Latest News - Page 2457

As Sony's new PlayStation 4.5 sports hardware upgrades to upscale 1080p games to 4K, gamers are pretty excited about the new console. Finally, we'll be able to hit native 1080p 60FPS in every game, along with light 4K gaming. Developers, on the other hand, aren't too happy about all the extra work they'll have to do.

In today's age of gaming, developers typically have to port games across three systems: PS4, Xbox One, and PC. With Sony's PlayStation 4.5 on the way, that number has been bumped by one. Reports say that all PS4 games made after October must have two versions: a PS4 version, and a new PS4.5 flavor. The new PS4.5 version also has to match the FPS of the base port. Even though the PS4.5 will likely be built on the same basic x86 architecture as the PS4, developers will still have to make tons of adjustments to add in 4K upscaling, on top of getting used to the new hardware.

"A trusted source tells me most developers are not happy with PS4.5, and having to develop around it. Extra cost, planning, other nonsense," says ex-IGN editor and KindaFunnyGames co-founder Colin Moriarty. Since Colin has tons of contacts in the industry, this is probably true. BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk mirrors the sentiment, saying that the PS4.5 will be a "gigantic pain in the ass" for developers.

Since Sony is working on a new PlayStation 4.5 model that features upgraded CPU, GPU and RAM, Microsoft has to counter with their own Xbox refresh in order to stay relevant. Now the word is that Microsoft has been testing various new Xbox prototypes, all of which are outfitted with boosted hardware that overshadow the beleaguered Xbox One.

According to reports published by The Verge, the new mid-cycle Xbox prototypes mirror the kind of hardware you'd find a gaming PC. "Sources familiar with Microsoft's Xbox plans have revealed to The Verge that the company has been testing a variety of prototype Xbox devices. Some of the prototypes have been tested with upgraded components you'd use to improve the performance of a PC gaming rig."

Recent FCC filings confirmed the new Xbox by revealing the console's wireless chip, and Brazilian communications board Anatel even showed the new chip. Furthermore, we've had reports that the new mid-cycle Xbox will be called Xbox NeXt.

Vizio has just unveiled its new M-Series and E-Series sets, with both of them being 4K capable and some super-awesome features with a great price point.

The new M-Series TV features a 6-inch Android tablet remote running Vizio's SmartCast app, and includes support for Google Cast so that you can stream from other devices throughout your house. The M-Series 4K TV features better image quality than its predecessor, with twice as many active LED lighting zones (64) for higher contrast ratios, and HDR video and Dolby Vision support.

The new 4K-only line of TVs from Vizio start at $850 for the 50-inch model, while the 80-inch model is priced at $4000. The updated E-Series has less options, with the 43-inch model setting consumers back $470, while the bigger 70-inch model costs $1700. No HDR support is provided, nor is Dolby Vision, and there are only 12 active LED zones, down from 64 on the M-Series.

We reported a couple of days ago that Intel was preparing for major global workforce cuts, with the chipmaker announcing that they will indeed be cutting jobs over the next year.

The employment cut is part of Intel's larger and continued restructuring efforts, as the company is facing a slower PC market, and continued struggles in the mobile market. The job cuts will see 12,000 employees sliced away from the company, or 11% of its global workforce. Intel will begin most of the layoffs in the next 60 days, with the entire process working its way through to 2017.

Patrick Moorhead, President and Principal Analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy reached out to us about the global workforce layoffs at Intel, saying: "In spite of the announced layoffs, Intel had a good quarter and even showed PC growth in a very down PC quarter. In fact, all but one segment showed improvements year on year".

Tesla Motors has one of the most advanced vehicles in the world with its Model S electric car, but this latest example will have more orders than ever. The autopilot system is shown off in the real-world, saving someone from an accident.

As you can see, a truck is coming up on the left of the driver, with the autopilot system kicking in and swerving to the right to get out of the way of the accident. Model S driver Joshua Brown had his vehicle automatically move out of the way, posting the video to YouTube.

Brown said: "I was driving down the interstate and you can see the boom lift truck in question on the left side of the screen on a joining interstate road. Once the roads merged, the truck tried to get to the exit ramp on the right and never saw my Tesla. I actually wasn't watching that direction and Tessy (the name of my car) was on duty with autopilot engaged. I became aware of the danger when Tessy alerted me with the immediately take over warning chime and the car swerving to the right to avoid the side collision".

