‘Pokémon Go’ has most first-week downloads in App Store history
Despite only being available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand for its first week, Apple has officially confirmed that Pokémon Go had the most downloads in its first week of any in the App Store’s history. Considering that the game has launched in over 26 countries since then, including opening in Japan today, it might just keep breaking records.
The success has led to billions of dollars in stock gains for Nintendo, which saw its share value double before creeping back down, which has even gotten stock “shorters” to start playing with it. And companies are starting to see their value boosted by association: the game launched in Japan today with a heavy McDonald’s promotion partnership, and the burger giant saw a subsequent 20 percent leap in its stock value. Despite criticism that Nintendo just cashed in on a franchise name without bringing over real gameplay, the game continues its onslaught as a mobile juggernaut.
Source: TechCrunch
NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 gives you gaming power on a budget
After debuting the fastest high-end and mid-range video cards ever seen, the GTX 1080 and 1070, we expected a lot from NVIDIA’s new lower-tier entry, the $249 GeForce GTX 1060. And the stakes were raised even higher after AMD launched the Radeon RX 480, a $200 GPU that’s fast enough to power VR headsets (and manage some decent 1440p gaming). NVIDIA claims the GTX 1060 is even faster than the GTX 980, its premium video card from 2014. That says quite a bit about how far we’ve come in the GPU world: You no longer have to break the bank for a decent amount of gaming muscle.
As with the GTX 1080 and 1070, I tested the slightly more expensive ($299) Founders Edition of the GTX 1060. While the previous two cards looked practically identical — they’re both beefy 10.5-inch-long dual-slot GPUs — the GTX 1060 is a bit shorter at 9.8 inches. They all share the same elaborate metallic case and fan design, though, along with a premium-feeling build quality. On the back, there are three DisplayPort slots, an HDMI port and a DVI connection.
The GeForce GTX 1060 features clock speeds between 1.5GHz and 1.7GHz (in boost mode), just like the GTX 1070, and there’s also 6GB of GDDR5 RAM. Because of its slightly shorter frame, and the fact that it only needs a 6-pin power connector, the GTX 1060 might be a useful upgrade for people with tight cases and less capable power supplies. If you’re really in that spot, though, maybe just hold out until you can revamp your entire system.
| 3DMark (Firestrike) | 3DMark 11 | |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 | Standard 10,890 / Extreme 5,715/ Ultra 2,953 | X5,698 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 | Standard 13,918/ Extreme 7,703/ Ultra 4,110 | X7,778 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 | Standard 15,859/ Extreme 9,316/ Ultra 5,021 | X9,423 |
| AMD R9 Fury X | Standard 13,337/ Extreme 7,249/ Ultra 3,899 | X,6457 |
| AMD Radeon RX 480 | Standard 10,279/ Extreme 5,146/ Ultra 2,688 | X4,588 |
Now on to those benchmarks: The GTX 1060 performed pretty much as I expected on my system (which consists of a 4GHz Core i7-4790K CPU, 16GB of 2400Mz DDR3 RAM and a 512GB Crucial MX100 SSD on an ASUS Z97-A motherboard). It’s noticeably slower than the 1070, and slightly faster than the AMD RX 480 with 8GB of RAM. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a GTX 980 that I could use to directly test NVIDIA’s claims about the 1060 being faster, but 3DMark comparisons against similarly specced systems showed that the cards were about as fast.
4K benchmarks
| Witcher 3 | Hitman | Doom | |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 | 24 | 23 | 29 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 | 38 | 35 | 48 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 | 43 | 48 | N/A |
| AMD R9 Fury X | 35 | 38 | N/A |
| AMD Radeon RX 480 | 20 | 25 | 35 |
Average frames-per-second performance in 4K with all graphics set to maximum and NVIDIA HairWorks turned off.
Unsurprisingly, the GTX 1060 isn’t much of a 4K contender. That’s a resolution that even the GTX 1070 struggled with, and honestly I wouldn’t even want to run it on the 1080. Still, it’s worth comparing the GTX 1060’s performance (if only to future-proof our benchmarks a bit). Once again, it’s slightly faster than the RX 480, but that’s kind of a moot point, since both cards delivered unplayable performance.
