Latest News - Page 2622

The Star Wars Battlefront open beta is nearly wrapped up, with DICE announcing that the first-person shooter will receive four post-release expansion packs, which is all part of the $50 season pass. Considering DICE said there would be no microtransactions, this is quite the fork in the road.

These expansions haven't been detailed, nor do we have a release window, but EA teases that they will be "filled with new content". EA is giving season pass holders a couple of reasons to plonk down $50, where Star Wars Battlefront gamers can enjoy a two-week early access to the expansion packs, and an exclusive "Shoot First" emote.

The season pass to Star Wars Battlefront is nothing new for EA, with the company really driving the post-release content home with their Battlefield franchise. This means if you buy Star Wars Battlefront Ultimate Edition, and the $50 season pass, you'll be paying a total of $119.98.

Roberts Space Industries has opened a free trial of Star Citizen's Arena Commander module, letting would-be space pilots test their mettle with intergalactic dogfighting and simulations for a full two weeks.

Now the devs originally opened up the free trial for those who watched CitizenCon 2015, but we have you covered even if you weren't able to check out the livestream. Simply enlist and sign-up here, and then enter CITCONFLIGHT2K15 in this field here.

Test pilots will have access to a slew of ships to choose from, and will get a good feel of the game's free-roaming and ship-to-ship combat. The Star Citizen trial will last up until October 25, so if you sign up now you'll get almost two weeks of free play.

After spending 9 million GBP on three years' worth of constant guard, the London Metro Police have finally stepped away from their 24/7 surveillance over the Ecuadoarian embassy that houses Julian Assange.

For the past three years now the London Metropolitan Police Service has stood like sentinals outside of the Ecuadorian embassy in round-the-clock guard posts. The world watched on as the controversial figurehead Julian Assange faced his opressors through the safe harbor of the embassy. The polic guard have strict orders to arrest the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange on sight if he should step outside of the safe harbor of the embassy, but for the past three years, Assange has stayed safely ensconced in the building like a hostage.

This endeavor has cost nearly 10 million GBP across three years time, and now the police force has finally called it quits. "Whilst the MPS remains committed to executing the arrest warrant and presenting Julian Assange before the court, it is only right that the policing operation to achieve this is continually reviewed against the diplomatic and legal efforts to resolve the situation," reads an official announcement from the London Metro Police. "As a result of this continual review the MPS has today Monday, 12 October withdrawn the physical presence of officers from outside the Embassy."

343 Industries has just released the official launch trailer for Halo 5: Guardians, giving a tease at the events that made Master Chief go rogue and trigger an intergalactic manhunt.

The footage is a delicious mix of in-game action and cinematic flair, giving viewers a satisfying look at the new Spartan abilities like the devastating ground slam, as well as setting the somber tone of the campaign. The montage has it all--first-person chaos in a battlefield of Covenant baddies, vehicular insanity with explosive Scorpion tanks, new weapons being teased, and a glimpse at the high-tech Promethean overlords that look as deadly as they do stylish.

Sadly we don't get to see Blue Team in action very often in the trailer. It's most Locke's new Fireteam Osiris ripping and shredding through snowy precipices, skillfully gunning down baddies like a hot knife slides through butter. As an avid fan of the Halo books I'm more interested in sticking with the classic Spartan II's, but the trailer does allude to the exact cause of Master Chief's disappearance, hinting at a mysterious mission with the rest of Blue Team.

Dell has just completed the single most substantial acquisition in the history of technology, paying a whopping $67 billion for EMC Corporation, one of the biggest names in data management.

Bringing EMC into the fold is extremely advantageous for Dell, who plans to bolster its data computing sector with EMC's valuable expertise in services like cloud management, enterprise-grade backup, recovery and archiving, and data virtualization. EMC powers a huge portion of the world's business data management, with companies across the globe utilizing its wide array of services to encrypt, analyze and interpret massive data streams across a wide variety of platforms.

"The combination of Dell and EMC creates an enterprise solutions powerhouse bringing our customers industry leading innovation across their entire technology environment. Our new company will be exceptionally well-positioned for growth in the most strategic areas of next generation IT including digital transformation, software-defined data center, converged infrastructure, hybrid cloud, mobile and security," said Michael Dell. "Our investments in R&D and innovation along with our privately-controlled structure will give us unmatched scale, strength and flexibility, deepening our relationships with customers of all sizes. I am incredibly excited to partner with the EMC, VMware, Pivotal, VCE, RSA and Virtustream teams and am personally committed to the success of our new company, our customers and partners."

