Latest News - Page 2471

Until the recent rise of low-level programming APIs Mantle, DirectX 12, and Vulkan, visual and performance advancements and innovations in the gaming space were slow and scarce. Now, says Crytek technical director Rok Erjavec, it's a whole new ballgame again.

"I have no doubt we will see a lot more novel approaches and deviations from established rendering pipelines [as a result of DirectX 12], something that has already been happening to an extent," he explains in an interview with DSOGaming.

"There's a wealth of academic research that was ill-suited to practical application through a combination of hardware and software abstraction limitations. With the latter getting out of the way, and hardware flexibility continually improving - more than things just getting iteratively "prettier" - we're looking at a rise in experimentation again. In a way, the industry has circled back to a place similar to where we were in the early-mid 90s, when software rasterization didn't really impose any restraints on creativity beyond the 17ms barrier."

The Xbox One isn't useful for much, as it's only capable of playing games at resolutions we used to play at back in the 90s, but hey - you can install Windows 95 to your Xbox One now.

YouTuber 'vcfan' had 'Dosbox', a virtual DOS machine app running on his Xbox, where you can run Windows 95 and other software. Not everyone can do this, as you'll need an Xbox One developer unit, but Microsoft is allowing the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) later this year, where more fun might begin.

Wake me up when I can install Windows 10 on an Xbox One, and I be excited - would you want to install a desktop OS with a working mouse and keyboard as a media machine, or something similar?

Most people would think that Apple has a decent handle on Mac sales in the US, but this quarter the company was beaten by Chromebook sales.

Market research firm IDC has said that Apple sold 1.76 million Macs in the US in the last quarter, and while it was up from the 1.56 million units in the same quarter as 2015, it didn't beat out Chromebook shipments. IDC only breaks down PC shipments by manufacturer, so it's hard to know how many more Chromebooks were sold, we just know it was 'more'.

Chromebooks have been especially popular for education purposes and those on lighter budgets, as Apple Macs can range from thin-and-light notebooks, all the way through to workstation-class desktops. Chromebooks are mostly low-cost laptops from various companies, with Apple's closest competitor being the iPad. This quarter, Apple sold 10.3 million iPads in the US, not bad at all.

Just over a week before Computex, IN WIN has announced their latest 303 chassis. IN WIN's new 303 chassis is a "simple, yet elegant computer chassis crafted from steel and tempered glass", says IN WIN, continuing that the 303's "distinctively clean front panel is complimented with a bright LED design to balance the overall appearance".

At the front of the 303 and to the right we have the power buttons, IN WIN branding, and I/O panel. The IN WIN logo is highlighted with a beautiful neon, with the LEDs acting as a power-on indicator. There are 2 x USB 3.0 ports, 2 x 3.5mm audio jacks, and 2 x USB 2.0 ports on the front of the 303. IN WIN is known for their innovative cases, with the 303 being another in their tool-less design range, where the 3mm tempered glass can be pulled away from the 303 by pressing the handle at the top of the case.

When purchasing the IN WIN 303 chassis, you can choose between the closed panel with affixed thumbscrews, or the beautiful tempered glass front panel if you want to peek into your system from time to time, or show off that ridiculously good looking PC you've just built. There's also a user-friendly dust filter which has an embedded design for quick removal, with it being found at the bottom of the 303, and is easy to remove to clean.

AMD has just announced its press conference during Computex 2016, with AMD set to unveil their new Polaris GPUs and Zen APUs on June 1. There'll be plenty of top shelf AMD staff there, with AMD's CEO Lisa Su and Radeon Technologies Group boss Raja Koduri, with both of them being joined by AMD's CPU and APU boss, Jim Anderson.

The company said in its press release: "The event is slated to feature presentations from AMD executives including AMD President and CEO Lisa Su; Senior Vice President and General Manager, Computing and Graphics Business Group, Jim Anderson; and Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, Radeon Technologies Group, Raja Koduri. A real-time video webcast of the event will be accessible on AMD's Computex page (www.amd.com/computex) and on AMD's Investor Relations home page (ir.amd.com). A replay of the webcast can be accessed a few hours after the conclusion of the live event on both pages and will be available there for one year after the event".

