Latest News - Page 2587

A new bit of artwork is rumored to be associated with Platinum Games' upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game...and it looks tubular.

The word is that Platinum Games, the Japanese devs who brought us such gaming greats as Bayonetta, Okami, and Viewtiful Joe, are apparently planning on spinning their magic on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. According to an Australian classification listing, the game will be called TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan, and Activision will step in as publisher.

Up until now we haven't received any actual confirmations that the project exists, however a new bit of artwork may indeed be attached to the game. If genuine, the Mutants in Manhattan promo art shows authentic IDW-flavored artwork that harks back to the early days of the triumphant comic series.

The Duke is taking a small leave of absence from GoG while they continue negotiations with the new IP holder for the right to sell Duke Nukem games on their service. He'll definitely be coming back, no doubt about it.

And to commemorate the sabbatical that he'll be taking, GoG is offering up a Duke Nukem bundle that's a whopping 90% off of it's normal price. Or you can get each individual game with a 75% discount, but only until the 31st of December, by which time they'll be gone for an indeterminate amount of time. If you own the game, it'll remain in your catalog, being DRM free of course.

The reason for the small hiatus is that Gearbox has recently purchased the full rights to the Duke Nukem franchise and so they have to negotiate to keep selling the games. It's just a normal part of business that unfortunately means we have to go sans Duke for a bit.

Samsung has just introduced a new three-layered approach to security for their SmartTV ecosystem to better secure any stored information, such as account details, payment details or any data being sent between it and the Internet.

This comes right after Samsung announced that they'd move more towards making their SmartTV's more of a hub for all of your IoT connected devices throughout your house. With that much data flowing between their TV's and being able to control your security system, lights and more, it's definitely a good idea to at least have a little encryption. Thankfully they're doing more than just a healthy dose of AES 256. Because of that centralized nature, security is important, Samsung said that "Protecting consumers' personal information is of the utmost importance to Samsung, both in terms of the company's values and what's needed for the continued growth and success of the IoT ecosystem."

GAIA works in three ways. First it separates the main operating system, the Tizen OS, from a secure space that can house all the important and personal bits of information and core services that's logically segmented in memory. This'll work in a similar way to how ARM's TrustZone and Intel's TXT works. The second piece is a built-in anti-malware service that can scan incoming and outgoing data, it'll also encrypt all traffic to and from the TV. The third part is much the same as the first, segmenting the OS in memory so that even if there is malware, it won't be able to touch the actual personal information.

OLED is one of those technologies that has real-world benefits and merit yet is still very much a marketing term used to help sell more units of a particular device. It's maturing though, and the iPhone has long been rumored to include one, since time immemorial. Now those rumors might actually, finally, turn into reality with the iPhone 7.

The Electronic Times is reporting that a partnership is developing between Samsung, LG and Apple supposedly for the production of flexible displays for the iPhone. Apparently there's already a signed agreement between the three parties for a 2-3 year contract with an influx of 15 trillion Won, or $12.8 billion USD, to ramp up production of the latest in OLED technology.

Perhaps OLED is being chosen so to create, or re-create as is often the case, a flexible product category in a way that's either different or just the same with a different and more zealous audience. Apple has indeed proved that you don't need to be first to have the most sought after product, you just have to bide your time and get it right.

Studio Wild Card has now has more daily players on the Xbox One than they do on Steam. Not an easy feat to accomplish when there are more PC gamers out there than Xbox One consoles. But they've been smashing some records with over 1 million players having downloaded ARK: Survival Evolved since December 16th.

And those 1 million people have spent a combined 200,000 real-life days surviving in the harsh landscape, taming the ancient wild beasts and generally exploring the treacherous and unforgiving environment. And in the next seven months before it's finally released in complete form they plan on adding a lot of new features to it. First on the list is a way to send feedback from inside the game itself. Then they'll add some of the most requested features; split-screen play, better gamepad customization, UI improvements, balance tweaks and of course all of the content that's already available on the PC.

