Latest News - Page 2509

To celebrate next week's release of the action adventure epic 'Gods of Egypt' in cinemas next week, we have three double movie passes to give away thanks to our friends at eOne Films.

In this spectacular action-adventure inspired by the mythology of Egypt, a clever mortal thief, Bek (Brenton Thwaites), undertakes a thrilling journey to save the world and rescue his true love. In order to succeed, he enlists the help of the powerful god Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in an unlikely alliance against Set (Gerard Butler), the merciless god of darkness. As their breathtaking battle against Set and his henchmen takes them into the afterlife and across the heavens, both god and mortal must pass tests of courage and sacrifice if they hope to prevail in the epic final confrontation.

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

The Xbox app on PC is getting a nice little update today with the Xbox One February update following on sometime tomorrow. The update focuses on the social aspect of gaming, connecting PC and Xbox gamers through Xbox Live.

The app update on PC, and on the console, adds the new Avatar Store to help you personalize your virtual self, a more organized Xbox News feed for getting the latest gaming related news and a better "suggested friends" algorithm to help you expand that social circle. In addition, there's a new Xbox Accessories App that lets you configure your Elite controller more easily, even going so far as to letting you change the sensitivity curve of the thumbsticks.

On the Xbox One side, the coming update allows you to see who's in a particular party before you join in on the chat. It also adds a new Gamerscore leader-board, adding another competitive element that was missing. We earned those points, but there was no point if we can't compare to others, friends or otherwise. Sometimes it's nice to know if there's someone you hate in the group, so you can prepare those "mom" jokes in advance.

The much anticipated Eden update to ArmA 3 is finally here, and it's more than just the gorgeous new editor by the same name. Improvements to the already immersive audio, better graphics options and a new amphibious engine simulation have made its way in the game.

The foremost item added is the Eden editor, a new scenario editor within ArmA 3t that lets you manipulate things in full 3D, seeing the changes you make before you commit. This gives you greater control over the kinds of military actions you're planning. It's an incredibly robust experience that gives up nothing compared to the traditional 2D editor.

Under the hood improvements include the inclusion of HBAO+ to the engine and a more advanced parallax technology for better looking environments and of course more improved sound effects. Those sound effects, things like gun-shots and other environmental sounds, all have distance information and can be added in the Eden editor, giving a greater sense of depth to your creations. Or if you really want to feel like you're there.

The first Just Cause 3 content pack, Sky Fortress, is coming to us on March 2016 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the PC. If you happen to have the Air, Land and Sea Expansion Pass then you'll get to play it a week before it's out.

"If Just Cause 3 is over-the-top action then the Air, Land and Sea Expansion pass aims to stand on its shoulders and reach even higher," said Tobias Andersson, Senior Producer at Avalanche Studios. "An incredible amount of time has been spent ensuring every new item is fully integrated into the main game and can be used during existing missions. Rico's new Bavarium Wingsuit will fundamentally alter the core gameplay of Just Cause 3 and we can't wait to see the crazy stunts that players perform with it."

Sky Fortress contains a brand new set of missions that introduce a new threat, a gigantic, menacing Sky Fortress and an army of deadly robotic drones that don't seem to like you very much. You'll get to use a new upgradeable, rocket-powered, weaponised 'Bavarium Wingsuit' fitted with shoulder mounted machine guns and auto targeting missiles - alongside Rico's new 'Eviction' personal defense drone and 'Bavarium Splitter' assault rifle.

What if you didn't need to rely on Li-ion batteries to power your devices? What if you could just plug your phone or laptop into your shoes and power them as you walk? The University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed a new high-tech pair of shoes that does just that.

Mechanical engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created a device that converts the energy from walking into practical electrical current. The energy harvester is called a "bubbler", and uses a new kind of reverse electrowetting on dielectric (REWOD) phenomenon. REWOD is much more efficient than electromagnetic, piezoelectric, or electrostatic conversion because it has the potential to "produce very high power densities", and the device can be easily scaled in size.

In order to function, the bubbler energy converter is embedded into footwear between two chambers of pressurized gas. As wearer's take a step, the gas is compressed and then displaced through the REWOD chips, triggering thousands of oscillations which generate the electrical energy. So every natural step converts mechanical energy into electrical energy, with hundreds of heel-to-toe strikes accumulating into actual usable power current. So in theory, a one mile walk could not only reinvigorate your body, but your mobile devices as well.

