the HBM1-powered R9 Nano and R9 Fury cards. In Q4 2015, AMD's discrete GPU sales increased by 6.69%, thanks to the release of the R9 380X.

On the other hand, NVIDIA's discrete GPU sales were down 7.56% after it released the GTX 950. This means that AMD could secure itself 7% of the discrete GPU market share in a single quarter, which is impressive. It won't be long until AMD fully unveils their next-gen Polaris 10 and Polaris 11-based video cards, but we'll have to wait until late this year according to the new rumors, or early 2017 for the HBM2-powered Vega GPU.

Right now, AMD has nothing to fight against the behemoth that is the GeForce GTX 1080, but it could shift focus to the mid-range market with its new Polaris 10-based cards priced at $299 or under.

We've just wrapped our review on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, with it blowing everything else out of the water, but one of the things I can't wait for is the cheaper GTX 1070.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070 is going to be a video card that represents huge value for money, priced at $379. The specifications were hush-hush until now, but it looks like the GTX 1070 will feature 1920 cores, down from the 2560 cores found on the GTX 1080. The GP104-based GeForce GTX 1070 is expected to be faster than the current GM200-based GeForce GTX 980 Ti, and even the Titan X.

We can work out the rough GPU clock of the GTX 1070 if we look at the ~1600MHz Boost clock, comparing it to the 1733MHz Boost on the GTX 1080. The GTX 1080's default GPU clock speed is 1607MHz, so I'm expecting the GTX 1070 to fall somewhere in the 1400-1450MHz range. Coupled with 8GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit memory bus, we're talking about 256GB/sec of memory bandwidth - which is a kick down from the 320GB/sec on the GTX 1080 with its 8GB of GDDR5X on the same 256-bit memory bus.

Modder Zulliethewitch created the first person mods for Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, and now she's back again with a first person mod for Dark Souls 3.

It's rudimentary to say the least: there is no character body visible from the new perspective and arms and hands float out in front of you attached to nothing. Presumably, the mod will be updated for realism, but if you just want to have some silly fun now, head here to download it (and here if you experience Windows 10 related issues with it).

The mod is said to not alter files in any way, but as always, use it as your own risk and know that a ban is a possibility, however slight.

Last week's Radeon 16.5.2 drivers included some optimizations for Doom, although no specific numbers were included. Now AMD has released a beta driver in 16.5.2.1 with yet more performance improvements, and this time with numbers in hand.

The company claims up to 35% better performance on the R9 390 over the previous drivers. Anyone on the 290 series should absolutely download these as well given the similar GPU architecture; it doesn't hurt to try for older cards either.

In my personal testing with a 290X, Ultra settings were giving me anywhere from about 40 to 110 FPS with frequent stuttering and a general feeling of input lag with 16.5.2; updating the drivers sees Ultra run smooth as butter, rarely if ever dipping below 60 FPS and often staying over 100, with little or no stuttering and no feeling of input lag. I'll go so far as to say this is likely the biggest performance improvement I've ever seen from a driver update.

Crytek has been pushing into the world of VR for a while now, with the Crysis developer announcing it has signed up 6 more universities into its VR First program.

The developer has added The University of Canterbury (New Zealand), Kajaani University of Applied Sciences (Finland), University College London (UK), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), Oklahoma University (USA), and Tallinn Technical University (Estonia). Crytek first announced VR First in January, offering up its CryEngine source code for schools and free access to the required VR hardware from various companies.

At the time, Crytek's Ferhan Özkan said: "Collaborating with the IEEE dramatically broadens the potential reach of VR First and emphasizes our commitment to ensuring the program makes a genuine impact on the landscape of VR research and development at the grassroots level".

Overwatch has been a success, with Blizzard reporting that over 9.7 million gamers participating in the recent open beta of Overwatch.

The Overwatch beta took place on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC for less than a week, with over 9.7 million gamers using the time to play 37 million matches. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime described the huge interest in Overwatch as "incredible" and "overwhelming".

With over 9.7 million gamers playing the Overwatch beta, Blizzard should be over the moon. Comparing it to Star Wars Battlefront which had 'only' 9 million players, but EA has recently confirmed 14 million copies have been shipped. The Division's beta had 6.4 million gamers, but made $330 million in the first five days on sale.

Sony has announced that it will be hosting its E3 2016 press conference at 6pm PT on June 13, which will take place in the Shrine Auditorium in LA.

Sony is taking its usual Monday evening spot during E3, while Microsoft and Ubisoft will kick off their E3 2016 festivities in the morning and afternoon. Ubisoft will be a few hours earlier than usual, closer to the EA spot that they moved away from this year. EA is hosting its own EA Play event on Sunday, June 12 during the afternoon.

Rumor has it the new PS4K won't be unveiled during E3 2016, but I think that would be a gigantic mistake on Sony's part. The PlayStation VR push should be quite real, as this is the biggest event that Sony can use to push its VR headset.

Oculus continues its path towards VR enlightenment, announcing its new initiative 'VR for Good'. Oculus will use VR for Good to partner with 10 nonprofits with "rising filmmakers" to make 360-degree videos for VR.

Organizations will be provided with two days worth of training at the Facebook HQ, Nokia OZO camera, and even post-production help. The collection of videos will be displayed at Sundance next year, which will give filmmakers a huge stage to launch from. The VR startup will also help students who are interested in VR, with Oculus working with 9 high schools throughout the San Francisco area with professional filmmakers to make short 360-degree videos about their communities.

Better yet, the students will get to use a Samsung Gear VR, Galaxy S6 smartphone and Rocoh Theta S 360 camera, editing software and help from mentors in order to create their short films. At the end of it, the finished videos will be on Facebook and Oculus Video when the six-week program has ended.

With the broadcast of the first new 'X-Files' episodes in over a decade proving a huge hit for the Fox network earlier this year, talk immediately began to whether we might see more Mulder and Scully in the future. Now it looks like we will.

As reported by Bloody Disgusting, Fox TV Group chairmans Dana Walden and Gary Newman recently spoke at a conference call and confirmed that initial discussions had been had. Walden confirmed that "we have had conversations with Chris Carter and David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. I believe everyone is on board to do another installment of the show." Newman added "Conversations are ongoing. I can tell you that all of them would like to do more of these, and certainly the network and studio want to do more."

Despite the six episode event series being a ratings success, many long term fans and critics expressed disappointment by the majority of episodes, with all singling out the third episode 'Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster' as the clear standout.

Quantum Break has been Quantum Broken since its release, with the Windows 10 release being in shambles since its release - but, there are big changes on their way.

Remedy Entertainment's head of PR, Thomas Puha, says that a future update for Quantum Break will add G-Sync and FreeSync support, thanks to Microsoft recently adding support for NVIDIA and AMD's variable refresh technology into Windows 10.

The new update for Quantum Break is expected to drop in the next two weeks, where we should also expect some other tweaks and performance improvements. The last patch for Quantum Break included a fix for the frame pacing issues it was experiencing while the latest Xbox One patch had multiple general fixes and more.