Welcome to Thursday evening folks. Today we heard that Samsung may use MWC 2013 to unveil a new Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet, which is certainly exciting to say the least. According to new rumors, Verizon may be shipping the Samsung ATIV Odyssey on January 24, while a new Apple job listing suggests some major Siri improvements coming in the future. Instagram said today that it has 90 million monthly active users who are uploading 40 million photos per day, and even though Intel’s earnings for Q4 2012 were down, the company still managed to pull in $13.3 billion in revenue.
New photos from the incoming Steve Jobs biopic are showing us what John Gad looks like as Steve Wozniak, with Time Warner Cable accusing Netflix of discriminating against its customers today. Carrier-specific Galaxy Nexus phones are getting updates to Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean save for Verizon’s version, while Sony showed off the construction of products that were new to CES in a five-minute video. King.com has unseated Zynga for the top spot on Facebook’s charts, and 13-inch Retina MacBooks are now available in Apple’s refurbished store.
Dish network is asking the FCC view SoftBank’s deal with Sprint as “unripe for consideration,” and Sony announced that Classic White PS3 bundles will be making their way to North America on January 27. Speaking of the PlayStation family, we learned today that the PS Vita can only hold 100 apps, even if there’s room on the memory card for more. Google CEO Larry Page talked about what kind of influence the company has over Motorola, while in the same interview talking about why Google may not exist if it weren’t for Nikola Tesla.
Skype said today that it isn’t helping Facebook with its new calling service, while a new patent suggests that Google Glass could be outfitted with laser-projected keyboards. American Airlines unveiled a new look today, and Temple Run 2 was busy burning up the iOS App Store’s free chart just hours after release. NASA says 2012 was the 9th-warmest year on record since the 1880s, and Valve has announced that it will be showing off a virtual reality port of Team Fortress 2 at GDC 2013. Finally tonight, Don Reisinger asks if Apple doubt is beginning to creep in. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, we hope you enjoy the rest of your night everyone!
Remember the Oculus Rift at CES last week? Of course you do — it was only one of the top stories of the entire show, and we want one pretty badly. Now, Valve is preparing a version of Team Fortress 2 that will utilize virtual reality devices like the Oculus Rift, and the company is planning to show it off at the Game Developers Conference in March.
These two presentations will give developers a rare look into Valve’s game development process, and will provide a better idea of all the successes and failures that the Valve team met along the way. These talks could also provide further insight into the progress that game developers are making with virtual reality games.
Overall, it’ll be interesting to see what Valve dumps on us come late March, and hopefully the ability to play Team Fortress 2 using virtual reality will be available in the near future. With the popularity of the Oculus Rift already at full steam, it should only be a matter of time before we see some awesome games come to the new platform.
Get ready, Steam users, because today’s the day Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition arrives on your digital distribution platform of choice. After a brief period of exclusivity with Beamdog, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is now available through Steam. This should net Beamdog quite a few more sales, considering the amount of people who claim they won’t buy PC games unless they can buy them through Valve‘s channel.
Whether those threats are real or not, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is one title every fan of RPGs should have in their collection. Originally released way back in 1998, Baldur’s Gate in many ways set the standard for computer RPGs, and it’s a title that still has gamers talking today. For this latest release, Beamdog has taken the beloved game and given it a makeover for a new generation of gamers, fixing bugs, adding new areas to explore, and adding support for higher resolutions (among other things).
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is also available on iPad at the moment, and it should be landing on Mac and Android at some point in the not-so-distant future. That’s the hope, at any rate, but ultimately it comes down to when Beamdog feels those versions are ready for release. Once those versions have landed, players should be able to take advantage of cross-platform multiplayer, a feature that has so far been missing from the iPad version.
So, even though this launch has been relatively slow going, it’s good to see Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition show up on Steam. There may be more of these remakes coming up in the future, but all of that is dependent on how well this first Enhanced Edition sells. Keep it tuned here to SlashGear and we’ll let you know when Beamdog announces release dates for the Mac and Android versions – in the meantime, you can pick up Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition on Steam now for $19.99.
If Valve Software’s Team Fortress 2 is anything, it’s versatile. The company’s demonstrating that versatility once more in porting the game to virtual reality goggles, which could result in some serious psychological trauma. Kidding aside, a Game Developers Conference blurb today revealed the internal project — part of Valve’s ongoing wearable computing efforts — which says the talk, “will describe lessons learned from Valve’s porting experience.” In another talk, Valve hardware man Michael Abrash is diving into the possibilities he sees in the future of VR, as viewed through his own company’s experience.
It isn’t clear whether Valve is using the much-loved Oculus Rift technology (seen above); the notes of the second talk only detail a general exploration of VR’s weaknesses and strengths as they pertain to current technology. One thing is clear: both talks aim to educate game developers on what some Valve employees see as a burgeoning new frontier in game development. We welcome this bizarrely sci-fi future with open arms.
