Gaming - Page 993

Nintendo's new Switch console handheld hybrid will reportedly use the modern USB Type-C interface to charge the handheld while on the go, instead of a proprietary first-party charging cable.

Sources at Nintendo have told Let's Play Video Games' Laura Kate Dale that the Switch handheld shown in the preview trailer uses USB Type-C port for power, meaning the actual consumer Switch could use the new Type-C interface. This would allow the Switch to benefit from Type-C's fast-charging modes, along with potential high-speed transfers and compatibility with a host of adapters.

USB Type-C charging could offset the Switch's purported three-hour battery life while in un-docked handheld mode, as users may be able to easily and quickly re-charge the Switch console. Nintendo typically regulates its hardware with exclusive first-party power cables, so this move to the new future-proof standard would be substantial for the company.

Titanfall 2 is finally here, with developer Respawn Entertainment coming out and explaining that there will be no Season Pass released for their second mech shooter in the franchise.

Respawn Entertainment confirmed the news in a blog post, explaining that Titanfall 2 isn't a typical shooter: "No Season Pass required: all maps & modes will be free in Titanfall 2 Multiplayer. This means no splitting up the community and it all starts with the legendary Angel City map, remastered from the original Titanfall".

They continued: "This means once you've purchased Titanfall 2, your investment includes a full single player campaign, the full multiplayer maps and modes, and long-term support with no hidden costs. You can pre-order the game to play 3 days early, but it will never cost you extra".

Nintendo's investors don't like the company's new Switch console, with many seeing the company's stubborn push to carve out its own space in the console world a risky gambit.

When the Nintendo Switch was unveiled a week ago, Nintendo's investors were less than excited about yet another home gaming console. As a result, Nintendo's shares actually dropped 6.5% after the Switch reveal; conversely, Nintendo's shares skyrockted 4.6% after Nintendo's pre-reveal Switch teaser Tweet, adding "more than $1 billion" to the company's market share.

To date, the Japanese games giant has had its shares slip almost 10% since the Switch reveal, which certainly shows how optimistic stakeholders are about the system.

We've been bombarded with teases of Nintendo's next-gen Switch console, but we don't know much about the launch, its games that are in development, or the pricing on the codename NX console that is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra processor.

Nintendo has now announced it will be livestreaming an event for Switch on January 12, 2017 - with Nintendo saying in its press release: "This will be an event for invited media, financial analysts, and trade partners in Tokyo that will be globally livestreamed on Jan. 12, U.S. time. The presentation will include the launch date and pricing for Nintendo Switch, as well as a look at the lineup of games currently in development".

Nintendo will be providing an exact start time "in the coming weeks" for the event, but it will be hosting Switch "sampling events" for media, partners, and consumers in the US and Europe at later dates. Nintendo added: "There will be opportunities for the public to participate in other hands-on events around the same time, details of which will be announced later".

As a PS4 owner, I can attest to the console's heat, and how it can get pretty toasty while playing a game for an hour or so. But what happens when you slap a watercooler onto the APU?

Linus Tech Tips aimed to find out, and succeeded by making a highly-customized watercooled PS4. And just because they can, they threw in a $2,000 3.84 TB Samsung PM863 SSD to tally up the console's total worth to an insane $3,000, making it "possibly the most expensive PlayStation 4 ever." Yes, really.

The insanely expensive, ultra-cool PS4 actually has an entirely separate chassis to hold the radiator, pump and reservoir, making an external water cooling box. So how what kind of temps does a watercooled PS4 hit?

UPDATE: Nintendo has announced that it will reveal Switch pricing, specs, and more during a special presentation on January 12, 2017.

Nintendo has also confirmed that the Switch will have special hands-on preview events for the public and media across the United States and Europe:

"Kimishima also announced that Nintendo Switch sampling events for invited media, partners, and consumers will take place in the U.S. and Europe after the presentation at later dates. There will be opportunities for the public to participate in other hands-on events around the same time, details of which will be announced later," reads the press release announcement.

