Latest News - Page 2667

Microsoft and Sony continue to move forward developing their respective augmented reality and virtual reality headsets, but Nintendo still isn't convinced. Shigeru Miyamoto, creative director of Nintendo, recently discussed how the Japanese gaming company is focused on discussing titles - and technologies - that will be available to gamers sooner rather than later.

It looks like Nintendo is trying to portray VR as a technology that won't be fun and social, and could cause more problems. Miyamoto previously said he didn't feel VR is a good fit for Nintendo.

"The current software for these virtual reality devices cannot be played simultaneously by a number of people," Miyamoto said during a meeting in front of investors. "And since it is generally expected that the development for the applicable software for a high-performance device will take two to three years, there were a number of visual demonstrations for virtual reality devices."

In a petition on Change.org, Billy Johnson from the US has asked Ellen Pao, the CEO of Reddit, to step down from her position. I went to write this article about two hours ago but had to run out of the house for a while, where at that time, there were 75,300 signatures.

Two hours later, there are 83,500 signatures asking for Pao to step down. Why is Pao being asked to step down? Well, the company just fired its Director of Communications, Victoria Taylor, who was responsible for some of the most popular subreddits on the site, such as /r/IAmA and many more. Taylor was the main contact for many celebrities and other high-profile figures, and in response to her being fired, Reddit moderators have "effectively shut down many of the site's most popular sections" reports The Verge.

But when it comes to the petition asking for Pao to step down, Johnson writes: "Ellen K. Pao is a lawyer and the chief executive officer of the Internet company Reddit Inc. After Pao lost her gender discrimination case against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins she was appointed CEO of Reddit Inc and Reddit entered into a new age of censorship. A vast majority of the Reddit community believes that Pao, "a manipulative individual who will sue her way to the top", has overstepped her boundaries and fears that she will run Reddit into the ground. Alternative sites to Reddit.com have sprung up and have received vast amounts of traffic within the recent months". He finishes with: "Action must be taken to prevent Reddit from being further run into the ground".

It wasn't more than 12 hours ago that we reported on what the Radeon R9 Fury will have in store for us, but now we're seeing that the pricing on the upcoming ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX video card.

The ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX will include the 3584 stream processors that will come on the Fiji PRO based GPU, 4GB of HBM, and the awesome STRIX cooler from ASUS. We should expect the ASUS made R9 Fury STRIX to be priced at around $700, which is really jumping into the GeForce GTX 980 Ti territory.

Now we have to hope that ASUS is able to do something with the clocks on the card, because the SP count is down from the Fury X, which is only toe-to-toe and not a total GTX 980 Ti beater. If the R9 Fury can't beat the GTX 980 Ti, this pricing might be far too high for most people.

As seen on Daily Dot, one lucky Reddit user has claimed to make the nostalgic find of this century, a Nintendo PlayStation prototype console - apparently limited to 200 total units worldwide.

In the dawn of the 1990s Nintendo entered partnership with Sony, set to produce a console partnered between these two technology giants. Apparently this partnership wasn't to last, with Nintendo focusing on the N64 and Sony working on its first PlayStation release instead. With a claimed 200 models of this 'Super Disc' produced, it's said that this piece of gaming history was found in an box belonging to an old Nintendo employee.

Brandishing a SNES-style controller, a cartridge and disc slot and line-out through the power of RCA, it seems that this console hasn't seen the light of day in some time. It's also been stated that the owner isn't sure if it even works, completely devoid of a power pack to test it out with.

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, won't be leaving the Ecuadorian embassy in London to head to France, after President Francois Hollande refused to give him asylum. Assange's attorneys say he never requested official asylum, but was asked to visit the country by Justice Minister Chistiane Taubira and members of a French civil rights group.

"France cannot act on his request. The situation of Mr. Assange does not present an immediate danger," President Hollande's office said in an official statement. "Furthermore, he is subject to a European arrest warrant."

Assange will remain in the embassy in London, where he has been for three years, as he tries to avoid extradition to Sweden. Although he maintains his innocence in alleged rape and sexual assault cases, he fears the possibility Sweden will extradite him to the United States.

If you didn't already know, the Star Wars: Battlefront alpha build leaked out to torrent sites yesterday, but now it looks like All Games Beta has leaked out something we all wanted to see... 4K screenshots of Star Wars: Battlefront, which look absolutely gorgeous.

As you can see, there is an extreme amount of detail in the game, powered by the Frostbite engine, the same engine that Battlefield 4 and Battlefield: Hardline is based on.

Below, we have over 20 screenshots, so prepare your Internets!

There has been a push for more games to be pushed across from PC-only platforms to console in recent years with Minecraft instantly coming to mind. Next up is the third-person MOBA of SMITE, set for an Xbox One beta launch on the 8th of July and coming complete with Australian servers too.

Currently operating in closed beta, SMITE brags its placement as the first major MOBA to reach across to the console audience. Hi-Rez Studios' Xbox One Senior Producer, Andy Andersonm, stated in a recent press release that "We're delighted to offer SMITE communities the best possible experience on PC and now console," however mentioned no competitive announcements for this upcoming release.

