Hasta La Gadget!

Epic Games isn’t just offering up its ubiquitous current-gen game creation tool Unreal Engine 3 to Oculus Rift developers, but also its next-gen tool, Unreal Engine 4. Epic Games VP Mark Rein told Engadget as much during an interview at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, repeatedly stating he’s “super bullish” on the Rift, all the while rocking an Oculus pin on his exhibitor lanyard. “Oh, for sure,” he said when we asked about UE4 support for the Rift. “We’re working on that now.” The Rift dev kit was demoed at CES 2013 running Unreal Engine 3’s “Epic Citadel” demo, and Epic’s offered support to the Oculus folks since early on, making the UE4 news not a huge surprise, but welcome nonetheless.

The next-gen game engine was being shown off at GDC 2013 with a flashy new demo (seen below the break), as well as a version of its “Elemental” demo running on a PlayStation 4 dev kit (shrouded behind a curtain, of course). Rein was visibly excited about that as well, unable to contain random vocal outbursts during the presentation. “It’s a war out there, and we sell bullets and bandaids,” he jokingly told us in an interview the following day. The quote comes from coworker and Epic VP of business development Jay Wilbur, and it’s fitting — Epic only makes a handful of games, and the company’s real money comes from game engine licensees. In so many words, the more platforms that Unreal Engine variants can go, the better for Epic (as well as for engine licensees, of course). “It’s a good place to be — we try to support everything we can. We have to place some timed bets on things that we feel are gonna be the most important to licensees, and also to us where we’re taking games. But because the engine is portable — it’s written in C++ — a licensee can take and do whatever they want,” he said.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD

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True, D-Link’s AC1200 may better resemble the container keeping your coffee hot at work than a traditional WiFi router, but it remains a rare take on networking design that’s frankly appreciated. We’re glad to report, then, that it’s shipping to stores. The device (seen in the middle) is the more affordable of D-Link’s two 2013-era 802.11ac routers at its $130 street price, keeping costs in check by peaking at at more modest 867Mbps speed with the new standard and 300Mbps on old-fashioned 802.11n. It still dishes out wireless on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands, offers wired connections to four gigabit Ethernet devices and shares content from drives attached to its lone USB 3.0 port. When devices like the HTC One and Galaxy S 4 are arriving with 802.11ac built-in, we’d say the AC1200 is a timely solution — just don’t pack it with your office lunch.

Filed under: Peripherals, Networking

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Source: Newegg

The GameStick is the second of two Kickstarter-backed Android-powered game consoles announced in the past 12 months, and its arguably the less visible of the two (the other being OUYA, of course). It’s a bit different than the OUYA as well, in terms of both form factor and specs: the GameStick is roughly the size of a USB thumb drive and runs a dual-core Amlogic processor, rather than the Tegra 3 found in the OUYA. Similar to the OUYA, the GameStick also comes with a proprietary wireless controller — the standard four button layout, two analog sticks, two shoulder buttons, and a d-pad make up its inputs — though the GameStick’s controller is actually the bulk of the hardware. The GameStick itself actually nestles into the back of the controller, making the whole bundle rather portable.

But perhaps you already know all of this? We have been hearing about the GameStick for some time now. Should that be the case, you’ll wanna know how the thing actually feels, and we can deliver that just beyond the break, as we’ve just put GameStick and its controller through the paces.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, HD

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Some Pebble owners were understandably perturbed when their smartwatches seemingly went dead after a shutdown — that’s not the best first impression of an emerging technology. Some credit is due for a rapid turnaround, however, as the Pebble team just delivered a 1.9.1 firmware upgrade that should tackle the problem. It fixes a bug that occasionally prevented the microcontroller from reconfiguring itself before the watch went dark, leaving the buttons unresponsive on wake and the Pebble more of a paperweight. You’ll still have to swap out for a replacement if your watch has already fallen ill and won’t recover, but the experience should be more reliable for already functional watches from here on out. Let fellow owners know how well the upgrade worked in the comments.

[Thanks, Daniel]

Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables

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Source: Pebble

Microsoft would certainly argue that its Surface tablet design is iconic. The company is doing more than simply extolling the virtues of kickstands and VaporMg casings, however. It just obtained a trio of design patents that cover both the Touch Cover keyboard and the magnetic coupling on the tablet that so often gives Microsoft something to dance about. You won’t find any deep insights into the technological workings here — still, this might give some would-be Surface KIRF creators a reason to hesitate.

Filed under: Peripherals, Tablets, Microsoft

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Source: USPTO (1), (2), (3)