Epic Games has unleashed a new bit of gameplay footage for its rather amazing-looking MOBA Paragon, showing off some killer hero abilities.

The clip is short but rather sweet, and gives us a crash course in sci-fantasy chaos. We're introduced to six distinctly stylish characters and their deadly abilities, all of which can be combined for strategic synergies.

There's Howitzer, a robot that can spawn mini clones; Sparrow, the bow-shooting rogue who rains down a torrent of arrows on her foes; Gideon, who uses arcane magic to teleport across the map and slam down huge comets from cosmic rifts; Dekker, who wields a futuristic staff powered with electric doom that can trap enemies in a containment fence; Steel, a hulking automaton who can throw up huge defensive shields; and Grux, a rhino-slash-dino that wields dual clubs and unleashes fiery earth attacks.

Opera is almost at version 37.0 and is adamant about continuing to innovate in the browser realm despite the fact that a Chinese company is on the verge of buying the parent company, Opera Software. Version 37.0 is supposed to have a few fun surprises in the final version, things that aren't mentioned in any logs whatsoever.

The focus is on fixing a tremendous amount of bugs that have been found and adding in a few much needed changes to keep it competitve, such as smooth scrolling. But there'll be more too. "Now we are preparing small surprise for you, or actually, two, if we manage to fix everything on time. You will not find it in changelog, not even in the flags," Błażej Kaźmierczak said in an official blog post.

If you'd like to participate in the beta, with it's clean interface and rather quick browsing engine, you can download it here. Just know that it's not quite production ready yet, even though it's in great shape. The interface and intuitive way in which you interact with it is a surprise given the last time I played with it nearly three year ago. They've stepped up their game quite a bit!

AMD is partnering up with the Associated Press to bring an unprecedented level of interactivity to the world of news reporting with "next generation VR journalism".

With the help of AMD's Radeon graphics hardware, the Associated Press will report news on a new VR channel, allowing viewers to seamlessly enter real-time news broadcasts with full 360-degree field of views. The plan is to breathe new life into news coverage and documentaries using the immersive power of virtual reality, which could revolutionize the world of news reporting altogether.

AMD will leverage the power of its Graphics Core Next Radeon graphics technology in conjunction with LiquidVR to render environments for documentaries and news coverage. AMD is confident that it's tech will deliver "spectacular VR visual experiences to engage audiences both emotionally and intellectually". The AP promises that its new VR channel will immerse viewers with a new dimension of news reporting, allowing them to actually experience major news stories rather than just watching.

It seems no one is safe from the mighty DDoS anymore, and you don't even have to use anyone's bandwidth to accomplish that feat either. A flaw in WordPress's pingback feature has allowed a layer 7 (the application layer) DDoS take down, and effect, nearly 26,000 different sites using the CMS.

The attackers are flooding the sites with HTTPS requests, in this case pingbacks, that the server will log to the database and try to process. Being HTTPS means that more resources are being used to establish an SSL session, which devotes those resources to those tasks. Enough requests and the site can slow down to a crawl because the physical server just isn't fast enough. Not as much network bandwidth is needed to send these packets, so at the network layer it may look like normal traffic. But even 10,000 HTTPS requests per second can take offline even a modestly powerful server.

Thankfully the solution is relatively simple. Just turn-off pingbacks on your site altogether. At the very least change your .htaccess file to whitelist only the known and good IP addresses that are within your own community, those that aren't part of a botnet. Apparently the application layer DDoS attack accounts for around 13% of all DDoS attacks according to Sucuri. That's a lot more than you might think.

Bethesda recently dropped a megaton nuke onto the Commonwealth by revealing the first wave of Fallout 4's DLC packs. The announcement not only triggered a wave of anticipation but also rocketed Fallout 4's season pass to the number one spot on Steam's best-seller list.

There's a very simple reason Fallout 4's season pass is selling like hotcakes. Bethsoft made some key changes to the game's all-access pass to reflect its new expanded DLC roadmap, hiking the price to $50. But the price isn't instantaneous, and gamers still have up until March 1 to grab the pass at $30, which accounts for the huge influx of pass purchases.

