PS4 price cut to spread overseas, says Microsoft

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 21, 2015 8:42 AM CDT

As Sony's direct competitor in the console war, Microsoft has kept up with the old mantra of "know thy enemy" quite well. As a result, Xbox division head Phil Spencer has made some predictions on Sony's next move, and "fully expects" that Sony will expand the PS4's recent price cut overseas to the west.

"When I think about the playbook they've used in the past, I fully expect [Sony] will drop [the PS4's] price," Phil Spencer told IGN in a follow-up interview. "If history tells, then we'll see a price drop from them coming."

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Star Wars: Battlefront to have dedicated servers

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 21, 2015 7:46 AM CDT

DICE has confirmed that Star Wars: Battlefront will indeed have dedicated servers to power the game's new skill-based matchmaking system, putting the fears of a peer-to-peer system to rest.

"We'll still have dedicated servers [in Battlefront], absolutely," DICE's Jamie Keen told PlayStation Lifestyle at TGS 2015. "It's one of the hallmarks of making sure we deliver an unparalled online service for the game." Given Battlefront has the 40-player Walker Assault mode, most gamers assumed DICE would go with dedicated servers. Then again the Frostbite engine has P2P support "baked in" and has been used for Battlefront 3's co-op missions.

We still don't have any concrete details on how Battlefront's new matchmaking system works, but DICE has made the extremely unpopular decision to cut out server browsers entirely on PC. This led to considerable backlash from the PC gaming community that sees server browsers as a must-have for games like Battlefront, giving users the freedom to pick and choose the type of maps and sessions they want to play.

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Intel's new Xeon CPU will feature 28 CPU cores, 56 threads in total

Anthony Garreffa | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Sep 20, 2015 4:56 PM CDT

Intel isn't far away from releasing its Skylake Purley-powered Xeon processors, with the new platform set to feature a huge 28 Skylake cores, and thanks to Hyper-Threading, a total of 56 threads of CPU power.

These new Xeon processors are not destined for the consumer desktop, as they will include multi-processor setups. The new Xeon E5 and Xeon E7 processor ranges will see the Xeon E5 range packing between two and four CPUs on a motherboard, while the Xeon E7 steps it up, considerably. The upcoming Xeon E7 range will pack an 8-socket design, allowing for an insane amount of CPU horsepower, especially when each CPU has 56 threads.

Intel will be unleashing its new Omnipath Architecture inside of the new Skylake-powered Xeon processors, something it calls Storm Lake (Generation 1). This new PCH will be codenamed Lewisburg, where it will include updated Ethernet controllers. The Skylake Purley update will also pave the way for Socket P, with a TDP that's configurable between 45W and 165W. The PCIe slots will have 48 lanes of bandwidth to play with, but this could change at any time.

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There's no point in playing Destiny without The Taken King

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 19, 2015 10:51 PM CDT

Bungie and Activision are sending a clear message with Destiny's new The Taken King expansion: if you don't want to buy it, then there's no reason to play. Rather than moving away from the controversial paid DLC models, Destiny has embraced them in a whole new way for Year 2, which offers a decidedly shocking look at the future of the franchise.

Destiny's The Taken King isn't just an expansion: it's a whole new game. Bungie has finally made Destiny into the game we always wanted. But even with all of these new additions and changes, Activison and Bungie are still up to the same old marketing tricks.

Just as I was starting to have faith in Bungie again, I'm reminded how exactly Destiny works. The game is built upon a ridiculous paygate scheme that literally forces gamers to purchase new expansions if they want to continue onward. With every passing DLC, little bits and chips of the core game are locked off: Xur selling expansion-only gear, daily heroic missions and weekly Nightfall strikes featuring DLC-only missions.

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A New Hope for original 'Star Wars' theatrical cuts release

Ben Gourlay | Celebrities & Entertainment | Sep 19, 2015 9:14 PM CDT

The rumours of a release of the original, non-special edition release of the 'Star Wars Trilogy' have been swirling ever since the purchase of Lucasfilm and all its properties by the Disney corporation back in 2012, even thought the new owners failed to release the product before 'The Force Awakens' launch in December. But according to Director John Landis, Disney will do what fans have been demanding for years.

Filmmaker John Landis, director of dozens of films and music videos such as 'Animal House', 'The Blues Brothers', 'An American Werewolf in London' and Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' has been a friend and colleague of 'Star Wars' creator George Lucas for decades and his words hold far more weight than an anonymous sources.

While this is far from official confirmation from Disney, I'm very hopeful that fans will recieve a surprise ahead of the 40th anniversary of the saga in 2017.

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AMD loses its high profile CPU architect Jim Keller

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Sep 18, 2015 4:32 PM CDT

It was only last week that AMD effectively spun off its GPU division into Radeon Technology Group, and now the chipmaker is in the headlines again as it has lost another high-profile employee in the form of its Chief Architect of Microprocessor Cores, Jim Keller. Keller is leaving AMD to pursue other opportunities.