SMITE offers a global championships for its PC audience, seeing a $2.6 million prize pool offered earlier this year in Atlanta. It seems console is left out, for now.

World exclusive: AMD launched the Radeon R9 Fury X not too long ago, and while it was a great card for 4K gaming, the requirement of a radiator and watercooling setup stopped it from greatness. But, the Radeon R9 Fury is the card that will really see AMD fight back at NVIDIA, but the specs have been kept under wraps, until now.

We were the first to bring you news of AMD calling its next generation video card the Fury X, and here we are again with the first official specs on the Fury. According to our industry insiders, the Radeon R9 Fury will feature 3584 Stream Processors, down from the 4096 on the full Fury X. The Fiji-based GPU will be clocked at 1050MHz, which is identical to that of the Fury X. We have 4GB of High Bandwidth Memory that provides the same 512GB/sec of bandwidth, clocked at 500MHz (1GHz effective). We are being told to expect temperatures of the Fiji PRO-based R9 Fury to be less than 75C, which is considerably higher than the 50C or so from the watercooled Fury X.

The biggest difference between the Fury and Fury X is that the Fury is air-cooled, with AIB partners able to put on their respective coolers onto the card. The other big difference is that the Fiji PRO GPU is what is powering the Fury, with 512 less Stream Processors. We shouldn't expect performance to be that much less, probably 10-15% less than Fury X. But, without that huge radiator and pump, we're going to have an impressive card to combat the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti.

Back in February, we reported that Naughty Dog said that hitting 60FPS on the PS4 with Uncharted 4 was 'really f**king hard', with the developer inevitably hitting that brick wall. Naughty Dog has now confirmed that the single player side of Uncharted 4 will be locked at 30FPS.

Co-Lead Designer on Uncharted 4, Anthony Newman, explained that the frame rate being locked to 30FPS was because "the game we wanted to make, to make the best game possible. To me, a locked 30 is better than a variable 60".

This change to 30FPS for Uncharted 4 on the PS4 does have me asking a question: Naughty Dog did promise it was sticking with 1080p 60FPS for future games. If the studio can't hit 60FPS on the PS4 without a large jump in visual fidelity over Uncharted 3 on the PS3, we need to really start tackling a big problem: the current generation consoles were never fast enough to begin with. Oops, there, I said it, again.

For the last few years, I haven't preordered a game. This is mostly because 95% or more of games are not ready on launch, and after spending $60-$100 (living in Australia sucks for gamers), this is not how you should be treated as a consumer.

Well, it looks like the founder of Oculus has the same feeling about preorders as I do. Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, said that preorders are "a balance", he continued, saying: "you don't want to be holding onto people's money". He then attacked the entire industry and their preorders, saying: "we all know preorders are often a joke in this in this industry. We don't want to be a part of that and be taking people's money nine, ten months before we ship anything".

It's great to see Luckey taking that stance, especially with developers having no issues taking consumers' money months, sometimes a year in advance and then delaying the game, or having the game half-baked and not ready at launch.

Looking forward to upgrading to Windows 10 on July 29? Don't hold your breath, as there will be some of us required to wait until a later date before being able to download our upgrade.

At least 5 million people involved in the Windows Insider program will receive Windows 10 first, and next in line will be users who registered for a copy. There is no timeframe as to when Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 users will be able to begin downloading the OS.

"If you reserved your copy of Windows 10, we will notify you once our compatibility work confirms you will have a great experience, and Windows 10 has been downloaded on your system," a Microsoft blog reads.

I've only just taken my hands off the keyboard writing about the downgraded visuals in Elite: Dangerous, but now it looks like Next Car Game: Wreckfast is going through the same thing.

Bugbear Entertainment, the studio behind the game, has just pushed out a new DX11 rendering engine update, something that included an improved physics engine, and support for 64-bit operating systems. This new updated engine looks to have downgraded the visuals in the game, with some keen-eyed gamers spotting the differences as soon as the patch started making its way onto gamers' systems.

We've posted a bunch of images that DSO Gaming has shared, with the previous build on the left, and the updated build on the right. You be the judge, and let us know in the comments below.

Frontier Development is the latest studio in the firing line of the PC master race, with gamers reporting that the developer has watered down the graphics of Elite: Dangerous in its latest update.

Gamers have said that the dust/fog effects have been radically reduced, the Galaxy Map has changed, textures look worse, and the Ring LOD and Station Letterbox Draw Distance have both been reduced. Frontier has hit back, saying that some of those things have indeed happened, addressing concerns on whether the PC version of Elite: Dangerous has been downgraded because of the upcoming release of the game on the Xbox One.

Head of Rendering for Frontier Development, Greg Ryder, said: "Please thank Granite for putting together a thread like this. The team is always striving to make things better, and we've found a number of things using the profiling tools on the Mac and Xbox One that have improved the PC build (thus the opposite to the fear they might lower the quality of the PC build). Elite: Dangerous is built to scale on PC (including 16k screenshot ability and hopefully one day 16k game when the monitors & video cards exist!). We are certainly not inclined to downgrade the appearance of anything in the game. Exposing more tweakables for an enhanced Ultra is clearly something you guys are passionate about and we'll see where it can fit in the current roadmap".

