Hasta La Gadget!

With fewer and fewer computers packing an optical drive, you might be under the impression that the accompanying media is dead. Not if you’re to believe Sony and Panasonic, who are planning to develop a next-gen optical disc with capacity of at least 300GB.

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Arcade fighting game fans are probably well-aware that Capcom is currently working on Ultra Street Fighter IV, but due to lack of staff and a budget, at the moment there are no plans for a Street Fighter V, much to the disappointment of many Street Fighter fans around the world. However while there are no plans for a Street Fighter V, Yoshinori Ono admitted to 4Gamer that he does not want the Street Fighter series to end at IV, although we also acknowledged that creating a new title especially for next-gen consoles could pose a challenge.

According to Ono, “Personally, I don’t want to stop Street Fighter’s main numbered series at IV […] Realistically speaking, developing a title for next-gen consoles requires a huge amount of staff members, and a large sum of money. The issue of money also applies to everyone else, as it’ll be required to invest in a new console, game, and arcade stick.” Of course given that Ultra Street Fighter IV has yet to hit the shelves, thinking about Street Fighter V could be a bit premature, but hopefully the sales of Ultra Street Fighter IV will be enough to convince the executives at Capcom to invest money into producing a sequel.

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | Street Fighter’s Yoshinori Ono Does Not Want SF IV To Be The Last original content from Ubergizmo.

While Nintendo’s 3DS handheld console is certainly doing pretty well for itself now, it did not get off to a good start and saw its price reduced to help boost its sales, and the Wii U isn’t exactly a hot seller at the moment either, but what could be the cause of Nintendo’s troubles? Could it be bad hardware? Lack of games? Lack of appeal to the more hardcore gamer? Well according to Nintendo, it’s none of that. Instead it seems that Nintendo’s executives are blaming the Tohoku earthquake which occurred in 2011 for slowing the momentum of the 3DS.

According to Yahoo Japan News, this sluggish start for the 3DS had a carry-over effect on the Wii U console, which affected the sales of the console. Granted the earthquake had repercussions on not just the daily lives of the people in the area, but also on businesses, but do you think Nintendo is right in blaming the earthquake for the slow start of the 3DS and the sluggish sales of the Wii U? Assuming they are right, does that mean we expect to see Wii U sales pick up in the future?

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | Nintendo Blames 2011 Tohoku Earthquake For Sluggish 3DS And Wii U Sales original content from Ubergizmo.

A few months after introducing its Kirabook flagship, Toshiba is back with some mid-range laptops that bring some of the same understated design elements. The 14-inch Satellite E45t Ultrabook and the 15-inch E55, announced today, have the same pared-down look as the Kirabook, except they’re made of aluminum instead of pressed magnesium, and the bottom isn’t made of metal but rather, textured plastic. The screen resolution is also lower, at 1,366 x 768; these are middle-of-the-road machines, after all. On the bright side, they all support 802.11ac WiFi — of a surprise on otherwise humdrum systems like these. The E45t, which will be sold only at Best Buy and on Toshiba’s site, comes in just one configuration, with a Core i5 Haswell processor and a 500GB hard drive paired with an SSD. Perhaps most interesting, though, is that the E45t will come with Dragon Assistant on board for simple voice commands (think: shutting down the computer, doing a web search, controlling multimedia playback, et cetera). You can expect to find that next week, on August 4th, with a suggested retail price of $818, though a Toshiba rep told us it’ll likely sell for $799.99 once it actually hits shelves. Just a heads-up.

The 15-inch version, meanwhile, will be offered with either a Core i5 processor and touchscreen (that’s the E55t) or a quad-core A6 APU. There are actually two AMD models: one configuration comes with a touchscreen (that would be the E55Dt) and one has a non-touch panel (that’s the E55D). Strangely, the non-touch model also offers lesser storage; that has a 750GB HDD, while the touch version goes up to a full terabyte. Either way, you get a number pad, which you won’t find on the 14-incher, though you’ll be missing out on that Dragon Assistant app with the AMD models. These will be available in September, a little later than the 14-inch model, with the non-touch E55D going for $580 and the touchscreen E55Dt priced at $700. We haven’t yet confirmed pricing for the E55t, that lone Intel-based model, but we’ll update this post once we do.

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The city responsible for the first solar-powered family car and a building shaped like a UFO is no stranger to creativity. Eindhoven, Netherlands was recently named “most inventive city” by Forbes magazine, probably thanks to the High Tech Campus (HTC) research and development center located there. The HTC is the result of the Dutch government’s initiative to bolster high-tech innovation in the region after rounds of layoffs from companies like Philips. Scads of tech firms are holed up within HTC’s walls including IBM, Intel and Accenture, with a focus on open cooperation and sharing of ideas and resources. Apparently, this has paid off in spades. According to the HTC’s website, the campus is responsible for roughly 50 percent of the Netherlands’ almost 10,000 patents each year. Yowza.

[Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons]

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Via: Phys

Source: Forbes