Latest News - Page 2697

Now that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been out for close to a year, it's time to start the rumor mill on the next generation iPhone. We don't know if it will arrive as the iPhone 6S, or the iPhone 7, but from our industry sources, we are expecting the iPhone 7 to arrive later this year.

Now, onto what we will find in the iPhone 7. The next iPhone will reportedly feature an edge-to-edge display, taking up that valuable bezel that made the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus feel far, far too big. As for resolution, I think Apple will keep it at 1080p, and the screen size and physical dimensions of the iPhone 7 will also shrink.

Inside, we should find Apple's new A9 processor, which will be made by their main competitor: Samsung. Samsung will use their new 14nm FinFET technology to make Apple's custom processor, so we should expect a seriously fast dual- or quad-core processor from Apple in the iPhone 7. On the rear, rumor has it Apple will cram in a dual-lens snapper into the iPhone 7 that will provide 'DSLR-like' images. The rear-facing camera in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge is already damn impressive, so it should be interesting to see what Apple can do.

KFA2 has announced its new white NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 EXOC video card to the public, boasting this new color scheme covering the shroud, fans and back plate, but not on the PCB.

Featuring a factory overlocked core at 1279 MHz, 1367 MHz GPU Boost and 7 GHz of memory, this provides a little extra boost when compared to reference speeds of 1127 and 1187 MHz respectively.

As for cooling, an aluminum fin-stack heat sink combined with 8mm thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes ensures your card stays cool. The display options include one DisplayPort 1.2 port, two DVI and a single HDMI 2.0 option.

Since its inception, The Division has had three studios working on it. Massive Entertainment are leading development, while Red Storm and Reflections have been putting their long weeks and months into the open world RPG. Massive Entertainment has now partnered up with a fourth studio, Ubisoft Annecy, which will help out on all things The Division.

Managing Director of Massive Entertainment, David Polfeldt, has talked about this collaboration, where he said: "We are very happy that Ubisoft Annecy is part of The Division's family. They are highly experienced and talented developers, adding much value to the project. Being able to work with other studios offers fantastic creative opportunities during development and, in the end, strongly benefits the overall quality of the game".

Studio Manager at Ubisoft Annecy, Rebecka Coutaz, said: "The team in Annecy is delighted to be collaborating with Massive, Red Storm and Reflections on Tom Clancy's The Division. We are bringing our previous experience in multiplayer online games and this project is allowing us to build our technical knowledge in other areas and become experts on this incredible brand. The collaboration with the other studios is going very smoothly, and we're working together to ensure we meet and exceed the high expectations players have for this new title".

With the Oculus Rift not shipping until the first quarter of 2016, the VR game is up in the air until HTC and Valve can get their Vive headset to the market. That is, however, unless you go for mobile VR thanks to Samsung's Gear VR headset.

The mobile giant has released its new Gear VR headset that works with the new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge handsets, versus the old Gear VR which was locked to the Galaxy Note 4 smartphone. The new Gear VR is said to be much better than the previous iteration, with a smaller 'tunnel vision' experience in some apps courtesy of the smaller 5.1-inch display found on the new S6 handsets.

The new Gear VR can be purchased from Samsung's website, or from Best Buy starting on May 15.

After they said that it would be a PC exclusive feature, it looks as though Rockstar Games will be releasing the Rockstar Editor for Grand Theft Auto V on the consoles.

The Rockstar Editor will not be reaching the Xbox 360 or PS3 consoles, but it will be released for the Xbox One and PS4. Rockstar is hoping to have the Editor ready this summer, or as they've put it: "as soon as it is ready", which could mean 2018. Are you excited for the Rockstar Editor? Or have you been enjoying the PC version of the game, which has it baked in already.

One of my biggest memories of being a younger gamer was when Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was released on the Nintendo 64 and PC back in 1997, as it had some of the slickest graphics at the time, with a huge fog of war to hide it all and get the performance up to relatively normal numbers.

Well, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is being remade by Level Designer Samuel Villarreal. Villarreal has designed levels for games like FEAR: Perseus Mandate, Section 8, Aliens: Colonial Marines (I wouldn't want that on my resume...) and he has reportedly been working on rebuilding Turok: Dinosaur Hunter in his free time.

Villarreal talked with TechRaptor, where he said: "I was originally working on remaking N64 Turok (called Turok EX) but it got put off to the side. Since now Night Dive Studios has picked up the rights to re-release it, Turok EX will resume development later this year".

According to our sources, AMD will be announcing its new Radeon R9 390X at E3 2015 in mid-June, while some of our other sources have told us that HBM yields are extremely low, so the Radeon R9 390X that features HBM will be in extremely limited availability. We have been told that AMD has some "surprises" in store for the Radeon R9 390X, which is exciting. But what about these leaked photos of the HBM-powered Radeon R9 390X? Well, let's talk about that.

The above image is reportedly photoshopped, with WCCFTech reporting that the image is "completely fake and are essentially a Photoshop recreation of the image by an artist on Chiphell forums". But for me, I don't think it's as "fake" as people think.

With AMD using High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) it will save so much room on the PCB that the usual GDDR5 takes up, and thanks to it running cooler than GDDR5, it will remove much of the last third of the PCB and associated cooling, VRMs, and more. This could give AMD the opportunity to make a shorter VGA card, but will the shorter card just be the HBM version? With our sources teasing multiple Radeon R9 390X models being released, with one being the premium HBM model, and another running GDDR5. If this happens, it's going to be good, and very bad for AMD.

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata says his company plans to release five mobile games by March 2017, as Nintendo tries to expand its business operations.

There is no word what characters will be featured, or which titles gamers can expect, but Nintendo promised it wouldn't simply port content for smartphones and tablets.

"You may think it is a small number... but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all - and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business," Iwata said during a meeting with investors.

Gone are the days of a 120GB SSD serving all of your needs, Fixstars has just announced their development of a new record-breaking 2.5-inch SSD in the form of a 6TB 15nm MLC NAND drive named Fixstars SSD-6000M.

Boasting transfer speeds of up to 540 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write, this SSD features your normal inclusions of NCQ, TRIM and SMART and measures in at 9.5mm thick - which means some laptops may be left out.

Set for launch in July 2015 with a 3-year warranty, there is no current mention of price. If the 6TB model is too large or expensive for your tastes, they also have a 3TB model on offer - more information can be found on their official website.

With Project CARS finally out, gamers across the world are beginning to feel the pain of owning an AMD Radeon video card. Some have started spreading rumors that developer Slightly Mad Studios were paid by NVIDIA to deliberately gimp the performance of AMD hardware, but this rumor is of course, very wrong.

Slightly Mad Studios boss Ian Bell has come out and talked about the performance of AMD owners in Project CARS, where he said: "We've provided AMD with 20 keys for game testing as they work on the driver side. But you only have to look at the lesser hardware in the consoles to see how optimized we are on AMD based chips".

"We're reaching out to AMD with all of our efforts. We've provided them 20 keys as I say. They were invited to work with us for years, looking through company mails the last I can see they (AMD) talked to us was October of last year". He continued: "Categorically, NVIDIA have not paid us a penny. They have though been very forthcoming with support and co-marketing work at their instigation. We've had emails back and forth with them yesterday also. I reiterate that this is mainly a driver issue but we'll obviously do anything we can from our side".

Consumers and businesses aren't in a big hurry to purchase new hardware or software, as Microsoft prepares to launch the Windows 10 operating system this summer, according to NVIDIA.

"We see a very soft market going into Q2," said Colette Kress, Chief Financial Officer at NVIDIA, while speaking during a financial analysts' call. Previously, the Gartner research group predicted PC prices will increase up to 10 percent in 2015, as the industry is still undergoing a change to fight off mobile products.

Windows 10 is expected to receive strong support, especially from disgruntled Windows 8/8.1 users - and Microsoft believes Windows 10 could be the last OS upgrade consumers need, as it will provide a seamless user experience across multiple devices.

With Windows 10 right around the corner, the news of Microsoft's upcoming operating system being the last could scare some people. But, for others, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

According to Microsoft Technical Evangelist Jerry Nixon, "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows". He added: "Right now we're releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we're all still working on Windows 10". If this is the last version of Windows, we can expect this to be the biggest launch of Windows ever.

Internally, Microsoft began working on Windows 10 after they started pulling the best parts of Windows 8.1 away, which ended up forming the last version of Windows ever. Instead of massive successive releases of Windows, Microsoft will instead provide improvements and fixes through updates, in a different way. Instead of the usual Patch Tuesday's, we should expect bigger updates over time which will overhaul the operating system.

The growing activity tracking company Fitbit has today announced plans to float on the stock exchange, in a $100 million IPO.

In documents submitted to the New York Stock Exchange, via TechCrunch, the company has announced it's sold through 20.8 million devices since its inception in 2007. The company has also demonstrated significant growth with over half of its lifetime sales made in the last year, with revenue for 2014 at $745.4 million, a huge leap from $271.1 million in 2013.

Fitbit is upfront about the challenges it faces in a competitive environment, even naming the Apple Watch in it's registration statement, but noting that they "believe we compete favorably with our competitors on the basis of these factors as a result of our leading market position and global brand, advanced and proprietary sensor technologies, software-driven online dashboard and mobile apps, our motivational and social tools, and our premium software offerings" and kicks Apple with "our singular focus on building a connected health and fitness platform, coupled with a leading market share, has led to our brand becoming synonymous with the connected health and fitness category."

John Riccitiello, former CEO of Electronic Arts and current chief of Unity Technologies, believes the Sony PlayStation 4 has "f**king nailed it" and deserves its "victory" compared to the Microsoft Xbox One.

