Latest News - Page 2535

Alan Wake's sequel has been rumored to be around for some time, though we haven't heard very much about it and we actually thought it was cancelled for good at one point. But Remedy apparently isn't done with the survival horror just yet.

A trademark application for "Alan Wake's Return" has been spotted in the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (the trademark office of the EU), having been applied for by Remedy themselves on the 23rd of February.

A trademark application can come at many points in the development cycle depending on how secretive the company wants to be. If the IP is already too big, they may apply for several potential marks before any work is done to secure the right to use the name they finally choose. Smaller projects might wait because the public nature of the system tends to expose anything in the works. In this case it might even simply be related to the "return" of Alan Wake to the scene through the backwards compatible version. Hopefully it's an actual real, bona-fide, new game though.

"VR is now a reality and both the F131 and NOMAD VR are ready to fully immerse you into any virtual adventure you seek" says MAINGEAR CEO Wallace Santos in a recently issued press release. This PC company has jumped on the VR-ready hype train by releasing its F131 desktop and NOMAD VR notebook for virtual reality operations.

The NOMAD VR packs a serious punch as you may expect, bragging some similar specifications to the Eurocom Sky X9E that I wrote about earlier today. Within this model, you can expect to find an Intel i7-7600K, a desktop NVIDIA GTX 980 and a 1080p G-Sync ready display.

Further packed with HD Foster Audio speakers that are tuned by Soundblaster Cinema, USB 3.1 Type-C, an integrated webcam and more, this model is shaping up to be another killer portable gaming rig. While I say 'portable', it's important to remember that you're not expected to sit this in your knees while waiting for long-haul flight connections, but it's certainly much easier than carrying a desktop PC around.

Eurocom is known for making some incredibly bulky and powerful gaming and emergency server laptops, with its latest edition being along the same lines. Meet the Sky X93, a portable gaming device that has been marketed as VR-ready by the manufacturer.

With a plethora of different internal options depending on your needs and budget, the top tier model shown off in a recent press release contains no less than an Intel Core i7-6700K, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, 64 GB DDR4 memory and an impressive 4K 17.3" display. Explained as a "desktop laptop," there are no mobile processors or video cards being used here, with Eurocom being well known for releasing desktop components within its laptop models.

Running on an Intel Z170 Chipset, Eurocom says that this device is ready for any Oculus Rift or HTC Vive task you with to throw at it, further packing support for M.2 PCIe SSDs and the previously mentioned 4k UHD IPS display.

Things are heating up for Ubisoft leading up to the launch of The Division, with Naughty Dog using concept art for Assassin's Creed in their new trailer for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

In the trailer, concept art from Assassin's Creed was spotted - by Assassin's Creed Head of Content, Azaïzia Aymar. Aymar posted it to Twitter, tweeting: "Woooow Uncharted 4 using one of ACIV artwork in their trailer... I get the "thief title now!". Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal, Alex Hutchinson, tweeted: "Doing your own concept art is twice the work? ;)" - so, there's a few burns headed towards Naughty Dog. Did the Uncharted developer respond? Yes, yes they did.

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann said in a statement: "In our eagerness to get the story trailer out we made a regrettable mistake and didn't thoroughly vet the art work used for an in-game painting.We've already updated the trailer. We hold all artistry in high regard and take full responsibility for having allowed this to happen. We want to sincerely apologize to everyone at Ubisoft, the Assassin's Creed team, the original artist, and our fans".

Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge smartphones at Mobile World Congress earlier this week, with DisplayMate putting it under its equipment to test out just how good the new 5.1-inch QHD display really is.

Well, DisplayMate walked away more than impressed. The company said that the Galaxy S7 features the best OLED display its ever seen, with subtle improvements in brightness and contrast over its predecessor. The AMOLED display on the Galaxy S7 is 24% brighter than the Galaxy S6 display, which is important for visibility in various conditions. Contrast has been improved, with the Galaxy S7 falling closer to the larger Galaxy Note 5 - but offers higher pixel density than its larger sibling.

Samsung introduced Personalized automatic brightness with the Galaxy S7, a new feature which remembers the brightness settings you've chosen through ambient light levels. This results in the Galaxy S7 adjusting its brightness to your specific personal preferences, something else DisplayMate liked to see.

Valve has just raised the bar when it comes to the prize pool for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with a 400% increase on what the CS:GO prize pool was last year. Valve has just raised its prize pool for CS:GO's championship events to $1 million.

Last year, Valve had $250,000 on offer so the increase is only going to whet the appetites of CS:GO professionals. The first CS:GO event to make benefit of the increased prize pool is Major League Gaming Columbus, which takes place in Ohio's state capital between March 29 and April 3. According to a post on the official CS blog, the increased prize pool was a required response to the "incredible rate" of CS:GO's influence on the pro-gaming scene.

In a statement, Valve said: "CS:GO tournaments are now among the largest esports events in the world, drawing global audiences of millions of viewers, filling massive venues, and garnering higher prize pools. Professional CS:GO has grown, and the CS:GO Major Championships are about to grow with it".

