Latest News - Page 2476

EA is giving away Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault as part of their On the House program, replacing last months free game, Need for Speed Most Wanted.

The game is normally a cool $10 on the Origin storefront, but they're being generous by letting anyone download, and keep it, for free. It was one of the better Medal of Honor games that was released later in the series life. The 7th installment, it received generally favorable reviews, even though our own reviewer seemed not to enjoy it at the time. Reliving the game, for free, might just change your mind with nostalgia and rose-colored glasses. Which isn't terrible at all.

The series is taking an indefinite break since Medal of Honor Warfighter from 2012 didn't quite meet the expectations of the company or of fans looking for a good FPS experience. We gave that one a 60% rating, citing the graphics and sound design as among the best parts. The story and gameplay weren't quite there. Perhaps we'll see its return, perhaps we won't. Regardless, a free game is available now that's surprisingly fun to play.

Much to the delight of Nintendo fans everywhere, those "leaked" Nintendo NX controllers photos have been confirmed as fakes.

The phony controllers are actually 3D renders based on Nintendo's recent patents. The same Redditor who leaked the photos (idriss2Dev) confirmed them as fakes, and even went so far as to release a video showing how he created the photos.

The second batch of NX controller leaks have been also confirmed as fakes, too. The creator stepped forward with his own reveal video, showing how he used a 3D printer to make the controller.

Atari has finally announced that Roller Coaster Tycoon World, the first of the series to appear on the PC in nearly a decade, will officially enter Early Access on March 30th. It's been a long wait and one fraught with all the dangers that come from letting people play your unfinished game. But it's here, and in fine form too.

When it launches in Early Access the plan is to have quite a bit of content and things that you can mess around with. You'll be greeted with a few different game modes, the ability to create your own wild and wacky rides and have the full management experience. You can even ride your rides in first-person, which might be a very exciting feature with VR in the future.They're fine-tuning the game, so any feedback is still appreciated.

It's been a somewhat rocky road for the developers of the next great roller coaster game on PC. They had several early beta and alpha tests available to fans that were very informative. The reviews of the game on Steam at the moment are of those early builds and are not representative of the work that's been put into addressing the concerns that have been raised. But it's up to you to decide whether it's a genre or game you'd be willing to support. Thus far there have been sweeping changes to the UI and control mechanisms, making it a bit easier to navigate and make the coaster you've been dreaming of. And there's more to follow. Atari has also laid out plans to support the game with free content through 2016.

Quantum Break just can't catch a break. Despite the huge controversy surrounding Quantum Break's 720p resolution on Xbox One, and the whole Windows exclusivity fiasco, it's now been revealed that the game's live-action segments will require an atrociously huge 75GB of hard drive space.

If you're an Xbox One owner who plans to play Quantum Break offline, then you'll need to clear out a huge portion of HDD space. The game's live-action cinematic shorts, which bridge the game's story after each gameplay segment, require a ridiculous 75GB of HDD space. That's over 1/10th of the total 500GB HDD space just for videos. So with the game and the video files installed, you're looking at a total install size of 119GB--44GB for the base game, and 75GB for the videos. Ouch.

Having such an insanely high storage requirement for the game's videos pretty much discourages offline play. As any current-gen console gamer knows, HDD space is precious, especially when single games can command up to 50GB install sizes. The Xbox.com listing also says the episodes are "Bundle Only", which means we can't download them episode by episode, just all at once. I can only imagine how long that'll take.

Skynet has begun its takeover, of the library. Future University of Hakodate researchers have announced that their artificial intelligence has co-written a short-form novel, and it's been accepted by a Japanese story competition.

The short-form novel co-written by the AI has been accepted by the Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award, and while the story didn't win the competition, its acceptance is a huge win for AI systems becoming more capable of reaching human-like creativity.

The team was led by computer science professor Hitoshi Matsubara, who worked closely with their AI during the writing process. The team assigned a gender to the protagonist in the novel, and then developed a rough outline of the plot. The team created a list of words, phrases, and sentences to be included with the story. The AI has the job of assembling the distinct assets into a unified text that was just intelligible, but compelling, as well.

