Gaming - Page 581

When the term 'brain-computer interfaces' is mentioned, one of the first things that spring to mind is The Matrix. But just how close are we to bringing that movie into reality?

According to Valve CEO, Gabe Newell, we are closer than one might think. In a recent interview with IGN, Newell discussed designing Valve's new title, Half-Life: Alyx. At the same time as discussing the titles development, Newell touched on the future of computing and how eventually the human race will be able to link computers to brains for the ultimate interface. Here's what Newell said when talking about the future, "The area that I'm spending a lot of time on has been growing out of a bunch of research that occurred a while ago on brain-computer interfaces."

He continued and said, "I think that that's kind of long lead stuff, so that's kind of the background thread that I get pulled back into when other things aren't demanding my attention." At the moment, human brains can communicate with computers, but in mostly sending and receiving signals. Overall the communication can only happen in extremely limited ways. Even though that might be the case now, Newell believes that "We're way closer to The Matrix than people realize."

The PlayStation 5's new solid state drive isn't your run of the mill PCIe 4.0 SSD. It's heavily customized on a number of levels, including its revamped 12-channel memory controller. While on the surface it has similar specs to a PC-level SSD like PCIe 4.0 interface with 4x lanes on an M.2 card using the NVMe protocol, it's been built from the ground up specifically for the system's custom 7nm AMD SoC and 16GB of GDDR6 system memory. And in many ways, the SSD is the most important part of the PlayStation 5.

The SSD can deliver uncompressed data to other system components at up to 5.5GB/sec via its new proprietary hardware, which is over twice that of an Xbox Series X. And like the Xbox Series X, the PS5 also has dedicated hardware-based decompression to reduce CPU overhead. The new custom-designed I/O unit is the heart of making all this happen.

In this article we'll be combing through Mark Cerny's latest technical dissection of the PlayStation 5 hardware and putting everything into perspective along the way. This will be a long ride, but if you have even a passing interest in next-gen console storage, it'll be worth checking out.

Unlike the Xbox Series X, which uses proprietary CFExpress memory cards to expand SSD storage, the PlayStation 5 will let gamers slot in third-party PCIe 4.0 drives into the console.

Sony has learned a lot from the PS Vita memory fiasco. The PS5 won't have high-priced restrictive memory cards. Instead, Sony allows gamers to expand memory by slotting in third-party PC-grade M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs into the PS5. This is pretty important considering the system only has a 825GB SSD.

"We will be supporting certain M.2 SSDs. These are internal drives you can get on the open market and install in a bay on the PlayStation 5. They connect to the custom I/O unit just like our SSD does so they can take full advantage of the decompression, I/O co-processors, and all the other features," PlayStation 5 architect Mark Cerny today confirmed.

UPDATE: Major Nelson confirms the Thanksgiving 2020 release date was a mistake. The console is still coming 'Holiday 2020.'

The Xbox Series X will release on November 26, 2020 on Thanksgiving, the console's website says.

On the eve of the PlayStation 5's big spec reveal, Microsoft trades blows with Sony by announcing the Xbox Series X's launch date. The console was previously set for Holiday 2020, but according to the console's official website, the Xbox Series X is now coming on Thanksgiving day. Thanks makes it a hot item for the Black Friday shopping season.

Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 can deliver up to 9GB/sec speeds on its powerful new PCIe 4.0 SSD, making it roughly 100x faster than the PS4's current hard drives.

If the Xbox Series X is a lion, then the PS5 is a cheetah--this console's SSD tech is lightning-fast. Sony's next-gen console has a custom PCIe 4.0 SSD that can push compressed data at up to 9GB/sec, or almost twice as fast as the Xbox Series X's max compressed data throughput of 4.8GB/sec. This means the system will be able to access compressed data that's downloaded or from a disc much, much faster. Blu-ray disc game installs will be blindingly fast.

