Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve heard anything about the upcoming “game changer” title set to be produced by Bungie over the next 10 years in installments with Activision, you know that it certainly wouldn’t make sense for the whole series to be appearing on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In fact the first installment will be on those two consoles, but essentially everything afterward has been confirmed in legal documents to be hitting no less than the PlayStation 4, the Xbox 720, and the PC. The information that reveals said bits and pieces comes from a Call of Duty legal dispute where the contract between Activision and Bungie had to be unsealed.

The full document comes from The LA Times but the important section is right here. You’ll find “Destiny Game #2″ to be the subject of production on the PlayStation 4 and Personal Computer, while the Xbox 720, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 are being set for the Destiny Game #1 release. This means – it would seem – that the PlayStation 4 won’t be ready for action in time for the release of the first Destiny Game.

The folks at Bungie have been longtime Xbox developers having made one of the most successful gaming franchises in the history of the world with Halo, so it’s not out of the question that they’re simply going to hit the Xbox 720 first even if the PlayStation 4 will be out “in time” for one of the first Destiny installments. The fact that the first release is set for pre-order right this minute for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 has us wondering, on the other hand, how this contract figures in with the PlayStation event occurring this week – could it be that no PlayStation 4 will be shown?

Have a peek at the Destiny trailer above and see how the PC and mobile platforms – like the iPhone, in this case – will very obviously be taking part in the overall structure of Destiny and its many tendrils. This game will not be limited to one platform, nor will it be dependent on one piece of hardware for you to be able to play it. This is the next generation in gaming made real – anywhere, anytime. We wouldn’t be surprised if this game were playable on NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD before all is said and done.

Destiny set for Xbox 720, PlayStation 4, and PC in 2014 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

At the end of this month, February, Buffalo is set to release the new HD-GDU3 series of hard disk drives in 1, 2, and 3 terabyte sizes. Not big news until you look at the copy speed. These nifty drives with DRAM cache are set to push copy speeds over USB 3.0 to 2.3 times faster for Windows users while Mac users will see an increase of 1.6 times over the competition. At a transfer speed of 408.1mb per second, that should let you copy 1,000 digital photos in a mere 3.5 seconds.
Make sure your …

We all know that, generally speaking, buying the newest top-end part gets you the most performance. But in most cases, the premium you pay for that part covers a whole lot of other stuff as well that has no bearing on frame rates or video encoding times. We’re talking about the added cost of covering research and development, product marketing, lower production yields, etc. That high price also includes a vanity tax, if you will-the extra charge incurred by folks who simply want to have the latest hardware, hot off the fab, for bragging rights. More »

As Tim Cook spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this week, a question of “cannibalization” came up, prompting the Apple CEO to speak about the first time he’d ever been asked such a question. Believe it or not, it wasn’t when the iPad mini was introduced – it wasn’t even when the iPhone or the iPod nano was introduced. In fact it was back when the iBook was revealed back in 1999.

The question asked of Tim Cook was about market share – about what the trade-off is for working to keep a product like the iPad the hero of the market. Cook made it clear – Apple is here to win. Cook noted that “the truth is the first time I got asked about cannibalization was when Apple came out with the iBook. Portables went on to be three quarters or more percentage of the Mac and Mac did an all-time record last year.” Cook made clear that information like the analysis reported last month that the iPad was 1 out of every 6 PCs sold in the fourth quarter of 2012 is particularly striking.

Cook continued, speaking about the iPad: “If you look at when we came out with iPad, what did people worry about: they worried, oh my god you’re going to kill the Mac. The cannibalization question raises its head a lot. The truth is, we really don’t think about it that much. Our basic belief is, if we don’t cannibalize, someone else will.” Continuing to speak on the market working with PCs and computing power in general, Cook spoke: “In the case of iPad particularly, I would argue that the Windows PC market is huge and there’s a lot more there to cannibalize then there is of Mac, or of iPad.”

Note also that the iPad mini has been projected to both cannibalize AND drive iPad sales through 2013 – doesn’t seem possible, does it?

Then came the big hit – a gouge at future companies looking to swallow up the industry by following alone: “I think if a company ever begins to use cannibalization as a primary or even a major factor of what products to go to, it’s the beginning of the end.” Have a peek at the timeline below for more information on what Tim Cook spoke about at the conference and be sure to hit up our massive Apple portal for more iPhone, iPad, and Mac than you can handle!

Apple CEO: “if we don’t cannibalize, someone else will” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The analysis group Canalys has released a report detailing how they’ve run the numbers on the PC market for the fourth quarter of 2012, discovering that when the iPad is included in those numbers, they take 1 out of every 6 units sold. This report details PC shipments across the whole world for the fourth quarter of 2012 and makes it clear that while worldwide shipments of PCs did go up 12% year-over-year, it’s Apple’s iPad that seems to be making the most significant dent. Apple also leads the PC market in general.

With a fourth quarter worldwide sales mark of 134 million units for PCs, it was Apple who came out on top in several ways. Apple keeps the number 1 spot in this market analysis with 27 million units and kicking back a 20% share overall – that’s the most it’s ever had, mind you. In second place was HP with 15 million PC units shipped and Lenovo with just 200k unit sales difference – both vendors work now with an 11% share of the total worldwide PC sales market.

For the first time in the top five in the history of the time Canalys has been analyzing such things, Samsung has broken into the top 5 for PC sales worldwide, edging out Dell with a 9% share – that’s 11.7 million PCs. It’s worth noting that Canalys has seen neither the launch of Windows 8 or holiday sales (in Europe and/or the USA) have a real effect on worldwide shipments of PCs.

On the other hand, Canalys notes that the “pad” segment (tablets, that is), grew 75% this Q4 2012 up to 46.2 million units. This jump combined with the rest of the year sales put the pad segment at 114.6 million units over the past four quarters. Apple specifically saw continued growth driven here in the pad category with their new iPad mini. Canalys notes that in addition to appearing to swallow up a bit of their own potential full-sized iPad sales, Apple has been cannibalizing PC sales on the whole with the iPad mini. That’s one beastly little “pad”.

[via Canalys]

Canalys: iPad was 1 of ever 6 PCs sold in Q4 2012 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.