Hasta La Gadget!

Just when you thought that the dust had settled at the recently concluded E3 2013 event at Los Angeles, California, along comes Mad Catz’ Android-powered M.O.J.O. micro console which is touted to deliver the mobile Android gaming experience to those of you who have also invested a huge chunk of your spare change to bring home a big-screen TV in order to make your living room keep up with the times. It is said that the M.O.J.O. micro console is capable of packing in the kind of 3D gaming performance that one would not expect in such a tiny box, where it will also establish a direct link to digital storefronts such as Google Play and the Amazon Appstore.

Darren Richardson, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Mad Catz Interactive, Inc., did share his thoughts on what M.O.J.O. might be able to deliver in the future, “M.O.J.O. is basically a supercharged smart phone with no screen that plugs into your flat screen TV to bring the living room experience to mobile gaming. M.O.J.O. is designed to interact seamlessly with our GameSmart controllers, mice, keyboards and headsets, in fact, the entire eco-system of gaming peripherals. We also want M.O.J.O. to be a truly open platform. People are already comfortable buying games from Google Play, Amazon, TegraZone or any other retailer of their choice. They play those games on their phones and tablets already, and with M.O.J.O., they will be able to play them in the living room at no additional cost. The same approach applies to movies, music and any other digital media. Our focus is on providing the best hardware configured for performance, not forcing people to buy content from us.”

Obviously, it remains to be seen whether the likes of Mad Catz’s efforts in the home console market will bear fruit eventually as the M.O.J.O. rolls out to the targeted markets, considering how the Sony PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One from Microsoft look set to take center stage among high powered consoles in the living room, with Nintendo’s Wii U apparently picking up the scraps from the main table once those two have duked it out with one another in a battle royale.

Press Release
[ Mad Catz M.O.J.O. Android gaming console copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

The Xbox One won’t arrive in Asia until a full year after it hits US shelves, Microsoft has confirmed, with gamers in several countries being forced to wait for a “staged approach” as the company supposedly localizes content. Those in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and India won’t get the Xbox One until November

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Let’s say you’re excited about the Xbox One… so excited, in fact, that you’re okay with spending $499 on it before you’ve even touched the gamepad. Microsoft wants to accommodate you: buy a system quickly enough and you’ll get the limited Day One Edition. While the core system won’t change, you’ll get to flaunt your early adopter status through both a slightly customized controller and a special Xbox Live achievement. Microsoft is also offering a matching (though separate) Xbox Live 12-month Gold pass that bundles an exclusive Killer Instinct character. If those rarities are enough to encourage an early purchase, you can reserve one through Microsoft and other retailers. Let’s just hope that there aren’t too many launch day quirks.

Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft

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Source: Xbox.com

The latest product from BlueStacks, the GamePop Android-powered gaming console, will retail for $129 once it exists its free pre-order offer, which is ongoing and will continue through the end of June, the company announced today. And it will launch with a solid line-up of paid gaming titles for the all-you-can-eat subscription fee of $6.99 per month, thanks to newly announced partnerships with COM2US, Korea’s largest game developer, which will have its own dedicated channel in the GamePop menu.

Other newly announced partners included Intellijoy, and education developers that boasts three of the top 10 spots in the education app category of Google Play, which will be adding around $30 worth of software to the subscription package on offer from GamePop. At launch, GamePop plans to have 500 top paid gaming titles available to subscribers, with revenue split 50/50 between itself and those game developers chosen to be included in the roster.

GamePop also shared sparse details about its controller system, which will feature dedicated hardware as well as other mobile devices. I spoke with BlueStacks’ John Gargiulo about the new GamePop announcements, and about the controller in particular.

“It is not what people will expect, it’s much better, we will ensure that the experience is high quality game-by-game,” he said. GamePop will also support using Android or iPhone devices as controllers, via a virtual gamepad interface, and also using “new control paradigms that have recently been made possible,” he teased, though he couldn’t go into more detail about what exactly we’d be seeing in terms of unique control schemes. Most likely gesture-based controls that leverage the accelerometer in those devices will be in play, perhaps providing a Wii-style gaming experience. These will also be tailored to titles game-by-game.

