Tag: Game

When a terrorist strikes, getting information fast from a tech giant can make the difference between police catching the suspects, or another attack taking place. That’s the premise of a new game created by Europol, the European body responsible for connecting the continent’s myriad policing agencies and helping them investigate major crimes.

Right now, police officers are often confused by the process. What data can they request from which provider? Can they retrieve any encrypted content from the likes of Apple or WhatsApp? What legal mechanisms should they be using? What’s the best language to use to ensure they get the information they want quickly?

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire but for fighting terrorists

The game, exclusively shown to Forbes ahead of its release to law enforcement partners and their 4,500 officers on Wednesday, hopes to make sure police know the answers to those when an emergency happens. It looks much like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire but crossed with a create your own adventure game and without the options of phoning a friend or asking the audience. It opens with a hypothetical terror attack in which a gunman has started firing at people on a city street, killing 15 and injuring many others. When the player arrives on the scene, they learn that the suspect has fled but had worn a body camera to livestream the event. The livestream has been found, created by a profile called Bobby Cat.

The player is then offered multiple choice questions about what information they would seek, from what provider and how. Some of the questions are about processes, others are vendor specific, covering data access at established tech firms like Facebook through to newer players like TikTok. The quicker the officer is in getting the relevant data, the more points

Online game platform Roblox said Monday that on a confidential basis it had submitted a draft registration statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission for a public offering of common stock.

The San Mateo, Calif., company said it hasn’t determined the number of Class A common shares it will sell and at what price.

Roblox said it intends to commence the public offering following completion of the SEC review.

The company is aiming for a public valuation of about $8 billion, Reuters reported earlier this month. 

That would double the $4 billion valuation it got in a $150 million fundraising round in February led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The VC firm said in February that the platform reached more than 115 million monthly users.

The company hosts millions of games that are built by its users, who then get a share of any related revenue. 

“Roblox is powered by a global community of over two million developers who produce their own immersive multiplayer experiences each month using Roblox Studio,” the company said on its website. 

“Our popularity is driven purely by the community with millions of people signing up through word of mouth every month.”

Roblox, which was founded in 2004, said that two-thirds of all U.S. kids 9 to 12 years old use the platform.

In July, Roblox said its developer community was on pace to earn more than $250 million in 2020, more than double 2019’s $110 million.

David Baszucki is the company’s founder and chief executive. Prior to Roblox, he founded Knowledge Revolution, which was acquired by MSC Software in 1998.

Last month, Andrea Wong, who was most recently the president of international at Sony Corp.,  (SNE) – Get Report joined the Roblox board. 

The PS5 launches around the world next month, and while there are still many lingering questions about how the system works, Sony has now shared some more details about its backwards compatibility. As with Xbox Series X, it appears a few previous-gen games will be improved when played on PS5 thanks to Game Boost, a feature that gives some PlayStation 4 games a performance boost on the newer console.

As detailed on the PlayStation support website, Game Boost allows certain PS4 titles to “run with a higher or smoother frame rate” when played on a PS5. However, Sony notes that this will only apply to “select” games; it appears the performance boost won’t be applied across the board, as Xbox Series X does with Xbox One games.

The company shed a bit more light on how the feature will work in a PlayStation Blog post. “Some titles with unlocked frame rates or dynamic resolution up to 4K may see higher fidelity. Additionally, PS4 games will also take advantage of some of PS5’s new UX features, but more to come on that later,” the company wrote.

Although we don’t know the majority of the games that will be making use of Game Boost, developer Sucker Punch confirmed that Ghost of Tsushima will take advantage of the feature. The open-world action game will get a 60 frames per second option when played on PS5. You’ll also experience much faster loading times on the next-gen system.

According to Sony, the “vast majority” of the PS4 library will be playable on PS5, although there are a few titles that won’t be compatible with the new system. Sony has also explained how to upgrade some PS4 games to their PS5 versions, and the process sounds fairly straightforward.

However, it appears there are a few quirks

With a month to go before the PlayStation 5 officially launches, Sony has answered a few burning questions for those who are curious about the next-gen console.

Posting on the official PlayStation Blog, Sony dealt mostly with questions regarding backward compatibility and PlayStation VR, and put a few rumors to rest while addressing some things that may have been leaving those curious about the PS5 anxious.

Regarding backward compatibility that was not in the plans for the PlayStation 4 when that system launched, Sony said that this time around 99% of PS4 titles will work on the PS5, confirming something previously teased by Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan.

There is a huge catalog of games already out in the market that can be immediately played on the new console upon its launch. The blog post pointed out two hits from 2020, namely “The Last of Us Part II” and “Ghost of Tsushima,” as titles that will work on the new console at launch.

Aside from the aforesaid PS4 titles, a few other games including the pre-loaded “Astro’s Playroom,” “Sackboy: A Big Adventure,” “Demon’s Souls,” “Destruction AllStars,” and “Spider-Man: Miles Morales” will be available when the PlayStation 5 arrives in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea on Nov. 12.

For those wary about just how different games on the PlayStation 4 will run on the PlayStation 5, Sony promised an even better experience for the older games on the new gaming machine. “Select PS4 titles will see increased loading speeds

Start planning out space for your PS5 games on the system’s SSD now, because they are going to take up a lot of room. In fact, it might not be too long before you have to start deleting games if the file sizes Sony has revealed are anything to go by.

On the PlayStation Direct website, which lets you buy PlayStation games and accessories directly from Sony, Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Demon’s Souls both have their file sizes estimated. In the case of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the standard version of the game takes up 50GB, while the Ultimate Edition, which packs in a copy of Spider-Man: Remastered, takes up 105GB. Demon’s Souls, meanwhile, is a full remake of the 2009 PS3 game and takes up about 66GB.

For comparison, From Software’s previous game, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, takes up less than 13GB on PS4. The PS3 version of Demon’s Souls is less than 8GB.

With updates down the line, these file sizes could get even bigger. Games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare have drawn some controversy this generation for ballooning file sizes of well over 100GB, and with higher-resolution textures and more detailed game worlds, that only looks to become more of a problem for PS5. The system’s 825GB capacity is lower than the PS4 Pro, and though it will support expansion cards to increase that storage space, those are expensive and likely out of many users’ budget range. Getting 2TB of storage could nearly double the cost of the system itself. When you have a library of games to purchase, as well, it’s a tough pill to swallow.

The PS5 is releasing on November 12 in two versions: a $499 standard console and a $399 digital edition. The systems are otherwise identical, so you won’t be losing out