Sony took a "gamer-first" approach, while Microsoft tried to expand the Xbox One's possible user base with marketing towards a broad market.

"Microsoft was focused on the shot after the one they needed to make, putting the 7-ball in the corner pocket, but they missed the first shot and didn't get another shot at it," Riccitiello said during the GamesBeat Summit. "Sony focused on the shot they needed to make, which was win the hearts and minds of the gamer. The broader scope of entertainment might be a bigger idea, but not with an unfocused execution. A tight execution on the 50 million people that matter, which are the people currently lapping up consoles... Sony f**king nailed it, and they deserve the victory."

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan has asked Congress to find a middle ground between national security and citizens' privacy, after saying the National Security Agency's phone surveillance program went too far.

The court's ruling will put added pressure on Congress to either scrap the program entirely, or make major changes. Using the Patriot Act as a front for its massive data collection, the NSA reportedly collected information on almost every call made in the United States - with data entered into a national database. It remained secret until former NSA contractor Edward Snowden unveiled the illegal phone data sweeps.

"In light of the asserted national security interests at stake, we deem it prudent to pause to allow an opportunity for debate in Congress that may (or may not) profoundly alter the legal landscape," said Judge Gerard E. Lynch, as he announced the decision.

Popular tequila company Patron has introduced its "Art of Patron Virtual Reality Experience," giving customers the chance to check out its Mexican distillery using VR. The tour can be viewed using an Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR headset, with Patron also showing the VR demo at company events and seminars.

The tequila maker recorded its agave fields and distillery using a drone equipped with seven GoPro cameras, with binaural audio recorded so clear sound accompanies the video footage. It took six months to prepare the VR experience.

"It's relatively easy to write brand education materials or shoot a video, but that doesn't always capture the full experience," said Lee Applbaum, global chief marketing officer at Patron Spirits, in a press statement. "What we've created, using the very latest VR technology, is an authentic, intimate and unprecedented look inside our private Hacienda doors, second only to visiting in person."

GIGABYTE has unveiled its P55K, a 15.6" gaming laptop that combines a quad-core Haswell processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M mobile GPU to power a stunning 1080p display.

The gaming laptop is powered by an Intel Core i7-4720HQ CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M GDDR5 2GB GPU, 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and full-sized backlit keyboard. The laptop ships with 4 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, D-Sub, SD card reader and DC-in jack - put together in a unit that measures 15" x 10.6" and stands 1.3" high. It weighs an acceptable 5.3-lb.

The P55K starts at $1,249 MSRP.

Periscope proved popular during the Mayweather-Pacquiao boxing super fight, but has brought intense scrutiny against the Twitter-owned app. The live video streaming app has a number of different legitimate uses, but its streams of the pricey boxing pay-per-view available last Saturday night gave it a large number of new supporters.

HBO and Showtime submitted 66 takedown requests to Periscope, with 30 of the streams dropped within a few minutes - but there were still plenty of streams that could be found throughout the fight. The app was reportedly purchased for $100 million by Twitter, and racked up 1 million users after 10 days of public availability.

"Companies like YouTube and Ustream developed those tools over years. We've been live for a month. And we're really excited to work with whoever we need to to figure out what those tools are," Beykpour said on CBS This Morning. "I think we built a tool that allows people to share what they're seeing with the world, and sometimes people will use that for things that we have no intention of supporting."

Nintendo generated $350 million in net profit for the fiscal year which recently ended in March, a massive increase over a predicted $250 million profit. It's an impressive turnaround for Nintendo, which hasn't turned a profit since 2011 - as the company deals with drastically changing software and hardware markets.

The Japanese gaming company hopes software game sales for the Wii U and 3DS will help add additional revenue - even though it predicted 3.4 million Wii U console sales and a drop in 3DS sales for the current fiscal year.

Even though Nintendo hasn't been able to compete with the Sony PlayStation 4 or Microsoft Xbox One, there are still bright signs for the future. The company's partnership with DeNA, for example, to take a more active role in mobile gaming should offer new life into the company: "A new source of revenue is expected from a gaming application for smart devices which will be released this year," according to Nintendo.

We've covered quite a lot here at TweakTown about the various match-fixing and betting ring scandals to hit the international CS:GO scene, with the first and most prominent scandal being that of some North American and Canadian pros being banned by Valve themselves for life due to their actions - we even wrapped up the international wrong-doings here in a mega-thread for you.

One of the highest profile players involved was Braxton 'swag' Pierce, a young teenage professional with many years of fragging to come ahead. Heartbroken by the ban, he announced on his public Facebook page that the ban was necessary to set a precedent and he regrets all actions.

In recent news, Swag has been kept around the gaming scene with professional North American organization 'Cloud9' announcing that it has offered him a position as their CS:GO team analyst. Yep, 'Swag analyst'.