Nintendo projects to sell at least 2 million Switch consoles on the system's launch in March 2017.

Nintendo today held its latest investor relations meeting, laying out financial forecasts for the last quarter of FY 2016, which ends in March 2017 and coincides with the launch of its new Switch handheld-console hybrid. According to Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima noted at the IR meeting that the company expects to sell 2 million Switch consoles by the end of FY2017.

The company has already confirmed it won't reveal Switch pricing info until 2017, meaning it will only have three months to accrue pre-orders and launch sales totaling up to 2 million units.

Microsoft is pushing for more sales of its Xbox One S console, offering a bunch of bundles and other deals that include 3 months of Xbox Live Gold membership.

Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb , announced that for every Xbox One S sold between now and October 29, Microsoft will be adding in a three-month Xbox Live Gold membership free of charge with each purchase.

It gets better! Up until November 11, customers who don't want the membership have the option to switch and receive a $20 discount off Gears of War 4 instead.

The World of Warcraft patch 7.1, Return to Karazhan, is now live! The patch is bringing back the iconic Karazhan, initially introduced as a ten-player raid instance in the Burning Crusade expansion, in the form of mythic five-man dungeon. The players will have to face eight bosses in Karazhan, on a mythic difficulty, so don't expect it to be easy.

The new patch also introduces a new raid, Trial of Valor, which has three bosses - Odyn, Guarm, and Helya. The raid itself will be available shortly after the launch of Patch 7.1.

The Patch 7.1 also brings new world quests, a new world event - Alcaz Isle, new battle pets inspired by Wrath of the Lich King raid bosses and much more.

After much want and discussion by players, Blizzard has listened with the announcement of the reward system for World of Warcraft, with a new update coming to us in just a few days.

Starting next week the PvP mode will become more interesting, as Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan, introduces new Battlegrounds, Skirmishes, Arenas and featured extras such as weapons and equipment. Between increased Artifact Power, First Victory of the Day bonus and story modes, which have all been updated for better gameplay, it's no wonder that WoW gamers are excited.

The official World of Warcraft patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan will be released on October 25th for the US and 26th in Australia. For further information log onto the official World of Warcraft website to find out more.

The scariest night the year is almost here, and in celebration of Halloween, Niantic Inc. will be launching Pokémon GO's first in-game event.

The spooky-themed feature will commence October 26, and run through until November 1. During that time, players will earn double the amount of candy for catching, hatching, and transferring Pokémon.

In keeping with the spirit of Halloween and all things scary, players will encounter more ghoulish type Pokémon over the next week. Gastly, Haunter, Gengar, Zubat, Golbat, Drowzee and Hypno will be more visible throughout the event duration.

The Nintendo Switch preview trailer is just a concept demonstration, and isn't meant to be taken as complete 100% accurate truth. The Switch console could drop resolution and/or FPS when detached from the docking station instead of delivering identical console-level gaming on the go.

Nintendo has affirmed that the gameplay footage shown in the trailer may not reflect the Switch's final experiences, meaning the handheld might actually have lower graphics while on-the-go and even during console play. In fact, at the very end of the preview trailer Nintendo warns that "gameplay footage not final; graphics and features subject to change." How did everyone miss that?

Nintendo further drilled the point home in an interview with Eurogamer, saying: "This video is all about explaining how the Nintendo Switch works," Nintendo told Eurogamer. "You shouldn't assume what you saw on the video represents actual game footage and further specifics on first-party games will be provided later."

Final Fantasy 15 could get some sort of co-op multiplayer functionality...but only if enough people made enough noise to get Square Enix's attention.

Given Final Fantasy 15 has a four-person party made up of Noctis and his three best bros--Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto--many gamers are curious why there isn't some sort of co-op feature within the game. Sure most Final Fantasy games are primarily one-play experiences, but FF15 has challenged the series' status quo in many ways, including its action-based combat.

