Latest News - Page 2439

There's been a debate raging the past few weeks about whether or not Blizzard should implement a one hero limit for Overwatch. As it stands, there's no such limit, which sometimes leads to silly compositions that are tough to beat in some situations like double Winston, double Lucio, and double Tracer.

After much vocalization (particularly from the eSports scene), the developer is going ahead and implementing the limit, which it says is because stacking has decreased overall fun. As you'd probably hope, this is only for Competitive Mode; Quick Play remains the 'let's do silly things / try out heroes we're not good with' mode. A side effect of the limit is you'll likely notice more compositions that double up on effects but with different heroes as opposed to using the same heroes: for example, area control from Pharah and Junkrat, double turret action from Bastion and Torbjorn, and so on.

Also on the way is a balance patch which features buffs to a few heroes and a nerf to one.

Makers of the GT mouse Swiftpoint are aiming to do it all with their next device. The Z mouse offers a level of control over your actions and movements we've never seen before, whether it's tilting the mouse to lean, pivoting it to change direction, taking advantage of the pressure sensitive clicks for added action precision, lifting it to bring a chopper off the ground, or all kinds of other things.

Between the different buttons, how you click them, and the aid of tilting and pivoting, the Z allows you to take advantage of 50 clickable button actions, which could prove very handy for RPGs, MMOs, and MOBAs.

"Deep clicking" is useful for strong versus light attacks in games, but also for office productivity: a shallow click will select a word, a medium click will select a paragraph, and a deep click will select an entire page. Similarly, you can use the tilt functionality to scan through pages freely.

Last week, a sniper rifle that appeared to have healing functionality was teased for Overwatch and today it's revealed as well as the hero that wields it. As some suspected, that hero is Ana Amari, mother to Pharah and a one-eyed sniper who has come out of retirement.

Ana's rifle allows her to deal perpetual damage to enemies (when zoomed out). When zoomed in, she acts like a traditional sniper. As well, the weapon can be set to restore health to allies. Other equipment includes a "sleep dart" that renders a foe unconscious until damage is dealt to them, a biotic grenade that deals damage to enemies and prevents them from healing while also healing any allies in the area of effect, and a nano boost (appears to be her Ultimate), which will inject a foe with a shot of adrenaline, allowing them to move faster, deal more damage, and take less damage from enemies.

With all of this high-value utility, it's not hard to imagine Ana as a Competitive Mode and tournament mainstay, but of course, time will tell. Whatever happens, it seems clear either Widowmaker will need a buff or Ana will need a nerf in order for both to be viable.

Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive will be at Gamescom 2016, so we could see Red Dead Redemption 2 teased and/or revealed onstage.

Take-Two Interactive skipped E3 2016 and missed the opportunity to reveal Red Dead Redemption 2: Legends of the Old West, but we could see the hugely anticipated sequel announced at Gamescom. The publisher will be in attendance (although Rockstar won't be tagging along) and has two separate booth areas that could feature demo builds of RDR2 and other titles.

Evidence of a Red Dead Redemption sequel--actually it might be a prequel--has been mounting, especially now that a copy of the game's map leaked out, adding more credence that the game will feature a "much bigger open world". The most convincing evidence comes from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, who confirmed the company is working on some "exciting future projects" that culminate in a "robust development plan that extends well beyond the current fiscal year."

Country and Western singer turned pop super-star Taylor Swift has out foxed the likes of Madonna and Bono to become the highest paid celebrity in the world.

According to the annual Forbes Celebrity 100, Taylor Swift topped the list by earning $170 million over the last year. That's a sweet half a mill almost every single day. Not bad work if you can get it. Forbes puts Swift's massive payday increase comes courtesy of the starlets massively successful 1989 World Tour. I can personally vouch for its value - I'm not even scared to admit it was awesome.

Forbes will soon release the complete 100 listing.

