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After a decent amount of testing from Windows Insiders, Microsoft have finally set a release date for the next and possibly final incarnation of their long-running operating system. Windows 10 will be released to all on July 29th.
Windows 10 of course is well-known right now for the offer Microsoft have made to all owners of Windows 7 and 8 – for a limited time after release you’ve the option to upgrade to 10 for free. This offer even extends to owners of illegal copies, although Microsoft have made it clear that any illegal copies that want to be upgraded to a legit 10 version will require the owner to pay the licence fee before updating.
A new update for Windows is adding a little icon to the toolbar that allows owners to ‘reserve’ their copy of 10 in advance and sign-up for a little prompt to your e-mail when the copy is ready for download. Clicking the option pops up a number of screens to show off the new features of 10, all of which I’ve included below. The download will be a digital one so there’s no worries of them running short, but then I’m assuming it gives Microsoft a bit of a heads-up on just how many people can be expected to be accessing the servers for the download at one time and to prepare accordingly. Also, the prompt will be quite useful to remind people.
For gamers there is hope that Microsoft are going to keep their promises to make sure gaming is as smooth and simple as we’d like. The fact that DirectX 12 will be exclusive to the OS is sure to be a draw for that section of the market as well.
I run Windows 7 at the moment, having been put off from 8 by the stories I heard of it as well as the lack of the start button (which apparently is making a return for 10, result!). Given all Microsoft has said though, I’m very tempted by the new Windows 10.
What about you? Did you avoid 8 as well, and are you looking forward to the release of 10?
“Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29“: [x]
In today’s stranger news, a lorry has been stolen. Not just any lorry though, a lorry containing stock of the new Splatoon game as well as various associated Amiibo figurines that was on its way to GAME’s UK warehouse. No really.
The lorry had been on a journey from Nintendo’s European headquarters towards the warehouse, and what makes this theft all the more noticeable is that among copies of the standard game and standard Amiibo figurines were a sizeable number of the Special Edition copies of the game. In fact, GAME’s entire shipment of the Special Edition was in that lorry. That’s a pretty hefty theft.
GAME has now had to send out notifications to all customers who had pre-ordered the Special Edition to inform them of the situation and how because all of the allotted shipment was taken they are unfortunately unable to substitute the missing copies with other Special Edition games.
“We have no option but to substitute the Splatoon + Squid Inkling in your order with the standard version of the game. “You will still receive your Inkling Girl and Inkling Boy Amiibo. We will be discounting this edition by £10 from £52.99 to £42.99 to apologise for this inconvenience.”
No details have been made public about the circumstances around how the vehicle was taken, but Nintendo have told GamesRadar+ in a statement that they are working with GAME to contact all affected customers and apologised for the inconvenience caused to them as a result of the theft.
Dare say a lot of special games might soon make their way onto Ebay or into CEX…
Guild Wars 2 players get a chance to head into the Heart of Thorns this evening—that is, if they’ve already got a key to enter into the jungle expansion’s closed beta. The test consists of three two-hour sessions staggered throughout the day. Players who found a rare portal during last month’s Dry Top and Silverwastes events will be able to create a new beta character to test out a small portion of the new expansion.
“Participants will be able to use a revenant—or any of the existing eight professions—to play a small amount of expansion story content, followed by two beta versions of outposts and their corresponding adventures in part of the Verdant Brink map,” explains a news post on the Guild Wars 2 site. “An early, partially completed version of the day/night cycle meta-event experience from Verdant Brink will also be available.”
ArenaNet says they’ll be adding additional participants, picked from email addresses subscribed to the expansion’s newsletter.
Here are the times of the closed beta tests:
– 11:30 am – 1:30 pm PDT / 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm CEST / 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm BST
– 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm PDT / 12:30 am – 2:30 am CEST / 11:30 pm – 1:30 am BST
– 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm PDT / 4:30 am – 6:30 am CEST / 3:30 am – 5:30 am BST
For those without access, the test isn’t under any NDA restrictions. That means you can expect the beta to be streamed by players during each test window.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt hasn’t been out long so it’s getting little updates still that tweak performance and make things look better. The latest one is no different.
The latest patch improves high-end textures and boosts Nvidia Hairworks performance. Also standard for a patch, bugs and fixes have been put into this patch as well as adding keyboard remapping and the Prologue area now offers a few new cards for Gwent, a card-game within the game itself.
The full breakdown of the 1.04 patch is on Steam as below:
Rebinding of all keys is now available after switching on the ‘Unlock Bindings’ option in the Options\Key Bindings submenu.
Corrects an issue in the dialogue system that might have caused dialogue looping in certain scenes.
Fixes an issue with incorrect behavior of Wild Hunt warriors after they were affected by the Axii Sign.
Corrects a bug that caused spontaneous combustion of gas clouds.
1280 x 720 resolution is now properly displayed as a valid resolution option.
Fixes boat stuttering in cutscenes.
Texture rendering quality for the high and ultra presets has been improved.
Further improvements made in NVIDIA Hairworks performance.
A few additional gwent cards are now available in the Prologue area.
Fixes an issue where users with usernames incorporating non-Latin characters were unable to import saves from The Witcher 2.
Includes a series of overall stability and performance improvements.
Fixes issues related to alt + tabbing and minimizing the game window.
Updates the game icon.
Enlarges the loot pop-up window in the UI.
Fixes an issue where, in certain circumstances, the comparison window could extend beyond the game borders in the UI.
Upgrading items included in gear sets no longer destroys rune sockets on said items.
Introduces small tweaks in the UI for Gwent.
Corrects some missing translations in localized versions.
I love good mysterious teasers for games, because they often show how creative the developers are with their games. It’s fun too for the players who are waiting for the game. So the latest development with Soma is interesting to say the least.
The studio behind the upcoming psychological horror game, Frictional Games, retweeted a partial URL that was originally posted by the PathosII Twitter account.
The link when completed leads to a terminal that seems to be hiding some secrets, although a little knowledge of DOS is needed. Using the “help” command should give you enough knowledge to help you navigate though. So far a couple of videos have been found, along with distorted imagery and a block of what appears to be encoded text. That’s not yet been decoded and there are two further folders that are currently inaccessible. Whether they will be unlocked later is unknown.
Frictional is responsible for Amnesia: The Dark Descent and hope to use what they learned from that game to make Soma an even better horror game. Soma entered beta last month and they hope to have it on full release sometime later this year.
