Category: Gaming News

PS Plus October 2019 FREE PS4 games: Sony ready to reveal PlayStation Plus lineup

20 Oct 19
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PS Plus October 2019 FREE PS4 games:

By LIAM MARTIN  of the Daily express

 

 

PlayStation Plus subscribers are counting down to the reveal of the free PS4 games for October 2019.

And the good news is that the October 2019 free PS Plus games reveal is coming very soon.

Subscribers looking to find out the identity of the free PS4 games will be happy to hear that Sony will make the announcement next week.

The October 2019 PS Plus games lineup will be unveiled on September 25 at 4.30pm UK time.

The free games will be available to download less than a week later on October 1.

In the meantime, PlayStation Plus subscribers can grab the September 2019 free PS4 games selection.

This includes the excellent Batman Arkham Knight, as well as the divisive Darksiders 3.

And with International Batman Day coming up on September 21, there’s no better time to download the Caped Crusader’s epic virtual adventure.

“In the explosive finale to the Arkham series, The Scarecrow returns to unite an impressive roster of super villains, including Penguin, Two-Face and Harley Quinn,” reads the official description.

“Batman: Arkham Knight introduces Rocksteady’s Batmobile, which is drivable for the first time in the franchise. This legendary vehicle combined with the acclaimed gameplay of the Batman Arkham series, offers gamers the ultimate Batman experience as they tear through Gotham City.”

Darksiders 3, on the other hand, takes a leaf out of the Dark Souls playbook, although arguably to its detriment.

“Return to an apocalyptic Earth in Darksiders III, a hack-n-slash Action Adventure where players assume the role of FURY in her quest to hunt down and dispose of the Seven Deadly Sins.

“The most unpredictable and enigmatic of the Four Horsemen, FURY must succeed where many have failed – to bring balance to the forces that now ravage Earth.”

Batman Arkham Knight

Batman Arkham Knight (Image: WARNER)

Darksiders 3

Darksiders 3 (Image: THQ)

There’s even an extra bonus for Fortnite fans with a PlayStation Plus subscription.

Available to download now, the Fortnite Celebration Pack contains a new pickaxe, weapon Wrap, Banner and Emoji.

This includes a Pneumatic Twin Pickaxe, as well as a Radiant Blue Wrap, a Flail Emoji the aforementioned banner.

A separate bonus bundle is available for Apex Legends fans. It includes two character skins, two weapon skins and two banners.


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Rainbow Six Siege: Playlist Improvements

16 Sep 19
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[2019-09-16] Dev Blog PI header

 

Dev Blog: Playlist Improvements

09/16/2019 Source = Ubisoft® (CA)

When we announced our Y4 roadmap, we revealed several major playlist changes with the addition of the Newcomer Playlist, updates to Ranked Playlists and Casual, and more. For this purpose, we created the Playlist cell, a multidisciplinary team dedicated to working on the Playlists. With the playlist changes, our goals were to provide more guidance in the onboarding experience for new players, foster a healthier competitive scene at the higher ranks of play, while also finding better ways to disseminate information to ease the leap between casual and Ranked.

This dev blog aims to provide insight on the changes and improvements that have been made to Playlists throughout Y4, and will shed some light on the decision process that goes into helping us look for ways that we can improve the player experience for all types of players in our community.

 

GUIDING NEW PLAYERS

Rainbow Six Siege is a complex game to pick up. Even for experienced FPS players, Siege requires more than just shooting, as there is an expanse of game knowledge that can and should be learned as you grow as a player. As the game continues to grow, we realized that we had to begin developing initiatives to ease the learning curve and better guide our players.

Entering a casual PvP game as your first Rainbow Six experience is daunting and can easily turn into a frustrating experience for new players. The creation of the Newcomer playlist aimed to offer a compact experience for new players. So with only three bomb-only maps, and a maximum Clearance Level of 50, we sought to create a space for newer players to learn among themselves in a more controlled environment.

The Newcomer playlist is just one step in our plans for improving the onboarding process, and we are continuing to search for more ways to inform, guide, and educate players. The Operator selection screen now contains difficulty ratings and full loadouts. We also added in default loadouts for new players as well. Furthermore, we have been monitoring feedback and understand that the Clearance Level cap prevents new players from playing with their friends. Part of the solution to this is the upcoming Unranked Playlist (read for more on this below), but we are continuing to look into ways we can improve the Newcomer playlist further while keeping our core purpose of the playlist intact.

 

FOSTERING COMPETITION

At the other end of the spectrum, we also wanted to focus more on creating a better Ranked experience for our highly dedicated competitive players. We wanted to provide an experience that more closely mirrored Pro League, improve Ranked competitive balance in all aspects, and develop long-term engagement with players and Ranked. It was time the Beta tag came off ranked.