Bethesda's grace period strategy has worked out quite well, and pretty much every Fallout 4 player wants to grab the season pass for $30 before it jumps to $50. The devs promise that "more than $60 worth of Fallout 4 add-on content" is planned for 2016, and if you buy the pass at $30 you still get access to the full shebang--the first three DLC packs and every pack afterwards.

The newest Surface line of devices has been marred by a few unsettling problems. They just didn't seem to enter into the deepest of sleep states, which means the battery would run down far faster than you'd expect. Sometimes even being dead when you really wanted to use them. Some new firmware updates have been pushed out by Microsoft that finally solve those long-standing power drain issues.

The CEO of Microsoft, Panos Panay himself, actually posted in a blog post to communicate how thankful they are of patience from those affected. "Today's updates include a set of Microsoft and Intel driver and firmware updates for Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 that will help you get the most of the power management options that Surface is designed to offer and continue to make your Surface more productive," Panay wrote in the post. "We love our Surface customers. You are our early adopters and our fans and you keep inspiring us with what you are able to do with Surface. You keep pushing us to make Surface even better."

Power management was one of the first issues noted by some of the early adopters, and this update is long in the making. It was one of the most requested updates despite it largely being ignored until now. Battery life could potentially be reduced to around 3-5 working hours, sometimes even being completely drained once arriving at some far off destination. It didn't quite work as advertised, and was incredibly frustrating. And this is just in time for our long-term gaming focused review of the Surface Book. How delightful.

Activision knows that the multiplayer is what really sells the Call of Duty series, so they've taken the multiplayer-only approach from the older consoles and released a Multiplayer Starter Pack for Black Ops III for $14.99.

Even though have quite the large budget for creating a truly spectacular single-player productions, with triple-A actors and a story that could rival many good movies (but admittedly aren't always fun to play), the true fun is in the competing with your friends, and insult-hurling strangers across the Internet.

This lowers the price of entry into the competitive world of Call of Duty and lets you play the fun bits without having to have the extra large single-player campaign taking up precious hard-drive space. Of course, you won't be able to enjoy the delightful Zombies game mode, either.

NVIDIA is on a roll when it comes to game franchises arriving on their GeForce Now service, with Tomb Raider launching on GeForce Now... and even better, it's completely free.

NVIDIA adds that this is "the first of many Square Enix titles coming to SHIELD", teasing that "Sleeping Dogs, Lara Croft Guardian of the Light, Quantum Conundrum, Murdered Soul Suspect, and more that will be released soon on SHIELD for GeForce NOW members. Keep an eye out for SHIELD Tuesday updates!"

Right now, GeForce Now features over 80 games that you can play right now on Shield, with more major publishers stepping on board. Janet Swallow, Vice President of Licensing Worldwide for Eidos Label at Square Enix explains: "Square Enix is delighted to join the NVIDIA SHIELD platform and enable instant access for gamers to stream our award-winning franchises like Tomb Raider with GeForce NOW".

Announced recently in a press release, Lian Li has shown off its 'classic design' PC-7N chassis for those looking for a break from the mainstream flashy offerings.

The PC-7N chassis comes packed with four drive bays that feature vibration-dampening rubber washers and are mounted in a way to encourage simple installation procedures. Further supporting CPU coolers up to 170mm tall, video cards up to 370mm long and ATX power supplies up to 270mm in length, this new release comes packaged with two 120mm front intake fans and a 120mm exhaust fan on the rear panel.

Set to hit the market at the end of this month, expect to pay $99 off the shelf. More information on this model can be found here.

NVIDIA has made it official, announcing that its partners will be bundling free copies of The Division with certain GeForce video cards. It all kicks off this week and lasts for around a month with the deal taking place throughout the US, Canada, most European countries, and a few Asian countries.

Which GeForce cards will include a free copy of The Division? You'll be glad to know the GeForoce GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980 and GTX 970 will include a free copy, as well as the GTX 980 for notebooks, and the GTX 980M and GTX 970M-powered notebooks. The expensive GTX Titan X isn't included, and neither are the GTX 960 and GTX 950 nor are the GTX 965M and below for notebooks.

Earlier today we reported that NVIDIA has over 100 million GeForce gamers, with the company excited for the future of VR gaming. The company also announced record quarterly, and full-year revenue riding a huge wave of success in nearly every aspect of its business.

While speaking to The Guardian, Valve's veteran coder and designer Robin Walker, who has been working on the Steam Controller for three years now, explained that the company has been trying to make its hardware "more like software".

