Latest News - Page 2512

GameStop's CEO, Paul Raines, told Fox News yesterday that Sony's PlayStation VR HMD is going to be available starting this fall, and that they'll be carrying it in stores of course.

During an interview regarding how tax refunds help to drive the economy and how taxes could be more fun if they were like video games, Raines mentioned the upcoming release of VR hardware in general being one of the major industries that'll likely be targeted by customers. He also mentioned quite pointedly that PS VR will be in stores this fall, that they'll "launch the Sony product this fall."

Raines is excited about the potential in the VR market, especially with his chain of stores providing one of the only ways to try VR for yourself once the PlayStation VR is available in store. It could very well be the revival of his brick and mortar operations, adding a particular value that can't be had anywhere else. Certainly, with the PS VR specifically, Raines things it's better than the other solutions with better content at launch, he says.

The Khronos Group has announced that Vulkan is finally released and ready to be used on any platform you desire. The full specification of Vulkan, 1.0, is available for everyone and is as robust and mature as DirectX 12, even.

Vulkan, of course, is the open-source answer to DirectX 12, a low-level API that's also been borne from the ashes of Mantle and shaped into something that can be used by anyone and is completely platform agnostic. At its core, Vulkan provides the same low-level access to the driver with far less overhead than graphics API's of the past.

"The release of the Vulkan™ 1.0 specification is a huge step forward for developers. The Vulkan API, which was derived from Mantle, will bring the benefits of low-overhead high-performance Graphics API to the benefit of cross-platform and cross-vendor targeted applications," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "The promotion of open and scalable technologies continues to be the focus at AMD, as a pioneer in the low-overhead API space. As a member of the Khronos Group, AMD is proud to collaborate with hardware and software industry leaders to develop the Vulkan API to ignite the next evolution in PC game development."

NVIDIA has released its 361.91 WHQL-certified drivers, complete with optimizations for a handful of new and upcoming titles, bug fixes, and added or updated SLI profiles.

Street Fighter V is the big game to benefit from the optimizations, but the upcoming Arma 3 update, next weekend's Hitman beta, and the Chinese Monster Hunter Online beta receive love, too. As for SLI profiles, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Bless, Need for Speed, Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2, and XCOM 2 comprise the list of titles supported.

Download the drivers now through GeForce Experience. If you still haven't downloaded Experience, grab it here.

Rebellion just posted a new trailer for their remake of the 1998 version of Battlezone, the tactical, sci-fi tank strategy game based loosely on the original. And it's an exciting look into the care they're taking in remastering this classic, iconic game.

If you ever played the original then you're probably very excited about the return of this legendary game. They're taking that original and remastering it with new graphics, effects and a better UI on top of it all. They're also building in multiplayer again so that you can have massive futuristic tank battles with your friends.

The whole base-building mechanic is all there and it looks to be just as fun to play with as it was so many years ago. Despite the graphics being remastered and not built from the ground up it still looks great. Is there a chance that Vulkan or DX12 will underlay the foundation? Now that would be fantastic! Battlezone 98 Redux is coming this Spring.

Big changes are coming to Shallow Space, a space RTS with big potential. Originally it was suppose to be a full-on, completely customizable RTS allowing for massive battles in a rich galaxy. But they're expanding the original vision and adding a much more engaging way to play. Making it an open-world adventure with even more direct control of your ships.

While playing their alpha version, it was noticed that the customization was a fantastic idea, but with the combat mechanics, it was almost impossible to actually fully utilize those upgraded parts of your ships. There was something missing. The solution to the problem is letting you take direct control of your ships in the fleet and fly them around yourself, engaging the enemy in some very fun scenarios. To that end they're adding in support for controllers to play with your ships.

That's not all, though. The maps were far too linear, following a strict story-line that just isn't up the standards that we seem to have set for modern games. The developers are working towards making it more open-world, letting you fly around the Shallow Space (the are of the galaxy you'll be in in the game of the same name) to build up resources, level-up your ships and showing off your fighting prowess. The different map areas will be instance based, meaning enemies, allies and resources will spawn around you.