Samsung has just launched its juggernaut 4TB 850 EVO solid state drive, the world's largest consumer-grade SSD on the market.

Built with Samsung's renowned V-NAND technology, the 4TB 850 EVO SSD melds the reliability and endurance of the 850 EVO series with high-end performance. Set in a slim and compact 2.5-inch form factor, the Samsung 850 EVO 4TB model sports all the trimmings and optimizations of the 850 EVO line with blistering-fast 540 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write speeds with TurboWrite.

Four terabytes is quite a staggering amount of data, especially for an SSD; for reference the 4TB 850 EVO can hold up to 1,000 two-hour 1080p movies with compression--that's more than two or three movie libraries on a single 2-inch SSD. The colossal SSD also features a 1.5 million hour MTBF rate, and uses the SATA 6Gb/s interface for speedy transfers.

Eidos Montreal confirms that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will have a NewGame+ mode to allow players to continue their journey even after the game ends.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a game about choice, and like any Deus Ex game, it gives a staggering amount of freedom to the player. Not only do we get to choose how to handle any given situation, how to build up Jensen's huge armory of weapons and abilities, or how our decisions impact everyday people, gamers get to choose when Jensen's story actually ends.

"We know New Game + totally breaks the narrative, but this is a game about choice, so we wanted players to explore that in this aspect too," Eidos Montreal Executive Narrative Director Mary DeMarle said in a recent PlayStation Blog post. "Your augmentations in New Game + really let you take advantage and get access to stuff that you didn't know was there the first time, especially as we designed the game to feature more verticality and 360 entrances for some of the buildings."

DICE's renowned Battlefield game franchise is crossing over into the real-world with its own TV show series adaptation.

On the heels of Battlefield 1's massively popular reveal trailer and the huge buzz surrounding the World War 1 shooter's alpha test, the time is ripe for a Battlefield TV show. DICE announced the news in a recent blog post, confirming the Battlefield television series would come to "television programming across broadcast, premium cable, cable and online audiences." Paramount's partner, Anonymous Content, has a tremendous track record with Mr. Robot, whose second season premieres this week.

"Paramount TV actively seeks smart content from all sectors that will resonate with audiences and translate to compelling programming," said Amy Powell, President, Paramount TV. "EA's Battlefield has an incredibly dynamic narrative, coupled with a loyal fan base, which will allow us to bring this exciting and unique property to the small screen. We look forward to working with EA and Anonymous Content and thank Michael Sugar for his tenacity in bringing us this exciting project."

Modder Trix and his team breathed new life into Just Cause 2 (JC2) and its sequel Just Cause 3 (JC3) with well-received multiplayer mods. In the case of the JC3 mod, that's now being put on indefinite hold, and Trix is taking a job at Avalanche Studios (where the Just Cause series is made). Presumably, this means the next Just Cause title will feature native multiplayer.

"As part of Avalanche, I'll be able to bring many of the things you know and love from JC2-MP into future Avalanche experiences, while reaching heights that a mere mod couldn't facilitate," Trix states. "Unfortunately, due to time constraints, neither I or the rest of the team can actively pursue development on JC3-MP; our lives are just too busy to allow for it right now."

JC2-MP will be actively maintained (and AMD compatibility worked on), but beyond that, you're on your own. Fortunately, JC3 lovers can still check out a separate multiplayer mod from a different team.

Sharing one's Netflix password with a family member or friend is a somewhat common practice, but a new ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rendered it a prosecutable crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The ruling pertained to large, serious crimes that threaten security and privacy of company data, but has residual effects on common users, potentially including those who share passwords of any kind.

Ninth Circuit judge Stephen Reinhardt opposed the ruling, saying it could turn thousands into "unwitting federal criminals" and that it "loses sight of the anti-hacking purpose of the CFAA, and... threatens to criminalise all sorts of innocuous conduct engaged in daily by ordinary citizens."