Valve has just unleashed the CAD files for its Steam Controller, allowing games to design their own modifications to the controller, which works with specific games, and already offers custom configurations.

Valve encourages gamers who want to design unique modifications for the Steam Controller, but Valve's approval is needed in order to sell them. Erik Johnson, a designer at Valve said that the version of the Steam Controller available at retail wasn't meant to be the final form.

The company hoped that gamers around the world would customize the hardware to their unique needs, with Johnson telling Polygon back in October 2015: "We want to release the CAD files for how these controllers are put together".

With 'Batman v Superman' hitting screens across the world, Director Zack Snyder has addressed criticisms aimed at it's predecessor 'Man of Steel's overt destruction and ensuing death toll by taking a swipe at the record-breaking 'Star Wars' sequel 'The Force Awakens'.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Snyder recounts a conversation he had with someone who claimed they couldn't think of a movie in recent memory with higher collateral damage, to which he responded "Really? What about ... 'Star Wars' - they destroy five planets with billions of people on them. That's gotta be one of the highest death toll movies in history, the new 'Star Wars' movie, if you just do the math."

He might be right, of course. The difference is that scene in question was shot in a sympathetic matter and only implied detail, compared to 'Man of Steel's destruction porn. We'll take an in-depth look at 'Superman v Batman in the coming days.

Oculus has started shipping its final Rift headset to consumers, with Oculus boss Brendan Iribe confirming the first batch of Rift headsets will reach customers as early as March 28.

We don't know who will be getting their Rift headsets first, but I ordered within the first 5 minutes and haven't gotten shipping notification emails yet - but I did get an email minutes ago saying that my unit would be shipping in the next 1-3 weeks. I really thought I'd be in that first batch, so here's hoping to an email in the next day or so.

Let's hope that before consumers start getting their Rift headsets, that Oculus doesn't require everything to be installed onto their C: ... eh?

GDC 2016 - ZOTAC unveiled their MAGNUS EN980 gaming PC leading up to the Game Developers Conference, but the company had it in the flesh in the Valve suite at the show.

We got some hands-on time with the not-yet-finished prototype, so there will be some changes before it is final. Inside, there's a sixth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 (the full desktop version, the same one that was shrunken down late last year for gaming notebooks) and much more.

ZOTAC is providing support for up to four displays thanks to the GTX 980, and is pushing it for VR gaming. The MAGNUS EN980 also features dual Gigabit ethernet, USB 3.1 Type-C connectivity and a super-small footprint that would fit perfectly in your living room, or for gamers on-the-go.

As we get closer to NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference, it should come as no surprise that more leaks are arriving on AMD's next-gen Polaris architecture. This time, it's in the form of the Radeon R9 490 and R9 480 video cards.

According to the new leaks, AMD will slap 8GB of the new GDDR5 (and possibly GDDR5X) memory onto the R9 400 series cards, with a 256-bit memory bus. There'll also be 2304 fourth-generation GCN cores, which should be able to easily compete against the likes of NVIDIA's Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards (placeholder names, I really don't see NVIDIA calling them as the GTX 1000 series).

AMD's Polaris cards will be made on the 14nm FinFET process, but remember - these cards are the R9 490 and R9 480, not the R9 490X that should be a little beefier. The R9 490X could be different, where it will feature the faster GDDR5X, while the R9 490 might retain the GDDR5 standard.

As enthusiasts know, AMOLED displays offer all kinds of benefits over LCD (thinner, more energy efficient, and arguably better colours, to name a few), but price has held them back from becoming the technology of choice for manufacturers. That's now changed, as production costs have dropped below LCD production costs for the first time, as predicted they would this year.

IHS Technology data tells us a 5'' "full HD" smartphone display cost $17.10 with AMOLED and $15.70 with LCD to produce as of Q4 2015, but Q1 2016 shows $14.30 and $14.60, respectively.

With this shift, it's expected AMOLED will quickly become the default display technology for manufacturers in regards to mid-range and low-end devices. LCD likely won't go anywhere anytime soon, but it's going to take a hit.