1440p benchmarks
| Witcher 3 | Hitman | Doom | Overwatch | |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 | 44 | 44 | 58 | 60 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 | 60 | 60 | 55-65 | 60 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 60 |
| AMD R9 Fury X | N/A | 70 | N/A | 60 |
| AMD Radeon RX 480 | 43 | 45 | 58 | 60 |
Average frames-per-second performance in 1440p with all graphics set to maximum and NVIDIA HairWorks turned off.
When it comes to 1440p (2,560 by 1,440 pixels), my preferred gaming resolution, the 1060 was about twice as fast as it was in 4K. In some games, like Doom and Overwatch, it even managed to reach 60 frames per second, which is the gold standard for smooth performance. It was about on par with the RX 480, which came as a surprise given the 1060’s slight 3DMark lead.
Naturally, the GTX 1060 had no problems reaching 60 fps and beyond at 1080p in just about every game I threw at it. Given the amount of power it holds, that’s no surprise. It also delivered a smooth VR experience with both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. There were no signs of slowdown either as I flew around space in Eve: Valkyrie or had shootouts in Hover Junkers.
While the 1060 generally outpaced AMD’s $240 RX 480 (8GB RAM version), it would likely perform similarly against the $200 RX 480 (4GB RAM) variant. Benchmarks comparing the 4GB and 8GB RAM versions of AMD’s card show very little difference between the two. So if you’re looking for the most bang for your buck, the RX 480 is still your best bet. You can also add in another RX 480 down the line for even more performance, whereas NVIDIA has removed its multi-card technology (SLI) from the GTX 1060 entirely.
And if the RX 480 doesn’t cut it for you, it’s probably worth saving up and getting a GTX 1070 instead of NVIDIA’s budget GPU. GTX 1070 cards retail for around $379, and they’ll offer significantly better performance than the GTX 1060. The 1070 also supports SLI, so you can throw in another card in a year or two as games become more demanding.
Overall, the GTX 1060 is exactly what NVIDIA needed to compete against AMD’s revolutionary RX 480. But its pricing makes it a tough sell, since the 480 is a better deal and NVIDIA’s own GTX 1070 isn’t that much more expensive. Once GTX 1060 cards come down in price, though, they’ll become much more compelling.
Survival in ‘We Happy Few’ starts next week
We Happy Few was one of my coworker Jess Conditt’s favorite games from E3 this year, and for good reason: its alt-history, drug-and-paranoia fueled take on a dystopia is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. But how did it all begin? With a question, according to an Xbox Wire post by developer Compulsion Games’ Sam Abbott. The team was trying to figure out how to make a bigger game than its first (Contrast, which made its debut with the PlayStation 4) but wanted to keep its staff size from ballooning. That’s why Compulsion turned to procedural generation — akin to No Man’s Sky — for its 1964 English city.
That single question led to more regarding what you’d actually do in We Happy Few. “What kind of gameplay made sense in a city? Certainly not survival — it should be easy to survive in a city. Except… what if it wasn’t? Wouldn’t that be interesting?” Abbott writes. We saw a little bit of that onstage during Microsoft’s E3 keynote this year. There was a lot of running from police just itching to bash you with their clubs because you didn’t take your soma Joy.
The game also employs something unique for an AI-assembled setting: a story. When We Happy Few hits Xbox Game Preview on July 26th as a work in progress, though, it won’t have a narrative — that’s something Compulsion is holding back until version 1.0. What sorts of things does the game have in store next Tuesday? You’ll have to download it to find out.
Source: Xbox Wire
Try passing ‘The Turing Test’ August 30th on Xbox One
Given video gaming’s reliance on artificial intelligence and penchant for sci-fi themes, it’s surprising that only now there’s a game named after Alan Turing’s famous A.I. test. Here we are though, with The Turing Test hitting Xbox One on August 30th. It’s also been promised for Steam next month. A post on Xbox Wire makes the game sound an awful lot like Portal, to be honest. It’s a first-person puzzler set in a sterile research facility on Jupiter’s moon Europa wherein you’ll use a gun of sorts to control A.I.-powered machines and “solve puzzles that only a human could solve.” That’s in addition to other tasks designed to bend your brain.
“All of this is woven into a multi-layered story based on the human struggle for power, which can only be experienced through the interactive medium of video games,” developer Bulkhead Interactive’s Howard Philpott writes. If you can’t wait until the end of next month to play but will be in Cologne, Germany for Gamescom, good news, because the game will be on the show floor.
