Latest News - Page 2459

Even with the new updates, I have a love-hate relationship with Bungie's MMOFPS Destiny, but one thing I've always admired is the game's visual flair. Destiny has always spun that critical illusion of sci-fi futurism, which is in no small way due to the game's impressive user interface. Now we get to see how the UI looked in the game's early stages, and it's quite amazing.

At GDC 2016, Bungie's UI Design Lead David Candland gave a talk entitled Tenacious Design and The Interface of Destiny. In it Candland revealed how Destiny would have looked if Bungie followed their early prototypes--colorful, unique, eye-catching. Totally unlike the casual-friendly design we see today. Everything was different--character panes, inventory screens, reputation lists, the Director scheme, and vendors all had their stylish look.

Hopefully Bungie will revert to their past styles at some point for Destiny. Maybe with Destiny 2 will get a neat visual overhaul. It's really interesting to see all the intersecting points and possible shapes the game could have taken, especially given how drab--yet clean--the current UI looks. While we're on the subject of what could have been, when will Destiny get those awesome huge frogs as depicted in early concept art?

Technology really is awesome, isn't it? Homebrewers and hackers have done all sorts of amazing things like getting DOOM to run on an ATM. Now that same spirit has brought Counter-Strike 1.6 to Android phones.

That's right, you can now play one of the most coveted and beloved shooters in existence, Counter-Strike 1.6, on your Android phone. It's a straight port over to Android, so you'll be playing the authentic flavor of CS 1.6 on your mobile.

Sure the screen is pretty much filled with touchscreen icons, and we can only imagine how janky it is to play a frenetic shooter on a phone, but you can also pop in an OTG cable for controller support. Given the flexibility of Android, you could probably even get mouse and keyboard action in as well for an extra nerd bonus.

FCC filings posted earlier this week outed the existence of a Xbox One refresh, possibly the rumored Xbox One Slim. Now Anatel (Brazil's version of the FCC) has published pictures of the new console's wireless card, giving even more inference on the upcoming console refresh.

Although the FCC has locked specific details of the new tech behind an NDA, Brazil's Anatel posted the pictures online. The new wireless card's 1683 model number matches those found in the FCC filings and identifies the device as the new Xbox One's 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2T2R dual-band wireless LAN radio. We've included a side-by-side slide so you can compare the new chip with the current Xbox One model.

Since the FCC's embargo lifts on June 25, Microsoft is expected to formally unveil the new Xbox One console at E3 2016 in June. Rumblings in the industry speculate that the new revised console could be an Xbox One Slim--a thin, digital-only set-top box for game streaming. As far as console upgrades go, Microsoft doesn't believe in mid-cycle upgrades: they don't want to take half-steps, but instead full-steps with dramatically improved hardware.

Most people have probably not heard of the name Hasselblad, and for those who do know the company, it has been a while since they've been in the headlines. Hasselblad is an iconic company, making cameras since 1941 and have been involved in some of the most iconic photos of all time.

The Beatles' Abbey Road cover, the black and white portrait of Steve Jobs, and the first photos taken on the moon from the 1969 moon landing were all shot on Hasselblad cameras. Well, the company is back with the new H6D camera, available in two forms. The first is a huge 50-megapixel offering, while the second is an insane 100-megapixel camera.

Both of them rock a new autofocus system that is capable of locking onto specific points, such as a subject's eye, so that the photographer can track it and adjust composition. The H6D also rocks features that we have on smartphones and compact cameras, like a touchscreen and 4K video recording. As for price, the 50-megapixel version costs $27,000 while the 100-megapixel camera rocks a huge $33,00 price - and for these prices, you won't get a lens - they're extra.

I didn't grow up with very many Dragonball Z games as a kid--I still remember buying a converter chip to play Dragonball GT: Final Bout. In today's age we have Budokai and Xenoverse, and even fans are creating their own dream Dragonball fighters. The latest example is Dragonball: Unreal, a new fan-made game built with the power of Unreal Engine 4.

The footage for Dragonball: Unreal is pretty impressive, and shows off what fans can do with enough dedication. We've seen a ton of classics get revitalized with UE4, including the dazzling Ocarina of Time rendition, Nintendo's immortal icon Mario, and even BioWare's cult classic Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

I think just about every Dragonball fan would play this game if it were ever released. Of course, I think the project would get shut down right away by Bandai Namco, but we can dream, can't we? A full-fledged Dragonball GT game would be great, especially one that features the fabled SSJ5 Goku...

