Game Tech News

Qualcomm Qualcomm's new modem is here, it's blazing fast and it's not just for phones. The Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System can download data at up to 10Gbps, and it will power high-end devices starting later this year. Those include premium smartphones, PCs, mobile hotspots, robots, fixed wireless access and private 5G networks set up by companies.

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Backward compatibility has been a major feature of the Xbox Series X and Series S. Microsoft has emphasized it more than Sony, with an extended effort to make Xbox 360 and Xbox One games playable on the Xbox Series X. (The Xbox 360 version of Prototype is not currently one of those games — boo, hiss.) The company is rolling out a new feature that’s part of its overall backward compatibility toolkit, and while it’ll initially only help a handful of titles, Microsoft is pledging additional support over the long term.

FPS Boost does exactly what it says it does, doubling or quadrupling the frame rates of games that were initially locked at 30fps. According to Microsoft, it partnered with game developers to ensure titles could run well at higher frame rates, though it implies that its techniques might not work with all engines. This could be a reference to games like Fallout 4, where the physics engine is tied to the frame rate (at least, it is on PC), and pushing the frame rate too high can break gameplay. Not all games run well at higher frame rates, and that may limit which games Microsoft can implement this feature for.

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CDPR has already announced that its upcoming major February patch for Cyberpunk 2077 would be pushed back some weeks as a result of the ransomware attack the company has suffered, but it didn’t give a firm reason why. Cynics might have wondered if this delay had anything to do with the actual hack itself. Gabe Newell once delayed Half-Life 2 by a year after a hacker stole source code, only to later admit he’d used the hack as an excuse for the delay he was going to have to announce no matter what.

The good news is, CD Projekt Red doesn’t appear to be doing anything quite that cynical. The bad news, according to Bloomberg, is that the company’s developers are still locked out of their own workstations due to the ransomware attack. CDPR’s VPN (virtual private network) remains inaccessible more than two weeks after the attack.

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If you were playing games 20 years ago, you probably spent at least a little time with Diablo II. This game was so popular that some people are still playing it, but an upgrade is on the way. Blizzard is working on a remastered version of the game, and it will be very faithful to the original. How faithful? Blizzard producer Matthew Cederquist confirms save files from the original game will work with the remaster, allowing you to finish the quest you started two decades ago.

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Microsoft Microsoft's acquisition of ZeniMax Media was a done deal Tuesday after regulators gave their approval. This means some of the biggest games made by Bethesda, id Software and Arkane Studios are now the property of the Xbox maker, so these games are coming to Game Pass.
Microsoft revealed the 20 games added to the Game Pass catalog starting March 12. These games include recent titles such as Rage 2, Doom Eternal and Fallout 76 along with some classic games including Doom, Wolfenstein and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The titles will be available either on PC, Xbox console or via xCloud, Microsoft's cloud gaming service.

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Microsoft is continuing its quest to make Xbox Game Pass a first-class contender for gaming. The company has now introduced support for dual-screen gaming on devices like the Surface Duo.

Here’s how the feature works: Fire up Game Pass on a device such as the dual-screened Surface Duo, and your game controls will be mapped to the bottom screen, with the top reserved for displaying your actual game. Developers can tailor the way controls are displayed on the lower panel, allowing different games to offer different buttons or control layouts.

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Nintendo surprised gamers in 2019 by turning Tetris into a Fortnite-style battle royale game. A little over a year later, it did it again, turning Super Mario Bros. into an intense 35 player retro platforming face-off. Now, the company has announced Nintendo Switch Online's latest throwback battle royale game: Pac-Man 99.

Like the Nintendo Switch Online service's other retro battle royale games, Pac-Man 99 asks players to outlast dozens of other players in the arcade classic -- but there's more to it than simply getting the highest score. Every time a player eats a ghost, it gets sent to another player's screen as a "jammer Pac-Man," which can lower a player's speed and make them a target for ghosts. Managing power-ups and carefully targeting opponents is key to outlasting other players.

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The 93rd Academy Awards are closing in, airing this Sunday, April 25 on ABC. Like most awards shows, the ceremony felt the impact of the pandemic: The Academy delayed the ceremony by two months and extended the eligibility window to accommodate films released in 2020 through to February 2021. Another tweak allowed films that originally had a theatrical release, but which were forced to release straight to digital platforms, to be eligible for Oscars. A positive is, thanks to the delay, you can stream almost all of the films right now.

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Apple may be converting its Mac products entirely over to its own SoCs, but the company evidently plans to use AMD’s GPU hardware for at least one more product cycle. Apple’s Big Sur 11.4 beta adds support for graphics cards based on the RDNA2 architecture, including the Radeon 6800, 6800 XT, and 6900 XT. The Apple note doesn’t mention the 6700 XT, but we’d assume that GPU will be supported as well.

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Originally Posted by HiGame

Microsoft is continuing its quest to make Xbox Game Pass a first-class contender for gaming. The company has now introduced support for dual-screen gaming on devices like the Surface Duo.

Here’s how the feature works: Fire up Game Pass on a device such as the dual-screened Surface Duo, and your game controls will be mapped to the bottom screen, with the top reserved for displaying your actual game. Developers can tailor the way controls are displayed on the lower panel, allowing different games to offer different buttons or control layouts.

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Seems very cool and convinient