Latest News - Page 2512

NVIDIA has just doubled down on its latest Quadro M6000 professional video card, with the new Quadro M6000 featuring a huge 24GB of GDDR5. The previous model had 12GB of VRAM.

As for what makes the Quadro M6000 tick, it is technically similar to the GTX Titan X, with a full GM200 core and 6 Graphics Processing Clusters. Each of the Graphics Processing Clusters features four SMM (Streaming Multiprocessing Units) with 12 cores in each SMM block. There's 3072 CUDA cores, 192 TMUs, 96 ROPs and 3MB of L2 cache, with six 64-bit memory controllers - with a 384-bit memory bus, and the GPU clocked at 988MHz.

The only difference between the older Quadro M6000 and the new model is that the new model features 24GB of GDDR5, up from the 12GB on the previous M6000. The card has a 225W TDP, with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, DVI, HDMI and 3 x DisplayPort outputs.

GDC 2016 - One of the stand out VR experiences from CES 2016 was Bullet Train from Epic Games, something we tested when we stopped by and had a chat with NVIDIA in Las Vegas in January.

At the Game Developers Conference, we wanted to try Bullet Train again - just because it's such an awesome VR experience. We noticed that this version was an updated build, with some slight changes - including the ability of being able to hold certain guns like the AK-47 with two hands, thanks to the Touch controllers on the Oculus Rift.

Check out the video above, where I explain it all. If you have the chance of playing Bullet Train, do not miss that opportunity - take it. It's the closest you'll get to being Neo from The Matrix.

Some more sad news rocks the industry as the developer of Driveclub, Evolution Studios has been shut down. Their parent company, Sony, has reviewed their assets and have determined that it's in their best interest to shut the studio down.

The company had an internal review process as part of a restructuring and has determined that there is some redundancy in the staff and function at Evolution Studios. "Regular reviews take place throughout SCE Worldwide Studios, ensuring that the resources that we have in such a competitive landscape can create and produce high quality, innovative and commercially viable projects," Sony said in a statement. "As part of this process we have reviewed and assessed all current projects and plans for the short and medium term and have decided to make some changes to the European studios structure. It has been decided that Evolution Studio will close."

Some of the positions will be shifted to other internal studios, but as is the case the majority of time, it also means that there will be some redundancies and thus layoffs as a result. "It is regrettable that this decision will lead to compulsory redundancies. We accept that this decision will mean that we risk losing high calibre staff but by focusing on other Studios that already have exciting new projects in development we believe we will be in a stronger position going forward and able to offer the best possible content of the highest quality for our consumers."

One of the three founders of Intel, Andrew Grove, has died at 79. Grove served as company president in 1979 and became CEO in 1987; he served as Chairman of the Board from 1997 through 2005. He is remembered as a hugely influential figure in the world of technology, an excellent manager, and and as an author, public advocate for Parkinson's disease research, and philanthropist (he once donated $26 million to establish the Grove School of Engineering in New York, to name one venture).

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. "Andy made the impossible happen, time and again, and inspired generations of technologists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders."

Grove is credited with shifting Intel's focus from memory chips to microprocessors, and making Intel into the widely known brand it is today. With his leadership, Intel created the 386 and Pentium processors, which are partly responsible for the ubiquity of the PC today.

The renowned Cryengine gets an upgrade with a new, fifth version, as shown off in the new video below. Some of it is developer-centric and won't interest you, but quite a bit will be exciting to gamers of all kinds.

Graphically, Cryengine V offers support for DirectX 12 and VR and advanced particles and clouds with much less of a CPU hit, among other things. The latter you can see an example of in the video; the clouds are pretty realistic and impressive, particularly those seen in the distance.

In an intriguing twist, Crytek has adopted the pay what you want model with this version, with the option to contribute as much as 70% of your payment to its Indie Development Fund, much like the Humble Bundle setup. For more information, head to the website.

