Gaming News - Page 1641

Rise of the Tomb Raider has been enjoying huge sales on the PC, where it has smashed the sales of the Xbox One version - but what about the rumored DX12 patch for the game?

Well, it looks like it could be closer than we thought, with Microsoft teasing that Rise of the Tomb Raider was running in DX12 at its Xbox Showcase Media Event. Microsoft confirmed: "DirectX 12 Showcase: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Ashes of the Singularity, King of Wushu - Square Enix, Snail, and Stardock showcased their latest DirectX 12 enhancements for Rise of the Tomb Raider, King of Wushu, and Ashes of the Singularity on Origin PCs, iBUYPOWER Revolt 2, and Maingear PCs".

They continued: "Ashes of the Singularity is taking advantage the DirectX 12 multi-adapter technology, allowing PCs to use multiple GPUs, even from different manufacturers. Rise of the Tomb Raider was playable for the first time at the Xbox Spring Showcase running DirectX 12".

Killer Instinct is coming over to the PC through Windows 10, with Microsoft confirming the news earlier today. The game will launch on March 29, and thanks to a new FAQ posted on the official website, we know that if you buy the Xbox One version of Killer Instinct, you won't lose all of the content you've purchased.

If you want to keep your existing Killer Instinct content when you shift over from the Xbox One to Windows 10, you must "receive the Season 3 game update, available starting March 29, 2016. Simply login to your Xbox One console and launch Killer Instinct. Ensure you're connected to Xbox Live and follow the prompts to receive the update. Once the update is complete, launch Killer Instinct fully. Once the update is complete and you have launched Killer Instinct again, you will be able to login into Windows 10 to access your owned and earned content".

As for the minimum and recommended requirements, this is what you'll need:

The Xbox One Preview Program is getting a pretty substantial update pushed out tomorrow. This update is finally giving you the ability to buy those Xbox 360 backwards compatible games straight through the Xbox One store itself.

If you're lucky enough to have signed up and been chosen for the honor of this program, then you'll also be able to enjoy much larger Party Chat rooms, with up to 16 people able to tell you how much you such at one time. You'll also have the ability to include each person individually into your Twitch broadcast, though each person has the ability to decline should they want to. The party leader can also mute the voice of anyone who opted-in to being part of the broadcast, just in case.

And in case you want to show off the things you've accomplished with the nearly 30 million hours of Xbox 360 in Xbox One gaming time, then you'll also be able to share your Xbox 360 achievements in your Xbox One activity feed, which is only natural given that you can play those games on the console now. So why not celebrate all of your achievements properly.

Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness is being developed primarily for the PlayStation 3, but that doesn't mean that the PlayStation 4 version, which is the only version that'll be available outside the US, has to suffer because of that. Some of the differences between the two versions have been outlined by Square Enix and tri-Ace.

On the latest Star Ocean Program broadcast, they talked about the fact that the framerate would be targeting 60FPS in most cases at 1080P on the PS4, though some of the more challenging scenes might push it more towards 30FPS. The resolution won't scale, though and will remain the same regardless. The PS3 is limited to 720P, 30FPS and far less visual fidelity compared to the big brother port.

Although it's a port, tri-Ace is working hard on ensuring that the graphics are actually taking advantage of the 1152 GCN cores available. It won't be a direct port, with higher resolution textures, more fluid animations, and a higher LOD. The full list of differences is below. At least initially it sounds like they're taking care to not make the mistakes of many ports that have preceded this one.

Well, not it's actually official. After the Seattle Times jumped the gun by just a few hours, Microsoft has announced that Forza Motorsport 6: Apex will be available this Spring absolutely for free.

The game will more than take advantage of the kind of power inherit in PC's. Under the hood the engine will be flying on top of DirectX 12 to help maximize performance. That means we won't be limited to only 1080p and 30FPS. Turn 10 studios does promise the ability to scale very well with different hardware so everyone can still have a good experience. The Xbox One version ran pretty well given its limited hardware.

