Latest News - Page 3118

DICE GM Karl-Magnus Troedsson has confirmed that development for Battlefield 3 switched from lead platform on PC to consoles half way through the development "in order to meet release on time". Troedsson elaborates:

Executive producer Patrick Bach chimes in:

Even though Sandy Bridge-E is about to drop, Apple might not be interested in investing anymore time or money into their full-size workstation line outside of this year because of limited sales of the Mac Pro. Apple has reportedly developed a revision to the Mac Pro, that may or may not even get released according to people familiar with the matter said management as far back as May of this year.

Apple have reportedly had discussions about the future of the Mac Pro, and that their days were inevitably numbered. Internal discussions have gone as far as mentioning that the sales of the Mac Pro to both consumers and enterprises have dropped off so considerably that the Mac Pro is no longer a particularly profitable operation for Apple. Then there's the Thunderbolt issue.

Thunderbolt was introduced this year, and allows the other, more popular members of the Mac family to assume the vast majority of the roles that once required the high-end Mac Pro's.

The state of gaming is in disarray, but the problem is that 90-percent of gamers don't really notice it. It's the old-school gamers, the early FPS titles that were remembered, the fast-paced, PC-exclusive, hardware-loving, crazy-insane FPS titles from the 90s that are the most enjoyed FPS games of all time. Back in a day when gaming wasn't mainstream, when a PC gaming system would give you hours of joy with hard games, not corridor shooters, with puzzles and hours of head-scratching now just simplified, easy games.

There's a video I found online, saying that if id Software's FPS defining Quake were built today, what would it be. Check it out below:

First we find there's a million and one load screens and advertisements before the game starts, as the game starts we find the main menu displayed. In the main menu is "new game", "options", "DLC" and "exit". The video shows "options" and within options, "graphics". Graphics has an awesome display of "on" and "off", which is taking the piss out of the current console ports like Crysis 2 which feature lack lustre graphic options when compared to even the original Crysis.

It was only hours ago that we found out Battlefield 3 had shipped 10 million copies with retailers begging for more, but straight from EA itself, we find out that Battlefield 3 has an estimated 5 million sold in its first week of availability. That is a bloody good number, but what most people want to know is how the numbers are split between the consoles and PC versions of the game.

EA have also talked about the various stability issues with Battlefield 3 which have haunted it since the start. EA told Ars Technica:

Apple is set to change everything up with their new iOS app and retail plans have finally been confirmed thanks to a source of BGR's. On Thursday, Apple's new retail store app for iOS will launch, bringing with it two major new features. Firstly, it will enable online ordering with retail store pickup, which has already begun rolling out in Apple Stores in New York City and California, with more stores going live on Thursday.

As for what will now happen, just check out the insane list below:

If a customer orders an in-stock product, pick up will be available approximately 12 minutes after completing the order. Why 12 minutes? Well, the order goes through the system to the designated Apple Store in about 3 minutes. Apple's back-of-house employees have 2 minutes to set all of the products aside on a shelf from the minute it was ordered. There is then a 7-minute grace period for employees to get everything else in order. Around 12 minutes after purchasing, customers will be able to walk into the Apple Store, skip lines, skip registers, get their products, sign for them and leave. We're told Apple is really excited about this, and it's something customers have been seeking for a while.

ASRock have come out swinging today with some Sandy Bridge-E flavored teasing. ASRock shot off e-mails all across the world announcing they were showing off some X79-based motherboards. No list of specifications or features were included, but we do have some delicious photos to show you.

First up, we have the X79 Extreme9 which sports eight DIMM slots, five PCI Express x16 slots, dual auxiliary 12V power connectors, 12 SATA ports and network connectivity/audio are powered by what looks to be Creative's new Core3D audio chip. The Extreme 9 features a hot-as-hell color scheme and fills out along the rest of ASRock's X79 line.

Next up we have the Extreme7 which throws out the add-on card and two DIMM slots, but adds a PCI slot into the mix. Because two of the DIMM slots were thrown overboard, the Extreme7 features more extreme VRM cooling. As you can see, it sports a tiny little fan just like the Extreme9 - one of the biggest downfalls of these boards.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) have released their third quarte report for the graphics market. The news brings announcement that there was a 16.7-percent sequential increase in shipments, raising them to 138.5 million. That is above the 10-year average of 13.9-percent, but in line with seasonal expectations as vendors stock up for the holiday season.

Intel saw a 28.5-percent growth in shipments on-quarter and 36.5-percent on-year, which is made up nearly entirely of embedded graphics chips inside their latest-generation desktop and mobile processors. Intel have maintained a huge lead on their competition, gobbling up 60.4-percent of the GPU market share, up 10.1-percent from Q2 2011 and up 9.5-percent when compared to Q3, 2010.