AMD's Capsaicin event at GDC was quite the blast, if not for the reveal of their Radeon Pro Duo dual-GPU, VR-focused monster card, they also took time to show off just how potent Polaris 10 actually was. And someone was lucky enough to get a close-up of its behind. And it looks like any other GPU's derrière.

Looking closely, which is easy here, you can see that the connectors include three DisplayPort (presumably 1.3) one HDMI (likely 2.0) and a DVI-D port. And we get our first peek at the prototype PCB as well. Though it's only a prototype, and this could change. There it is. It is an engineering sample, so things could change in the future. The best part is the small form-factor it happens to be in. AMD is definitely committed to bringing more power to smaller form factors.

This is "Big Polaris", or Polaris 10, that's running the newest Hitman using DX12. It's stuffed in a Cooler Master Elite 110 case, meaning the board is minuscule to be able to fit into that case. The PCB is probably around the size of the R9 Nano and should consume less power than any Fiji based board to date.

Yesterday Microsoft launched its teen girl 'Tay' Twitter AI. It's designed to interact with followers and become smarter for it, so naturally it was doomed to fail. Within 24 hours, the Internet transformed it into a pro-Hitler sex robot, as the Internet is wont to do.

The tweets in question are deleted now, but screencaps like those below give you a healthy idea of what occurred. Warning: they're not for the easily offended.

Since this happened, Tay temporarily went offline, so Microsoft could "make adjustments." A cursory look through her current feed shows nothing out of the ordinary, so the situation is under control...for now.

If you play The Division, don't make High-End backpacks. If you do, you could be locked out of your uPlay account for an indeterminate amount of time.

The Division players are suffering from a substantial game-breaking glitch that's locking them out of their accounts and preventing further play. The glitch leads to an endless looping loading screen and prevents users from signing in to the game's servers.

The bug is widespread, affecting countless players across the globe who are barred from playing. Oddly enough, the bug seems to be caused by crafting High-End grade backpacks, so stay away from crafting these items at all costs. Who would have thought an in-game item could cause so much trouble?

Shader Model 5.0 is old, having come out in 2009 with DirectX 11. It's long overdue for some innovation and a few changes to make it better than it is. Sure, games look great using the underlying model, but wouldn't it be nice to have something a bit more advanced to go along with the improvements made to the lower level graphics API?

Microsoft has been working diligently to get Shader Model 6.0 out the door, but not too quickly, of course. They're quickly putting the finishing touches on the next set of technologies and talked about them at GDC this year. The biggest change that will greatly affect game development is the switch to using Clang as the frontend for compilation of applicable programs. That alone can increase the actual speed and efficiency of programs by a few percentage points, if not more. It does mean that drivers have to be re-worked by AMD and NVIDIA to make it backwards compatible, but that's also actively being worked on as well.

The new shader model is also going to have some very intriguing benefits for VR as well. There's the ability to change the pixel size and use procedural textures, so that anything that's calculated as being on the periphery of your vision can simply be a bit lower resolution, saving precious processing power. Our peripheral vision is blurry anyway, so it likely won't make a difference to the experience aside from increased framerates. And there's even more improvements too.

Dark Souls 3 is the latest game to have underwhelming performance on the Xbox One, once again earning Microsoft the ire of an entire community of gamers.

It looks like Miyazaki's final Dark Souls chapter is riddled with optimization problems on the Xbox One. Digital Foundry's in-depth performance analysis reveals that Dark Souls 3 runs at a native 900p (upscaled to 1080p) on the Xbox One, which isn't so surprising given the console's track record. What is surprising is how awkward and inconsistent the game's frame rates are, dropping well below the targeted 30FPS and leading to stutters.

Frame rate drops are most prevalent during environmental effects such as volumetric fog, and in some demanding sequences the Xbox One port dived down to 20FPS. The site notes that the drops are rather annoying, but aren't game-breaking, but it's still rather worrying given the fact that Dark Souls 3 requires split-second reactions. I doubt Miyazaki originally meant for gamers to fight stuttering frame-rates in order to survive--the games are already hard enough.