AMD has an exciting piece of technology with its Polaris architecture, but its upcoming Radeon M400 mobility series will reportedly be filled with rebrands, except for the high-end designs, which will be based around Polaris.

VideoCardz is reporting that AMD will be launching the rebranded lineup, followed by Polaris-based mobility offerings later in the year. The new Radeon R9 M470X will be a rebranded Radeon R9 M385X, with both of these SKUs using the Bonaire XT GPU. It'll rock 896 stream processors, 56 TMUs and 16 ROPs.

Then we have the Topaz XT-based Radeon R7 M460, R7 M440, R5 M445 and R8 M445DX which will be rebranded Radeon R7 M270DX, R7 M260, R7 M265DX, and R7 M360, respectively. The Radeon R5 M430 will be based off of the R5 M330 and its Sun XT-powered GPU, while the Jet Pro will power the new Radeon R5 M430 which is jus the R7 M260DX.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is coming soon, and the Faith driven shooter, powered by DICE's latest Frostbite, is going to be a graphical powerhouse on the PC. At least potentially. The PC requirements are now out and it looks like the recommended requirements, for a 1080P 60FPS experience, aren't terribly steep.

For the minimum level of enjoyment, DICE and EA seem to recommend a modest Ivy Bridge-based i3 or a six core/three module AMD FX processor paired with either an NVIDIA GTX 650 or an AMD Radeon R9 270X. Those cards are not the most expensive on the market, and with the right combination of settings, Catalyst should run just fine. The Frostbite engine is a very versatile one, capable of scaling up and down while still looking quite good. It's also very well optimized in the majority of games it's been employed in, with good multi-GPU support.

The beta for Mirror's Edge Catalyst begins on the 22nd of April and goes through the 26th. They had such a large response to the prospect of playing the beta that they actually stopped accepting any new applications after a mere 45-minutes after they opened up registration. The game will make use of the classic mechanics from the first, letting you run around the city of Glass completing missions in an open-world setting while free-running to get to where you're going. This time, it should be an even more open and fluid experience. The full PC specification recommendations are after the break.

Mark your calendar folks, because on April 22nd Max Payne will be coming to the PlayStation 4, and will probably be just as vengeful as ever. The European PlayStation Blog revealed the date of the next classic game that'll make it the PS4 with their version of backward compatibility.

This will be the 22nd such game to be brought back to life, specifically from the era of the PlayStation 2, which has a great deal of classic, hit games. Sony has recognized the value in bringing back older titles to the platform quite some time ago when they started offering PSOne and PS2 classics via the PlayStation Network for the PlayStation 3 and Vita. They soon became popular items in the store, prompting them to continue, and evolve development to the newest platform.

Max Payne was originally released all the way back in 2001 for the PS2, the original Xbox and the PC. It was a smashing hit with its introduction of Bullet Time, a mechanism for slowing down time so you could more easily target the plethora of enemies that no doubt ambushed you often. April 22nd is the date that's available, though that might be exclusive to the EU PSN store, we'll update as we know more. The full list of PS2 games playable on the PS4 is just after the break.

Apple's thin and light Macbook, a return to the popular less expensive non-pro brand, has been updated with new Skylake processors that should help increase already great battery life and boost performance while still keeping it just as petite.

The exterior has retained the same svelte 11.04 x 7.74 x 0.52-inch and 2.03lbs dimensions, but pick up a new Rose Gold finish to compliment the Space Grey, Silver and Gold options already in the store. The changes under the hood are evolutionary, changing out the Broadwell M processors for Skylake M. Now the $1,199 model comes standard with a new 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core M3 attached to 256GB of PCIe-based storage with 8GB of LPDDR3 1866 and Intel's HD 516 pulling graphics duty. The more expensive $1,599 model switches to a Skylake-based 1.2GHz Intel Core M5, 512GB of PCIe-based storage and the same 8GB of LPDDR3 1866. There's an option for both models to upgrade their storage and the processor to a more speedy M7 variety as well.

One of the major complaints against the re-envisioned Macbook was that the storage was much slower than it should have been, being purely SATA based, which has now been fixed at absolutely no price increase. The inclusion of the new processors should help with battery life and even the overall experience. Battery life is quoted as being an hour longer at around 10 for browsing and 11 fro movie playback. The original is a testement to the memory management and general efficiency of OSX, with most tasks being completed with ablomb. You won't use it as a primary video editing platform, however.

