Lionhead Studios may have been shuttered, but that doesn't mean it's the end of the beloved Fable franchise. Flaming Fowl Studios, a studio created from the ashes of Lionhead's closing in March, is looking to revive the series, albeit in a very different format.
Via: IGN
For its upcoming Polaris GPUs, AMD doesn't just want to entice hardcore gamers. Instead, it's aiming to bring virtual reality-capable PCs to just about everyone with its new Radeon RX480 video card, which will retail for a mere $199. The RX480 is capable of more than 5 teraflops of computing power, whereas NVIDIA's new GTX 1070 packs in over 6 teraflops for $380, and the high-end GTX 1080 sports around 9 teraflops for $600. On paper alone, AMD's new card is an astounding value.
Mojang's putting its blocky foot down when it comes to brands and Minecraft. In an open letter to the community on its site, Owen Hill, the company's director of creative communications, laid out new guidelines specifically directed at companies, ad agencies and any other non-gamer entities looking to capitalize on Minecraft's massive user community.
For an idea of just how vast that base is, consider that, in 2014, creator Markus "Notch" Persson revealed that the PC version had over 100 million registered users. It's understandable that a pool of users that large would prove a tempting lure for brands that want to market their wholly unrelated wares to the community. But no more -- according to the new building promotion guidelines, it's no longer permissible to build servers or maps to "promote unrelated products in playable form." So what does that translate to? Well, you can say goodbye to awkward promotions like the giant, working cellphone CaptainSparklez made on behalf of Verizon, or Disney commissioning a map of Tomorrowland to promote its film of the same name. All that said, if you're a mega fan and you do these sorts of things on your own time and dime, well, that's just fine by Mojang.
Source: Mojang
If Microsoft is hoping to quell rumors of new Xbox hardware at E3, it isn't doing the greatest job. The company has permanently cut the prices of Xbox One consoles by $50 across the board, lowering the base price to $299 -- even some of the nicer multi-game 1TB bundles now sell for $319. These are tremendousprices, of course, but they're coming just a couple of weeks before E3. While this could just be an attempt to goose sales during the historically quiet summer, it's only going to fuel talk of a possible smaller 2TB system that would become the new flagship. The price drop is great if you're looking for the most affordable Xbox One possible, but it's otherwise worth holding off a little while... especially if you want to see what Sony brings to the table.
Via: Polygon
Source: Xbox.com
It's often hard to convey what's happening inside virtual reality. HTC Vive's green screen idea attempts to do just that -- and also make it more interesting to watch. I will admit: Watching someone else play in VR is typically pretty damn boring. But this concept from HTC represents a rare opportunity to show what someone's doing when they strap on a headset. The tech is clever, but not rocket science: A camera (with a HTC Vive controller attached for positioning within the VR world), captures you on green screen. The camera then sends this feed to a connected PC which processes it in tandem with the VR game (in this case, teleporting-shooter Jeeboman.) Then, like a hyped video-game promise from decades ago, it's like you're inside the game.
Now that Intel has officially trotted out Core i7 Extreme Edition processors based on its shiny new Broadwell-E platform, gaming PC makers are coming out of the woodwork with systems that tout these extra-fast chips. You'll now find up to a 10-core processor in models from Origin PC (the Chronos, Genesis, Millennium and Neuron) and Velocity Micro (the Raptor Z95, Raptor Signature Edition and ProMagix HD80). If you like to run multiple apps at once or use software that thrives on multi-core CPUs (such as video editors), you're in paradise.
Source: Origin PC, Velocity Micro
The trend of gigantic all-in-one gaming PCs isn't ending any time soon. Digital Storm has unveiled a new version of the Aura, a 34-inch curved system that packs some truly high-end hardware. To begin with, it's one of the first PCs to use Intel's enthusiast-oriented, Broadwell-E-based Core i7 Extreme Edition processors -- you can equip it with up to a 10-core chip if you're bent on juggling multiple apps at the same time. You can also stuff in a GeForce GTX 1080 to make sure games play smoothly at the Aura's ultra-wide 3,440 x 1,440 resolution.
Source: Digital Storm
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have caused a minor international kerfuffle after deciding to reduce the number of languages it translates Pokémon games into. Back in February, the pair revealed that Pokémon Sun and Moon would be released in traditional and simplified Chinese -- the former for Hong Kong plus Taiwan, and the latter for Mainland China. But rather than keeping the three original sets of localized character names for these markets, the companies dropped Cantonese -- the main dialect of Hong Kong and many overseas Chinese folks -- and unified the Mandarin Chinese names used by the two other larger markets. The news didn't go down well with Pokemon fans in Hong Kong, and yesterday, around 20 locals staged a protest outside the Japanese consulate, with help from anti-communist political party Civic Passion. They came armed with banners demanding that Pei-kaa-jau (Mandarin for Pikachu) should be restored to Bei-kaa-chyu (Cantonese Pikachu) for their local market.
Source: HK01, Quartz, Next Media
In the middle of humid Taiwan, Computex is a show mostly all about computers. There's always other stuff, but it centers on PCs. ASUS started the show a little early, but we're also hearing from Intel, Microsoft and more about what to expect over the next year or two. Mobile computing is The Thing now, so the likes of Qualcomm will have something to say as well. Virtual reality has ushered in a renaissance in PC gaming, and we're sure that'll also inform what we see this year.
You'll find the news right here -- we''ll be reporting all week.
Now that the megahertz race has slowed down in the desktop processor world, the new race is all about more and more cores. To that end, Intel just announced its first 10-core desktop CPU, the Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition, today at Computex. (It's had 10-core Xeon CPUs for servers since 2011). The new processor will run at 3GHz (with boost speeds up to 3.5GHz), pack in 25MB of cache and feature Intel's new Turbo Boost 3.0 technology. Just but be prepared to pay through the nose for the privilege of owning it, as the 10-core i7 Extreme Edition will run you $1,723.