Latest News - Page 2517

AMD was once a very prolific force in the mobile, handheld GPU world. And it seems that Raja Koduri, the head honcho in charge of the new Radeon Technologies Group, isn't necessarily ruling out the idea of returning to that field either.

AMD is already well positioned to create custom chips with their deal that they've brokered with Sony and Microsoft, not to mention Nintendo. And Raja himself is open to the idea of licesning their IP to be used in mobile products. They don't, however, want to actively build their own mobile devices based on their technology, but if someone else approached them with the idea to integrate either an APU outright or Polaris into their own design, it wouldn't at all be out of the question.

The idea is a natural one, given the potential power savings that the new Polaris architecture could introduce on all fronts. Already Polaris 11 (the smallest chip thus far) can play Star Wars Battlefront at 1080P with a steady 60FPS while only consuming around 35 watts for the GPU itself. So, then, it isn't a stretch to have their new architecture appear in lower-power APU's for, say, tablets, micro-consoles or even phones.

Blizzard isn't done with StarCraft 2 just yet, and their next expansion, called Nova Covert Ops, will have three episodes of content with the first one coming on or before June 19th 2016.

There'll be nine new missions across those three episodes, where you'll get to play as November "Nova" Terra, who's a psionic ghost. You'll get to use your abilities to infiltrate bases and try to find out what happened to the other ghosts that seem to have disappeared. There's a large consipiracy for you to unravel here.

Being almost entirely story and character based, it's supposed to bring some interesting new elements into the fold, things that aren't traditional "StarCraft" at all. You'll also get a chance to use some experimental technology to properly complete those missions, and maybe even save the entire Dominion itself.

There was one particular race that we were very interested to see just how they'd be integrated into Total War: Warhammer, the Vampires. Who, by the way, they've been able to keep very quiet about up until now. And it's been worth the wait.

They are undeniably evil and even take pleasure in that fact. The Vampire Counts, here led by Mannfred von Varstein, you can watch as he raises your once dead army to use them to wreck havoc over anyone in their path. As would be expected you'll get to call upon death magic, necromancy and take a zombie dragon into battle. One can imagine that anything else dead can also become their pets, and possibly a lot more. They're the opponents that you won't want to face, but inevitably will have to. The Vampire Counts won't be playable right away, and will only make a playable appearance on May 24th due to a small delay.

GDC 2016 - Yesterday Sony officially revealed the PlayStation VR's $399 price tag, matching the PS4's original MSRP. At first glance the price seems more than fair, but the Japanese console-maker has a hook in that bait that could raise the final price of the PSVR experience to $500 and above.

Sony has made the decision not to bundle key hardware like the PS Camera and PS Move controllers with its PlayStation VR headset. This is surprising given the PlayStation VR cannot function without a PS Camera, transforming a once-optional peripheral into a must-have commodity. The PS Camera is currently priced at $60, but we've seen them rise as high as $100 back when stock was limited--and I'm betting Sony is counting on a giant influx of demand for the camera once the PSVR launches in October.

What's more is that certain PlayStation VR games require the use of $50 PS Move controllers. Some games actually require two PS Move controllers to play. So $399 suddenly turns into anywhere from $500 to $550, not including tax. On top of the hardware costs, PSVR games are expected to be anywhere from $10 to $60, so don't expect console-based VR to be cheap--just cheap-er.

The PlayStation VR finally has an announced price, and at $399, it could be the competitor that the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift didn't quite see coming, though the full price of entry is just about the same anyway. But Sony is intent on having unique and exclusive experiences just the same. A small nugget of information slipped out about making an exclusive Star Wars Battlefront VR experience.

At the end of the GDC Keynote, Andy House said that EA and Lucasfilm would be using the PlayStation VR for a completely new, VR-based Battlefront game. This isn't the same as the Star Wars Cinematic Experience that's going to be available on the HTC Vive, but something completely separate, even though details happen to be a bit sparse at the moment.

