Latest News - Page 2490

Yesterday we were shocked with the news that Microsoft was going to shut down Lionhead Studios and cancel their titular product, Fable Legends, but they've announced they won't be shutting down the current beta immediately, and will let players that are already in, continue to play until April.

No new players are being let into the beta, but if you're already in, and enjoying yourself, then you'll be able to continue your adventures until April 13th at 3:00PM GMT. After that, the servers will officially be shut down and the game will be gone for good.

So far there's been no word as to whether we'll see Fable be taken up by another studio, but we do know that for the time being, development has ceased completely. Fable Legends was a showcase of the capabilities of DirectX 12 and was one of the best examples of it too. It didn't use asynchronous compute quite to its fullest, but it did end up using it right. It's sad to see a game that's also quite fun to play, wander into oblivion.

Designed as a promotion between Samsung and Six Flags in order to promote the brand new Gear VR hardware, users now have the option to wear this device while literally riding a roller coaster.

While some users and companies have made pneumatic roller coaster seats that move and jostle in conjunction with VR headsets, this literal roller coaster ride pits you as a fighter pilot battling against all odds, with the real g-forces of the roller coaster assisting in the whole sensory-overload experience.

As seen on Gizmodo this promotion is set to kick off on March 10, with it set to extend to Six Flags sites in Arlington, Atlanta, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Lake George, Montreal, San Antonio, Agawam (Massachusetts) and Upper Marlboro (Maryland).

The March update for Star Wars Battlefront is quite small, probably because the next major patch and content drop is going to be the Outer Rim expansions coming later this year. But we get to enjoy a new survival mission on Tatooine and a new map based on Endor.

The new survival mission is called Rebel Depot, and like the name suggests, you'll have to attempt to survive against all odds, defending the precious depot. The new map is Survivors of Endor and can be played as part of Walker Assault, Supremacy and Turning Point.

This update is small, but the developers are hard at work putting the final touches on the Outer Rim update that will add in new playable heroes, more maps and even a new game mode, Extraction. Extraction looks interesting and depending on how it's implemented, it could be quite a popular new mode. As the name suggests, you'll be tasked with extracting resources from hostile areas.

It seems that SFF computers are all the rage recently, seeing companies like Corsair teasing its Bulldog, other manufacturers releasing Steam machines and ORIGIN PC proudly promoting this beast of a machine.

The Chronos gaming desktop is presented in a Small Form Factor (SFF) chassis, packing within some seriously powerful technology. Measuring in at 11.75" (H) x 4" (W) x 13.75" (D), a recently issued press release reinforced that this product is "ORIGIN PC's smallest form factor chassis ever offered." While it may be small, it certainly doesn't lack performance, with ORIGIN PC mentioning that there is plenty of space to fit an NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z within.

With further capacity for five hard drives, the top of the range Chronos can come packaged with an Intel Core i7 5690X or XEON and is said to support all Mini-ITX platforms that are based around Z170 and X99.

The leaks are already starting for Fallout 5, with voice actor Ryan Alosio teasing that Fallout 5 is in development. Alosio was the voice of Deacon in Fallout 4, and is quite active on social media like Instagram - which is where the leak on Fallout 5 started.

Alosio started a conversation about a collage of himself voice acting, and what he thought was a picture of Deacon wasn't actually Deacon, but it ended up being a picture of Zeek, instead. Well, his followers caught wind of it quickly, and corrected him. Alosio put up another picture, this time a correct one, but posted a weird explanation - which we've got below:

But things got even better, with 'fallout_temple' replying, saying "I knew you'd click onto it, I saw your last one and was like BRUH. I'll repost this one and shout out this week ok?" - to which Alosio replied to the Fallout Temple account, confirming that work on Fallout 5 was already underway, with the game in pre-production right now. He said:

Can you believe that The Division is finally here? The opening cinematic for The Division has been leaked, which is something you can watch below.

The Division is available right now on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC - with Ubisoft detailing its extensive DLC plan for 2016 recently. We should expect around 26 missions in total for the game, with more missions to arrive with the various DLC releases throughout the year.

Sniper Elite 4 has just been announced, with developer Rebellion saying that the game is in development, and will be released later this year.

The new game will hit the Xbox One, PS4 and PC - missing out on the last-gen consoles, with Sniper Elite 4 taking place in Italy. Rebellion teases that Sniper Elite 4 will offer breathless emergent stealth action, with unrivaled sniping freedom throughout a bunch of maps that are much bigger than the ones found in Sniper Elite 3.

