Latest News - Page 2534

I fondly remember the days of id Software dominating the graphics engine market, where their competition became Epic Games when they released the original Unreal. The idTech engine was a tour de force of graphical power, which continued to evolve through new games like Quake II, Quake III and so on.

Well, id Software wants to bring those days back with the Doom reboot, with the company hiring several Crytek staff over the last few years. One of those acquisitions was Lead Rendering Programmer, Tiago Sousa. Sousa recently talked about the new Doom, and his goals with the new engine, where he said: "My hope is not a very humble one, but I'd like to help bring idTech back to the forefront of technology once again".

Lead Project Progammer at id Software, Billy Khan, said that the team is geared to make Doom the best looking game running at 1080p 60FPS - where we reiterate that's for consoles, where the PC version should run at 4K 60FPS and beyond if you've got the hardware to drive it. Khan said: "We want players to wonder how DOOM and idTech 6 games can be so visually stunning at 60 frames-per-second at 1080p on all platforms, when other titles cannot even achieve a similar look at 30 frames-per-second. Our goal is to be the best-looking game at 1080p at 60fps".

We all know that AMD will be showing something Polaris-related at the Game Developers Conference next month, teasing they wanted to "spice things up", even more so that an AMD board with a "C91101" codename receiving the RRA's proof of certification.

What does the RRA certification mean? Well, all ASIC boards need to go through South Korea, just like the US - but, the RRA publishes its certifications in the public domain. A new board has been certified, and it belongs to AMD - with this board not popping up on the Zauba database, but it looks like a Polaris-based board. We already know that AMD will be launching its new Polaris-based products in mid-2016.

With the release of Far Cry Primal this week on consoles, PC gamers are itching to not only play the game but find out what the performance is like - and if we're going to see a decent jump in graphics over the potato boxes. Well, now we know what hardware you're going to need to game at 1080p @ 75-90FPS.

According to TotalBiscuit's stream on Far Cry Primal for the PC, he reported that his NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X at 1080p and a custom graphics quality setting performed at around 75-90FPS. Increasing it to 2560x1440 saw 60FPS or so, and at 4K he reported only 30FPS. The game doesn't stutter, so there's that - but 30FPS at 4K on a freakin' Titan X? Far Cry Primal better look damn good.

Far Cry Primal drops on the PC on March 1.

It looks like AMD is about to hit an even rougher patch, with rumors from DigiTimes that "AMD is likely to suffer from a record low share of both markets in the first quarter of 2016", according to their industry sources.

DigiTimes reports: "Demand for standalone video cards has already been sluggish given a weak PC market, and the market for standalone gra[p]hics cards continues to decline. In the already-shrinking market, AMD's rival NVIDIA has eaten away at its market share, the sources indicated". The latter part is true, with NVIDIA having 82% of the discrete GPU market - something we reported on in November 2015.

But AMD has reportedly been hurting on the CPU side of things thanks to an onslaught from Intel - and nothing really worthy of consumers and gamers moving away from their Intel-powered systems. We have AMD's exciting new Zen architecture around the corner, with DigiTimes' sources stating that it's still unknown if Zen is enough to save the company from more troubles. I agree there, but I think if Zen is as good as it looks on paper - and AMD has enough support from their partners, which I think are going to be an issue thanks to Intel's stronger relationships with the likes of ASUS and GIGABYTE - then we can expect some big changes from AMD in the near future.

The PC port of JRPG Disgaea is seeing some concerning reports across the web, both from users and reviewers (most notable is this scathing Destructoid article).

Developer NIS has responded quickly to the issues in a Steam forums news post, defending its hard work but also acknowledging what's happening.

"We spent a total of ten months on researching and developing this game for PC users, two months of which were spent on rigorous testing," it writes. "However, we have been made aware of the fact that some of our customers have been experiencing issues when playing the game."

Taiwan's technology giant Foxconn was set to purchase struggling Japanese electronics maker Sharp for nearly $6 billion this morning until it discovered some concerning information released by the latter company yesterday. Now Foxconn is taking time to look over the details, but says it hopes to resolve the situation quickly and then complete the deal.

Its concern is understandable: Sharp released a list of approximately 100 contingent liabilities that would see Foxconn inherit a potential $3.1 billion worth of risk should it take the company over, sources close to the matter say.

This latest disturbance is just one of many in the long-running on and off negotiations which date back to at least 2012.

Google's Boston Dynamics has an impressive new version of its Atlas robot on display in the video below, which gives off a pretty strong AT-AT vibe. In it, you can see Atlas open doors, walk through rocky, snowy terrain, pick up and move boxes, and get up again when it gets knocked down. Pretty impressive, especially considering this failure at last year's DARPA Robotics Challenge.

As for the source of its mystical robot powers, it features articulated, sensate hands, and an articulated sensor head with stereo cameras and laser range finder.

Sources close to the company and security experts are saying Apple is currently working on upgrading its iPhone security measures, which would shield them from potential win by the government in the ongoing encryption war. It's said they've been working on it since before the San Bernardino attack.

The new security would be configured in such a way that a backdoor couldn't be created for it at the government's request (as is currently the case). Specifically, it addresses the vulnerability introduced by the troubleshooting system that allows Apple to update system software without a password. Once the new security in place, the government could request all it likes: Apple wouldn't be able to oblige even if it wanted to.

Experts believe Apple will be able to go through with it. Should the government win the fight, it's expected a new round of court battles would begin, at which point Apple may introduce yet more security measures, and round and round we go. In other words, Apple currently has the upper hand and will for the foreseeable future, barring Congress involvement.

Samsung is getting serious about mobile storage. They may have brought back expandable storage with the Galaxy S7, but they want native storage to grow exponentially as well. And they're doing that by producing 256GB embedded NAND using the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard.

The UFS 2.0 standard will allow phones to enjoy read speeds that are nearly twice as fast as SATA 6, though still lagging behind NVMe enabled PCIe SSD's. The new embedded UFS 2.0 NAND from Samsung will be able to read at around 850MB/s and write at a much lower, but still acceptable, 250MB/s. They're quoting that it'll be able to sustain around 45,000 IOPS, which is far faster than the previous generation.

Samsung says that this is the ideal solution to record 4K footage to, since more mobile phones are beginning to have 4K capabilities. The faster interface means you can actually record them without having to rely on buffering in RAM or otherwise.

Marvell just expanded their line of ARMADA SoC ecosystem, that are frequently used in NAS and other networking devices, to include native support for open-source software platforms like OpenWRT and openSUSE.

Before now Marvell didn't officially support any other software than that which was initially installed on their platforms. Adding support in the kernel of the various open-source OS's required a lot of time from volunteers to make it work properly. Because of that, support was always a bit precarious, and it could take quite awhile for new devices to be added to the compatibility lists.

Now, however, their 64-bit ARMv8 powered ARMADA 3700 Cortex-A53 device family and ARMADA 7K and ARMADA 8K Cortex-A72 device families are getting full-fledged support for the Linux kernel as well as U-Boot support. That means that it'll be compatible with a much wider range of OS's, anything that has ARM support baked in can run on their chips, essentially.

Warren Spector, the mind behind the original System Shock and Deus Ex, is making his way back into the game industry but he isn't too impressed with the progress he's seen since he made his exit so many years ago.

He left the University of Texas to get back into an industry that he says changes constantly, but even that change seems to be just putting a facade over the same wall. Putting a new coat of paint on the same thing. "I can't believe I'm about to say this -- I'll never work in this industry again -- but in the mainstream space I really haven't seen a whole lot of progress. It seems like we're getting more finely-tuned, prettier versions of games we've been playing for years."

Spector sees a stagnant industry that's being held back by a number of different factors, but he's confident that better AI, non-combat related AI specifically, could help revitalize and breath new ideas into games. "What I want to do, is I see a variety of places where we could make some strides that would help take games to the next level. The biggest one, for me, is more robust characters and character AI. We've gotten very good at combat AI, we've made great strides there, but I don't think we've done much in the world of non-combat AI and interacting with people -- human or otherwise."

Following its trend of re-releases, Capcom today announced a new trio of remasters set in its landmark zombie outbreak franchise: Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 will be released on PS4 and Xbox One.

The Japanese games-maker broke the news in a recent Capcom Unity blog post, and honestly we're mostly excited for RE4 making the jump to current gen. It's the best out of the bunch, and is arguably the best Resident Evil game of them all.

Sadly, Capcom has a disjointed release schedule for the remasters. Each game will be released separately for $20, and instead of going in order, RE6 will be released first on March 29, followed by RE5 in Summer 2016, and RE4 in Fall 2016. Each game will be available digitally or on physical discs in North and South America. Be sure to check out the screens below, and the reveal trailer above.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate just got a new patch that seems to focus the most on improving performance all around. It wasn't the worst performing AC game on release, but it also wasn't the smoothest experience from a new game either.

Unlike the misstep that was the release of Assassin's Creed Unity, Syndicate had fewer bugs and game-breaking glitches when it became available. The crowd density was reduced in order to help alleviate some of the issues regarding framerate while walking around the bustling city. That helped, but the increased environmental geometry, improved ambient occlusion along with increased shadow map rendering quality has made for quite the resource hungry game.

SLI in particular scaled horribly in the beginning, though it works quite well now. Ubisoft has been very quick to react to player feedback this time around putting out patches that have solved nearly all the issues and glitches that did, unfortunately, happen to make it into the final release of Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Curious if your system is any better, download the patch and let us know!

It seems that the cat is out of the bag a little early on this one. Once again the trademark system has helped to uncover and confirm two upcoming Pokemon games for the 3DS before the big Nintendo Direct anniversary celebration tomorrow. Though nothing has actually been confirmed (aside from a fake parody account doing so) officially as of yet. The filings, however, are indeed real.