Doom now supports the Vulkan API, meaning improved performance for you thanks in large part to more efficient CPU usage. While Doom already ran incredibly well on high-end hardware, this could mean 4K is now viable for you whereas before it was not. As well, those on low-end or midrange setups may now be able to run the game more smoothly.

Doom's Vulkan support also benefits from AMD's work in supporting Async Compute (only AMD GPUs support this for now), "Shader Instrinsics", and "Frame Flip Optimizations", three techniques designed to make GPU usage more efficient.

AMD claims up to 27% better performance with Vulkan on an RX480 at 1920x1080, and 23% on an RX480 at 2560x1440, which appears to be in line with user reports. The API is by no means restricted to AMD cards only though; NVIDIA users should see about the same improvement. However, note that NVIDIA GPUs with 2GB RAM on Windows 7 or on the 690 are not currently supported.

Niantic confirms that Pokemon GO is far from unfinished: like the furry Pocket Monsters it meshes with our real-world, the smartphone app will continue to evolve.

The free Pokemon GO smartphone game is a juggernaut. Not only has Pokemon GO topped the free iOS app charts, but it's about to eclipse Twitter as the most-used free app on the market. Nintendo and Niantic have hit a goldmine by making our everyday real lives into an AR "gotta catch em all" video game, leading Nintendo's market share to rise by 23% over the last few days. But can the game keep up the momentum and keep players actively engaged, or is Pokemon GO destined to be a curious case of "burning twice as bright for half as long" smartphone game experiments?

According to Niantic CEO John Hanke, Pokemon GO will get key features like Pokemon trading with friends and other content to keep the game fresh. "[Trading] is kind of a core element," Henke said. The CEO also says that players can expect updates to Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms, which exist now only "very most basic versions," and players will also be able to "customize their functions in other ways."

Unlike most games today, the infinite universe of No Man's Sky won't break your HDD space. In fact the entire game will fit on a 16GB thumb drive.

Even with its monstrously huge procedurally generated galaxies, No Man's Sky will only be 6GB in its disc form. Sean Murray even says that most of the 6GB is audio. Yes, really. The game has some 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets and its total install size is still less than the day-one patches of AAA games. With a size like this Hello Games doesn't even have to use a Blu-ray disc; they could just use a dual-sided DVD.

No Man's Sky owes its small install size to its procedurally generated environments, which offers advantages like "smaller file sizes, larger amounts of content, and randomness for less predictable gameplay." Both the New Yorker and PBS (see video above) have excellent content explaining how Hello Games made No Man's Sky's universe, so be sure to check those out.

Tesla Motors and SpaceX boss Elon Musk has teased on Twitter over the weekend that he's working on 'Top Secret Tesla Masterplan, Part 2' which he's hoping "to publish later this week".

What the hell is Tesla's master plan? Well, BGR reports that on August 2, 2006 Musk published the first part of Tesla's Masterplan. The first part of Tesla's Masterplan was titled "The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)" and outlined Musk's vision for electric vehicles, where he detailed the specific steps his company was planning in order to bring an electric car that was affordable, to the masses. If you look at Musk's detailed plan, he has pretty much completed his goals bit by bit:

So, in short, the master plan is:

Nintendo has seen a huge 23% rise in stock thanks to the massive success of Pokemon GO, while actual Pokemon GO players are getting robbed by thieves.

Police in O'Fallon, Missouri have said that thieves have been using Pokemon GO to lure victims, as the game is a mobile augmented reality title that sees gamers exploring the real-world around them in search for Pokemon. The thieves have probably created a Pokestop, which is a location where you collect items in Pokemon GO, waited for the gamers to show up, and rob them.

This isn't the first Pokemon GO related incident to happen, either - with someone finding a dead body after walking past a river to find Pokemon. Nintendo has updated Pokemon GO with warnings to be mindful of the environment around you - but geez, this is kind of crazy, isn't it? Small businesses need to jump onto Pokemon GO, as soon as possible.