The Xbox One is a great console in it's own right, yeah not everyone will agree, but there are still millions of potential players out there with one. ARK presents a very unique style of gameplay that isn't really found in anything else in the catalog at the moment, so perhaps that's but one small reason for the quick adoption. It's just too unique to pass up and it actually runs fairly well considering. It certainly doesn't hurt to be one of the first Unreal Engine 4 games that's actually playable on the platform either.

Halo: Reach is finally on the Xbox One through backwards compatibility, but it's not all roses for the newest game to be revived. The story is still intact and the graphics are still more than acceptable, but the framerate can't even reach Xbox 360 levels at the moment. Players everywhere are complaining of the poor performance.

But that's perhaps expected given the added overhead of running the game in a virtual machine, or emulator. This is a new implementation that'll take a bit of time to mature before performance is near a 1:1 ratio or even higher. That being said, the Xbox One generally is around 10FPS less than the Xbox 360 version in the same level. That's not insignificant.

What's more is that performance still takes a hit when your gameplay is played back through the "Theater Mode", though higher than live gameplay. That's supposed to be saved gameplay, so it should hit the same framerates, even though it doesn't. Curiously the Xbox 360, again, takes no performance hit.

Microsoft has been enjoying the huge success behind its Surface line of products, with the Windows 10-powered Surface Pro really battling it out with Apple and the iPad.

There hasn't been much competition against it, and while there are devices out there like it - there's nothing quite like the Surface Pro 4 right now. But according to the latest rumors, Samsung is working on a new 12-inch Windows 10-powered tablet that could compete against Microsoft's popular slate.

We are hearing about the 12-inch slate from Samsung thanks to it receiving Wi-Fi Certification, but all we know is that it will feature Wi-Fi connectivity, has Windows 10 installed, and goes by the product name of SM-W700. We might see it teased at CES next week in Las Vegas, too.

Batman v Superman is only three months away from its debut, with Entertainment Weekly getting its hands-on two new photos of the Batcave featured in the movie.

Ben Affleck is playing Bruce Wayne/Batman, with his new Batcave stocked to the walls with armor, weapons, cars, gadgets and more. This iteration of the Batcave is cemented in reality, with director Zack Snyder and his collaborators creating an entire line of next-gen technology and design choices that a billionaire would make.

Remember that Batman is long established in this world, so with a near unlimited budget, this is what he would do - especially given the 10-year-plus timeframe that Batman has been in the world for. Ben Affleck talked with EW, where he said: "[Batman] represents human beings, mortal men. In a world of Flashes and Aquamen and Supermen, there needs to be that guy. It's interesting that
 he became the 
leader of the Justice League in the books - I'm not sure how that'll play out here - but his humanity is also an asset".

After a while cooking in the oven, Thecus has announced the continued development of ThecusOS 7.0, with the release of the ThecusOS 7.0 Beta.

ThecusOS 7.0 was designed on a 64-bit architecture, works with HTML5, and offers countless improvements in not only the design but performance and the user experience. Thecus CEO Florence Shih explains: "Individuals and businesses alike demand storage solutions that provide productivity, efficiency, and agility. With the release of ThecusOS 7.0, we plan to transform user experience by providing an optimized, feature-rich platform for data management and application use". here are the main points on ThecusOS 7.0:

If you want to try ThecusOS 7.0 out, visit Thecus' live demo site, here.

With two Development Kits under their belt, Oculus is close to the Consumer Version of the Oculus Rift - coming in early 2016. Well, 'Chaoss86' has posted on the Oculus reddit, saying that he has tried out the Oculus Rift Consumer Beta (ECV7) headset - and had lots of positive things to say in his analysis of the headset.