Peter Moore, former Microsoft corporate VP of the Interactive entertainment business and now Chief Operating Officer at Electronic Arts, recently recounted the horrific times caused by the Xbox 360 "Red Ring of Death."

Issues related to the RRoD cost Microsoft more than $1 billion, and left many gamers frustrated. Despite strong global sales of the Xbox 360, it was a constant headache for Microsoft and a number of their frustrated gamers.

"We were seeing failure rates and starting to get reports through customer service. This was a thing where we couldn't actually figure out what was going on," said while speaking to IGN in a recent podcast interview.

Even though Nintendo had things to offer at E3 in Los Angeles last month, it still faced criticism regarding the Japanese company's presence at the gaming show.

Nintendo managing director Shigeru Miyamoto and President Satoru Iwata have become a bit more vocal in discussing the criticism. During a shareholder meeting, Miyamoto discussed the frustrations expressed by E3 attendees - and online viewers:

"We recognize that we have let down a number of the online viewers of this year's E3, especially the avid Nintendo fans, because we did not show what they had expected. On the other hand, since E3 was originally a U.S. trade show, when we consider what kind of messages we should dispatch and in what fashion, while we have to take into consideration the impression that we may give people outside the U.S., we have been very mindful about how we can maximize our immediate business in the U.S. this year."

The latest competitor in the streaming music market, Apple Music, publicly launched on June 30 - and received quite a bit of media attention. The streaming music service and the Beats 1 live radio station may not win over users from Spotify, but will give other music listeners another option - $9.99 per account, or $14.99 for a family plan.

It looks like the service won't be a source of major revenue, and is expected to amount to less than 1 percent - around $1.8 billion - towards Apple's revenue next year.

"Apple Music matters because music is fundamental to the mobile phone experience," Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffra, in a statement published by CNET. "Interestingly, Apple Music will also be available on Android and Windows, which doesn't matter from a revenue standpoint, but could help Apple attract incremental iPhone buyers from competitive platforms."

Prince is only a fan of Jay-Z's Tidal music streaming, as his representatives have asked for his music to be removed from Spotify, Apple Music, and Rdio. It looks like Prince is trying to negotiate new rates for songs played, and streaming services will have to agree before they have access to his music again.

"Prince's publisher has asked all streaming services to remove his catalog," a notification on Prince's Spotify page reads. "We have cooperated with the request, and hope to bring his music back as soon as possible."

The official Prince music channel only has "Breakfast Can Wait" listed, as his team also has been quick to use Web Sheriff to remove music online. Prince has been vocal about artist compensation in regards to music streaming - and is the latest artist to speak out against services offering free listening tiers.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has sold 34.7 million smartphones during Q1 and Q2 of 2015, an impressive 33 percent year-over-year increase. Xiaomi's sales have slowed down slightly in China, but expansion into new territories seems to be going well for the company.

Xiaomi's home market of China has generated the bulk of sales, but the company has ambitious expansion plans for India, Brazil, and other select markets. The company is still taking baby steps in the United States, and doesn't want to rush into mature markets without developing a strong foundation.

"Roughly 90 percent of Xiaomi's volumes have been in China in the past, followed by India in a very distance second," said Bryan Ma, VP of IDC Asia, in a statement to CNET. "Sure, the US and Western Europe are important markets (especially in terms of influence), but in terms of numbers, these smartphone markets are each only just over 10 percent of the worldwide market right now. India, on the other hand, is expected to be larger than the US in unit terms by 2017."

After a week with the new AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, one of the things that has annoyed me was the very loud noise coming from the pump. It sounds like coil whine, and under heavy stress, the Fury X really begins to sound quite loud.

But it looks like a member of the AnandTech has noticed that AMD is shipping an updated version of the radiator with the latest batches of the Fury X. It looks like the first batch that mostly went to selected press and a handful floating out into the world is the only one effected, with the second batch and hopefully beyond including a radiator that isn't as noisy.

The unit that the news of the revised radiator was from SAPPHIRE, so we should expect other AIB partners to use the revised pump as soon as possible.

If you thought the 24TB+ NAS systems we're seeing these days were good, Synology has just announced two new business-focused NAS systems that will blow you away. The new RS18016xs+ and its expansion unit RX1216sas have some insane expansion capabilities, and more.

Synology's new RS18016xs+ is capable of 3.9GB/sec with 348,000 IOPS, which is just insane. On top of that, if you're using encrypted share folders, it's still capable of pumping out over 3GB/sec, meaning you can have super-secure data, with huge performance. The new Synology RS18016xs+ native supports SATA 6Gbps and SAS, and can be upgraded all the way up to 32GB of ECC RAM, and 10GbE, with the RX1216sas providing a next-gen scale-up system capable of stacking 14 of the RX1216sas expansion units together, delivering a 180-drive cluster.

The full run down on Synology RS18016xs+ systems: