Latest News - Page 5

The hype for Microsoft's next-gen Windows 10 operating system is pretty real, with the official reveal event taking place in less than a week -- on June 24 -- but before then, check out these awesome default wallpapers for Windows 11.

The recent Windows 11 leak has allowed the default wallpaper to be leaked alongside it, and they're really, really good. Microsoft has continued to make improvements with the default wallpaper with its new Windows operating system releases, but Windows 11 has the best default wallpaper by far.

Microsoft is including wallpaper for both light and dark modes in Windows 11, and as a big fan of the dark mode in any operating system -- the dark-themed wallpaper for Windows 11 looks especially awesome. I can't wait to see how that looks blown up on a 43-inch 4K monitor.

Cyberpunk 2077 is coming back to the PlayStation Store next week, and CD Projekt RED is rolling out even more patches to fix bugs and glitches.

CP2077's new Patch 1.23 update corrects a ton of bugs across all platforms, including fixes for 17 different missions and gigs. Some other major tweaks include adjustments to NPCs as well as crash fixes across all platforms in an effort to maintain stability and performance. There's also an optimization for I/O and system memory to reduce the amount of repeated NPC appearances across Night City.

There's even a prompt surrounding corrupted save data--an issue that plagued gamers a few patches ago. "A popup message asking to verify integrity of game data will now be displayed when incomplete or corrupted game data is detected," reads the notes.

Sabrent unleashed their performance-dominating Rocket 4 Plus 1TB + 2TB SSDs last year, offering an insane 7GB/sec (7000MB/sec) reads, and now those drives have some new firmware up for grabs.

The original version 1.1 firmware on the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus has been updated, with a new version 1.2 firmware available for download on the official Sabrent website. There are a few issues with the new firmware, with early Sabrent Rocke 4 Plus SSDs now receiving some upgrades.

If you picked up one of Sabrent's super-fast Rocket 4 Plus SSDs closer to their release, you might have a drive with v1.1 firmware -- but most purchases after the initial waves should be v1.2 firmware and not needing the firmware update. For those who purchased early, that firmware update is now ready.

343i talks a bit more about Halo Infinite's multiplayer, but leaves out some really important details as well.

Halo devs showed up to talk about multiplayer at the Xbox Extended stream and revealed a few more tidbits about the F2P mode. According to 343i, the AI bots can be played on any map in the game, which allows gamers to practice the ins and outs of specific areas. Bots can also be scaled to difficulty and their loadouts and equipment usage can be cusotmized.

Next we have something that will change the dynamic flow of multiplayer. Weapons and spawning equipment will be mounted on objects in Halo Infinite (e.g. walls) and they will also have active respawn timers that are visible to all players. So now you'll know exactly when the rockets, sword, or sniper will respawn. This affords more tactical strategy to gameplay, planning, and execution across team-based and FFA modes.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is one of the most demanding video games ever made. It pushes today's highest-end PCs to their limits. So how did Microsoft get it running on Xbox Series X/S hardware? It borrowed power from the cloud.

Microsoft Flight Simulator on consoles both rides the clouds and is powered by them. Today the company confirmed that Flight Simulator's console release is driven in part by Microsoft's potent Azure servers, which can stream the massive 2.5 petabytes of Flight Sim data from the servers directly to console hardware. Machine learning is also a big part of what makes Flight Simulator tick and is responsible for building the game's staggeringly-detailed environments in real-time.

"The Series X is a super-powerful console and we're also using the Microsoft tech stack in an interesting way. The Series X/S are like beasts, the GPU is awesome, the CPU is multiple cores, fast RAM so we can run in 4K, the SSD is super-fast. It's basically the equivalent of a high-end PC," said Flight Sim boss Jorg Neumann.

Top Gun's Maverick is coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator for PC and console, complete with another expansion pack in 2021.

Today Microsoft announced the Maverick expansion pack for Flight Simulator, which brings the eponymous big screen legend to the gaming world. Not much is known about the crossover other than it will coincide with the movie's release on November 19, 2021.

The company says the expansion is all about going fast: "All I can say is that we're going to go fast, like really fast, and we're going to be in the danger zone." More expansions are coming this year and next year; Microsoft has one other big expansion planned for 2021 and six more planned for 2022.

Xbox Design Lab is back and now allows players to customize the new Xbox controller variants.

Microsoft has brought back Xbox Design Lab due to popular demand and gamers can now customize their new-gen Xbox controllers. The controllers start at $69.99 and offer lots of paint job variations and unique designs, including custom share/back/options buttons, unique D-Pad schemes, and more.

"We had to take a pause when we launched the latest generation Xbox hardware, but now we're back. There's tons of color options, you can choose from 18 different colors for the pieces on the exterior. Three of those colors are new to Design Lab: Shock Blue, Pulse Red, and the Electric Volt."

Today Ninja Theory confirmed Hellblade II: Senua's Saga isn't in full production yet, meaning it could be a while before it releases.

Hellblade II was missing from the Xbox E3 2021 show for a good reason: There's not a whole lot to show just yet. Ninja Theory says the game isn't in full-scale production yet and the teams are currently ramping up assets across the board, from motion capture and real-world photogrammetry captures.

"We're building a big chunky slice of the game before we move onto full production to build out the rest of the game," Ninja Theory boss Tameem Antoniades said.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy has yet to experience a competitor, but that time has come to an end, as a new Lord of the Rings movie will be coming out.

The new movie will focus on Helm's Deep, and more importantly, Rohan, or more accurately put, the Rohirrim. The announcement for the new film comes from Warner Bros. Animation and New Line Cinema, and it will be directed by Kenji Kamiyama, who has previously directed titles such as Ultraman and Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045. It should be noted that this new LOTR movie won't be live-action. Instead, it will be anime.

The new movie will key in on Helm Hammerhand, a legendary king of Rohan, and according to Warner Bros. Animation head Sam Register, while the movie will be a standalone story, it will feature stylistic elements from Peter Jackson's trilogy, as well as deep lore from Tolkiens books. The studios have said that the anime film is a "companion piece" to the original movie trilogy. Additionally, the animation will be done by Sola Entertainment.

A newly published study has claimed to have found evidence that life on Mars exists, but it's not in the form of a small green martian alien.

The study claims that the "evidence" of life that was discovered was actually mushroom-like life-forms growing on the surface of Mars. According to Space.com, these mushroom-like life-forms aren't life-forms at all but are actually small spherical-shaped pieces of the mineral called hematite.

Hematite is a combination of iron and oxygen, and scientists believe that the rocks could have formed from volcanic activity or accumulating in slowly evaporating water environments. The exact origin of the material is yet to be confirmed by scientists as it's still being debated. However, the suggestion that these "mushrooms" are life-forms is incorrect, as researchers have spotted them around Opportunity's landing site as well as underground, and even between rocks. For more information on this story, check out this link here.