We first began with the introduction of Ranked Pick and Ban as a first step to bring Ranked closer to Pro League. A logical next step with our pool of Operators increasing season by season, Pick and Ban has helped to shift the meta, act as a balancing check, and refresh gameplay experience from one match to another. With the next season, we’re taking one more step closer to Pro League by changing the plant and defuse timer to 7 seconds, forcing teams to plan and commit more in order to plant.

Next, we turned our eyes towards shaking up the Rank distribution. While the average player placed in Gold, what we knew from feedback and what our data was telling us were that progression in lower ranks felt very difficult and led to diminished motivation to rank up. As a result, we added an additional fifth Rank to Copper, Bronze and Silver and removed the fourth Rank in Gold – making movement for players at lower Ranks feel more progressive as they climb up the ladder.

Additionally, we’ve added a new Rank for our top skilled players. Any player that reaches 5000 MMR will enter the Champions Rank and maintain a leaderboard position. The more MMR you have, the higher your Champions positions. We believe this will help ignite the competitive spirit at the top, and drive our best players to show they are at the top.

Further changes coming to Ranked in Y4S3 bring the focus on improving competitive health, balance, and integrity. The Rank restriction will prevent players with greater than a 1000+ MMR gap from playing with each other as a means to prevent boosting, and the new Ranked map pool will be reduced from 14 to 12. We will be looking at feedback on these changes with the new season to see what tweaks and further improvements can be made.

 

BRIDGING THE GAP

The leap from Casual to Ranked can be overwhelming due to the stark difference between competitive and casual players in terms of mentality, playstyle, and even personal comfort level. This gap was the driving motivation behind the new Unranked playlist.

The Unranked playlist maintains all the same rules and settings of Ranked, but without the pressure of Ranks, MMR, and importantly, no Rank restrictions. Players can warm up in a more focused environment, create pre-made squads with friends without restriction, and familiarize themselves with Ranked to prepare themselves for the next step up.

Unranked is a new playlist, and we hope it will be the answer to players’ needs. We will be gathering data during this Season to see if we achieve the results we are aiming for!

 

PROVIDING MORE AND BETTER INFORMATION

Finally, information and knowledge is everything in Siege, but sometimes finding that information can be difficult. To better disseminate this wealth of information and to keep our players updated on any and all changes, we’ve made a couple of improvements.

In the Casual Playlist, we’ve enhanced player comprehension by adding the “Locations” screen by allowing players choose their Attack spawn point and highlighting the objective room for Defenders. For Ranked, we’ve created the Ranked Guide which provides Ranked rules, ban policies, the current map pool rotation, information on ranks and rank distribution, and more to prepare and inform players before queuing up for Ranked.

With all the Playlist changes, we feel that they will all contribute to improving player experience, no matter what type of player you are. These changes are by no means the end and we look forward to your continued feedback as we move towards even more improved Playlists.

 

Stay tuned for more future updates from our Playlist cell!

 

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What’s New in Minecraft Snapshot 19w37a?

13 Sep 19
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This week’s snapshot for Minecraft 1.15 is 19w37a – with a lot of bug fixes and even more things brought over from Bedrock. This comprehensive video guide will show you all the changes!

 

New in this version: Mobs: – When breed-able mobs in groups spawn naturally they sometimes spawn babies in the group – Fixed custom mobs and normal vexes dropping equipped items with Looting even if Drop Chances are set to 0 – Fixed mobs picking up items dropping their current item even with drop chance of 0 – Fixed tamed animals no longer teleporting to players properly.

 

Gameplay: – Boats as fuel now smelt 6 items in a furnace – Campfire can be extinguished with a shovel – Fixed large ferns not dropping seeds – Curse of Vanishing now works for saddles and items on horses, donkeys and llamas – Fixed horse armour occasionally being duplicated when killing a horse with Looting III – Fixed the recipe book rejecting bows with Damage:0 tag when crafting dispensers – Fixed tools from the creative inventory and crafting not having the Damage:0 tag set until relog – Fixed Silk Touch books working like Silk Touch tools – Fixed villagers always ringing bells in the same direction, even if that should not be possible.

 

Redstone: – Fixed bells activated by redstone always ringing in the same direction, even if that should not be possible – Blocks that can be manually placed on farmland can now also be pushed onto it by a piston without destroying the farmland – Fixed placing wet sponges in the nether not updating redstone.

