Latest News - Page 2485

In light of previous Xbox One exclusives coming to PC, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer was recently asked at a Microsoft event what reason do PC gamers now have to purchase an Xbox One. Spencer's reply: "So they might not [buy an Xbox One]. And I want that to be OK."

He seems to see PC gamers and Xbox gamers as one and the same in a sense, to which Microsoft provides one service to accommodate both.

"When you go and you buy [PC and Xbox One games]," he says, "You're not gonna feel like you're dealing with disconnected islands that don't understand what games you own, or where you are in those games, or what your achievements are in those games and what you play with, but that instead [we] put you as the gamer at the center of our platform and build our platforms around you."

Western Digital gets in on the Pi Day fun by announcing its new PiDrive 314GB, a new 314GB HDD made specifically for the... you guessed it, Raspberry Pi.

WD's new PiDirve 314GB costs just $45.81 - but it's currently available for $31.42 - celebrating Pi. The 7mm-high drive is based on the WD Blue range of HDDs, which are found in many budget and mid-range laptops and PCs. The difference here is that the interface has been modified from SATA to USB so that it can connect and work with the Raspberry Pi.

WD adds that it customized the PiDrive 314GB so that it would "reduce the electrical power load of the hard drive on Raspberry Pi while still maintaining sufficient performance to deliver maximum USB data transfer rate".

Sniper Elite 4 is well into development, and was announced to much fanfare last week when it was unveiled by Rebellion Developments.

Now a new press release has revealed a fairly tight window of release of sometime in 2016 and will retail for £49.99 / €69.99 / $59.99 when it hits the streets. Of course it'll be available through the usual digital channels, but physical copies of the game will be available from Sold Out. in the UK. They were responsible for providing physical copies of Zombie Army Trilogy when that released. Physical copies of the game will be available in the US through U&I Entertainment through an exclusive deal with Sold Out.

Sniper Elite 4 will be available on the PC, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One when it comes out sometime in 2016. Rebellion is promising that we'll see it at 1080P on both the consoles, with an unlimited framerate and 4K (and Eyefinity) support on the PC. Maps will be many times the size of anything we encountered in Sniper Elite 3, and it'll retain the less linear way in which you can go about your missions, taking place in Italy in 1943.

GDC 2016 - Stardock has some exciting stuff on its hands with Ashes of the Singularity, a DirectX 12-powered game that has an awesome benchmark for mixing AMD and NVIDIA video cards - but it's limited to just one game, for now.

Stardock has teased that it's working on a software solution, something that's part of DirectX 12, that will let gamers use multi-GPU support on DX12 games. Outside of AotS, multi-GPU support through DX12 isn't really a thing, but it could very well be in the near future.

Brad Wardell, Stardock CEO, explained to VentureBeat: "One of the biggest problems with games is that a new video card comes out from AMD and NVIDIA, and they're like [expensive], and you have to make a call. I like my video card. I can play most games on it, and I don't want to spend $800 on some new video card. But imagine, instead, hey, they're having a sale [using my GTX 760 as an example]. Hey, they're having a sale on an AMD 290 for $75. Wouldn't it be cool to put this into your computer and double your performance. You keep this in there [the 760]. You put this in there [the 290], and your games are twice as fast without doing anything else".

Microsoft has wanted to have a way for people from all of their platforms to play together, but it just hasn't really been technically possible. Until now. And they're expanding the idea to other platforms "including other console and PC networks." Meaning the PlayStation 4.

They're new cross-network play was just announced today and it means that games, if the developer choose to support the function, can enable every platform that a game happens to play on, to be able to interact with each other. A native solution hasn't ever been available that allowed this. Wargaming.net had to create their own internal API to even let Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC gamres to play together with World of Tanks.

The first game to take advantage of this is naturally Rocket League, which will let you play against your friends that are on whatever platform they happen to have. Right now it only supports play across the Xbox One and the PC, but there's an open invitation to allow the PlayStation 4 to participate, because it apparently isn't hard to implement. Interestingly, this could make the decision to buy a console rest solely on other factors other than what your friends happen to have, or want.

