Latest Articles (Page 925)

A principal programmer at Sony associated with the firm's Advanced Technology Group is working with AMD's Ryzen technology, improving the Zen core's micro-architecture support within the LLVM compiler stack - a key component of a tool used in the PlayStation 4 development environment. Of course, there is no PS4 product using the Ryzen processor, leading to speculation that this is related to a prospective next-gen PlayStation 5 console currently in development.

This year's Gamescom will open with an announcement-filled livestream featuring reveals from "major game publishers". The broadcast will be called Gamescom: Opening Night Live, and it'll be hosted by Geoff Keighley.

The dust's not had time to settle on Sony's first reveal of PlayStation 5 details, but Microsoft has already fired back with the announcement of Xbox's big E3 press conference.

Following the success of Nintendo's mini consoles and with Sega about to enter the market with its own slimmed-down take on the Mega Drive, Capcom has now entered the fray with its own spin on the phenomenon - a massive £200 arcade stick that's shaped like the Capcom logo which allows players to enjoy 16 classics of the 90s.

The unexpected continuation of the Marvel Ultimate Alliance series that was unveiled late last year now has a release date, with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order coming exclusively to Nintendo's Switch on July 19th.

It's been 30 years since Amy Hennig's first game, Electrocop, and eight since she said goodbye to her most famous creation, Naughty Dog's Uncharted series. Informed as much by vintage Hollywood adventure films as the likes of Gears of War, Uncharted is the acme of the gun-toting blockbuster with a human face. It's a style of production with which Hennig, a former film student, is indelibly associated, though I'll always reserve my love for her first turn as director, 1999's Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. But as she herself admits, it's a style of game that is becoming untenable, involving vast expense and many years of labour, in an industry that has never been more conscious of the unhealthy workplace practices that prop up some of its most beloved experiences. Hence, perhaps, the untimely demise of her last project, Visceral's Star Wars game "Ragtag", as publisher EA moved its business away from finite narratives and into the murky waters of the game-as-service.

Let's take a look at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's upcoming virtual reality support - coming via a free update on 26th April. Of course, the mode requires you own Nintendo's just-released Nintendo Labo: VR Kit to use as a pair of hold-up-to-your-face goggles.

There's a brand new free-to-play Forza game available now for Windows 10 and coming soon for iOS and Android phones. It's named Forza Street, and is designed as a portable version of Microsoft's famous racing series.

Rare's multiplayer pirate extravaganza Sea of Thieves is currently enjoying a discount of 50% on Xbox One and PC, ahead of its massive, game-changing Anniversary Update, due at the end of the month.

Octopath Traveler, Square Enix's celebrated retro-ish J-RPG, will be throwing off the shackles of Switch exclusivity on June 7th - when it comes to PC via Steam.

Rayark, the developer behind top-notch rhythm-action games Voez and Deemo, has announced that another of its music titles, Cytus Alpha, is coming to Switch on April 25th.

The latest Nintendo Switch system update, version 8.0.0, is available today.

We're a little over two months away from Mario Tennis Aces' first birthday, but the updates still aren't slowing - and Nintendo's latest offering, cannily titled version 3.0, is a little larger than normal, introducing new modes and more.

It's been three years since the initial launch of Facebook's Oculus Rift and this spring, Oculus will be launching two new versions of its headset. Both the Oculus Quest and the Oculus Rift S will retail for £399/€449 each, but after hands on time with both, it's safe to say they offer radically different experiences depending on what kind of gamer you actually are.

Search your feelings and you'll know a brand new Lego Star Wars game is in development. Or, if you're not tuned in to the Force, you can just search online instead.

Less than two years ago, Uncharted creator Amy Hennig had her story-based single-player Star Wars game, code-named Ragtag, shut down by EA. The message at the time? Single-player games do not make money - or at least, not enough - to continue justifying their existance.

Listen: there is a classic bit of business in Pac-Man that occurs whenever you go through the wraparound tunnel that takes you from one side of the screen to the other. What you get is a pause. Pac-Man takes a little longer to go through the tunnel than you expect him to, so you can't help but imagine that there's a bit of the tunnel that you can't actually see. (The novel Lucky Wander Boy, by D. B. Weiss, riffs brilliantly on this point.) Video games don't make enough of this kind of thing, but Burnout did. Burnout, from Burnout 3 onwards, knew just what to do with a pause.

Last year's excellent, reinvigorated God of War launched a year ago this week and, to celebrate, PlayStation has a couple of nice freebies for you.

In real life, planes do not move the way they do in Jetstream. In Jetstream, gone are the arcs and steady ascents, the slow, bovine turns and the rattly, thumping intrusions of turbulence. Instead, it's brisk straight lines and sudden right angle turns. Start here, get to there. Go.

Racing esports is serious business, I'm sure you've heard. I think I've probably bored you in the recent past about it - whether it's how Gran Turismo Sport and F1 2018's esports series have produced races that have sometimes been the measure of the real thing, for a spectator at least, how the likes of F1 star Lando Norris have used games to sharpen their skills, or how McLaren is turning to esports to find the next generation of racing driver - but it's only when visiting the offices of esports team Veloce Racing that it really hits me. This really is serious business.

Just in case you haven't had enough Star Wars this weekend, a new, free to subscribers expansion pack is coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic - the first in three years.

Sony has filed two new VR patents: one to permit PSVR users to spectate live events, and another for inserting avatars of your pals into your games.

With the arrival of Nvidia's RTX video cards and support for real-time ray tracing in both the DirectX 12 and Vulkan graphics APIs, we're looking at one possible future for graphics technology - but it is one mired in controversy because up until this week, only RTX GPUs could run DXR-enabled software, meaning only a very limited number of PC users could access ray tracing functionality. But now, the floodgates are open: Nvidia's latest driver allows its 10 and 16-series GPUs to run DXR software too. But is any kind of playable experience possible on cards without RTX's hardware accelerated support?

Sony has confirmed it has changed its protocol for dealing with potentially inappropriate PSN ID usernames.

Bungie's plans to enable the cross-platform transfer of Destiny characters were stopped by Sony, according to Kotaku's Jason Schreier.

Final Fantasy XV director, Hajime Tabata, is creating a new Paralympics RPG, The Pegasus Dream Tour.

The Sega Dreamcast - now over 20 years old, the Dreamcast represents an era of unprecedented creativity within Sega. With a huge range of remarkable games spread across every genre imaginable, Sega's final console remains popular even today but while the Dreamcast's video output options were forward looking at the time, taking full advantage of them today isn't quite as easy as you'd expect - but the arrival of a hardware modification with a pristine HDMI output is an absolute gamechanger. There's no doubt about it - DCHDMI is the best way to play Dreamcast on a modern flat panel display.

Another day, another rumour about Microsoft's discless Xbox One S and this time, we have reports of an imminent announcement.

UPDATE: EA has promised it won't add microtransactions or loot boxes to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order post-launch.

Mortal Kombat is a series known for its gore - and the Fatalities are the goriest moves of them all.