Continuing its acquisition spree, Microsoft is set to snap up Xamarin, a company considered to possess the best mobile developer tools and resources anywhere. In combination with Visual Studio (which already made use of Xamarin) and the recently acquired Azure, this deal puts Microsoft in an excellent position from a mobile development standpoint. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Xamarin's platform supports iOS, Android, and Windows, so users of all kinds will benefit from this deal. The company boasts over 15,000 customers in 120 countries, including over 100 Fortune 500 companies. Yeah, they're kind of a big deal.

Plans relating to the acquisition will be revealed in a few weeks at the Microsoft //Build conference in late March/early April as well as at Xamarin Evolve in late April.

MSI is taking Intel's mini-STX standard and running with it, with the CUBI 2, an upgradeable PC the size of a NUC, or about two decks of cards side-by-side.

The PC world is getting turned on it's head once again after it was rumored quite awhile ago that Intel was going to do away with socketed CPU's completely. Now even miniscule 5"x5" PC's have socketed, upgradeable CPU's. Granted, you're limited by the external power-supply and should probably stick to the T-series of Skylake processors. It has more connectivity than you can shake a stick at with three USB 2.0, one USB 3.1 Type-C in the front, two USB 3.1 in the rear, a top USB 2.0 port for quick-charging, HDMI, audio-out, ethernet, DisplayPort out, and an SD card reader as well.

This is a pretty significant move, especially with the idea of being able to able to have it sitting next to, or hidden close to, your TV or another display. It can actually be powerful enough to do work with room to spare. Plus it's a way to invest in a platform that can be upgraded later if more power is needed. That alone is an idea worth visiting for those that want tiny, but not limited. Imagine a day when you can hook up a GPU via USB 3.1 Type C, then this could be the ultimate in teeny gaming PC's.

T-Mobile product expert Des takes a dip while showing you exactly what to expect out of the Samsung Galaxy S7 in the unboxing video below. That's one way to show off water resistance, right?

Throughout the video, Des takes a call from his friend Darrel, snaps pictures, and streams TV, all the while indecipherably talking up the features (how about that 200GB microSD expandable storage?). A couple of things not mentioned in the video: The S7 includes caller ID (the traditional kind) and fraud and scam call flagging by default, as well as a very respectable 3000mAh battery.

What was originally thought impossible -- 60 FPS in JRPG Tales of Symphonia -- is coming to fruition. The major obstacle to modder Kaldaien was the game's VMProtect DRM, but recently, against all odds, he has managed to circumvent it for modding purposes. Thus, the door has been opened for a higher framerate cap, à la Tales of Zestiria.

Kaldaien wrote Monday that "work is progressing on 60 FPS support" for his TSFix mod. Given the steady progress he's made to date, it wouldn't be surprising to see that support arrive this week or next.

TSFix is currently at version 0.5.3. Since we last looked at it, it's added performance improvements, fixed aspect ratio scaling, enhanced anti-aliasing and character outlines, and more. Hit the source if you want the full details on it and to download it.

The newest trailer for The Division is a spectacular showpiece designed to flaunt the high performance and graphical ability the PC is capable of. It's running at 60FPS, encoded in 60FPS and looks quite smooth.

In the video, Ubisoft goes through the different effects and options that can be turned on for the PC, from dynamic global illumination, realistic weather particles and even real-time reflections. All of those combine to make for a visceral experience that's quite nice. The beta might have been a bit sparse on content (as beta's should be, they don't want to give away the whole thing at once, right?) but it looked good and was stable.

And now they're selling you on more reasons to either upgrade your PC or just buy it on PC over consoles. Despite the seeming lack of love that the PC has had in the past from other developers, the platform is far from "dead" and is enjoying good advancements, however small they might be. An really, these technical optimizations for The Division look great. Even if they're been slightly downgraded from what we saw initially.

Announced in a recent email, Uber has launched its puppies initiative, stating that it has"teamed up with Purina's Pets at Work mission and local animal shelters to bring UberPUPPIES to offices in 8 cities across Australia."

Pets at Work is a campaign conducted by pet food company Purina and is explained as a way to help keep your staff happy, offering workplaces the ability to create a pet-friendly office in order to boost morale and keep furry companions around throughout the working week.

If you're not in the right working conditions or ready to take on a pet full time, Uber will now let you borrow one for a short while. Simply select the puppies option on your Uber app and they will deliver to you a puppy for 15 minutes of delightful play time. Setting you back $40 in total, Uber has stated that it will be supporting the Animal Welfare League of Queensland, Australia as part of this promotion.

You've probably already seen the upgraded like button array already, likely due to being on Facebook at this very moment. But if you haven't had a chance, it seems that Facebook is adding a bit more to their Like button, letting users pick from five other emotes to express how they feel about a particular post, and they're calling them "Reactions".

Liking a post has been a way to acknowledge a post, interacting with it in a one-dimensional way that sometimes can be misinterpreted to mean something it doesn't. Do I "Like" the death of a friends grandmother? Well, now you can choose an emote to indicate how that post makes you feel. So it just got a bit less awkward.

The search for a better way to communicate actually was a long road by the team behind the new Reactions. The team, led by Sammi Krug, did a lot of research into how people tend to communicate, with stickers and with words, to determine the best mix of reactions to add. "People come to Facebook and share all kinds of things," Krug said. "And we kept hearing feedback from people that there wasn't an easy way to express empathy for these different kinds of posts."

Through the magic of a well designed JavaScript engine you can play with a Windows 98 virtual machine right in your browser, playing some classic minesweeper just as it was originally intended.

The emulator is capable of only basic x86 emulation at the moment, but the small program is a great example of just how capable JavaScript, in the hands of adept programmers, can actually be. You won't be able to do anything more than simple tasks, and can't play retro games, but it's certainly a very interesting project.

What's more, the individual whose made the project has also been able to emulate Windows 1.01 and certain versions of Linux that all work just swimmingly. So if you're of the generation that never knew the glory of Windows 98, now's your chance to play around without having to install it in your own virtual machine. And you can easily dabble in Linux without the need for a Live-CD and even dabble in FreeDOS.

Windows Spotlight is a great feature that can actually be useful at times. Showing you some nice artistic photographs on your lockscreen and even suggesting some surprisingly useful apps on your start menu. A recent update seems to have added some annoying ads that go beyond simple suggestions. But thankfully there's a way to turn it off.

In fact, it's very simple. But it also means you won't get a rotating gallery of beautiful photos when you start-up. You might find ads magically appearing about games or even other products that aren't even related to Microsoft. Just follow the below steps and you'll be just fine, sans ads.

The new trailer for Hitman is a very interesting journey through the many exploits of Agent 47 in the previous games, which constitute the future from the point-of-view of the Hitman beta. In it, we see some of the classic hits from his "future," from the assassination of Franz Fuchs in the thermal baths of the Hotel Gallard in Budapest to some of his other iconic moments.

What the trailer is trying to show is the journey that you're about to help Agent 47 begin. It goes through the 20 year gap between the prologue mission in the beta of Hitman that eventually leads to the Paris mission at the beginning of the new game. It grabs onto that nostalgic feeling, showing you some of the finer moments from the previous games, bridging the gap between the old and the new.

Packed with 118 parts and the capability to construct three different chassis types depending on your needs, the AeroCool Dream Box DIY kit is a seriously interesting invention.

While you're provided with a plethora of parts including aluminum frame pipes, various connectors, mounting C-rings and more, this creativity kit comes at a price - being $149.90 MSRP. Released as part of AeroCool's 'Free Your Imagination' contest, this pack also comes with in-depth manuals and an installation video for those looking for some inspiration.

While not completely unlimited in use, this three-chassis kit may be a sign of things to come. Interested? It's available to buy right now.

The actual underlying story for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End has finally been revealed in a new trailer released by Sony. Retirement didn't quite work out so well for Nathan Drake it seems.

If you're good at your job, then you might not be able to retire at all, and in Drake's case, you could be called to action again by the very nature of your expertise. Treasure, especially the kind of haul that seems to be at stake here, is a dangerous motivator. And Drake was born for this, so why wouldn't he want to get involved?

The blurb below the video reads: "Several years after his last adventure, retired fortune hunter Nathan Drake is forced back into the world of thieves. With the stakes much more personal, Drake embarks on a globe-trotting journey in pursuit of a historical conspiracy behind a fabled pirate treasure. His greatest adventure will test his physical limits, his resolve, and ultimately what he's willing to sacrifice to save the ones he loves."

'Bleepin' Janitor' from the self-stated free technology community 'Bleeping Computer' purchased a SpyHunter License and unleashed a review to all readers on the forum. Enigma (SpyHunter creators) isn't happy with the negative review and has threatened legal action.

Tech Power Up reported that Bleeping Computer says Enigma has been "bullying" this community into altering the scathing review, with a threat that non-censorship will result in a lawsuit.

While Bleeping Computer has publicly stated that the lawsuit is a waste of time it is still crowdfunding for an official defense, as seen in the pop-up advertisement above - something that appears when you first open the website. Enigma Software claims that this review is slanderous towards its software, while Bleeping Computer states that it is exercising its right to free speech by reviewing and reporting on a product as they see fit.

The first Hitman beta was a success all around, delighting fans with a very short sneak preview of the full game. It also helped IO-Interactive discover issues that they want to perfect before it launches. So a new beta that's exclusive to PS Plus members on the PS4 is being launched on March 4th, just before it releases.

The beta, while mostly stable and graphically quite good looking, revealed a few weaknesses and bugs that need to be addressed before being released. Backend issues could spell doom with a larger player-base, and while they've implemented fixes, it's time to put those to the test before it's game time.

"Our initial beta was an extremely helpful moment for our new HITMAN game, as it gave us great insight into how the server game mechanics function under pressure. A lot of those pressure points are currently being strengthened for release," said Hannes Seifert, Studio Head at Io-Interactive. "Now Sony have given us the opportunity to go even bigger to validate some of the initial things we saw. Therefore we are inviting everyone who is a PlayStation Plus member to try the same beta and you don't have to pre-order the game. This will allow us to really stress test our server setup, which is a crucial element for us to get just right."