Once the data is decompressed, the system can process it at 5.5GB/sec, which also roughly twice as fast as the Xbox Series X's 2.4GB/sec decompressed data I/O throughput. PS5 architect Mark Cerny confirms the PS5 can load 2GBs of data in just 0.27 seconds. The system will utilize decompressed data for real-time processing and loading, like assets that're fed into 10.3TFLOP 2.23GHz Navi GPU for rendering. This puts the PS5 on par with today's most demanding enthusiast-grade consumer PC storage.

Sony today announced the PS5's specs, and confirmed the console is less powerful than the Xbox Series X in some regards, but it's GPU is faster.

Despite being quite close to its competitor, the PlayStation 5 is technically less powerful than the Xbox Series X. The PS5 uses a RDNA 2 Navi 2x GPU clocked in at 2.23GHz with 36CUs with 10.3TFLOPs of power, complete with ray tracing support, and its 8-core 16 thread Zen 2 CPU is clocked at 3.5GHz. The next-gen PS5 sports 16GB of GDDR6 unified system RAM on a 256 bit bus (less than Microsoft's custom 320 bit bus) with 448GB/sec memory bandwidth.

The SSD is blazing fast, but it's only 825GB to keep costs down. The PlayStation 5's internal PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD can hit up to 9GB/sec transfer rates with compressed files, and 5GB/sec rates with uncompressed files. Sony developed a new compression methodology based on RAD Game Labs' potent Kraken compression system that massively reduces data sizes. There's also a new architecture that reduces CPU usage overhead to free up system resources. It's also designed to give developers much more granular control over how their data is processed by the console.

A Warner Music account accidentally uploaded the OST for L.A. Noire Part Two, hinting a sequel is in development at Rockstar Games.

Internet detectives might've solved the case of Rockstar's next game. The studio could be working on a sequel to 2011's ultra-stylish crime story for next-gen consoles, complete with immaculate animations and a storyline that'd impress hardcases like Humphrey Bogart.

According to screenshots, Warner Chappell Music, the global publishing company of the Warner Media Group, uploaded a song from L.A. Noire Part Two. The song in question is Break My Stride from Matthew Wilder, and is probably for the big reveal trailer that's set to accompany either Sony's or Microsoft's big livestream E3-timed events. The account and the music was deleted shortly after.

Sony is finally revealing key PS5 specs and details today at 12pm EST in a livestream with Mark Cerny, complete with architectural info and much more.

The PS5's enigmatic mystery will be lifted today. The livestream with Cerny should uncover tons of tidbits about the system's software and hardware stack and we'll probably get perf numbers: 8K, 4K 60FPS, 1080p 120FPS, ray tracing, etc. And Cerny should explain how this kind of performance is possible on the system. And storage...hopefully we get info on storage too.

The stream should be roughly 52 minutes long so we could see some game reveals, a big reveal of the system's final consumer design, memory cards (yes, those are back now), and more. Kotaku's Jason Schreier, who has knowledge with the goings-on in the games industry, says spec-hunters will be disappointed. The PS5 may not hit the same TFLOP power as the Xbox Series X.

Former Facebook Creative Director, and veteran game creator, Mike Booth, will be moving over to Resolution Games as a member of its board of directors.

Booth has been in game development for quite some time now, starting his career back in college with a game called Nox and then moving onto to work on two legendary titles - Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead under Turtle Rock Studios before being acquired by Valve. Booth also worked on a range of big titles such as Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Command & Conquer: Generals, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Booth also spent some over at Facebook as the leader of the company's virtual reality ventures.

Resolution Games is known for creating titles such as Bait!, Acron: Attack of the Squirrels! and Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs. Booth touched on the transition to Resolution Games and said that "What drew me to Resolution Games is the team's passion and dedication to creating innovative and immersive game play in what's proving to be an incredibly powerful, yet still somewhat challenging technology".

Coronavirus COVID-19 is canceling and delaying things left right and center, and now the latest thing to be delayed is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's next DLC fighter.

The news has come from PushDustIn, who is known for translating Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Director Masahiro Sakurai's Famitsu column regarding the development of the game. According to PushDustIn, excerpts of Sakurai's next column have been leaked online, and from the translations, the upcoming announcement for the next DLC fighter has been "put on hold" due to COVID-19.

