Post Tagged with: "Gaming"

Alienware refreshes M14x, M17x, and M18x gaming laptops

Gallery Photo: Alienware M14x, M17x and M18x 2012 models hands-on pictures

They might look just like the same Alienware gaming laptops that went on sale last year, but the M14x, M17x, and M18x are getting some pretty major additions for 2012. Each laptop now has an mSATA slot for a solid state drive for a variety of new storage configs, and Bluetooth 4.0 now comes standard on every model. Klipsch speakers aren’t the only audio perk this time around: now, all three laptops have a dedicated Creative Sound Blaster chip on the board, and THX TruStudio software. And of course, they’re getting some serious gaming firepower in Nvidia’s new GeForce 600 and AMD’s Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs.

The new 14-inch M14x R2 will have a bona fide 28nm GeForce GT 650M GPU with up to 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory, up to 16GB of RAM,…

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April 19, 2012 0 comments Read More

Why Xenoblade Chronicles represents the past, present, and future of Japanese gaming

This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer.

If you want to know where Xenoblade Chronicles came from, you need only look toward two sources. There’s Monster Hunter, which is the inspiration for seemingly every modern JRPG from Dragon Quest IX to more blatant knockoffs like God Eater. And there are MMORPGs, which have come to exercise a great deal of influence over Japanese gaming culture as a whole.

Xenoblade Chronicles, and Monster Hunter too, are like this for a reason. Work and school start early and end late in Japan, and any time at home is usually either devoted to the family, or sleeping. Many gamers have migrated to manga cafes, which have been dominated by MMORPGs like Lineage for about a decade now. MMOs have in turn influenced loot-centric cooperative handheld games like Monster Hunter, which serve as the other alternative for busy students and salarymen.

This trend presents a dilemma for Japanese developers. Japan simply can’t get enough Monster Hunter and its ilk, which is all the more reason for developers to keep cranking them out. Global audiences, however, have been slow to embrace co-op RPGs. That’s where Xenoblade Chronicles comes in – an RPG with all the trappings of an MMO or a Monster Hunter, but wrapped in a traditional, single-player JRPG.

Gallery: Xenoblade Chronicles

Continue reading Why Xenoblade Chronicles represents the past, present, and future of Japanese gaming

Joystiq Why Xenoblade Chronicles represents the past, present, and future of Japanese gaming originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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April 18, 2012 0 comments Read More

CryENGINE 3 gives us a glimpse at the future of gaming [video]

Devices like Apple’s iPad have shown the world that huge advances have been made in mobile gaming over the past few years. Featuring the Apple A5X processor with quad-core graphics, the third-generation iPad takes mobile video games to new heights on iOS devices, but technology blogs and the media tend to get a bit carried away in terms of comparisons between console gaming and mobile gaming. Gameplay itself paints an obvious picture, and the numbers do as well; Microsoft’s 10-year-old Xbox 360 console features floating-point performance of 240 Gflops and 500 million triangles while Apple’s brand new iPad is rated at a maximum of 7.2 Gflops and 35 million triangles.

The next-generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles currently being developed by Microsoft and Sony will make the disparity between these two classes of gaming even more vast, adding more fluid animation support and a number of additional enhancements that will make video games more realistic than ever. But even when confined to the capabilities present in today’s home consoles and PCs, new video game engines show us just how amazing gaming will be moving forward.

Ctytek, the lab behind the popular Crysis franchise, recently released the CryENGINE 3 SDK 3.4.0 DX11 update for developers as well as with a quick reel to highlight some of the engine’s capabilities. Along with companies like Epic Games, Crytek continues to push the envelope while enabling other developers to do the same, and this latest release will set the bar even higher. Crytek’s video trailer follows below.

BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech

April 16, 2012 0 comments Read More

Valve job listing points to hardware plans for ‘whole new gaming experiences’

Yes, there are employees at Valve right now who are working on some form of gaming hardware. What that gaming hardware is, however, remains to be seen. A job listing discovered by Engadget this week offers more clues as to what that hardware could be, specifically pointing to job skills like “hardware design, prototyping, testing, and production across a wide range of platforms.”

Getting more direct, the “electronics engineer” position entails working “with the hardware team to conceive, design, evaluate, and produce new types of input, output, and platform hardware.” Wait, platform hardware? That sounds an awful lot like the Steam Box rumors we heard earlier this year (rumors that were later semi-shut down).

But don’t get your hopes up just yet – just because Valve is experimenting with different types of hardware doesn’t mean that it’s looking to produce a piece of consumer hardware any time soon. We’ve reached out to Valve for further clarity, but aren’t expecting much beyond silence.