When it comes to the screen inside of the Rift, the DK1 and DK2 had a very visible 'screen door' effect - but with the Consumer Beta (ECV7) headset "there is no pixel pattern of 'screen door' effect", according to Chaoss86. He added that the field of view is "considerably wider than the DK2" headset, adding that while the vertical field of view is "shorter at the top edge", it's "significantly wider horizontally".

Chaoss86 noted that the headset "rests very comfortably" on the head, with the front faceplate capable of moving away, and it's replaceable. This is a big deal, as Chaoss86 notes that "there was no issue with lenses fogging up", and that the Rift is "very light and feels very well built, the "material" seems to be made of some sort of dirt/water retardent and does not get dirty and it does NOT collect dandruff or other dirt".

Japanese researchers at the University of Tokyo's Department of Complexity Science and Engineering have developed a new type of hologram that can be touched. While there are limitations (a handshake, for example, is impossible), you could "stroke the hand of the other side and lightly touch each other freely at arbitrary parts of the hand, sharing the haptic sensation." You could also send someone an image of your face and let them touch it as though it's real.

The technology behind it is named Haptoclone, which employs "telehaptics". Essentially, a Kinect sensor captures the motion while ultrasound arrays emit ultrasonic radiation pressure, providing the desired result.

One of AVG's Chrome addons, Web TuneUP had a security hole that your could drive a tank into, something that could potentially let websites with malicious code in their CSS take control of your PC, though only in a trivial manner.

The exploit was originally found by Google, who reported it to AVG to have fixed. The initial fix wasn't quite good enough, so they just pushed out a new fix that seems to solve the issue. That being said, it still seems to be vulnerable to XSS attacks, though that should be fixed soon as well.

One generally thinks that antivirus companies are a bit more scrupulous and careful when designing their applications, but this mistake, and a mostly glaring one, calls to question the type of quality control and examination goes on before things go live. But it's best to fly without any addons, because all addons can potentially be security risks. Browse safe!

Over the holidays, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII got some love on PC with a new patch that adds support for extra high resolutions. Six new ones in total are now supported: 3840 x 2160 (4K), 3200 x 1800, 2880 x 1620, 2560 x 1440, 2400 x 1350, and 2160 x 1215. Note you can't select a higher resolution than your monitor supports for supersampling purposes.

As well, in response to negative user feedback about not being able to boot the game in Offline Mode, you can now do just that. Square seemed to think Steam Cloud support meant Offline Mode couldn't be supported too, but now all is clear and the game can be booted regardless of whether you have a connection or not.

Hit up Steam for the patch.

Windows 10 is now apparently installed on nearly 200 million devices and represents a total of 28.85% of the operating systems reported by Steam's Hardware Survey. That's some astounding growth, nearly being adopted faster than Windows 7 was.

Back in October Microsoft said that Windows 10 had already been installed on 110 million devices world-wide. That figure alone is fantastic, but now Microsoft is reporting, via Winbeta, that in two months Windows 10 has has another 90 million installs.

The holidays and the free-upgrade tactics that they aggressively marketed towards users of Windows 7 and above are likely factors in the huge adoption. But that figure doesn't separate installations and activations on new devices. Granted, those running Windows 8 and 8.1 have been very satisfied with the switch, though those on Windows 7 haven't always seemed to see the switch as an "upgrade" by all metrics.

Intel has just finished their acquisition of Altera, another chip designer that focuses on FPGA's, for a whopping $16.7 billion. This is one of the largest acquisitions that Intel has ever made, and is one that is designed to allow them to compete in a variety of new areas without having to completely reinvent the wheel.

FPGA cards have become highly useful for some industries, particularly the financial sector, for intense computational tasks. Drop-in cards are sometimes used that bypass the host machine and are connected directly to the network via an RJ45 connection. This'll allow them to enter that highly specialized market with products that are already developed. They also want to use this to help with their presence with connected devices and the Internet of Things.