Until then check out the trailer embedded just below. There’s an extremely hard wink at director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina at the very end — an incredible Oscar-winning movie about, you guessed it, an advanced Turing Test. Coincidence? I think not.
Source: Xbox Wire
NVIDIA’s new top-end graphics card is the $1,200 Titan X
If you recently bought a $599 NVIDIA GTX 1080 in order to have the fastest rig around, I have bad news. NVIDIA has revealed the latest Titan X, a graphics card with 12GB of GDDR5X memory and 3,584 cores running at 1.53 GHZ, yielding an absurd 11 teraflops of performance. That easily bests the 8.9 teraflops of the GTX 1080, which itself put the last-gen Titan X to shame. You probably won’t feel too bad, however, when we tell you that the new card has a price tag of $1,200, double that of its now-second-best sibling.
The Titan X, based on the company’s new Pascal P102 GPU, has 12 billion transistors and runs at 250W, meaning it burns around 40 percent more power than the GTX 1080. Style-wise, it hews closely to the triangular, faceted form of the GTX 1080, but sports darker colors. It features DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b and DL-DVI ports, though the company hasn’t yet detailed the configuration. NVIDIA has now unveiled four cards (the GTX 1060, 1070, 1080 and Titan X) in just over two months, which is a pretty frenetic launch rate.
To hammer home the point about brute horsepower, NDIVIDA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang did a surprise unveil of the Titan X at a meetup of artificial intelligence experts at Stanford University. That’s fitting, because it’s starting to blur the line between its gaming cards and Tesla GPU accelerators used for deep learning in servers and supercomputers. The card will go on sale August 2nd in North America and Europe for $1,200, but only on NVIDIA’s site and via “select system builders.”
Source: NVIDIA
‘Pokemon Go’ launches in Japan under golden arches
Despite being the true home of Pocket Monsters, until today, Japanese fans weren’t able to download the smartphone phenomenon that is Pokemon Go. As rumored, Niantic Labs’ game launches in Pikachu’s homeland with a promotional tie-in with McDonald’s (it’s already offering Pokemon toys with its kids’ meals in anticipation) and the app maker says more sponsored locales and events are on their way.
Ingress, the location-based game that preceded Pokemon Go, ran multiple promotions with companies including McDonald’s and SoftBank in Japan — as well as Jamba Juice in the US. Expect see plenty more sponsored locations in Pokemon Go (well, gotta make some money when the app is free to download), but what exactly do the sponsored locations entail? The good news is that the tie-in doesn’t seem to change much at all — and could even be good news for some players.
It is, however, a substantial sponsorship. Typically, Pokestops (where you pick up items) and Gyms (where you battle other trainers) are centered around cultural points of interest — or just interesting things. The deal struck with McDonalds adds stops and gyms to the locations of almost all of its 3,600 restaurants. My local burger hole is a mere Pokestop, although according to Twitter, there are plenty of gyms to be found in the chain, too.
In a leaked email which resulted in a further delayed launch almost a month after Europe and the US, the company pointed out concerns over poor connectivity in McDonald’s restaurants, as well as people lingering without making any purchases. However, the ubiquitous chain claims that there will be places for users to develop and catch more Pokemon. Not everyone lives in a major city filled with landmarks and cultural curiosities, but there’s pretty much a McDonalds in every town in Japan.
Like Nintendo, McDonald’s has already seen its stock price buoyed following rumors of the collaboration, but whether people will actually choose to enter, pay for something, then capture or battle Pokemon remains to be seen. I stood outside to grab my Pokemon items — after all, there’s no faster way to undo all those calories burnt walking around on the hunt for a Psyduck than paying a visit to a fast-food establishment.
Nintendo’s new NES commercial will toy with your nostalgia
Between the incredible popularity of Pokémon Go, game-themed sneakers and the NES Classic Mini console, Nintendo’s nostalgia bombs show no signs of stopping. The gaming juggernaut is fueling that fire with a decidedly retro-style trailer for the new-old system, replete with the familiar “now you’re playing with power” tagline from the ’80s. It’s a fun look at the analog past in our digital future. But upon closer inspection a few things pop out. For starters, folks who’ve played anything reissued via Virtual Console on Wii U or otherwise can attest that the games look dingy and dull.
