Latest News - Page 2530

While fans eagerly await the theatrical release of the superhero bust-up 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' in just a few weeks, online stores are capitalising on the swirl of interest in the title by offering the Blu-ray up for pre-order.

While Warner Bros haven't officially provided a release date or disc specs, Amazon are already taking pre-orders for the Blu-ray release for $33.99. The release is said to include the longer, more intense R-rated director's cut, which has already been passed by the MPAA.

But if you want to see it as soon as possible, 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' will be released in 3D and 2D cinemas, as well as IMAX screens ("Holy big screen, Batman!") on March 25th worldwide.

An Australian startup has successfully Kickstarted its first product: LMcable, a 2-in-1 connector that allows you to charge an iPhone or an Android phone. Data transfer is an option, too. The idea is pretty simple: plug it in one way for a Lightning port, and turn it upside down for micro USB -- no split connectors necessary.

Features include a brass buckle for "neat closure" and portability, a leather-bound cable, and tin-plated copper wires for high durability. And for the environmentally conscious, it utilizes Halogen-free TPE instead of PVC.

$5,000 AUD / ~$3,600 USD was the funding goal, which has been shattered with $59,073 AUD / ~$42,500 USD raised as of press time, and with 29 days to go, no less. The cable is expected to start shipping in mid April (initial planning began last July).

AMD is being very forward about teasing what Roy Taylor calls 'the world's best VR solution' - this time partnering with the Associated Press, and sending them a bunch of dual-GPU powered VR gaming machines. It was only a few days ago when we got our first real look at the R9 Fury X2 inside of the Falcon Northwest Tiki gaming PC.

Roy Taylor took to his personal Facebook and Twitter accounts, saying: "Thanks Wallace Santos for his partnership in shipping the world's best #VR solution to the #AssociatedPress". We still don't know what's inside, but I'm sure it's AMD's dual-GPU based on the Fiji architecture - currently known (or at least, it should be called) the Radeon R9 Fury X2. It's also gone by codename Gemini, which also sounds super-awesome.

AMD is set to "spice things up" at the Game Developers Conference on March 14, where we might see either the dual-GPU in action or Polaris.

It's strangely named but that concern will likely subside after some brief use: SoundHound's Hound app has left beta and is now available to all. If you're looking for a solid voice assistant app (allowing you to search and perform various other tasks with your voice alone), this should be your ticket.

Hound features a slick, fast, and intuitive interface, and appears to be more intelligent than most if not all apps of its kind with language understanding capabilities that combine with speech recognition as well as context and detail comprehension. The result: you can simply say things naturally and get the result you want instead of worrying about accommodating the app.

Now for the bad news: it's only available in the US. We've heard one report that users from Canada can download it, but it simply forwards your voice requests to Google. In any case, those not in the US may want to try an APK mirror here.

The Xbox One Preview Program is getting a pretty substantial update pushed out tomorrow. This update is finally giving you the ability to buy those Xbox 360 backwards compatible games straight through the Xbox One store itself.

If you're lucky enough to have signed up and been chosen for the honor of this program, then you'll also be able to enjoy much larger Party Chat rooms, with up to 16 people able to tell you how much you such at one time. You'll also have the ability to include each person individually into your Twitch broadcast, though each person has the ability to decline should they want to. The party leader can also mute the voice of anyone who opted-in to being part of the broadcast, just in case.

And in case you want to show off the things you've accomplished with the nearly 30 million hours of Xbox 360 in Xbox One gaming time, then you'll also be able to share your Xbox 360 achievements in your Xbox One activity feed, which is only natural given that you can play those games on the console now. So why not celebrate all of your achievements properly.

Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness is being developed primarily for the PlayStation 3, but that doesn't mean that the PlayStation 4 version, which is the only version that'll be available outside the US, has to suffer because of that. Some of the differences between the two versions have been outlined by Square Enix and tri-Ace.

