Among Us Reaches 2 Million Active Players Milestone on PC After Becoming Free on Epic Games Store

Among Us is available for free to download from Epic Games Store till June 3 during its Mega Sale. InnerSloth, the game's developer, noticed a spike in active player count on PC during the weekend of May 29. There are also a lot of factors that led to a spike as most existing players from other platforms tried the game on PC while the long weekend in the US could also...

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Tata Sky Binge app for Android and iOS launched, plans start from Rs 149

Tata Sky Binge app has officially launched for Android and iOS smartphones and brings content from 10 premium OTT apps. Tata Sky Binge mobile app lets you manage content from 10 OTT apps and enables you to have a single subscription for them. The content on the Tata Sky Binge service is sourced from Disney+ Hotstar Premium, Zee5, Hungama Play, Eros Now, ShemarooMe, Voot Select, Voot Kids, SonyLIV, and Curiosity Stream. 

“The launch of Tata Sky Binge Mobile app is in sync with our endeavour towards making our products available to a larger audience base. Our subscribers can now access their choice of OTT content, on large and small screens, at home or on the go, all with a unified interface, single subscription, and sign-on,” said Pallavi Puri, Chief Content and Commercial Officer, Tata Sky.

Tata Sky Binge mobile app subscription plans

The Tata Sky Binge mobile app offers two subscription plans: Rs 149 and Rs 299. The Rs 149 subscription is a mobile-only plan that offers content from seven OTT apps. These include Zee5, SonyLIV, Voot Select, Voot Kids, Eros Now, Hungama Play and ShemarooMe. This plan also supports upto three mobile devices.

The Rs 299 plan offers content from 10 OTT apps and also supports up to three mobile devices. Apart from the seven apps in the base plan, this subscription also brings in Disney+ Hotstar Premium, Curiosity Stream, and Sun nxt. Moreover, this plan also allows playback on a TV through the Amazon Fire TV Stick - Tata Sky Edition or Binge+ set-top-box. 

Tata Sky is offering a 7-day trial of the new Tata Sky Binge mobile app.

Tata Sky Binge mobile app features

The Tata Sky Binge service was first launched on the Amazon Fire TV Stick - Tata Sky Edition after which the company decided to extend its Binge service to mobile devices. 

The Tata Sky Binge service offers content aggregated from 10 OTT platforms including the likes of Disney+ Hotstar Premium and more. The service essentially allows users to keep a single subscription plan for these services and we get to see all content from these OTT platforms in a single app. The Binge app also offers unified search across the 10 OTT services that the company thinks leads to better content discovery. 

The app curates movies, TV shows, and more and lists them under categories like New Releases, Popular Movies, Trending Now. The users can filter the choices using language, genre, and more. The Tata Sky Binge app aims to remove the hassle of maintaining different OTT subscriptions and brings it under one app. 

The Tata Sky subscribers who already have a Binge subscription on Fire TV Stick or Binge+ set-top-box can log in via subscriber ID or mobile number to access the Binge mobile app as well.

Also Read: Tata Sky Binge+ Review: Does it bring the best of OTT and live TV in one package?

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Apple TV app now available on NVIDIA Shield, Android TV

The Apple TV app is now available for Android devices. Previously, the app was available on Select Sony BRAVIA Android TVs. Now it looks like more Android TV users will get access to the Android TV app. During the NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti and 3070 Ti announcement, the company announced that the Apple TV app is available for the NVIDIA shield. 

On its official blog NVIDIA writes, “Starting today, SHIELD owners can access the Apple TV app, including Apple TV+, and its impressive lineup of award-winning series, compelling dramas, groundbreaking documentaries, kids’ shows, comedies and more”.

But the NVIDIA shield is not the only Android device to get access to the Apple TV app. According to 9to5Google, “Starting today, Apple TV is available for the “Android TV OS ecosystem,” Google tells us. This means that any modern Android TV device can access the service. The list includes your traditional streaming box/stick including the likes of Xiaomi as well as TVs from TCL, Hisense, and other brands.” 9to5Google continues to say that, “any Android TV device running 8.0 Oreo or higher that’s not an operator-tier device has access to Apple TV starting today”. We have a Sony BRAVIA W950C with us running on Android TV 8 and as of writing this story, the app is not available on that TV. 

The Apple TV app is available on the Google Play Store but is currently not compatible with any of the Android devices we have. We will have to wait and see if the app is available in the coming days. We will look into devices like the Mi Box 4K (review) and other Android streaming devices to check if the app is available. 

The Apple TV app is available outside of Apple devices. We have seen the app on select Sony TVs, the AmazonBasics Fire TV (review), Select LG TVs running WebOS and Samsung Tizen TVs. On the streaming dongle front, the Amazon Fire TV Stick (review) and Fire TV Cube (review) have access to the Apple TV app.   

Users who purchase an Apple device get 1-year free access to Apple TV+. After the free trial, the service is priced at Rs 99 per month. Apple TV content is available in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. In addition to Apple’s streaming service, the Apple TV app also lets users rent and buy movies, similar to Google Play Movies.

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Garena teases Free Fire x Street Fighter V crossover in July

Garena has announced a global collaboration with notable game’s developer, Capcom. As part of the collaboration, popular Street Fighter characters, Ryu and Chun-Li will make their way to the game. As with other collaborations, the event will come with interface reskins, activities, collectibles and more.

“Street Fighter revolutionised fighting video games. It is a franchise many of us grew up with, playing as its iconic characters like Ryu and Chun-Li,” said Harold Teo, Free Fire Producer at Garena. “Bringing a part of Street Fighter into Free Fire and welcoming Ryu and Chun-Li to Bermuda is something our players will enjoy.”

Free Fire x Street Fighter V: Release date

The Free Fire x Street Fighter crossover will start from July onwards. This means that players will have to wait another month for the crossover to begin. 

Free Fire x Street Fighter V: What to expect

Garena didn’t reveal much about the crossover. But judging by past crossover events, we can hazard a guess at what it has to offer. This would include Ryu and Chun-Li outfits that players can unlock. It should also offer weapon bundles with Street Fighter themes. There should also be emotes that players will be able to get. These emotes will somehow be connected to Street Fighter, so one can assume they will allow players to emote their favourite Street Fighter moves like the Hadoken and Shoryuken.

For the month of June, Garena has also teamed up with McLaren. This crossover event will see McLaren vehicles make their way to the game. This includes the McLaren P1 supercar and a special car called the MCLFF, which stands for McLaren-Free Fire. This is McLaren’s vision for Grand Prix racing and takes inspiration from the MCL35M, the current F1 used by McLaren this season. You can learn more about that here.

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Older Need for Speed games delisted from stores, online play to shut down on Aug 31

Fans of classic Need for Speed games were in for a surprise today, and not of the pleasant variety. EA, the developers, and publishers of the popular racing game series have announced that some older Need For Speed titles will be removed from digital storefronts. This includes Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed, and Need for Speed The Run

Need For Speed Delisted: What’s gone

Besides the games themselves, players will also no longer be able to access the in-game stores. This means that players will no longer be able to make any purchases. It was also noted that owners of the game will still be able to race online, but only till August 31, 2021. That’s when the developers will no longer offer online services. From September 1st onwards, owners will be able to play their games, but will only be able to access the offline content. 

The post on the official Need for Speed Reddit forum notes, "Decisions to retire games are never made easy, but we are now shifting gears to focus on the future of Need for Speed. The development teams and operational staff have put a lot of time and passion into the development, creation, release, and upkeep of the game over the years, and we love to see you play. But the number of players has come to a point where it's no longer feasible to continue the work behind the scenes required to keep Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Undercover, Need for Speed Shift, Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed, and Need for Speed The Run, up and running.”

The developers note that they will now focus on newer titles like Need for Speed Most Wanted (2012), Need for Speed Rivals, Need for Speed (2015), Need for Speed Payback, Need for Speed Heat and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered.

Need For Speed Delisting: FAQs

How does this work?

Well, those who have already bought the game will still have it in their library and will be able to play the offline mode whenever they want. However, players will no longer be able to play these games online post August 31, 2021.

How can I buy the games now?

Buying digital copies of the game is no longer possible, However, players will still be able to purchase physical copies of the game. It should be noted that these copies will only be able to play the offline content. The in-game store, as well as online content, will not be available.

Perhaps the biggest example of game delisting of P.T, the 'Playable Teaser' for Konami's then-upcoming Silent Hills game. P.T was directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro and was extremely well received. However, due to the fallout between Kojima and Konami, the game was delisted from the PlayStation Store, and only those 

You can check out our review of NFS: Heat here.

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Alienware x15 R1, Alienware x17 R1 Gaming Laptops Launched With Thin Chassis, New Cooling Technology

Alienware x15 R1 and Alienware x17 R1 gaming laptops have been launched with thin chassis and a next-generation cooling technology. The laptops also come with 11th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors.

