Latest News - Page 2452

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.

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".