Qualcomm has just unveiled its plans to enter the server CPU market with a new custom processor based on an ARM design. Qualcomm's latest chip is being aimed at the likes of hyper-scale customers like Google and Facebook, as well as many service providers and large enterprises.

The new chip was shown off last week, with the CPU being a purpose-built system-on-chip that is different to other Snapdragon processors. The first version of Qualcomm's new chip is a 24-core processor, combining PCIe, storage and other features into the SoC. According to Qualcomm Senior Vice President Anand CHandrasekher, the first pre-production processor has 24 cores, but future chips will have many more.

The chipmaker is now shipping its processor to big customers for testing, but Qualcomm isn't naming names. The company said it would provide a release window for the chip, but it would update the world in 2016.

ASUS has just unveiled its latest Z170-based motherboard, the new ROG Maximus VIII Impact. The new Maximus Impact motherboard is the best yet, set to make it the centerpiece of new high-powered mini-ITX gaming PCs.

The new ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Impact features Intel's latest Z170 chipset, compatible with the new Skylake-powered processors like the Intel Core i7-6700K. The motherboard itself features two DDR4 slots that will take DDR4 RAM right up to a huge 4133MHz when overclocked. The motherboard features a "full-scale voltage-regulator module (VRM) dubbed Impact Power III vertically-mounted onto the tiny board, allowing you full access to digital power management for ultra-precise and stable overclocks with your processor and memory".

On the audio side of things, ASUS has deployed its SupremeFX Impact III which features beautiful LED-illuminated audio jacks and Sonic SenseAmp technology. Connectivity wise we have the brand new 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO technology which is built-in, so it doesn't take up any additional space. ASUS has also provided USB 3.1 Gen. 2 Type-A and reversible Type-C connectivity, as well as a built-in U.2 connector which provides up to 32Gbit/s of bandwidth.

Just how successful are some YouTubers? Well, YouTube personality Jordan "CaptainSparklez" Maron mostly plays Minecraft, just spent $4.5 million on a new mansion in the Hollywood Hills. His new mansion is just down the road from the massive house that the creator of Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, purchased recently.

CaptainSparklez has over 8.8 million subscribers, and has a decent amount of subscribers on Twitch too, with over 1.2 million. Maron has over 1.9 billion views on YouTube, which has provided him with the bank account to dump down $4.5 million on a new house. Not too bad for playing games, hey, Mom?

Roberts Space Industries has just put another notch on the belt of Squadron 42, the first-person shooter module of Star Citizen, by announcing some serious Hollywood talent for the game.

Gary Oldman of The Dark Knight Trilogy, Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame, and Mark Hamill who should need no introduction (and was featured in the Wing Commander games made by Chris Roberts) have joined Squadron 42 with their likeness and voice talent. RSI also announced that they will have John Rhys-Davis, Andy Serkis, and many more joining the cast. Oldman will be playing Admiral Ernest Bishop, but we'll have more updates on the game and hopefully its development soon.

Squadron 42 is due out in 2016.

We know that Sony is ahead of Microsoft in this generation of consoles, but to hear it directly from the boss of Xbox feels weird. During the 2015 GeekWire Summit, Xbox boss Phil Spencer had some choice words on the future of gaming, Microsoft's competition with Sony and Nintendo, and more.

When asked about whether Microsoft could beat Sony with the current generation consoles, Spencer said: "You know, I don't know. You know, the length of the generation... They [Sony] have a huge lead and they have a good product. I love the content, the games line-up that we have. One thing that probably I didn't realize as much as I should have when I started in this role was the impact that the launch had on our team here in Redmond, the Xbox team".

So what's Microsoft's goal with the Xbox One? For once, the company isn't trying to beat Sony, as they just want to reach as many consumers as possible with their platform. Spencer continued: "Every time I sit down and I do a product review, mostly every time, the team comes in with surprise and delight around the momentum that they have, more than I'm able to add. And when I see that transformation of a team that's questioning the leadership of the organisation to a team that's motivated by the customers that we have and their ability to delight them, I see a team that's making amazing progress. [Backwards compatibility] was one".