Rebellion explains Sniper Elite 4's storyline as: "Italy, 1943. Covert agent and elite marksman Karl Fairburne must help free Italy from the yoke of Fascism and defeat a terrifying new threat that could halt the Allied fightback in Europe before it's even begun".

The new Need for Speed has been shown off once again, ahead of its release next week, this time on the PC with 9 minutes of footage. Check it out below, running at 1080p 60FPS on the PC.

The footage is courtesy of YouTuber 'BlackPanthaa' who says he captured the footage at 1440p (2560x1440) but had issues with his video editing software - so he dumped it down to 1080p. The footage still looks great, thanks to the gorgeous Frostbite 3 engine powering Need for Speed. The smoothness that 60FPS provides is beautiful, with BlackPanthaa noting that the framerate is completely uncapped - so if you've got an awesome 144Hz or 165Hz gaming display - you're in for a treat, if your PC can handle it, of course.

In Win is a company that never ceases to impress, with the company celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Kicking off their big 3-0, the company will "we renew our gaming products website and hope to provide more detailed information to visitors".

Not only that but In Win is starting off their first modding contest - hosting it at their own Taoyuan factory, between May 27-29. The Mod in Taiwan event will kick off days before Computex, and will be a live modding event. Modders from around the world will mod In Win's famous cases, as well as get a peek into In Win's production center where all of their signature chassis and products are made.

TweakTown will be a media partner at the event, so you can expect live coverage from us during the entire show.

AMD will be teasing their next-gen Polaris architecture, the Radeon R9 Fury X2, and latest software improvements for Radeon video cards during the Game Developers Conference next week - but, there's a larger event that I feel AMD will be shining a spotlight on - its Capsaicin party, in San Fransisco on March 14, and we will be there - but now you can join us, through a live webcast!

AMD has announced that there will be a live webcast of the Capsaicin event, where the company will be showcasing the latest innovations from the Radeon Technologies Group. RTG Marketing Director Chris Hook posted on Twitter that they will be showing off some very hot and spicy new innovations during GDC 2016.

Last year, AMD announced their LiquidVR software program during GDC 2015, but this event is called "Capsaicin", which is a marquee developer and press event hosted by RTG's Senior VP and Chief Architect Raja Koduri. We will be there in person, bringing you everything live from the event.

Both sides of the video cards war will be using HBM2 (High Bandwidth Memory) with the new super-fast HBM2 going into mass production later this year, kicking off with 4GB HBM2 dies in Q3 2016, followed up by 8GB HBM2 dies in Q4, reports Golem.de.

With AMD expected to unveil its new Polaris architecture in more detail at GDC next week, and NVIDIA following up with its reveal of Pascal at its own GPU Technology Conference in early April, the GPU scene is heating up. SK Hynix setting off its 4GB HBM2 die mass production in Q3 2016 signifies when the next-gen GPUs will launch, where I think we'll see a launch in June/July and availability in the months proceeding their launch.

The professional-orientated next-gen cards will require the 8GB HBM2 dies to get things kicked off in a higher fashion, as that's when we'll see 32GB of HBM2 on a video card - and by just typing that, there's feelings in my body that I've never felt before. 32GB of HBM2? Freakin' incredible, isn't it? We will be at both GDC and GTC, so expect some quick and plentiful coverage from both events in the coming weeks.

Even though Kanye West has a vested interest in streaming company Tidal, and despite the fact that physical CD sales are down from their heights of a number of years ago, it's not a revenue stream that many distributors can go without. Except West.

Taking to his favourite social media platform earlier today, the musician has pledged that he won't release any more albums on CD.

West's latest album 'The Life of Pablo' was released exclusively to the Tidal platform last month and no plans have been made to release the album on CD. Presumably now it won't.

The new Google Material design for Facebook Messenger on Android has been revealed. As you can see, it's much cleaner than what's in use currently, and features a 'new conversation' button.

"If you're using Messenger on Android, you've been wanting a brand new material design for a bit," says Vice President of Messaging Products at Facebook David Marcus. "Any major redesign of an essential app used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is painstakingly hard, and that's why we took every precaution to ensure you'd truly enjoy this evolution."

Last week it became apparent Amazon had not included support for local encryption with Fire OS 5, which would seem to contradict its support of Apple's fight for encryption. Asked for comment on exactly that and why they would drop support when it seems all the work is done by Google anyway, an Amazon spokesperson simply told us, "We will return the option for full disk encryption with a Fire OS update coming this spring."

Amazon initially said its customers "weren't using" local encryption, so it decided not to include support for it, which appeared flimsy reasoning. Whatever the case, the company has wisely decided to change course, likely in light of how it looks currently.

To curb the appeal of violent video games, Target stores in Australia has whitewashed the box art of all R 18+ rated games on its shelves.

An image posted on NeoGAF reveals the exact nature of Target Australia's censoring, showing a whole shelf of mature-rated games packed in Blockbuster-style plain packaging. Instead of the glamorous and colorful artwork that pulls the eye, the games are ensconced in ugly monochrome boxes that only show the rating, game name, and an age restricted warning.

This kind of censorship is nothing new for Target Australia; the chain's "war" against video games is notorious across the globe. The retailer even went so far as to pull all copies of Grand Theft Auto V from its shelves, citing a "significant level of concern" over the game's content.

If you've been waiting forever to get access to Google's Project Fi service, we've got some great news for you--the line just got a whole lot shorter. In fact, the line no longer exists.

Starting today, Google is dropping the invitation-only requirement for its Project Fi cellular service. Now anyone in the United States that owns a Nexus 5X, 6, or 6P handset can sign up for Google's affordable mobile service, which starts at $30 per 1GB of data with unlimited calls and texting.

"We launched Project Fi as an invitation-only Early Access program to make sure we could deliver the best quality of service to our first customers. Today, we're excited to be exiting our invitation-only mode and opening up Project Fi so that people across the U.S. can now sign up for service without having to wait in-line for an invite. "

Classic and indie games download service GOG.com gets more secure as of today: the powers that be have added an optional two-step login, much like what Steam has employed for years now.

As with Steam, it will prompt you to enter a code sent to your email when you attempt to login from a new browser or location, thus hacking into your account becomes that much more difficult. Additionally, you can clear all of your active GOG sessions across every device and browser to ensure nobody but you has access.

Taking it further, the HTTPS encryption supported by the GOG Galaxy client for awhile now is going to extend across the entire service: the store, forum, chat, downloads, and all of Galaxy. A slow rollout has already begun, and will be complete within the coming weeks.

Now that Microsoft is bringing its Xbox games lineup to the PC, console owners are worried that their Xbox Ones are now obsolete. As an Xbox One owner myself, I can definitely say I feel left behind, but Xbox boss Phil Spencer says we shouldn't be worried.

According to Xbox division head Phil Spencer, Microsoft isn't going to bring over every Xbox One game over to Windows 10 PCs. The console will still have its own unique platform exclusives and although the Xbox One is considered a Windows device, it'll still be at the forefront of Microsoft's gaming plans.

"The argument people give me is that 'hey, I'm just going to sell my Xbox One and play all these games on my PC'. I get the emotion around that argument. Frankly, from a financial standpoint, the most cost-effective way to play these games is to own an Xbox One," Spencer said in an interview with IGN. "We're committed to bringing our biggest franchises to both Xbox and Windows, but it doesn't necessarily mean that every game could end up on both platforms. There could be many differences in the play space and how the games play."

Users are reporting some strange issues when they try to install NVIDIA's latest WHQL drivers, version 364.47. When installing over a previous driver version you might experience a crash while trying to install them, resulting in a black screen. You won't be able to boot properly into Windows afterward, either.

Quickly after they were released several users took to the feedback thread to share their disdain for the new driver. Once installed, you'll have to boot into safe mode in order to uninstall the drivers. Once completely removed, however, they should reinstall without issue.

The new driver is supposed to bring performance improvements to Ashes of the Singularity, The Division, Hitman, Need for Speed and Rise of the Tomb Raider. It also adds support for the only Vulkan game available right now, The Talos Principle.

Despite the disastrous launch of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on PC, Microsoft is asserting that Gears of War 4 will be "mind-blowing".

Xbox marketing exec Aaron Greenberg was recently shown the most recent build of Gears of War 4, and publicly states that it was absolutely "mind blowing". Greenberg also affirmed that the Gears franchise is in "very good hands" with The Coalition (formerly known as Black Tusk Studios). After Microsoft had purchased the Gears of War series from Epic Games, the company handed off development to The Coalition.

The Xbox exec also revealed that a beta test for Gears of War 4 is coming up soon, so we'll be able to try it out and see if it's truly mind-blowing or not. The beta test will likely be gated off behind pre-order access, which is the norm for the industry these days.