Hasta La Gadget!

Google Play, the company’s Android app store, has passed 25bn downloads, and to celebrate Google is running a series of discounts on top titles over the next week. There are now 675,000 apps and games in the former Android Market, Google says, with downloads jumping from the 1bn point in 2010 to a whopping 25bn today. That calls for some significant discounts to mark the occasion.

Google has roped in Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, runtastic, Full Fat, and other developers and studios to run some limited-time offers. Titles will be sold for 25 cents, with a new selection every day; the first batch will be added to the store later on today, Google says.

Meanwhile, there’ll be further price cuts in other types of content. Google will be pushing discounted ebooks, movies, and music, with a collection of promotions like “25 movies you must own,” “25 banned books,” and “25 top selling magazines.” They’re not going to go for $0.25 necessarily, but they will apparently be cheaper than usual.

We’ll be keeping an eye out on the market to see when the first promotions go live.

Google Play celebrates 25bn downloads with $0.25 app promo is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google Play crossed a rather significant milestone this morning: something to the tune of 25 billion app downloads. While the accomplishment is weighty enough on its own — especially given that the store also offers books, music and movies, which aren’t included in this tally — Google is celebrating in symbolic style with a number of apps and games for sale at just $0.25 over the next five days. Among the mix of discounted titles, you’ll find publishers such as Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Runtastic and Full Fat. Not to stop there, shoppers will also discover a curated collection of 25 must-own movies, 25 banned books, 25 albums that changed the world and 25 top-selling magazines.

With today’s announcement, it was revealed that 675,000 apps and games now live in Google Play — a healthy increase when compared to 600,000 titles and 20 billion installs just three months ago. As you might expect, Apple still claims the largest selection with 700,000 titles in its App Store, although with such a thin separation between the two, we may see Google Play eclipse its rival in short order.

Filed under: Software, Mobile

Google Play hits 25 billion app downloads, holds celebratory yard sale with $0.25 games originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not content at stopping with its recent European tour, Google Play Books has made the trip to Japan and brought back a handful of new features. In addition to support for reading Japanese books in a vertical, right-to left layout, Mountain view now lets users tap on names of geographical spots within text and see them pinned to a Google Map alongside the option to find more information using Larry Page’s favorite search engine or Wikipedia. A freshly added translation feature takes user-highlighted words and phrases and spits them out in the reader’s language of choice. Particularly studious literature lovers can now mark up their digital books with notes and highlights that sync to the web and across their personal fleet of devices. A new sepia tone theme also joined the existing day and night views on their journey abroad. Hit the source links below for more details and the download.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Google Play Books app arrives in Japan, adds translation, place info, highlighting and more originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the usual NVIDIA fashion today we have two awesome new games that are launching for Android on the Google Play Store and the NVIDIA TegraZone, exclusively for Tegra 3 smartphones and tablets. NVIDIA has continued to partner with developers and roll out excellent games with stunning graphics and these are no different. The popular PC game Bard’s Tale is making its way to Android, then an exciting new adventure game Fort Courage is launching too. More details below.

Both of these visually stunning new games are launching today, Thursday September 20th, in the Play Store and TegraZone and we have all the details. First we’ll start with Bard’s Tale because for one, it’s awesome, and for two it has some of the best voice-overs I’ve heard in a long while.

Bard’s Tale, from the developers inXile entertainment, you’ll play Bard, a selfish rogue weary of pointless sub-quests and rat-infested cellars. Through song you summon magical characters to join you on your quest for coin… and cleavage! The game is snarky, fresh, and full of comedy. Bard goes on missions all around town, will save the princess if she’s pretty enough, and will battle over 50 different enemies. Bard’s Tale features easily 20-30 hours of deep, fun, and dark humored gameplay. It even has some amazing voice-overs with Hollywood actors such as Cary Elwes.

Bard’s Tale has over a dozen bosses and big enemies to battle, over 150 different unique items such as weapons, armor, tokens, and of course loot. With over 50 achievements, auto-save features, stunning graphics and awesome voice-overs, this game will surely give you fun for the 20-30 hours of game time it’ll take to complete. NVIDIA tells us the Trilogy will be coming to Android soon so stay tuned for more you Bard’s Tale fans! Get Bard’s Tale today right here at the Google Play Store, or NVIDIA TegraZone — priced at $5.99.

Then a second awesome game has also launched for all those Tegra-toting devices. The game above isn’t really for kids perhaps, but this next one surely is. This is called Fort Courage and is from the developers Human Head Studios who brought us Prey, and Prey 2. Fort Courage is an exciting free-to-play 3D adventure of the imagination. You are an imaginative child that falls asleep during class and wakes up in amazing environments full of interaction and 3D movement only available from Tegra 3′s power. Your courage will help you fight off dinosaurs in the jungle, monsters in special laboratories and more.

Fort Courage is available for many Android devices, but Tegra 3 users will enjoy enhanced graphics, more advanced physics, and lifelike movement. Gameplay involves 3 crazy locations, 9 player skins, 10 power-up options, tons of toys for weapons, and over 15 different enemies. While this game isn’t as deep as Bard’s Tale they mention around 80 hours of exciting gameplay to help you pass the time during class.

Fort Courage is completely free-to-play and is available for Android devices today over at the Google Play Store, or as usual from NVIDIA’s TegraZone. For even more awesome NVIDIA Tegra-powered games hit the links below, or take a peek at our Tegra Hub!

Android games Bard’s Tale, and Fort Courage hit the NVIDIA TegraZone is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Earlier today, we brought you the news that Google was planning to launch a Google Maps update for Android to coincide with the launch of iOS 6. In iOS 6, Apple has cut Google out of the loop, instead opting for a Maps app of its own, so it makes sense that Google would want to launch an Android update around the same time that Apple released iOS 6. The only problem was that when Google announced the update, it didn’t give us a specific time for release.

That time is apparently now, as the update to Google Maps for Android has gone live on the Google Play Store. One of the big features in this update is that Google Maps will now sync your search queries and previous maps over multiple devices. This means that when you search for a location on your Android phone, Google will suggest locations and direction data that you’ve previously searched for, allowing you to pull up maps and get directions quickly. Of course, for this syncing to work, you’ll need to be logged into your Google account while searching and have web history enabled, but those are kind of no-brainers in this case.

Users can also access their map and directions history by going into the “Search” or “Directions” tabs in My Places. In addition to giving you the ability to quickly pull up your map history on mobile devices, this Google Maps update also brings a new way to zoom with one hand: just double tap the screen, hold your finger down, and then slide it across the screen to zoom.

In the grand scheme, these features aren’t groundbreaking, but they will certainly have their uses. Making it easier to bring up previous maps and direction data will be considered a godsend by those who hate typing on a small smartphone screen, and these new features complement the “always moving” society we live in nicely. Expect to hear more about Google Maps soon, because with new competition on the scene, you can bet that Google wants to make Maps the best app it possibly can.

[via Google Maps Blog]

Google Maps update for Android available now is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.