The Uncharted series is a staple of gaming on the PlayStation, but did you know that around 80% of PS4 owners haven't played an Uncharted game? That's a number that is too high for Naughty Dog.

During an interview with MCVUK, Naughty Dog's Community Strategist Eric Monacelli talked about the upcoming Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, where he said: "We did a lot of research and discovered that about 80 per cent of the people that own a PS4 have never played Uncharted, period. That was one of the reasons why we thought remastering it would be a good idea". He added: "The other reason is we decided we wanted to do it; especially when we got The Last of Us Remastered done, we thought 'Oh man, this would be cool if we could go back'".

Considering the success behind The Last of Us, the hints of Naughty Dog's next big project could be surprising. Monacelli teased: "We tend to work on one game at a time. Uncharted 4 is what everybody's working on. After that, we're going to be working on Uncharted 4 DLC. Beyond that, there's been tons of ideas bandied around - everybody knows the rumour about The Last of Us 2. There could potentially be - who knows? We could go back to Jak and Daxter 4 if it seems right, or there could be something else in the future on our horizon. We tend to work with an idea always on the board and then once we have time to devote the right amount of attention to it, then we'll tackle it".

There have been a number of employees that have reportedly been poached from Tesla Motors by Apple to work on their rumored electric car project, but Tesla founder Elon Musk has had a few choice words to throw into the mix.

When talking with German newspaper Handselsblatt, Musk was questioned over the key members that Apple had secured, with Musk saying: "Important engineers? They have hired people we've fired. We always jokingly call Apple the 'Tesla Graveyard.' If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I'm not kidding".

It's quite the statement, with Musk continuing his laugh at Apple when he was asked if he saw the iMaker as a serious competitor to its electric vehicles, where he said: "Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch". He added: "No, seriously: it's good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction. But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can't just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: 'Build me a car.' But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough".

Sony's foray into virtual reality isn't anything new: the Japanese tech giant has been working on the PlayStation VR tech for about half a decade now, and it actually helped shape the PlayStation 4.

The PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR are synergized in a very fundamental way and were specifically designed to compliment one another to make a uniform system. Tom's Hardware recently interviewed Dr. Richard Marks, who's been working on Sony's R&D department for 16 years, and he revealed some new info about the PlayStation VR.

"The official PlayStation VR project started around 2010," the Sony veteran said during the interview. "Once PlayStation Move came out some of the internal researchers were putting the controllers on their head and doing head-tracking with a display in front of them...it was a very low-end VR system. They were looking at what you could do and what experiences you could achieve."

ASUS has just officially announced its exciting new ROG gaming monitor, the PG279Q, at its Republic of Gamers Unleashed event in San Francisco. The PG279Q is a 27-inch successor to the super-popular ROG Swift PG278Q, but with some nice upgrades.

The new ASUS ROG PG279Q has a 27-inch QHD (2560x1440) panel, with a 144Hz refresh rate (where you overclock it to 165Hz) with NVIDIA's G-Sync technology. We have a WLED + IPS panel with 1000:1 contrast ratio, 350 nits of peak brightness, 4ms delay, and 178-degree viewing angles. It's an 8-bit panel with DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 inputs with two USB 3.0 and 3.5mm audio backing that up.

ASUS is pricing the delicious new gaming monitor at a not-so-bad price of $799, and we can't wait to get our hands on a sample for review to see how driving a 165Hz monitor is for those fast-paced first-person shooters.

Samsung has been in legal battles with Apple, Microsoft, and NVIDIA in recent years over the technology it uses in its mobile devices. A new development in the NVIDIA case today came about when a judge made a recommendation that means it's not looking good for the graphics company.

NVIDIA feels Samsung has infringed on its graphics patents and should not be able to sell certain devices as a result (and also pay a lot of money to NVIDIA), but administrative law judge for the US International Trade Commission Thomas. B. Pender says Samsung has not done this, and that one of the patents is invalid due to being covered in previous patents. While a formal decision still must be made, this seems like a big blow to the company. NVIDIA says they "remain confident", however.

At its recent New York press event, Microsoft showcased a fresh new HoloLens demo that introduced the future of mixed-reality gaming. Now the Redmond tech giant is going on tour with the AR headset in an effort to spark interest and win over developers.

