Daily Archives: February 27, 2020

Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

Thanks to some dedicated coders and hardware developers in China, fans of handheld gaming no longer have to rely on Nintendo to get their fix. The Anbernic Retro Game 350 might not play the latest and greatest titles like the Switch or 3DS do, but when it comes to classic gaming, the RG350 delivers the best experience yet thanks to a pair of near-perfect analog joysticks.

Note: A sample of the Retro Game 350 was provided to Gizmodo by online retailer Retromimi.

A few weeks ago we looked at the New Pocket Go, which is one of the most affordable entries in a new wave of portable consoles that rely on emulation to give gamers access to a giant back catalog of titles, including fully 3D games from popular systems like the Sony PlayStation. For $65, the New Pocket Go delivered an excellent experience, assuming the PS1 wasnt your focus. The single analog stick it included was, unfortunately, mostly unusable, which was problematic for 3D games that often rely on analog controls for precision. If you can spare an extra $9, however, the RG350 delivers a much improved experience over the New Pocket Go.

A handheld gaming console capable of playing countless retro titles through emulation, including the original PlayStation.

For the price you get a well built piece of hardware that plays 16-bit games flawlessly, while dual analog joysticks emulate the PlayStation gaming experience better than competing handhelds.

You will need to seek out your own games, firmware and software updates can be a pain, and there are included hardware features that don't work yet.

Like the New Pocket Go, the RG350 runs on the 1 GHz JZ4770 dual-core 64-bit processor with a half gig of RAM at its disposal. At this point that processor is around nine years old and far from cutting edge, but its cheap, and more than powerful enough to handle the processing demands of consoles 25 years and older. Will every PlayStation, SNES, or Genesis gameplay flawlessly on the RG350? No, youll occasionally have to pop into an emulators settings and activate features like frame skip to ensure gameplay remains smooth without screen tearing, but at this point, thats only the case for a handful of more demanding titles.

However, the JZ4770 is still not powerful enough to properly emulate Nintendos N64 which was released a couple of years after the original PlayStation. Many have tried, but emulated N64 games on handhelds like the RG350 that use this processor remain completely unplayable.

The analog joysticks on the RG350 feel fantastic, but the action buttons sit a little high and have a little more travel than many gamers might like.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

It might not be the best directional pad ever implemented, but the RG350's works just fine and is highly responsive for 8 and 16-bit gaming.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

The RG350's shoulder buttons have a subtle but great tactile response, and the R1 and L1 buttons wrap around to the consoles edges making them more accessible.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

Accessing RG350's battery and microSD card that holds the operating system requires you to remove the entire back cover first, which is kind of a pain.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

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Branding is never welcome on the front of any device, especially if youre a brand only a handful of people have actually heard of before.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

The RG350's 3.5-inch, 320x240 screen is nearly identical to the one used in the New Pocket Go with excellent colors and viewing angle. But with limited resolution, you are going to see pixels, particularly when trying to scale older GBA titles to fill the screen.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

In terms of build quality, Id say the RG350 slightly edges out the New Pocket Go. It feels incredibly solid, all the seams line up perfectly, and theres no light leak around the screen when the unit is powered on. Its ever so slightly larger than the New Pocket Go in every dimension, including thickness, but thats mostly due to the RG350 including additional features like a pair of analog joysticks and a rumble motor for force feedback effects. Including it is a nice attention to detail on the part of the RG350's creators, but its also a feature that can eat away at the consoles 2,500 mAh battery which otherwise will keep the handheld running for six to eight hours, depending on how processor intensive the game youre playing is.

Two USB-C ports are included, but only one works with the current software. The second, as well as a mini HDMI port, will be implemented in future software updates, hopefully.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

An external microSD slot allows ROM files to be easily loaded, but a second microSD card, containing the RG350's OS, is trapped inside, requiring the consoles back panel to be removed to access it.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

There are a few hardware quirks with the RG350. The power, reset, start, and select buttons are scattered around the console, which can be confusing when so many of the operating systems quick access menus (for tweaking emulator settings, etc.) require multiple button presses. Even adjusting the screen brightness requires users to press the power button and the volume rocker at the same time, which feels counterintuitive. After a few weeks I still havent developed the muscle memory, and find myself accidentally quitting back to the consoles home screen when I really just wanted to tweak the performance of the game that just unceremoniously quit.

