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Square Enix started life as the architect of the JRPG, a genre that has grown immensely since they released the first Final Fantasy in 1987. And they're going back to those roots with I AM SETSUNA, the premier game from one of their new studio, Tokyo RPG Factory.

What that means is that they're going to take the impactful, deep storytelling aspect of the typical JRPG, mixing in complex and near endless character development with a modern graphics engine the new immersive tools at the disposal of developers. This is going back to the roots of what RPG's began as, and remaking that into something more. They're saying that the battle system is inspired by Chrono Trigger, which has one of the most refined of such systems.

No information on the release date just yet, but if they want tor bring back the authentic JRPG gameplay and dig deep into their archives for I AM SETSUNA, then who are we to complain? It has some beautiful art design and they promise to give us a sorrowful and impactful story. Stay tuned for more information on this one. A masterpiece in the making. Potentially.

The Coalition have announced just that the first round of beta testing for Gears of War 4 will commence on April 18th, but only for those that have played Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on the Xbox One, or through the Windows Store.

If you did play the latest remaster of Gears of War, then you should start getting a beta token through the Xbox Live messaging system that you can redeem for the early access to the beta. The good news is that everyone that has an Xbox Live Gold membership and an Xbox One will be eligible to try out the beta just a bit later, on April 24th running through May 1st. They're extending the timeframe in which you have had to log in and play Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, moving the deadline from March 1st all the way until April 11th.

The beta will be all about the multiplayer aspect and should include some fun levels to romp around in. Just remember that it's a beta and isn't at all complete. There will be bugs and other glitches, and some things in some certain situations might not work as you'd expect. Don't be a stranger to reporting any bugs, so they can fix them before it's released.

The new remake of the classic Battlezone is getting a very well done single-player campaign. But it isn't going to be entirely written and structured by humans, though. Instead, it'll have elements of procedural generation to keep thing unique for everyone. The new trailer gives us a glimpse inside the cockpit, as well as what that campaign might look like.

The dynamic nature of procedural generation means that there will be endless opportunities for replayability. You'll rarely get bored if this type of action is something you've been waiting for. The enemies, objectives and seemingly the levels can all change drastically, making for new and exciting experiences. If the AI is up to snuff, then that'll just be icing on the cake.

The game itself is looking really good. The cockpit is almost ergonomic, if it were real, and the windscreen doesn't seem to pose an issue with visibility at all. The remaster is looking splendid and really brings back memories of the original Atari classic. The sound effects alone are a pretty good homage to the original. I'm certainly excited to see how it actually plays out, is anyone else looking forward to this?

The remastered version of System Shock 1 has finally been shown in full, working form for the first time since it was announced. The remake, they say, is going to stay true to the original, attempting to capture the same parts of our imagination that it originally did. so take a look below, see if it feels at all familiar.

Night Dive Studios is remaking System Shock 1 using the Unity game engine. The in-game trailer is a showcase of all the work they've done in translating the original into the new engine and in how they've remade the UI. The want to keep the classic System Shock, but update it and make it much more visually striking, allowing it to be a better representation of the original intent.

The remastered version is going to be available on the Xbox One and the PC starting sometime in 2017, so you'll be able to have your chance at reliving the nightmare very soon.

Microsoft is turning to a very interesting platform to help improve research in artificial intelligence. Minecraft is being used by researchers at Microsoft, and by select academic researchers through a private beta program, in its unstructured mode, as a sort of testing ground for testing AI theories and programming.

Now how would they go about doing that? The AIX platform which is being developed by a Microsoft lab in Cambridge, U.K., that they're using can potentially be programmed to learn in a similar and, well, general way that humans do, to program the Minecraft avatar to go forth and do stuff. It's a closed environment where researchers can look easily observe what the character is doing, and in a safe environment. The constructible world allows for a number of different variables that let them test in a lot of different conditions. All without actually sacrificing real, and expensive, robots.

"Minecraft is the perfect platform for this kind of research because it's this very open world," Katja Hofmann, the platforms developer, said. "You can do survival mode, you can do 'build battles' with your friends, you can do courses, you can implement our own games. This is really exciting for artificial intelligence because it allows us to create games that stretch beyond current abilities." Even trying to get your character to do simple tasks, like walking, is very beneficial to AI research.

