Hasta La Gadget!

In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.

At a rather vitriolic (and frequently profane) presentation given to a small group of frequently bemused journalists (myself included), T-Mobile CEO John Legere laid out the company’s reinvention. In the interest of keeping things PG I won’t repeat the colorful language, but Legere accused the other major carriers of being not only confusing, but also misleading — ignoring the fact that his own company has, for years, enacted the very same policies. No more. It’s time for the UnCarrier to step up.

But, it’s important to note that you’ll be paying full price, or near to it, for your smartphone.

First is a series of contract-free Simple Choice plans, which are similar to those the company offered before. It’s $50 for “unlimited talk + text + web” — though the data use is indeed limited to 500MB. Stepping up to truly unlimited everything is $20 more, which is a fair bit cheaper than the biggest plans from competing carriers. But, it’s important to note that you’ll be paying full price, or near to it, for your smartphone.

Filed under: Misc, Apple, Blackberry

Comments

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

Comments

This year’s Battlefield series entry — Battlefield 4 — is headed to PCs this fall. The game wasn’t given other platforms, but logic dictates it’ll arrive on the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 successor. Apparently, since only Sony’s next-gen console is a known quantity and Microsoft’s staying mum, EA isn’t sharing other platforms yet (but hey, it’s probably PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox). The game’s being built on the latest iteration of DICE’s Frostbite engine, though no other details were given about the engine just yet.

Like previous Battlefield entries, EA-owned Swedish game studio DICE is at the helm, and Battlefield 4 remains planted in current times (unlike the pseudo-future of Call of Duty‘s latest entry, Black Ops 2). A beta for the game will go live some time this fall, and folks who bought last year’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter are automatically part of said beta. We’ll have more info as EA offers it up, but color us not surprised if Battlefield 4 makes a reprise appearance at Microsoft’s still undated Xbox 360 successor unveiling.

Update: EA also released a 17-minute gameplay demo of the game’s prologue section, played on a PC. It features a squad of four soldiers on the run from Russian spec-ops militants in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku. You’ll find it just beyond the break.

Update 2: Per a listing on EA’s digital store, Battlefield 4 is headed to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in addition to the PC. PlayStation 4 is curiously missing, as is mention of Microsoft’s next-gen game console.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD

Comments

Having produced the graphics chips that powered both the original Xbox and the PlayStation 3, it was a surprise to see NVIDIA‘s name left out of Sony’s big PlayStation 4 reveal event last month. But there was AMD, picking up the empty spot left by NVIDIA, powering the PS4 with its 8-core “Jaguar” CPU and Radeon GPU. So, what happened? While we don’t know the specifics of how AMD won the contract, NVIDIA’s senior VP of content and tech Tony Tamasi tells GameSpot that his company, “Didn’t want to do the business at the price those guys [Sony] were willing to pay.”

In so many words, Tamasi says NVIDIA weighed its options against other potential products the company would be working on — rather than producing discreet tech for a single console manufacturer, thus being unable to use said tech elsewhere — and decided against it. “We had to look at console business as an opportunity cost. If we say, did a console, what other piece of our business would we put on hold to chase after that?” he tells the game site.

NVIDIA is indeed working on a variety of new products, including an Android-powered Tegra 4 gaming handheld called Project Shield. That’s in addition to its bread-and-butter business of PC GPU development — the company recently unveiled its Titan GPU, a $1,000 card with enough power to keep your gaming graphics needs met for years to come (or at least we sure hope so at that price).

Filed under: Gaming, HD, Sony, NVIDIA

Comments

Source: GameSpot

The Assassin’s Creed video game series — beyond its trademark murderous historical fiction — is known for arriving in annual installments. 2013 is no exception, with French publisher Ubisoft recently revealing Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, a pirate-centric next entry in the long-running franchise. Unlike last year’s game, which took players through the American Revolution as a half-British / half-Native American named Connor, AC4: Black Flag puts you in his grandfather’s swashbuckling boots as Edward Kenway of The Caribbean. Kenway’s the captain of a pirate vessel known as “The Jackdaw,” which promises a new twist in the AC series: open-world naval combat. While the last series entry teased naval combat, Black Flag is built around that gameplay; AC4 also borrows from recent Ubisoft highlight Far Cry 3, with Kenway battling sharks below water while diving for booty (a takeoff on the hunting found in that game, as well as in the last AC entry).

Of course, the conceit of the AC series has always been that you’re a modern man named Desmond Miles, a member of the ancient Assassin’s Guild, and that you’re experiencing your assassin lineage through a machine called the “Animus” in order to save the world. That story line led Desmond through a variety of eras in previous games, ending with the American Revolution in Assassin’s Creed 3. Without spoiling that game’s final moments, it’s safe to say that Desmond isn’t joining the cast in Black Flag; rather, you’re simply a modern day Templar (the long-running rivals of the assassins) searching for more secrets about the enemy. Ubisoft reps wouldn’t tell us much about how the modern day will play into the new game’s story, but did admit that it’ll play a major role.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo

Comments