Steam Greenlight has been up and running since August 2012, and so far, it seems to be working out at least relatively well. Today Valve announced the fourth round of games to make it through the community voting service, meaning that more than 60 games have now been approved through Greenlight. That isn’t too bad, and if you’ve been gaming for a while, there’s at least one title in this latest round of approvals that you’ll recognize.
Without further ado, here are the ten games that have earned a spot in Steam’s catalog: Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, Asylum, DLC Quest, Eador: Masters of the Broken World, La-Mulana, Leisure Suit Larry, MaK, The Age of Decadence, Unepic, and War For The Overworld. A pair of software titles have also been approved by the community, with articy:draft (a game design tool) and GroBoto (a modeling app) given the go ahead to join Steam’s still-young line up of non-game software.
Of course, just because these games have earned the approval of the community, that doesn’t mean they’ll be available on Steam right away. Valve says that all of these titles will be launching independently over the next few months, so it’s ultimately up to the developers when these games go up on the Steam store. Valve couldn’t get more specific about potential release dates as all of the titles approved are in varying stages of development.
Steam Greenlight launched as part of a larger roll out of new features for the digital distribution service. Around the same time, Valve also introduced Big Picture Mode and launched the Steam for Linux beta. Group those with the revamped Community Hub, and there have been plenty of new things for Steam users to get excited about. Hopefully it won’t be long before Valve is ready to announce the next round of Greenlight-approved games, so stay tuned.
Ultra High Definition TV and — surprisingly — gaming took the spotlight at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Who’da thunk it? Certainly not me, Engadget’s resident gaming dude. But here we are, with NVIDIA’s first game console, Razer’s modular PC rig, Valve’s Steambox prototypes and Xi3’s first example of third-party, Valve-backed Steambox hardware and, and … maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s look back to January 3rd, before NVIDIA’s press conference, before Razer’s Project Fiona unveiling and before Valve surprised us with hardware prototypes. Those were simpler times — times when Valve hadn’t yet launched its multi-front attack on what we’re still calling console gaming. It seemed unlikely that we’d see such a concerted effort to move PC games from the exclusionary world of desks and home offices into living rooms this early in the year. Yet, again, here we are.
The Internet loves a good Half-Life rumor, and this next one seems about as good as any. New images from the ill-fated Half-Life 2: Episode 4, otherwise known as Return to Ravenholm, have surfaced today, years and years after the game was canned. The title was in development at Arkane Studios, but in 2007, the project was left in the dust, so we’re seeing these new images almost six years after the fact.
That is, of course, assuming that these are actual images from the game. They come ValveTime, which doesn’t cite any sources but claims that the shots have been verified to be real. Whether or not that’s actually the case is anyone’s guess, so while you’re checking these screens out, be sure to keep in mind that they may not be the real deal.
In any case, the images don’t show off much, just what kind of textures and environments Arkane was working with before the project went belly-up. They don’t look particularly great by 2013′s standards, but back in 2007, this game wouldn’t have looked half-bad. Savor them, because if these are the real thing, they’re all we’re likely to see from Episode 4 for quite some time, if we ever see anything else at all.
Meanwhile, the Internet is still going nuts trying figuring out when Valve is going to launch the next Half-Life game. We’ve heard rumor after rumor, but so far, Valve has remained tight-lipped and nothing has been officially revealed. With the company staying silent for so long, you’d hope that an announcement would be coming up shortly, but since this is Valve we’re talking about, anything is possible. Check out our story timeline below for the more recent Half-Life rumors.
We’re used to CES being all about gadgets and technology in general, but this year, there were actually a surprising number of major gaming announcements. NVIDIA positioned itself front and center, leading the charge and talking about a number of new products and services that are bound to get any gamer bouncing up and down with glee. Perhaps the biggest reveal NVIDIA’s press conference held was the reveal of Project SHIELD, a new Android-based games console that’s packing the company’s latest mobile processor, the Tegra 4.
While that’s impressive enough, it gets even better: Project SHIELD won’t just play Android games, but is also capable of streaming games over Wi-Fi from a computer outfitted with a GeForce GPU. During our hands-on time with the device, we got to see it streaming Black Ops II to its 5-inch 720p screen, so there’s certainly plenty to look forward to with this new device. The streaming functionality makes a good segway to another major announcement from the company – NVIDIA GRID.
With NVIDIA GRID, we’re seeing NVIDIA enter the cloud gaming space, outfitting its server racks with enough GeForce GPUs to supposedly match the power of 700 Xbox 360s. A number of key players have failed or otherwise stalled out in the cloud gaming space, so it’ll be interesting to see if NVIDIA can excel. The company also gave us more details about GeForce Experience, which will do its best to optimize your graphics settings so that games run as good as they can on your rig.