To celebrate this week's release of 'Heroes Reborn' on Blu-ray HD and DVD, we have ten Blu-ray copies to give away thanks to our friends at Universal Sony Australia.

A new phenomenon begins. From Creator/Executive Producer Tim Kring, who imagined the original critically acclaimed 2006 "Heroes" series, comes "Heroes Reborn," an epic 13-episode event series that chronicles the lives of ordinary people who discover they possess extraordinary abilities. For better or for worse, some are fated to cross paths with assorted heroes of the past, including Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg), Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) and the Haitian (Jimmy Jean-Louis), among others. Yet, together, their ultimate destiny is nothing less than saving the world and mankind.

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

Fallout 4's new Wasteland Workshop DLC adds in the ability to make your very own Thunderdome battles, but you'll need to know some basics before you get started.

Since Bethesd didn't exactly optimize things too well, building your own arena in Wasteland Workshop can be a time-consuming affair. We show you some helpful tricks and tips you can use on the PC version of Fallout 4, but if you're on console, these battles are going to take some careful time and planning. That being said, you absolutely can create some rather epic sequences on consoles, and now PS4 and Xbox One players can take part in the epic NPC wars that were previously locked off to PC gamers.

The Wasteland Workshop's arena is pretty much like the Combat Zone, and gives players the chance to set up post-apocalyptic gladiator matches. Players get to full customize their own rings with a ton of devious traps and the like, offering even more hilarity to the mix. We'll show you the materials and objects you should use to fortify your ring, and run you through the process so you're not spending too much time on the basics. Throw in some Deathclaw cages to add some chaotic flavor to the battles, or maybe even make your very own blood ring with dozens upon dozens of cages.

Fallout 4's console commands are tons of fun. In the past, we've shown you how to make your own epic wide-scale Fallout 4 battles like you see on Cosmic Contrian's YouTube channel, and now we've discovered another awesome tidbit: how to shrink or gigantify your character.

Fallout 4's "setscale" console command arms you with your very own shrinking ray. Now you can experience the glee in making anything--or anyone--the size of a toy. Want your very own collection of cute robots? Zap 'em down to scale! Tired of Preston Garvey bothering you every two seconds? Make him into a miniature and you won't even see him. Conversely, you can also blow things up to epic giant-sized proportions, including NPCs, enemies, and even yourself. That's right, you can shrink and even gigantify yourself.

The best part about using the "setscale" command on yourself is that your HUD scales with your size. This means you'll actually see through the eyes of a hulking city-smashing, Godzilla-sized monster, or run around like a shrunken casualty from Honey I Shrunk the Kids. This feature has so much potential--you can zap the entire town of Diamond City and make them ultra tiny, or play the game as a mini-mouse hero. You could even replicate Super Mario Bros. 3 style platforming action by making your own levels, especially with the new Wasteland Workshop traps.

While Intel is shrinking down to 14nm right now, it is reportedly looking to shrink down its job numbers, with a new "significant round of job across across business units this spring", reports Oregon Live.

At the end of 2015, Intel had 107,000 employees worldwide, with its Oregon-based operations including 19,500 employees. The new cutbacks will reportedly reduce employment in some parts of Intel's business by double-digit percentages, which will result in thousands of job cuts by the end of 2016. We could expect the announcement soon after Intel reports its Q1 financial results on Thursday.

Last year, Intel sliced up 1,100 jobs - but these fresh job cuts will reportedly be even more severe. The company is still insanely profitable, with gross profit margins higher than 60%. Even this year, Intel's forecast sales growth is somewhere higher than 5%, but the job cuts are still reportedly on their way.

VR is a hard sell to anyone who has never tried it - imagine being told what music sounds like, without ever listening to it. Yeah, I thought so. Well, Sony will begin pushing its PlayStation VR system into retail stores in June, so that consumers and gamers can begin trying it out.

GameStop has announced that they will be hosting demo stations for the HTC Vive at some of its stores, and now added to that news with PlayStation VR units hitting some of their stores in June. Sony Interactive Entertainment VP of Marketing, John Koller, told GameStop executives and investors that Sony plans to give consumers over 500,000 in-store demos across retailers between June and December.