 

Worlds: – Fixed chests missing after converting and loading old maps from 1.7.10 – Fixed using portals in older worlds creating a new portal instead of taking you to an existing one – Fixed the new game-rules introduced in snapshot 19w36a defaulting to false in worlds from older versions.

 

Visuals: – Fixed bee hives filled with honey missing their top and bottom textures – Fixed placing lily pads not having a hand animation in third-person – Fixed the spawn egg ‘use’ animation not being shown when using it on an animal – Fixed arm animation not being executed in certain circumstances – Fixed spawn eggs used on water not displaying a hand animation.

 

Technical: – Fixed the gamerule fire-Damage being set to false not preventing lava damage – Fixed /data modify modifying player item data despite showing an error message – Fixed ‘/execute store’ modifying player data inside item “tags” of their inventory or Ender-Items – Fixed cloned block containing the same item in memory – enchantments advancement field now only matches enchantments on item itself – it no longer can be used for enchanted books – to match contents enchanted book, use stored_enchantments – Fixed buckets’ CanPlaceOn NBT check being applied to the block behind.

 

Stability & Performance: – Fixed mobs riding an item frame riding a mob crashing the server when the item frame breaks – Fixed slime and magma cube spawners crashing the game.

 

From Previous Versions: – The world format now stores biome information in 3D.

The best games of 2019 so far, ranked

25 Aug 19
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It hasn’t been a great year for blockbuster games, but dig around and there are some absolute belters, including Apex Legends, Outer Wilds and Tetris 9

 

Original source = wired

Apex Legends
Any casual observer, skimming through lists of blockbuster releases, might conclude that 2019 hasn’t been a great year for games. At a certain level, they’d be right: the dearth of real must-have titles is most likely down to the fact that we are reaching the end of every console’s life-cycle.

Fear not, however – if you venture deeper into 2019’s murky depths, you can find a panoply of shining gems. (The trick is not being afraid to go indie). Speaking of which, we have a handy guide to the best indie games if you’re interested, and try our guide the new games in 2019 for what’s coming soon. But, without further ado, here’s our list of the best games of 2019 so far.

1. Resident Evil 2

 

This is the best kind of remake. Rather than lightly remaster 1998’s version with new textures and effects, Capcom has re-made the game entirely for today’s hardware. The result is a terrifying delight that looks incredible and plays better than ever thanks to a switch to the over-the-shoulder viewpoint first seen in Resident Evil 4. For anyone who loved the original but didn’t enjoy its awkward fixed camera angles, it’s a great chance to revisit a genuine classic.

 

2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

 

From Software, of Bloodborne and Dark Souls fame, give us yet another ridiculously punishing action-adventure, but this time set in an ancient samurai mythos. There’s also less role-playing and levelling up: this is stealthier, story-driven quest. A grappling hook lets you zip around and sneak up on your kills. Single-player only, you won’t be able to summon buddies to help you in a game some reviewers have said is the hardest From Software release of all time. Depending on your relationship to the Souls series, this news may excite or terrify you.

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC

3. Devil May Cry 5

 

Much like Mortal Kombat, Devil May Cry is an old series, and this latest version is the best entry. The series focuses on Dante, (named after the Italian poet), who must avenge his murdered mother by killing legions of demons. The game is combat heavy: players must string chains of attacks into special moves and eliminate hundreds of enemies. Reviewers are pretty much unanimous: “the question of which Devil May Cry game is the best has gotten much easier with Devil May Cry 5”, says Mitchell Saltzman over at IGN.

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC

4. Outer Wilds

 

An action-adventure game set in a magical-looking solar system, with an emphasis on exploration. You play as a member of a four-eyed race of purple aliens, on a mission to find out where they come from, and whether life existed in the solar system before them. Plot twist: every 22 minutes, the sun implodes and you start again. The game is currently generating massive acclaim as well as much discussion around its deep, moving story and extraordinary vistas. A lot of this is down to the game’s central conceit: much like Majora’s Mask, the sun ends all life, which adds both an interesting gameplay trope and a moving theme to proceedings.

Platforms: Xbox One and PC

5. Mortal Kombat 11

 

More heart-ripping, acid-dissolving, scorpion-biting fun from one of the most beloved and controversial series in gaming. As Wesley Yin-Poole explains over at Eurogamer, this is the superior Mortal Kombat offering: “a kind of Mortal Kombat greatest hits package and certainly NetherRealm’s best-playing fighting game ever.” The gameplay caters to old hands while providing entertainment for the large, amateur section of the game’s audience who just want to button bash and pull off their friends’ heads. Playing online, as with any fighter, is still a harrowing experience. You will get destroyed.