Walker said that the design team at Valve tried to visualize the controller as a piece of physical software, where it could be adjusted and tweaked to perfection. Walker added: "We're very interested in trying to make hardware more like software. With a traditional controller, people think of it as a solely physical object: you build the hardware, you build a thumbstick and the thumbstick says 'I'm being pressed right', and that information goes to the game".

She continued: "But there's actually a huge software layer that's doing a lot of work: how you interpret and filter for things like my thumb slipping off the pad; or if you want a character to move sideways, well, the reality is no one moves their thumb perfectly horizontally, so how do you adjust for that? It's all software work".

The original Deus Ex was one of the best first-person RPGs of all time, with its creator Warren Spector becoming a household name amongst gamers. Well, the legendary game designer has joined the developer of System Shock 3, Otherside Entertainment.

Spector joins Otherside Entertainment as the Studio Director, after being the founder of Ion Storm in the 90s, creating Deus Ex. He also worked on other iconic PC games like Wing Commander, Ultime, and even Thief. In 2005, Spector joined Disney to work on Epic Mickey, a steampunk Nintendo Wii title. Now at Otherside, Spector will be working on both System Shock 3, and Underworld Ascendant.

Spector talked with GamesIndustry.biz, where he said he was excited about working on System Shock 3. He said: "I've loved working with students as Director of the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy in the University of Texas' Moody College of Communication. But when the opportunity to have a bigger role in bringing Underworld Ascendant to life, as well as playing in the System Shock universe once again, helping to bring these games to a 21st century audience, I just couldn't say no. Working on System Shock was one of the most fulfilling things I've done in my career and it's hard to describe how much I'm looking forward to sharing with players what SHODAN has been up to since the last game was released".

Epic Games has been doing some great things for the community, announcing its second round of Unreal Dev Grants to 10 more contributors.

The developer launched its $5 million Unreal Dev Grants initiative nearly a year ago, with its second round of academic and educational funding for contributors. Education Evangelist at Epic Games, Luis Cataldi, explains: "A few months ago we awarded more than $75,000 in educational grants to individuals creating outstanding learning resources for Unreal Engine 4. We couldn't be happier with the results, and so today we are issuing $100,000 to instructors, tutorial creators, book authors and formal educators whose noteworthy contributions are helping people achieve success with Unreal. Keep it coming, folks. We love and support these amazing efforts".

As for the recipients, here's who will be receiving money from the recent round of funding:

NVIDIA has posted its earnings report for Q4 2015, smashing its previous records pulling in a huge $1.4 billion - 7% higher than the previous quarter of $1.3 billion. Full-year numbers were also impressive, with a record $5.01 billion - up 7% as well, from the previous year of $4.68 billion.

The company experienced growth in all market sectors, with Gaming, Professional Visualization, Datacenter and Automotive sectors all growing well. If we look back at 2015, it was a massive year for NVIDIA. The company launched its Maxwell-powered parts in late 2014, riding that wave throughout 2015. The company commanded 76% of the discrete GPU market in early 2015, and later in the year NVIDIA secured a huge 82% of the dGPU market.

Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA said: "We had another record quarter, capping a record year. Our strategy is to create specialized accelerated computing platforms for large growth markets that demand the 10x boost in performance we offer. Each platform leverages our focused investment in building the world's most advanced GPU technology".

If you don't have a gaming PC that's ready for the Oculus Rift and were in the market for a new PC, you can now pre-order Oculus Rift PC bundles right now - with the PCs starting at $1499.

The ASUS G11CD-B11 bundle sports an Intel Core i5-6400, 8GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 for $1499. The recommended specs for the Oculus Rift are an Intel Core i5-4590 or better, 8GB of RAM minimum, and a GTX 970 or R9 290. The entry-level VR gaming PC from ASUS barely makes it, but hey - it'll be fine for $1499.

Moving from there, we have the Alienware Area 51 which costs $3149, featuring an Intel Core i7-5820K, 16GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980. Alienware's Area 51 gaming PC also includes a 128GB SSD and 2TB mechanical HDD. Remember that each of the Oculus Rift ready VR gaming PCs includes an Oculus Rift headset, sensor, remote, an Xbox One controller, and the two games included by Oculus: Lucky's Tale and EVE: Valkyrie Founder's Pack.