Latest News - Page 2971

According to a Joystiq report, Ubisoft's much-anticipated game Watch Dogs will be releasing in mid-November. The report says that North America will be getting the game on November 19 and the United Kingdom will be getting it on November 22.

Watch Dogs will be released on all current gaming systems, including the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U, as well as PC, the PlayStation 4, and next-generation consoles, such as the Xbox 720.

The UK version will reportedly be available in four different editions: Dedsec, Vigilante, Uplay, and Special Edition. Dedsec will come with a 23cm figurine, while the Vigilante will come with Aiden Pearce's cap and mask. Uplay, available through Ubisoft's digital distributioin network will reportedly come with a steelbook and the Special Edition will reportedly come with an extra single player mission. North American bundles are not currently known.

Our readers seem to have quite an interest in space, and who wouldn't? As part of the commercialization of space and space travel, Virgin Galactic has successfully completed the first test flight of its space plane, which will eventually be used to take ordinary citizens into space.

Don't start packing your bags quite yet, though, as Virgin Galactic didn't even make it into space on this first test flight. The plane behaved as expected and flew for around 10 minutes before returning to the ground. It was shuttled to an altitude of 47,000 feet before being released to fly on its own.

After being released, the plane flew up to 55,000 feet and broke the sound barrier. Virgin Galactic expect to test the plane in space by the end of the year and plan to have real flights for everyone available starting in 2015.

Corsair has just communicated information to us that states that Corsair is not being bought out by Francisco Partners (as previously reported), a private equity (PE) company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, which specializes in tech companies.

Corsair, however, has confirmed that it is in active talks with Francisco Partners for an injection of funds to the tune of $75 million to settle in a few weeks. Corsair explains that it won't change the management of the company or its direction that targets the gaming and enthusiast market, one which Corsair says is "growing and shows no signs of stopping".

It's little secret now that Corsair had plans to go public last year, but it was around the time that Facebook launched and saw less than stellar results. This caused Corsair to re-think its plans and come up with something new. The result, it seems, is working with Francisco Partners.

Some leaked specifications on Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note III have floated onto the Internet, and if they're correct, we'll be looking at the fastest smartphone on the market. Check out the specs:

We should hear more about the Note III at IFA 2013 which is in October, until then we'll just have to dream of this phone. What do you think? An 8-core smartphone with 3GB of RAM and a 1080p display. This thing is better specced than most PCs!

Thanks to Icon Home Entertainment, we have three copies of Dredd 3D: Limited Edition on Blu-ray up for grabs, which retail for $50.95.

The future. America is an irradiated wasteland. On its East Coast, running from Boston to Washington DC lies Mega City One a vast, violent metropolis of over 400 million citizens living in perpetual fear. The only ones attempting to impose order in the urban chaos are The Judges. Law enforcers, juries, judges and executioners rolled into one. The epitome of these Judges is Dredd. The Chief Judge gives Dredd a mission. To road test a rookie Judge, the powerful psychic Cassandra Anderson. It is to be a training day. The Judges head for a seemingly routine homicide in the notorious Peach Trees mega-block - a 200 story vertical slum run by the pitiless Ma-Ma clan. When the Judges attempt to arrest one of Ma-Ma's chief henchmen, Ma-Ma shuts down the entire building and orders her clan to hunt the judges down. Our two judges are now caught in a vicious and relentless fight for survival.

The Dredd 3D Blu-ray features the 2012 film in both 2D and 3D, along with some solid extra features. The limited edition Blu-ray version also adds a high quality slipcover and an insert graphic novel.

Up until now, NVIDIA's PhysX technology hasn't been used in games all that well. Even today, it's still just a technology demo, and a technology acquisition by NVIDIA, but they continue to keep their heads down and work on the physics technology.

There's a new simulation using PhysX, which you can check out in the above video. The demo is the result of research by Miles Macklin and Matthias Muller. They have a paper published about it, which you can read here, with some details below:

A regulatory filing shows that Francsico Partners is currently in talks with Corsair Componenets over a possible buyout. Corsair had previously indefinitely postponed an IPO after the IPO flop that befell Facebook. At the time, they said they would "relaunch when equity conditions are more favorable."