The RG350 also includes two USB-C ports, one for charging and one for, presumably connecting peripherals. But that functionality is still to be added in a future version of the handhelds OS, as is making the included mini HDMI port work so that the RG350 can be connected and played through a TV.

And for those who read my review of the New Pocket Go and are dying to know, I can happily confirm that the RG350's volume can be adjusted to a much quieter level at its lowest setting. You dont necessarily have to pop in headphones when playing in a room full of people, but the option is still there.

The New Pocket Gos analog joystick (left) was all but unusable, but the RG350's (right) are almost perfect.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

The Nintendo Switchs analog joysticks (left) feel a little better than the RG350's (right) but the Switch is a console that also comes with premium pricing, so thats expected.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

The directional pad on the New Pocket Go (right) actually feels a little better under thumb than the one included on the RG350. Its also better positioned for 8 and 16-bit gaming.Photo: Andrew Liszewski (Gizmodo)

Where the RG350 mostly outshines the New Pocket Go is with its controls. Ill admit that I prefer the smaller, more rounded directional pad on the New Pocket Go, and the RG350's action buttons sit a little too high and have more travel than Id like, but those are very minor complaints and the dual analog joysticks on the RG350 more than make up for those issues. Whereas the analog joystick included on the New Pocket Go was awful, the sticks on the RG350 feel fantastic and almost as good as the ones youll find on the Nintendo Switch. They have great tactile response, with excellent tension, and just the right amount of grip on the pads.

Some who prefer Sonys DualShock controller have complained about the asymmetrical placement of the analog sticks on the RG350, but I far prefer it, even if it means the directional pad gets bumped a little low. I thought this would be a problem, but I still find the D-pad on this handheld to be comfortably accessible, and surprisingly, Ive actually found I prefer playing classic 8 and 16-bit games with the RG350's analog joysticks instead.

The only caveat worth mentioning is that not all emulators or games support the RG350's dual analog sticks just yet, but support will be improved and expanded as the handhelds software and emulators do.

As with the New Pocket Go, the software is arguably another big trade-off with the RG350. The included operating system is ugly and often times confusing, and installing new Linux-based emulators isnt as straightforward as just popping into an app store. The software and hardware is open source, however, allowing third-party developers to create alternate versions of the OS that offer better usability and even performance. But software and firmware upgrades with the RG350 are even more of a pain than with the New Pocket Go because the microSD card containing the operating system is actually trapped inside the console, requiring you to completely remove the back panel to access it.

Simpler incremental software updates that can be loaded through the accessible microSD slot are available, but its highly recommended that you swap out the cheap microSD card included with the RG350 when it arrives, and perform a full OS purge and update.

Theres also the issue with finding games for the handheld. Like the New Pocket Go, the RG350 can only play games through ROM files stored on a microSD card which is a legal gray area as weve explained many times before. Theres also some level of technical proficiency needed to locate ROM files for games you already own and get them onto the RG350 to play. As a result, the handheld may not be the perfect upgrade for your Game Boy loving grandma.

But if youre up to the challenge of finding ROMs, navigating tricky software updates, and living with some peculiar usability quirks, the RG350 is definitely the top pick amongst the recent pack of handheld emulators to come out of China. At $74 its $9 more expensive than the New Pocket Go, so if you mostly care about older consoles like the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis you can save yourself a few bucks and go that route instead. But if you want to relive some of your favorite PlayStation games, the dual analog sticks on the RG350 are an essential and worthwhile upgrade.

Read more from the original source:

The RG350 Is the Perfect Portable Retro Gaming Machine - Gizmodo

There are more ways than ever to spend money in Rainbow Six Siege. Tally up the $25-$30 annual passes, $15 premium cosmetics, paid renown boosters, seasonal paid alpha packs, $10 battle passes and its a lot for a game that still requires a minimum buy-in of $20. When I sat down with game director Leroy Athanassoff at the Six Invitational 2020, I was curious to know: will Siege ever go free-to-play?

