Hasta La Gadget!

You had to expect that as the 3DS got closer to its global release, stray units would manage to break out of Nintendo’s manufacturing fortress and dash out into the wild. We already saw one such escapee earlier this month and, if we’re not terribly mistaken, that very same unit has now gone through the ritual of having its body disassembled for the sake of curious 3D gamers everywhere. There’s little to thrill the superficial viewer — we already knew about the 1300mAh battery, for example — but maybe you’ll care to scrutinize the silicon more closely. If so, the source link is your nearest and dearest friend.

[Thanks, Adam]

Alleged Nintendo 3DS roams the wild, gets thoroughly dismantled originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re looking to get your motion-controlled gaming fix, there are plenty of ways to go — cameras, electromagnets and accelerometers, for starts — but most figure you’ll buy a single peripheral, a few plastic accessories, and call it a day. That’s not the Aiken way. North Carolina startup Aiken Labs wants to sell you a set of tiny boxes that you can stick on any body part or toy you own, each with a full inertial measurement package (three-axis accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope) inside. The boxes connect to a base station over 802.15.4 wireless that doubles as a USB recharging unit for the lot, and you can connect up to eight modules to track 24 degrees of freedom at a time. It’s not an elegant solution, to tell you the truth, particularly given the hacked-together nature of the prototype devices we saw on the CES 2011 floor, but we love the idea of simply affixing a box to a helmet to get instant head-tracking support in our favorite PC titles. Inventor Chris Aiken tells us a starter set will ship for about $300 with two sensors and the base station in the second quarter of this year — additional sensors should run $100 each — and you can see what it looks like in a video right after the break.

Continue reading Aiken Labs shows off modular motion-sensing game kit, we give it a swing (video)

Aiken Labs shows off modular motion-sensing game kit, we give it a swing (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on July 23, 2008 by CyberNet.

I’m sure that most of you have heard about Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE video game service that lets players compete against each other over an Internet connection. Similarly Microsoft also has a Games for Windows LIVE service that will let you play against other people on your PC, and starting today the service is being offered to consumers for free. Previously this costed $49.95 per year, unless you were already an Xbox LIVE subscriber.

Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t even know about LIVE for Windows games. The fact is that the service hasn’t really taken off on Windows despite its overwhelming success on the Xbox. Heck, it’s been out for over a year and there are only 11 LIVE enabled games for Windows right now:

• Battlestations: Pacific
• The Club
• Fallout 3
• Gears of War for Windows
• Halo 2 for Windows Vista
• Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
• Lost Planet Extreme Condition – Colonies Edition
• Shadowrun
• Universe at War: Earth Assault
• Viva Piñata for Windows
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

So why haven’t Windows game developers been taking advantage of the new technology? What I’ve heard is that they too had to pay in order to incorporate the LIVE service in their games, but that’s no longer a problem. Microsoft has decided to drop all costs for developers as well, which means Games for Windows LIVE is free for both consumers and developers!

This is a very intelligent decision by Microsoft. I have quite a few friends who have been thinking about switching to a Mac, but since they play lot of games on Windows they don’t want to deal with the hassle of switching between multiple operating systems. This is going to be yet another thing to keep the gaming community tied to Windows.

[image via Wikipedia]

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We said we’d bring you an Verizon LTE speed test on the Acer Iconia Tab A500, but we can give you better than that — here’s a test of latency in cross-platform online multiplayer gaming and a FiOS app that streams live television. Hosting a game of Dungeon Defenders on an Alienware M11x laptop (also connected to LTE), Verizon joined the party with an Acer Iconia Tab, and a pair of the slates were able to go head-to-head in a peer-to-peer Asphalt 5 race over LTE as well. What’s more, the carrier showed us an experimental version of its FiOS DVR Manager app, which streamed live television to the Iconia over LTE — similar to what we saw on the iPad. Unlike the games, it was choppy and took some time to cache, but we’ll have to see what it’s like when (or if) it’s finalized. Of course, if you had just clicked the play button on the above video instead of reading these words, you’d already know all that.

Eyes-on: Verizon LTE gaming and live TV on the Acer Iconia Tab (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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