Rise of the Tomb Raider has a very good base-game story, with a lot to explore and do in former Soviet Russia. But the final piece of DLC is going to add something that was clearly missing; zombies. Or zombie-like creatures that seem to be very blood-thirsty, for both your death and likely your brains as well. Even though that isn't explicitly mentioned. Zombies, in some form or another, seem to be a tradition with DLC.

The Cold Darkness will be the absolute last content pack coming along and can be purchased separately from all the other DLC. In this, though, there are nightmarish predators that are actually soldiers from an abandoned Cold War base in Russia. The Trinity soldiers have been transformed and are extremely dangerous. This'll present new dangers and challenges to Lara as she has to shut down the decommissioned base.

It's $9.99 by itself for the new DLC, or you can opt to get the Season Pass for $29.99, which includes the entire set of DLC that's been released thus far. The newest, and last, will be available on March 29th 2016 via Steam, the Windows Store or through your Xbox One's store as well. Good luck with those zombies.

Sometimes it stings a little when you see a game that was supposed to be, but never quite made it out of development. Especially one like the cancelled Superman game from Factor 5, best known for their very well done Star Wars games. It could have been a great game, should have been. But it's no more. You can watch some footage from the unreleased game, however.

The game was being developed for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and even the Wii, though it really never exited the concept stage, of the most part. A good portion of Metropolis has been created and a number of models to showoff the ideas they were working on, as a tie-in to the also cancelled sequel to Superman Returns.

At the stage that it was finally left, a story hadn't been created yet, though it would be fairly simple to translate any number of different story arcs from the comics into a viable backdrop. Factor 5 was working on finding and developing interesting gameplay elements to add to the game, and had some very interesting Superman specific ideas. Of course there would be a slew of his enemies that you would eventually face-off against, and you'd be able to grapple with them while flying furiously through buildings, with destruction being dynamically rendered in real-time in your wake.

According to Xbox marketing exec Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft has absolutely no plans to allow Xbox gamers to trade in unwanted digital games back to the company's digital storefront for credit.

"Yeah we are not actively planning such a thing, surprised it was even asked in a survey," Greenberg wrote in a Tweet response to industry analyst Michael Pachter, who criticized the trade-in policy as "playing with fire". As Greenberg is Microsoft's chief marketing exec, he'd be on the up and up when it comes to new storefront features.

The whole idea was kicked off by an official Microsoft user survey that asked gamers if they'd like to be able to trade in digital Xbox games for 10% of their purchased value. The news spread like wildfire, engulfing the entire Xbox community within days. Suddenly every Xbox One owner saw dollar signs when eyeing all those old digital games they never play.

Square Enix today revealed that its upcoming JRPG Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness now has an official summer 2016 release window for North America and Europe.

As part of its new Star Log live stream, the publisher further revealed key details about Star Ocean 5 including story tidbits, character info, and tons of gameplay footage. Star Ocean 5 mirrors the unique JRPG battle mechanics found in the previous games, and players will unleash streams of devastating combo attacks in the game's dynamic real-time battle system.

Based on the heaps of screenshots and footage released thus far, Star Ocean 5 is ever the fantasy mashup, featuring a brilliantly-hued spectrum of colors and an enchanted world rife with magic and mayhem. Japan will get the game on March 31 so we should see a ton of gameplay footage all over the place, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled if you're looking forward to Square Enix's latest RPG masterpiece. Also, remember that Europe and North America only get the PS4 version when summer rolls around--the PS3 port is exclusive to Japan.

Recently there's been much controversy regarding the reduction in native resolution in Quantum Break from the promised 1080P at 30FPS to 720P and performance that still wasn't quite what we expected, or rightly wanted from a Microsoft platform exclusive game that's making use of DirectX 12. Remedy has spoken up about the resolution dispute, explaining, for better or for worse, their decision and also the actual techniques used to render at their target resolution, which is technically 1080P, though doesn't quite start that way. It's... complicated it seems.

Quantum Break is a very good looking game, there's really no denying that fact outright. There are aspects that are quite stunning given the base hardware configuration that Remedy is working with. The scenes we've seen in the various trailers, demos and screenshots are, thankfully, accurate to the actual game. That is, there's no "downgrade" that's happened in the slightest, it's just that the final perceived resolution differs from the initial resolution, and can vary wildly in-between.