Sniper Elite 4 just might be in development, or so someone's resume on LinkedIn just so happened to leak. When Rebellion was approached concerning the listing, they were more than happy to provide a statement that, more or less, confirmed that it's likely.

The profile is of an individual who works at a digital arts company called ADIA Entertainment, and has supposedly worked on Sniper Elite 4 as well as a great deal of other games and even as an architect for the Unreal Engine. Rebellion's Jason Kingsley, the co-founder, talked to Videogamer to dismiss the claims, despite being flattered by being searched for an mentioned alongside such high-profile games. The employee actually doesn't work for Rebellion, though they didn't outright dismiss that they worked on Sniper Elite 4.

In fact, he went on to say that "Last year we celebrated the Sniper Elite series' 10th birthday and 10 millionth sale, so our IP is still hugely important to both Rebellion and independent UK games development. We're actually gearing up to announce a new Rebellion game soon, so expect to hear more from us before GDC!" This ambiguous statement is almost a sure way of saying that it's coming, and likely well into development.

AMD today announced that they'll be bundling in the new Hitman from Square Enix and IO Interactive with an R9 390 series GPU or an FX processor.

The free game code is only offered if you happen to get an R9 390, 390X or a 6-8-core FX CPU of any variety and will run from February 16th to April 20th 2016. So if you're in the market for a new GPU and are looking at buying Hitman, this bundle might be worth a look.

AMD is putting together this bundle because of their relationship with Square Enix with the development of Hitman. DX12 features should be available shortly after release and will take good advantage of the async shaders in AMD's GCN architecture. Despite the 390 and 390X being Hawaii based parts, Hitman with DX12 should still be a smooth experience.

A new trailer has been released for the upcoming The Walking Dead: Michonne mini-series that lets you take control of one of the deeper and more troubled characters from the series, Michonne. This new series is a deep-dive into her psyche, giving additional background information to compliment the TV series.

The first episode, titled In Too Deep, Michonne joins Pete and his crew on the sailing ship The Companion as they cruise the coast looking for survivors and additional supplies. They come upon a desperate signal for help that draws them to a scene of a horrific massacre where Michonne and the crew are lead further to the floating survivors' colony of Monroe. And of course you have to go investigate, because where there's danger, theirs also lurking opportunity.

Like all Telltale games, it's an interactive story that allows you to complete actions as quick-time events. Though it's not nearly as frustrating and incredibly engaging. The first episode is coming on February 23rd for the PC and on Mac. You'll also find it on the PSN for the PS4 and the PS3, the Xbox Store for the Xbox One and the Xbox 360.

Elite: Dangerous has a surprisingly fun "mini-game" with it's competitive CQC game mode. Compete in a fast-paced fight to the death against other skilled fighter pilots in some startlingly tight spaces. Frontier Developments is now offering just that module as a separate standalone purchase for those wanting a different kind of competitive experience.

For $7.49, you can take to the arena in Elite: Dangerous and compete against your peers in what they're calling the ultimate futuristic gladiatorial contest. Purchasing from the Frontier Store will get you a discount on the upgrade to the actual full game, minus the full purchase price of ED: Arena. It doesn't look like Steam offers such a deal at the moment.

CQC mode in Elite: Dangerous has the potential to be a new type of eSport, leveraging a different skill set than the usual FPS games require by having you also think about how to maneuver a ship with true, realistic Newtonian physics. You can either have automatic compensation of inertia to drive you in the direction your nose is pointed, or turn off all the assist and pull off maneuvers that aren't possible in gravity.

Already released to those in the US and UK, rumors have mounted that Apple plans to release its payment platform to China extremely soon, with France and Canada to follow before the end of 2016.

While not confirmed by the tech giant directly, China bank announced the release on its official WeChat recently, stating the formal local launch of this service to be February 18th at 5:00.

