Hasta La Gadget!

I’ve long believed that touchscreens leave a certain something to be desired when it comes to playing games, and if a new (and very curious) report holds true, Apple may feel the same way. According to PocketGamer.biz’s Jon Jordan, Apple has been meeting with developers on-site at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to talk about a forthcoming Apple game controller.

Jordan’s multiple developer sources claim that the Cupertino company has booked a meeting room under an assumed name to talk about the game-centric device, though they weren’t able to shed any light on what the thing will look like or when it will actually see the light of day. That said, Apple is expected to hold an iPad-centric event in April so it’s possible that this controller may be officially unveiled in just a few weeks.

At first glance, the prospect of Apple churning out a game controller of all things seems downright silly, but after chewing on it for a while the notion doesn’t seem quite as outlandish. You’d be hard-pressed to think of OS X as prominent a platform for gaming as Windows is (though some big-league developers are working to change that), but iOS plays home to a staggering number of games and it’s not inconceivable to think that Apple would want to enhance the sorts of gaming experiences available to iPhone, iPod and iPad users. As such, a game controller seems like the sort of thing that Apple would agonize over getting right, and it appears that Apple may have been doing just that.

In the site’s 2012 review of the 3rd generation iPad, AnandTech’s Anand Lal Shimpi and Vivek Gowri let slip a tantalizing tidbit when discussing the iPad’s faculty as a gaming machine: ”I know of an internal Apple project to bring a physical controller to market, but whether or not it will ever see the light of day remains to be seen,” the review reads.

What’s more Apple has been seen bulking itself up with patents that relate to a potential gaming push for at least a few years now. This patent from 2008 describes an accessory that wraps around a portable electronic device with touchscreen (sound familiar?) and includes a standard D-Pad and button, while this one spotted in 2012 takes a slightly different approach. Either way, these patents plus the AnandTech comments make it rather clear that Apple has been mulling over a physical game controller (or something like it) and it may be time for those ambitions to come to fruition.

I’ve reached out to Apple, but the company has declined to comment.

(Also, here’s hoping it looks nothing like the Pippin controller pictured above.)

GDC 2013 has been pretty eventful all week long, and a lot of announcements have been made on new hardware and video games. However, AMD made an appearance but didn’t quite announce anything, but they did tease their new Radeon HD 7990 graphics card, which has unofficially been out on the market from a few third-party vendors, but AMD has never made it official.

The company made the new graphics card official earlier today, unveiling the official design of the card during a press conference at GDC 2013 (seen above). Little else is known about the new card, though. However, game developing studio DICE has admitted to using the HD 7990 card for its 17-minute Battlefield 4 preview that we reported on a couple days ago.

Other than a few pictures that we were treated with, nothing else was said about the specs of the card, other than that it’s a dual Tahiti card. However, the photos do give away some clues about the card itself. First off, the card has a complete open-air cooler, as opposed to previous dual-GPU cards sporting full blowers. This means that your computer case will have to be particularly well-ventilated and breezy.

There are also two 8-pin PCI-express connectors, which means that the power rating probably hovers around 375 watts, so you’ll definitely need a fairly robust power supply in order to get feed an adequate amount of juice to this bad boy. Other than that, AMD said that the card will be coming soon, but no word on an official release date.

[via AnandTech]

AMD Radeon HD 7990 makes an appearance at GDC 2013 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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This week on the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast we celebrate episode number two of everyone’s favorite audio file! We also talk about 3D printing, the Ouya console, and the Facebook Fone AKA the FF.

This week we are joined by our quiet intern, Michael Seo.

We are slowly by surely working the kinks out of this process, so bear with us. However, we invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and appreciate all those who listened to our inaugural effort last week. 17,000 listens is nothing to sneeze at and we sincerely love you for putting up with us.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
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Intro Music by Rick Barr.

The Boxee Box came out in November 2010, which is eons ago in gadget time. Since then, there has been a new Apple TV, two new flagship Rokus, and even a new Boxee. The king of the streamer world is now the $100 Roku 3. Still—this absurdly shaped open-source streamer has quite the following, and that’s because it’s the last major set top box to embrace a maximalist, open philosophy: wanna plug in a hard drive and play some Xvid files? Sure! Channels for MLB.tv, or Netflix or Youtube? Got ’em. Hey, want to catch some over-the-air television? You can do that with a $50 dongle. More »

I’ve never been a fan of Hello Kitty, the little kitty turns up on some things that are cute and cuddly and others that are just plain bizarre. We’ve seen the kitty adorn everything from adorable flash drives, to creepy chainsaws, to Darth Vader in the past. One of the strangest uses for Hello Kitty I’ve seen comes in the form of a cartoon that’s coming to The Hub Network. The cartoon has a working title called KISS Hello Kitty.

The series will be based on the oddly successful KISS x Hello Kitty line of products from Sanrio. I don’t exactly think KISS when it comes to kids’ entertainment programming. However, many of the cartoons on TV today aren’t aimed at kids in the least.

The cartoon series will follow four KISS x Hello Kitty characters living the rock ‘n roll dream. The series is currently in the initial stages of development with Gene Simmons slated to be one of the executive producers on the show. There is no indication yet when the show will air.