To my surprise, Athanassoff told me he wants it to happen and believes that much of Sieges development team wants it too. But Sieges price isnt only up to Athanassoff. Its a company decision. I think on the development team we want that at some point. We want the game to be accessible to everyone, he said.

Athanassoff said taking Siege free-to-play is more complicated than adjusting a price tag. You need certain features ready to be a good and successful free-to-play game, he said. One of those features, Athanassoff explained, is a good solution to smurfing. Smurfing is the practice of buying a new account to reset your skill rating and play against less-skilled players.

The ethics of smurfing is a long-debated topic in multiplayer games. Last year, Valve reset and banned over 17,000 accounts for smurfing in Dota 2. Epic upholds a zero tolerance policy for smurfing in Fortnite. Overwatch doesnt punish players with multiple accounts, but purposefully losing or boosting your account by playing with highly-skilled friends is bannable.

You wont be banned for using an alternate account in Siege either, but Athanassoffs stance is clear: smurfing creates an unfair environment for players and should be thwarted as much as possible. Ubisofts team dedicated to player behavior is working on new solutions that would lessen the impact of smurfing. Whats important for us is that we find out as soon as possible that a player is highly skilled in the things that matter, he said. The problem right now is that you can play a certain amount of matches with Copper players while youre a Diamond.

Currently, Siege determines your skill group through MMR, a scoring system that's highly dictated by your win rate. Smurf accounts can easily dodge detection by purposefully losing matches and tanking their MMR. Athanassoffs team plans to fight this by taking more stats into account and reacting to skill disparity faster. For instance, a new account with a kill/death ratio of 4 and a win rate of 0.2 would be automatically recognized as a smurf account thats intentionally losing games.

The proposed improvements sound very similar to a system Valve implemented for Dota 2 in 2019 that artificially raises the MMR of an overperforming player until they stop overperforming. That update helped, but Valve takes other measures to make smurfing and hacking a bigger hassleplayers are required to log 100 hours in-game and link a unique phone number before ranked play is even possible. Siege has required two-factor authentication to play Ranked since late 2018, but Athanassoff didnt mention plans for more rigorous requirements.

I dont expect even the most sophisticated stat tracker to completely thwart smurfing. If an impure heart craves the empty satisfaction of stomping on new players, theyll find a way. Still, there are ways to mitigate smurfing to the point of irrelevance. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was out for six years before it finally went free-to-play in 2018. It was four years before Team Fortress 2 took the free-to-play plunge in 2011. Now in its fifth year, Siege may be on a similar trajectory.

See the original post here:

Rainbow Six Siege may go free-to-play someday, but first Ubisoft wants to solve smurfing - PC Gamer

EA has permanently banned a prominent FIFA YouTuber and streamer from its games over toxic behaviour.

Outspoken ex-FIFA pro Kurt "Kurt0411" Fenech, from Malta, was banned for posting abusive and threatening messages and videos about EA employees and competitive players on social media, EA said.

"His messages have crossed a line of decency into very personal attacks and breach Terms of Service," EA said in a statement.

Fenech is now banned from playing all EA games, including FIFA, and has seen his FIFA Ultimate Team account scrubbed.

In November 2019, EA permanently banned Fenech from all future official FIFA events for repeated code of conduct violations which followed a final warning and suspension during the FIFA 19 tournament series. As EA put it, Fenech was found to be "posting or uploading materials that we have determined are abusive, harassing, and vulgar".

This followed a previous ban in October 2018, when Fenech was handed a two-month suspension from competing at EA's FIFA 19 esports tournaments for abusive behaviour towards FIFA players and others in the community.

Fenech's videos, while popular among many in the FIFA community, have included attacks on FIFA opponents and EA Sports staff, the latter of which he has called "cowards". In one video he repeatedly spat on an official EA FIFA 19 scarf.

Also in November 2019, several FIFA team members saw their personal Twitter accounts hacked as part of "targeted" attacks. The Twitter accounts of those EA staff members affected were subsequently deleted.

