Gamernode: Latest PC News

AMD considering buying AGEIA?

AMD can't really do business with Havok anymore because rival company Intel scooped up the physics developer back in September.

But that doesn't mean AMD is out of the acquisition game; in fact, AMD has been considering purchasing AGEIA, a rival physics developer, for several months now.

Richard Huddy, head of developer relations for AMD, told Custom PC, "We've had that discussion, yes. It's a discussion that goes round every three months - someone turns to me and says 'why don't we buy Ageia?' and I go through the arguments about why we should and why we shouldn't."

It's kind of interesting though, AMD considered purchasing Havok, but the price was too high. My guess is that AMD is still reeling from the $5.4 billion purchase of ATI back in July.

Huddy said, "Our biggest problem is that Havo...

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Rumor: Dead Rising heading to PC?

According to TGMOnline, they have a report (in Italian) that Capcom is developing a PC edition of Dead Rising along with an expansion pack for Lost Planet: Extreme Condition titled Colonies.

The unconfirmed report is based from Halifax, Capcom's Italian distributor. In addition, Halifax listed a January release date for both titles. Other than those details though, nothing else was revealed.

Personally, I've been waiting for Dead Rising to come to PC since its release back in August 2006. I've seen the game's love or hate saving system too, so hopefully it'll get tweaked if the game heads to PC.

Also I'm a bit skeptical about Capcom's porting jobs; while Lost Planet was fine for PC, Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry 3 weren't.

If you PC folks are thinking of scratching your zombie itch, mayb...

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Legendary: The Box trailer

I think very X-rated thoughts whenever I hear or read this game's title, but Legendary: The Box has captivated me from the beginning.  I think the concept of opening up Pandora's Box in a modern setting is an excellent idea for a videogame, and this one looks to be filled with all sorts of pandemonium.  The following video was taken from the alpha build of the game (read: very early, very rough), but it still shows plenty of promise for what the final product will be.  Check it out:

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Crysis multiplayer video

It's been a week since the release of Crysis, and I still have yet to play the game (mostly thanks to my underpowered PC). That doesn't mean that everyone in the same boat as I am in can't watch videos and dream of poulty pugilism. This is the multiplayer portion of the game running on an 8800GTS and 2Gb of RAM. Enjoy:

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Fallout 3 to have 12 endings?

Bethesda has revealed that the upcoming Fallout 3 will have anywhere from nine to twelve different endings, all dependant upon how a player conducts him or herself throughout the course of the game.

Said Bethesda's Pete Hines, "There will be somewhere between nine to 12 different endings to the game based on what you've done in the game. So it's something that is inherently a diverging path. It may be some of the same things but doing them in very different ways, and ultimately that will define your gameplay experience.

The game will feature fewer quests than the developer's previous outing, Oblivion, and will allow or restrict access to future tasks based on the choices players make. There will be many different ways to complete the quests in Fallout 3.

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Jonathan Coulton performing "Still Alive"... live

It seems like Jonathan Coulton and I have been pretty connected the last couple of weeks. Whether it's my boy JoCo telling me how much he enjoys the Black Mesa "Still Alive" parody or me getting the first word on him penning a song for The Orange Box, I'd dare say he's more connected with GamerNode than any other Internet-famous geek folk singer.

Obviously, then, I can't stop now. Below, you'll find a video of Jonathan performing "Still Alive" live at a show in Atlanta last week. Enjoy, and here's hoping the original recorded JoCo track will be included when the soundtrack drops on Steam.

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Unreal Tournament 3 UI to get revamp in patch

After the release of the Unreal Tournament 3 beta demo earlier this month, a large amount of complaints about the UI started to crop up all over the Internet. One of the main places people complained was the official Epic Games UT3 Forums and it seems that Epic Games got the message.

In a thread on the Epic Games Forums, one of the admins has created an FAQ that will be added to over the coming weeks following the release of the full version of the game. So far there are only two questions, and one of them relates to the UI:

"Q: I am unhappy with the UI.A: We're aware that the UI isn't perfect. We're working on numerous improvements and additions to the user interface that will be made available in future updates to UT3."

It's good to see the Epic Games devs are listening to the community fee...

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Gamers slowly embracing Vista says Valve survey

The latest Steam hardware results are out and over 151,000 PCs were compiled, including mine! So statistics buffs can scan the data for neat trends, like myself!

For software, it looks like Windows XP continues to be the popular Windows OS to use, since 84% of all Steam users use it. But Windows Vista has gained some ground because 14% of all users use it. This is a jump from back in June, where total Vista users were only at 5%.

