EA-owned gaming studio Pandemic Studios announced they're working on a new Lord of the Rings video game for the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and DS gaming platforms. The game is called The Lord of the Rings: Conquest and it will be an action-packed game in which you'll be able to join the forces of good or evil.
In a partnership with New Line Cinema, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is an action-packed game created by the same Pandemic Studios team behind the best-selling Star Wars Battlefront? and Star Wars Battlefront? II titles. Set in The Lord of the Rings universe of J.R.R. Tolkien as depicted by the Academy Award-winning films, players will finally fight the entirety of these epic battles any way they want. In addition to crusading as the heroic forces of good, for the first time ever in a The Lord of the Rings? action title they'll conquer Middle-earth while playing as the legions of Sauron's evil army, including Cave-trolls, Oliphaunts, the Balrog and Sauron himself. The game is set for a global release in fall 2008.
Our Pandemic Studios creative teams have years of expertise bringing giant battlefields to life, says Andrew Goldman, Pandemic Studios co-founder and general manager. We've always wanted to harness our experience in a fantasy universe with warriors, archers, mages and castle sieges. Of course, there is truly no better fantasy world to recreate than the enormity of The Lord of the Rings realm.
We'll freely admit that we're rabid fans of The Lord of the Rings fantasy, says Josh Resnick, co-founder and general manager at Pandemic Studios. Our experience creating massive, rich, action-packed games means that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest will give fans exactly what they want: full control of the blade, bow and magic to fight its epic battles any way they want, even if they choose to play from the evil side.
AP writes AMD remained tightlipped on its future. Last year AMD's CEO Hector Ruiz hinted the firm may sell some of its manufacturing capacity to third parties but no new information was made public about this strategy on the firm's annual shareholders meeting.
A year ago Ruiz began hinting that AMD is thinking about offloading some of its manufacturing duties to third parties to save money, but he has been tightlipped about details since then.
"Our plans are bold, and progress is ongoing," Ruiz said Thursday in prepared remarks about the so-called "asset smart" manufacturing strategy. "And I hope to communicate additional details of this complex undertaking in the very near future."
AMD has racked up more than $4 billion in losses over the last year and a half as intensifying competition from Intel and expenses from AMD's $5.6 billion acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies have taken their toll.
The company said last month it plans to jettison 10 percent of its global work force, or about 1,600 workers, by September in an aggressive cost-cutting move.
Ruiz reiterated Thursday that the company expects to reach operational profitability in the second half of this year.
The Inquirer reports a bug in Windows XP Service Pack 3 is giving some AMD-based a lot of trouble:
One user reported, "I just installed Windows XP SP3 and after completing the processes and when the system reboots, the system cannot proceed to load the Windows. It just displays the flash screen of Windows then after it reboots again."
Angry users have also reported that, after the installation, it is not even possible to boot in safe mode, usually the last resort before setting up a repeated forehead/screen interface.
Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft and a well respected bogger on such things has provided some pointers as to where the problem might lie.
According to Johansson, there appears to be two separate problems. One affects only AMD-equipped PCs sold by Hewlett-Packard. "The problem is that HP, apparently along with other OEMs, deploys the same image to Intel-based computers that they do to AMD-based computers," said Johansson.
"Because the image for both Intel and AMD is the same all have the intelppm.sys driver installed and running. That driver provides power management on Intel-based computers. On an AMD-based computer, amdk8.sys provides the same functionality. "
FUD Zilla claims the GDDR5 version of the ATI RV770XT GPU will have support for a 512-bit memory interface. The card will be released in June but you'll have to wait until July for volume availability.
We are getting back to the memory controller of R600, but possibly significantly improved, and this time the chip can cope with GDDR5 while the previous controller could only cope with GDDR3 and GDDR4.
As GDDR4 didn’t really get these cards any faster, ATI decided to go for GDDR5. We believe this is the future and this definitely makes the RV770 a bit bigger than the RV670 and this will be the most significant difference between the chips.
CNET reports a growing number of startups are trying to commercialize algae-based biodiesel. This fuel has the benefit that it grows fast and doesn't compete with food as algae don't require arable land.
Melbourne, Fla.-based PetroAlgae says that it hopes to test a commercial system as early as next year.
The company licensed strains of freshwater algae bred by Arizona State University and is developing the bioreactors and harvesting methods to grow the algae at large scale, said Fred Tennant, PetroAlgae's vice president of business development.
The algae harvested from open-pond farms can be converted to oil that can be refined into biodiesel. The remaining material can be sold as high-protein animal feed, Tennant said.
Because algae needs a source of carbon dioxide to grow, PetroAlgae is seeking to set up joint ventures with electric utilities looking to reduce their carbon emissions.
"The laws that are being debated right now will change a power company's life. They will have to have a lot more renewable energy and get rid of CO2," Tennant said. "Any power company in the world will be happy to pay us to take their CO2 away."
The E3 show used to be one of the largest game trade shows in the world but it's been very troubled since the organisers decided to make it a press-only event two years ago. Bit Tech reports many large game developers won't attend the show this year as they rather host their own shown:
Since the new E3 is invite-only for journalists, the general vibe seems to be that publishers and developers could be just as well served by hosting their own shows entirely (see Ubidays) or simply dealing with the journalists individually.
So far, a number of big names have announced they will either not be attending the show or that they are currently undecided. This includes NCSoft, that claims the event doesn't sync with any releases this year, and Atlus, that told Joystiq the event didn't do much for them financially.
More worryingly, Vivendi Activision has decided not to attend also and has gone so far as to split from the ESA group altogether - which Kotaku puts possibly at the feet of ESA president Mike Gallagher under claims of mis-management.
More recently, id Software has been in the spotlight though and Joystiq is reporting that the hugely-influential developer may yet pull out of the show too.
The latest processor series from AMD is a little unusual as it makes use of not one, two, or even four cores, but rather three! That’s right, the new Phenom X3 carries an unusual core configuration, and I guess the question most of you are probably asking yourselves (as we did) is why? The most reasonable explanation is that this still allows AMD to sell Phenom X4 processors with a defective core, minimizing their loss. Second, it gives some leverage for AMD to compete with Intel’s dual-core processors, being able to pull the "additional core" card.
Okay so its been a little while since our last free giveaway, but things should go back to normal in the next few months. This month one lucky winner will receive a matched pair of XFX GeForce 8800GS SLI cards to grace their system and get them into the SLI mode of gaming. The contest runs from April 10th until May 10th so be sure to enter and have your chance at wining these cool cards from XFX. Remember you cannot win if you do not enter, so just follow the link below and enter today!! Only a few days left to enter
OCIA.net has posted their NZXT May Forum Contest with a chance to win a brand new NZXT Tempest Case:
Another month, another contest here at OCIA.net! We have once again teamed up with NZXT to offer one lucky winner NZXT's brand new Crafted Series chassis, the Tempest!
Have you heard about NVIDIA Hybrid SLI and HybridPower over the past several few months? Having the ability to turn off a graphics card and run integrated graphics in order to save power and reduce noise sounds great in theory, but does it work? That is exactly what we have been working on here on the test bench and bring you our findings after spending countless hours with the ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe motherboard and the XFX GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card.
"NVIDIA Hybrid SLI and HybridPower technology are welcomed additions to the enthusiast computing scene and give consumers another reason to purchase NVIDIA platforms. Having the ability to turn off the discrete graphics at will is one of the coolest new features we have seen on a PC. It's amazing that it took this long for someone to figure it out, but the time has finally come. NVIDIA Hybrid SLI technology was found to be pretty solid for being brand new technology.The slight performance decrease was expected, but the ability to use HybridPower seems to outweigh the performance hit..."
Iomega unveiled a new 250GB "Camo" model in its eGo portable hard drive lineup.
Whether you're someone with an adventuresome style and spirit, an avid participant in tough travel environments, or just want to be different from the crowd, the new Iomega eGo Camo Portable Hard Drive is a fast and fun notebook hard drive that delivers on form and function. Iomega's new eGo Camo Drive has a curved chassis covered by a woodland camouflage pattern that also comes with a black Iomega Power Grip band that not only looks cool but also provides extra durability.
The new eGo Camo Portable Hard Drive also packs a lot of storage capability - the 250GB* 2.5-inch drive is USB-powered for simple operation (no power supply required), and it comes with EMC® Retrospect® HD software for automatic backups, scheduled backups, or on-demand backups. With Iomega's new 250GB eGo Camo Portable Hard Drive, users can carry up to 1,000,000 photos, over 4,625 hours of music or 375 hours of video** with confidence and a look that no other portable hard drive offers today.
Iomega's patented DropGuard™ technology protects the eGo drive from accidental damage caused by drops of up to 51 inches (129 cms), compared to portable hard drives from other manufacturers that claim drops of less than 40 inches. With the new Power Grip band on the eGo Camo Drive, this eGo portable hard drive can handle drops of up to 60 inches (152 cms), a real benefit and advantage for adventurous users.
The Iomega 250GB eGo Camo is available for $149.95.