Joystiq Valve job listing points to hardware plans for ‘whole new gaming experiences’ originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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April 13, 2012 0 comments Read More

Origin PC upgrades EON15-S and EON17-S gaming laptops with Ivy Bridge-ready chipset, prices start at $1,525

Origin PC EON15-s

Origin PC has joined HP in the march towards Ivy Bridge, announcing today that its EON15-S and EON17-S gaming laptops now support the Intel HM77 Ivy Bridge chipset — though the new chips still aren’t available. The EOS15-S starts at $ 1,561 with a 2.5GHz Core i5-2520 processor, the new GeForce GTX660M GPU (based on the 28nm Kepler design), a 250GB hard drive, 4GB DDR3 RAM, and a 15.6-inch screen. The EON17-S starts at $ 1,592 with the same specs as its sibling and a larger 17.3-inch screen. Both models come in black, red, silver, or custom colors, and are available now.

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April 8, 2012 0 comments Read More

Trampoline gaming system could reduce strain while encouraging exercise

Trampoline Gaming

Natural user interfaces abound of late, but the trampoline-based gaming system below is one of the most fun we’ve seen. Designed to “make exercise less intimidating” and reduce injuries from moving around on a hard floor, the trampoline is placed on top of infrared range sensors that can detect heel and toe movement. A separate sensor in front of it detects which direction the player is turned. Using this information, the game interprets how to move the in-game point of view. Continuous left-right movement, for example, is interpreted as walking forward, and jumping is translated onto the same action on-screen.

The University of Tsukuba research group that’s building the trampoline interface says it’s intended for groups that may not…

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March 30, 2012 0 comments Read More

Xbox 360 used more for video and music apps than for gaming

More than half of the time people spend on Xbox Live is devoted to watching videos and listening to music, Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi told the Los Angeles Times. “What we’re seeing is that people are turning on the Xbox to play games and then keeping it on afterwards to get other types of entertainment,” Mehdi said.

The Xbox 360 isn’t a gaming console; it’s now officially an entertainment center that includes games, and it’s becoming more popular with this angle. Today households spend an average of 84 hours a month playing games and using other apps on Xbox Live, up 30 percent from a year prior. To compare, the average household watches 150 hours of TV each month.

Even before Kinect, a tool that has always made more sense as an entertainment control rather than a gaming one, Microsoft has wanted the Xbox 360 to be “the heart of connected digital entertainment,” as HBO senior vice president of consumer technology Otto Berkes put it.

Today Microsoft added MLB.TV, HBO GO and Comcast Xfinity TV apps to its lineup, which already includes Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, Zune, Last.fm and others.

Joystiq Xbox 360 used more for video and music apps than for gaming originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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March 27, 2012 0 comments Read More

Digital Storm announces Aventum: a $3,800+ boutique gaming PC with an original chassis

Gallery Photo: Digital Storm Aventum press pictures

Plenty of companies are happy to piece together a gaming PC using off the shelf components, but very few build their cases from scratch. That’s what Digital Storm claims it has done with the Aventum, a powder-coated, anodized aluminum and steel chassis filled with the latest PC gaming components and some pretty snazzy cooling solutions to go with them.”It’s the first time a boutique builder such as us has created a high performance PC to our own specifications,” CMO Harjit Chana told us, “we designed everything down to the custom control module circuit board.”

Not only does the massive case have the company’s proprietary “Cryo-TEC” liquid cooling system, which allegedly sends sub-zero liquid to remove heat from the CPU, but it removes…

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March 27, 2012 0 comments Read More

The Art of Video Games exhibition gathers 40 years of gaming history

The Art of Video Games Exhibition Teaser Video

Whether your tastes fall along the lines of Zaxxon, Super Mario World, or Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, you’ll find games you love at The Art of Video Games exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibit takes a look back at the last four decades of gaming as a creative medium that transcends traditional disciplines to create an entirely new form of artistic expression altogether. Focussing on 80 different games chosen by a public vote, the show presents its subjects via videos and still images alongside interviews and commentary from some of gaming’s greatest designers. Playable copies of five different games are also part of the show, including Super Mario Bros., Myst, and The Secret of Monkey Island. The exhibit also…

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March 17, 2012 0 comments Read More

Kickstart a gaming history book, have dinner with Molyneux (and more)

Rusel DeMaria’s High Score: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games is one of the most seemingly ubiquitous volumes in the “canon” of writing about games — you’ve definitely seen that cover before, right? Well, it’s not as ubiquitous as we thought. It’s out of print.

DeMaria is working with a publisher to release a 3rd edition of the book, updated with “expanded coverage and insight into the period roughly from 2000-2011.” But he needs money to fund the 4-6 months of intensive research and possible travel required to get the book up to date. And for that funding, he has turned (of course) to Kickstarter.

Contributions will earn backers potential copies of the book, along with various optional bonuses. The $ 250 tier includes dinner with your choice of classic gaming personalities: Shiny Entertainment (and Gaikai) founder David Perry, Oddworld’s Lorne Lanning, composer Tommy Tallarico, Trip Hawkins of EA, 3DO, and Digital Chocolate, John Romero, Will Wright, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, and many more.

Joystiq Kickstart a gaming history book, have dinner with Molyneux (and more) originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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March 16, 2012 0 comments Read More

Post Tagged with: "Gaming"

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