Gaming - Page 1173

AMD GPU14 - Dirt 3 is one of my favorite off-road racing games, and it still packs a punch in the graphics department. While the game itself is a little old to be showing off at a next-gen GPU launch event, demonstrating it running across three 4K resolution monitors from a pair of AMD Radeon R9 290X GPUs in Crossfire mode is pretty sweet.

Shawn Baker said that this demo really showed off how exciting 4K and next-generation graphics really are. He said that the game appeared crisper than ever, and the R9 290X GPUs really kept the frame rates high so things seemed seamless and smooth. We can not wait to get our hands on this technology and bring our readers comprehensive reviews and guides to multiple monitor 4K gaming.

AMD GPU14 - Shortly after yesterday's keynote at the AMD GPU14 Tech Event, our own Shawn Baker had the chance to preview some cool games, of which Lichdom was the first. Lichdom is a magic spell crafting style game in which you are left to roam the realm that is filled with aggressive NPCs, ghosts, and monsters. Players can craft over a million different spells and then chain them together to create devastating and deadly combos.

Lichdom was being shown off at the event as it showcases all of AMD's new Radeon technology. The game utilizes effects such as TrueSound, Tress FX, and much more, and is developed by Xaviant, a company based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Lichdom is expected to release summer 2014, and being a major fan of games such as Skyrim, I will be first in line for my copy!

"Entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world!" That is the opening line to Steams second big announcement this week. Today valve announced "Steam Hardware", something we were all expecting in some form or another. The company says that it wants customers go to choose the hardware that makes sense for them, and that they are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam game machines to the market in 2014.

All of the machines will run SteamOS, and will be tailored to fit an individual's personal needs, such as powerful hardware, or a quiet gaming experience. Valve did not say who its hardware partners were, but did say that there will be several devices launched in 2014. The biggest announcement however is about will be building its own prototype in which it will give to 300 lucky Steam users free of charge for testing.

I wanted to say "here we go again" but I've already used that line up in a previous GTA V on PC story, but the rumors persist, and we're here yet again. But, this time, we have more details on the technical side of GTA V.

The latest talk of Grand Theft Auto V on the PC leads us to believe that we should expect GTA V on the PC to feature DirectX 11 support, 64-bit support, 2K textures and Advanced Effects> These advanced effects would arrive as Bloom, which should make the world of GTA V more lush when you look at the horizon. The 64-bit support will see support for more than 4GB of RAM, which is definitely something we're going to need with a world as big as GTA V.

The code that the evidence is coming from is below:

Battlefield 4 is a day closer to being played on our PCs or consoles, and now there's a new post on the official Battlefield 4 website that details the second-screen application for BF4, Battlelog.

Battlelog will allow gamers to use a PC, smartphone or tablet for maps, leaderboards and much, much more. The service for BF4 will allow gamers to track how many of their friends are online, and just how many active missions are accessible. Gamers will be able to create emblems, which will be displayed on soldiers and guns in the multiplayer portion of Battlefield 4.

When gamers are away from their PCs or consoles, Battlelog on their smartphones for example can let them view status, access forums and leaderboards, customize their loadout and more. Battlelog is also capable of giving players the chance of remotely joining new servers quickly. The update on the BF4 website says:

Earlier this week, I reported that Grand Theft Auto V had become the fastest selling game of all time, and was well on its way to reaching $1 billion faster than any other game by weeks. Today, Take-Two Interactive announced that in just three days' time, GTA V has surpassed the $1 billion in sales milestone.

"We believe this marks the fastest that any entertainment property, including video games and feature films, has reached this significant milestone," the company said in a statement.

"Grand Theft Auto is a cultural phenomenon and Rockstar Games continues to redefine what can be achieved in interactive entertainment," said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two. "We are incredibly proud of the extraordinary critical and commercial response to Grand Theft Auto V."

AMD is the company that has hardware in both next-gen consoles, with x86-based APUs in the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One. We know to expect benefits as PC gamers from next-gen consoles thanks to the x86 architecture, which means better, and much more polished 'ports', if you can even call them that with this generation of consoles.

AMD's Matt Skynner has had some interesting things to say during an interview with Forbes, where he said that not only is PC gaming alive and well, but that it's actually growing. Skynner said that the architectures in the next-gen consoles are similar to that of the PC, which makes it much cheaper and most of all, easier for developers to create games for both the consoles, and PC.