Like VR, Augmented Reality is really something you have to experience for yourself. The HoloLens head-mounted system is just brimming over with potential and Microsoft is eager to get it in developer's hands as soon as possible to reap the rewards. To do so, the company plans to hold a HoloLens tour across eleven major North American cities to show off the tech and its wide capabilities.

Despite its awe-inspiring magical reality-manipulating functionality, the HoloLens has a serious barrier for entry for enterprising developers: a $3,000 price tag. The cost is quite steep, but Microsoft affirms that the minimal headset packs a performance punch with "more computing power than the average laptop". Plus there's the added bonus that it's self-contained and doesn't need any expensive peripherals, wires, phones or PC's to power it.

Just Mobile has launched its TENC iPhone case line, which boasts Wolverline-like "self-healing" capabilities. Some would say the point of a case is for the case to get banged up instead of the phone, so why purchase a product like this? Well, maybe you like your case looking slick too, particularly if you're only dropping $24.99 or $29.99 on it anyway (which is what these cases are priced at). Also, TENC cases protect and heal the screen, not just themselves.

BGR's Zach Epstein says, "It works. I've seen it work. Just Mobile sent along a brass brush with the test cases I was given, and I spent a bit of time scratching up the surface of several of the cases. In most cases, the scratches I made were gone a short while later. In a few instances, some scratches were still visible on the case's surface after a few minutes. Over time, however, they faded away to almost nothing."

The cases are available on Just Mobile's website, Amazon, and possibly through other outlets.

BlackBerry's new Priv smartphone is more than just the company's first Android device: it represents a kind of final push into the modern mobile market. If the hybrid OS-powered Priv--named for BlackBerry's emphasis on user privacy--doesn't take off, then the company might stop making handsets altogether.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen delivered the news to Re/Code during the Code/Mobile event, saying that if the new Priv smartphone didn't turn a profit, executives would think about ceasing smartphone production within a year. Chen told The Verge that BB needs to sell at least 5 million phones a year in order to turn a profit.

It looks like BlackBerry has put all of its eggs in one basket, hoping that their new power-sliding Android smartphone will be enough to bolster its software earnings. Since the Priv has a dual-OS system, it's compatible with Google's slew of Android apps on the Google Play store while maintaining all of the functionality and privacy offered by th BlackBerry 10 OS. Chen also affirms that the phone will be available in physical carrier stores when it launches.

With its new Surface Book, Microsoft one-ups its own Surface Pro line by melding the on-the-go utility of a tablet with the functionality of a laptop and the performance of a desktop. Microsoft touts the Surface Book as the "world's most powerful, thinnest laptop", and new info on the 2-in-1's dual-GPU setup helps add credence to Redmond's claims.

Rather than featuring a single graphics solution, the more expensive Surface Book models actually have dual-GPU setups: an iGPU complimented by a dGPU. The Surface Book's tablet portion houses Intel's integrated Iris Graphics by default, so this is the graphics solution you'll get with the $1500 and $1700 models.

Consumers who opt in for the $1900 and above flavors get a second discrete GPU that's housed in the attached keyboard base. The discrete solution is a Maxwell-based GPU with 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM that's been custom-built by NVIDIA. "The new GPU is a Maxwell-based GPU, and was designed to deliver the best performance in ultra-thin form factors such as the Surface Book keyboard dock," NVIDIA told Gizmodo. "With NVIDIA GeForce GPU powering this new hybrid, users will be able to speed up productivity apps such as Adobe Illustrator and Lightroom, and light PC gaming."

Sony's PlayStation 4 remains triumphant over this generation of consoles, with its long-standing sales streaks only intermittently broken up by the Xbox One. Faced with the PS4's momentum and the system's new price drop to $350, Xbox boss Phil Spencer doubts whether or not Microsoft's Xbox One can even catch up--not to mention overtake--to Sony's console.

At this year's GeekWire Summit, Phil Spencer was asked if he thinks the Xbox One can beat the PS4. "You know, I don't know," Phil Spencer answered with candor. "In terms of the length of the generation, [Sony] has a huge lead over us and they have a good product. [But] I love the content and the games line-up that we have. I'll say we're not motivated by beating Sony. We're motivated by satisfying our current customers and gaining as many customers as we can."

The Xbox One's disastrous E3 announcement seriously harmed the trust that gamers had in the company, and thus pushed them towards the PlayStation 4. Spencer went on to chronicle how the original Xbox One announcement was a catastrophe for the company and how he came in to pick up the pieces.