Nearly two years on from telling Variety that there was "no plan for a fourth Iron Man", it seems not much has changed for Robert Downey Jr.

On the eve of the release of the Captain America/Iron Man grudge match in 'Captain America: Civil War', Downey Jr. was asked by USA Today whether he'll return for a fourth stand-alone film, responding "I don't think that's in the cards", likening the third Captain America to "my little Iron Man 4".

'Captain America: Civil War', which also gives the first look at the new Spider-Man, begins its 2D, 3D and IMAX worldwide release from April 28 in Australia.

It's been 20 years since the blockbuster 'Independence Day' blew up screens across the world and in honor of the film, Twentieth Century Fox has set a new 20th anniversary Blu-ray edition for release in May which comes with the previously DVD-only extended cut.

According to IGN, the upcoming 2 disc edition will come with the 4K restored original theatrical cut and a 10 minute longer extended cut. It's being accompanied by a whole disc of bonus features, including the new 30 minute retrospective documentary 'A Legacy Surging Forward', probably joined by the previous DVD extra features including an alternate ending. Fox will also release an 'Attacker Edition' giftset in the United States, which comes with a limited edition alien ship replica and a collectible booklet.

The film's sequel, the eagerly anticipated 'Independence Day: Resurgence' hits 2D, 3D and IMAX cinemas worldwide from June 23.

Google's DeepMind AI first set its sights on European Go champion Fan Hui, defeating it soundly before taking the crown from world champion Lee Sedol (while there's still one game to go in the series, it currently sits at 3-1, favoring DeepMind). With that achievement in its pocket, we're left to wonder what's next. Asked just that at the Structure Data event in San Francisco today, Google Senior Fellow Jeff Dean pointed to StarCraft, calling it their "likely next target."

StarCraft presents a different and possibly greater challenge for DeepMind, as a lot of information is hidden from it unlike with Go where the opponent's moves are laid out in front of it. Due to that and the more visually stimulating nature of video games, the prospect is very exciting. Of it, a Blizzard said to us, "We're reaching out to learn more about what Google has in mind. For now, let's just say... challenge accepted!"

After dominating the five-game Go tournament series 3-0 and looking invincible in the process, Google's DeepMind AI has finally fallen to its human opponent; world Go champion Lee Sedol made the series 3-1 over the weekend after seeing weaknesses in Deepmind's game and mounting a surprising comeback. The match was described as "long and complicated."

The fifth and final match will begin late tonight or early tomorrow morning depending where you live, and can be viewed here. It's highly anticipated, and for good reason.

"It seems Lee Sedol can now read AlphaGo better and has a better understanding of how AlphaGo moves," said Song Taegon, 9-dan, Korean commentator. "For the fifth match, it will be a far closer battle than before since [they] know each better."

GDC 2016 - AMD has been hinting at their dual-GPU for the better half of a year, but today is the day that we've been introduced to their dual-GPU: the Radeon Pro Duo. Up until now, we thought it would be called the Radeon R9 Fury X2, as well as the tease of Gemini, but AMD landed on the name of Radeon Pro Duo.

AMD's new Radeon Pro Duo has 16TFlops of compute performance, compared to the 8.6TFlops on the Radeon R9 Fury X. The Radeon Pro Duo in AMD's words is "guaranteeing the highest level VR experience for developers who love to game", and is "the platform of choice for Crytek's VR First initiative - enabling today's and tomorrow's generation of VR content developers with the most powerful hardware".

The Radeon Pro Duo is watercooled, just like its single-GPU cousin, and with the price set at $1499 it won't be for casual or even most enthusiasts - this is a card for the die-hard enthusiasts who need 120FPS+ at 2560x1440 or 60FPS+ at 4K. Past that, it's a card built for VR and its 90FPS+ requirement, and developers are going to snap this up for game development thanks to its beefy horsepower.