We don't know how many GameStop locations will have PlayStation VR, but there should be a fair amount of places with PSVR in the coming months. GameStop CEO Paul Raines added: "We've played all the VR that's come through our office, and the setup time for PlayStation VR is significantly easier and the space required to demo is small, so I expect we'll have a lot of demos in stores, unlike the Oculus or HTC".

From now on, don't mess with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau - he's a total boss in his knowledge about quantum computing - smacking down a "sassy reporter" who didn't expect Trudeau to know much about quantum computing.

Well, he's actually quite knowledgeable when it comes to quantum computing, answering the reporter's question of "I was going to ask you to explain quantum computing, but...". Trudeau was quick off the mark, replying with: "Very simple: normal computers work by...".

The crowd laughed, interrupting him briefly, but then he continued with a brief explanation of quantum computing - explaining more about the subject than the reporter thought he'd know on the subject.

The open beta of DOOM is finally here, with various publications running their tests, including GamingBolt. The site reports that the PS4 version of DOOM runs at a dynamic resolution of 1600x1080 to 1920x1080, while the Xbox One varies from the super-low 1350x1080 to 1920x1080.

The one good thing that the console versions of DOOM have going for it, is that they both run at 60FPS, with the PS4 version managing to "hold a stable 60FPS" most of the time. GamingBolt reports that it "definitely drops" below 60FPS, but "compared to the Xbox One, it's far more stable".

Both versions of DOOM on the consoles suffer from screen tearing, which happens when the id Tech engine runs out of resources required to hit the constant 60FPS mark. GamingBolt reports that "it isn't as bad as RAGE", but it can "definitely be noticed on the console versions".

It looks like Verizon is preparing a new set-top box based on Intel technology, something it acquired a few years ago.

Intel sold its Internet television project to Verizon a few years ago for a rumored $500 million, but nothing much came of it - so the new rumors from Variety are pointing to the new STB from Verizon to launch with their Fios markets by the end of 2016.

Variety reports that Verizon filed documents with the FCC earlier in the week, looking for approval on a new "video set-top box". The purported set-top box is codenamed Mallard, and is considered the crowl jewel in Verizon's upcoming service. It will reportedly offer a new UI that won't look like the current Fios TV service, with the company reportedly starting work on the project before it acquired Intel's TV technology.

With DOOM's open multplayer beta in full swing, id Software today announced that the upcoming shooter will have an unlocked frame rate on PC.

"Happy that we announced FPS unlock officially - code team been working hard on eradicating that for #PCMASTERRACE <3," id Software's Tiago Sousa wrote on Twitter, confirming that the studio's new OpenGL/Vulkan-powered id Tech 6 game engine will enable frame rate unlocking on all the games it powers, including DOOM.

id Software originally planned to hit 1080p 60FPS across all platforms, and based on this new announcement, it looks like the team was able to hit their goal. As far as a technical perspective, early DOOM benchmarks saw AMD's Radeon cards smash NVIDIA's GTX lineup in 1080p, 1440p and 4K.

We only recently reported that Nintendo's next-gen console would be faster than the PS4 by a 'noticeable amount', but what APU or GPU would be powering the NX console? An AMD chip, of course.

AMD is powering all of the consoles right now, with APUs inside of the PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Wii U. The next-gen Nintendo NX console being powered by an APU or GPU from AMD comes as no surprise, but it'll be interesting if it's powered by their next-gen 14nm Polaris architecture.

During the RTG event in Sonoma late last year, I actually asked AMD that question - whether their new GPU would power any next-gen consoles. AMD said they couldn't elaborate, but it makes sense. 14nm provides a cooler operating system, with an improved punch in performance, and less power draw - another notch on the belt of reduced heat, and noise.

If there's one thing that Apple has done better than every other smartphone company, is that their iPhone sales have increased year-over-year... forever - until now, that is.

It's expected that 2016 will be the first year that iPhone sales will experience a decline, with Tom Cook even teasing this during Apple's earnings conference call earlier this year. Cook said: "We do think iPhone units will decline in the quarter. We don't think that they will decline to the levels you'll talk about. We aren't going to project beyond the upcoming quarter".