There's no doubt that the now global virus is drastically affecting multiple industries across the planet, and that means game development as well. So, this isn't that surprising considering studios such as CD Projekt Red have already told their workers to begin working from home, hindering game development process. The same will likely happen for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which will most likely push the expected completion date of Fighters Pass 2 back further.

Call of Duty: Warzone is off to a big start, with over 15 million players already joining in on the action.

Warzone is amassing extreme popularity in the battle royale genre, and to keep players enticed Infinity Ward and Activision have rolled out a new update. Inside of this update are numerous bug fixes that the community was no doubt complaining about, and an addition to being able to jump into Warzone completely solo.

Infinity Ward will no doubt contain rolling out updates that contain fixes for Warzone, as the game is still young and has a lot of distance still yet to go. One of the more notable bug fixes inside this update is that players who downed an enemy player will be rewarded with kills, instead of who killed the enemy player while they were down. If you are interested in checking out the full update notes, dot points have been provided in the entirety of this post, or a link to the official site can be found here.

Half-Life: Alyx is right around the corner, with Valve providing some details on when the game will begin pre-loading onto PCs, as well as when the game will unlock exactly.

Valve explained in a tweet that Half-Life: Alyx will begin pre-loading on March 20, while the game won't unlock for VR gamers until March 23 at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. This means we're only days away from its launch, with Half-Life: Alyx opening up the pre-loading flood gates the day DOOM Eternal drops on March 20.

More reading: I've written an extensive article titled 'Half-Life: Alyx Buyers Guide: PC Hardware & VR Headset Recommendations'. Check it out with recommendations on the PC hardware and VR headset required, and recommended by me, for Half-Life: Alyx.

CD Projekt RED has just posted on their official Twitter account to update the world on the status of its much anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, amid all the COVID-19 coronavirus panic.

The developer explained: "Many of you are probably wondering how things are at CD PROJEKT RED and how COVID-19 influences out day-to-day operations. Here's a short update. Over the past week, we have been adapting to the situation and gradually rolling out preventative measures across our entire organization".

CDPR continues: "We've also been upgrading equipment & infrastructure and working towards enabling our employees to work remotely, from the safety of their homes. Today, as a result of that preparation, CD PROJEKT RED switches to full remote work for as long as it is needed. We think this will grant every team member the highest level of personal health safety. And while this all is a bit new to everyone, we are rising to the challenge and showing no signs of stopping in our effort to bring you some kick-ass role-playing action in September".

I'm surprised it took this long, but there is now an official "coronavirus mod" for Fallout: New Vegas, released by modder 'JotunYmir' and available right here.

The mod is called Immersive Coronavirus, and will see Fallout: New Vegas players needing to eat some Bat Soup to contract COVID-19 coronavirus. There's not much more to go along with the mod, as once you have it you simply need to survive it -- which isn't that hard by the looks of things.

I would rather see the infection of coronavirus changing the way you interact with the world at least, as it seems like a waste to be (what seems) the first "coronavirus mod" for a game. I'm sure Resident Evil is next, though.

Haven't picked up Doom Eternal yet? Don't own a Switch? Don't fret: The Steam Game Festival is coming back to save us from quarantine woes.

The Steam Game Festival is one of the best things Valve has ever done. Originally debuting last year as part of the The Game Awards 2019 showcase, the festival is basically a digital games convention where you can demo and play an assortment of games. Now it's coming back to help cure our COVID-19 quarantine woes.

Since so many indie devs missed the chance to demo their games at GDC, PAX East, and E3 2020, Valve and Geoff Keighley partnered up to host a kind of virtual games meetup. This time around Valve will offer over 40 games for Steam gamers to try out. They won't all be indies and expect some surprises thrown in there. Last time around we got to try the amazing System Shock remake from Nightdive Studios which looked and played incredibly well (here's hoping it's back for round 2).