On the hardware side, over 40% of all Steam users are utilizing 2.0GBs of RAM or more while 33% are utilizing 1GB to 1.49GB of RAM. For video cards, an overwhelming 53% of all Steam users are proud owners of NVIDIA video cards, while only 28% use ATI cards -- like yours truly.

The most popular NVIDIA card used is the 8800 while the most popular ATI card used is the ...

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BBC News' state of PC gaming: It looks good!

How has your PC been faring in the gaming scene lately? I'm probably one of the few on the GN roster who solely plays PC games, so you can say I stuck with PC gaming through thick and thin. To make you PC gamers feel a bit proud, BBC News did a nice piece on the PC gaming resurgence.

The article attributes the gaming resurgence through an increased emphasis on gaming hardware, especially quad core processors, graphics cards using DX 10 tools and developers willing to push hardware to their limits.

But is the current generation of consoles anywhere near the true power of a PC? NVIDIA's vice president of content, Roy Taylor, says no.

"It's absolute nonsense to think that consoles are at the cutting edge. As good as consoles are, they are so far behind the PC gaming experience that there is no c...

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November 15 GameTap releases; Sid Meier pushes ser...

I figured I'd do the GameTap update this week and give ol' Billy a break.

There are two new subscription games this week on GameTap. First up is the arcade title, Armored Warriors, Capcom's mid-90's beat-em-up. I had to look at Wikipedia to remember fully what this game was, but it was a great multiplayer game back in the day. If you care, the story invovles the future and war.

Next up is a (much) better game, and also the 1,000th game released on GameTap: Sid Meier's Civilization IV. If you haven't played this game yet and subscribe to GameTap, you have no excuse now.

In addition to the two new subscription titles, the list of free-play titles has been expanded to 50 with the inclusion of Hitman: Contracts. For the full list of free-play games for this week, take a gander at the full story.

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New Terminator game coming in 2009

Another Terminator game? That's right, even before you can utter "I'll be bock," a new Terminator game is currently under development for release in summer 2009. As of now, planned platforms include unspecified consoles, PC and mobile.

The Halcyon Co., who owns the rights to the Terminator franchise, will be forming a new gaming division and one of its first projects is a game adaptation based on the forth coming Terminator film called "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins." It's expected the game will coincide with the film's release.

Peter Levin, a former Disney executive, will head up Halcyon Games as acting CEO. The CEO revealed that Halcyon decided to develop the game internally rather than contract another studio to create the game.

"When you own the intellectual property and have t...

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New Seagate hard drives infected with virus

If you bought a Seagate hard drive in the past few months, you might be in for a surprise.

Seems as though a virus managed to find its way onto a line of hard drives earlier in the year, with a small percentage of Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drives being infected and released for purchase during August of 2007.

The Chinese virus is known as "virus.win32.autorun.ah" and will find your online game passwords and send them to a private server. Some of the affected games include QQ, WSGame, AskTao and Blizzard's famous World of Warcraft.

If you happen to have bought a Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 hard drive after August 2007 then contact Seagate support as soon as possible so they can check if your drive is one of those affected by the virus.

[via 1up]

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NVIDIA releases 8800GT 256MB details

Following on from the recent release of the much acclaimed 8800GT 512MB video card, NVIDIA has released new details regarding the 256MB variation.

The 8800GT 256MB boards will be priced in the $179-$199 USD range and should be arriving in PC stores in the next two weeks. There will be offerings available from Asus, BFG, EVGA, Leadtek, PNY, XFX and a number of other partners.

The specs for the card are as follows:

# of Stream Processors 112 Core Clock Speed 600MHz Shader Clock Speed 1500MHz Memory Clock Speed 700-900MHz (memory speed varies, check with board partners) Memory 256MB GDDR3 Power Connector 6-pin Length 9 inches Board Power 105W Cooling single-slot fansink Outputs 2x dual-link DVI, HDTV-out

The FAQ also contained some information pertaining to DirectX 10.1 and its use in fut...

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Bethesda planning Fallout 3 DLC?

Now that Bethesda is finished with all of its planned downloadable content (DLC) for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, folks may be thinking, "Is Bethesda planning any DLC for their upcoming title, Fallout 3?"

Pete Hines spoke with CVG and mentioned that they're looking at producing DLC once F3 is complete. While Bethesda wants to continue to support Fallout 3 after its release with more content, they have to make sure they don't screw it up first.