AMD have seen a steady 9.9-percent increase in shipments, this is thanks to their Fusion APU, but they lost market share. Market share for AMD is down to 23-percent, down 5.9-percent on-quarter, and flat year-over-year. Shipments of AMD's desktop and notebook Fusion chips have increased 58.4-percent from last quarter. Now for some big numbers, almost 92 million PCs shipped worldwide this quarter alone, up 8.8-percent sequentially. There were roughly 1.6 GPUs per computer in 2011, up from 1.16 GPUs per system ten years ago.

The shocking flooding in Thailand has not only affected families and citizens of Thailand, but some giant IT companies have factories there such as Western Digital. We've all heard, seen or read about the recent hard disk drive pricing hikes the world over, with prices ballooning to sometimes over 50-percent (or more) and stock levels should be getting quite thin over the following weeks toward the holiday season.

Thanks to Bright Side of News, we have some pictures that show the epic flooding that has hit Thailand. The waters near the WD factory were between 1 and 1.4m deep (4-5 feet) and were an average of about 1m (4 feet) through most of the factory and its surroundings. As you can see in the above shot, the water isn't just in some parts, it's everywhere.

Western Digital is also not the only company that is directly affected by the floods, with HDD production hitting all major players with expected 28-percent of quarter-on-quarter drop in HDD production. Other companies affected are not even in the HDD industry, the digital camera industry was also hit with companies such as Canon, Nikon and Sony all being affected, so expect digital camera prices to jump.

First, HP were killing off their PC unit, then they said they were keeping it, now the group's chief technology officer announced that he is leaving in a statement on his personal blog. December 31st will be his last day and his statement is below in its entirety.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments grew by 44-percent annually, with a record 117 million units in Q3 2011. Samsung sped past Apple to claim top spot as the world's number one smartphone vendor. Samsung shipped 28 million smartphones and overtook Apple to become the world's largest smartphone vendor by volume with 24-percent market share.

Director at Strategy Analytics, Neil Mawston says:

Apple's iPhone 4S may have enjoyed a large start in sales, but those sales are useless if there are various issues with the handsets. Today brings the problem of battery life on the new iPhone 4S. A story on the Guardian reported that Apple engineers have begun contacting certain users who have complained of battery problems.

Apple have reportedly asked those used to install diagnostic programs onto their iPhone 4S' so that Apple can better diagnose what is causing the battery issues. Since the get go, the Internet has been ablaze with people complaining about the battery life. Even as far as reviews from such places like iLounge, which noted their biggest disappointment with the iPhone 4S was its battery performance.

Then we have TechCrunch which had an opinion piece titled "Dear Apple, Please Make My iPhone 4S Battery Life Suck Less", which they say after a full charge, the 4S dies within eight hours. They also claim that the iPhone 4S battery only lasted for around two-and-a-half hours of Internet usage, 30 minutes of talk time and five hours on standby before being totally drained. This is the same kind of issues that various people on the Apple support forums are reporting.

Naughty, iiNet! iiNet's recent ad on TV has been taken down after it was found it breached the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice as it included a subliminal message. The message in the ad read:

The link sends you here, but the limit of 100 entries has already been met. You can however, still enter your details for the chance to win one of five iPads. The message itself is fine, it won't make you a zombie for iiNet products, but it was enough of a breach to enable Free TV Australia to take it down. The Code of Practice states that information conveyed in a manner that is "below or near the threshold of normal awareness" is unacceptable.

Guess who's back? The Battlefield 3 on Steam rumors are back, that's who. This time its thanks to a competition held by Sapphire, which was found on the Sapphire Select Club website. One of the prizes in this competition is "[o]ne (1) PC Game code for Battlefield 3, redeemable for the game on Steam". Of course, this could be a mistake on Sapphire's behalf.

Kotaku does raise an interesting point, that Sapphire are most likely so used to writing competition terms and conditions that usually reference Steam codes, that they just assumed it would be the same with this competition. But... there's also the PBSetup.exe file, which is used to install Punk Buster for Battlefield installs, has been updated and now shows the following install files:

C:Program Files (x86)Electronic ArtsBattlefield 3

ARM Ltd is getting serious against Intel and AMD, and are now going to compete with the chip giants in the high-end and server computing market, where competition is tight. ARM has announced their new ARMv8 architecture, the first one to include a 64-bit instruction set. ARM CTO, Mike Mullar says:

ARMv8 will have both 32- and 64-bit modes, like todays x86/x64 CPUs, and this should help transition ARM into the 64-bit world for existing applications. ARM have dubbed the 32-bit mode "AArch32" and the 64-bit mode "AArch64".

Google TV arrived last year to some lukewarm reviews, citing its complicated interface and lack of actual usefulness. Google has spun out with another push in the form of Google TV 2.0, which includes a totally revamped UI as well as access to Google's Android Market. The update will get rolled out to Sony devices starting today and will hit Logitech Revue set-top boxes soon after.