Cellular networks are already pretty insecure as they are. Voice is sent unencrypted and in the clear despite having the necessary hardware to support even light encryption methods. Spoofing cellular towers, too, isn't exactly the most difficult thing to do either, but that's small potatoes compared to a vulnerability in the Signalling System No. 7 telephony protocol that can allow a potential malefactor to track you across the globe, with relative ease. Congress is now taking an interest and investigating these vulnerabilities.

The interest in the issue began with the airing of a 60 Minutes piece where Sharyn Alfonsi and a German computing enthusiast who specializes in nefarious programming techniques, showed off just how easy it is to exploit the SS7 protocol to track cellphone users. To demonstrate their point, the pair recruited US Representative Ted Lieu and asked him to use a new, not modified, iPhone when conducting staff phone calls. With just the phone number, they were able to pinpoint the location of the US Representative wherever he had the phone, and they were even able to record conversations he was having as well. It apparently didn't take much effort on the part of the researchers, either.

Mr. Lieu, following the demonstration he took part in, called for an official full investigation into the matter so that the vulnerabilities can be addressed. The flaw is something that potentially affects quite a few different markets, within the US and abroad, which could pose serious privacy issues. Not to mention if someone should use the flaw to target individuals as part of pre-meditated actions.

In 2005, the Authors Guild sued Google for scanning book excerpts for its database. 11 years later, the battle is over, and Google has won resoundingly following a judgment from the Supreme Court, which denied the option for appeal.

The Guild claimed the project hurt authors' abilities to make money from their work, while Google claimed everything it was doing was protected under fair use laws. After the ruling, both parties echoed these sentiments.

"We believed then and we believe now that authors should be compensated when their work is copied for commercial purposes," said Authors Guild president Roxana Robinson.

Streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Instant Video offer the option for offline playback -- the key benefit of which is the ability to listen to or watch content in situations where Wi-Fi is not available -- and it may only be a matter of time before Netflix offers the same. Its CEO Reed Hastings, when questioned on the prospect in an earnings call this week, clearly indicated it's not something he's opposed to.

"We should keep an open mind on all this... as we expand around the world where we see an uneven set of networks, it's something we should keep an open mind about."

Should the service one day implement it, it's likely stored content would disappear after 48 hours.

If you want the high fidelity a 4K TV offers but don't want to sell your pets to get one, Vizio is offering a 43'' $469.99 option with its E-Series. It doesn't come with anything in the way of bells of whistles as far as we can tell, but it should get the job done.

Its other budget options include the 32'' $229.99 and 43'' $369.99 E-series TVs, which are full HD as opposed to 4K, but offer SmartCast (allowing you to send your favourite apps to the TV).

On the higher-end, Vizio has two 2016 M-Series 4K TVs: $849.99 for a 50'' and $3,999.99 for an 80''. For your hard-earned dough, you get support for high dynamic range (HDR), Dolby Vision, and SmartCast. Then there's the $1,699.99 70'' E-series offering, which also doesn't seem to come with any bells and whistles, but offers massive size and extreme resolution for a not completely obscene amount of money.

John Romero has long been rumored to be working on a new game, but there's been precious little info available to actually go on aside from his confirmations. HOXAR might just be the name of that mysterious new game, if the info is sound.

That website is for a fictional company supposedly set in his new game world. The company develops immersive holodeck like experiences without the use of any sort of headset. Presumably, this is set up as a marketing stunt to help introduce us to the new, thriving world. It lends a bit of realism to the characters and is something that Romero and crew have done with past games, specifically the UAC website for Doom 3.

Unfortunately, this still doesn't give away much aside from what we might see as a start to the story of the game. It's safe to say that this technology will have some impact inside the new FPS, which it's likely to be considering that's the primary genre that he's responsible for creating. Mum has been the word up until now, but since the cat is crawling out of the bag, maybe he'll be kind enough to release a few details soon.

Umbrella Corps is reaching deep into the history of Resident Evil for a new map that Capcom is showing off. The Antarctic facility that you see below is a base that was originally featured in Resident Evil Code: Veronica from 2000. They're bringing it back and infesting it with zombies.

The original was apparently nearly destroyed in Code: Veronica and it remains in its heavily destroyed state in Umbrella Corps. That means that there are three desolate levels that bring a surprising amount of verticality into play. Those three floors are littered with all kinds of detritus that can be used tactically to help defend against yet another outbreak. In fact, I can imagine a sick game of hide and seek being played through the level Perhaps the most tactical map in the game, players can utilize cover points, interwoven ventilation ducts, and ladders to make for a very interesting and dynamic time.

