Latest News - Page 2590

Today Battlefront fans got a big shock when EA revealed that the new Star Wars shooter won't have server browsers, and instead will be based entirely on a new matchmaking system.

"Star Wars Battlefront will not offer a server browser, but will utilize a new skill-based matchmaking system," EA's community manager Sledgehammer70 said in a Reddit post. Essentially it looks as if even PC gamers won't be able to create and join custom maps and gametypes on a server, instead being stuck in a matchmaking playlist.

EA says that gamers will still be able to join and create party lobbies with their friends, but the studio still hasn't revealed any concrete details on their new system. Reddit users accuse EA and DICE of "console-izing" PC gaming with this move, and one user says that regional gamers might get the short end with matchmaking: "Australian MatchMaking has never worked properly here we get so many out of region players that just ruin the server."

Not only are we looking for US-based news reporters, but we are on the lookout for a US-based video professional, too. TweakTown is wanting to step into the world of video content in a big way, so we need a professional video guy or girl, too.

The candidate would need extensive experience in video content, with previous bodies of work as an example before applying. Preferably, we are looking for someone who is already in the industry who might work for a smaller site or company (or even on your own) and wants to join the big leagues, but you don't need to be intimidated by this. You might do kick ass work and just haven't been noticed yet, so this is your chance!

We would need someone based in the US who is willing to travel to trade shows and expos around the world, including CES in Vegas, E3 in LA, Computex in Taipei, and more. We are looking for someone who has considerable experience in YouTube, Vessel, and more - and has no issues dealing with deadlines. There's no super amount of technology expertise required, but this would be an advantage.

TweakTown is expanding! We are on the lookout for a US-based news reporter that will join our team. The job is pretty straight forward and easy, and it's a ton of fun, too.

The candidate will of course need to be based in the United States, with the West Coast being preferred. The candidate would be required to have above average English and grammar skills, and a large interest in technology and games. Previous experience isn't required, but it is definitely favorable. You'll of course need Internet access, a computer of some sort to write on, and the time required (which varies depending on your typing speed, and how quickly you get used to writing news, hopefully for a living).

This is a paid position, where you'll start off on a trial for 1-2 weeks before joining our awesome news crew led by yours truly. We are looking for a serious candidate, so if you're working a full-time job, you'll have to think twice before applying. The candidate would also have to be excited about attending local technology and game trade shows, such as the Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas, E3 in LA, and more.

Fallout 4 is a pretty complex and dynamic game, and lots of gamers are stumped when it comes to the new perk system. Below we make an educated guess based off of data and speculation on how Fallout 4's perk and leveling system might work.

A recent OXM interview with a Bethesda rep has prompted a dizzying level of confusion in the Fallout community, leading to rampant speculation and millions of gamers scratching their heads. "You'll still level up via XP, and each level increase will still give you a point to spend on a perk, but now those perks have varying XP levels of their own," says the Bethesda employee. "It's perk-ception, essentially, and means that, should you theoretically play long enough to max out every tier of every single one gaining untold buffs and no doubt all kinds of horrendous real-world illnesses in the process - you'll top off with a total of 275."

Perk-ception? Perk level ups? How does that work exactly? Also does this mean there actually is a level cap after all? I believe the concept is pretty hard to explain in just words, and the rep was put on the spot and wasn't prepared to adequately explain the system. Which makes sense, as Todd Howard says Bethsoft won't spoil Fallout 4, and this could ruin some surprises.

The Toshiba Digital Products Division (DPD) has announced the Satellite Radius 12, a new compact 2-in-1 12.5" convertible laptop supporting a 4K UHD display.

The laptop supports the 12.5-inch diagonal IPS touchscreen display (3840x2160), and runs the 6th Gen Intel Core processor. It weighs just 2.8 pounds, and has been designed to be an ultimate travel companion for power users on the go. It also supports Laptop, Tablet, Tabletop, Presentation and Audience modes.

"Toshiba has made significant investments to deliver an exceptional customer experience across its portfolio of Windows devices," said Peter Han, VP of worldwide OEM at Microsoft. "Toshiba's Satellite Radius 12 provides an optimized experience that allows customers to take advantage of some of the exciting new features in Windows 10 including Windows Hello."

It might be the introduction of high performance unlocked K-series mobile processors from Intel, but EVGA has decided to enter the gaming notebook market. At IDF, Intel hinted that EVGA would be bringing a gaming notebook to market featuring a new Skylake mobile CPU.

EVGA is traditionally known for their aftermarket video cards and motherboards, and they have a large following of enthusiasts and gamers who want the best hardware in their computers. I contacted our EVGA representative to get more information or even confirmation. According to EVGA marketing, "[EVGA] are working on a new 17-inch thin gaming notebook with very high-end hardware. Plan to launch late this year/early next. 100% EVGA design from the ground up".

EVGA is known for their NVIDIA-based GPUs and Intel-based motherboards, so we should expect an Intel CPU and the possibility of a discrete mobile GPU from NVIDIA. We could even go as far as to expect Intel's first K-SKU mobile CPU in EVGA's gaming notebook, but at this time there is no solid confirmation of what hardware will be used in their gaming notebook.