According to OHIM website, Nintendo put in an application to trademark Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon just earlier today. This corresponds to the surprise that Nintendo was teasing just yesterday for the 20th anniversary. More info will likely be available tomorrow during the Nintendo Direct, an we'll be watching along side you for all the juicy bits of info.

GIGABYTE has some new 17.3-inch gaming focused laptops coming to market soon with the latest round of Skylake mobile processors.

The new laptops are in the P57 family, which has at its core, an Intel Core i7-6700HQ under the hood that runs at 2.6GHz and can boost to 3.5GHz. It's on Intel's HM170 chipset and can have up to 32GB of DDR4-2133 memory installed along side it. There are currently two different variants of the laptop, the P57K and the P57W.

They both share a 1080P IPS matte screen but the P57K powers that screen with an NVIDIA GTX 965M whereas the P57W has a more powerful GTX 970M with 3GB of VRAM. For storage they're using a 512GB M.2 SSD that uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface for some blistering fast speeds. In the front of the massive laptop is a Blu-Ray RW drive that's situated just under the trackpad, a strange and new location for the drive, which can also be swapped out for more storage if you so choose.

During a recent AR/VR presentation, Sony's Dr. Richard Marks revealed more details on Sony's PlayStation VR headset. According to one of the slides, the PS4 is actually 60% more powerful than equivalent PC hardware.

"This isn't my number, this is some middleware people that said that the PS4 console is 60% more powerful than a same-spec PC. This is because of all that direct access you have and knowing every piece is exactly what it should be, and not having any variability. You can just tune things and effectively get about 60% more performance," Dr. Marks said during the talk. Other details include a 120Hz refresh rate, Unity integration, always-on reprojection to reduce latency, 100-degree FOV, and less than 18ms latency with no "screen door" effect.

A PSVR developer corroborated the slide in a recent Reddit post, saying: "PSVR is extremely close to being on par with Vive and the Rift w/ a gtx970 based on the tests I've done. The team from Epic (Nick & Tom) have also stated the same in at least one of their VR Twitch streams. If your app runs at 90Hz on a PC with a gtx970 then you should be very close to 60 on the ps4. And with the 120Hz reprojection applied it's glassy smooth."

Nintendo has a great opportunity in front of them to leap head-first into the market, delighting with their upcoming console with a lineup of games that show just why they should be chosen over all others. The secrecy around their new console, even among developers, might hurt Nintendo's chance at making the substantial wave their business needs.

The CEO of Moon Studios, the developer of Ori and the Blind Forest, sees the folly in keeping their plans so secretive and said as much on NeoGaf. He was very critical of all console makers and how they tend to even keep developer kits until the last minute to prevent leaks from happening.

"This is actually the single most annoying thing for every dev out there," Thomas Mahler wrote, "Every hardware manufacturer is treating their dev kits and unreleased consoles like they're the second coming and are insanely secretive about it to a stupid degree in today's time." And really, he's right. Without those developers being able to actually make their games and optimize as far out as possible, then the starting line-up can diminish the initial value.

If this list of leaked features is genuine, Fallout 4's new Survival Mode overhaul is going to be pretty punishing.

Players aren't too impressed with Fallout 4's so-called Survival Mode. There's really not much to say about the game's hardest of hard mode other than increased enemy health and damage output. Bethesda has heard our cries and is preparing to add some serious bite to the Commonwealth. Along with its huge Fallout 4 DLC roadmap, the studio plans to completely tweak Survival Mode to keep endgame players busy and add new depth to the experience.

According to data found in the game's code, the new Survival Mode changes include weighted ammunition, disabled fast travel, and the need to eat, drink, and sleep. Running around while over-encumbered drains Agility and Endurance, and you can also get infected with diseases like the Elder Scrolls universe. I'm hoping one of these diseases turns you into a fully-fledged ghoul if left untreated. Check below for the full list of details uncovered by dedicated dataminers.

Rockstar Games and 2K Games are headed to E3 this year "in a big way", the CEO of 2K, Strauss Zelnick told MCV. That means newly announced IP's or a huge celebration of what we know is coming.

Probably not the announcement we'll actually see

And they already have some good titles on the way. Battleborn is an exciting new addition from 2K's own Gearbox, though they've been featuring that quite a bit lately, so it logically doesn't make sense to see that at the forefront. It was last year. So perhaps they'll have a number of other new and interesting working titles to talk about, things we may haven't seen yet, or at least in full form.

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has reportedly confirmed that WIndows 10 universal apps will expand to the Xbox One, further unifying the company's cross-platform ecosystem.

According to Microsoft Insider. Nadella made the confirmation at the dotNET Conference in Spain. Nadella apparently didn't reveal a timeline for Windows 10 universal app integration, but we may see the first apps show up as early as summer during the console's next major update.

Thanks to November's major New Xbox One Experience update, the console is now running on Windows 10--more specifically a customized OS kernal called OneCore.