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC

6. Tetris 99

 

It’s Tetris, but battle royale: it sounds impossible, but it’s incredible fun. The clue is in the title: you and 98 other players play a fast-paced game of Tetris until one player is left standing. You get upgrades to attack other players. Mayhem ensues. Extremely addictive and extremely popular, this has been a coup for Nintendo as a Switch exclusive. It’s free-to-play, but you need a Switch Online subscription to play. Unless you really like NES games, Tetris 99 is the best reason to get one.

Platforms: Switch

7. Hypnospace Outlaw

 

A gorgeously animated detective game, which draws on the aesthetic of the late 90s and early 2000s internet pages (think Myspace and Geocities). You surf this exciting looking web, trying to stop illegal activities such as copyright infringement. If you were around during this era of the internet, the game will bring you back to a time before Facebook and the iPhone changed the web. The puzzles themselves are also fiendishly constructed and rewarding.

Platforms: PC

8. Metro Exodus

 

 

The Metro series, based on a series of books by Dmitry Glukhovsky, are broadly set in post-apocalyptic Russia. These survival horror games are known for their claustrophobic atmosphere, stunning graphics, and mix of stealth and FPS shooting action against desperate humans and irradiated monsters. Metro Exodus, the fourth entry in the series, takes place in more sandbox-like open-world levels, as opposed to the linear offerings of the older games. Be warned, it’s scary!

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC

9. Void Bastards

 

Void Bastards is an indie FPS with some of the most stunning comic-book inspired graphics we’ve ever seen. If you are at all into cel-shading art styles, Void Bastards is a must play. Luckily, the gameplay is also excellent: a thoughtful shooter inspired by Bioshock and System Shock 2. Why the name? Well you’re a convict sent into space to repair the ‘Void Ark’ and it’s full of alien bastards. As Samuel Roberts at PC Gamer explains, “While there is a stealth element to Void Bastards, it’s mostly about shooting weird, British aliens in tight corridors and rooms.“

Platforms: PC, Xbox One

10. Wargroove

 

This turn-based tactics game is a must-buy for all Advance Wars fans. Imagine Nintendo’s classic reinvented with a fantasy theme, and you’ll be pretty close to what Wargroove offers. Choose between four factions, take turns to build up your armies and guide them across a top-down map into battle against the opposition. Solid multiplayer and an in-depth level editor will keep you coming back for more.

Platforms: PC, Xbox One and Switch

11. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

 

Fire Emblem is one of those series, now at sixteen main games and three spin-offs, that’s absolutely massive and seminal in Japan but reaches more of a niche market in the West. (Players may know its characters best from the introduction of Marth and Roy to Super Smash Bros Melee). The games are famous for their permanent death feature – if your character dies, that’s it. The latest release is a tactical roleplayer, where you move your characters across grid-based environments but also level them up like a more traditional role-playing game – it’s a Nintendo exclusive, and a high point in the series long history.

Platforms: Nintendo Switch

12. Blood and Truth

 

Playstation VR hasn’t had many great games – Blood and Truth is one of the better ones, and it was in fact the first ever virtual reality game to top the UK charts. It’s an expanded version of the “London Heist” level from VR Worlds – you’re an army veteran pushed into a murky London criminal underworld. Expect lots of shooting, explosions and bad cockney accents.

Platforms: Playstation VR

13. Pikuniku

 

 

A loveable 2D puzzle platformer where you play a small being called Pikuniku, trying to save his cartoon town from corporate interference. Animated in a children’s book style, the visuals in Pikuniku are beautiful and charming; the title character reminds you of a child’s drawing of themselves, where they draw only legs and head, forgetting their body. You use these long legs to solve puzzles and kick objects, including many of the game’s characters.

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC

14. My Friend Pedro

 

An absolutely chaotic shoot ’em up where your goal is to create as much cinematic mayhem as possible. Careen off walls and bullet-time spin through the air to mow down your prey. You’re also best friends with a talking banana. The shooting action is addictively frenetic. There are tons of different ways to finish your enemies: throw a frying pan in the air and use it to spray bullets at unlucky foes; swing through the air from a bungee rope and chuck dead enemy’s body parts at their allies.

Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch

15. Apex Legends

 

A challenger to Fornite’s dominance approaches. Apex Legends hit one million, ten million and 50m players faster than Epic’s cultural phenomenon. It offers the now-standard battle royale formula – players skydive onto an island and try to kill each other. Innovations, like a character class system akin to Overwatch, keep Legends from feeling stale. And just like Fortnite, it’s free-to-play, so you’ve got nothing to lose.