The dream of higher-bandwidth it a slightly lower cost compared to HBM is coming closer to reality now that Micron has begun shipping samples of their GDDR5X chips to customers for inclusion in prototypes. This means that AMD and NVIDIA are now able to properly test the increase in bandwidth compared to normal GDDR5 and even HBM(2).

It looks like at the moment they're able to ship two different densities, 8Gb and 16Gb that can allow for VRAM of up to 16GB over a 256-bit wide memory bus. Each chip would be relegated to a single 32-bit channel. Don't fret, however, because even though it's a comparatively small memory bus, the internal changes to the structure still allow for far more bandwidth traveling over that bus. It's akin to increasing the speed limit, despite the lane being the same size. The result is that we could see up to 448Gbps of bandwidth, which is similar to first generation HBM, though without the restrictions on memory die size. Power-consumption, too, has been reduced slightly to offset any increase from higher clock speeds and more memory chips on the board.

As of right now it looks like both AMD and NVIDIA are interested in using GDDR5X in their next generation products. From the Capsaicin event, we learned that HBM2 will not be making an appearance until Vega even though the first generation HBM has been confirmed to be part of Polaris alongside traditional GDDR5 and GDDR5X memory. NVIDIA on the other hand will be making great use of Micron's faster tech by likely including 8GB of it in their upcoming GTX 1080, which should be revealed at GTC in April.

Another major source says that Sony's upgraded PlayStation 4.5 console is indeed real, adding even more credence to the validity of past reports.

Eurogamer claims it knows for a fact that Sony's 4K PS4 refresh is happening. "We know PlayStation 4.5 is real," reads the headline of a new article, adding even more assurance on Sony's updated 4K PS4. While the website claims to know the PS4.5 is genuine, it doesn't know any key details about the hardware, and speculates on three different console configurations while tying in AMD's new Polaris GPU tech and 14nm FINFET chips.

We've reported that Sony's PlayStation 4.5 could be powered by a custom new-generation AMD Zen APU, which would harness the power of AMD's Zen CPUs and Polaris graphics architecture baked into the 14nm FINFET node, which provides significant boosts across the board. With this tech under the hood, Sony's PS4.5 would be a competitor right out of the gate and provide native 4K gaming for years to come.

Killer Instinct on the Xbox One, and soon on the PC via the Windows Store, is entering its third season, and with that evolution comes three distinct ways to buy into the iconic fighting game. Naturally.

Depending on how much extra you'd like to tack on, and what kind of extra costumes or experience boosts, the three tiers will differ drastically. $20 is the price of entry, getting you the game and little else. The largest package includes every piece of content from all previous seasons, 18,000 of the in-game currency, Killer Instinct Classic and Killer Instinct Classic 2 that's playable on the Xbox One. All for a mere $60. Not terrible for a game that's had a pretty significant visual upgrade and that provides hours of enjoyment in the fighting genre anyway. Season 3 starts on March 29th, which is the same day that it'll be available on the PC.

Sony's PlayStation VR is selling like hotcakes, and Amazon sold out the first wave of headsets in just four minutes flat. Luckily Sony has envisioned such a scenario and is pushing out the pre-orders in waves, and Amazon will have a fresh batch of pre-order bundles available later today.

Amazon's new stock is expected to arrive this morning, and the retailer has announced you'll be able to pre-order the $499 PlayStation VR Launch Edition bundles starting at 2PM today. We're not sure if that's 2PM Eastern or Pacific, so you'll want to make accommodations either way.

If you don't manage to get a PSVR from Amazon, don't panic: pre-orders are available at Target, GameStop, and BestBuy. Remember that Sony is rolling out these pre-orders in waves and phases, so don't be alarmed if you don't get a pre-order--just check our PSVR pre-order timeline to see your next opportunity. Be sure to avoid those ridiculous $1,000 eBay listings at all costs--there's no reason to spend double or triple MSRP just because stock is limited right now.