It looks like NVIDIA is really ramping things up for GRID 2.0, so that it can power an insane amount of virtual desktops thanks to its Maxwell GPU architecture.

GRID 2.0 was announced at the VMworld conference yesterday, where NVIDIA unveiled two new video cards based on their Maxwell architecture. The first is a dual-GPU, high-end card in the form of the Tesla M60 while the other is a single-GPU, high-end offering in the Tesla M6. Starting with the Tesla M60, we have 4096 CUDA cores, 16GB of GDDR5 and 7.4 TFLOPS of single precision performance. The Tesla M60 is capable of handling 36 simultaneous H.264 1080p30 streams at once and uses up to 300W of power.

The Tesla M6 features just 1536 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR5 and it can handle 18 simultaneous H.264 1080p30 streams at once. It arrives on a bare board on its own, using up to 100W of power. NVIDIA is coy on pricing at the moment, with both of the new Maxwell-based Tesla offerings being made available on September 15.

Intel took everyone by surprise when they launched the Broadwell 5775C and 5675C desktop SKUs around Computex. The CPUs not only took the crown with the fastest desktop integrated graphics, but they also were able to overclock.

Building upon the success of their Iris Pro line with integrated eDRAM, Intel is adding eDRAM to their more affordable Iris lineup as well. For Skylake, both GT3 and GT4 integrated graphics will feature 22nm eDRAM. The eDRAM will be treated as normal system memory (instead of cache), but should prove to be beneficial for graphics performance.

While the 5775C and 5675C were both launched months ago, only recently did they start to sell. Their prices are also sky high, but we hear that there is demand for desktop CPUs with strong integrated graphics. The overclocking potential of the "C" SKUs was also low, the CPUs didn't overclock well. Intel told us that this was due to the mobile nature of Broadwell; transforming the BGA CPU to an LGA CPU proved to be cumbersome because of the eDRAM implementation and expected overclocking capabilities.

As of August 9th Intel had shipped 1 million Skylake CPUs worldwide. The new CPUs will go on sale on September 1st in Asia and in 6 weeks will be available worldwide. While Intel already launched their K series Skylake desktop SKUs last month, they are now announcing the launch of their entire introductory Skylake lineup including both desktop and mobile segments.

Intel predicts that Skylake will last approximately 4 years, meaning that we should expect even more SKUs in the future. A lot of microarchitecture information was disclosed during technical sessions at IDF and I already wrote that up here.

Skylake features a broad range of designs. The microarchitecture can scale all the way from Y-Series mobile chips (SoC) all the way to Xeons and powerful desktop models. The new lineup will feature a Y-Series for tablets and compute sticks, a U-Series for mini PCs and notebooks, an H-Series for more powerful mobile devices, and the S-Series for desktop. The desktop SKUs will maintain the same Core i3/i5/i7 naming scheme. The CoreM lineup has been further segmented into Core M3/M5/M7 to better identify performance and power packages.

Device manufacturer ARCHOS has unveiled the ARCHOS Diamond Plus, a larger screened model of the Diamond smartphone. ARCHOS plans to show off the device during IFA in Berlin, which starts later this week.

The device features a 5.5" FHD IPS screen (1920x1080) that is powered by an Octa-Core A53 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB internal storage. It runs the Google Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system. The phone itself will be released sometime in November and will cost around $273 at launch.

"There's no reason customers should have only one model option in our quest to offer 4G/LTE smartphones to a greater public," said Loic Poirier, CEO of ARCHOS. "Offering a larger-screened product with a slightly different design gives ARCHOS customers more diversity and choice."

DICE is planning on conducting an expansive beta test for Star Wars: Battlefront that will let players test out the iconic 40-player Walker Assault mode.

According to EA's new devblog update, the Star Wars: Battlefront beta will roll out "early October" across PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The beta will let gamers will clash in the epic Battle of Hoth in the prestigious 20 vs. 20 Walker Assault mode, which pits the Galactic Empire against the Rebel Alliance for some old-fashioned iconic wide-scale chaos: snowspeeders tripping down AT-AT's, groundforces gunning down snowtroopers and the skies will be alight with lasers as the two sides dogfight in the clouds. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader will join the battlefield as hero characters, wreaking havoc in the name of the Light and Dark sides of the Force.

According to the latest data from JPR, NVIDIA has pushed into owning 81.9% of the GPU AIB market. AMD on the other hand, dropped from 22% to just 18% this quarter, and when looking at the year-over-year data, AMD has dropped down from 38%.

JPR's report finds that total AIB shipments decreased this quarter, down to 9.4 million units. AMD's quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments decreased by a sharp 33.3%, while NVIDIA's dropped 12%. JPR also noted that the "demand for high-end PCs and associated hardware from the enthusiast and overclocking segments has bucked the downward trend and given AIB vendors a needed prospect to offset declining sales in the mainstream consumer space".

I feel quite privileged to have all of my systems powered by SSDs, with the biggest ones being 480GB. But those 1TB SSDs are just huge, and by the looks of things, they're only going to get bigger, and very quick.