It's 1080P, sort of. But initially, any given scene seems to begin life as a 720p frame with 4X MSAA added to it (which actually looks great by the way). But it's upscaled and reconstructed from four frames to make the final output that we see. This is a way to save on power by making it the resolution we want with a decent amount of visual quality thrown in.

Sony has revealed the different times that you'll be able to pre-order a PlayStation VR headset, giving consumers ample time to secure their own HMD.

Rather than opening up pre-orders all at once like its competitors and shipping hardware on a first-come first-served basis, Sony has opted to accept pre-orders in phases and waves. The first wave is already over, following the PlayStation VR's price reveal, and Sony has announced two more pre-order phases before the headset's launch in October.

The next pre-order window for the PlayStation VR is today at 7 am PST, but it's only for the $499 PSVR Launch Edition which includes the PS Camera and other hardware, not the $399 Core Edition. The next time you'll be able to pre-order the $399 PSVR Core Edition is on March 29 starting at 7 am PST. If you happen to miss both of these pre-order windows, Sony has plans for another phase in the summer, and we're not sure if this will be the last pre-order wave before the headset launches in October.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown has been rumored to be making a debut on the PlayStation Vita sometime this year, but it's been somewhat mired in mystery, at least the release date has been. It's on nearly every platform, including mobile devices with potentially less powerful hardware than the PS Vita, but not on Sony's premier portable gaming console. But now it's been spotted on the UK PlayStation Store for £15.99.

The original release date was going to be in December of 2015, though that was pushed back until around January 26th 2016, but was pushed even further back with a hitherto unknown date of "later this year". It's a perfectly sensible option to delay a port if the studio needs to focus on releasing XCOM 2, which released in February. But apparently the game has now shown up on the UK PlayStation Store. Though it's curiously absent from the North American PlayStation Store.

Though it was released just today and we might end up seeing it in the NA store sometime later than might be considered usual. The game itself should run fairly well given the (still) surprisingly stout PowerVR SGX543MP4+ that's inside. The interface of the game was well suited for both controllers and a keyboard w/ mouse, so that should not be an issue. It'll be interesting to see if this version retains the touchscreen enhancements found in the Google Play Store version. Hopefully we do actually find it out throughout the world sometime later today, or at the very least within the week.

With Dark Souls 3 just around the corner, we thought you could use a refresher on Hidetaki Mizayaki's final punishing RPG.

Namco was in attendance at this year's SXSW festival to show off Dark Souls 3, which culminated in a surprisingly informative live stream. The stream has a particularly energetic Namco commentator that highlights tons of features that From Software's latest cult offering has to offer, so you'll likely learn a thing or two. Plus you get to revel in the visual style; that overpowering sense of awe-inspiring woe is still ever-present, mingling with the haunted, eldritch darkness that permeates from the entire franchise.

In other news Namco Bandai has officially confirmed that Dark Souls 3 will hit 1080p 60FPS on PC, which is pretty important in games like these where every split second matters. Dark Souls 3 is slated to release on April 12, 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Right now (as of this writing) the servers for The Division are back up from undergoing necessary maintenance while patch 1.02 was applied worldwide. The patch focuses on addressing the a lot of the small complaints that people have brought up regarding quality of life items. UI elements are slightly improved and nearly 14, appreciated, gameplay-affecting issues have been found.

One of the bigger changes is that named enemies, who were roaming New York and were considerably tougher than they appeared (cuddly), will now drop actual good loot instead of something more normal. They'll also disappear and won't return after you kill them. There's incentive to taking a bit of time to take them out, as opposed to avoiding them.

The Dark Zone has also gotten a bit of an overhaul. Instead of being at the mercy of your teammates when down, any other neutral player can heal you, and vice versa. You'll also lose far less credits and experience if you die, even if you decide to go rogue.

GDC 2016 - This year's Game Developers Conference was so popular it broke records, with UBM Game Network reporting that it was a record-breaking GDC with 27,000 attendees.