That doesn’t appear to be the case here, as Ars Technica points out. The effect is similar to the pre-roll clip on Paramount’s Blu-rays where the dim, old logo gives way to the brighter and pin-sharp HD one. These quick glances of Metroid, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda and others look great and almost as if they’re running on a PC emulator.
However, until we actually get a look at the 30 classics running to a HDTV with our own eyes though, it’s anyone’s guess how they’ll actually perform. It’s still a shame that we’re stuck with the games in the box come November 11th, though.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Nintendo (YouTube)
‘Overwatch’ was June’s best-selling game, even with a handicap
In case you haven’t noticed, Overwatch is really, really popular. Popular enough to support millions of active players, host high-stakes professional competitive gaming drama and even inspire a graphic novel adaptation. All this, and the game’s barely three months old. Still not convinced? Okay, we’ve got one more thing: Overwatch sold better than any other game in June — and according to NPD Group, it won that top spot with a handicap.
Having a new game from a major publisher take the top spot in NPD Group’s sales report is nothing new — but this month’s sales data is sort of unique. June marks the first time the company has been able to include digital sales numbers. The twist? Overwatch’s digital PC sales aren’t part of the total.
Confused? Don’t be. Traditionally, NPD Goup only publishes numbers tracking physical game sales, but recently it struck a deal with a handful of publishers to self-report digital sales data. Unfortunately, this means the group can only publish digital sales numbers from companies that offer them willingly, and neither Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo are willing to share that data with the public. This means that titles like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Doom appear on NPD reports with an asterisk — “No digital sales included in ranking.”
Activision Blizzard, Overwatch’s publisher, actually does report console’s sales to NPD Group — but for some reason, its PC Battle.net sales weren’t included in this month’s report. It made the top spot anyway, beating out Grand Theft Auto V, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and more. That’s impressive! Still, it would be more impressive if the chart reflected the full digital sales for every game on every platform. We won’t really know who’s winning the so-called “console wars” until the industry opens up and makes that data available.
An ‘Overwatch’ graphic novel is coming
With over 10 million players on PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One, Overwatch is a bonafide success. By now, gamers have got to grips with the abilities of its 22 playable characters, the latest of which was added this week, but the game itself doesn’t go into too much detail as to the organization’s origins or explaining why agents were urged to reactivate in the first place. Blizzard has slowly started to fill those gaps with a series of video shorts and an online comic book series, but a new partnership with Dark Horse Comics looks set to expand on that quite significantly.
IGN reports that under the new agreement, Dark Horse will republish Blizzard’s digital Overwatch comics through its own comics service. The publisher will then print a 100-page Overwatch graphic novel in April 2017. Both companies are keeping quiet on the name and the team behind it but we do know that it will follow the story of the original strike team. Finally, there’ll be an oversized hardcover book called The Art of Overwatch, which will be released in Summer 2017.
If you’re wondering why Overwatch lore appears somewhat limited, that’s actually a conscious decision by Blizzard. In an interview with GameSpot (embedded below), its developers explain that they “didn’t want to fill in the blanks” and wanted people to experience different parts of the game and form their own opinions. The game features little hints — the arrival of Ana was teased via various in-game assets — but the comics and visual novel will go someway towards rounding out Overwatch’s overall story.
Source: IGN
Nintendo tries to salvage ‘Star Fox: Zero’ with a late demo
Despite being one of Nintendo’s most highly anticipated Wii U games, Star Fox: Zero landed with less than stellar reviews. It wasn’t that the game was bad, just sort of hard to play. Critics and fans alike lambasted the title for having an obtuse, disconnected control scheme that moved half of the action to the Wii U gamepad — forcing players to divide their attention between two screens. Now, Nintendo is letting players judge for themselves: three months after hitting store shelves, Star Fox: Zero finally has a free, downloadable demo.
The demo itself is little more than the full game’s tutorial mode with Nintendo’s Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins animated short tacked on for good measure, but it’s enough to give players an idea how the game controls. If it’s enough to boost the game’s sales is anybody’s guess, but at least Nintendo seems to have learned its lesson about demos: a free version of Metroid Prime: Blast Ball launched today too — over a month before Federation Force, its retail counterpart, hits store shelves. Both demos can be found on their respective Wii U and 3DS eShops.
Via: Destructoid
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