Latest News - Page 2551

Sonic the Hedgehog is getting his own feature film, after nearly 25 years since he was first introduced to the world. Sony will be teaming up with Sega Sammy Group in order to realize the blue blur into a combination action and CGI film.

This is the first theatrical production with Sonic, though he's had plenty of other animated for TV dramatizations. Speaking to The World Folio, the Sega chief executive, Hajime Saito confirmed the movie, saying that "Sega Sammy Group is currently planning with Sony Pictures to create a live-action and animation hybrid Sonic The Hedgehog movie scheduled for release in 2018."

Sonic is celebrating his 25th anniversary this year and there has been much speculation as to whether a new game is in development as well. Sega even teased a new piece of the puzzle just yesterday, hinting at something special for this year.

North Korea set a major record over the weekend following the launch of their first satellite -carrying rocket. The problem, however, is that the Kwangmyŏngsŏng-4 satellite doesn't even work at all. And it's tumbling about in orbit, on a trajectory to burn-up in orbit. And smash into the Earth.

The US Department of Defense and other agencies around the world have analyzed the orbital object and have determined that it's in an unstable orbit, and absolutely incapable of functioning in any useful way. Other than as a proof of concept.

Of course officials from various countries and the U.N. Security Council are worried that this test is a display of their technological prowess and a secretive way to test technologies that could evolve into better intercontinental ballistic missiles, or even spy satellites.

Tomorrow's February update to DriveClub is bringing a whole new level of fun to the game. A hardcore handling mode and new tracks should help infuse some needed love into one of the better console racing games.

The new mode lets you turn off all traction control and any other driving assist features to let you truly feel the road. It also might make it that much easier to crash. But just imagine the fun you can have before the moment of impact. In case that isn't quite your thing, this update is also adding six variants of a new track, Scotland - old Town.

All of this is just a precursor to much larger expansions, No Limits and Suzuki, which are coming out on February 23rd. Those will add new cars, bikes and six extra events to play through. Those will be paid expansions, however, and this update with hardcore mode is completely free.

Rocket League has been promised to make it to the Xbox One this month, and it looks like they're releasing it right on schedule.

Starting on the 17th of February you'll be able to pick it up from the Xbox store for $19.99. The Xbox One version is getting all three of the previously released DLC packs bundled into it for free, adding a bit more value to it. That means you'll get six new cars and more decals than you'll know what to do with.

To sweeten the deal, prospective Xbox One owners will get two exclusive vehicles, the Armadillo, from Gears of War fame and a Warthog, from Halo. It would be blasphemy if these made their way to the PS4 or even the PC. They're also keen on adding in some garage items from Sunset Overdrive, again exclusive to the Xbox One.

Nine days before the beta for Hitman, the PC requirements have show up on the Steam page. Of course these could very well be subject to change after the beta reveals important data about performance. Check them out below to see if your system can handle it.

It looks like the more cores the better. And unfortunately we won't be able to play with DX12 or Vulkan quite yet, though those are rumored to be coming later on. But all you need for a good time is an R9 290 at a minimum or a GTX 770. Hopefully it's been a bit more optimized since the alpha version showed the Titan X struggling to keep up even at 1080P. We'll be in the beta, and we hope to see your thoughts too.

Minimum:

Following yesterdays restructuring news, Mad Catz has decided to layoff 37% of their workforce after seeing less than ideal profits.

That is, they had the second-highest quarterly sales for the year, with a 114% increase in profit year-over-year. That, however, was not enough to sustain operations given their primary focus in the peripheral market. Net income, likely due to the investment in Rockband 4 and in the creation of Star Citizen peripherals, which costs considerable R&D capital, was down by 10%. "Rock Band sell-through was lower than originally forecast resulting in higher inventory balances as well as lower margins due to increased promotional activity with retailers," Mad Catz said in their official statement.

The restructuring and layoffs are expected to save them around $5 million by the start of FY 2017. That should significantly increase their profitability, despite the negative impact on the surrounding job market.

Descent: Underground is bringing on the six-degree of freedom (6DoF) revolution. The fast-paced action packed Early Access game has inspired the creation of another game of its ilk, Overlord, which is being worked on by some of the co-creators of the original Descent game.

The new studio, Revival Productions, plans on launching a Kickstarter later today to help raise $300,000 to assist in the development of their dream. When all is complete, and there's no estimated date yet, they want to have it available on the PC, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

Inside you'll have a complete single-player experience with 15 levels designed specifically to take advantage of the unique FPS like physics and 6DoF movement. You'll be able to choose from a dozen different, upgradeable weapons, to fight against more than 12 different enemies and three intimidating bosses. Just because these can be a bit fast-paced even compared to CoD, there'll be five different difficulty levels to suit nearly every player.

The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic developer platform for all skill levels. The amount of amazing projects you can create is just staggering, but it's been somewhat limited by the meager processor under the hood. And the underused GPU. Experimental GPU acceleration has just been added to the latest release of Raspian, extending the possibilities immensely. Install at your own risk.