GDC 2016 - NVIDIA has just announced its new GameWorks SDK 3.1, with three new technologies included in the release. This includes new techniques for shadows and lighting, as well as two new physical simulation algorithms, released in beta form.

Senior VP of Content and Technology with NVIDIA, Tony Tamasi, explains: "It's our passion for gaming that drives us to tackle the technical problems presented by real-time rendering and simulation. Our GameWorks technologies push the boundaries of what's possible in real-time, enabling developers to ship their games with state of the art special effects and simulations".

As for the three new technologies with GameWorks SDK 3.1, this is what we can expect:

GDC 2016 - AMD has announced that it has made strides in the VR market already, with Yahoo finance reporting that AMD is powering an estimated 83% of the global VR market. AMD only just announced minutes ago that it powered the new Sulon Q headset.

This number includes the PlayStation VR, with the PS4 powered by AMD technology. When it comes to the PC side of things, AMD is partnering with both Oculus and HTC for the Rift and Vive respectively, with the company ensuring the Radeon ecosystem is ready to rock and roll when these headsets launch in the next month.

Later today, AMD will be displaying its Polaris 10 GPU running on Valve's Aperture Science Robot Repair demo, which is powered by the HTC Vive. AMD's Polaris 10 GPU is powered by the exciting new 14nm FinFET process, featuring support for both DX12 and VR - and includes HDR monitor support, and impressive performance-per-watt numbers.

GDC 2016 - AMD's commitment to VR is pretty damn strong, with the company announcing a partnership with Sulon Technologies for a new "spatially aware" head-mounted display. The new Sulon Q is powered by AMD technology, and will blend the world's of VR and AR.

AMD explains the Sulon Q as the "first and only all-in-one, tether-free, 'wear and play' spatially aware headset for VR and AR". The description for the Sulon Q reads: "When you experience augmented reality the Sulon way, your physical world is not replaced, its enhanced. Everywhere you look your full field of view is the physical world you know, seamlessly augmented with new realities. It s the best of both world's, literally".

The Sulon Q is powered by an AMD FX-8800P processor with Radeon R7 graphics that will make use of AMD's GCN architecture. Sulon Technolgoies CEO, Dhan Balachand explains: "The full performance of 4 compute cores and 8 GPU cores are unlocked through a revolutionary Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA), enabling the cores to share memory to work together for dramatic performance and efficiency. The result is a solution that is optimized for modern workloads and media formats, capable of driving the latest graphics APIs including DirectX 12 and Vulkan, and able to render stunning video game console-quality visuals on a beautiful 2560x1440 OLED display".

GDC 2016 - Just as I'm getting ready to leave my Airbnb accommodation and pick up my GDC pass, and then later in the afternoon head to AMD's Capsaicin event - the company will reportedly be teasing its Polaris 10 GPU at the event, running on a SteamVR benchmark.

The company will be unveiling its new Radeon Pro Duo video card during the event, with it based on two Fiji GPUs offering 12TFlops of performance - making it the perfect card for VR and 4K gaming. AMD will be using the next-gen Polaris 10 GPU running on Valve's Aperture Science Robot Repair which will be powered by the HTC Vive Pre headset.

Polaris 10 looks like the same GPU showed off at CES 2016 and the RTG event in Sonoma in December, which will compete against the likes of GeForce GTX 950. The Polaris 10 will be an entry-level/mainstream part based on the 14nm FinFET process with GCN 4.0 enhancements. As for availability, it should launch in mid-2016 right around the time of Computex - so expect plenty of new entry-level/mainstream laptops to be powered by Polaris 10.

You might already be potentially experiencing some of the best mobile VR on a Qualcomm chipset. It's inevitable with the kind of market share that they enjoy, but they want to make sure that the 3D enabled apps that you're using have the chance to be the absolute best when paired with the Snapdragon 820 with their new VR SDK.

Virtual and augmented reality are becoming more and more complex works of art, taking advantage of the creativity of their creators, becoming vivid abstractions of our minds eye. Btu all of that requires processing power, and access to the underlying hardware in easy to use, low-overhead ways. To do that we need SDK's that allow for that. That's precisesly what Qualcomm's new VR SDK sets out to do. Allow VR app and content creators to design into their apps the ability to take advantage of the inherent advantages of their processor.