LG has been making some huge strides in its push for OLED technology dominance, with their 65-inch 4K OLED TV being one of the most beautiful TVs on the market. Well, the company is now going to use its OLED technology in foldable/rollable smartphones and tablets, starting in 2017.

According to the Senior Principal Analyst for Emerging Display Technologies and OLED at IHS, Jerry Kang, foldable and rollable smartphones, tablets and wearables aren't that far away. Kang said that manufacturers like LG are going to be launching them with tablets that can fold into the size of a smartphone, but wearable devices will also be a focus point.

The displays on the foldable and rollable products will utilize OLED, thanks to OLED displays not needing to light up the back panel - making them thinner, and much more power efficient. It isn't easy to bring foldable screens to the market, as it represents a fundamental change in the way smartphones and tablets are created today. Batteries, circuits, touchscreen layers and more will be needing some change, allowing the flexible screen revolution to begin.

To celebrate this week's release of '13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi' on Blu-ray and DVD, we have ten Blu-ray copies to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

From director Michael Bay. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi is the gripping true story of six elite ex-military operators assigned to protect the CIA who fought back against overwhelming odds when terrorists attacked a U.S. diplomatic compound on September 11, 2012. When everything went wrong, six men had the courage to do what was right. Based on the nonfiction book "13 Hours" by New York Times bestselling author Mitchell Zuckoff and members of the annex security team.

To go into the running to win a prize, simply 'like' this post, share via Facebook or Twitter and send your postal address to ben at TweakTown dot com before the competition closes on July 16th.

Bitcoin mining just got harder, with Reuters reporting that the digital currency system now has new anti-inflation code, which makes mining Bitcoins twice as long.

Previously, the reward for Bitcoin mining would be 25 bitcoins ($16,000 or so) being mined every 10 minutes, but that now takes 12.5 minutes. The measure automatically starts every four years in an attempt to stop inflation that many miners are worried about, especially with quicker and quicker computers mining Bitcoins, outpacing desktop PCs.

Dedicated miners are going to be pissed, as they'll need to work twice as hard to get the same money from bitcoins, and then the hardcore/professional bitcoin miners might to rethink their entire business.

Night Dive Studios has reached its $900,000 funding goal for System Shock Remastered, where as of July 9 they had reached $905,396. There are over 14,000 backers to System Shock, which was one of the best games on the PC in the 90s.

At the time of writing this article, System Shock had hit $922,764 of its funding goal on Kickstarter. The Kickstarter page explains the game as "System Shock is a complete remake of the genre defining classic from 1994 built by a team of industry veterans. Remember Citadel".

Now that the game has its $900,000 funding goal, we can expect the following unlock on Kickstarter: Modern Inventory Management, Modern Controls, New Puzzles, Updated Faithful Levels, Game Difficulty Modes. If the game reaches $1.7 million in funding, Night Dive Studios will add: Enemy limb dismemberment, More puzzles, Ammo types/weapon settings, Vending machines, Basic components/research, RPG progression, Weapon upgrading, Hardcore mode (No respawning), Ironman mode (Only 1 savegame. If you die, the save is deleted).

Samsung has continued its portable storage dominance, announcing the world's first removable UFS memory card.

The company has the new removable UFS memory cards in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB with some pretty crazy speeds to boot. Samsung's new UFS cards have read speeds of up to 530MB/sec, which is 5x faster than even the fastest microSD cards. This means you can download a 5GB file from the UFS card in around 10 seconds, compared to UHS-1 microSD cards where it would take around 50 seconds.

Samsung has also boosted the write speeds on its new UFS cards, with up to 170MB/sec on tap, nearly double that of the fastest microSD cards like Sandisk's Extreme Pro, which writes at up to 100MB/sec. Samsung has crammed this type of speeds into the new UFS cards because of the high-resolution footage being captured by smartphones to action cameras, aerial drones and 360-degree cameras.