There's no new hardware announced, but we should see some from Samsung, Vizio and other partners next year. Google, for now, are focusing their efforts making its software more user-friendly and building a solid base that will continue to be improved upon with one or two major OS updates per year and through apps from third-party developers.

Google have also tweaked the YouTube app, making it more living-room friendly. Videos now start playing in full-screen mode right away and custom playlists are created on-the-fly, so a related video will automatically begin playing when the previous one finishes, leaving you not having to tweak that remote control every time a video ends. Google have also added a very nice update that gives users access to a filtered version of the Android Market with apps optimized for Google TV.

Google+ has added Instagram-like controls to its photo section. The section has always had basic editing, because Google+ shares its photo albums with Picasa, so any edits made there would bounce back. But now they're stepped it up a few notches and built it directly in. The new controls only work in the desktop version, and can be accessed by clicking the edit button when you're in the fullscreen light-box view and selecting "Creative Kit".

From there, you're launched into an editor which is powered by PicNik (my niece Alisha will love that). From here, you can crop and tweak photos, but also included is an Instagram-like filter where you can perform some powerful edits. Included is a "Sunless Tan" tool, which can do exactly what it says... you use a brush to apply the tan and somehow it works out where the edges are and turns anyone into a reality TV star ready for the Jersey Shore, b*tch.

Right now there is a seasonal toolkit: Halloween. This allows you to add blood spatter, gravestones, "Dracula Dermis", and other fun stuff to your pictures. The Creative Kit is Flash-powered, so if you were thinking you might hit it up by signing into the non-mobile version of Google+ from an iPad, you're completely out of luck.

Valve have been been quite good with DLC and user-created content, and Portal 2 from what it seems, is set to get a serious injection of not only awesome, but ease. Valve released Portal 2's authoring tools earlier this year and it has unleashed various custom puzzles for Portal 2 from the community. So far more than 700 puzzles have been created.

It's not a massive success, as many spiring modders have complained that the toolkit is too complicated to use. Many gamers have also complained that it's too difficult to find and play the community-generated test chambers. Valve have not been sitting on their hands during this, as they've vowed to resolve both lingering issues.

As you can see from the above two screenshots, Valve look to be offering the masses with a puzzle creator that offers "simplified" but "powerful" controls. Valve have not talked about any specifics on the new authoring tools, but the two screenshots above seem to indicate it would be quite simple indeed. I feel a Sims vibe when I look at them, and that is a simple enough game, but powerful at the same time.

If you haven't played Battlefield 3 yet, I don't know why you haven't - it is an amazing achievement of a game. For me, it has been one of (if not the) best multiplayer experiences of my life. DICE have followed through (technical issues aside). EA have announced that they have shipped 10 million copies to retailers worldwide, with many retailers requesting more stock.

Three million copies of Battlefield 3 had been sold as pre-orders before the game was released, which was confirmed by EA's COO, Peter Moore in an investor call a few days ago. Even though Battlefield 3 has been very successful, they [EA and DICE] still want to keep its single player campaign in the future Battlefield titles.

EA's Frank Gibeau says:

Intel has just released version 3.0 of its "SSD Toolbox" which sports an entirely new UI and rolls in a ton of new features.

The management and diagnostics of your Intel based SSD with this tool is now about as complete as could be with SMART status, Summary Drive Health and Estimated Life Remaining bars, used/unused capacity pie charts, diagnostics, system information summary and contextual help that integrates one-click same-page help pointers.

With SSDS typically having a limited rewrite cycle count (the amount of times data can be rewritten onto its NAND cells before it's game over and the SSD becomes a doorstep), while the cycle count equates to many, many years of use even for the all day every day user, it's still nice to have peace of mind about the rewrite cycle status.

Logitech have just unveiled a new gaming keyboard and mouse in the form of the Logitech Gaming Keyboard G105 and Logitech Laser Mouse G9X, specially made for the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The Logitech Gaming Keyboard G105 is the official keyboard of COD: Modern Warfare 3 and sports military-style, night-vision green LED backlighting. It also features six programmable G-keys, each with three mode states.

The Logitech Gaming Keyboard G105 also features up to 18 possible macro combinations per game, where they can allow you to perform single keystrokes or intricate multi-key combinations complete with mouse events, user-defined delays and repeating. New macros can even be recorded on the fly with the help of the Logitech Gaming Software (when installed).

Next up is the Logitech Laser Mouse G9X, this mouse gives you the 'game-changing precision' at hand speeds up to 165 inches per second on the most popular gaming mouse pad surfaces. It also sports on-the-fly, adjustable dpi which takes you from a pixel-precise 200 dpi, to lighting-fast 5700 dpi without pausing in action, while full-speed USB delivers performance at up to 1000 reports each and every second.