Now Final Fantasy 15 game director Hajime Tabata says there's hope for co-op, but gamers will have to make quite a clamor to get it, especially since it'll be "very tough" to implement.

Last week we got a lot of new info about Nintendo Switch, you can read all about it here.

With its unique look, Switch reminded someone of a dog, and we got an illustration of it. Now, the Switch dog came to life.

Microsoft Xbox Live Gold subscribers will see the addition of four new games this coming November. The company recently announced the titles that will become available, free to users for the Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Xbox One games:

Xbox 360 games:

Square Enix has already affirmed that Final Fantasy 15 won't come to PC until the console versions launch, but how long after? A year or so? Maybe more? According to game director Hajime Tabata, PC gamers might be waiting for quite some time.

Tabata affirms that a PC port of Final Fantasy 15 would be a massive undertaking, and would actually require mostly new development. The team would have to totally focus on FF15 on PC and nothing else, to the point where their whole dedication would be on the PC version.

"About the PC we're focusing all our efforts into the console versions of the game. So we're not looking into it right now to be honest. Making a PC version of the game would mean we'd have to readjust a lot of stuff and concentrate solely on developing it, even though the development team has shown interest in getting a PC version out at some point," Tabata said in a recent interview with Hobby Consoles.

Nintendo's new Switch hybrid console will only have a tablet and dock bundle at launch, and gamers won't be able to buy a handheld-only SKU.

A Nintendo source told Let's Play Video Games' Laura Kate Dale that the Nintendo Switch would launch in March 2017 as a complete package containing the base tablet and the docking station. While the Nintendo Switch console (the tablet) can work independently of the dock, Nintendo doesn't want consumers thinking that they can hook the tablet directly up to the TV by itself.

Nintendo has confirmed that the Switch is a single-screen only experience, unlike the Wii U, which uses both the GamePad display and an HDTV for dual-screen gaming. This means the Nintendo Switch can only be used for TV gaming if its docked.

Modders are busily porting over Skyrim: Special Edition mods to consoles and PC, with over 100 mods and counting already available.

Bethesda has released the Skyrim: Special Edition Creation Kit to beta testers, and modders are porting over their content to the new Bethesda.net Skyrim remaster mod interface in preparation for the game's release.

Right now there are a total of 123 Skyrim: Special Edition mods available for all platforms, with 64 mods on Xbox One alone. One of the best Skyrim survival mods of all time, Frostfall, has also been uploaded to Xbox One, along with the excellent Open Cities. Both will be available when the game releases.

The Monopoly board game has certainly changed over the years from the standard shoe playing, Mayfair buying, collecting $200 version. Video game titled-themes have been taking over the classic with the likes of the Legend of Zelda, Pokemon Johto edition, and Final Fantasy VII. The popular RPG, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim developed by Bethesda, will now join the list of themed-titles as it debuts in March 2017.

The announcement was made recently by retailer Merchoid: "Enter the realms of Tamriel in this brand new Skyrim themed edition of the fast-dealing, property trading game, as you experience lore, characters and locations from the bestselling videogame."

The Skyrim Monopoly board game will retail for $52.99 USD (includes tax & shipping) and can be pre-ordered via the official Merchoid website right now. Hurry before they sell out!

I've been too busy playing Battlefield 1 on my PC to write much about it, but EA DICE have released the v1.02 patch for the game, which includes a bunch of UI-related fixes, as well as some issues with the War Story objectives, and more.

The new v1.02 update fixes various graphical issues and artifacts, with temporal anti-aliasing now the default AA method used on the Medium graphics preset. We've recently tested Battlefield 1 on the AMD Radeon RX 480 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 to find that the RX 480 is 30% faster than the GTX 1060 at 1080p with DX12 enabled, check it out here.

The full notes on the v1.02 patch for Battlefield 1: