Latest News - Page 2651

Xbox chief Phil Spencer is excited about Microsoft's decision to support Xbox One backward compatibility, saying it provides a "valuable" way to keep gamers engaged.

Since Microsoft must emulate each Xbox 360 game to make it playable for the Xbox One, receiving publisher support is critical. It's a great sales and marketing campaign, allowing players the opportunity to catch up on previously-released games if they haven't already played them - and allow those of you with an Xbox 360 game library, the chance to play select titles one more time.

"We're having great conversations with all the publishers about backward compatibility," Spencer recently told GameSpot. "It's really been a good time for something like backwards compatibility to come around, because so many of the publishers have built more service-based games where they're able to find a business opportunity in the longevity of games."

Acer used Gamescom 2015 as the launch pad for its newly redesigned Predator gaming desktop, known as the Predator G6-710.

The gaming system is powered by the latest 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, 64GB DDR4 dual-channel RAM, and Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi MB5 and Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) 5.0 and 5.1 channel audio.

Ideally, the gaming rig is "futureproof" with the addition of 64GB RAM, so owners have the chance to play video games and watch movies in stunning detail.

Electronic Arts has shown off the Battlefield 4 Night Operations DLC from DICE playtest sessions, so gamers can enjoy some unique gameplay.

The studio also showed off the night version of Zavod 311, dubbed Zavod: Graveyard Shift, so you can expect to use the night vision and thermal imaging scopes - or a different gadget so you're able to identify enemy locations.

Zavod: Graveyard Shift supports Conquest, Rush, Team Deathmatch, Obliteration, Domination and Gun Master. EA promises Gun Master will play "very differently" at night, and even included a secondary layout.

Autodesk has announced a new Stingray game engine, with full support for the Oculus Rift out of the box when it launches later this month on August 19.

Autodesk is better known for its computer visualization tools for architecture, engineering, CGI and more with software like Maya and 3DS Max, but this venture into the gaming world is going to be a big one. Stingray will see Autodesk doing everything in-house, instead of using Autodesk software somewhere along the game-making procedure, pulling assets in from other game engines like Unity or Unreal Engine. The company is pitching Stingray to game developers as a way of providing seamless interoperability between Autodesk's software, with a "one-click workflow and live link".

Stingray will launch with full support for the Oculus Rift DK2 headset out of the box, with Autodesk referring to the DK2 as one of Stingray's platforms that will support "Deployment and Testing". This means Stingray will allow developers to view their projects through the Rift during development, where they can then publish a game that's compatible with the DK2 with ease.

DICE teased that there was a new game mode coming for Battlefield Hardline, and here it is: Robbery. The new expansion is the second for Battlefield Hardline, with Criminal Activity launching not too long ago.

Battlefield Hardline: Robbery has four new maps, a new 5v5 game mode known as 'Squad Heist', four new weapons, two new gadgets, two new factional vehicles and new vehicle upgrades, new camos and vehicle paints, and 'The Legendary Super Feature'. As for the new Squad Heist game mode, the developer refers to it as "refreshing and familiar". DICE explains that Squad Heist has three distinct stages:

Battlefield Hardline: Robbery will be made available for Early Access for Battlefield Hardline Premium members starting next month.

Gamescom 2015 - ROCCAT has debuted its new Nyth gaming mouse at Gamescom, with the Nyth being a new MMO-hybrid gaming mouse with a "completely hot-swappable side button grid" that is sure to have MMO gamers foaming at the mouth.

The new ROCCAT Nyth has huge out-of-the-box customization, with a massive 36,738 different combinations thanks to its 33 different buttons. ROCCAT founder and CEO, René Korte, explains: "We've loved cracking the challenge of the Nyth. Making a mouse so deeply customizable was a great test for our creative and design teams. What we ended up with was not only a one of a kind MMO-centric piece of gaming equipment, but a mouse that is a chameleon. Turn it into a MOBA mouse, an FPS weapon, and more; any gaming configuration for any genre you can think of. That's what the Nyth brings to the table".

But the more exciting product that ROCCAT was showing off, at least to me, was the Sova prototype. ROCCAT showed off the Sova prototype at E3 2015 earlier this year, with the modular gaming board wanting to see you gaming in the living room. ROCCAT has announced that there will be more than one model of the Sova, with Korte saying: "After the great reception at E3 for our Sova prototype, we were given so much feedback, and pursued that further with surveys and more testing. Gamers want a PC gaming living room solution that's affordable, effective, and meets their spec priorities".

Gamescom 2015 - Seagate has used the mega games event Gamescom to announce its new 2TB Game Drive for the Xbox One, with the storage unit also working on the Xbox 360.

Seagate's new 2TB Game Drive features the Xbox green-and-black color theme and is powered by a single USB 3.0 cable. The drive features Xbox and Seagate logos and allows you to have your catalog of downloaded games, achievements and so much more on-the-go. Senior Director of Product Marketing for Seagate, Jeff Fochtman, explains: "This exciting new collaboration with Microsoft Xbox is an important milestone for Seagate that will help us to reach a new audience, which has an insatiable appetite for storage". "There was a clearly defined need in this market for additional plug-and-play storage and Seagate is happy to be able to provide the solution," he added.

The new Seagate Game Drive will retail for an MSRP of $109.99, and will be made available at GameStop, Amazon and other consumer electronic retailers across the world.

Corsair has just unveiled a bunch of new gaming peripherals during Gamescom 2015, with new STRAFE RGB mechanical gaming keyboards, Scimitar RGB MMO/MOBA mouse, and new flagship VOID gaming headsets.

One of the jewels in Corsair's new gaming peripherals is the ultra-quiet STRAFE RGB Silent, which is the world's first keyboard with Cherry MX RGB Silent gaming switches, which will "deliver the speed and precision of linear mechanical switches with significantly quieter actuation". Corsair adds that the STRAFE RGB Silent has "new switches combined with the noise-suppressing architecture of the keyboard chassis", that makes the "pro-level STRAFE RGB Silent 30% quieter than other mechanical gaming keyboards".

Corsair's new VOID headsets come in three flavors: wireless, USB or analog stereo. The VOID gaming headset earcups are "shaped to fit the human ear, providing the utmost comfort while delivering spectacular audio fidelity". The USB and wireless VOID headsets feature innovative features like InfoMic status LEDs, and a CUE Control dial that lets gamers control their gaming soundscape without pausing their game.

Anticipation for the film adaptation of the the graphic novel 'Deadpool' has been rising since Fox greenlit the film last year, and despite previously showing a trailer during last month's San Diego Comic-Con, the studio has now officially released the nearly three minute long the red-band trailer, and it's a doozy.

Ryan Reynolds portrays the renegade X-Men spin-off character, along with a cast which includes Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein and T. J. Miller. The film is directed by former graphic artist Tim Miller.

Deadpool is scheduled to hit theaters on February 12, 2016.

Taylor Swift initially didn't want her music available on Apple Music, and once Apple caved regarding payments to artists, decided to allow her music to be streamed.

All of this happened before Apple Music even launched, and revealed how powerful the 25-year-old is in the music industry. Swift recently praised Apple while criticizing Spotify:

"Apple treated me like I was a voice of a creative community that they actually cared about," Swift said in the September issue of Vanity Fair. "And I found it really ironic that the multi-billion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the start-up with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine."

Gamescom 2015 - If there's a game that should have the attention of Xbox One users, it should be Forza Motorsport 6, which is pumping along at 1080p 60FPS thanks to the optimization Turn 10 Studios has made to the game.

The studio was showing off Forza 6 at Gamescom 2015 which is currently underway in Cologne, Germany, with DualShockers interviewing Creative Director Dan Greenawalt, where he said: "Honestly, it is optimization, optimization, optimization. Forza Motorsport 5, as well as Forza Horizon 2 as well as Forza Motorsports 6 are underpinned by our bespoke graphics engine ForzaTech. And that graphics engine is being worked on by two world-class teams: the Turn 10 team and the PlayGround team".

Greenwalt added: "But also, we're first party, so we work with The Coalition, we work with 343, we're able to learn how to really optimize for the box. So yeah, I think it surprised a lot of people that Forza Motorsport 6 was able to come out with 1080p, 60 frames per second, 24 cars on track, with night, with wet, but it drives great. At the end of the day, that's what all this technology is for. It's for the experience. It's to get people passionate and excited about cars in games.And if it does that, it's all worth it".

A drone dropped a bundle of narcotics and tobacco into the Mansfield Correctional Institution, located southwest of Cleveland, Ohio. The incident left nine people in solitary confinement for fighting over control of the contraband.

The delivery included more than five ounces of tobacco, over two ounces of marijuana, and about one-quarter ounce of heroin, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The package was dropped on the north recreation yard, and was thrown into the south recreation yard as inmates fought.

All inmates in both the north recreation and south recreation yards underwent mandatory strip searches and clinic checks.

The Apple Watch didn't give the wearables market a significant boost like some analysts hoped for, but there is plenty of great growth opportunity thanks to virtual reality. Even though there have been very few VR product launches this year, shipment volumes will reach 14 million units in 2016, according to TrendForce's Topology Research Institute (TRI).

VR video games cost less to create than VR movies, and with the appeal of audiovisual in regards to VR, there is huge sales potential. Game developers have plenty of incentives, such as low cost and minimal time investment, to create VR game titles - and it seems like only a matter of time before VR-centric games hit the market.

"VR hardware's market positioning is clearer than smartwatches," said Jason Tsai, wearable device analyst at TrendForce. "Since VR device's strongest feature is providing users with an immersive audiovisual experience, its early application will be related to gaming."

The recent launch of Windows 10 has led to a mass migration from Windows 7 and 8/8.1 to the newest Windows OS - and there is hope Microsoft will be able to attract phone manufacturers to jump onboard. Acer is rumored to launch four new Windows 10 Mobile-powered smartphones during IFA 2015 next month in Berlin, Germany.