Of course, the show wasn’t only about NVIDIA. The company made a lot of major gaming announcements – that much is true – but it had quite a bit of competition for gamers’ attention. Razer had its Project Fiona tablet on hand at the show, only now it’s been renamed the Razer Edge. Making use of Intel’s third-gen Core line of processors (with one configuration even sporting a Core i7) and an NVIDIA GT640M LE GPU, this tablet definitely has some stellar hardware. It will also have a number of accessories available separately, including a detachable controller dock, keyboard dock, 360-esque gamepad, and docking station that has all the ports you need to turn your Edge into a mini gaming desktop.
As you might imagine, we found during our hands-on time that playing games on the Razer Edge is a blast, and seeing triple-A retail titles like Dishonored running on it at excellent frame rates certainly was exciting. It seems safe to say that if the Edge catches on with gamers, then we can look forward to a whole new era in mobile gaming.
Archos was at the show, and though it had a number of different devices on display, one of the more intriguing products was its GamePad. The Archos GamePad is another tablet made specifically for gamers, though it comes with a far less expensive price tag than the Razer Edge. As one of the only Android tablets to provide physical face buttons, this makes the tablet a prime choice for people who like enjoy games but hate touchscreen controls. In our hands-on, we said that though you’ll have to map the physical controls for a fair number of Android games, the process seems pretty easy, and should keep the downtime between downloading and gaming short.
Right before Pepcom kicked off, we heard that Xi3 and Valve would be showing off a new product. Xi3 was there in force at Pepcom, showing off its brand new 7 series modular computer, and while we made a few guesses at what Valve would be using it for, in the end it turned out that we were wrong. It would appear that Valve has invested heavily in Xi3′s modular computer to offer set-top “Steam boxes,” meant for gaming and streaming content, so we’ll be keeping and eye on that.
Switching gears completely to move from hardware to peripherals, there were two companies in particular that were showing off new gaming mice. One was Genius, which let us get a little hands-on time in with its relatively new Gila mouse. The Gila comes with a number of accessibility options, letting users program any of the twelve buttons and featuring highly adjustable dpi settings.
Mad Catz is not one to be outdone, however, giving us a look at its new R.A.T.M and M.O.U.S.9 mice. If you’re a serious PC gamer, these mice seem to be aimed directly at you. Both mice are quite similar, with the M.O.U.S.9 being just a bit bigger than its brother. Both have very unique designs as far as gaming mice go, with buttons everywhere on the pair. They each can supposedly boast one year of battery life as well, so that’s something to get stoked about if you’re always on your gaming PC.
In the end, this was actually a pretty big year for gaming at CES. All of the stuff we saw during the show will of course being popping up more and more as the year goes on, and we’re hoping that we’ll get the chance to spend much more time with Project SHIELD, the Razer Edge, and the Archos GamePad soon. Keep it here to SlashGear for more information on all of these cool devices, and in the meantime, be sure to check out our CES portal for our full show coverage.
I lost a bet with myself at CES 2013. In the gaming preview we published ahead of this week’s big show, I wrote, “As per usual, the games industry and CES are acquaintances at best — at least from what we’ve heard thus far. Perhaps this will be the year that bucks the years-long trend, but we’re not betting on it.” Wrong. Wrong. But hey, this is one of those, “glad to be wrong” situations. NVIDIA shocked everyone with its first Tegra 4 device, Project Shield, which is essentially NVIDIA’s first in-house dedicated gaming handheld. Not only does it play Android games, but more importantly, it streams full retail games from your NVIDIA GPU-based PC, all on its high-res 5-inch screen. Heck, it even has Steam’s Big Picture Mode built right in, allowing you to explore Steam and purchase games, as well as push them directly to your television (employing Shield as your controller).
And then Valve’s internal hardware prototypes popped up, confirming what we’ve heard murmurs of for months: the company’s head down on creating a PC for your living room. Not exactly shocking, but certainly exciting; the plans are still nebulous, but Valve’s confirmed we’ll see hardware in 2013. We even saw some third-parties stepping up with their own versions of Valve’s initiative. Xi3’s Piston is the first such creation revealed, though the company’s staying tight-lipped about specs — we do know that Xi3’s working directly with Valve on its tiny, modular PC. It’s barely 2013, and already Valve’s Steambox initiative is dominating gaming news. Let’s call it right here — this is the year that Valve attacks.
Fans of Half-Life 2 know that the Gravity Gun is one of the greatest weapons in the history of video gaming. The idea of a gun that can pick up random objects like sawblades and turn them into projectiles was just brilliant. Well, soon you’ll be able to own a full-scale replica of this great gaming gun.
The guys at ThinkGeek have managed to score a distribution deal for NECA’s limited-edition Gravity Gun (aka the “Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator.”) The full-size replica will include bright orange LEDs, as well as sound effects from the game when you pull the triggers. While it looks awesome, it still can’t actually manipulate gravity like the real gun. Though you could always try this hack once you have it in your grubby little mitts.
It’s coming to ThinkGeek this April, where it will sell for $149.99(USD). While you can’t pre-order one just yet, you can get on the notification email list now if you want to score one of these for your Half-Life 2 collection.
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