Photo credit: Reddit
Always wanted a cool stand or mini arcade cabinet for your Nintendo Switch? Well, if you have a 3D printer, then look no further than this custom creation. Created by Zach on Howchoo, you simply print all the parts, glue them together, and then install the optional electronics. These optional electrical parts charge your Switch while you play, as well as provide additional cooling to help keep the console cool. You can also plug in USB controllers up front since all of the electronics connected directly to a powered USB hub. Read more for a video tutorial, additional pictures and information.
The Farm 51’s Chernobylite is an upcoming survival horror video game for the Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 platforms. Set for release in Fall 2019, you play as a physicist, formerly employed at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, suffering from the loss of their loved one in the Chernobyl Disaster approximately 30-years ago, who returns to the disaster zone to look for their partner. Most of the gameplay revolves around exploring the 3D-scanned recreation of the exclusion zone, gathering supplies and tools while encountering “Stalkers” and hostile military personnel. Read more for a 30-minute gameplay trailer, additional screenshots and a link to the Kickstarter page.
Facebook AI Research team unveiled an AI called Vid2Game that grabs real people from videos and turns them into playable game characters, similar to those ’80s full-motion video games (Night Trap, Ground Zero Texas, Prize Fighter, Corpse Killer, etc.). Put simply, it uses neural networks to analyze random videos of people performing specific actions and then proceeds to recreate that character and action in virtually any environment. Read more for a tech demo video and additional information.
If you’ve never heard of OpenAI, it’s basically an artificial intelligence (AI) research organization that aims to promote and develop friendly AI in such a way as to benefit humanity as a whole. Within this group, there is the OpenAI Five, which is a team comprised of five OpenAI-curated bots that are used in the competitive five-on-five video game Dota 2, who learn to play against human players at a high skill level entirely through trial-and-error algorithms. The system essentially uses a form of reinforcement learning, which means as the bots learn over time by playing against themselves hundreds of times a day for months, they are rewarded for actions such as killing an enemy and destroying towers. Read more to watch one of the humans vs. AI Dota 2 championships.
First announced at the first ever PlayStation State of Play, Marvel’s Iron Man VR is hitting PlayStation VR exclusively this year, and it takes virtual reality to the next level. This game has you taking control of genius inventor Tony Stark, who confronts ghosts from his past—powerful forces that seek to ruin him and everything he stands for. Players will come face-to-face with iconic allies and Super Villains as they jet around the globe on a heroic mission to save not only Stark Industries, but the world itself. “We’ve set our sights on not only giving the player thrilling moment-to-moment action. But also a deeply personal, and appropriately funny, narrative that puts players in Tony Stark’s armored shoes,” said Camouflaj director Ryan Payton on the PlayStation Blog. Read more for a hands-on video impression and additional information.
Assassin’s Creed Unity maker Ubisoft, which recreated the Notre Dame Cathedral in its 2014 game “Assassin’s Creed Unity” has pledged $565,000 in its restoration efforts. The Paris-based video game publisher said Wednesday that it will make its virtual rendition of the cathedral available to those involved in the rebuilding of the church. Plus, they’re also making “Assassin’s Creed Unity” available free to players on PC for the next week. “As the smoke clears on the events that unfolded on Monday at the Notre-Dame de Paris, we stand in solidarité with our fellow Parisians and everyone around the world moved by the devastation the fire caused. Notre-Dame is an integral part of Paris, a city to which we are deeply connected. Seeing the monument in peril like this affected us all,” said Ubisoft. Read more for a virtual tour of Notre Dame in Assassin’s Creed Unity.
Gamers rejoice! Capcom teamed up with Austrian publisher Koch Media to build a new mini-console called the “Capcom Home Arcade”. Featuring a pair of competition class Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT sticks with 8-way GT-Y directional gates and OBSF buttons for the best response times as well as durability. There are also 16 pre-installed games from the original Capcom CPS1 and CPS2 arcade ROMs with emulation provided by FB Alpha, delivering an authentic and accurate arcade experience exclusively for the Capcom Home Arcade. It’s scheduled for release on October 25, 2019 in Europe, priced at €229.99. Read more for a trailer video and additional information.
Photo credit: Windows Central
Microsoft has officially rebranded “Miami Street” into “Forza Street”, and for those who haven’t yet tried the free-to-play game, it basically offers a “race-on-the-go” experience for Windows 10, iOS as well as Android users. Simply put, players choose an event, set their lineup, and race to collect legendary cars. To keep things accessible on mobile devices, Forza Street offers timing-based controls rather than direction. Read more for a gameplay video and additional information.
NVIDIA has just released its latest GeForce Game Ready driver update, and it brings their ray-tracing capabilities to the older 10-series GTX cards. Up until this latest update, ray-tracing has been reserved for its pricier GeForce 20-series RTX graphics cards, due to the GPUs’ underlying Turing architecture boasting dedicated RT cores for handling the complex calculations ray-tracing needs. “With this new driver however, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and higher GPUs can execute ray-tracing instructions on traditional shader cores, giving gamers a taste, albeit at lower RT quality settings and resolutions, of how ray tracing will dramatically change the way games are experienced,” said the company. Read more for benchmark comparison videos and additional information.
Photo credit: Roland Quandt / WinFuture
WinFuture managed to get their hands on the first images of the Xbox One S All Digital, and it’s exactly as it sounds…. an Xbox One S minus the Blu-ray drive and equipped with a 1TB hard drive as well as preinstalled copies of Forza Horizon 3, Minecraft and Sea of Thieves. There’s no official release or pricing information available yet, but it could be revealed as early as April 16th and priced around $260. Read more for a video, additional pictures and information.