Kalakshar US

Forza Horizon 5 is officially coming to the PS5 on April 29. We knew the racing sim was going multiplatform, and now we have a legit date when players will be able to race around a digital replica of Mexico. 

This version does have cross-play support, which has already been a boon for Xbox and PC players. Additionally, the PS5 build allows gamers to purchase all of the same car packs, including the Hot Wheels and Rally Adventure expansions. There’s a new and free content update for PS5, Xbox and PC players called Horizon Realms that features a set of in-game achievements based on the game’s dynamic and evolving world, which arrives on April 25.

Horizon 5 comes to PS5 in three flavors. The base game costs $60; the Deluxe Edition, which comes with the game’s car pass, costs $80; and the Premium Edition, which comes with all of the game’s DLC, costs $100. If you pre-order the Premium Edition you also get early access to the game on April 25, though does it count as early access when the game’s been out for over four years on Xbox and PC? That’s for you and your wallet to decide. All editions are digital only — the Forza Horizon X account confirmed there are currently no plans for a physical release.

Developer Playground Games has also run down the various graphics modes available on PlayStation 5. Regular PS5 consoles will have access to a 60 fps performance mode and a 30 fps quality mode. PS5 Pro owners will have the same options, but with “increased fidelity” in the performance mode and ray-traced car reflections in races and free roam. There is no word currently on resolution targets for either console, or how they shape up versus Xbox Series X/S.

For the uninitiated, Forza Horizon 5 is a fantastic open-world racing game that we absolutely loved upon its initial release in 2021. The graphics are top notch, with a gorgeous design aesthetic, and the open world is fun to just race around in. The game is so approachable that we said “you don’t need to be into cars to love it.”

This is just the latest former Xbox exclusive to bridge the console divide. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle debuted as an Xbox exclusive in December, but is also coming to the PS5 soon. Other former exclusives that have been allowed to roam free include Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment and Grounded.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/forza-horizon-5-careens-onto-ps5-on-april-29-222606043.html?src=rss 

Video game preservation scored a win today with EA’s decision to make four Command & Conquer games open source. The company has released the source code for Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Command & Conquer: Renegade and Command & Conquer: Generals through a GPL license. All four projects are available to the public on Github.

In addition, EA is adding Steam Workshop support to more contemporary entries in the real-time strategy franchise, including a modding support pack with assets from the series titles on the SAGE engine, such as Command & Conquer Red Alert 3. This game genre has fallen out of vogue in recent years. But the C&C series still has a lot of fans, so a fresh boost of modder interest could bring new players to the franchise. (Plus, never forget that Red Alert 3 also contains the single best line delivery in all of video game history.)

EA released meticulous remasters of the first two installments of Command & Conquer in 2020, which included the release of those games’ source code. In December, the company made several of its patents for accessibility open source as well.

It’s also encouraging to see EA taking a positive action around a beloved franchise, especially when its recent efforts to remaster The Sims and The Sims 2 was riddled with technical issues at launch that required heavy-duty patches to fix.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/ea-releases-source-code-for-four-command–conquer-games-223425774.html?src=rss 

At some point in 2025, Twitch plans to offer monetization tools like subscriptions and Bits for all streamers, according to an open letter from Twitch CEO Dan Clancy. Monetizing Twitch streams previously required reaching “Affiliate” status on the platform.

Having viewers subscribe to a Twitch channel or cheer with Bits (Twitch’s digital currency) during a stream are the two most prominent ways the average streamer can make money from their streams, outside of passive ad revenue or sponsorships. Currently, each subscription earns you a 50/50 split on subscription revenue after processing fees and taxes, while each Bit earned during a stream translates to around $0.01.

Opening up subscriptions and Bits to “most streamers, from day one,” should serve to make streaming on Twitch more enticing to anyone worried about the long process of becoming a Twitch Affiliate or Partner. Reaching either status on Twitch requires earning a certain amount of followers and streaming a certain amount of hours, on top of other criteria. With at least some monetization tools becoming available to everyone, climbing Twitch’s ladder seems like it could become more about unlocking access to tools rather than the ability to earn money at all. (Thought novice streamers should keep in mind they must get a minimum of $50 to withdraw their earnings from Twitch at all.)

Alongside these changes, Clancy also announced that Twitch will introduce more ways for streamers to earn money together, new editing tools for creating clips of streams and expanded moderation tools on mobile. Twitch’s has been rethinking its approach to moderation and policy violations over the last few months. Earlier in February, the company tweaked how it enforces community guideline violations, making it so violations can “expire” after a certain amount of time.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/twitch-will-open-some-monetization-tools-to-even-first-time-streamers-204805004.html?src=rss 

In a fitting crossover, Roblox is getting a big speed boost on Chromebooks. Google said on Thursday that a new x86 version of the online game platform and creation system is twice as fast as the Android version, which was previously the only way to play Roblox on ChromeOS.

Given the overlap between Chromebooks (popular in education) and Roblox (popular with kids, for better or worse), a better-performing version on ChromeOS seems like a good match. Although there are more ARM-based Chromebooks than before, most still use x86 architecture.