GDC 2016 - AMD has just launched its new dual-GPU known as the Radeon Pro Duo, continuing its push into becoming the leader of VR. AMD has teamed with Crytek to push its momentum of VR, with AMD becoming Crytek's exclusive GPU technology partner for its Crytek VR First initiative.

AMD is also working with over 10 universities across the world in order to push VR into areas outside of the gaming industry, with AMD reiterating that VR will "transform entire industries beyond gaming and entertainment", with industries like education, medicine, and countless other mediums being affected by VR.

The 83% number is interesting, because AMD doesn't have that much discrete GPU market share - with NVIDIA heavily swayed when it comes to dGPU market share. Could AMD be including PlayStation VR as part of their VR dominance, thanks to the PS4 being powered by an APU made by AMD? We'll be asking AMD for clarification on this shortly.

The Bank of Korea wants to follow in Iceland's footsteps and achieve a cashless society by 2020, replacing paper entirely with credit cards and other means of payment like Samsung Pay.

It's well on its way as more Koreans than ever are choosing non-cash options for purchases than ever: 40 percent say they use credit cards more than anything else, up from last year's 30 percent; Koreans carry an average 74,000 ₩ this year versus last year's 77,000, and the central bank is issuing 12.3 percent fewer 10,000 ₩ banknotes, 5.9 percent fewer 5,000 ₩ notes, and 3.7 percent fewer 1,000 ₩ notes this year.

Lee Hyo-chan, the head of the research center at the Credit Finance Institute believes ditching paper will cut costs by somewhere between 0.1 and 1.1 percent of GDP (1.305 trillion USD in 2013). Lee notes the value of transparency, too: having a greater understanding of the underground economy gives the government and banks much better economic data to work with. Additionally, he touts decreased cash-related crime and the adoption of monetary policies like a minus interest rate to stimulate the economy, forcing citizens to spend more if they want to avoid interest.

There's a lot of cool and interesting ideas that are coming out of the VR revolution, and not all of them are the hardcore super immersive experiences, either. Some, like Disco Flux which is coming to the PlayStation 4, are taking on a much lighter and more playful take on what VR can do for gaming.

Disco Flux is one of those games that breaks the bounds of one genre and adds in another that ends up being something completely unexpected. A music game that's wrapped with shooter mechanics? Oh yeah, this is a thing, and after watching the video above, this is a very good thing too. Just look at how awesome it looks, and how challenging it might possibly be, forcing you to use hand-eye coordination while rocking out to some of your favorite retro music. It looks like a blast, pun fully intended.

It's a music-driven shooter, that has four different modes that the game will switch through dynamically as you play more. They're already including some retro disco-esque music, but in the future you'll be able to import your own music that it'll analyze so targets can pop-up to the beat. This minimalist style of game would actually be very well suited to mobile. It doesn't seem to necessarily require a whole lot of processing power, and it would work well with the GearVR or similar headset.

In light of previous Xbox One exclusives coming to PC, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer was recently asked at a Microsoft event what reason do PC gamers now have to purchase an Xbox One. Spencer's reply: "So they might not [buy an Xbox One]. And I want that to be OK."

He seems to see PC gamers and Xbox gamers as one and the same in a sense, to which Microsoft provides one service to accommodate both.

"When you go and you buy [PC and Xbox One games]," he says, "You're not gonna feel like you're dealing with disconnected islands that don't understand what games you own, or where you are in those games, or what your achievements are in those games and what you play with, but that instead [we] put you as the gamer at the center of our platform and build our platforms around you."

Western Digital gets in on the Pi Day fun by announcing its new PiDrive 314GB, a new 314GB HDD made specifically for the... you guessed it, Raspberry Pi.

WD's new PiDirve 314GB costs just $45.81 - but it's currently available for $31.42 - celebrating Pi. The 7mm-high drive is based on the WD Blue range of HDDs, which are found in many budget and mid-range laptops and PCs. The difference here is that the interface has been modified from SATA to USB so that it can connect and work with the Raspberry Pi.

WD adds that it customized the PiDrive 314GB so that it would "reduce the electrical power load of the hard drive on Raspberry Pi while still maintaining sufficient performance to deliver maximum USB data transfer rate".