EA's FIFA community managers have for some time now suffered harassment, verbal abuse and even death threats on social media as the game's toxic community has grown increasingly exacerbated about the state of the game. With the release of FIFA 20, this toxicity was fuelled by issues with the career mode, but it's subsequently come to encompass other aspects of the game as well.

Fenech, the cheerleader for this online FIFA mobilisation, responded to the ban on Twitter, saying: "End of the day I have never said anything I shouldn't have. This is just deeper than anyone thinks. They didn't want me competing at events cos they were scared I'd win them, now I'm the second-biggest streamer of their game and they're scared I'll overtake their golden boy.

"But when everything is said and done we'll beat them trust me. They have money but we have numbers. Fuck them and everyone on their side."

Fenech's time with FIFA is now over, but it looks like he will remain in the headlines. Drama-focused YouTuber Keemstar has announced he will release a documentary about the situation.

Meanwhile, Fenech's last two YouTube videos were about PES.

Read more here:

EA bans prominent FIFA streamer Kurt0411 from all its games over toxic behaviour - Eurogamer.net

As it turns out, Kliff Kingsbury had the same thoughts many other fans had about halfway through his first regular season game as an NFL head coach: this guy is in trouble. That's at least what Kingsbury said during an appearance on "The Ryen Russillo Podcast" when describing how he felt when the Cardinals were down two scores to the Lions back in September.

"I'm not exaggerating, I was thinking, 'I can't believe I just bought that house. I'm gonna be here two games and they're gonna fire me,'" he told Russillo. "That was about the highest anxiety I've ever had on the sidelines. Truly anything we tried to do was a complete disaster."

His concerns then briefly went away from himself, and were then focused on the man who hired him, general manager Steve Keim.

"That was a rough 30 minutes and I just kept thinking about poor Steve up there in the press box with the owner, probably just wanted to jump off the balcony," Kingsbury said.

But then his fears returned back to the bigger issues that would complicate his life were he to actually lose his job in that time he expected to less than two quarters into his professional head coaching career.

"I remember thinking, 'I cannot believe I spent that much on a house, I'm screwed on this deal because this is going to be a short stay and I don't know what we're going to do,'" Kingsbury said.

Things turned out pretty well for Kingsbury during that game all things considered, the game ended in a tie only because Tramaine Brock dropped what would have been the game-winning interception to start off the new era of Cardinals football with a emphatic comeback victory. Instead, that opening victory would have to wait until Week 5, with a 26-23 win over the Bengals.

The first year of Kingsbury's tenure in Arizona ended with a 5-10-1 record that saw first year quarterback Kyler Murray win offensive rookie of the year, despite the lack of production, weapons and, well, talent from his supporting cast.

The rest is here:

Kliff Kingsbury thought he'd last only two games in Arizona halfway through the Cardinals' Week 1 matchup - CBS Sports

One of the most impressive parts of The Mandalorian (other than Baby Yoda) was the production design, with the varied locations, sets, and effects despite the comparatively lower budget for television as opposed to a blockbuster film.

As it turns out, thats because most of it wasnt real. Rather, more than half of the season was shot using Industrial Light & Magics new StageCraft technology, which uses giant 20-foot-tall LED video screens to create fully digital environments as in-camera sets and backdrops, as a new behind-the-scenes video shows off.

Those environments are purely digital creations, which ILM built together with Epic Games Unreal Engine, and then projected around the actors and physical set elements (like spaceship parts or speeder bikes) to create the finished project. As part of that effect, those LED screens are actually then shot on camera for a seamless effect that replicates location shooting without the costs. (The 3D environments are specifically lit and rendered from the perspective of the camera to accomplish that.)

There are also real benefits to the virtual sets compared to a traditional green screen setup. Since the actors are actually on the set with the displays, they can see and react to things in the background while theyre actually shooting, instead of imagining effects that will be added later.

It also means that the lightning from those digital sets is present on set and interacting with the physical elements, like the actors and props. So shots where Mando and Baby Yoda sit around a fire, with the sunset shining off Mandos armor still look right because that light is actually there on set. Its just coming from an LED screen instead of an actual sun.