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COMPUTEX 2021 - AMD unveils 3D V-Cache technology bringing L3 Cache on Ryzen CPUs to 192 MB, 15 gaming performance improvement

AMD’s COMPUTEX 2021 keynote saw many key product announcements including upcoming Ryzen 5000 series APUs, mobile Radeon RX 6000M GPUs, collaboration with Samsung for their Exynos mobile processors which will incorporate Radeon RDNA2 GPUs and lastly, FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) which is AMD’s answer to NVIDIA’s DLSS feature. While each of these were notable announcements, the most surprising announcement – 3D V-Cache – was left for last and it’s all about boosting the L3 Cache of AMD Ryzen processors. 

3D V-Cache is an implementation of the 3D packaging technology by TSMC called 3DFabric which was announced back in August 2020. 3D packaging technologies allow silicon manufacturers to stack multiple silicon chips on top of each other and save space on the substrate. You could stack any sort of chiplets onto another, so you could add more processor dies if heating isn’t going to be an issue or stack memory on top of processor dies. It also helps to ensure that existing components within the PC ecosystem don’t need to be massively overhauled to ensure compatibility with processors. AMD or TSMC isn’t the only one with 3D Stacking technology. Intel had already unveiled Foveros in 2019 and we’ve also seen its implementation in Lakefield processors built for thin-and-light form factors. 

AMD 3D V-Cache - Boosting L3 Cache to 192 MB

AMD is using 3D V-Cache to stack SRAM onto the CCDs in their Ryzen processors as well as for their HPC products. This allows AMD to increase the L3 Cache of their processors by a ridiculous amount. Existing AMD Zen 3 processor CCDs can have a maximum of 32 MB of L3 Cache that’s equally available to all cores within the CCD. With 3D V-Cache, AMD can stack an additional 64 MB of SRAM on top of each CCD to take the L3 Cache of each CCD to 96 MB. Which means, each high-end AMD Ryzen desktop processor such as the Ryzen 9 5950X or 5900X can have up to 192 MB of L3 Cache in total. This does not mean that entry-level and mid-range CPUs will not have 3D V-Cache. We’re bound to see a lot more SKUs from AMD in the coming months. AMD CEO also said that this is the “first” implementation of 3D packaging technology leaving room for more surprises in the coming years.

The SRAM cache is being bonded to the CCD directly using TSVs (Through Silicon Vias) and the data rate for these interconnects would be up to 2 TB/s. Since the stacked SRAM adds to the height of the CCD, additional structural silicon is added on to either side to increase the height of the entire CCD and make it uniform. At the end, a CCD with additional SRAM stacked onto it using 3D V-Cache will look the same from above. Moreover, the structural silicon would ensure proper heat dissipation since it will be connected to the IHS (Integrated Heat Sink). 

AMD also stated that this particular packaging technology allows for more than 200x interconnect density when compared to 2D packaging technologies, more than 15x density compared to 3D microbump technology (which is akin to how Intel’s Foveros is implemented) and more than 3x interconnect efficiency compared to microbump technology. Intel’s upcoming 12th Gen Core processors codenamed ‘Alder Lake’ are rumoured to employ Foveros stacking technology. So AMD and Intel could both release desktop processors with 3D Stacking technology later this year.

The same 3D V-Cache technology when implemented on AMD’s EPYC server processors such as the EPYC 7763 could see up to 768 MB of L3 Cache. This makes a lot more sense in HPC applications since servers tend to deal with a lot of high-bandwidth big-data applications which can benefit from a much larger L3 Cache. 

15% more gaming performance with 3D V-Cache

AMD showcased a prototype which was built on the AMD Zen 3 based Ryzen 9 5900X (12-Cores / 24-Threads) with an L3 Cache of 192 MB thanks to 3D V-Cache. When put through a few gaming workloads, the prototype Ryzen 9 5900X managed to get an average performance improvement of 15 per cent over a normal Ryzen 9 5900X.

In Gears 5, the two processors were locked at 4.0 GHz and the vanilla 5900X scored 184 FPS whereas the 3D V-Cache enabled prototype scored 206 FPS which works out to 12%. AMD also shared a few additional graphs showing FPS increases in games such as DOTA 2 (18%), Monster Hunter World (25%), League of Legends (4%) and Fortnite (17%).

3D V-Cache enters mass production this year

At the COMPUTEX 2021 keynote, AMD CEO also announced that volume production of AMD products incorporating 3D V-Cache technology would begin in August 2021.

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