One of the most important aspects is the reduction in latency from what's being rendered and what you see. If there's too much, speaking in the realm of milliseconds here, then it can cause a huge disconnect and contribute to motion sickness. Using the SDK provides a nice and healthy 50% decrease in latency compared to not using it. They've also allowed lower-level access to the DPS and have built-in lens correction functions. Another great feature of the SDK is a native way to generate menus and other overlays in apps so that they can actually be rendered correctly.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for the PC got off to a pretty bad start when it was released at the beginning of the month. It was a complete mess for AMD cards and a slightly smaller mess for NVIDIA cards. DirectX 12 was there, but it didn't quite provide the performance boost that we thought, and expected, it would. But a new patch coming out soon should prove to fix quite a few of the more worse problems.

This new update will include a lot of performance optimizations, tweak Ambient Occlusion and disable mouse smoothing, some of the most requested additions to the game. Unfortunately, if you have a 60Hz monitor, you're still limited to the up to 60FPS, even with V-sync turned off. At the moment they're working on a fix for that. And they're also looking into adding an FPS counter into the game since very few external solutions support UWP or even being available in DirectX 12. FRAPS, a popular solution, doesn't work in DX12 enabled games, for example.

The most important fix in the patch are the performance enhancements, and under-the-hood changes they've made so that AMD cards don't result in a whole screen of graphical artefacts or other strange occurrences. Now it'll actually be playable, even if it's limited to the refresh rate of your monitor. And at least a smooth constant 60FPS is acceptable for playing, if not really for showing off.

Star Fox Zero for the Wii U is going to cater to the beginning gamer in all of us, allowing you to activate an in-game invincibility mode to let you get used to the controls and help you become more proficient without the worry that death can cause.

Shigeru Miyamoto, a designer from Nintendo, was asked by Time whether or not some Nintendo games tended to coddle players in certain situations. He responded that they aren't simply making the game easier, but are making some challenges more fun for those that otherwise could be overwhelmed by them. There's no sense in having a game that can't be fun for a wider audience. Younger gamers in particular, might benefit from having a bit of assistance once in awhile. And they don't want to lower the hurdle, so to speak, but just make it more accessible.

Invincibility will come from a difficulty level that allows a special Arwing that you can obtain so you can familiarize yourselves with the levels. He didn't quite go into detail as to how that would work, but higher difficulty levels will likely feature better rewards. But for the more hardcore player, they also seem to be adding in even higher difficulty modes as well.

Microsoft was one of the first major companies to accept a digital cryptocurrency as a valid payment method for their wares on the Windows app store. Though it wasn't a mainstream currency, they saw the growth potential, and wanted to give customers a wealth of choices. But they've recently decided to remove Bitcoin from their list of payment methods that are accepted.

If you happen to have a balance of Bitcoin in your wallet already, you can use those at the Microsoft Store or App store, though you can't refill the internal wallet with more Bitcoin nor can you get a refund if you wanted to get those out. That seems to indicate that the infrastructure used to process Bitcoin no longer happen to be in place. You were able to use them for any Microsoft branded store.

This is another bold move considering they were advocates of choice in 2014, and this escape from the market is quite the shock. Though there are probably practical reasons as to why they did so. Microsoft hasn't announced why they made the decision though we've reached out for comment.

Ubisoft is getting tired of the rampant cheating that seems to happen in Rainbow Six Siege. They've already released one patch that took care of a lot of latent exploits in the various levels, and it also made it possible to report people for alleged cheating. But that doesn't seem to have been enough. Now they're expanding their criteria when looking for cheaters in their game. So cheaters beware.

To help to prevent cheating on the scale that it already seems to exist, they're implementing new algorithms to identify cheaters. That algorithm looks at how you play, where you aim compared to where the bullet seems to strike and so on. They're becoming much more strict in their effort. And if you've been identified as a cheater mid-game, you're immediately pulled from the game and given a temporary suspension. There's no word whether punishments will become worse as more instances are found, or if there's the possibility of banning you from the game completely.

