- Early Black Friday deal drops Samsung’s Odyssey Ark 55-inch gaming monitor to lowest price yet XDA Developers
- This Skytech gaming PC deal could be the best offer you’ll see all year – pre Black Friday deal PC Guide – For The Latest PC Hardware & Tech News
- Whoa! Lenovo just slashed $600 off this RTX 4090 gaming laptop before Black Friday Tom’s Guide
- Save 32% on Dell’s 32-inch 4K monitor with narrow bezels and picture-in-picture support Neowin
- Stunning LG monitor just got even more affordable in pre Black Friday Amazon deal PC Guide – For The Latest PC Hardware & Tech News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: ARK
Cathie Wood’s ARK sells 135K Coinbase shares as price hits $90 – Cointelegraph
- Cathie Wood’s ARK sells 135K Coinbase shares as price hits $90 Cointelegraph
- Cathie Wood’s Ark Offloads $12M Worth Of Bitcoin-Linked Stock Amid 10% Rally On CBOE Tie-Up – ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARCA:ARKF), Coinbase Glb (NASDAQ:COIN), ARK Innovation ETF (ARCA:ARKK) Benzinga
- Coinbase stock has been surging. Cathie Wood’s flagship fund makes its first sale in nearly a year. MarketWatch
- Cathie Wood’s ARK Sells $12M Coinbase Shares as COIN Nears Yearly High CoinDesk
- What’s Going On With Coinbase Stock Tuesday? – Coinbase Glb (NASDAQ:COIN) Benzinga
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Bitcoin ETF race gets hotter as ARK Invest adds surveillance agreement to application – Cointelegraph
- Bitcoin ETF race gets hotter as ARK Invest adds surveillance agreement to application Cointelegraph
- Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin Rise After Fidelity ETF News: Analyst Says King Crypto Poised To Touch $40K I Benzinga
- ARK Invest Gains Edge In Bitcoin ETF Approval Race With New Surveillance Agreement | Bitcoinist.com Bitcoinist
- BlackRock has ‘50% chance’ of getting spot Bitcoin ETF approved: Analyst Cointelegraph
- Cathie Wood’s Ark made this change to bitcoin ETF Filing. Here’s why it matters MarketWatch
- View Full Coverage on Google News
ARK: Survival Evolved to Ascend to PS5 in August, No Upgrade Path for Existing Owners – Push Square
- ARK: Survival Evolved to Ascend to PS5 in August, No Upgrade Path for Existing Owners Push Square
- Ark 2 is delayed, so they’re turning off Survival Evolved’s official servers and charging $50 for a remaster Rock Paper Shotgun
- Ark: Survival Evolved servers going offline in August to make way for Ark: Survival Ascended VG247
- Ark 2 Delayed Again, to 2024; But a Next-Gen Version of the First Game Is Out in August IGN
- ARK: Survival Ascended announced for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC; ARK: Survival Evolved servers to shut down in August Gematsu
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Weirdly, The GTA Remaster Devs Fixed The Worst Switch Port
Back in 2018, the Switch received one of its worst and most unplayable ports in the console’s history, a remarkable distinction given how many rough games are on the platform. You might know it, as it’s a pretty popular first-person open-world survival simulator called Ark: Survival Evolved. Now four years after its initial release, Ark has a new Switch port using a newer version of Unreal and it might be one of the most impressive upgrades to a Switch game I’ve ever seen.
There have been some miracle ports on the Switch. Games like The Witcher 3 and Doom 2016 not only look nice on the aging portable hybrid console, but also play well, too. That’s not easy to do, mind you. The Switch is old and not very powerful, so getting modern, big, fancy-looking 3D games running on it is challenging. I mean, even Nintendo-published games like the new Pokémon struggle on it. So it’s not surprising that for every miracle port there are a dozen bleh ports of big games. But then there are the truly abysmal ports, the ones that make you wonder why they even got made. And perhaps the worst of the worst is 2018’s Ark: Survival Evolved.
Ark on Switch in 2018 wasn’t just bad, it was really, really terrible. Many websites and critics have called it one of, if not the, worst port released for Switch. It featured incredibly low resolution and a horrifically bad framerate, with tons of stuttering and hitching.
Even when it ran well, it looked like shit, with lots of blurry objects and fuzzy shapes floating around. Some of these, apparently, were meant to be dinosaurs or trees. It was hard to tell. This Digital Foundry video from 2018 is a great look at the port and how poorly it played. Fast forward a few years later and now this month a brand new version of the popular survival game is out on Switch. And folks, it’s kind of impressive how much better things are.
Eurogamer and Digital Foundry took a look at this new port and talked to the developers behind it. Apparently, the entire game has been rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal 4. In fact, according to the devs, nothing from the original game remains. Instead, this port is based on a newer Xbox build of the game. New port developer Grove Street Games (yes, the same people behind the hated, wonky GTA Trilogy remasters from last year…) is also using dynamic resolution scaling to help things look sharper and run better on the Switch.
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The new port of Ark features nicer-looking shadows and less pop-in thanks to new tools available in UE4. Even better, the infamously long loading times have been cut down to only around 30 seconds. That’s still a lot, but consider that in the original port it could take up to nearly three minutes. So yeah, big improvements all around.
To be clear: This is still a rough way to play Ark: Survival Evolved compared to more capable platforms. Of course, playing the game on newer more powerful consoles or a beefy PC will provide a much better experience. But for folks who prefer portable gaming or who only have a Switch, it’s nice to see a publisher go back and spend the money and time to completely fix and replace a bad port with something much better. This isn’t something you see very often and even if the new port still has its own issues, the new version is a night-and-day improvement that should be applauded.
Ark: Survival Evolved – Ultimate Survivor Edition is out now on Switch and is available to previous owners of the old port for free. Maybe The Outer Worlds can get a better port next?
Samsung’s $3,500 Odyssey Ark gaming monitor is now on sale
Samsung’s behemoth Odyssey Ark, a $3,500 55-inch curved gaming monitor, is going on sale today after a few weeks of being available for preorders. And — somewhat shockingly, given how gaming launches have gone in the past few years — you may actually be able to just walk into a store and buy one. Checking stock at our local Best Buys, several Verge staff members found that stores had one or two models available for pickup today.
To be clear, I’m not saying that you should casually spend a month or two’s rent on a mini LED gaming monitor that’s the size of a decent TV. In fact, it feels a little bit wrong that it could even be that easy — there have been nine months of hype building around the Odyssey Ark since its CES 2022 debut, and it’s such a bonkers product that it feels like you should need permission from someone to get it. At the very least, your chiropractor should have to sign a note saying that you understand the risks of using a computer monitor capable of completely towering over you.
With that said, I totally understand if you find yourself puzzling out how much you’d get for selling your car and then trying to figure out how you’d get the Ark’s undoubtedly massive box home. (The solution to that, by the way, is just ordering it from Amazon.) But maybe try to resist the call of the void on this one, at least until we’re able to properly review it — Samsung’s similarly outrageous 49-inch Odyssey G9 has found a home on several editor’s desks, but this takes things to a perhaps unconscionable level.
My colleague Cameron Faulkner has spent a little time with the Odyssey Ark, but it’s going to take a lot more testing to determine if something this massive in both price and size is actually worth it versus, say, just buying an LG OLED TV and plonking it on your desk. However, one of those wouldn’t come with Samsung’s Gaming Hub built in, which lets you connect to game streaming services like GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud Gaming without the need for anything but your monitor and some kind of input device (though let’s be honest, anybody buying the Ark probably has a pretty beefy gaming setup to go along with it).
There will be some who give in to the temptation; in fact, the Best Buy closest to me now says that I’d have to wait until Saturday to do an in-store pickup for the Ark, even though there was one available for pickup when I looked earlier this morning. That means that someone in Spokane has dropped $3,500, plus 8.9 percent sales tax, on this monitor. They may even be gaming on it as we speak. If that was you and you end up reading this, please reach out and tell me what your thought process was and how the Ark is treating you so far. (Also, do you wanna hang out? Yes, I’m only interested in seeing your monitor, but I’ll bring Pizza Pipeline or something to make it up to you.)
Cathie Wood has a simple response to Tesla getting booted out of an S&P 500 ESG index: ‘Ridiculous’
Cathie Wood isn’t pleased about one of her most popular investments, Tesla Inc., being excluded from a prominent index that tracks eco- and socially friendly companies.
“Ridiculous,” was essentially Wood’s terse response to news that the S&P 500 ESG Index has dropped Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker Tesla
TSLA,
-6.80%
from its lineup, as a part of its annual rebalancing.
Read: Tesla dumped by S&P ESG index and Musk cries label is a ‘scam’
“While Tesla may be playing its part in taking fuel-powered cars off the road, it has fallen behind its peers when examined through a wider ESG lens,” wrote Margaret Dorn, senior director and head of ESG indices, North America, at S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a blog post dated Tuesday.
The announcement from S&P Dow Jones Indices might come as a shock to some, given that the vehicle manufacturer is seen as a pioneer of producing EVs for the masses, perhaps laying the groundwork for large manufacturers such as Ford Motor
F,
-5.54%
and General Motors Co.
GM,
-5.96%,
who are racing to compete with Tesla in EVs on a bigger scale after badly falling behind Musk & Co. in the low-carbon category.
Dorn makes the case that a couple of the factors contributing to Tesla’s exclusion were “a decline in criteria-level scores” related to its low-carbon strategy and its “codes of business conduct.”
Tesla has been one of the biggest and most successful investments for Wood, the CEO of ARK Investment Management, whose bullishness on disruptive companies like Tesla helped propel her to fame on Wall Street.
However, Wood’s flagship fund has been unhinged by the downturn, which has capsized much of the market in growth-oriented, technology and tech-related investments.
Wood’s flagship ARK Innovation ETF
ARKK,
-4.43%
has tumbled about 74% from its peak back in mid-February 2021, and is down more than 56% thus far in 2022.
Tesla’s stock has fallen more than 42% since its recent peak in early November. Shares of the EV maker are off 33% so far in 2022.
Meanwhile, Ford and GM’s stocks are both down by about 38% year to date, with the S&P 500
SPX,
-4.04%
down almost 18% so far this year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-3.57%
off more than 13% and the technology-laden Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
-4.73%
down 27%.
Musk also had thoughts on Tesla’s exclusion from the ESG index:
Worth a read: A ‘summer of pain’? The Nasdaq Composite could plunge 75% from peak, S&P 500 skid 45% from its top, warns Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd.
Amazon bans over 1 million Lost Ark bot accounts
The popular Korean MMO Action RPG Lost Ark launched to an international market last month and posed an unfamiliar challenge to developer Smilegate; the record-breaking success it garnered was a surprise to both Smilegate and Amazon Games franchise leader Soomin Park alike. An official forum post from the team acknowledged botting is a “growing issue” and detailed the recent large-scale ban wave.
“Our team has been hard at work on crafting effective tools and methods to identify and remove bots from the game. As a result of this work, today (3/4) we will be permanently removing over a million illegitimate accounts from the game that have been determined to be running bots,” read the post.
Due to the size of the ban, the Lost Ark team also noted some innocent people might have been inadvertently caught in the deluge; if this is the case, submitting a ticket to their support site will solve the issue.
The team went on to reaffirm their zero tolerance attitude toward cheating. In an effort to assuage all fear, Smilegate has assured us of their continued commitment to making Lost Ark as fair and fun as possible. The game went from a positive rating to a mixed rating on Steam due to the longer queue line, but recent Twitter feedback directed at the official account would suggest this problem has improved a great deal.
“Looking ahead, we will continue our work on detecting and removing botting, cheating, and harmful behavior from Lost Ark at scale, which includes expanding our anti-cheat tools, improving bot identification methods, and rolling out more ban waves as frequently as is necessary.”
Lost Ark saw a historic high on Steam; it became the second-highest played game on the platform with a concurrent player record of 1.3 million.
Lost Ark won’t increase Europe Central server capacity • Eurogamer.net
UPDATE 22/02/22: Amazon Games has responded to player disappointment in Lost Ark server capacity.
In a statement sent to Eurogamer, it confirmed that the Europe Central server won’t see increased capacity, but the newly created Europe West server is easing congestion. Below, the statement in full:
“Lost Ark has become more popular than we ever could have anticipated, scaling to 800k concurrent players in 17 minutes and 1.3m in 24 hours. This is the balance of bringing great games to new territories – new surges in demand can also bring new, unforeseen challenges. Given the complexity of the systems that have to work together, adding more capacity in the ‘Europe Central’ data centre is not an option. Instead, Smilegate and Amazon Games partnered to deploy a new data centre for European players in just five days – ‘Europe West’ – to respond to the regional demand. To further clarify, the terms ‘Europe Central Region’ and ‘Europe West Region’ are the names of specific data centres, and do not refer to the geographical region of Central Europe.
“Since opening four days ago, the new ‘Europe West Region’ data centre now houses just under 20 percent of our Europeans players and is growing every day. We know queue times are very frustrating for our players, and we are encouraged to see this new data centre has already reduced peak queues by 48 percent. We’re monitoring this number closely while continuously working to further improve queue times.”