House said that: "We at PlayStation are thrilled to be partnering with our friends EA and LucasFilm to create something all new for PlayStation VR. This will be a Star Wars Battlefront gaming experience like nothing else; coming only to PlayStation VR from the talented team at DICE, where players can transport themselves to a galaxy far far way." Not much to go off of at all, but just one more reason to consider the PS4. The natural question is whether this will be a timed-exclusive or a complete platform-exclusive game.

GDC 2016 - AMD came out swinging at its Capsaicin event, rolling out the red carpet and its impressive Radeon Pro Duo, but RTG boss Raja Koduri was on fire that night, teasing an unannounced VR headset, too.

Ars Technica reports that Koduri said: "We are already working with a headset manufacturer, unannounced, with a 4K per eye headset. It exists. It's quite, quite beautiful, and we believe that the roadmap to go into higher resolutions will happen more quickly than is probably expected. Once you've seen a high resolution VR experience, you can see that it's really quite beautiful".

It'll be interesting to see this happen, and what type of GPU we're going to need to power 4K per eye on a VR headset. Polaris can't come quick enough!

GDC 2016 - AMD unveiled its dual-GPU yesterday at its Capsaicin event, but now the company has revealed benchmark numbers on 3DMark Fire Strike from the Radeon Pro Duo.

The Radeon Pro Duo destroys the Radeon R9 295X2, AMD's previous dual-GPU champion based on the Hawaii architecture, as well as NVIDIA's only current GeForce GTX Titan Z - based on its older Kepler architecture. Keep in mind that NVIDIA never released a dual-GPU based on its Maxwell architecture, but we could see a dual-GPU based on its next-gen Pascal architecture in early April at GTC.

Back to the benchmarks, the Radeon Pro Duo beats the Titan Z and R9 295X2 in all resolutions - 1080p, 1440p and 4K. On the Standard preset, the Radeon Pro Duo beats the Titan Z by 134%. On the Extreme preset it's 148% faster, and on the Ultra preset it beats the Titan Z by 152%.

GDC 2016 - Battlezone fans are quite excited for Rebellion's reboot of the game, as it'll be including support for not just the PlayStation VR - which has just had its $399 pricing and October launch window revealed - but Oculus Rift support, and DX12.

AMD's Chief Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy revealed during GDC that Battlezone will have DX12 support, and during an interview with VRFocus, Rebellion CEO and Creative Director Jason Kingsley said: "We are doing a lot of work on DirectX 12, and it really depends on how well Oculus works on DirectX 12".

Just how successful has The Division been? Quite successful, thanks to Ubisoft announcing official revenue numbers for The Division.

In its first five days of release, Ubisoft pulled in over $330 million - beating out Destiny's $325 million five-day haul from September 2014. AlsoDestiny launched on the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, while The Division launched onto the PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot said: "The Division taking the top spot in the industry for first week sales of a new franchise is a tremendous achievement. We are very proud of our teams, and humbled by and thankful for the millions of players who are giving us their feedback and support".

Apple has partnered with digital distributor Dubset Media Holdings to bring many thousands of previously unlicensed DJ remixes and mixes -- or in old people terms: that DJ music the kids are listening to -- to its Apple Music service. For now, these aren't available anywhere else, but Dubstep claims every distributor will be supported in time.

The deal is made possible by Dubset's agreements with over 14,000 record labels and publishers, as well as its MixBank technology (used in combination with other proprietary and related software), which can analyze songs to determine original artists and make sure their labels and publishers as well as DJs are paid accordingly, all at flat rates. It's an impressive feat given one of these mixes can have more than 600 different rights holders, and one that's already making both DJs and labels happy.

"Remixes are a huge part of our culture - they allow DJs and fans to put our own creative spin on music," says DJ Steve Aoki. "Apple working with Dubset now is a really simple solution to something traditionally complex, and allows everyone to make money on this content for the first time."

