Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re still on the fence about choosing between a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Microsoft wants to help you make your decision. Redmond is taking its next-gen console on a multi-city international tour starting October 1st, putting the system’s launch titles in your hands and throwing parties replete with live music in select Canadian, European and US towns. These events are running right up until the system’s November 22nd launch, and full details — where to find the happenings and when — are but a click away.

Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft

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Source: Xbox Wire, Xbox

Graphics cards aren’t normally our go-to choices for audio processing, but we may have to make exceptions for AMD’s just-unveiled Radeon R9 and R7 lines. The R9 290X (shown above), R9 290 and R7 260X (after the break) will support TrueAudio, a new programmable pipeline that enables advanced audio effects without burdening a PC’s main processor or a dedicated sound card. Not that the range will be lacking in visual prowess, of course. While the company isn’t revealing full specifications, it claims that the R9 290X flagship will have five teraflops of total computing power versus the four teraflops of the previous generation. The boards will ship sometime in the “near future,” with prices ranging from $89 for an entry R7 250 to $299 for the mid-tier R9 280X. AMD isn’t divulging the R9 290X’s price, but pre-orders for the card will start on October 3rd.

The firm has also revealed a new programming interface, Mantle, that makes the most of the Graphics Core Next architecture found in many of its recent processors and video chipsets. Developers who build the low-level code into their games should get better performance from GCN-based devices without having to re-optimize for each platform — a title meant for Radeon-equipped PCs should still behave well on a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, for instance. Mantle will debut on Windows through a December update to Battlefield 4, and should spread to other platforms in the months ahead.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, AMD

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Via: AnandTech

Source: AMD

Each week, our friends at gdgt go through the latest gadgets and score them to help you decide which ones to buy. Here are some of their most recent picks. Want more? Visit gdgt anytime to catch up on the latest, and subscribe to gdgt’s newsletter to get a weekly roundup in your inbox.

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If you’ve wanted to immerse your body in a first-person shooter, you’ve typically had to use a complex simulator. Battlefield 4 may soon provide a decidedly simpler (and cheaper) alternative. DICE’s Patrick Bach has revealed to Xbox Wire that the game may use the Xbox One’s Kinect sensor for head-tracking look controls, such as leaning around a corner. Voice commands might also be available, Bach says. There’s no guarantees that BF4 will get the new input methods, but DICE may have competition as an incentive. Infinity Ward recently hinted to Official Xbox Magazine that Call of Duty: Ghosts could use Kinect for more than navigating menus, so there’s a chance that at least one of the two games will have motion control in the future.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, Microsoft

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Via: Eurogamer

Source: Xbox Wire

In a move that reminds us of the kid that leaked the first in the wild shots of the Xbox 360, YouTuber Jackson Carter has posted a two minute video claiming to show a working Xbox One. After flashing the console itself and a controller as proof, he focuses mostly on the UI, displaying its Windows 8-style tile layout. You can check out our detailed impressions of the console’s UI right here, but this will be the first opportunity most have had to see the system’s default menu — multitasking, Ryse beta, Kinect 2.0 and all — in motion. There’s no info on exactly where this console came from, but our friendly narrator mentions he can’t access other beta games just yet. While conspiracy theorists debate if this legitimate and/or intentional, everyone else can just take a peek at it embedded after the break.

Update: The original video has been pulled from YouTube, we’ve embedded a working version after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft

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Via: NeoGAF, Wario64 (Twitter)

Source: Jackson Carter (YouTube)