Gaming - Page 1974
All the latest gaming news, with everything related to PlayStation releases (PS4 & PS5), Xbox, PC Games, Nintendo Switch & plenty more - Page 1974.
New study says games have no negative impact in kids
Are video games causing the youth of today, and tomorrow, with behavioral or emotional problems in the future? Well, according to a huge new study of 11,000 kids, no, no it does not.
The University of Glasgow used surveys from mothers in a massive millennial survey to track behavior over time. The goal of this study was to see if there was any connection between screen time, and behavioral or emotional troubles in the future. The authors dived into the study wanting to use both TV and video games, arguing the point that there is a connection with attention disorders, anger and other problems that might be connected to both.
The researchers wanted to know if "games may have more powerful effects due to active user engagement, identification with characters and repeated rehearsal and reinforcement." Then, we have some key findings, where "exposure to video games had no effect on behavior, attention or emotional issues." The study also found that "neither television nor video games lead to attentional or emotional problems."
Continue reading: New study says games have no negative impact in kids (full post)
Battlefield 4 hit by massive DDoS attack over the weekend
Battlefield 4 players may have experienced an excessive amount of server disconnects over the past weekend, and while many may have attributed them to bugs released with the game, EA says that they were the result of a massive DDoS attack. A new report from Bit-Tech claims that an EA employee has confirmed that Battlefield 4 was targeted on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
While Battlefield 4 players have come to expect random server crashes, the number reported this weekend seemed to rise exponentially despite the fact that EA released an update around the same time that was said to fix the issues. It is still unknown who launched the denial of service attacks, or why they did it. The rep from EA did say that the company was working on preventing this from happening in the future, and they are continuing to work out bugs in-game that affect gameplay.
Continue reading: Battlefield 4 hit by massive DDoS attack over the weekend (full post)
Sony PS4 owners will have to wait until 2014 for hardware replacement
Many of those who bought PlayStation 4 consoles early are experiencing frequent and sometimes system bricking errors, and today we are learning that replacement systems will not be arriving until 2014. Call it sabotage, an acceptable margin of failure, or poor design, the fact still stands that many PlayStation 4 owners will have to wait months to get their consoles replaced.
The issues range from poor thermal dissipation which leads to overheating, while other reports suggest a red-ring-of-death type event where the PS4 will fail to boot, and will flash the status LEDs indicating an error. While this is common for the first devices off the assembly line, the true cause could be much more nefarious and could involve internal sabotage at the time of manufacture.
A report from Geek.com says that Sony is now telling customers that replacement PS4 units will not be available for shipping until February . If you purchased your dead PS4 from Amazon.com and opted for the extended warranty, then you could get your replacement console as early as January 2014, but you should expect to wait until Feburary like everyone else. Best Buy and GameStop also could see replacement units arrive as early as January, but that is still up in the air as well.
Continue reading: Sony PS4 owners will have to wait until 2014 for hardware replacement (full post)
The PlayStation 4 gets full support from... Pornhub
Normally I wouldn't like to write about porn in my news, but hey - the porn industry defines what medium is going to come in next, like it did with VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. But, it looks like the PS4 is the system of choice for Pornhub, and this could be a big, big thing.
Pornhub is the first porn site to completely support the PS4, and it could be a big tipping point against the Xbox One. The porn site already supports the Nintendo Wii U, but what about Microsoft? It might not support the Xbox One, but I'm sure we'll see support, especially considering the Xbox One is more of a multimedia entertainment unit, versus the PS4 being a pure games console, with other content on the side.
What I want to know is: will it include trophy and achievement support...
Continue reading: The PlayStation 4 gets full support from... Pornhub (full post)
Ubisoft announces 1080p update for Assassin's Creed Black Flag on PS4
The People at Ubisoft shipped out Assassin's Creed Black flag at 900p to make sure the GPU and CPU ran the game at a consistent 30 frames per second. They will be sending an update to make the game native 1080p. The update will also include an anti-aliasing which will improve jagged edges in the graphics. Anti-aliasing will be available on both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Ubisoft says the update will be available shortly after launch.
Community manager Gary Steinman: "Finishing the game at 900p gave the development team the extra room in terms of the GPU and CPU usage to ensure the frame rate never dips below 30 frames per second. The team then used the time between the ship date and the release to focus on a title update that could deliver native 1080p resolution on the PS4."
Associate producer Sylvain Trottier: "The most important part of this title update is not necessarily 1080p native resolution. It's the fact that even when we were done with the project, even when we were finished with the certification and everything else, even when most of the engineers had started to work on other projects - like we always do at Ubisoft - some of my engineers continued to work on Black Flag and they even developed a brand-new anti-aliasing technique."
Continue reading: Ubisoft announces 1080p update for Assassin's Creed Black Flag on PS4 (full post)
Sony's Playstation 4 gets torn apart by iFixit, is basically a PC
After almost a decade, the PlayStation 4 is here, and the folks over at iFixit have wasted no time in tearing the next-generation console down to its basic components. Using nothing but a T9 Torx driver, two phillips drivers, and a pair of tweezers, iFixit was able to completely disassemble the PlayStation 4.