Cheating is an issue in any kind of game but games of a competitive nature that have a rank structure attract more due to the want, or perceived need, to be the absolute highest even with the absence of skill. And of course, that can potentially ruin the game for others, who want to play it within their skill level amongst those that are like-minded. It can be incredibly frustrating playing against those that are using assistance. It's a bit easier to be more strict with Rainbow Six Siege being purely a multiplayer competitive experience. It's great to see them wield that ban-hammer a bit more surely.

To celebrate this week's release of 'Game of Thrones: The Complete Fifth Season' on Blu-ray HD and DVD, we have five Blu-ray prize packs to give away thanks to our friends at Roadshow Home Entertainment.

'Game of Thrones: Season Five' begins with a power vacuum that protagonists across Westeros and Essos look to fill. At Castle Black, Jon Snow struggles to balance the demands of the Night's Watch with those of newly-arrived Stannis Baratheon, who styles himself the rightful king of Westeros. Meanwhile, Cersei scrabbles to hold on to power in King's Landing amidst the Tyrells and the rise of a religious group led by the enigmatic High Sparrow, while Jaime embarks on a secret mission. Across the Narrow Sea, Arya seeks an old friend while a fugitive Tyrion finds a new cause. And as danger mounts in Meereen, Daenerys Targaryen finds that her tenuous hold on the city requires some hard sacrifices. This season features some of the most explosive scenes yet, as the promise that "winter is coming" becomes more ominous than ever before.

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

Have you forgotten about the Half-Life and Portal movies? Well, they're still in development according to The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams.

During a chat with IGN, Abrams said: "Nothing that would be an exciting update". So while it's not new news, it's something - acknowledging that they're still in development. J.J. Abrams first said he was working with Valve on Half-Life and Portal movies during DICE 2013, during a chat with Gabe Newell.

At the time, Abrams said at the time that they had talks with Newell about storytelling in film and video games, which is why they started working together. At the time, Abrams said: "We're not looking to make a movie in the gaming world. We're not looking to impose what we do on that".

Valve will have quite a lot to show off at the Game Developers Conference this week, with the company teasing through email over the weekend that it will be showing off SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode.

In an email, Valve said: "SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode is in early beta, and will be showcased at next week's Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. Desktop Theater Mode enables users to play non-VR games with VR systems such as the upcoming HTC Vive and others".

No screenshots or videos have been released, so we should expect a complete unveil this week during GDC. But what should expect? Being able to play all of your Steam games in VR is going to be a huge win for not just Valve, but HTC - the company making the SteamVR-powered Vive headset.

With the performance-related issues surrounding Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, it's good to hear that the upcoming patch for the game will address at least some of the performance problems. The upcoming patch will have performance optimizations, Ambient Occlusion tweaks, and more. Here's the full list:

As for what's coming in the future, The Coalition will be adding 21:9 support, NAT problems and more. We should expect these improvements in the coming weeks.

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ASUS held an event in Sydney, Australia over the weekend - where it collected a bunch of companies including InWin, NVIDIA, Cooler Master, Kingston and Bitspower - where it was teaching Australian IT retailers about water cooling.

The event included letting IT store staff building a water-cooled PC into the InWin 805 or 909 chassis, where they will display their work in their store for 3 months. Not only that, but they get a certificate in water cooling training, too. There was an afternoon session that allowed local residents to come in and check out the modded PCs, learn about water cooling, talk with ASUS staff, modders and retailers - culminating in a Q&A session.

If you can't make this year's Coachella music festival in Indio, California but have the money for tickets, you can still watch the show: in virtual reality. And if you are going, VR could enhance the experience.

Once you purchase a ticket, you'll receive a unique VR headset (pictured here) that can be used in combination with a Coachella VR app (which can be found in the iOS, Android, and Samsung Gear VR stores), which you can then use to take in photos from previous events, virtual tours, interviews, and of course, performances, among other things. A 5mbps or higher Wi-Fi connection is recommended.

Unfortunately, no reduced cost VR ticket only option is available.