In more gaming news: Activision
Amid news of Activision and developer woes, not all news for the company is negative. Bungie, the developer behind Halo and other popular video games, are joining Activision.
In more Activision news, the company is planning to announce the next Call of Duty title today.
Things hardly look bleak for Activision, but I still wonder about the outcome of any court hearings involving the Infinity Ward fiasco.
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Activision may shut down Infinity Ward
With all the news of member after member of the game development company, Infinity Ward leaving for the new and I assume more free to operate and earn Respawn, it's no surprise that Activision may close down Infinity Ward. That is, according to analyst Mike Hickney.
That's according to Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey, who predicts that Modern Warfare 3 development will be handled by two other studios.
"Continued defections from their Infinity Ward studio have created meaningful uncertainty around the future of their Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise," he said in an investor note.
Read more on the story at CVG.
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First look at a Best Buy UK store
American consumer electronics retail giant Best Buy is coming to the UK, with its first store opening this weekend. What can their brand name bring to the retail market in this country? HEXUS take a preview look at what their stores in the UK have to offer.
You can find the resultant video coverage over here.
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HP to acquire Palm for $1.2 billion
Palm have been struggling somewhat within their own market even before the iPhone hit the streets, and the success of Apple's device certainly hasn't helped them much in recent years. However, the company itself still looks to be a worthy investment, at least in the eyes of HP who look set to snap the company up for a cool US $1.2 billion.
“Palm’s innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience spanning multiple mobile connected devices,†said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP. “And, Palm possesses significant IP assets and has a highly skilled team. The smartphone market is large, profitable and rapidly growing, and companies that can provide an integrated device and experience command a higher share. Advances in mobility are offering significant opportunities, and HP intends to be a leader in this market.â€
The Tech Report carries the story.
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ASUS Cine5 Compact Speaker review
It probably goes without saying that there's a lot to like about having a multi-channel speaker system hooked up to your PC, whether it's for gaming or movie watching, but having six speakers scattered around the room isn't always practical in terms of space and cabling. If so, ASUS may have the answer via their Cine5 compact speaker system, which claims to offer a full surround sound experience in a small and compact (as the name suggests) unit.
Setting up the speaker is a simple matter of plugging in the power supply and connecting up the three 3.5mm audio jacks. This is one of the benefits the Cine5 has over full surround sound systems as they usually have a more complicated cabling system as a result of multiple satellite speakers.
Read the full review at Hardware Heaven.
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Corsair Force F100 vs. OCZ Vertex 2 vs. OCZ Agility 2
Solid state drives based around Sandforce's SF-1200 controller have quickly built up an impressive following on account of the performance available from it, with Corsair and OCZ both making use of said controller in some of their latest products. If you're after a Sandforce-based SSD but aren't sure where to spend your money, then PC Perspective have taken a look at a trio of offerings from these two companies to help make your mind up.
Corsair has kept things simple by producing a single model line in the form of the Force Series. Part numbers were also kept simple, as all Force Series drives will start their model number with an 'F'. The Corsair Force models use the standard SandForce firmware.
See all of their results right here.
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AMD Catalyst 10.4 available for download
It's been available in preview form for a little while now, but today sees AMD's latest Catalyst 10.4 graphics driver become officially available. Here's the list of what's new this time around:
Performance improvements
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky
-
- Improves up to 6% with ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 5970 graphics products
- Improves up to 3% with ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 5800 graphics products
- Improves up to 3% on ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 5700 Series products
ATI Catalyst – Video enhancements
- H.264 Level 5.1 support
- ATI Catalyst™ can now playback  5.1 level streams on all support players
- Allows for playback of high resolutions (4Kx2K)
- Mosquito noise removal
- Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback .
- Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series of products
AMD video transcoding updates
- This release of ATI Catalystâ„¢ provides enhanced support for the Windows 7 Drag and Drop video converter
- Performance improvements
- New formats supported (H.264 file formats – MTS and WMV9 Complex profile interlaced content)
- ATI Catalystâ„¢ Control Center option for enabling/disabling GPU acceleration
- Support for the ATI Video converter is now available in the advanced view of the ATI Catalyst Control Center
Resolved Issues:Â Highlights
- Desktop mouse cursor will no longer intermittently appear enlarged
- Pressing the "Page Down" button while configuring the last display in Eyefinity group will now properly switch to the next display instead of closing the bezel user interface
- Shortcut keys to configure the bezel now functions properly
- "Battlefield 2: Bad Company" maps no longer takes unusually long to load for ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 5000 Series
- Performance on 2D applications and benchmarks has now been fixed
- Flashing no longer visible in "Shattered Horizon" game with CrossFireâ„¢ enabled
- Changing in-game resolution in "Alien vs. Predator" no longer causes screen flickering under multi-GPU configuration
- Tint setting under Catalyst Control Center - Basic Color now displays smooth transition when adjusted for Blu-ray playback
- In-game anti-alias now functions properly when other in-game options like Volumetric Effects are enabled in "Empire: Total War" and "Napoleon: Total War"games
- Flickering corruption and flashing textures are no longer visible in "Battlefield 2: Bad Company"
Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalystâ„¢ 10.4 release include:
New Features
Support for new Linux operating systems
- This release of ATI Catalystâ„¢ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:Â
- Ubuntu 10.04 Â early look support
You can download this new driver for your Operating System of choice from the AMD Game web site.
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Motherboard makers experiencing tight supply of AMD's new southbridge
AMD look to be onto a winner between their Phenom II X6 CPUs released yesterday and their latest range of motherboard chipsets, but are supply problems going to once again conspire to reduce the company's competitive advantage?
The company has also postponed the launch of its mainstream southbridge chip, the SB810, which is expected to be cheaper than the SB850.
DigiTimes has the full story.
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Jon Peddie Research reveals graphics shipment numbers for Q1 2010
Jon Peddie Research have just announced their latest graphics chip shipment figures for the first quarter of 2010, and although Intel inevitably remain in the overall lead in terms of market share, the numbers do also make for some positive reading for both NVIDIA and AMD.
For a more comprehensive overview of these latest results, check out the Jon Peddie Research web site.
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Interview with NVIDIA's Drew Henry
We've all heard the rumours of sub-20% yields on NVIDIA's latest GF100 GPU, but is that speculation actually true? DigiTimes digs a little deeper courtesy of an interview with NVIDIA's general manager of their MCP business Drew Henry, who they quiz on this subject and others besides.
A: Nvidia does not comment on unannounced products; however, we have a chance to launch a graphics chip with 512 cores in the future.
TSMC's yields for its 40nm process has met our expectations and market rumors about the yields being lower than 20% are completely untrue. We currently have everything under control.
You can find more within this article.
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