Hasta La Gadget!

PC players who love playing on the big screen rejoice, because Valve has officially launched Steam Big Picture Mode. Big Picture Mode has been in beta since September, but now it’s ready for prime time, with Valve rolling the feature out to everyone. For the uninitiated, Big Picture Mode makes Steam and the games it offers compatible with larger screens, meaning you can hook up your computer to your TV and play your PC library from the couch.

It gets even better though, because Valve has decided to celebrate the official roll out of Big Picture with a sale. The sale will be going on until December 10, with all of the games on sale coming with full support for controllers. By “full support,” Valve means that you can use a controller for everything – including the installation process – making them the perfect choice for Big Picture players.

In all, Steam lists 41 games with full controller support, and another 386 games with partial controller support. If you pick up a game with partial controller support, be aware that while they’re compatible with controllers, they may need a mouse and keyboard at times. In any case, there are plenty of games that are primed and ready for Big Picture mode, so you should have no lack of titles to play on the big screen.

Notable titles that have been discounted for this sale include a number of games in the LEGO series, Castle Crashers, Sonic Generations, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, and Braid. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though, with many games being discounted by as much as 75%. Even if you aren’t planning to play these titles in Big Picture mode, this is still a good time to snag a few deals you missed during the Steam autumn sale. Are you planning to take advantage of Steam Big Picture mode?

[via Steam]

Steam Big Picture Mode officially launches, Valve celebrates with sale is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Keeping up with their promise from Friday, Motorola and Verizon have begun rolling out the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update for the DROID RAZR HD and the DROID RAZR MAXX HD. Over-the-air update notifications are slowly hitting users’ devices, and new RAZR owners will finally be able to experience Project Butter, Google Now, and ISIS enhancements.

While Verizon simply said that update would hit sometime this week, we’re glad it’s happening first thing rather than later in the week on a Thursday or Friday. Either way, Verizon is pushing out the update “in phases,” so be patient if you haven’t yet seen the update hit your notification tray — it will come!

The Jelly Bean update comes with Google Now, which offers a Siri-like voice search experience that we really like, as well as Project Butter, which adds a layer of virtual butter to the user interface to make it snappier and smoother to navigate, as well as make it quicker to open up apps and switch between them effortlessly.

The DROID RAZR HD comes with a 4.7-inch 720p Super AMOLED display and runs on a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 1GB of RAM. While the 2530mAh battery may be plenty for most users, Motorola launched the RAZR MAXX HD, which is practically identical to the RAZR HD, except for the larger 3300mAh battery for those who really want to last all day long.

Motorola DROID RAZR HD, MAXX HD Jelly Bean update rolling out now is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

President Obama is answering questions on Twitter. This is what it looks like. Here are his hands—on a keyboard. More »

Sony will be pushing an update to its PlayStation Store tomorrow that will introduce a slew of deals that users will want to take advantage of. One of the better deals, however, is that they’re releasing BioShock 2 to the ever-expanding Instant Game Collection for free this week. The game will be available for free if you’re a Plus member once the PlayStation Store updates tomorrow.

BioShock 2 was released in February 2010, and it’s the sequel to the original BioShock, which featured some of the best gameplay elements we’ve ever seen. All week long, PlayStation Plus users will have the chance to download and play the game for free via the service’s Instant Game Collection.

Other deals for Plus subscribers include a 10% discount on Rockstar Games Collection Edition 1, which is a bundle that includes Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, L.A. Noire, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition. The bundle usually costs $59.99, but Plus members can pick it up for $53.99 — not a huge discount, but better than no discount at all.

Puzzle game Puddle will also be 50% off on both of its platforms, costing only $5 for PlayStation 3 gamers and just $4 for PlayStation Vita users. However, it’s not cross-platform compatible, so if you want the game on both systems, you’ll have to cough up $9 for the pair. Sony has said that they plan to release weekly updates to the PlayStation Store that will include new deals and offers for every week all month long.

BioShock 2 now free to play all week long for PlayStation Plus subscribers is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you thought spelling out childish messages was the only fun you could have with a calculator, think again. Some incredibly talented hacker who goes by the handle Builderboy has written a Portal clone for Texas Instruments Ti-83 and Ti-84 graphing calculators. More »