While we are super pumped for the Polaris-based video card side of things, I think I'm equally as psyched about seeing just how good Zen turns out to be. AMD has quite a lot riding on the new Zen-based side of its CPU/APU business, as they're being shrinked down to thet 14/16nm node like the new Polaris-based GPUs. We're expecting a decent amount of improvement over the current Vishera- and Kaveri-based APUs, with Zen said to really ramp things up for AMD and have them competing against Intel on a much firmer ground.

Creative Assembly, the developers behind Total War: WARHAMMER, have released more details on the PC side of the game. The team says that WARHAMMER has been optimized to better utilize all of the CPU cores in your PC, where the game won't lose performance on single-threaded limitations or problems.

In a new post that Creative Assembly wrote, they said: "Total War has traditionally been quite CPU-bound, with the game-draw and graphics render processes both running on the same CPU thread. Over time, as the engine has evolved and become more demanding, this has become an increasingly important bottleneck for us. During the course of TWWH's development, we've spent time separating these so they now run independently on their own threads. We've also optimized our task-system to have better multi-threading performance across the board".

The team has spend time on the particle simulation pipeline, from the pixel shader to the compute shader, making better use of the GPUs time. The team added: "In fact we've done this with several parts of the rendering pipeline, further utilizing the GPU and letting the CPU focus on everything else it has to do". Thanks to these changes that CA made to Total War: WARHAMMER, the game will make great use of multi-core CPUs. CA elaborated: "Long story short: all of this means we're using the CPU and the GPU more efficiently. TW: Warhammer takes better advantage of multi-core CPUs, balancing the load across the cores so that no single core is maxed out and limiting framerates while others sit idle".

Destiny's new expansion will be called Rise of Iron, and it'll feature a dedicated raid activity along with expansive content.

A promo pic for Destiny's new Rise of Iron DLC was leaked onto Reddit just hours ago, and sources confirmed to Kotaku that the promotional image is indeed genuine. The outlet reports that Rise of Iron will have its own raid activity that's "loosely based" on the scrapped House of Wolves raid, and the expansion will be bigger than The Dark Below and House of Wolves--but likely not as big as The Taken King.

Rise of Iron shows the Iron Banner's Lord Saladin brandishing a fearsome fiery axe, and the expansion will obviously be based on the game's legendary nine Lords of Iron Titans. We could even see old Ironlords like Timur, Felwinter, Perun and Radegast appear once again in some form.

Battlefield 1 surprised most people, with its throwback to the World War 1 days, but we're only finding out now that the original pitch by DICE for the WW1 theme was 'totally rejected' by EA.

EA's Executive VP Patrick Söderland didn't think the WW1 theme would appeal to players, saying that a game focused on trench war couldn't "be fun to play". During EA's recent Investors Day, Söderland said: "It wasn't the most obvious choice. When the team presented to me the idea of World War 1 I absolutely rejected it. I said 'World War 1 is a trench war, it can't be fun to play".

Söderland added: "The team continued and persisted in the fact that this can be fun, and showed up with a very short demo that convinced me at least that this was the right path. The good news is whenever you take creative risks and it works, you actually can get to substantial success". He continued, finishing off with: "I think that the World War 1 theme is resonating with players out there, I think we have done something that will be right for the franchise and right for EA [but] we have to remember that so far we've only shown one trailer, and yes it's gotten a lot of success, but what's important is now we have to go back and make sure we deliver on the full promise of what Battlefield can be - and that we will do".

Hit Rockstar games like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto could one day get VR adaptations, but only when VR becomes "consumer's platform of choice".

"I think in general these are all opportunities. I've talked about VR in the past--there's a lot of excitement in the marketplace, and a lot of our people are excited too. We're still in our R&D route because this still isn't a consumer business. We want to be really clear: if this is the consumer's platform of choice, we'll bring our IP's to it aggressively and ambitiously. We just tend not to vote when we don't have to," Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said during an investor relations call.

Given how expansive Take-Two's labels are--Rockstar Games, 2K Games, 2K Sports, Irrational Games--we could see a huge number of IPs getting remade on VR, including GTA, BioShock, Red Dead Redemption and a huge offering of sports titles. The publisher is all about chasing new opportunities, but isn't ready to gamble on VR just yet--not until it becomes bigger and more gamers own an HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, or PlayStation VR.

The 2016 superhero success story 'Deadpool' has now become the first major new release title to hit the fledgling 4K UltraHD Blu-ray format, and the movie's filmmakers are more than happy to promote the product.