It appears that tearing down the PlayStation 4 is just about as easy as tearing down a common PC, and rightfully so as that is basically what a PS4 is. The teardown images from iFixit do lend some interesting insight into the PS4 though. Anyone who was hoping that they could upgrade the AMD processor inside will be sad to learn that the chip is permanently soldered to the board and is not even branded as an AMD device. Instead, the chip is labeled as a Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. CXD90026G, a SoC that features AMD Jaguar CPU Cores, and Radeon Graphics Cores.
Additionally, places around the APU, are 16x Samsung K4G41325FC-HC03 4 Gb (512 MB) GDDR5 RAM for a total of 8GB of video RAM. Samsung's K4B2G1646E-BCK0 2Gb DDR3 SDRAM is also present in a capacity of 8GB. The PS4 should have no cooling issues either, as a massive air-based cooler is present that appears to be made mostly of copper for maximum thermal dissipation. When it was all over and iFixit had removed the last screw, they awarded the PlayStation 4 a repairability score of 8 out of 10, which means that it will be easy to fix in the event of any hardware failures.
Continue reading: Sony's Playstation 4 gets torn apart by iFixit, is basically a PC (full post)
Some PS4s are having serious hardware issues, some are DOA
The PS4 launched in the United States today, but it looks like it is already having issues with some customers. Not only that, but some media are having issues, with Kotaku's PS4 review stating that the first retail unit it received from Sony "didn't work", and Kotaku even said that editors also used "one pre-release PS4 and three retail PS4s with no problems".
Customers who had received the borked PS4s reported that the next-gen console didn't boot, with Reddit user 'arogon' winning a PS4 through Taco Bell, receiving a DOA PS4. Another user, 'yearsoflove' claimed to also receive a dead on arrival PS4, but a replacement was currently being shipped from Sony. But all is not lost, because Sony has your back.
President of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, tweeted earlier today: "Be assured we are investigating reported PS4 issues. The number is very small compared to shipped, we believe they are isolated incidents".
Continue reading: Some PS4s are having serious hardware issues, some are DOA (full post)
AMD's Mantle API will work with at least 15 Frostbite-powered games
The AMD APU13 conference is continuing on, with some new details about AMD's Mantle API. DICE's front man for the Frostbite engine, Johan Andersson, took the stage at the APU13 conference to talk about Mantle, and how it is going to be used extensively in Frostbite.
Andersson said that there would be a Mantle-powered version of Battlefield 4 released soon, something I'm excited to start testing on, and that there will be a bunch more games released under the Frostbite engine, that would be powered by Mantle. The biggest benefit to take away here is that Mantle has a lot less of an overhead to it, when compared to DirectX.
Jorjen Katsman, from Nixxes, the developer who is working on porting Thief to the PC, said that DirectX 11 has an overhead of around 40%, while Mantle has an overhead of just 8%. Katsman said that it's "not unrealistic that you'd get 20% additional GPU performance" with a Mantle-powered GPU.
Continue reading: AMD's Mantle API will work with at least 15 Frostbite-powered games (full post)
Sony explains why it's difficult to keep the PlayStation Network free
Sony's PlayStation network has always been a free service to all PlayStation users. Sony's head of global marketing and vice president of Sony Network Entertainment, Eric Lempel explains to GamesIndustry.biz why they had to make the change and that it would be too difficult to keep the PlayStation Network free. Although the PlayStation Network's app services will still be free, Lempel says the PlayStation 4 will still have an edge over Xbox One due to Xbox Live's requirement to use many of its services. Lempel also explains that you get a good value and that it is worth paying for.
Eric Lempel mentioning it's difficult to keep PSN free: "There's a ton of value in the network. We've built up the network over the years and made a significant investment... and it's quite honestly hard to keep everything free"
Lempel continues: "The network's gotten so much better and it's completely redesigned on PS4. And the investment in Plus gives the user a ton of value, so putting multiplayer in there will continue to help us build the network up for our users. It's a massive infrastructure to run this thing, and now with some of these social features there's a lot going on."
Continue reading: Sony explains why it's difficult to keep the PlayStation Network free (full post)
Ubisoft CEO says pre-orders for Xbox One not as high as PlayStation 4
The next generation of consoles are just right around the corner. Ubisoft's CEO, Yves Guillemot comments that the PlayStation 4 is doing better in pre-orders than the Xbox One. Guillemot is not worried though, and says the Xbox One is improving in pre-orders. Guillemot was asked if he was worried about a lack in demand for The Xbox One's pre-orders.
Guillemot comments: "What we see is that there is a good pre-order list on that machine. Even if the PS4 is in front in terms of pre-orders, we see lots of improvement in the pre-orders that are coming on Xbox One. So no, we are not worried at all. We think it will be a big seller as well."
Guillemot is also not worried about the short term transition the consoles bring. Guillemot says, "The PS4 and Xbox One will be released in a few days' time and will be a new driving force for the industry,"
Continue reading: Ubisoft CEO says pre-orders for Xbox One not as high as PlayStation 4 (full post)