Game Tech News

Amazon has dipped its toe in gaming over the past few years, not always with the most success. Its cloud service, Luna, seems like an easy win, though. It just needs to remain committed, unlike Google. The retail giant first debuted its cloud gaming service in 2020 as a semi-closed beta. Now, Luna is officially available to everyone in the mainland US today. If you’re a Prime Member, you can even play a few games for free.

Luna is similar to Google Stadia and Microsoft GamePass in that you don’t need powerful hardware to play high-end games. All the hard work happens in the cloud, and then the video streams to a device like your phone or a TV box — a Fire TV in the case of Luna. Often, connection speed and latency are the main impediments to a good game streaming experience, but Amazon can leverage its AWS backbone, which hosts a vast swath of the internet. The video stream tops out at 1080p and 60 fps, whereas Google offers 4K HDR streaming on Stadia, but there are other issues with that platform.

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Google still puts on a strong face, but all the news coming from the company’s Stadia gaming division is disheartening. Stadia’s sluggish acquisition of new games has led to similarly stagnant subscriber numbers, but Google might have a secret weapon to boost adoption: Windows. There are hints that Google could unveil a Windows compatibility layer for Stadia at its upcoming Dev Summit, which could make it a snap to port games to Stadia.

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Intel revealed Tuesday its second new "megafab" chipmaking site in Magdeburg, Germany, the centerpiece of an expected $88 billion in investments across several European countries. The investments come on top of other gargantuan spending commitments in the United States, including a planned megafab in Ohio, intended to bring Intel back to the forefront of chip manufacturing.
"The world has an insatiable demand for semiconductors," Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said in a video announcing the investments. Today, 80% of chipmaking takes place in Asia, but the company's spending in the US and Europe will mean a "more balanced and resilient" supply chain that isn't so dependent on Asia.

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Warner Bros. The Batman has been packing out theaters since March 4 -- a crucial piece of information when it comes to its streaming release. The 2022 HBO Max streaming model sees Warner Bros. movies hold a 45-day exclusive theatrical release window, before heading to the streamer on day 46.
Thanks to a technical glitch on the HBO website, we no longer have to squint at our calendars and count down the days -- a release date has been pegged down (though, given it wasn't an official announcement, keep a hold of some of your breath).

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Apple recently unveiled its fastest SoC yet: the M1 Ultra. Its new flagship silicon fuses two M1 Max chips into a single component with “Ultrafusion” technology, and powers the new Mac Studio. When Apple unveiled it at its Peek Performance event recently, it included several charts to demonstrate its prowess. Now, we hope you are sitting down, because it turns out its charts weren’t telling the whole story.

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HBO Max doesn't have the deepest movie catalog compared to competitors like Netflix and Prime Video, but it trades that quantity for serious quality. HBO Max is home to some of the most iconic fantasy movies ever made, from classics like the Wizard of Oz to more recent hits like The Lord of the Rings and the Studio Ghibli collection. If you want an endless catalog of new movies to check out, you're better off with other streaming services, but if you want a nice mix of fantasy powerhouses and cult classics, look no further.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003)
Spirited Away (2001)
Harry Potter (2001-2011)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
The Mummy (1999)
The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Kiki's DeliveryService(1989)
Hellboy (2004)

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The latest Microsoft and Sony game consoles are still hard to find, but there’s still plenty of time to track one down before you have to start planning for the next generation. Sony hasn’t even rolled out all the promised features to its PlayStation 5 hardware. The company says that the promised variable refresh rate (VRR) is still on the way, and gamers can expect it in the coming months.

For years, we’ve been playing console games at 60 frames per second because that’s what TVs supported. The upshot to VRR on a console is similar to dynamic refresh systems like Nvidia G-Sync on the PC side. VRR allows your game console and TV to talk to each other, synchronizing the refresh rate with the console’s frame rate. The result is clearer motion and a reduction in artifacts and screen tearing. On PCs, this feature is known as G-Sync (Nvidia) and FreeSync (AMD).
Sony promised VRR support up to 120Hz on the PS5, but it released the console without it.

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The Batman is in movie theaters (but not on HBO Max yet), with Robert Pattinson donning Bruce Wayne's iconic cowl and beating up Gotham City's criminals in an intense adventure set in the early days of his vigilante career. In writer-director Matt Reeves' movie, Batman faces off against the wildly creepy Riddler (Paul Dano) as the puzzle-obsessed supervillain targets the city's sleazy elites.
Teaming up with Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman, played by Zoë Kravitz) and GCPD Lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), our hero unravels Riddler's dark plot to expose the depths of the city's corruption. It's a twisty-turny tale, so let's take a closer look at the ending, some of the major revelations, Barry Keoghan's chilling cameo and sequel possibilities. We also have a separate explainer for the post-credits Easter egg.
Be warned, SPOILERS are about to swoop in.

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WWE For the second year in a row, WrestleMania is a two-day event. The biggest show in pro wrestling takes place this Saturday and Sunday in Arlington, Texas -- and live on Peacock. For the third time ever, WrestleMania is being main-evented by a clash between Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns. WWE is billing it as the biggest WrestleMania match of all time which, to put it lightly, is a bit of an exaggeration. But the stakes are high: The victor will walk away with both the WWE and Universal Championship titles.

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Star Trek has been around for more than 50 years, shaping the very landscape of modern science fiction across television, films, and novels. Yet, it still seems like the franchise hasn't much explored the realm of video games. There is the massively multiplayer game Star Trek Online, which is still going strong with new updates, but the more philosophical and interpersonal storytelling elements of Star Trek are something that we don't often see in the interactive medium.

That's changing with the upcoming Star Trek: Resurgence, releasing later this year. It's an adventure game coming from former members of the original Telltale Games, creators of Telltale's The Walking Dead, and Batman: The Telltale Series. I got to play a brief demo of Star Trek: Resurgence at GDC 2022, and it felt like stepping back into the era of The Next Generation from an entirely different perspective.

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