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One and PC

16. Sunless Skies

 

The result of a successful Kickstarter campaign, Sunless Skies is a top-down steampunk space adventure set in a universe where the British “Victorian Empire” has gone interplanetary. It’s as much a literary experience as a gaming one, filled as it is with bizarre, intriguing vignettes. The gameplay leans heavily on the survival and rogue-lite genres, forcing you to make hard decisions to survive as you battle space pirates and monsters. It’ll leave you with memorable tales of surviving by your wits and absorb you for forty hours or more.

Platforms: PC

17. Observation

 

In Observation, you control a space station AI trying to recover after the crew disappears. It’s a neat reversal of the trapped in space trope and the limitations of controlling an AI, as opposed to a mobile protagonist, creates an interesting dynamic for this story-driven adventure. Echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey are writ large throughout and it’s short enough to be completed in a day.

Platforms: PS4 and PC

18. Super Mario Maker 2

The original Super Mario Maker was a brilliant idea sadly marooned on the colossal failure that was the Wii U. But it’s back and it’s on the Switch, where many a Wii U game has found a second life. As the name suggests, it’s all about building your own Mario levels based on assets from numerous previous games, and playing those made by others. It includes local and online competitive modes, a co-op level making mode for two players, and a Story Mode with 100 levels to complete.

Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Call Of Duty Modern Warefare

Here’s why Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s weapons may feel a little different than you’re used to

13 Aug 19
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Infinity Ward discusses bullet drop and weapon archetype changes

(Image credit: Activision)

In a lot of ways, Activision and Infinity Ward are going back to basics with the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot. Returning characters, classic guns, and none (or way, way less) of the new-age sci-fi nuttiness that’s defined the most recent games. But as Infinity Ward explained in a recent blog post, the new Modern Warfare is also making fundamental changes to the way weapons handle. 

“We were a little less precious with these [weapons] systems,” said multiplayer design director Geoff Smith. “We looked to see what still made sense, and pulled stuff out that we feel didn’t work, even if it made the team uncomfortable. Everybody on the team had pre-conceived notions on what ‘Call of Duty’ is and we had to shake people out of that mindset.” 

Some longstanding weapon types are also receiving a bit of a shake-up. SMGs, for instance, have been high-recoil close-range weapons for years, but as Smith noted, “in reality, they are low-calibre weapons and are easier to control; they’re lower damage, they’re fairly accurate, so we’ve shifted the role of that weapon around.”

At the same time, some of the customisation options coming in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Gunsmith system will give weapons a huge range of, well, ranges. Smith teased that “we have a shotgun that you can make by adding a long-barrel and a sniper scope, making it a sniper shotgun. Or you can modify that same weapon by removing the barrel and stock, and get this snub-nose, super-fast weapon that’s completely different than how you started out.”

Speaking of the multiplayer skill ceiling: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will thankfully have dedicated servers on all platforms.

 

Call of Duty fans, you can finally rest easy: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will have dedicated servers and support crossplay at launch. According to a Game Informer cover story (via Charlie Intel), Infinity Ward and Activision are confirming that alongside full cross-play support for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, Modern Warfare will feature dedicated servers to ideally help ensure stability at launch and beyond.

Dedicated servers aren’t anything new to Call of Duty, but with the introduction of crossplay support to the franchise with the upcoming Modern Warfare, it’s even more crucial to ensure stable server performance by forking out for dedicated servers. With the pervasive issue of server instability in online competitive gaming, it’s a big relief to hear it’s quickly becoming commonplace for AAA developers to address the issue before it becomes an issue.

As for cross-play, it’ll work similar to Fortnite, where matchmaking is input-based. That means players using controllers will be paired with other controller-users, and mouse & keyboard players will be paired up likewise. As for PC players looking to play with console-based friends, Infinity Ward has come up with a seemingly workable solution; in these situations, teams of mixed input players will be matched with other teams comprised of both mouse & keyboard players and controller players.

 
 

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Roblox

Roblox passes Minecraft and Fortnite as world’s favourite video game

06 Aug 19
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Roblox passes Minecraft and Fortnite as world’s favourite video game

Original story by GameCentral

Monday 5 Aug 2019 9:27 am

Looking like fake Lego is apparently the secret of video game success The most popular console and PC game may be one you’ve never even heard of, as kids’ title Roblox passes 100 million monthly users. Game review: Age Of Wonders: Planetfall is Civilization meets XCOM Back when video games were sold in shops, and that was it, it was pretty easy to tell which was most popular. There were never any sales figures, at least in the UK, but at least it was obvious which was selling the most. Things are much more complicated now but it seems the current number one game might be… Roblox. Many gamers, especially if they don’t have kids, have probably never even heard of Roblox but according to its makers it now has over 100 million monthly users, which is more than the 91 million Minecraft had back in March.