Speaking to Home Media Magazine at a promotional event for the release, Director Tim Miller remarked "The Ultra HD was just fuc*ing amazing at the level of detail. I truly thought it was the best-looking version of the movie by far" before selling the relationship-building aspect "Dudes can watch this with their wives. My wife hates everything I do, and she loved this movie." The film's colorist Tim Stippen also talked up the HDR grading, saying "The amount of detail that you get in the flames, you see so much more. It all of a sudden has more dimension to it. It almost becomes more 3D. Also, Deadpool's costume was the other big thing I noticed because it's got a really fine weave to it and suddenly all the detail in that costume kind of comes out. I think this is the wave of the future because you're seeing more of what the camera captured".

'Deadpool' is now available on 4K UltraHD Blu-ray in the U.S., and hits stores in Australia next week.

Take-Two teases that Rockstar is working on some "exciting future projects" which will be revealed soon, likely teasing Red Dead Redemption 2 and maybe GTA 6.

We already know Rockstar won't release Red Dead Redemption 2 until after April 2017 (FY2018), but the game will almost certainly be revealed at E3 2016--and possibly GTA 6 too. "Looking ahead, we expect to grow Non-GAAP revenues and earnings in fiscal 2018, based on our robust development plan that extends well beyond the current fiscal year. Rockstar Games is of course hard at work on some exciting future projects that will be revealed soon," Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said during the company's recent FY16 press release.

Zelnick further hinted at that the publisher has major AAA titles in its pipeline which will bolster FY2018 earnings significantly--what would boost sales higher than GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2? "You mentioned you expect growth on revenue and earnings for FY18, so what gives you the confidence to say that now?" an analyst asked during the call's Q&A session. "It's what we're working on in our development studios," said CEO Strauss Zelnick. "We have very good visibility into our pipeline, and based on what we see, it gives us high confidence for FY18 growth," Take-Two President Karl Slatoff added.

Microsoft's goal is to top 60 percent wind, solar, and hydropower energy usage in its datacenters early in the next decade, company president and chief legal officer Brad Smith reveals.

The company currently sits at 44 percent; it will attempt to achieve 50 percent by the end of 2018, 60 percent in the early 2020s, and go from there.

The news is especially significant because by 2025 datacenters are expected to be some of the biggest users of electrical power worldwide.

Uber is hopping on the self-driving car...train? Anyway, its first vehicle will be driving on the streets on the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the coming weeks, and while it kind of looks like it might shoot missiles at any moment, the company assures it's just collecting mapping data and testing self-driving capabilities.

The Advanced Technologies Center run by Uber is located in Pittsburgh and was chosen for its engineering talent and research facilities, so it's only logical for it to serve as its testing ground. Meanwhile, city mayor William Peduto sounds awfully proud to be apart of it.

"From the first steel mills to the laboratories at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh has a long history of innovation," he says. "Now we're taking another step forward, this time as home to Uber's Advanced Technologies Center, where some of the world's leading innovators are helping to shape the future of transportation. We're excited that Uber has chosen the Steel City as they explore new technologies that can improve people's lives - through increased road safety, less congestion, and more efficient and smarter cities."

Neither Red Dead Redemption 2 or Grand Theft Auto 6 will release during Take-Two's Fiscal Year 2017, so don't expect any major sequels before April 2017. A 2017 release folds neatly in with the game's recent leaks.

Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive won't sneak in any major releases outside of its already-revealed FY2017 lineup, meaning Red Dead Redemption 2 won't launch until after the next fiscal year ends in April 2017.

"We've announced our entire release schedule for the year, and that's what you should expect our release schedule to be. Any changes would be performance based," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said during the company's most recent fiscal earnings call.

Soon Windows 10 PC gamers will be able to make and edit Halo 5 Forge maps with the precision offered by mouse and keyboards.

Both Microsoft and 343 Industries have announced that Halo 5's Forge mode is coming to Windows 10 PCs as a free app, allowing gamers to build maps on PC and deploy them to Xbox One. Halo 5: Guardians is still Xbox One exclusive, however.

"Forge on the PC will finally give the mouse/keyboard editing precision the community has always been clamoring for. On top of that, an updated and optimized UI geared towards mouse interactions makes a lot of the inputs in Forge easier/faster than before," said 343i's Tom French.

Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City are being remastered for an all-inclusive package Warner Bros. calls Batman: Return to Arkham. Both games will utilize Unreal Engine 4 as opposed to Unreal Engine 3 they were originally built on and will feature improved models, environments, lighting, effects, and shaders.

The collection is being worked on by Virtuos, the team behind the recently released and well-done Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster as well as Fable Anniversary, so it's in good hands.

Return is exclusive to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which isn't surprising given the engine upgrade offers no definitive graphical improvement over the PC versions of the game, judging from the trailer. The Arkham Knight fiasco probably doesn't help, either.

Google has yet another messaging client in the works. Called Allo, it effectively replaces traditional SMS texting with a Facebook-like interface and features while still using phone numbers as the contact method. So, you can benefit from read message notifications, typing notifications, emojis, stickers, group chats, and improved picture display among other things.

In addition to that, there are some cool Google-specific features such as Ink (handwriting and drawing as seen in MSN Messenger many moons ago), Whisper Shout (increase text size for a given message to 'shout' at people -- great for arguments!), and smart reply (quick reply options that learn from your chat history).

And then there's Google assistant, which lets you do things like check sports scores, book dinner, play games, search Google, use Maps, share YouTube videos, look at photos from your Gallery, and so on, all without leaving Allo. Voice interaction is supported here, too.

Microsoft is reportedly preparing for new hardware to be unveiled during E3 2016 next month, as well as a "new standard controller that ships with the Xbox One", reports Thurrott.

The new standard controller will have a similar physical look to the current design, but it will arrive in a new color. Microsoft currently ships a black controller with the Xbox One, but will reportedly change it up with a mid-cycle refresh to help sagging sales. The big news here is that Microsoft is wanting to continue its work on interactions between the Xbox One and PC thanks to Windows 10, where the company wants to make Windows 10 on the desktop and Xbox One a "killer combination". The company is hoping to really squeeze the ecosystem to create completely unique experiences for games, that happen to be on other platforms.

But the even bigger news is that Microsoft has "something else up its sleeve", but it's a "much bigger deal" than the new controller reports Thurrott. I'm expecting for the company to pounce down hard at E3 2016 and announce a new Xbox with a VR headset, working directly with AMD and this is what AMD also has up its sleeve. The PS4K and PSVR are going to seriously chomp into Microsoft's sales, and the news of Nintendo leveraging a Pascal-based Tegra processor from NVIDIA for their Nintendo NX console is super exciting - but right now, what does Microsoft have to fight it? Nothing... and that's why a huge next-gen reveal at E3 2016 makes perfect sense.

G.Skill have always been at the bleeding edge of RAM frequencies, with the company unveiling its new flagship Trident Z DDR4 memory kits. There are 9 kits in total, ranging between 16GB and 64GB capacities.

The new Trident Z line from G.Skill uses Samsung's ultra high-performance DDR4 8Gb ICs, ensuring some of the highest frequencies we've ever seen. G.Skill's flagship 16GB DDR4-4266MHz Trident Z kit is a blistering fast kit of RAM, requiring 1.35V for its 4266MHz speeds at 19-23-23-42 latencies.

Below this flagship Trident Z kit are the DDR4-3466MHz models with 14-14-14-34 latencies in 16GB (2x8GB) and 32GB (4x8GB or 2x16GB), as well as 64GB kits (4x16GB), with all of the kits requiring 1.35V of power. The lower-end DDR4-3200MHz Trident Z kits have latencies of 13-13-13-33, with 1.35V of power required.

Did you know eSports is just a "promotional tool"... yeah, neither did I. According to Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two, eSports isn't a profitable standalone business just yet, as he believes in physical goods continuing to be profitable into the future.

Zelnick isn't convinced about eSports just yet, saying: "eSports we find very interesting. It is, however, still more a promotional tool than anything else. And most people see eSports as an opportunity to increase consumer engagement in their titles, and depending on the title, to increase consumer spending within the title".

It's not like Take-Two hasn't been involved with eSports, as they held an NBA 2K tournament with 92,000 teams competing for a huge $250,000 prize. The final 16 teams will compete in a single-elimination tournament over the weekend, with the finals taking place during the NBA Finals next month. Zelnick talked about the tournament, adding: "It's just the beginning for us. It's very gratifying so far, but we have yet to see it as a stand-alone profitable business. We see it more as an adjunct to consumer engagement in our titles".