The Pi already had some fantastic gaming chops and was a natural choice for a small retro console. Those graphics you'd be running, from the SNES, NES, Genesis and Jaguar era's aren't terribly demanding. But opening up the GPU gives you more emulation possibilities. Not to mention the ability to play actual 3D games.

Not to mention all the other great sciency things you can now do more quickly with that otherwise unlocked GPU. It could potentially mean using a farm of Pi's (despite the relative inefficiency, but it has the cool factor) to compute novel things. They do warn, however, that installing the experimental driver could break other GPU functionality, and might even prevent the camera module from working properly. Not to mention messing up video playback support. But this is just the beginning stages of something quite nice that adds to the value of the minuscule devices.

NASA has announced that it will be providing MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) with one of its huge 6-foot, 290-pound humanoid robots. MIT will use it to test and develop for future space missions to Mars, and beyond.

CSAIL Principal Investigator Russ Tedrake will work on algorithms for the robot, which is known as "Valkyrie" or "R5". Tedrake's work will be part of NASA's upcoming Space Robotics Challenge, with its missions to create more dexterous autonomous robots that will help, or one day replace humans on "extreme space" missions.

NASA says that it's interested in humanoid robots because they can assist, or replace humans working in extreme space environments. For future missions, humanoid robots can do tasks that humans simply can't do - like out in space itself, where humans die with a lack of oxygen - and that little thing called gravity.

Most people would love to own a Tesla, but their price keeps them away from the average consumer - which is why the electric car maker is working on the Model 3.

According to Bloomberg, the Model 3 could be found as low as $25,000 when it arrives, after tax subsidies drops it from its starting price of $35,000. Tesla spokeswoman Khobi Brooklyn told Bloomberg: "We can confirm it's $35,000 before incentives. We haven't changed our minds".

If we consider the average American wants to spend $31,000 on a new car (according to an analysis by Salim Morsy of Bloomberg New Energy Finance), the $35,000 starting price on the Model 3 from Tesla is getting very close to that point. Adding in tax subsidies and hitting $25,000 - well then, it's looking very good for consumers.

We all know the pain of crappy battery life on our smartphones, as it doesn't matter if you own an Android smartphone or an iPhone, the battery barely lasts a day (100% brightness, heavy use). But, this could soon change thanks to fuel cell technology.

British fuel cell developer Intelligent Energy Holdings has pumped $7.6 million into developing a fuel cell small enough to be crammed into a smartphone. How does fuel cell technology work? Well, it converts hydrogen into electricity, with the only byproduct remaining being water vapor. This leads fuel cell to be environmentally friendly, too.

Julian Hughes, the acting Managing Director for Intelligent Energy's Consumer Electronics team, said: "Embedding fuel-cell technology into portable devices provides a solution to the current dilemma of battery life. With consumers demanding more and more from their phones, battery innovation has not kept up".

Uber is getting feisty in Foggy London Town, with plenty of London taxi drivers looking at Uber and seeing them as a threat to both their profession, and reputations. Well, Uber has been smartly sidestepping multiple roadblocks in the UK, and wants to work with taxi drivers and the taxi industry as a whole.

The company launched an UberTAXI option, something that helped taxi drivers find new passengers - and today, the company is now waiving the fee that it would take for each Uber-sourced passenger. This fee is 5%, and it will be dropped for the next 12 months.

Uber's Regional General Manager for the UK, Jo Bertram, said: "For Londoners it means they can order a traditional black cab at the push of a button and pay electronically through their phone, rather than worrying about cash. For taxi drivers it's a chance to get a fare when there are no passengers on the street or they're waiting in a long queue at a rank".

Micron has updated us on the status of GDDR5X, with the company receiving their first samples back from their fabrication plant, earlier than expected.

These samples are 100% operational at data rates passing 13Gbps, with the company still testing its GDDR5X production line, with GDDR5X samples being sent to partners in the spring (over the next few months). Right now, the 13Gbps-capable GDDR5X chips don't consume any more power than the current GDDR5 chips, so in certain scenarios, GDDR5X-based cards will actually use less power, when maximum VRAM bandwidth isn't required.

GDDR5 has an 8Gbps data rate, so the huge 13Gbps that GDDR5X has hit before it's even in volume production is a huge achievement by Micron. The company is hoping to reach 14Gbps, but hasn't said when this will happen. Micron explained on their blog: "Compared to GDDR5, these ultra-high data rates were achieved at an improved power consumption per transmitted bit due to VDD/VDDQ of 1.35V, while not gating maximum speed of the device. We also added features to improve system signal integrity: a new package with reduced ball pitch enables shorter PCB traces, which improves electrical performance".

If you're wanting to buy a new Oculus Rift-ready gaming PC, pre-orders for Rift-ready gaming PCs bundled with an Oculus Rift start on February 16 at 11AM Eastern, or 8AM Pacific.

As for the companies offering the Oculus Rift-ready gaming PCs, we have Alienware, Dell and ASUS - which will be selling their gaming PCs through Amazon, Best Buy and the Microsoft Store. If you do pre-order any of these gaming PCs, you'll get your PC sometime in April (with the first batch of Rift headsets shipping on March 28, this works out well).

The PCs on offer are normal desktop gaming PCs that meet the Oculus Rift specification, but you'll score yourself a discount if you've already pre-ordered an Oculus Rift (between $100-$200 off). Considering the cheapest Rift-ready PC is $949 after the discount, you can get into VR gaming for less than $1K, which is great.

Microsoft has been pretty secretive about the contents of its Windows 10 updates, but that's no longer the case as of today. The company has launched a new section of its website which details all updates in changelog form, starting with two updates released today (one for each Windows 10 branch).

"We're committed to our customers and strive to incorporate their feedback, both in how we deliver Windows as a service and the info we provide about Windows 10," they write. "In response to this feedback, we're providing more details about the Windows 10 updates we deliver through Windows Update. You'll see a summary of important product developments included in each update, with links to more details. This page will be regularly refreshed, as new updates are released."

Today's update includes some minor quality of life changes alongside some potentially major security improvements. For the details on it and future updates, hit the source.

As reported last week, JRPG Tales of Symphonia is in pretty bad shape on PC, sporting a default rendering resolution of 720p and 30FPS lock, among other issues. Fortunately modder Kaldaien has come to the rescue again, releasing a fix similar to the one for Tales of Zestiria.

At present, TSFix gets rid of the framerate limiter, adds a fullscreen borderless windowed mode option, integrates Durante's neat character outline mod, matches the rendering resolution to the resolution you've chosen, and cures crashes. Not too shabby for version 0.1.1.

Download the mod at the source. Note Kaldaien is busy modding Dragon's Dogma and also says Symphonia's VMProtect DRM is making modding the game more difficult than it should be, so don't expect too much more to come, or at least not quickly.

ViewSonic had quite the lineup of gaming monitors at CES, breaking into that segment with quite the bang. Some of those monitors, of the FreeSync variety, are already available in stores even.

The star, of course, is the XG-2700-4K, a 27" 2160P, UHD, monitor that packs FreeSync compatibility with a 60Hz refresh rate. Around back it has a DisplayPort 1.2a connection, mini DP as well as one HDMI 2.0 and 2 HDMI 1.4a inputs FreeSync is only supported via DisplayPort, but with the announcement of FreeSync over HDMI, it's possible to provide that functionality with a firmware update. Beyond that, ViewSonic has their SmartSync technology that seems to a platform agnostic, scalar-integrated, method of keeping the best refresh rate based on what's being input. It does sound a lot like AdaptiveSync, however.

The panel they're using is what they've termed a SuperClear IPS panel that has a light anti-glare coating on top. It's likely an 8-bit + FRC LG panel. Input lag is supposedly very low allowing for the FreeSync to have a much more pronounced effect, even with it "only" being 60Hz. ViewSonic is also touting their Black level stabilization technology, which controls the contrast and makes darker scenes more easily visible. And what else is there?

A few days after learning Samsung's Galaxy S7 Edge (concept picture below) would feature a 3,500mAh battery comes an FCC filing confirming the original rumor was close but not quite on. Rather than 3,500mAh, the Edge will feature a 3,600mAh battery, according to a screenshot included in the filing.

Unfortunately, the Galaxy S7 doesn't feature such a screenshot, so we can't confirm the previous 3,000 mAh battery rumor.

If you are looking forward to the S7 or S7 Edge, be sure to mark your calendar for February 21, when Samsung will reveal both phones officially.

Bethesda has just rolled out Fallout 4's newest update on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which significantly boosts in-game performance and squashes pesky bugs.

Since consoles don't have access to mods (yet), Fallout 4 gamers are pretty much at Bethsoft's mercy for any kind of alterations or fixes. While the new v 1.3 update doesn't add any new content perse, it does inject a host of significant visual and stability overhauls to the game. Now Fallout 4's draw distances and object fading have been dramatically increased on both systems, making the Commonwealth look much better.

Sure the PS4/XO flavors won't get the new HBAO+ ambient occlusion setting on PC, but it's still great to see that Bethsoft is still making huge visual tweaks for consoles. As for actual mod support, the studio says an announcement will be made "soon". Let's hope that the news comes sooner rather than later, and console players aren't stuck waiting until Bethesda's E3 2016 showcase.

Final Fantasy IX is finally out on iOS and Android after being teased back at the end of December. We were unsure whether it would be a staggered Japanese then western release, but it looks like it's now available worldwide.

This is one game that has been long in the making, much anticipated and actually wanted. From what can be gathered, it's not just any old port, but the controls have been sufficiently optimized to allow for some good mobile gaming, and the graphics are all nicely upgraded to be high resolution. Some cheats are also available if you need them, like turning off random encounters or even a fast-forward button.

RPG's with savestates make for great on-the-go games because you can theoretically easily pick up where you left off. If you can put it down. And if you can't, I don't think anyone would blame you.