Earlier this year, Disney CEO Bob Iger promised that we'd see the return of the adventure icon 'Indiana Jones', and today the company which picked up the rights to the franchise in 2011 has finally made it official - and Harrison Ford is back.

In making the announcement that the Indiana Jones franchise will hit screens worldwide on July 19 2019, Disney Chairman Alan Horn said "Indiana Jones is one of the greatest heroes in cinematic history, and we can't wait to bring him back to the screen in 2019." Confirming that Director Steven Spielberg would be back on board, Horn continues "It's rare to have such a perfect combination of director, producers, actor and role, and we couldn't be more excited to embark on this adventure with Harrison and Steven."

Noticeably absent from the release was any mention of co-creator George Lucas, who served as co-producer for the previous four films. Instead, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will fill the role.

The AlphaGo AI created by Google's DeepMind division yesterday lost its first Go match to world champion Lee Sedol in a five-game series. Commentator Song Taegon remarked that Sedol had developed a better understanding of his opponent, making for a highly anticipated game 5. Sedol was beaten again, although it seems to have been a much tighter game, with commentators going back and forth right until the end about who was on top.

"It was difficult to say at what point AlphaGo was ahead or behind," said Michael Redmond, 9-dan, American commentator. "A close game throughout. AlphaGo made what looked like a mistake with move 48, similar to the mistake in Game Four in the middle of the board. After that AlphaGo played very well in the middle of the board, and the game developed into a long, very difficult end game."

GDC 2016 - Crytek announced its new CRYENGINE V at the Game Developer's Conference, with many exciting things to share from the latest iteration of its graphics engine. For the keen-eyed, CRYENGINE V skips CRYENGINE IV... as we still having games released with CRYENGINE 3.

CRYENGINE V has support for DirectX 12, full support for VR, a reworked low overhead renderer which "Significantly increases the performance of today's hardware in graphically intensive applications". Better yet, the latest version of CRYENGINE uses a "pay what you want" basis for developers, where "you contribute what you can" according to the Creative Director of Crytek, Frank Vitz.

Vitz continued: "Game engines that allow for lifelike rendering in real-time will be at the forefront of this revolution. Our first VR lab opened in Istanbul in January. We have seven more going in North America".

A handy new extension is now available for Chrome users known to browse Steam from time to time. It's called Fair Steam and it saves you the trouble of looking up gameplay videos from YouTubers by integrating their videos directly into the Steam website. The videos available on a given game page are determined by an algorithm that prizes gameplay-heavy, personality-light videos, so you just get the meat. As of now, there are 13491 videos in the database, with more added daily.

A few notes: more features are planned for Fair Steam, though they are not known yet. For now, the focus is on gameplay videos; if you're in the minority and don't use Chrome, Firefox and Opera versions are coming soon; for those that use Enhanced Steam extension, Fair Steam is compatible with it.

To download it, head this way.

GDC 2016 - Sony has announced the pricing of the PlayStation VR after all this time, with PlayStation VR launching in October for $399.

Comparatively, the Oculus Rift costs $599 while the HTC Vive costs $799. Now, with the PS4 priced at only $349 - this means playing VR with Sony hardware will only cost $750. Not too bad at all, Sony. Now, what about the hardware inside of the PlayStation VR?

We're looking at a 5.7-inch OLED display with 960x1080 per eye at 90-120Hz. It has around 100-degree field of view, less than 18ms of latency, and works with the DualShock 4 and PS Move controllers. PlayStation VR has 360-degree head tracking thanks to its nine LEDs, too.

Razer just unveiled their newest iteration of their Hacker Development Kit as part of the Open Source Virtual Reality program. And there are quite a few subtle but great improvements to help kick one of the most complained about problems in VR.

For HDK 1.4 they've put a diffusion film over the existing optics that's supposed to help reduce the screen-door effect considerably. That's the one aspect that a majority of people have complained about. It hurts immersion and just generally looks bad altogether.