On the latest Star Ocean Program broadcast, they talked about the fact that the framerate would be targeting 60FPS in most cases at 1080P on the PS4, though some of the more challenging scenes might push it more towards 30FPS. The resolution won't scale, though and will remain the same regardless. The PS3 is limited to 720P, 30FPS and far less visual fidelity compared to the big brother port.

Although it's a port, tri-Ace is working hard on ensuring that the graphics are actually taking advantage of the 1152 GCN cores available. It won't be a direct port, with higher resolution textures, more fluid animations, and a higher LOD. The full list of differences is below. At least initially it sounds like they're taking care to not make the mistakes of many ports that have preceded this one.

Well, not it's actually official. After the Seattle Times jumped the gun by just a few hours, Microsoft has announced that Forza Motorsport 6: Apex will be available this Spring absolutely for free.

The game will more than take advantage of the kind of power inherit in PC's. Under the hood the engine will be flying on top of DirectX 12 to help maximize performance. That means we won't be limited to only 1080p and 30FPS. Turn 10 studios does promise the ability to scale very well with different hardware so everyone can still have a good experience. The Xbox One version ran pretty well given its limited hardware.

Just what exactly is this new Forza game supposed to be? Well, Turn 10 says that it's a sort of "curated" version of the original that includes only 60 cars and six different courses to race about on. That's not much, but the price is right and it'll help introduce new, PC only players into the franchise. I'm curious if they'll take advantage of the extra horse-power and improve the graphics and physics even more than they likely already have.

It seems like it's tradition now for games to release out the gate with a day one patch. But Far Cry Primal's doesn't seem to have to fix any glaring or widespread issues, and just brings about bug fixes to make the prehistoric experience that much more harsh.

It was decided that expert mode was just too easy for PC players so your health has been halved and your aim assist has been similarly reduced. And be on the lookout as the AI can also shoot at you 1/3 faster than on Hard difficulty. Expert Mode was made to almost literally put you in the shoes (or wrappings) of a prehistoric human, making it a much more tense experience.

Other fixes include improvements to stability, improved lighting and better looking and more useful aiming reticle and improved destruction graphics when giant mammoths run rampant through the environment. Just some general enhancements, which is far cry (pun intended) from the cleaning up some games have had to have in recent past. Overall performance seems to be quite good, and you can look for our performance analysis very soon.

Just in time for the launch of Far Cry Primal and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on the PC, which launched just earlier today, NVIDIA has a Game Ready Driver ready and available to help optimize the experience.

Driver 362.00 is was released earlier this morning as well and provides some nice stability and performance enhancements that make Gears of War: Ultimate Edition especially. Gears, unfortunately, is only playable on NVIDIA hardware at the moment due to some strange occurrences and performance issues happening on AMD hardware.

Optimizations have been made for Far cry Primal, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and for the newest Dying Light update. That update adds a few new graphics options that you can toy with.

As the Raspberry Pi celebrates four years of DIY tech marvels and eighty million sales, the creators have unleashed a brand new computer iteration with a bunch of nifty enhancements.

The new Raspberry Pi 3 is 50% faster than its predecessor, owing this boost to a number of extra features like a beefier 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU (which is actually 10x more powerful than the original Raspberry Pi). The new Pi also sports onboard 802.11n Wi-Fi (up to 150Mbps) and Bluetooth 4.1 support, seamlessly unlocking a huge wave of device compatibility. As always, the Raspberry Pi 3 plays nicely with its younger siblings, the Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 computers.

The new Pi only sports 1GB of RAM--the same as its predecessor--but makes an upgrade in the graphics department thanks to Broadcom's 400MHz VideoCore IV. With Broadcom's graphics core, the Pi 3 can hit 1080p 60FPS video in H.264, and even supports H.265 but only at 1080p 30FPS.

After years of flagging sales, Sony has officially discontinued it's PlayStation TV micro-console in the United States and Europe.