Yesterday Microsoft pretty much revealed everything there is to know about the Xbox Series X, including specs, software architecture features, new SSD tech and memory cards, and amazing upscaling capabilities. Tomorrow Sony will do the same for the PS5.

Sony will reveal key information about the next-gen PS5 in a special live stream tomorrow hosted by system creator Mark Cerny, the company today announced. Cerny will "provide a deep dive into PS5's system architecture, and how it will shape the future of games."

We expect to see detailed info on PlayStation 5 specifications--Cerny should confirm RDNA 2 in the PS5's GPU, for instance--ray tracing capabilities, the ultra-fast SSD, and hopefully some game demos.

Doom Eternal comes out in just 4 days, and id Software is already planning its next demon-slaughtering adventure.

Doom Eternal is set to unleash unholy chaos this week and we're ready to rip and tear like never before. But like any studio, id Software is already planning out what's next for the Doom Slayer. Game devs constantly iterate and plot out their ideas and often start working on the next project even while the current game is still in development.

According to Doom Eternal's creative director Hugo Martin, id is laying the foundations for a sequel. "We're already moving on...we already have ideas for the next thing. And DLC. DLC is guaranteed. It'll be like an episode; we released the movie, and now we're going to release an HBO series of it. It's basically the adventures of Doom Guy. But it's hard to say when we're going to move on to the next game," Martin said in a recent Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

Memory cards are back and they're better (and more expensive) than ever. The Xbox Series X will use special memory cards to expand the console's built-in 1TB solid state drive. External hard drives are still supported, but they offer limited functionality and are locked to older games.

Microsoft has teamed up with Seagate to make special expandable memory cards for the Xbox Series X that plug into that vertical slot in the console's rear side. These cards pack fully-fledged PCIe 4.0 SSDs that're identical copies of the powerful drive used in the console. The Xbox Series X also supports current external HDDs as expandable memory. But things get a bit tricky with legacy HDDs.

Games that're optimized to use the new hardware aren't compatible with HDDs because of the huge performance disparity. Although Xbox Series X won't get exclusive games, it will offer enhancement upgrades of games that use the new high-speed SSD's DirectStorage and Xbox Velocity Architecture. Once a game is upgraded, it can hit high performance like 120FPS with ray tracing, 4K 60FPS, and more, but only if it runs from the internal SSD or the new expandable storage drives.

The Xbox Series X has baked-in boost mode functionality that will upgrade select current-gen games to run at native 4K.

Microsoft's next-gen Xbox is fully backward compatible with every Xbox One game, but it'll actually play all of these games better. Xbox Series X has two ways to boost in-game performance of older games: Native upgrades that're performed on a system level, and enhancement patches issued out by developers. What's incredible is that some first-party games will actually mix the benefits of both.

Microsoft today confirmed that select current-gen Xbox One games will be automatically boosted to native 4K resolution on UHD displays. The system's 3.8GHz Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU-outfitted hardware handles all the work, and there's no optimizations from the developer. Devs don't have to touch their games at all and there's no downloads. The games are simply automatically upgraded by the system itself, and is part of the console's new robust software stack and expanded backward compatibility support.

Microsoft's new Xbox Series X uses a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD to hit blazing fast speeds and open the doors to incredible new opportunities for game developers.

Today Microsoft revealed the Xbox Series X's full specs, confirming beastly hardware like a 3.8GHz Zen 2 CPU, 12.15TFLOP Navi GPU, and 16GB of GDDR6 RAM. The console's full might comes from the sum of its parts, the magical conjunction of hardware and software that allows serious performance boosts. One part, the console's new solid state drive, will help revolutionize console gaming as we know it.

The Xbox Series X uses a custom-made proprietary PCIe 4.0 SSD that's specifically designed to synergize with the rest of the system on a hardware and software level. The SSD itself is being made in partnership with Seagate and can deliver up to 4.8GB/sec compressed data transfer rates. That's 40x faster than the mechanical HDDs found in the Xbox One X. This translates to speedy load times like booting State of Decay 2 in 8 seconds versus the 30 seconds on the Xbox One X.