"How much of it or what we would do if anything is still up in the air... We had the same approach with Oblivion, which is if we f*** this up, nobody's going to want to download anything for it anyway. So let's focus on the first thing we're doing, get that absolutely right and then we'll have time for the other stuff."

I imagine Bethesda learned som...

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Is Starcraft II Blizzard's next released game?

All secret projects aside, we know that Blizzard Entertainment is working on at least two titles: Starcraft 2 and the next World of Warcraft expansion called Wrath of the Lich King.

While both games carry a TBA release date, Rob Pardo from Blizzard made a comment on the WoW forums recently, which hinted that Starcraft 2 might be heading out the door sooner than Lich King.

Posting under the name Enoyls, Pardo is the current vice president of game design at Blizzard; previously he was the lead designer of WoW. He noted that despite not being heavily involved with WoW as before, he focuses on all games at Blizzard; especially ones that are closest to release and went on to slip in Starcraft 2.

"Yes, I'm pretty active during betas on the forums. During Starcraft, War3 and WOW I was pretty active...

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November 8th GameTap releases

Move over weekly updates for Xbox Live Arcade, Virtual Console and PSN, here's one for GameTap.

This week's new GameTap releases include the world premiere of the first episode in Sam & Max: Season Two, a turn-based tactics game from 2000 called Shadow Watch and an old-school fighting game from the Sega Saturn called Virtua Fighter.

As for additions to the free play list, this week continues GameTap's support for the upcoming Hitman movie, so Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is available for free play. In addition, Joust, Space Invaders, Defender and Root Beer Tapper join Hitman 2 in the free play section.

If you want to check out the three new games added to the list of subscription games or take a gander at the list of 49 free play games, check the full story.

New Subscription Games:

Sam & Max Seaso...

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EA donates SimCity to One Laptop per Child program...

Delaware based, non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is an ongoing foundation that's seeking to provide children around the world a laptop for furthering education.

Today, EA announced they'd be donating Maxis' original simulation game SimCity to the foundation. Therefore, all laptops from the organization will come equipped with SimCity.

While games aren't normally associated with education, SimCity is one of the rare cases. For example, there's an annual contest that runs for 7th and 8th graders throughout the U.S. called the Future City Competition, which uses SimCity.

Steve Seabolt, global branding vice president for EA, said, "SimCity is entertainment that's unintentionally educational. Players learn to use limited resources to build and customize their cities. There are ...

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The Witcher heavily edited during English translat...

Polish developer CD Projekt's new RPG, The Witcher, has been heavily edited and censored during it's English translation according to fans of the game and one of the writers.

Posting on the official Witcher forums, writer Sande Chen said "Yes, it's true. My writing partner and I worked on the English adaptation of the script (based on the translation from the Polish script). It was edited down considerably, not because of censorship, though."

According to the fans though, some of the changes that have been made are quite drastic. For example, a line in the polish that directly translated to English reads as "Why do p**cks go in c**ts? It's the natural order of things. Humans have always disliked dwarves and elves. Not for me to know why," has been changed to just say "Humans have always hate...

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Free Rice game helping to stop world hunger

There should be more games like this.

Poverty.com's Free Rice game is a simple multiple-choice vocabulary test that donates ten grains of rice to the UN's World Food Program for every correctly answered question.. To make the game more interesting and useful to players, each correct answer also increases the difficulty of the following question. Each incorrect answer makes the questions easier.

Over 931 million grains of rice have been donated over the course of a single month, and that number is growing steadily every day. To put that number in perspective, let's consider how many people it could potentially feed.

1 teaspoon holds roughly 250 grains of rice1 tablespoon equals 3 teaspoons1 ounce equals 2 tablespoons1 cup equals 8 ounces

One cup of rice (which expands to two after cooki...

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Call of Duty 4 released to retail, Steam users wai...

With Call of Duty 4 released two days ago in the US, yesterday in Australia and tomorrow in Europe, gamers everywhere are indulging in Infinity Ward's latest shooter in the hugely succesful CoD series. Well, not exactly...

Steam users will not be able to play the game until November 12th, but pre-loading has already begun with pre-purchasing available even earlier on the 6th. It is quite baffling that the game is being played by thousands of gamers all around the world but Steam users have to sit and wait while a locked copy of the game sits on their hard drives for another week.

Another issue with the Steam version is the pricing. While US and Australian customers get the game for $49.95 USD, European customers are being charged an extra $20, which jacks the price up to $69.95 USD! Again, i...

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