Sniper Elite 4 is well into development, and was announced to much fanfare last week when it was unveiled by Rebellion Developments.

Now a new press release has revealed a fairly tight window of release of sometime in 2016 and will retail for £49.99 / €69.99 / $59.99 when it hits the streets. Of course it'll be available through the usual digital channels, but physical copies of the game will be available from Sold Out. in the UK. They were responsible for providing physical copies of Zombie Army Trilogy when that released. Physical copies of the game will be available in the US through U&I Entertainment through an exclusive deal with Sold Out.

Sniper Elite 4 will be available on the PC, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One when it comes out sometime in 2016. Rebellion is promising that we'll see it at 1080P on both the consoles, with an unlimited framerate and 4K (and Eyefinity) support on the PC. Maps will be many times the size of anything we encountered in Sniper Elite 3, and it'll retain the less linear way in which you can go about your missions, taking place in Italy in 1943.

GDC 2016 - Stardock has some exciting stuff on its hands with Ashes of the Singularity, a DirectX 12-powered game that has an awesome benchmark for mixing AMD and NVIDIA video cards - but it's limited to just one game, for now.

Stardock has teased that it's working on a software solution, something that's part of DirectX 12, that will let gamers use multi-GPU support on DX12 games. Outside of AotS, multi-GPU support through DX12 isn't really a thing, but it could very well be in the near future.

Brad Wardell, Stardock CEO, explained to VentureBeat: "One of the biggest problems with games is that a new video card comes out from AMD and NVIDIA, and they're like [expensive], and you have to make a call. I like my video card. I can play most games on it, and I don't want to spend $800 on some new video card. But imagine, instead, hey, they're having a sale [using my GTX 760 as an example]. Hey, they're having a sale on an AMD 290 for $75. Wouldn't it be cool to put this into your computer and double your performance. You keep this in there [the 760]. You put this in there [the 290], and your games are twice as fast without doing anything else".

Microsoft has wanted to have a way for people from all of their platforms to play together, but it just hasn't really been technically possible. Until now. And they're expanding the idea to other platforms "including other console and PC networks." Meaning the PlayStation 4.

They're new cross-network play was just announced today and it means that games, if the developer choose to support the function, can enable every platform that a game happens to play on, to be able to interact with each other. A native solution hasn't ever been available that allowed this. Wargaming.net had to create their own internal API to even let Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC gamres to play together with World of Tanks.

The first game to take advantage of this is naturally Rocket League, which will let you play against your friends that are on whatever platform they happen to have. Right now it only supports play across the Xbox One and the PC, but there's an open invitation to allow the PlayStation 4 to participate, because it apparently isn't hard to implement. Interestingly, this could make the decision to buy a console rest solely on other factors other than what your friends happen to have, or want.

GDC 2016 - NVIDIA has just announced its new GameWorks SDK 3.1, with three new technologies included in the release. This includes new techniques for shadows and lighting, as well as two new physical simulation algorithms, released in beta form.

Senior VP of Content and Technology with NVIDIA, Tony Tamasi, explains: "It's our passion for gaming that drives us to tackle the technical problems presented by real-time rendering and simulation. Our GameWorks technologies push the boundaries of what's possible in real-time, enabling developers to ship their games with state of the art special effects and simulations".

As for the three new technologies with GameWorks SDK 3.1, this is what we can expect:

GDC 2016 - AMD has announced that it has made strides in the VR market already, with Yahoo finance reporting that AMD is powering an estimated 83% of the global VR market. AMD only just announced minutes ago that it powered the new Sulon Q headset.

This number includes the PlayStation VR, with the PS4 powered by AMD technology. When it comes to the PC side of things, AMD is partnering with both Oculus and HTC for the Rift and Vive respectively, with the company ensuring the Radeon ecosystem is ready to rock and roll when these headsets launch in the next month.

Later today, AMD will be displaying its Polaris 10 GPU running on Valve's Aperture Science Robot Repair demo, which is powered by the HTC Vive. AMD's Polaris 10 GPU is powered by the exciting new 14nm FinFET process, featuring support for both DX12 and VR - and includes HDR monitor support, and impressive performance-per-watt numbers.