 

The problem with these figures is that they’re not updated regularly and it’s usually the game makers themselves that provide them, so it’s hard to know exactly how accurate they are. The last one for Fortnite, in September 2018, put it at 78.3 million – which is a completely different number to the number of people that have ever registered to play the game, which stands at around 250 million. In terms of how many are actually playing it right now though, Google search data seemed to show Minecraft passing Fortnite back in June. MORE: GAMING Pokémon Center opening in London this autumn Evo 2019 news round-up: Tekken 7 and King Of Fighters XV, but no Solid Snake Game review: Oxygen Not Included is a deep space survival game At that point Roblox wasn’t even in the picture but then it’s not something most adult gamers know or care about, as it’s a mix of MMO and game creation tool, which features more than 50 million mini-games created by mostly younger players. It’s even less of a traditional game than Minecraft but that’s a large reason for its success, with a userbase that’s 40% female. Half of its players also play with their friends, rather than alone, which also helps to encourage regular play. Whether Roblox really is the most popular game is hard to say, as Pokémon GO claims to be more popular now than at any time since launch, but in terms of console and PC games it seems like Roblox is currently number one.

 

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The Big O

Every Console In One Box

28 Jul 19
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Every Console In One Box – The Origin Big O

A first look from Unbox therapy

 

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=ErQQc6cUSTA[/embedyt]

all copyrighted material belongs to the content creators
Intel

Intel admits it won’t catch up with AMD’s 7nm chips until 2021

18 Jul 19
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By  of Tech Radar

 

Intel has explained how it struggled to bring 10-nanometer processors to market, while also admitting that we won’t see its 7nm chips until 2021.

The revelations come from Intel CEO Bob Swan, who said at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, that Intel’s goal to have a 2.7x transistor density improvement in its 10nm chips compared to current 14nm chips was too ambitious.

“At a time when it gets harder and harder, we set a more aggressive goal. From that it just took us longer,” Swan said.

Because of this, Intel has been slow to move on from 14nm. This has led many people to suggest that – for Intel at least – Moore’s Law is dead.

Moore is less

Moore’s Law, which is named after Intel co-founder and former CEO Gordon Moore, states that transistor density in computer chips doubles every two years. It’s been a driving principle behind Intel’s processor strategy, and many people credit it with the fast pace of technological advancements we’ve seen in the past.

Because of Intel’s delays with 10nm, it has fallen behind this schedule. However, with 10nm out this year and 7nm out by 2021, Intel is hoping it can catch up with Moore’s Law.

Swan admits that the 2.7x scaling for 10nm was both too ambitious and too complicated. He also explains how Intel made an error when it “prioritised performance at a time when predictability was really important”.

However, as Swan notes, “The short story is we learned from it, we’ll get our 10nm node out this year. Our 7nm node will be out in two years and it will be a 2.0X scaling so back to the historical Moore’s Law curve.”

 

So it looks like we’ll finally see 10nm chips from Intel this year, while 7nm will have to wait until 2021. That’s a long time considering both AMD and Qualcomm have 7nm chips out right now. But will Intel be happy with ceding any performance advantage 7nm brings to its two biggest competitors for that long?

Twitch.TV

Some Streamers Are Boycotting Twitch To Show Support Of The Amazon Prime Day Strike

16 Jul 19
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Nathan GrasonOriginal source by Nathan Grayson

Unless you’ve got the world’s most powerful ad blocker, you’re probably painfully aware that it’s Prime Day, a holiday that Amazon made up because it could. Deals parade naked in the streets and the company hosts glitzy concerts, all to encourage Amazon Prime subscribers to stick around. For the second year in a row, however, some Amazon warehouse workers are striking in the midst of all this; workers in Germany are striking over unfair pay, whereas workers in Minnesota are striking over unsafe working conditions. Amazon owns Twitch, and some streamers are boycotting the streaming platform for the next two days as a show of solidarity. For other streamers, though, the situation isn’t so black and white.

Last year, warehouse workers in Germany, Poland, and Spain chose to strike during Prime Day. Again, this year, Amazon workers in Germany are striking again, and now also, workers at a fulfillment center in Minnesota are joining the strike. “Amazon is going to be telling one story about itself, which is they can ship a Kindle to your house in one day, isn’t that wonderful,” said William Stolz, a Minnesota-based Amazon employee and strike organiser, to Bloomberg. “We want to take the opportunity to talk about what it takes to make that work happen and put pressure on Amazon to protect us and provide safe, reliable jobs.”