Skynner actually said that next-gen games will actually run better on AMD hardware because the games have been built from the ground up on AMD-powered consoles. This is going to be quite interesting considering NVIDIA is still by far in the game, so it'll be interesting to see what kind of benefit AMD will have with these next-gen titles. You can be sure we'll be covering this when the next-gen consoles, and games launch in November.

The man responsible for giving us the voice behind Uncharted's Nathan Drake, Nolan North, spoke with Gamerhub at the GameStop Expo in LA about the upcoming PlayStation 4 from Sony.He seemed to be in love with the tech inside of the next-gen console, stating that he has seem some work and just couldn't believe it was real. He said:

North then teased gamers by saying: "I've seen some stuff... gameplay... that they're testing for... I don't remember what game it was but they were doing some testing on the PS4 and I couldn't believe it was gameplay. I mean, it's extraordinary technology."

Blizzard just announced that it would be shutting down Diablo III's most hated feature. That's right, boys and girls, the much loathed auction houses from Diablo III will be going away effective March 18, 2014. Blizzard said that both real money and in-game gold auction houses will be shut down as they feel it detracts from what the game is all about: "killing monsters and scoring cool loot."

Today, Rockstar games released to the long-awaited and highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. Sony says that the game is also available for digital download from the PlayStation Network.

"Grand Theft Auto V was a massive undertaking for us, I'm so proud of what the team created," said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. "We cannot wait for people to finally play it."

Costing over $260 million to develop, GTA V is said to be the most comprehensive and full-featured open world games ever created. The game takes us back to Los Santos as well as the open countryside of Blaine County to once again commit crimes, cause mayhem, and explore one of the most massive open world maps ever created.

Today, a demo video that showcases some of the special effects that NVIDIA's PhysX API powers in the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins video game popped up online. The video covers the PhysX used to animate Batman's cape, but honestly the soft shadows and particle-based weather are much more interesting to me.

Unfortunately, the video features pretty poor quality even when set to 720p resolution and does little to show the minute effects that NVIDIA's PhysX will bring to the game. Honestly, this video actually makes me feel little let down as I was looking forward to some killer graphics and a massive new level of real-time rendering. The textures appear to lack detail and I really cannot tell that much difference in the hand-to-hand combat between Arkham Origins and Arkham Asylum.

Today, Rockstar Games released a new companion app for Grand Theft Auto 5 ahead of tomorrow's launch. The aptly named Grand Theft Auto: iFruit app is an apparent jab at Apple's iDevices, but it does actually serve a purpose within GTA V.

The new iFruit app allows users to create and customize vehicles that can be used in game, with the ability to make changes to almost every aspect of the vehicles in the game. Vehicle appearance as well as performance is upgradable via the app and users can even customize license plates that can be used in the online portion of the game.

"The Los Santos Customs app offers players the freedom to create their ultimate vehicle in Grand Theft Auto V from anywhere. At the bar, on the beach, on the toilet. This is the future, we're almost sure of it." Said Rockstar. "Depth of content, high production values, defecation. It's the app that has it all. Because who doesn't love tending to a virtual pet? Chop is Franklin's canine sidekick in Grand Theft Auto V. Look after him well in the "Chop the Dog" app and you will reap the benefits when playing as Franklin in Grand Theft Auto V. Pet him, feed and water him, play fetch and tug-of-war, teach him tricks."

During an interview with TechRadar, the Art Director for GTA V, Aaron Garbut, said that Grand Theft Auto V is so packed with Easter eggs and references that he feels that it is impossible for anyone to find them all. He was asked about the fabled Yeti rumored in the first visit to San Andreas and he said that "players would be wowed" by the stuff they find in GTA V.

"There's stuff that's so obscure that most people will never see it," said Garbut. "I love the connection that social media has given us to the people that play our games... We can see what they like and what is interesting them as it happens, and this really has helped push more of these things into the game. I think everything in IV has been found, I'm not sure if the same thing will happen for 5."

For our readers who see these quotes as a challenge, you are in luck as GTA V goes on sale tomorrow! I, for one, will be picking up my copy and starting my hunt for Easter eggs. Have you pre-ordered GTA V or are planning on purchasing it tomorrow? What place will you visit first? Let us know in the comments.

Rockstar Games' $265 million sure fire hit Grand Theft Auto V, has been getting a thrashing across pirate sites in the last couple of days, but one of the biggest benefits of this is that hackers and modders have their hands deep inside of GTA V's source code.