Some Apple fanatics are looking for and discussing a possible Apple Pay French announcement during WWDC 2016, however unlikely. As for further releases, iPhone In Canada has recently found some Canadian banking related code, helping its mission to string together various Apple Pay related clues regarding a local release in its nation.

Chris Schlerf, one of the writers at BioWare that was working on bringing Mass Effect Andromeda to life has decided to move on to Bungie to help impart a deep narrative in, presumably, the sequel to Destiny.

But this isn't necssarily surprising give that the story to ME: Andromeda is likely very much finished giving this prolific writer the opportunity to work on something else. And he's gone on to be the lead writer at Bungie, currently working on Destiny, or so his profile says. This could mean an actual story is on the way in the form of DLC or that Destiny 2 could contain a much more expansive fiction and backstory.

Thankfully on his way out Schlerf mentioned how proud he is of the story and how great he thinks Andromeada will be. In a Tweet late last night he mentioned how it's "really gonna blow people away," further explaining how proud he is of his involvement.

Yesterday we wrote about the fact that setting your precious iPhone's date to January 1, 1970 will destroy its usability - something that's currently unfixable, even by Apple.

Tech guru and YouTuber Tom Scott has posted a handy and easy to understand explanation as to why this event occurs. The quick and complicated explanation is that it is an "integer underflow caused by the Unix epoch," with Scott later on expanding this information for people like me who have no idea what 90% of those words mean.

Scott explained that setting your iPhone date to January 1, 1970 means that the value integer for this becomes 0. While this integer itself being 0 doesn't matter, when your phone tries to receive a text message and display it as being sent in the past, your phone will try and set this calendar integer into the negatives in order to explain the past-tense text message, crashing your phone.

Known for its wide range of mobile accessories and reliable power banks, Arctic has recently announced a new company direction - gaming headsets.

Announcing the P533 Series in a recent press release, this technology and lifestyle brand has signified a slightly altered company direction. The two headsets on offer are identical in specifications but offer different color schemes, being released in both Racing and Military color schemes.

Sporting cloth earcups, a 2m extension cable, a 3.5mm AUX connection, neodymium drivers and compatibility with Xbox, PlayStation, tablets, smartphones and PCs, this new range is available for $79.99 from the company directly.

We're receiving more details about Doom, with the alpha leaking online. Internally, Doom is known as Zion to id Software and features a 'similar architecture' to Doom 3.

Modding tools were found in the Doom alpha, with the tools known as idStudio, but we don't know if these will be made available to gamers. Thanks to Doomworld's member 'Marrub', we have the following details on Doom to share:

DOOM Engine:

Quantum Break being released on the PC thanks to Windows 10 has opened the flood gates for more Windows 10 exclusives, with rumors of Forza Motorsport 6, Forza Horizon 3 and even Gears of War 4 poised to be released onto the DX12-powered OS.

Microsoft has already shown Forza Motorsport 5 running on the PC with DX12, and if we rewind time to August 2015, Microsoft said Quantum Break wouldn't be coming to the PC for the foreseeable future. But now, well, yeah - you know the situation with Quantum Break. Now we're seeing Quantum Break released on the Xbox One and PC, simultaneously.

Forza Horizon 3 will be reaching the PC through the Windows Store, according to WPDang's sources - while Forza Motorsport 6 will receive its own special edition on the PC. Gears of War 4 on the other hand, is in development for the PC right now.

The devastating 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Taiwan on February 6 is still having on-going affects to both the citizens of the country, and businesses - like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

TSMC said earlier this month that the earthquake would have an effect of less than 1% on their wafer shipments for Q1 2016, adding that 95% of its foundry machines would be restored to normal conditions within 2-3 days. Machines at Fab 6 and Fab 14B have been 100% restored, according to the company.