Razer has also cooked in native support for CryEngine by partnering with Crytek. That means that the SDK is a part of the latest version of CryEngine, so any VR game made in the game engine can potentially easily support the OSVR HMD. All the tools they'll need to communicate with it are all there. This is a step in the right direction and a similar one to what AMD is doing by partnering with Crytek as well. AMD is also an OSVR supporter as well.

Water cooling can be a pretty fun process, but also somewhat scary if you don't quite know what you're doing. And that's why ASUS partnered with INWIN, Bitspower, Kingston (HyperX), NVIDIA, Intel and Cooler Master during the ASUS Australia 2016 PC water cooling event in Sydney, Australia at the University of Sydney this past weekend to give Australian retailers and Sydney-based PC enthusiasts all the info they need to be water cooling professionals. We prepared a video from the event, embedded below.

The whole event had a great turnout, with a lot of different examples of water cooled PC's, from the more extreme, modded variety all the way to the other end of the spectrum with modest examples of what can be done with proper water cooling parts.

It was all about showing off the different ways in which it can be used and how efficient it can be, and how complicated it is not. Really, the scariest part is wondering if the tubes you connected were done so with a proper seal. But other than that, water cooling, as this event showed, is a splendid idea for everyone. And now a variety of retailers all have the knowledge and power to help just about anyone plan their build, no matter how complex it might be.

Battlecursed is an upcoming roguelike action RPG where you're in control of a four person party with real-time, first-person perspective battles.

It's like the usual RPG's you've probably played (think Elder Scrolls) but on crack. That is, every dungeon you enter is procedural generated, with not only a different layout, but different loot, traps and enemies lurking around. It'll take some swift thinking and calculated strategies to manage the whole party and successfully navigate the dangerous dungeons below.

Initial hero classes that you'll be able to play as include the Huntress, Cleric, Grave Knight and Necromancer. The shrewd Huntress stealthily takes down opponents using her agility to dodge attacks and dexterity to strike with fatal precision. The Necromancer taps into undead sorcery, binding all manner of evil creatures to carry out the party's bidding. The Grave Knight plows through enemies with his superior strength and surprises many with his deadly frost spells. The Cleric, empowered with divine magic, will serve as the primary healer and protector of the party.

Blizzard is on a role lately, taking care to make sure that even their older gamesget the love that they deserve as well. Warcraft 3 follows in Diablo 2's footsteps with a new update coming up this week.

It's been nearly 14 years since the game was released, and it still remains a popular game, and genre. World of Warcraft doesn't quite replace the majesty that was the RTS. Patch 1.27 is coming on March 15th and will include a few new features. One of the biggest, and most welcome, changes is the addition of actual matchmaking, and another confirmed feature is that of improved in-game communication. They're playing a bit coy with the actual details outside of that, however.

Robert Bridenbecker, the lead person for Blizzard Classic Games, made a YouTube video that announced the new update. What we can gather is that aside from what's explicitly said, balance tweaks and massive bug fixes to make it more compatible with modern operating systems. In the Back2Warcraft video, Bridenbecker had a lot of great things to say.

GDC 2016 - Razer has just announced its new Blade gaming notebook, with an injection of specifications and a better price point. The new Blade sports the new sixth-generation Intel Core i7 processor, alongside the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M with 6GB of VRAM.

Storage wise the new Blade has a PCIe-based SSD which will ensure you can be pushing the speed limit when it comes to transferring data on the Blade. The new Blade has 16GB of DDR4 RAM in quad-channel, and a beautiful 14-inch IGZO-based 3200x1800 QHD+ display. The screen and its internals are found in a CNC-milled aircraft grade aluminum chassis which looks quite stunning.

The new Razer Blade has individually backlit RGB keys, making it the second laptop in the world after the Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook. Razer is also keeping the price on the Blade nice and tight, with the previous Blade with the QHD+ display starting at $2399 while the new Blade starting at $1999.