Just what exactly is this new Forza game supposed to be? Well, Turn 10 says that it's a sort of "curated" version of the original that includes only 60 cars and six different courses to race about on. That's not much, but the price is right and it'll help introduce new, PC only players into the franchise. I'm curious if they'll take advantage of the extra horse-power and improve the graphics and physics even more than they likely already have.

It seems like it's tradition now for games to release out the gate with a day one patch. But Far Cry Primal's doesn't seem to have to fix any glaring or widespread issues, and just brings about bug fixes to make the prehistoric experience that much more harsh.

It was decided that expert mode was just too easy for PC players so your health has been halved and your aim assist has been similarly reduced. And be on the lookout as the AI can also shoot at you 1/3 faster than on Hard difficulty. Expert Mode was made to almost literally put you in the shoes (or wrappings) of a prehistoric human, making it a much more tense experience.

Other fixes include improvements to stability, improved lighting and better looking and more useful aiming reticle and improved destruction graphics when giant mammoths run rampant through the environment. Just some general enhancements, which is far cry (pun intended) from the cleaning up some games have had to have in recent past. Overall performance seems to be quite good, and you can look for our performance analysis very soon.

After years of flagging sales, Sony has officially discontinued it's PlayStation TV micro-console in the United States and Europe.

As someone who owns a PlayStation TV, I can honestly say I'm not impressed. The device has an audaciously high retail price of $79.99, and since it only has like 700mb of onboard memory, it requires the use of expensive PlayStation Vita memory cards. While you can play PS Vita, PSP, and PlayStation original classics on it, it lacks optimization. It's really more of a niche product, and requires a ton of extra hardware and games to actually enjoy.

Although the micro-console is officially kaput, Sony isn't abandoning PSTV owners. "PS Store for PlayStation TV will continue to be accessible, and PlayStation TV-related information will continue to be updated. In terms of applications/service for PlayStation TV, we will make further communications to users as necessary."

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, the remastered version of the first three of the series, has been released on the Windows Store today, but instead of being a shining example of the prowess and graphical potential of the PC and of DirectX 12, it falls well short of that for AMD GPU owners.

What you can expect if played on an AMD R9 Fury

In fact, it's being reported that it hardly runs well at all, stuttering and exhibiting high amounts of graphical corruption even when running at modest resolutions with only modest graphical settings turned on. The performance is particularly abysmal on AMD's Fiji powered cards where the proper implementation of async shaders should theoretically hold an advantage. But even when RAM isn't a limiting factor, they don't perform. The game is a stuttering, glitching mess at this point, at 4K, 1440P or even 1080P. My own testing confirms the findings, with a horrible mess on the base Fury, making it unbearable to actually play.

Combined with the might of the existing video platform juggernaut, the YouTube Gaming streaming-and-video service is crushing the competition.

According to gaming research firm NewZoo, YouTube "dominates around the globe" and is beating Twitch by 2-to-1. Out of the 500 million viewers that tune into gaming videos, most of them pick YouTube. The firm notes that 50% of gamers in the United States choose YouTube for their content, compared to Twitch's 21%. In overseas countries like France only see 9% of viewers watching Twitch.

"Online video is the biggest thing to hit the games market since the launch of the iPhone in 2007," said Newzoo CEO Peter Warman. "Games are evolving toward cross-screen transmedia franchises right now. A direct consequence is the increased focus on communities of both gamers and viewers. This is creating enormous new growth and marketing opportunities for game companies and will accelerate the disruption of traditional media."

The newest update to Rainbow Six Siege is getting serious about cheating, which is surprisingly common in the nearly newly released tactical FPS.

The game is entering the pro's, and as such it needed a stronger foundation to help better prevent cheating, exploitation of maps (and glitches) and even rampant examples of spawn-killing. So now there's a "report" button that lets you tell Ubisoft when you think someone is doing something untoward, who will review data and make a call on what to do.

They've also introduced a kill-cam, which not helps you make sure that your death was actually somewhat legitimate. Quite a bit of time has been spent ensuring that the netcode and networking backend work well enough that lag shouldn't even be the reason for funny kills. But, of course, they've added quite a bit more to the patch as well.