Acer launched the Liquid M220 using Windows 8.1, but that isn't good enough for the company - as Windows 10 Phone could be used on mid-range and high-end devices. Of course, the Liquid M220 is upgradable to Windows 10, so owners have the choice of switching things up.

It would take a lot before Windows 10 would be able to even put a dent into Google Android, but it looks like consumers may have another realistic option besides the choice between iOS and Android. Expect Microsoft to announce the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL, both high-end Windows 10 Mobile during the show.

Basemark, free from the shackles of Rightware, has just announced Basemark Web 3.0, a new product that will be the successor to the Browsermark product line. The new benchmark is even capable of testing out the new WebGL 2.0 API. Basemark Web 3.0 has three different suites:

The new Basemark Web 3.0 will work on "virtually all modern browsers, operating systems, and devices" and will arrive in four different versions. The free version will be "for everyone", the community version will be for open source projects, a professional version will be available for consumers who want more detail on browser performance, and a corporate version for corporate customers, with the ability to run on its own servers.

Basemark Web 3.0 will be available by the end of 2015.

Following the conclusion of a legal stoush over rights, Variety are reporting that Warner Bros. are moving forward with a new feature film based on the classic fantasy RPG 'Dungeons and Dragons' and a script has already been written by 'Conjuring 2' scribe David Leslie Johnson.

The Brand Director of 'Dungeons & Dragons', Nathan Stewart took to Twitter to get fans excited.

'Dungeons and Dragons' was previously bought to the screen in 2000, distributed by Warner Bros. subsidiary New Line Cinema. That version, which starred Jeremy Irons and Thora Birch was nothing short of a disaster, with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and failed to gross its low $45 million budget.

HTC is in hot water over its Sense Home application on some of its smartphones, with the Taiwanese giant using the push notifications to throw ads for the new Fantastic Four movie onto some users' devices.

A thread on Reddit has 'impersonaljesus' reporting that even though they were using a custom launcher, "this ad was pushed to my phone". You can disable notifications from the Sense Home app by going into the app settings and disabling the ability of push notifications, but you shouldn't need to be putting up with forced advertisement from HTC like this, no matter what setting is enabled or disabled.

One of the big drawcards to living within Microsoft's ecosystem is the ability to stream games from your Xbox One to your PC, but it will be the PC to Xbox One streaming that could be more exciting.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has talked about it in more detail now that the Xbox app for Windows 10 has launched, allowing gamers to stream content from their Xbox One consoles directly to their Windows 10 PCs, and tablets over their Wi-Fi networks. Microsoft is now reportedly working on PC to Xbox One streaming, but it's not something that the company is talking about. Spencer said the company would love to give fans the ability to do so, including mouse and keyboard support on the Xbox One.

During a chat with The Verge, Spencer said: "We understand if you're going to go PC to Xbox, we need to get keyboard and mouse working completely so you could play those games. In terms of where we want to go with our platform, those are absolutely in scope of things that we want to do". But Spencer did note that streaming from Xbox One to the PC is much easier, as the company knows just what hardware you have, instead of the other way around where there are countless combinations of hardware.

Konami has moved up the PC release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to September 1, aligning both PC and console platforms for a simultaneous day one launch. There's only one catch--PC owners will have to wait until 2016 until they can access the game's Metal Gear Online multiplayer mode.

"We initially did not think it would be possible to get such an epic game out onto PC in time for launch alongside its console counterparts, but all involved have worked diligently to meet the demands of our consumers, Konami President Tomotada Tashiro said in an official statement. "Now PC users will be able to explore the vibrant and beautifully-realised locations and set-pieces that elevate The Phantom Pain beyond all other action titles. We feel confident that Steam users will be satisfied with the contents we will provide for the Steam version."

The Japanese publisher has also opened up MGSV pre-orders on Steam, and everyone who pre-buys on Steam will get a free copy of the game's short prequel adventure Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. Apart from the multitude of advantages the PC platform brings, The Phantom Pain will support 4K UHD resolution as seen in Hideo Kojima's Tweet embedded below.

On the eve of 'Jurassic World's Japanese domestic release, but already the third highest grossing film of all time, Universal has unsurprisingly moved fast to lock in a sequel for 2018, but where will they take the franchise next?

'Jurassic World' director and screenwriter for 'Jurassic Park 5' (or 'Jurassic World 2' if you will) Colin Trevorrow spoke to Wired and shed some light on what we will, and won't see in the next film.

"[It will not be] just a bunch of dinosaurs chasing people on an island. That'll get old real fast. I feel like the idea that this isn't always going to be limited to theme parks, and there are applications for this science that reach far beyond entertainment. And when you look back at nuclear power and how that started, the first instinct was to weaponise it and later on we found it could be used for energy... What if this went open source? It's almost like InGen is Mac, but what if PC gets their hands on it? What if there are 15 different entities around the world who can make a dinosaur?"