Hasta La Gadget!

When the new SimCity game launched earlier this year, it caught a huge amount of flack for requiring an Internet connection to play and bunch of server issues that prevented many gamers from playing for a long time. Those launch woes are behind the game now, and Maxis has announced its first expansion pack is coming on November 15.

The expansion pack will be available for PC and Mac gamers and is called SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow. The expansion pack is set 50 years in the future from the original game and brings a number of new technologies and planning techniques for your cities. Keep in mind that game does still require an Internet connection to play.

One of the complaints of the most recent SimCity was that larger maps were needed to allow people to build bigger cities. The expansion pack doesn’t expand the city size, but does introduce MegaTowers that allow players to build their cities vertically. The expansion also includes an exclusive disaster and a new villain in the form of a corporation that strip mines resources and pollutes the environment.

[via Eurogamer]

The 2013 American Customer Satisfaction Index report for Household Appliance and Electronics has been issued this week, showing Apple to continue to lead the pack in Personal Computers as has for a decade. This honor appears to be running above the industry average, with a total score of 79 shown for satisfaction in Personal Computers […]

Rockstar Games will be releasing Grand Theft Auto 5 on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 tomorrow, but if you’re a PC gamer, your time with the game is currently unknown as the company has yet to announce if they have any plans at all to bring their open-world crime simulator to PC. A petition was created to hopefully push Rockstar to announce a PC version of Grand Theft Auto 5 late last year, which at last count, passed the 200,000 signature mark. Today, we’re hearing that number has risen to over 350,000 signatures. (more…)

GTA 5 PC Petition Jumps Up To 350,000 Signatures original content from Ubergizmo.

Reports of Moore’s Law’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. In its opening Developers Forum keynote presentation at San Francisco’s Moscone West Center today, Intel unveiled its newest class of minuscule Quark processors. And at 14nm, the Quark could well make most any device smarter.

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Sorry NVIDIA, but it looks like the Shield is already obsolete. It’s not because of the Ghetto Shield, it’s because of the Cross Plane. Developed by three videogame console modders who founded a new company called Advanced Gaming Innovations (AGI), the Cross Plane streams HDMI input from and sends controller output to a PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and the Ouya. Yep, you read that right.

As you can see, the Cross Plane looks a lot like the Wii U Game Pad. It’s 1.5″ thick, 5.5″ tall and 9.5″ wide. It has a 7″ 1280 x 800 screen, two 25mm stereo speakers and a headphone jack. The red block you see sticking out of the Cross Plane’s back is a cartridge called the Control Pak. That cartridge doesn’t contain a game; rather it contains the hardware that makes the Cross Plane compatible with a gaming device. In other words, there’s an Xbox 360 Control Pak, a PC Control Pak and so on. AGI is also working on making the Cross Plane work with the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

The last component of the Cross Plane is a wireless HDMI transmitter and receiver, where you’ll plug in the HDMI cable from your PC or console.

As you may have guessed, the Cross Plane can only stream games within a local Wi-Fi network, but that’s to be expected. Perhaps the Cross Plane’s only weak point is that its battery only lasts 4 hours.

Pledge at least $349 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Cross Plane as a reward. That’s right, for just $50 more than the Shield you get a device that is far more versatile and possibly future-proof, thanks to its cartridge based hardware. If AGI does make it compatible with the next generation consoles I am definitely going to buy a Cross Plane.

[via Ubergizmo]