TSMC added that even though the earthquake has affected them, they are confident of reaching target consolidated revenues of $5.9 to $6 billion for Q1 2016. Let's hope that TSMC gets back to 100% operational capacity in the very near future.

Roberts Space Industries has updated the world on Star Citizen's purchase options, telling gamers that they can opt into the single-player content exclusively. This means you can pay $45 for the Squadron 42 campaign, or the core Star Citizen experience.

The core Star Citizen experience is a unique beast, as it's an MMO-like component - completely separate to Squadron 42, the single-player portion. But what if you've spent $45 on the MMO-based side of the game, and want to get in on the single-player campaign in the form of Squadron 42? That's fine, you can spend another $15 and receive the other side of Star Citizen.

For a total of $60, you're getting a damn lot of game, but RSI reiterates that these are two separate packages, that can be enjoyed on their own, or together for $60. RSI said: "The package split does not change the fact that Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are part of the same game universe, or the fact that the games are functionally connected. You will access Squadron 42 through the same game client. And your performance in Squadron 42 will still have an impact on your career in the persistent universe, whether you buy both segments together or if you choose to add one further down the line".

It seems that the Oculus website doesn't quite agree with AMD's current lineup of CPU's, and won't certify you as having a VR ready PC if you happen to have one, either. Now, it's well known, and not refuted by any means, that the performance is certainly not on par with Intel's current generation (and last generation) of CPU's, but that doesn't mean that they won't be able to provide a good VR experience, either. So AMD has released their own list of VR ready processors so that AMD owners, and fans, aren't left out.

The list contains CPU's that have been tested to a certain standard of performance, internally, when using VR. Essentially, Vishera is more than capable of handling the complex tasks in VR with higher clock speeds. The FX 8350 all the way to the FX 9590 make the list, as well as the higher clocked six core variants. A note, however, is that AMD has amended their list and take off the APU's and Athlon X4 880 an 870K, though not because they can't do VR, but because they haven't been qualified internally yet.

Going to the Oculus site definitely shows a lack of enthusiasm, perhaps rightfully so, for 32nm technology first introduced in 2012. The platform may be somewhat old, but it isn't lacking in it's ability to provide a good experience. They'll happily push Intel's products, of course, as well as NVIDIA's too. It's somewhat disconcerting for those that have already invested in AMD's parts to not see their processors mentioned anywhere regarding VR. So just remember that just because it isn't on the list, it doesn't mean it can't play VR with decent visuals, just that it probably hasn't been tested quite yet.

A new bit of footage for Quantum Break has dropped, showing seven minutes of carved up in-game action. The video footage isn't consecutive, so you won't get the first seven minutes of the game or anything like that. It's more of a highlight reel than anything, showing off specific points like impressive motion capture, cinematic fidelity, and time powers.

The footage reveals that Remedy's hotly anticipated shooter will have destructible environments, making firefights much more challenging. Luckily, players are able to manipulate the flow of time, so things tend to balance out. The game's protagonist--Jack Joyce--has a number of different unique abilities up his sleeves, including a freeze frame mode that stops time like the Twilight Zone's magic stopwatch, and Time Dodge, which zaps you out of harms way with a quick teleport.

There's also Time Vision, which highlights baddies like eagle mode in Assassin's Creed. This can be super useful when enemies are hiding behind cover, or when firefights get too hectic in frozen time--yes, you can have shootouts between time itself.Farther along in the game, however, Monarch baddies will use time powers with the aid of special suits to even things out.

Windows 10 has had a great Netflix app for quite some time, and now Hulu has followed suit with an app of their own. Available starting today in the US across PC, tablet, and mobile devices, the release coincides with the Hulu Original "11.22.63" launch, created by Stephen King and J.J. Abrams and starring James Franco.

The app features universal voice search and controls through Cortana (say Hey Cortana, Hulu play 'Empire' and it will immediately begin playing the show from where you left off), as well as Live Tiles support (pin the app to your start menu and see featured shows at a glance).

Head here to download the app.