The whole thing is rendered quite nicely and is a good reflection of the older map, even though it's been literally ages since we've last played through it. You can check out some more screenshots of it after the break.

Did you know that World of Warcraft is still a thing and that Blizzard are working on a new expansion pack for the game? Yeah, they are.

Blizzard has announced World of Warcraft: Legion for August 30, which will see the level cap raised to 110. Legion will also introduce a new continent, a new class (Demon Hunter), powerful new Artifact Weapons, and a brand new PvP Honor system. The key features include:

LaCie has just unveiled an insane new storage option, which when they read this - can you guys send me one? The new 12big Thunderbolt 3 storage from LaCie is a professional-grade 12-bay storage solution that looks like a desktop PC, except it rocks up to 96TB.

The company says that its new storage tower rocks 50% higher capacity than any other desktop direct attached storage solution on the market, and is powered by 256MB cache, enterprise-class 7200RPM drives from Seagate that rock a five-year limited warranty. The warranty covers the drives, enclosure and spare parts - with the drives rated for 8,760 hours of operation (24/7/365).

The front of the LaCie 12big Thunderbolt 3 enclosure features drive status LEDs that show you the drive health and RAID build status. The drives themselves can be accessed from the front of the unit, with the company using aluminum to assist with heat dissipation, helped out with four temperature-regulated fans.

Sony's new PlayStation 4 console, also known as PS4K or PS4.5, is codenamed NEO, and will feature beefier internal components with upgraded CPU, GPU, and RAM. The new PS4 will support 4K image output and upscale 1080p games to 4K UHD.

According to Giant Bomb's Austin Walker, Sony's new PlayStation 4 won't be a dramatic upgrade over the current version, and certainly not the crazy native 4K UHD console we had hoped for. The new system, codenamed NEO, is built around the existing structure with 8 Jaguar CPU Cores at 2.1 GHz, and improved AMD GCN GPU with 36 Control Units clocked at 911MHz.

The NEO's GPU specs seem to match the specs of AMD's next-generation Polaris10 Ellesmere chip found in the upcoming Radeon R9 480, so we could see the new PS4 powered by Polaris after all. If so, we'd undoubtedly hit 1080p 60FPS in all games along with native PlayStation VR support.

DJI has been making some seriously good professional drones over the years, with its impressive Phantom series, but has just unveiled its latest is the Matrice 600, a hexacopter that is capable of adjusting how it flies automatically, depending on what camera is attached.

The M600 costs $4599, and is the latest drone in DJI's huge professional lineup that is a successor to its current "Spreading Wings" series, which are higher-end craft that include retractable landing gear, and a foldable design. The new M600 features dust-proof propellers, as well as self-cooling motors.

DJI's new M600 launches with an improved, robust A3 flight controller that will change flight parameters depending on what it's carrying, and the amazing Lightbridge 2 camera link. Lightbridge 2 delivers higher frame rates over 1080p live-streamed video back to the pilot, at up to 3 miles away. This video is pumped to the pilot at 1080p 60FPS, which is impressive given the 3-mile distance allowance.

To celebrate this week's release of 'Silicon Valley: The Complete Second Season' on Blu-ray HD and DVD, we have ten Blu-ray copies to give away thanks to our friends at Roadshow Australia.

From the offbeat mind of Mike Judge (King of the Hill, Beavis and Butt-Head) comes a new season of the Emmy-winning comedy that takes viewers inside the lucrative world of Silicon Valley - and the socially awkward underdogs who try to navigate it. After taking the tech world by storm with their debut at TechCrunch Disrupt last season, Richard (Thomas Middleditch) and his Pied Piper team - Erlich (T.J. Miller), Jared (Zach Woods), Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) and Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) - look ahead to a bright and profitable future, one that's immediately soured by legal woes and petty revenge plans from Hooli overlord Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) and his competing platform, Nucleus. At Raviga, the empire created by Peter Gregory, big changes put the pressure on Monica (Amanda Crew), who's torn between her allegiance to Richard and her job working under a new head honcho, Laurie. Meanwhile, the presence of Richard's departed longtime pal Big Head (Josh Brener) looms large, as Gavin decides to use him to his fullest potential. Filled with even more industry cameos, this season of Silicon Valley promises to skewer the tech world with even greater veracity and hilarity, as its heroes continue to fumble their way towards unimaginable success.

To go into the running to win a prize, simply answer the following question in 50 words or less: