Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve ever caught yourself wishing that real life was like Minecraft, then boy does Mojang have the app for you. Developed primarily by studio 13th Lab, Minecraft Reality is a new augmented reality iOS app that allows you to drop your most cherished Minecraft creations into the real world. Do you particularly like that towering Pikachu pixel art you made with Minecraft blocks? Why not place it into the real world and see what it would look like if a giant Pikachu invaded New York City?

It’s definitely a cool idea, but there’s more to Minecraft Reality than simply seeing your Minecraft creations show up in the world around you. You can actually walk around them to view them from all different angles, and if your friends have Minecraft Reality installed on their iDevice, they’ll be able to track down your creations and check them out too. That’s made possible by the app’s use of GPS tracking to remember where in the world you placed your creations, which is an awesome feature if you ask us.

You can resize the object before you place it, letting you make sure that it fits in with the surrounding well enough before plopping it down in the real world. The app also comes with a few pre-made models ready to be placed, so you can begin using this app right away even if you don’t have anything of your own waiting to be uploaded. Speaking of uploading, players can head to http://minecraftreality.com to upload their own Minecraft worlds for use in the app. Check out Minecraft Reality in action below.

Minecraft Reality is available now on the iTunes App Store for $1.99 [download link]. The listing on the App Store says it isn’t compatible with the iPod Touch 4G or earlier and that it most of the app’s functionality isn’t available on the iPhone 4, so keep that in mind if you’re planning to buy. Do you think you’ll be picking up Minecraft Reality?

[via Mojang]

Mojang launches Minecraft Reality for iOS is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Colts cheerleader Megan M. is a woman of her word. She’s also a woman without any hair. The Indy cheerleader had her head shaved by Blue, the Colts’ mascot, during the team’s 20-13 win over the visiting Buffalo Bills.

Megan is just the latest member of the Colts’ organization to go bald to show support for coach Chuck Pagano, who has been away from the team battling leukemia during much of the season. Shortly after the players went hairless (or orange) to show support for their coach, who lost his hair while undergoing treatment, Blue tweeted at the team’s cheerleaders and asked if they were willing to do the same if he could raise $10,000 for leukemia research.

Megan accepted the challenge and #OperationShaveMegansHead was started.

Read More…
More on Highlights

In the pre-post-PC era, life was simpler for Nintendo and other successful competitors: Sell console. Sell discs. Repeat until wildly profitable. Six years ago, as Microsoft and Sony were taking part in a game of specification leapfrogging, Nintendo embraced casual and family gaming with the Wii even as it mostly ignored online play and convergent entertainment features. More than half a decade later, Sony has surpassed the original Wiimote with its Move controller and Microsoft has created a motion anti-controller with Kinect, but the Wii retains an advantage in that developers can assume the motion control is there.

Today, everyone in the games business still adheres to the basic notion of compelling software selling hardware, but the source of that software and the manner through which it drives revenue has changed via models such as digital distribution, downloadable content, free-to-play, subscription and advertising. In addition, Nintendo has launched the Wii U into living rooms in which game consoles must compete not only with each other but with Blu-ray players, TiVos, Rokus and Apple TVs for physical connections as well as smart TVs and tablets as other sources of connected entertainment experiences. How it has addressed these challenges reveals much about what the company has held dear from the Wii, what it has reluctantly accepted and what it has now embraced.

Continue reading Switched On: The Three Cs of Wii U

Filed under: Gaming, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo

Comments

The next time you’re having a bit of a bad day, consider this: in a part of the Southern Ocean, sea snails are literally dissolving day by day, thanks to the increasingly high amounts of man-made acidification. Being a little late to that meeting beats being dissolved alive, eh? More »

Faced with an event that negative — a defeat or a failure — a person may claim it to be completely unpredictable, that no one could possibly have seen it coming — a case when hindsight bias seems not only to be absent, but even reversed.
Read More…