GDC GM Meggan Scavio explains: "This year's GDC, paired with the inaugural VRDC, allows us to look both backwards at the legacy and lessons of previous years, and forward to the future of games and VR experiences. Even in its 30th edition, GDC continues to evolve and grow to encompass all of the key lessons, advancements and artistic strides that the industry makes. Once again, the staff, volunteers, speakers, students and attendees have made GDC 2016 an amazing, fun and safe show all around".

She continued: "As technologies mature and tastes in games change, we're happy have a place for all of our friends, colleagues and soon-to-be-friends to meet about, learn about and discuss the games and VR experiences that we love. Games are becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the modern world, so it's only appropriate that GDC carry with it the same spirit of fun, adventure and discovery as the games themselves, just as it has since its beginning".

Remember when we told you that Sony's $399 PlayStation VR wasn't the full package? The Japanese console-maker was listening, and has decided to roll out a new $499 PSVR bundle that comes with everything you need. Starting today you'll be able to pre-order the complete package.

Sony announced that the PlayStation VR Launch Edition will be up for pre-order starting today, March 22 at 7:00am PST for $499 across multiple retailers. Sony didn't provide a definitive list of retailers, but we're betting the usual suspects like Best Buy, Gamestop, and Amazon will have pre-orders up.

Up until now, no one knew when Sony would sell its completePlayStation VR bundle, and the timing is undoubtedly frustrating to those who've already ordered the default headset. The company also says that another wave of $399 PlayStation VR core headsets will be available starting March 29 at 7:00am PST, but be aware that these don't come with the required PS Camera or Move controllers.

Tencent is really pulling down some coin, with the Chinese giant making nearly $16 billion last year - with over $3 billion of that coming in from smartphone game revenue.

The $3 billion from smartphone game revenue is something to note, as it's an increase of over 50% from 2014. Throughout calendar 2015, Tencent posted $3.3 billion in revenue, an increase of 53% over the same period of 2014. PC client game revenue saw "low double-digit" revenue growth year-on-year, but the company didn't elaborate on those numbers.

Over the course of 2015, Tencent earned $15.8 billion, an increase of 30% over the previous year. Net profit reached $4.5 billion, up 22%, too. For 2016, the company will develop "new and emerging smartphone game genres, via leveraging our PC game experiences, smartphone game player communities, and relationships with leading game developers".

Late last year we reported on the developing reboot of the cult classic 'MacGyver' series for the CBS network, and now the company has revealed who will step into the role of secret agent Angus MacGyver, made famous by Richard Dean Anderson.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, 25 year old 'X-Men' star Lucas Till will play MacGyver in the upcoming relaunch, which follows "a 20-something MacGyver as he gets recruited into a clandestine organization where he uses his knack for solving problems in unconventional ways to help prevent disasters from happening."

Veteran TV director David Von Ancken will direct the pilot and executive produce, with input from original 'MacGyver' creator Lee Zlotoff.

I'm thoroughly disappointed and actually quite infuriated with both Remedy and Microsoft over Quantum Break and their deception over the render resolution and performance-related gameplay problems, something that shouldn't happen in 2016, or - ever.

The developer has now released the soundtrack to the game, with 28:53 of audio to listen to across 9 tracks. The 9 tracks on the Quantum Break soundtrack include:

Bethesda's Pete Hines reveals that Fallout 4's first DLC pack, Automatron, will get a midnight release across Xbox One and Steam. PS4 gamers will have to wait until 1PM tomorrow.

If you're not familiar with Automatron, it centers around the nefarious Mechanist who has "unleashed a horde of evil robots into the Commonwealth, including the devious Robobrain". The DLC is straight out of a nostalgia 1960's sci-fi flick, and features that same definitive Fallout style all the way through. Apart from the level 15+ story quests--which will probably be brief--, players will be able to build their own custom robot companions using "hundreds of different mods".

Automatron is priced at $9.99 but will be free for season pass holders. It's the first of three announced DLC packs, with the other two being the smaller Wasteland Workshop and the significant story-driven Far Harbor.