What did they find? Evidence of GTA V to reach PC and the PlayStation 4. The evidence was buried in an XML file that has been posted on PasteBin for the world to eyeball, but we could be looking at a fake here, so don't get your hopes up just yet. We can see in the above XML file references to "Orbis" which is the codename of the PS4 dev kit OS as well as the PC. If Rockstar play their cards right, they could release the game to PC alongside the next-gen console releases, which would keep everybody happy.

Well, well, shots fired from a certain developer according to an interview with game developers that Edge spoke to, who said that the PlayStation 4 runs most non-optimized games 50% faster than the Xbox One. Edge's sources have said that memory reads are around 40-50% faster on the PS4, and the built-in Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) is also around 50% faster.

What will this result in for gamers? A PS4 rendering a high-quality scene at around 30FPS at 1920x1080, while the Xbox One will struggle with just 20FPS... but at just 1600x900. Edge said that one developer event went as far as saying that the Xbox One's ESRAM is a "pain." Does this news coincide with the latest reports that Microsoft has been increasing the CPU and GPU clocks speeds of the Xbox One in the weeks leading up to mass production? It would sure as hell make sense now, wouldn't it?

One developer that Edge spoke to said: "The clock speed update is not significant. It does not change things that much. Of course, something is better than nothing." Before you jump to conclusions, remember that the PS4 won't be better at everything, as this is just for "non-optimized games." The Xbox One does have some parts of its internals that are superior to the PS4, such as complicated rendering techniques like raytracing and procedural generation.

A recently leaked screenshot popped up on Reddit today that appears to confirm the question on everyone's mind. If the photo is real, then we will see not only nudity in Grand Theft Auto V, but you will be able to grope and fondle the strippers in the game.

We have blurred out the image for obvious reasons (which can be found after the jump), but I can assure you that the image above contains anatomically correct nudity. You can also see a prompt in the image that warns you to not get caught by a bouncer while fondling the stripper.

After the major Hot Coffee controversy that surrounded GTA San Andreas, the decision to include nudity in GTA V is quite unexpected. How do you feel about nudity in GTA V? Let us know in the comments.

It's no doubt that GTA V is the most highly anticipated game of the year, maybe even the decade. With over $250 million in production, Rockstar has put a lot of effort into the games online mode. During an interview with website Game Informer, Rockstar Games CEO Leslie Benzies said that Grand Theft Auto Online would feature over 500 missions on launch day.

Benzies went on to say that Rockstar plans to utilize GTA Online to create an entire Grand Theft Auto universe that will incorporate everything Rockstar has done, and will do in the future with the series, and then let players freely move between the different worlds. This means that as time progresses we could see other GTA maps pop-up such as Liberty City, Vice City, and even London could make an appearance.

"We've always wanted to create a world with the complexity of a single-player Grand Theft Auto game with the addition of real players. We wanted a world where people could spend years without getting bored of playing the same content over and over," said Benzies. "I think we've managed to achieve something very close to our dream."

Steam has just announced a new service that will allow close friends and family members to share their libraries of games with each other. The service will not however be available to everyone in the beginning. Next week the company will launch Steam Family Sharing and limited beta form while they iron out the bugs.

Steam Family Sharing is designed to allow close friends and family members the ability to play each others games while the earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves in the Steam Cloud. This new feature is enabled by authorizing a shared computer to your steam library, and Steam says that up to 10 devices may be shared per account at any given time.

Unfortunately not all steam games will be able to be shared such as some third-party games that require a separate key to play. Additionally subscription-based games will not be able to be shared either. Shared games can only be played by one user at a time, meaning you and your friend cannot use the same shared game to go head-to-head against each other.

The next-gen consoles are nearly here, with most people thinking that the minimum requirements on PC games were going to go through the roof: think again. DICE and EA have just released the system requirements for Battlefield 4, which aren't too bad at all:

Minimum:

Recommended:

Grand Theft Auto V has become the most expensive game ever made, and even bumps shoulders with some of the most expensive blockbusters that have come out of Hollywood.

Rockstar Games' GTA V was made on a marketing and development budget of $265 million. Grand Theft Auto V has been under production for five years, with Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive making sure that this is the best open-world game, ever. In the US alone, there has been over 2.5 million pre-orders.

Analysts have high hopes for GTA V, where they expect it to be one of the most-sold games of this generation. With GTA IV selling over 25 million copies, you'd hope that GTA V sells much more than that. I think it would've sold more if it were sold on the PC too, and next-gen consoles. Let's cross our fingers.