Amazon, which is run by the single wealthiest man in the world, finally increased its minimum payment for warehouse workers in the United States to $15 late last year, after painstaking campaigns from workers and pressure from politicians like Bernie Sanders. However, many still feel that the company’s focus on productivity quotas often comes to blows with basic standards of workplace safety. In addition, workers hope to see more temp gigs turn into full-time employment. In addition to the strikes in Minnesota and Germany, protests are taking place in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and locations in Europe.

[Update 7/15/2019, 8:20 PM ET: In an email to Kotaku, an Amazon spokesperson defended the company’s current practices, saying that employee safety is “our number one priority” and that “training is constant, both in making sure employees know how best to work with the technology in the facility and also how to prevent injuries.” The spokesperson also said that “more than 75 percent of associates are already exceeding rate expectations before any changes are considered” and the company supports “people who are not performing to the levels expected with dedicated coaching to help them improve.” As for the Minnesota facility specifically, the company says that 90 percent of workers are full-time employees, and over 100 temp workers have been offered full-time jobs this year.]

Meanwhile, on social media platforms, people are encouraging others to steer clear of Amazon-owned products and platforms like Kindle, Audible, Goodreads, IMDB, Whole Foods, Comixology, Amazon Web Services, and Twitch. During this time period, however, Twitch is also running its own Prime Day event titled “Twitch Sells Out,” which may not have been the most amazing naming choice in light of the whole strike thing. Twitch describes Twitch Sells Out as a “shoppertainment-style program” in which popular streamers talk up deals in the ever-fertile fields of gaming, electronics, and of course, “related products.” All of this has sparked a debate about what exactly it means to cross a picket line when the company in question has its fingers in innumerable pies and you’re a contractor on a platform where a couple days of radio silence can be ruinous.

For some Twitch streamers, going dark for the next two days is a no-brainer.

“I think it’s really simple to show solidarity to people who have it hard,” said Adam “Yoman5” Hernandez, a competitive Magic: The Gathering streamer who won’t be streaming for the next two days, in a Twitter DM to Kotaku. “A two-day strike did wonders already over at Polygon, and while that’s a much smaller affair, a strike is really disruptive to the company’s production and can force the company to actually address concerns. A boycott in solidarity with the strike can hit Amazon in the only place they care: sales numbers.”

Josh Boykin, a video game critic who regularly streams on Twitch and who’s planning to host a Tacoma-themed discussion about mega-corporations on his first day back on Twitch later this week, agreed. “Amazon workers have striked many times beyond Prime Day, but taking these two days off in particular helps give more attention to their collective action and is a small way I can help raise awareness to their efforts,” he said to Kotaku in a DM. “I’ve benefited from being on Twitch, but Twitch and Amazon have both taken steps that seem to negatively affect the health and safety of the people that power their ecosystems. Whether it’s streamers experiencing harassment or workers in unfair labour conditions, I think, for those of us who have the ability, it’s worthwhile to take some time and make sure we’re all thinking about these issues and the many others that come with our work.”

“Whether it’s streamers experiencing harassment or workers in unfair labour conditions, I think, for those of us who have the ability, it’s worthwhile to take some time and make sure we’re all thinking about these issues and the many others that come with our work.”
But for some streamers, it’s not so simple. Twitch is a platform designed to funnel people down rabbit holes of near-infinite content by way of pages full of algorithmic recommendations, tags, browsing features that encourage you to look around even while watching other streamers, and more. Twitch viewers can be fickle, seemingly prone to seeking out new entertainment (and retracting valuable subscriptions) when streamers aren’t rigorously sticking to a regular schedule. Two days off may not seem like a lot, but for some streamers who are trying to maintain sustainable viewership’s or even just push for them via things like Twitch’s partner program—which requires an average of 75 concurrent viewers per stream—it’s a bridge too far.

Even though Hernandez is striking himself, he says he gets why not everyone would. “Twitch streamers are independent contractors under Amazon with no guaranteed income,” said Hernandez. “There are drastic negative consequences on that income from taking days off streaming. Even a day or two can really hurt someone’s ability to maintain a following and I don’t think it’s fair to ‘make’ them join the strike. Streaming is not my primary income so I can personally take that step and just delay my usual Monday stream to not coincide with the strike and boycott, but I know the harsh realities of streaming and the compounding effects of a day or two off compared to other jobs.”

It’s worth noting that few top streamers are supporting the boycott, despite almost certainly having the means and bandwidth to do so. A whole host of bigger streamers, meanwhile, are participating in the Twitch Sells Out event. Kotaku reached out to a handful of them to ask if business obligations compelled them to do so in spite of the strike, but did not hear back as of this publishing.

There’s been no small amount of discontent directed at streamers who’ve opted to go live despite the strike. This has led to calls for people to understand where some streamers are coming from.