Keller is known for his work with AMD in their early days of CPU dominance, as he was a key player in the creation of the original Athlon architecture, the K7. After that, he was the lead architect on the K8 architecture, and played a large role in developing the world's first native x86-64 bit architecture. Keller left AMD for Apple to help make its A4 and A5 processors, joining AMD once again in 2012 to lead the development of the Zen architecture.

An AMD spokesperson talked with HEXUS, where they said: "Jim was responsible for overseeing the teams defining the roadmaps for AMD's CPU cores, systems IP, and server and client SoCs". Obviously some people might be worried about AMD losing a key player of theirs, so the spokesperson added: "Jim helped establish a strong leadership team that is well positioned for success as we enter the completion phase of the "Zen" core and associated system IP and SoCs. Jim's departure is not expected to impact our public product or technology roadmaps, and we remain on track for "Zen" sampling in 2016 with first full year of revenue in 2017".

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PlayStation VR 'will be priced as a new gaming platform'

Now that we know the official name of Project Morpheus, we're finding out about what price point PlayStation VR will launch at. During TGS 2015, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House said that PlayStation VR would "be priced as a new gaming platform", reports Bloomberg.

We don't have a concrete price yet, but I would say that a 'gaming platform' is around $400 if you look at the price of the PlayStation 4. When it comes to Sony's future, the Japanese giant has been shifting from TVs, and towards games, image sensors and movies. The company wants to fight harder against Microsoft and the Xbox One, with PlayStation VR being a very big part of that.

House added: "VR rewrites the rule book on how you can create games. You're seeing a large amount of interest and work happening among smaller teams, because it's possible to create something in VR that is very simple but still very magical". Better yet, we're hearing about how many games PlayStation VR will launch with. At TGS, Sony is showing off 10 playable titles for PlayStation VR, which I think is the amount of games, maybe a little more, that we'll see launch with the VR headset.

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Report: Konami gives up on AAA games, no more Metal Gear

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 18, 2015 12:57 PM CDT

Reports indicate that Konami has finally thrown in the towel for AAA games development, and is no longer willing to gamble on franchises and game releases outside of the safety umbrella of the Pro Evolution Soccer sports line.

The reports come straight from two French game outlets, which was then verified by Eurogamer that Konami is indeed shutting down all plans for future AAA releases--except for PES games. The news was reinforced by the departure of Julien Merceron, Konami's worldwide technology director, and it looks like Konami will completely focus on mobile games from hereon out.

That effectively means that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which is simultaneously lauded as a masterpiece and seen as an unfinished game by the community, will be the last Meta Gear Solid game. Konami prepared for this move when it fired Hideo Kojima and dissolved his development team, a move that ushered significant backlash from its own audience. Gamers also watched in horror as reports of Konami "imprisoning and exploitating" its employees with unfair working conditions surfaced on the web.

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Final 'Steve Jobs' trailer trailer depicts the highs and lows of Apple

Ben Gourlay | Celebrities & Entertainment | Sep 17, 2015 5:58 PM CDT

The upcoming 'Steve Jobs' has been both praised and pilloried by those who knew the man best, but with the film beginning its worldwide release next month, fans will get to weigh in themselves. Today, distributor Universal Studios has released the final trailer for the film which samples the three major timelines that the film hones in on.

Michael Fassbender portrays Jobs in the film, which is already generating strong Oscar buzz. 'Steve Jobs' hits cinemas in United States on October 23rd, but has been delayed in Australia until January 2016.

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Amazon reveals $140 Fire TV microconsole with 4K streaming

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Sep 17, 2015 2:15 PM CDT

On the heels of the revamped Apple TV, Amazon throws its hat into the Android micro-console ring with the $140 Fire TV Gaming Edition that merges 4K video streaming with set-top box gaming.

The Fire TV Gaming Edition only supports 4K video streaming and doesn't do 4K gaming--which isn't a surprise since it runs mobile games. Under the hood it packs 2GB of RAM, a MediaTek quad-core processor at 2GHz speeds for "75% more processing power than previous models" and a Power VR GX6250 GPU for grpahics. 8GB of onboard memory storage is included along with an equipped 32GB Micro SD card in the expandable memory slot. The hybrid gamebox can hit 4K video streaming at 30fps and 60fps in 1080p, but we're not sure if the latter resolution is for gaming or not.

Amazon boasts that the Fire TV Gaming Edition "has more games than Apple TV, Roku, or NVIDIA Shield" and every unit comes with a free copy of the amazing 8-bit platformer Shovel Knight and Capcom's DuckTales remake. The Fire TV microconsole can be connected to the internet via ethernet or MIMO Wi-Fi over 802.11a/b/g/n/ac networks. The set-top box also supports Bluetooth 4.1 and has the standard fare of ports consisting of HDMI out, DC power, ethernet, Micro SD and USB port in a compact 4.5in x 4.5in x 0.7in form factor.

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