Google says the new Roblox build provides smoother gameplay, quicker load times and “an overall better Roblox experience.” More specifically, you should see a 99 percent framerate increase in the virtual pet game Adopt Me! and a 67 percent boost in the role-playing sim Brookhaven RP. Load times are up to 29 percent faster when going from a fresh start to the login page.

Alongside the x86 launch, Google and Roblox have some speed-themed in-game swag for Chromebook users. You can redeem a jetpack with a Chrome logo (of course!) for your avatar to fly around like a Google-sponsored Buzz Lightyear. You can also redeem a “hoverboard” (which looks suspiciously like a OneWheel) for faster ground travel. You’ll find both on Google’s perks page.

This isn’t the first mashup between the two companies. Last year, they teamed up on a weird game that teaches kids about online safety, the, uh, “interestingly” named Be Internet Awesome World.

Google told Engadget that you can install the x86 version of Roblox directly through the Play Store. Although that’s typically where you find the Android version, the storefront should automatically deliver the right build for your laptop.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/roblox-is-now-much-faster-on-chromebooks-210030799.html?src=rss 

Game Freak dropped a surprise trailer at today’s Pokémon Presents livestream for something called Pokémon Champions. It’s a dedicated battle sim, recalling the glory days of Pokémon Stadium for the N64. This means that Champions distills the franchise’s formula down to just battling, with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer.

To that end, the game is cross-platform, with the developer saying that players on “Nintendo Switch and mobile” will be able to duke it out. We don’t know what kind of roster the game itself will provide, but it integrates with the cloud-storage service Pokémon Home. People should be able to pull most of their favorite Pokémon from titles like Pokémon Go and recent mainline entries like Pokémon Sword and Shield. It also works with the spin-off Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The official press release, however, does note that there will be some restrictions when it comes to availability.

The gameplay should feel instantly familiar to anyone who has ever dabbled in the franchise, as the trailer description touts tried-and-true “mechanics such as Pokémon types, abilities and moves.” The footage even shows more niche mechanics like Mega Evolution and Terastallization, indicating that players may not be tied to the base-level Pokémon rule set.

There’s no release window yet. All we know is that it’s currently in development. Speaking of release dates, today’s livestream did reveal that Pokémon Legends: Z-A will be coming out by the end of the year for the Switch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/pokemon-champions-is-all-about-the-battles-194527252.html?src=rss 

In what has already been a busy past few days for new model releases, OpenAI is capping off the week with a research preview of GPT-4.5. The company is touting the new system as its largest and best model for chat yet. In early testing, OpenAI says people found GPT-4.5 to be a more natural conversationalist, with the ability to convey warmth and display a kind of emotional intelligence.

In one example shared by OpenAI, a person tells ChatGPT they’re going through a hard time after failing a test. Where the company’s previous models, including GPT-4o and o3-mini, might commiserate with the individual before offering a long list of unsolicited advice, GPT-4.5 takes a different tact. “Want to talk about what happened, or do you just need a distraction? I’m here either way,” the chatbot says when powered by GPT-4.5.

The gains shown by GPT-4.5 are the result of advancements OpenAI made in unsupervised learning. With unsupervised learning, a machine learning algorithm is given an unlabeled data set and left to its own devices to find patterns and insights. GPT-4.5 doesn’t “think” like the company’s state-of-the-art reasoning models, but in training the new model OpenAI made architectural enhancements and gave it access to more data and compute power. “The result is a model that has broader knowledge and a deeper understanding of the world, leading to reduced hallucinations,” the company says.

Speaking of reduced hallucinations, OpenAI measured how much better GPT-4.5 in that regard. When put through SimpleQA, an OpenAI-designed benchmark that tests large language models on their ability to answer “straightforward but challenging knowledge questions,” GPT-4.5 beat out o3-mini, GPT-4o and even o1 with a hallucination rate of 37.1 percent. Obviously, the new model doesn’t solve the problem of AI hallucinations altogether, but it is a step in the right direction.

Despite its relative strengths over GPT-4o and o3-mini, GPT-4.5 isn’t a direct replacement for those models. Compared to OpenAI’s reasoning systems, GPT-4.5 is “a more general-purpose, innately smarter model.” Additionally, it’s not natively multimodal like GPT-4o, meaning it doesn’t work with features like Voice Mode, video or screensharing. It’s also “a very large and compute-intensive model.”

It’s best to think of GPT-4.5 as a stepping stone to systems OpenAI plans to offer in the future. In fact, Sam Altman said as much earlier this month when he shared the company’s roadmap, noting GPT-4.5 would be “our last non-chain-of-thought model” — referring to the fact that the new system doesn’t solve problems by tackling them step by step like OpenAI’s reasoning models do. Its successor, GPT-5, will likely integrate many of OpenAI’s latest technologies, including its frontier o3 model. OpenAI reiterated that today, saying it plans to bring GPT-4.5’s “unique strengths, including broader knowledge, stronger intuition, and greater ‘EQ,’ to all users in future models.”

In the meantime, ChatGPT Pro subscribers can begin using GPT-4.5 starting today, with Pro and Team users slated to gain access starting next week.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-new-gpt-45-model-is-a-better-more-natural-conversationalist-200035185.html?src=rss