“If you are participating in the Amazon strike, please please do not punish Twitch streamers for working,” said PinkuShika, an artist who’s streaming today, on Twitter. “Many use it as a platform to earn income to pay rent, bills, and buy food. Most don’t have other sources of steady income, like artists! Taking a break is not an option for some.”

Adam Koebel, a tabletop-focused streamer who often speaks up about workers’ rights, initially expressed this viewpoint in even stronger terms, saying on Twitter that people should “buy shit for cheap today if it makes you happy, or boycott Amazon altogether” and apply a similar approach to Twitch, because ultimately “when we eat our comrades alive for not being left enough,” corporations and other powerful entities win. In a Twitter DM to Kotaku, however, Koebel said that he’d deleted his initial tweet because he realised it came across as flippant. What he was trying to convey, he said, was how Amazon has wormed its way into countless elements of our lives both on- and offline and how that makes expressing solidarity more complex than it might initially seem.

“I think what’s happening is this deep, weird problem where we want to fight back against bad corporate practice (in this case, warehouse worker treatment) and if this were a simpler world, it’d be a case of just supporting the strike directly,” he said. “Because Amazon is so deeply ingrained in our entire internet experience, we’re seeing secondary Amazon services like Twitch, and the independent folks who use those services for a living, being assigned solidarity violations by association.”

Amazon’s domination and the disembowelment of workers ensnared in its many tendrils, Koebel explained, puts everybody involved in a position of precarity, to the point that even a simple strike can be a tenuous proposition. This is good for the company and bad for workers who want more. Solidarity in times of protest is meant to get around these sorts of practices—thus people’s distaste for scabs—but Twitch’s structure makes it uniquely difficult.

“I don’t have an answer about whether it’s ethical or not for any given person to broadcast on Twitch during Prime Day,” Koebel said. “I think it’s a reasonable thing for people to avoid services provided by Amazon in solidarity. I don’t know that it’s the right choice for every broadcaster to risk their livelihood during that same period. I hope people will consider how they criticise one another over it. I made a badly-expressed point, and I’m thankful for the response I got to it and to have the chance to come at it from another angle. Is broadcasting the same as crossing a picket line or buying a new TV during Prime Day? I don’t know that I have a concrete answer.”

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The Division 2’s first big free DLC will add new missions, Exotics, and big skill changes this month

11 Jul 19
smokedog77
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By  of Gamesradar+

 

The next chapter in The Division 2 is Episode 1 – DC Outskirts: Expeditions, and as Ubisoft and Massive announced today, this free DLC will arrive on July 23 for Year 1 Pass owners and July 30 for all players. Aside from myriad fixes and balance changes, Episode 1 will introduce two new main missions, the Expeditions game mode, new gear including two Exotics, and two more Classified Assignments. The Operation Dark Hours raid is also getting a lowered “Discovery” difficulty (with reduced rewards), and even amongst the many balance changes, skill overhauls stand out.

The new missions are set in Camp White Oak and the Manning National Zoo, and star President Andrew Ellis and Outcast leader Emeline Shaw, respectively. Expeditions, meanwhile, will take players to Kenly College. Unlike missions, Expeditions will be split into three “wings,” with new wings released on a weekly basis. “Completing all three wings grants access to an exclusive treasure room full of rewards,” Massive said in a statement. The new Classified Assignments, meanwhile, are set in Washington’s Central Aquarium and NSA Site B13, and are exclusive to the Year 1 Pass. 

You’ll likely find some of the DLC’s new gear in that treasure room, including the Diamondback Exotic rifle and the Exotic BTSU Datagloves. Two non-Exotic weapons are also coming in Episode 1: the Stoner LMG and the Carbine 7. The Carbine 7 is a shooter staple and has been well-received on The Division 2 test servers, so its impact on the meta may well rival some Exotics.

On top of new weapons, agents will get to play with refreshed skills in Episode 1. Massive said “Skill power will be fine-tuned, adding more power to agents’ builds,” with game designer Bruce Kelly highlighting skill cool-downs as a point of focus in a recent live-stream. Simply put, the hard cap on cooldowns has been lowered from ten seconds to three seconds, so if you really invest in cool-down reduction, you’ll get to use skills much more frequently. 

Finally, crafting is also getting an update in Episode 1. “Players can now craft their gear up until Gear Score 500 and share blueprints across characters (available after reaching World Tier 1),” Massive explained. “Additionally, crafted weapons can now be recalibrated.” You can find tips for crafting and recalibration in our Division 2 crafting guide

Ahead of the big DLC, here’s everything in the latest Division 2 patch notes

 

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