In regards to the acquisition, Intel said that "We will apply Moore's Law to grow today's FPGA business, and we'll invent new products that make amazing experiences of the future possible â€" experiences like autonomous driving and machine learning." Intel continues by explaining that "In addition to strengthening the existing FPGA business, PSG will work closely with Intel's Data Center Group and IoT Group to deliver the next generation of highly customized, integrated products and solutions."

Microsoft's chief marketing officer Chris Capossela has stated on the Windows Weekly podcast that the end of of OneDrive unlimited storage announcement was rushed in order to do damage control.

"The way we did communication was very rushed because a major publication was going to print something that was very damaging and was not true, so we felt like we had to get in front of it," Capossela said.

"We had given ourselves a couple more months to get everything lined up [for removing unlimited storage] so we could do it all-in-one fell swoop. We were just not ready," he said, later continuing, "We just didn't do a good enough job ... to beat the story and get the communications in the shape they needed to be."

Far Cry Primal just received its official ESRB rating. The rating itself isn't so high at only Mature, though the synopsis provides some fairly gruesome details of what to expect, and it definitely isn't something you'd want your kids or younger siblings playing. We knew it was going to be violent, but perhaps not quite up to whats being described in the synopsis.

The game will feature blood and gore, intense violence, nudity and sexual content, though the last part won't be explicit, per-se. Based on the setting itself, it makes sense to include all manner of activities that might be conducted by our ancestors, so it's not unexpected. And of course we don't know just how these graphic scenes will be depicted, but they're graphic enough to warrant the rating.

Plextor is finally going to reveal the true successor to the highly successful M6e SSD, which also happened to be the very first PCIe based SSD as well. The new M8Pe will build upon that success with the addition of NVMe and a faster 4x PCIe 3.0 M.2 connection.

The new drive from Plextor will be their first foray into adding NVMe, and as a result, it'll have blistering fast read and write speeds. Plextor quotes it as being able to sustain 270,000 read IOPS at a 4KB transfer size and up to 150,000 write IOPS at the same transfer size. IOPS aren't exactly the metric of choice for gamers, but it does translate into smooth and fast performance. The new M8Pe will also make use of their PlexTurbo RAM caching and PlexCompressor, their software for compressing data to maximize space.

Aside from that spec, we don't know much more Hopefully we'll get much more information, such as read/write speeds, what kind of NAND it's using and what kind of controller they'll be putting to use here. This'll be a great addition to the very small stable of consumer NVMe enabled SSD's. Overall exciting news for those looking to upgrade their gaming rig.

It looks like some enterprising business people approached the Raspberry Pi Foundation with an odd business proposal, to pre-install their malware on the Raspberry Pi mini-computer.

In an email to the Foundation, a company, whose name was obviously redacted, was asking them to make available an exe file for installation (which wouldn't run on Linux anyway) in exchange for a sum of money for the amount of installations they detect.

This kind of tactic is surprising given the sheer audacity of asking a well-known organization, that prides itself on the many security applications of its minuscule box, outright to cheat its customers. It goes without saying that the Raspberry Pi Foundation didn't go along with their idea. It's even more hilarious that these peddlers of malware didn't seem to understand the platform being run on those devices. Maybe they'll ask Microsoft or Apple next?

What was the most pirated movie of 2015? Interstellar. Christopher Nolan's space epic, according to the best estimates, was downloaded 46.7 million times.

Coming in second place was Furious 7 with 44.7 million downloads, and Avengers: Age of Ultron with 41.5 million. Excipio tracks BitTorrent downloads, noting that there were 36.8 million downloads of Jurassic World, and 36.4 million for Mad Max: Fury Road. Here's the full list and their exact downloads:

These numbers wouldn't include downloads through VPNs, Usenet and other underground sources - so I'd expect these numbers to be quite conservative. Considering how Hollywood loves to bang on the 'piracy kills profits' drum, we have hundreds of millions of collective downloads here, yet Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the fastest movie to reach $1 billion, and before it Jurassic World make a Titanic amount of money.