With iOS 5, Apple is extending Airplay to any third-party app, allowing iPhones and iPads to serve as wireless game controllers for the Apple TV.
Although we’ve known about this since the summer, Real Racing 2 developer Firemint is showing off something new: split-screen gaming on the television, with up to four players racing at the same time.
Microsoft isn’t disrupting the cable industry by bringing subscription TV to the Xbox 360. It’s hardly even disrupting the cable box industry. Still, this could be the start of something big.
Verizon, Comcast and other television providers around the world are partnering with Microsoft to put pay TV programming on the Xbox 360 this holiday season, but the content will be limited compared to what cable subscribers already get through their cable boxes. Verizon’s bringing a “selection of popular live TV channels,” and Comcast is only offering on-demand shows. A smattering of other individual channels and services, including Bravo, EPIX and HBO Go, are tagging along.
The Indian government has succeeded where so many iPadversaries of 2010 failed: It actually delivered on its plans to launch a cheap tablet.
Sure, the Aakash tablet took longer than expected. And at a $45 unit price from U.K. manufacturer DataWind, it’s more expensive than the $35 prototype the Indian government showed off in July 2010. But according to the Times of India, it’s still the world’s cheapest tablet, and it’ll be commercially available for around $60 in November. (The $45 version is going to 100,000 students in India for free as part of a pilot program.)
When I think of Flash gaming, I usually picture colorful sprites on 2D backgrounds in games like FarmVille and Bejeweled. But that may change with Epic Games bringing its Unreal 3 engine to Adobe Flash.
During Adobe’s MAX conference, the two companies demonstrated Unreal Tournament 3–originally a PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 title–running inside a web browser. Scads of modern games are based on Unreal Engine 3, including hits like Mass Effect and Epic’s own Gears of War series, and Flash 11 will be able to tap the hardware acceleration necessary to run these games within a browser.
Spotify is giving users an option to turn off automatic Facebook sharing, for all those times you want to jam out to Kenny G without everyone knowing.
As Business Insider reports, “Private Listening” disables Facebook’s new “Add to Timeline” feature, which automatically shares users’ listening habits with their Facebook friends. Private listening does nothing for people who haven’t opted into sharing with Add to Timeline, but for users who usually want to share, this option allows them to temporarily go dark.
Verizon Wireless’ 4G upgrade for the Motorola Xoom tablet was supposed to arrive during the second quarter of this year. It will finally be available Thursday, two days before the fourth quarter begins.
The upgrade process from 3G to 4G is inconvenient. Xoom owners must ship their tablets away for six business days, and are encouraged to back up any personal information on the device before shipping.
But buyers knew about the hassle going in. What they didn’t know was that Verizon Wireless and Motorola wouldn’t be good for their word. First, the upgrade date slipped to the late summer, and then September, with neither company saying it was sorry for the wait. And then Motorola and Verizon have the gall to put out a cheery press release that acts as if the delay never happened.
I agree with Computerworld’s JR Raphael, who wrote on Twitter that Xoom owners deserve some free credit, a free accessory, or at the very least, an apology. But I’m not surprised that Xoom owners are getting nothing. This is, as Harry put it, the era of beta hardware. Gadget makers have no qualms about selling unfinished products with vague promises of eventual fixes. If you get fooled into buying a half-baked Android tablet, well, shame on you.
(UPDATE: The Xoom 4G upgrade page says users who upgrade now can get a free dock–a $35 value–“while supplies last.” The offer wasn’t mentioned in the press release or on the upgrade page until it went live on Thursday, but it does take some of the sting out, provided there are enough docks to go around. Thanks to commenter Steve Landsberg for pointing it out.)
Amazon Kindle Fire tabletAfter months of hype, Amazon today announced the Kindle Fire, a 7-inch tablet with a $199 price tag. Amazon also refreshed its line of e-readers with a $149 Kindle Touch 3G, a $99 Kindle Touch without 3G, and a non-touch $79 Kindle.
The pricing alone is sure to spook both Apple and Barnes & Noble. Here are the details on the Amazon Kindle Fire and the new Kindle e-readers.
In February 2010, before the iPhone had any well-established rivals, Nokia and Intel announced a little open-source operating system called MeeGo, intended for phones, tablets and netbooks. A lot’s changed since then, but today, Nokia shipped its first and only MeeGo-based phone, the N9.
The N9 is an anomaly among smartphones based on new software. Unlike, say, the Palm Pre with WebOS or the Blackberry Playbook with QNX, the N9 isn’t supposed to be the start of something big. It’s actually the end of something small–an experimental device built on abandoned software. Earlier this year, Nokia committed to focusing on Windows Phones, phasing out Symbian and casting aside MeeGo as “an opportunity to learn.”
At first glance, CityVille’s arrival on Google+ seems like good news for the social network. CityVille is Zynga’s most popular game on Facebook, and among the 18 titles currently on Google+ Games, it’s a standout alongside Angry Birds and Bejeweled Blitz.
But with CityVille, Google+ Games is no more exciting than it was last week. The game already launched on Facebook nine months ago, so unless you’ve got some grudge against Facebook and have been holding out all this time, CityVille+ doesn’t offer anything new.
Google may not realize this because it’s new to gaming, but it won’t get anywhere by pursuing Facebook’s leftovers. What it really needs–as any new gaming platform throughout history has needed–is a killer exclusive. Something that everyone wants, but no other platform has. The social network’s equivalent to Super Mario Bros., Halo or Uncharted. A system seller.
I have a feeling this game won’t come from Zynga, a publisher whose biggest innovations in social gaming are behind it, and whose main interest will continue to be in Facebook as long as that’s where the users are. For that matter, no major social game publisher is likely to create the killer exclusive that Google+ Games really needs.
But somewhere, there’s a developer with amazing ideas that could innovate social gaming in unforeseen ways. Maybe it’s an industry veteran-turned-indie game maker, or a small developer that lacks the resources to pursue its vision, or an up-and-coming studio like Mojang. In any case, Google needs to be on the hunt for this developer, and this idea, if the company is at all serious about gaming on Google+. The platform doesn’t need CityVille. It needs the next FarmVille–figuratively, of course.
Facebook’s f8 conference started off on a light note, with Saturday Night Live star Andy Samberg doing his best Mark Zuckerberg impression, but the conference quickly got down to serious business with some big changes for the world’s biggest social network.
With a huge smile on his face, Zuckerberg showed off a new kind of Facebook profile, called the “Timeline.” Think of your Timeline as a digital scrapbook that builds itself automatically through your activity on Facebook. Photos, app updates and other Facebook activity assemble in reverse chronological order, forming what Zuckerberg described as the “story of your life.” Whatever details are missing, you can add manually.