ORIGINAL STORY 21/02/22: Lost Ark won’t be increasing its Europe Central server capacity any further.
European players of the new MMO ARPG have been experiencing long queue times since launch.
In a new blog post, the game’s development team acknowledged issues but confirmed there’s nothing they can do.
“We know that players are still experiencing long queues in Europe,” the blog post explained. “The Europe Central region is at capacity and unfortunately there is no way to increase the number of players per world in Europe Central. Adding more servers is not possible based on the complexity of all the systems that need to work together.”
The Europe West server has been created to account for the game’s popularity. However, there is currently no server transfer functionality meaning this new server is only an option for new players or those willing to lose their progress.
“We definitely hear the request for server transfer functionality and have thoroughly investigated our options,” reads the blog post. “This instant functionality does not currently exist in Lost Ark. This service just rolled out in Korea and is a weekly batch process that requires maintenance to run. It also does not support cross region functionality. Therefore, unfortunately, it is not a viable option at this point for the western version – but we will not rest until we’ve exhausted all options.”
Further improvements are also in the works.
Maintenance was performed on the Europe Central servers at the weekend to improve matchmaking, a critical feature that many have had issues with.
We will be performing maintenance on the Europe Central Servers today at UTC 11 PM/00AM CET and expect the maintenance to last approximately 2 hours.
Thank you very much for your patience.
— Lost Ark (@playlostark) February 20, 2022
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Gold sellers spamming chat will be banned as the team work on improving in-game moderation tools. Changes are also in place to prevent fraudulent purchases, including a system to track the legitimacy of a player account and a limitation on daily purchases per account.
Lastly, ongoing fixes for matchmaking errors and store stability issues are top priority.
“We appreciate your patience while we work through these launch window issues. Your feedback and issue reports are extremely helpful and appreciated, as we continue working together to make Lost Ark the best it can be.”
Lost Ark, Smilegate’s free-to-play MMO that’s been brought to the West by Amazon Games, has proven incredibly popular in its opening weeks with the second-highest peak on Steam ever.
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Lost Ark: Steam Review Round-Up
Breakout PC action MMORPG Lost Ark was first released in South Korea all the way back in 2019. Only earlier this month was it finally released in the U.S. and Europe. It’s quickly become one of the most popular games in the entire history of Steam, with over 1.3 million active players last weekend. It’s currently the number-one most-played game on the service, beating out mainstay classics like Counter-Strike: GO and Dota 2. And with that many people playing, you better believe there are a ton of Steam reviews.
Overall, the Steam reviews for Lost Ark have been positive. However as the game has continued to struggle with long server queues in Europe, the Diablo-like MMO’s seen an uptick in negative evaluations. That’s reflected in some of the most popular reviews on Steam, with some players even sharing various recipes for food you can make while waiting to get online. Other reviews comment on how they’ve waited years to play this game, as Smilegate first announced it in 2013. So between that and the server issues, there’s been a lot of waiting.
Many of the reviews, positive and negative both, express how much they enjoy the combat, often calling it satisfying and fun. This is something I mentioned in my first impressions of the game. While it has a bland story, something other Steam reviewers pointed out too, the combat is really the star of the show. The use of “hitstops” and large groups of enemies really helps elevate the action above that of other ARPGs. In Lost Ark you feel super powerful, basically from the start, which is a nice change from how most MMOs go.
Of course, many reviews also reference Diablo. It’s almost impossible to talk about Lost Ark without doing so. In fact, it might be illegal? Everyone else talks about Diablo when talking about Lost Ark so I’ve been doing it too–better safe than sorry. Interestingly, a not-insignificant number of reviews suggest Blizzard should be concerned about how Diablo IV compares to Lost Ark. I’m not so sure about that, but there are probably some lessons to be learned from any game that clicks with so many people so quickly. (Though I think Blizzard has…other things to worry about right now.)
Some Steam reviewers point out that a lot of Lost Ark is very generic and samey, which isn’t wrong. You do spend a lot of time collecting things to take to NPCs and then repeating that over and over. But the numbers go up and that’s fun.
Overall, it seems that things are going well for Lost Ark. Even the spike in negative reviews from angry folks unable to log on seems to be subsiding after Smilegate and its partner Amazon added more servers this week. Will Lost Ark continue to dominate the Steam charts for the foreseeable future? I don’t know, but based on a lot of these reviews, I wouldn’t bet against it.