Overall, the game-by-game approach is a key competitive advantage for GamePop, Gargiulo argues. Whereas others like OUYA have put the impetus on developers to bring their software to their platform and tweak it to make sure it fits, GamePop is doing the opposite, and making sure that developers can bring their software untouched to its device. That means devoting more resources from its own team to ensuring the experience is a good one on the console, but it’s a necessary step when you’re asking developers to embrace a new business model, and it’s something that will ultimately help lower the barrier of entry and ensure that Bluestacks can offer as strong a library as possible.

That library needs to include games that people already know and love, Gargiulo believes, and delivering that will be the difference between success or failure in this space according to him.

“What’s really helping us win developers is the fact that we’re using our resources, our funding, our engineering to build all of the IP around their apps and games working on GamePop,” he said. “Whereas, the old school console model, and what others are doing in this space, is asking quite a lot of developers. Developers don’t have a lot of bandwidth, and people are asking them to integrate SDKs, special controls, build special menus and that’s not something we’re asking for.”

Instead, developers are helping cross-promote the console through in-app advertising and other channels, which requires relatively no effort, and, depending on subscriber base, they stand to make a lot more money than they can by offering their titles on a pay-per-install basis. Gargiulo also says that in-app purchase mechanics will remain untouched, and that all proceeds from those sales will go direct to developers (minus the standard Google Play store cut), without BlueStacks taking any cut of the action.

The GamePop is still on track for a Winter 2013 release, the company says, and it arrived at the $129 pricing based on a desire to make sure that it has powerful enough hardware to support the most demanding mobile games, and provide some degree of future-proofing. Its 500-game selection may be subject to future expansion, since they company has seen tremendous developer interest, but will also feature a rotating crop of titles, with under performing games being dropped to ensure players always have access to the top titles.

The next generation of console gaming is upon us. Nintendo has already launched its Wii U, Microsoft’s Xbox One will be launching sometime later this year, and Sony has revealed several details about its PlayStation 4.

But unlike its chief competitors, Sony has decided against showing off the design of its next console. The company announced the device earlier this year, talked about its specs, but wouldn’t show what it actually looked like. And when the console was recently featured in a teaser for the upcoming E3 gaming trade show, Sony once again decided against showing off the device.

It’s not immediately clear why Sony hasn’t shown off the PlayStation 4. The company has, of course, been asked numerous times why it doesn’t want to show the console yet and each time, it has sidestepped the question. The move is unprecedented, if nothing else, and could be either good or bad.

See, now that we have seen the Wii U and Xbox One, the onus is on Sony to shock us. The PlayStation 4’s design can’t be something that bores us or doesn’t have as good a look as its competitors. And by hiding it under a shroud of mystery, Sony is only calling more attention to the console than it otherwise would.

That puts extra pressure on Sony at the E3 gaming show. If the console is truly something that blows our socks off, all the secrecy would have been worth it. But if Sony’s PlayStation 3 ends up being just another black box that doesn’t have anything special built-in and lacks some unique design quality, we’ll all be rather bored. And being bored in the world of gaming is a very, very bad thing.

“To make the discussion all about hardware couldn’t be worse”

Sony needs to take the attention away from its product design and start focusing more on its game library. The move the company should be making right now is to show off the PlayStation 4’s design and be done with it. To make the discussion surrounding Sony’s next console all about hardware couldn’t be worse for the company.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that software sells hardware. The Dreamcast died off because its software library was sub-par compared to that of its competitors. Sony’s PlayStation became such a hit because it had so many games available. The console’s design didn’t really matter all that much.

In this case, I’m going to give Sony the benefit of the doubt. I think the PlayStation maker truly understands the dynamics of the gaming industry and doesn’t want to take too much focus off the games. I believe, therefore, that Sony has something quite special up its sleeve. And rather than just let Microsoft and Nintendo take E3 by storm, it wants to show off something that we’ve never even thought about from a hardware perspective.

Of course, all of that could be wishful thinking. But if history serves us correctly, it tells us that Sony can pull off some miracles. And it needs another one right now.

Why Won’t Sony Let Us See What the PS4 Looks Like? is written by Don Reisinger & originally posted on SlashGear.
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