It now appears that they are choosing a buyout over an IPO. Corsair could be heavily affected the current downturn in the PC market, resulting in the need for a cash infusion. As an interesting aside, Francisco Partners was part of the Blackstone Group-led consortium that decided to not make a formal buyout offer for Dell.

It's very possible nothing could come of these talks. On the other hand, Corsair could end up being bought out. This could result in changes in the company or products that they make and sell. For now, nothing has changed. We'll be sure to report if or when a buyout agreement is reached.

VR-Zone has posted up a picture of what appears to be box art for the upcoming Intel line of processors known as Haswell. Intel is really pushing a conceptual computing and creativity aspect this year, so the box design definitely fits within that strategy. But, is it the actual box art?

The box art shown above departs from the typical box art used by Intel. For instance, the top part of the front of the box features a wider case-badge instead of the typical small badge. We likely won't know for sure until Haswell launches at Computex in early June, which we reported earlier today.

Nintendo has released an update for its Wii U gaming console. This update, claims Nintendo, brings with it better performance, decreased boot times, and decreased load times. The Wii U, while an innovative console, has failed to sell in quantities that Nintendo would be happy with.

Nintendo has published the following list of changes:

We encourage that Wii U user make sure to run the update process on a stable Internet connection and reduce their risk of losing power to avoid risking a bricked system.

At least one Google Glass Explorer Edition owner has been doing some digging. Jay Lee, a hacker who got his hands on a pair of Google Glass, managed to connect Glass up to Google's ADB software and dig through the debug data to find out what operating system and hardware was powering the wearable device.

According to the ADB printout, Google Glass Explorer Editions are running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich. They are powered by an OMAP 4430 CPU, which is a dual-core in the same family as the processor used in the Galaxy Nexus smartphone. The ADB printout returned that the system has 682MB of RAM, though Lee believes it's more likely 1GB with some reserved for hardware.

We'll surely be getting more information as Glass gets into the hands of more developers and hackers. Until then, feel free to dig through the information Lee has posted on a Google Drive.

This morning Sony has released a new video that shows off its DualShock 4 controller. Sony mentions that they worked tirelessly with developers to create a next-generation controller that is truly the best it can be.

While the DualShock 4 may look similar to its predecessor in form, the whole controller has been fine-tuned with improvements made to the analog sticks, the sensitivity of the triggers, as well as a new light bar on the front of the controller that tells the PS4 your position in the room and adjusts your split screen, relevant to your location.

A new touch pad has been added to the controller, as well. Sony says that this was a major request from game developers and features multi-touch sensitivity and is comfortable to use with your thumbs or fingertips. Additionally a speaker has been added to the controller that is said to bring forth a new dynamic of sound to gameplay.

After a very successful first quarter for the Snapdragon 600, Qualcomm is moving forward with production on its next-generation system on a chip processor for mobile devices. A Qualcomm exec has confirmed with Engadget that the Snapdragon 800 is expected to move into mass production beginning late May.

Based around the Krait 400 architecture, the Snapdragon 800 is a quad-core beast that could likely see clock speeds as high as 2.3GHz with very low power consumption. An internal Adreno 330 GPU will be capable of 4K playback at 30fps. 802.11 B/G/N Wi-Fi, USB 3.0 and 4G LTE are also built into the chip, alongside a quick charging circuit and voice command capabilities.

Qualcomm is keeping quiet on which handset manufacturers have placed orders and as such, there is no official word, or speculation on which upcoming smartphones will feature the new SoC. We will tune an ear to the market as always and report back once we get word on any upcoming devices featuring the Snapdragon 800.

This morning Intel announced via its Facebook page and Twitter account that it would be unveiling its next-generation Core processor family at Computex on June 4th. Codenamed Haswell, the new processor family is no secret at this point, though.

Haswell architecture is designed to optimize the power savings and performance benefits from the move to FinFET transistors on the improved 22nm process, and feature a fully integrated voltage regulator, moving the power scaling duties from the motherboard and onto the processor itself.