Intel is working with Micron in their joint collaboration in IMFT, where the two giants will be making some sweet NAND together. With that in mind, Intel is now projecting to have 30TB SSDs by 2018, and passing 100TB by the end of the decade. Hitting 100TB+ SSDs isn't going to be easy, with Intel expecting datacenters and the enterprise markets to move over to flash-based storage quicker and quicker.

As it stands, flash-based storage is used to cache "hot" data, but Intel wants to see SSDs used for much more than that in the enterprise. The chipmaker sees NVMe-based solutions taking over, thanks to their reduced overheads and increased speeds and lowered latency.

Sony has just announced the Australian availability of its most exciting tablet yet, the Xperia Z4 Tablet. The Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet is the world's lightest and thinnest 10-inch tablet, which is quite the achievement for Sony, especially against Samsung and Apple.

The Xperia Z4 Tablet features a 10.1-inch 2K display, an 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor and weighs in at just 393g (13.8oz) for the 4G-capable model while the Wi-Fi-only model weighs 389g (13.7oz). As usual, the Xperia Z4 Tablet features IP68 waterproof protection, with dust tight rating with cap-less microUSB charging.

Sony is selling the new Xperia Z4 Tablet through Telstra for an RRP of $888, or on a 24-month plan through Go Mobile Broadband for $62 per month.

With the Final Fantasy 7 Remake on the way, legendary Square Enix alum Tetsuya Nomura takes us back to the late 90's to discuss how one of the most iconic juggernauts in video game history was made.

Final Fantasy 7 was a pivotal moment in history for Square Enix and gaming as a whole: the game rode the mighty wave set forth by the original PlayStation, ushering in a new era of 3D visuals that breathed true life into the game via cinematics, polygons, and characters with real heart (you teared up during Aerith's infamous scene, admit it).

"The original game was the first time in Final Fantasy that all of the creation of characters and environments was rendered in 3D," Nomura said in an interview with PlayStation Magazine. "It was a time of big changes when we went from sprites to something more lifelike and in 3D, and it was just such an iconic moment. And we just packed so much playable content for players to experience, I feel that maybe that's one of the great reasons that that game had such an impact on fans. We were able to create a new game-playing experience. And on top of that, the characters. Not only the transition of 2D to 3D polygons, just that their personalities were more drawn out, they were more human and you can attach emotionally to those characters."

It turns out that many people aren't afraid of fallout from Ashley Madison's high-profile data breach, with "hundreds of thousands" of new members reportedly signing up for the site in the past week. In addition, 87,596 women also signed up for the infidelity website, according to Avid Life officials.

"Last week alone, women sent more than 2.8 million messages within our platform," according to Avid Life Media.

"Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated. Despite having our business and customers attacked, we are growing." However, CEO Noel Biderman stepped down as head of the company, and additional shakeups are possible - though it looks like a bit of notoriety could be helping the website.

Final Fantasy XV will be released sometime in 2016, it has been confirmed, though an exact launch date hasn't been revealed just yet. Square Enix also shared new concept art and gameplay video for gamers to take a look at:

"We're proud of our technical capabilities and the work we've done to help shape the open-world genre," said Christofer Sundberg, co-founder and chief creative officer at Avalanche Studios. "We hold the FINAL FANTASY franchise, and the team working on it, in such high regard and are excited to be a part of the next chapter."

Earlier this month, it was confirmed Final Fantasy XV would receive a simultaneous game launch across the world.

It looks like Konami is quite impressed by the PC performance of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, with a company executive recently noting that gameplay is "stunning."

"The PC version is stunning," said Jon Edwards, marketing executive at Konami, in a statement to MCV. "We are so pleased to be able to release it alongside the console games, and that Kojima Productions has worked so hard to make it such a strong version."

Edwards also had this to add: "Like Ground Zeroes, the graphics are stunning in the new 4K mode, while the scale and online elements within the game are a perfect fit for the format. Metal Gear Solid V is such an entertaining game, we always wanted it to play strengths of its host format, and the PC edition certainly does that. It is a stunning conversion."

Microsoft has just unveiled a new upgraded Xbox One model that comes with a roomy 1TB hybrid hard drive and the modular Elite controller.

The new Xbox One Elite SKU is priced at $499 and features a 1TB hybrid solid-state hard disk that blends speed and storage. Microsoft boasts that the SSDHD improves initial boot up speeds by 20% from power-saver mode, and "adapts to your gaming preferences by storing frequently accessed files" on the SSD partition.

One of the main selling points of the bundle is the Xbox One's high-grade Elite controller, which features custom button mapping, modular, swappable parts, trigger locks and an enhanced D-pad to boot. The Elite controller retails for $150 and accounts for the price bump.

The new raid for Destiny's The Taken King expansion, King's Fall, won't be available when the content goes live on September 15.

Enthusiast site Planet Destiny spotted the news during IGN's PAX 2015 coverage, where Bungie's Luke Smith revealed that The Taken King raid won't be up on launch day.

"The [King's Fall] raid is not going to be available on day one," Smith affirmed during the show. "We definitely have a plan for when it's going to be available. I'm not going to announce the plan for it here, but I promise that people who are excited about the raid that they will know when it's time to take time off of work. We'll give them a heads up."