Hasta La Gadget!

Though it’s not entirely difficult to go ahead and download the software for yourself from your friendly internet browser window, gaming environment Steam will be coming to the Razer Edge gaming tablet built-in, right out of the box. This is a significant move by both the folks at Razer and the members of Valve that’ve agreed to push their Steam app to the hardware right out of the box as it’s the first time said software will have done such a thing.

While the trend amongst those purists in the hardcore gaming community would otherwise have a fit over a so-called Gaming PC coming packed with “bloat ware”, it seems that Valve’s contribution won’t be so ill-fitting.

“The Razer Edge has more than enough power to play the latest and greatest Steam titles and it is completely built with PC gamers in mind. The tablet is a great way to experience everything Steam has to offer, including Big Picture mode.” – Greg Coomer, product designer at Valve

Big Picture mode is a full-screen user interface built in to Steam, available to all desktop app users right this minute – check it out if you haven’t already!

The Razer Edge and the Razer Edge Pro are both gaming tablets working with 10.1-inch displays and Windows 8 inside. You’ll be working with detachable gaming controllers as well as optional keyboard docks and will find yourself paying well over a thousand bucks to gain said privilege. Have a peek at our guide “Razer Edge gaming tablet: What the heck is it?” and see if it’ll be worth dropping either $1,300 or $1,450 USD depending on the options you’d like – go big!

[via The Slanted]

Steam to come pre-loaded on Razer Edge is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It seems like a year ago already, but it’s been only a few days since we wrapped up our inaugural Engadget Expand event. If you weren’t able to join us in person, you missed a seriously good time. Attendees got to take a ride in a Tesla Model S, perform surgery using a da Vinci robotic surgery system and cruise around the show floor on the San Francisco Special edition of the electric ZBoard, which made its debut at the show.

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Valve has just announced a new program in Steam called “Early Access”. This allows gamers to purchase and play games that are still in development. It’s like a beta mode where you test drive the game in its current state, and report bugs and give feedback to the game’s developers. Valve believes this program will help developers form bonds with gamers as well as help them make better games.

Currently, there are only 12 games being offered in the Steam Early Access program. They are: Arma 3 Alpha, Kerbal Space Porgram, StarForge, Kenshi, Prison Architect, Kinetic Void, Gnomoria, Under the Ocean, Patterns, Gear Up: Premium, Drunken Robot Pornography, and 1…2…3… Kick It! etc. None of the games are free-to-play, however in the future, Steam plans on bringing f2p games into the mix.

Developers will offer their games at a discounted price in the Early Access program, so there’s a chance that you can get the game for a much lower-price point than if you purchased it on its official launch date. There may be developers, however, who may charge you a bit extra for the game later on during development, so be warned. Some of these games are only in Alpha mode, while others are more farther along. You have to view the screen shots of the game to see whether or not you’ll find it “playable”.

The Early Access program is a great way for developers to continuously make money for the games while they’re still in the development stages. The feedback from gamers will be helpful in creating the best end-product upon the game’s official release. Developers will be able to see what game features generate positive responses from players, and which features deter them. All in all, we should be seeing an influx of new, great games coming soon.

[via Steam]

Steam offers “Early Access” to developing games is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Valve Software’s experiments with virtual reality, most recently exposed as a “VR Mode” of its popular free-to-play shooter Team Fortress 2, are actually just an offshoot of the company’s longer-term goal: augmented reality. The dozens of AR markers plastered to the three walls of Valve programmer Joe Ludwig’s shared office are testament to that (seen above). “We’re mostly looking at a software level. We’ve talked to a bunch of different display vendors on the augmented reality side, and none of them are quite ready to go yet,” Ludwig says when we prod him for more on Valve’s AR efforts. One thing’s for sure: we didn’t spot any Google Glasses on-site, nor products from other companies producing wearable computers, not to mention in-house glasses.

“We’ve done some gameplay prototypes,” he says. “We’ve done some test pattern type stuff. But that’s basically it. There’s an application that we call ‘Sea of Cubes’ that fills the room you’re in with cubes just to basically test a bunch of different tracking methods and displays.” Thus far, though, Valve isn’t much deeper than that. A variety of different cameras mounted on tripods can be seen throughout Ludwig’s office. A $30,000 3D camera, which looks an awful lot like a giant Microsoft Kinect, sits in one corner. Ludwig tells us it can pinpoint specific objects with incredible accuracy, though he wouldn’t share much more. It’s not clear what all of this means for Valve’s AR work, but it’s clearly still a work-in-progress. Indeed, when the company first started talking wearable computing, Valve’s Michael Abrash called it “more research than development.” So, what fruit has come of that research since last April?

Filed under: Cameras, Gaming, Peripherals, Wearables, Software, HD

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First-person shooters lately have been trying their absolute best to either make their games as visually appealing as possible by creating extremely realistic graphics or by making them stylized. But there’s something about old-school first-person shooter games that even though they look OK by today’s standards, you can certainly enjoy their unique experience. A new mod will soon be released that brings the feel of an old-school FPS to modern-day games.

The mod is called gmDoom and contains a partial source port of Doom that brings its HUD, sights, sounds and weapons into Half Life 2. The results of which is a mashup that any old-school first-person shooter could certainly appreciate. The author of the mod GhorsHammer says this mod will be available through Steam Workshop once all of its bugs have been squashed, which they say should only take a few days. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Grand Theft Auto IV Mod Brings Toy Story’s Woody, Buzz To Liberty City, PS4 Live Stream Drew 8 Million Viewers On Ustream,