A new report from Nikkei suggests that the iPhone sales slump might hurt sales during the current June quarter, too. Nikkei reported: "Slow sales of the flagship iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, which debuted last autumn, have forced Apple to adjust inventories. It lowered production for the January-March quarter by about 30% from the year-earlier period. With sales still sluggish, the U.S. company has told parts suppliers in Japan and elsewhere that it will maintain the reduced output level in the current quarter".

Intel has officially unveiled its new Apollo Lake platform, which is the next-generation family of Atom-based notebook SoCs. Apollo Lake uses a new x86 microarchitecture, as well as a new generation graphics core that will provide more performance.

The new Apollo Lake family is set to take on the affordable all-in-ones, mini PCs, hybrid devices, notebooks and even tablet PCs when it launches in the second half of this year. Apollo Lake is built on the new Atom-based x86 microarchitecture known as Goldmont, with a new graphics core that includes Intel's impressive 9th-generation architecture that is found in the current Skylake processors.

The new Apollo Lake family includes support for dual-channel DDR4, DD3L, and LPDDR3/4 memory which allows PC makers to make devices with all sorts of form factors, thanks to the impressive memory support. We also have support for the usual SATA drives, PCIe x4 drives and eMMC 5.0 - USB Type-C support is also included, as well as various wireless technologies.

Can you believe it has been 12 years since Doom 3 was released? Yeah. Well, Clear_strelok has created Doom 3: Redux, which overhauls the graphics from Doom 3, and introduces an FOV slider, and restores cut content.

The new Doom 3: Redux is based on sikkpin's Sikkmod, and is joined by Wulfen's and Monoxead's texture packs: "Redux is being built on improved versions of sikkpin's Sikkmod along with Wulfen's and Monoxead's amazing textures packs. These mods have been used in other compilations before, but as they often change the same material and textures files, they conflict with each other and this creates a lot of visual issues that never seem to have been addressed properly".

Doom 3: Redux includes new graphics settings which can be adjusted, including different levels of texture quality, an FOV slider, different types of anti-aliasing methods, modern resolutions, and more. You can download Doom 3: Redux right here.

Earlier today the US House of Representatives passed a bill, the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act, that would effectively limit the authority that the FCC has to regulate broadband pricing schemes according to the current Net Neutrality laws.

The Net Neutrality rules that passed in February of 2015 reclassified broadband services as regulated telecom services, which would effectively allow the FCC the ability to regulate how these services are priced, setting caps so that its can be more affordable and available to a larger portion of the population, should they wish to. The Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, said that they don't currently have plans to do so, however. HR 2666, which passed earlier today, 241-173, was introduced as a measure to essentially hold them at their word. The reasoning behind limiting power preemptively is that the price of broadband should be determined by the market, not controlled by any one person or agency.

The bill itself doesn't quite focus purely on limiting pricing power, either. The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes the new bill, saying that the terms are overly broad and much too general in their scope. This could potentially eliminate any, or all, protections consumers have against unfair pricing models or even when ISP's introduce data cap exceptions that seem to be arbitrarily made. Their definition of what a rate is, even, a bit vague, and could stand to be more specific.

The free storage tier for OneDrive used to be among the largest of all the cloud storage providers by offering 15GB absolutely free. In 2015 Microsoft announced that they were cutting that all the way down to 5GB, a controversial move to be sure. The decision was made to let users claim the extra space if they responded and acknowledged they wanted it.

If you didn't respond to the call for action, then you should be receiving an email from Microsoft telling you to start migrating your data now, or upgrade your plan, by July 13th. If you haven't been using more than 5GB, then you have absolutely nothing to worry about, but if you're a data hoarder with your OneDrive account, then you'll need to plan for the eventual cutting of your storage space. The next highest tier is the "Basic" tier with 50GB of storage priced at $1.99 a month.

The smaller space will be the norm for all new users, so if you don't happen to have an account quite yet, then you'll only receive 5B for free. Initially, long ago under the SkyDrive moniker, they offered 7GB of storage upon signing up. A limited time offer in 2012 designed for users who had signed-up for the cloud service before April 22nd 2012 allowed those users 25GB of free storage as a token of appreciation. 5GB for free is more than what Dropbox offers, at 3GB, but less than Google Drive at 15GB. Apple's iCloud also has 5GB of free storage.