Additionally, because the sets are just digitally projected 3D environments, they can be moved around and edited on the fly. Dont like where a mountain is in the background for a particular shot? Simply move it around, or just delete it entirely.

ILM had already been using effects like this on existing films, like Solo, where the windows of the Millennium Falcon were digital screens, allowing for the lighting effect of the hyperspace jumps to be projected on the actors faces in camera. But The Mandalorian took the technology to a much bigger scale, with a 270-degree semicircular LED video wall and ceiling that created a 75-foot-wide set.

Again, check out ILMs video to get the full look at StageCraft. But best of all, The Mandalorians first season is just the start for this new tech. The company announced today that itll be making StageCraft available for use by filmmakers and showrunners worldwide as an end-to-end solution, meaning that the digital set technology could be showing up in a lot more TV shows and movies in the future.

Original post:

How The Mandalorian teamed up with Fortnite creator Epic Games to create its digital sets - The Verge

In an event for investors at New York Toy Fair, Hasbro has announced that Baldur's Gate 3 will come to Early Access later this year. The presentation highlighted seven Dungeons & Dragons-based game in development, including Baldur's Gate 3 and Dark Alliance. The plan is for one D&D-based game to be released every year until 2025. Hasbro is the parent company of Wizards of the Coast, who have licensed Dungeons & Dragons and Baldur's Gate to Larian Studios for the third game in the series.

Larian is no stranger to Early Access releases. Divinity Original Sin 2 came out in Early Access ahead of its main release with a limited section of the game's story. Baldur's Gate 3 will, according to the presentation, come to Early Access some time later this year.

This news comes after Wizards of the Coast has opened and started staffing a new studio, Archetype Entertainment, composed in large part of Bioware Austin veterans. That studio is working on a sci-fi project, but there was no further news on that front. The presentation also mentioned that 2019 was a record year for Wizards of the Coast, partly on income from Magic the Gathering: Arena.

Great find, Bell of Lost Souls.

Read more from the original source:

Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to Early Access this year - PC Gamer

The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will primarily be driven by AMD hardware, and have the potential to be quite powerful when they go on sale near the end of the year. Desktop gaming PCs are always a competitor, but Nvidia thinks the biggest challenger to the new consoles will be gaming laptops. In a recent conference call with investors, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that the gaming laptop category is essentially a "new game console" in its own right, and the largest one at that, in terms of popularity.

Jensen's comment came in response to a question about projected gaming laptop sales this year.

"Our notebook business ... has seen double-digit growth for eight consecutive quarters, and this is unquestionably a new gaming category," he said. "Like it's a new game console. This is going to be the largest game console in the world I believe. And the reason for that is because there are more people with laptops than there are of any other device."

"The fact that we've been able to get RTX into a thin and light notebook is really a breakthrough," Jensen added. "And it's one of the reasons why we're seeing such great success in notebook."

Nvidia's introduction of Max-Q designs made this possible. While Max-Q GPUs are not as powerful as their counterparts, they do allow for thinner and lighter form factors. For example, MSI's G65 Stealth Thin, one of the best gaming laptops, measures just 0.69 inches thick and weighs just over 4 pounds. Same goes for Acer's Triton 500, which packs a GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU inside a laptop that measures 0.7 inches thick and weighs 4.41 pounds.

Be that as it may, do the numbers add up? According to IDC, gaming notebook shipments grew nearly 13 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2019. At the time of the report, IDC had forecast 19.4 million gaming laptop shipments for the full year.

As PCGamesN notes, 106 million PS4s have been sold over the past six years. That works out to around 18 million per year on average. During its first year, the PS4 sold 13.7 million units.

So from my vantage point, yes, the numbers do add up: Gaming laptops are a big deal right now. It's hard to predict how things will go when the Xbox Series X and PS5 arrive, or what effect Nvidia's upcoming Ampere GPUs will have, but it is fair to say that gaming laptops represent a major force in the industry, and that they can easily be hooked up to a TV should help them compete with the consoles.

Thanks, Seeking Alpha.

Read more:

Nvidia says gaming laptops will be the biggest next-gen console competitor - PC Gamer