The new king of speed is said to be the Core i7-4770K, which is a quad-core, eight thread 3.9GHz beast. While the middle of the road low power consumption chip is said to be the Core i5-4670T that runs four cores at 3.8GHz.

Cyberthreats are the new way of slowly removing citizens' privacy, and now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing to deploy a very powerful new version of their EINSTEIN intrusion-detection system that is built to detect attacks and malware, especially when it comes to e-mail.

But because this new version of EINSTEIN is able to read electronic content, it is raising privacy concerns. DHS has recognized this, and have just issued a "privacy impact assessment" on what they're calling EINSTEIN 3 Accelerated, the intrusion detection and prevention system that is expected to be made available as a managed security service from ISPs to monitor the ".gov" traffic to and from civilian agencies and Executive Branch departments.

The DHS has said that EINSTEIN 3 might be able to collect "personally identifiable information" (PII) in some instances where this network security system will not just monitor but also prevent threats by clocking traffic in order to detect a cyberthreat or potential cyberthreat.

US ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, has reached out to his official Facebook page telling Australians to stop pirating popular HBO show, Game of Thrones. He wrote:

The comments came on April 23, marking the 17th annual UN World Book and Copyright Day. He added:

According to Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst for KGI Securities, Apple will start production on a Haswell-powered MacBook sometime in May in preparation for a late summer launch. A late summer launch flies in the face of what Tim Cook said during an investor call: "Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services that we can't wait to introduce in the fall and into 2014."

Kuo expects the MacBook line to feature a vastly updated design and only Retina displays. Intel is currently thought to be planning to release Haswell at Computex in the first part of June, so this timeline matches up with Intel's schedule, lending some credibility to this claim.

We don't doubt that Apple will make use of Intel's Haswell CPUs, it's just a matter of when exactly they make the switch and to what degree they update the MacBook line.

PlayStation 4's lead architect, Mark Cerny, says that the PlayStation 4 launch will feature the strongest set of launch games in PlayStation 4. In an interview with Gamasutra, Cerny talks about the PlayStation 4 and how it is so easy to code for thanks to its unified architecture.

Most importantly, Cerny says, "The launch lineup for PlayStation 4 -- though I unfortunately can't give the title count -- is going to be stronger than any prior PlayStation hardware." Gamasutra has the full interview at source #1.

Google has released a second update for Google Drive just shortly after the one released earlier today. This latest update will allow all of your Google Drive documents to sync in the background so that you don't have to plan ahead. With this new feature, anytime you're offline, you can simply head to drive.Google.com

This is a feature that is already present in Chrome OS. Google may one day bring this feature to other browsers, though it's not clear if they have plans to do so as of right now.

If you're looking forward to taking video with your shiny new Google Glass headset, I've got some bad news. According to Robert Scoble, a user with the Explorer Edition of Google Glass, shooting video can drain the battery in as little as 30 minutes. "One six-minute video I did took 20 percent of the battery."

This could end up being a deal breaker for a large majority of customers. Google has maintained that the Explorer Edition of Glass isn't for the mainstream consumer. As such, it's not the final version and still has bugs and issues to work out.

Google does have an issue with regards to battery life. They need to squeeze the most out of the smallest battery they can. If they increase the size of the battery, that extra weight takes away from the comfort during wearing.

Google Drive is one of the productivity tools that I do not think I could live without. I use it for note taking during meetings, collaboration on projects, and even as a file sharing service for documents. This morning, Google announced some improvements to the service that should make life easier and more feature rich for those like me who use the service daily with others.

Over the next few days, users will see the addition of profile photos, one-click group chats, and even a completely new look for anonymous users. Once the update rolls out, a profile photo will be displayed at the top of a file that was created and shared to you by another user. Google is hoping that this will help you better notice everyone who is in the file with you.

In addition to the profile photo being displayed, you will be able to click on the image and add that user to your Google+ circles. Anonymous users are also affected by this change and you will see them appear as a different icon chosen at random from the list above.