As someone who owns a PlayStation TV, I can honestly say I'm not impressed. The device has an audaciously high retail price of $79.99, and since it only has like 700mb of onboard memory, it requires the use of expensive PlayStation Vita memory cards. While you can play PS Vita, PSP, and PlayStation original classics on it, it lacks optimization. It's really more of a niche product, and requires a ton of extra hardware and games to actually enjoy.

Although the micro-console is officially kaput, Sony isn't abandoning PSTV owners. "PS Store for PlayStation TV will continue to be accessible, and PlayStation TV-related information will continue to be updated. In terms of applications/service for PlayStation TV, we will make further communications to users as necessary."

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, the remastered version of the first three of the series, has been released on the Windows Store today, but instead of being a shining example of the prowess and graphical potential of the PC and of DirectX 12, it falls well short of that for AMD GPU owners.

What you can expect if played on an AMD R9 Fury

In fact, it's being reported that it hardly runs well at all, stuttering and exhibiting high amounts of graphical corruption even when running at modest resolutions with only modest graphical settings turned on. The performance is particularly abysmal on AMD's Fiji powered cards where the proper implementation of async shaders should theoretically hold an advantage. But even when RAM isn't a limiting factor, they don't perform. The game is a stuttering, glitching mess at this point, at 4K, 1440P or even 1080P. My own testing confirms the findings, with a horrible mess on the base Fury, making it unbearable to actually play.

Combined with the might of the existing video platform juggernaut, the YouTube Gaming streaming-and-video service is crushing the competition.

According to gaming research firm NewZoo, YouTube "dominates around the globe" and is beating Twitch by 2-to-1. Out of the 500 million viewers that tune into gaming videos, most of them pick YouTube. The firm notes that 50% of gamers in the United States choose YouTube for their content, compared to Twitch's 21%. In overseas countries like France only see 9% of viewers watching Twitch.

"Online video is the biggest thing to hit the games market since the launch of the iPhone in 2007," said Newzoo CEO Peter Warman. "Games are evolving toward cross-screen transmedia franchises right now. A direct consequence is the increased focus on communities of both gamers and viewers. This is creating enormous new growth and marketing opportunities for game companies and will accelerate the disruption of traditional media."

The newest update to Rainbow Six Siege is getting serious about cheating, which is surprisingly common in the nearly newly released tactical FPS.

The game is entering the pro's, and as such it needed a stronger foundation to help better prevent cheating, exploitation of maps (and glitches) and even rampant examples of spawn-killing. So now there's a "report" button that lets you tell Ubisoft when you think someone is doing something untoward, who will review data and make a call on what to do.

They've also introduced a kill-cam, which not helps you make sure that your death was actually somewhat legitimate. Quite a bit of time has been spent ensuring that the netcode and networking backend work well enough that lag shouldn't even be the reason for funny kills. But, of course, they've added quite a bit more to the patch as well.

Thanks to a pesky error code, dozens upon dozens of gamers can't play Far Cry: Primal on PC. The game's Steam page are littered with negative reviews and complaints, but luckily, Ubisoft has delivered a fix.

There's nothing more frustrating than spending $59.99 on a brand new game, downloading the entire 20+ GB, starting it up, and being locked out due to something you can't control. Thanks to Error 88500014, tons of gamers aren't able to play Ubisoft's Stone Age adventure, causing a ton of alarm and frustration among the PC community.

It turns out that Error 88500014 is caused by a firewall that's blocking the connection between your PC to Ubisoft's online servers. Far Cry: Primal requires a "one-time activation" across the publisher's online service, and if players can't pass this authentication, then they're locked out. Check below for a walkthrough on how to fix it.

Backwards compatibility has opened up a lot of opportunity and different doors for the Xbox One. Even though the roll-out has been slow, yet steady, it also means there are more options available to the likes of EA Access now that older games can be made playable.

The first fully backwards compatible game for EA's subscription gaming service is Plants vs. Zombies, which has just now been added to the Vault, making the entire game playable as part of the subscription.

Just this past August, EA expressed their interest in adding their historic backwards compatible games to the list as they became available, and it seems that it's finally now becoming a reality. There's, of course, a chance that the Mass Effect series could also make it's way into the Vault sometime soon, though there's no word on EA about that. They seem to be working their way from more modern games, back, which isn't a poor way to go about it either.

Activision has already confirmed a new "innovative" Call of Duty game for 2016, but it looks like this year's entry into the annual franchise will be another sequel. Sadly, it may not be another Modern Warfare.

According to FragHero, the new Call of Duty will be a sequel to CoD: Ghosts. The news was apparently leaked by a UK game magazine called Games TM, which showcased Call of Duty: Ghosts 2 with a screenshot (probably from the first game) and a November 2016 release date.

The article itself is focused on the most-wanted games of 2016. Here's an excerpt: "When creative strategist Robert Bowling exited Infinity Ward in 2012, he put the departure down to doing too much 'pew pew and not enough new new'. We got a look at what he meant with the release of Call of Duty: Ghosts--a solid, yet unspectacular next-gen debut for the franchise. Infinity Ward will have had three years to work on a follow-up, and it needs to showcase the same creative spark that once put on the map with Modern Warfare back in '08 if it wants any chance of standing shoulder to shoulder with Sledgehammer and Treyarch."

Panasonic's GH4 camera is the camera of choice for many YouTubers and video enthusiasts, as it's capable of shooting 4K video at 30FPS, with a consumer-orientated price point. Well, Panasonic's next-gen GH series camera is set to knock off some socks, and some.

According to Japanese publication Nikkan, Panasonic's new GH5/GH6 camera will shoot 6K video at 30FPS. This means that each frame of the 6K video is shot in 16 megapixels, meaning you can grab 16-megapixel still photos from the 6K video - an awesome feature.

Panasonic also teased their new 8K-capable consumer level camera in May 2015, where ephotozine reported: "Panasonic announced plans for future 4K and 8K video and photo features, including 4K at 60fps and 120fps, as well as the ability to take 33 megapixel still images from 8K video footage. They say they are planning to have this technology ready for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games. No further information was given at the time".

Just yesterday we surmised that it were possible that Microsoft could potentially bring their fun and competitive racing series, Forza Motorsport, over to the PC in the near future, and it appears that that might very well be true.

Microsoft held a small Xbox and Windows 10 focused event last week where this information was supposedly revealed, along with other otherwise previously unknown information regarding the shift in focus for Microsoft and PC gaming. The embargo for the event lifts at 9AM ET today, but a certain site decided to post the information before then, perhaps by mistake.

The information they had up, which was quickly taken down, showed Forza Motorsport 6 Apex on the Windows Store for Windows 10. It appears to be a cut-down version of the original, however. There's also nothing in the article about what else we can expect. But ultimately, it seems that Microsoft is definitely committed to bringing back gaming to the PC, and in a big way.

PlayStation owners will soon be able to play PS4 games on PC and Mac...after a fashion.

In a recent PlayStation Blog post, Sony revealed that the PS4's next v 3.50 firmware update will allow Remote Play streaming of PS4 games to PC and Mac. Beta testing on the new update, codenamed Mushashi, begins tomorrow, so if you signed up be sure to check your email.

Microsoft recently made waves by revealing that it'll be folding key Xbox One games into its Windows 10 PC platform, starting with Quantum Break. Not content with watching from the sidelines, Japanese console-maker Sony is now ready to step outside its console comfort zone and embrace the PC as well. Essentially the PS4's Remote Play on PC will be like the Xbox One's cross-streaming capability on Windows 10 PCs, and since its all powered by the PS4, we won't be seeing any performance gains on higher-end PC hardware.