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by Published on March 11th, 2013 21:22- Categories:
- Android News
New data from Strategy Analytics (via Yonhap News) shows that South Korean OEM Samsung has topped the Chinese smartphone market in 2012, which is said to be the first time it's led the region since it started selling devices in 2009.
The company sold 10.9 million units in China in 2011, while sales rose threefold to 30.06m – 17.7 per cent – last year. Former leader Nokia, however, fell from 29.9 per cent in 2011 to just 3.7 per cent last year, and now sits in seventh place.
Samsung's surge comes as the company continues to be a key player in the global smartphone market to achieve brand recognition, while it's secured partnerships with a number of Chinese networks.
Meanwhile, local vendor Lenovo is number two with 13.2 per cent, up from four per cent in 2011, while Apple is third with 11 per cent, Huawei in fourth with 9.9 per cent and Coolpad 9.7 per cent in fifth.
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...st-time/020820 ...by Published on March 11th, 2013 21:16- Categories:
- Android News
Fans will be able to view the launch of Samsung’s next flagship model live from the Korean firm’s YouTube account.
The event, officially titled ‘Samsung Unpacked 2013 Episode 1’, takes place in New York on Thursday March 14th.
Although Samsung has not officially revealed what will be launched, a series of image and spec leaks, ‘source quotes’, and the fact that the invitation says “Ready 4 the show” and “come and meet the next galaxy”, it seems an almost certainty that the event will be the launch of the follow on smartphone from the Galaxy S3.
Watch the live stream of the Samsung Unpacked event at www.youtube.com/SamsungMobile on March 14th.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...youtube/030476 ...by Published on March 11th, 2013 00:04- Categories:
- DCEmu
We are raising funds to buy the iconic Atari brand, re-launch it, and give it back to you on the GCW Zero portable gaming console.
Atari is the Godfather of gaming. It is an icon that represents more than just a gaming company: it is one of the most recognizable names in gaming history. The company recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its assets are going up for sale.
We believe a new entity could be launched using smart, lean development teams and next generation hardware fit for today’s gaming environment.
GCW Zero is an open-sourced, handheld gaming platform that is creating the next wave of gaming: powerful enough to run classic PC games, emulate the game consoles we grew up with, and run homebrewed games seamlessly at high frame rates.
We want to combine the classic gaming experience of Atari with the awesome power of today’s handhelds - like the GCW.
We need your support and feedback to make this happen.
Please click here to show your support.... ...by Published on March 10th, 2013 21:55- Categories:
- Playstation Vita News
Vita sales were "quite low" in the run-up to Christmas but "absolutely exploded" at the height of the festive season, according to Sony Computer Entertainment UK MD Fergal Gara.Asked how he rated the handheld's performance in its first year on the market, the executive toldMCV: "Vita really, really responded as we went into Christmas."We had a pre-Christmas lull where sales were quite low. But that absolutely exploded 20-fold from that low-point into the peak of Christmas. That's very encouraging and shows that with the right promotion and software we can light that fire."Gara also admitted that the system's software release schedule currently appears light, but promised: "It looks bare in terms of what we have announced. The cupboard won't be bare."In the same interview, Gara suggested that the firm's big PS3 Christmas game, Wonderbook: Book of Spells, didn't perform as well as it had hoped, noting that "it could have sold better".Vita sales rocketed in Japan during the week ended March 3, thanks in no small part to the Vita price cut introduced in Sony's home country on February 28.Asked last month whether a similar Vita price cut is planned outside of Japan, a SCE UK representative told us: "The price cut announced today is for the SCE Japan region only and we have nothing to announce at this time regarding pricing within the our own region."Vita celebrated its first birthday in Japan before Christmas, having launched on December 17, 2011. For a thorough analysis of the handheld's first year performance, check out our feature, A second look at PS Vita....
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...ation-uk-boss/by Published on March 10th, 2013 21:41
Mario creator and Nintendo senior managing director Shigeru Miyamoto has said the firm will release a Wii U update to improve the system's interface performance 'by this summer'."Since the system was released, we've spent a great deal of time looking at how people are using it and where they feel it can be improved, and we're currently continuing out preparations for this first major system update that's coming," he said in an interview withTime."What we want to do is make sure that when we release it, that we address as many of the different opinions about how people would like to see the system improve as we can at once. We hope to cover a wide range of requests while simultaneously ensuring it's a very stable update to the system," said Miyamoto.The Wii U's system user interface has been widely criticised for its long load times when switching between games, on-board applications and menu screens.Speaking during a Nintendo Direct broadcast in January, company president Satoru Iwata apologised to Wii U owners who believe the loading times between selecting a game and playing it are far too long.Without offering a definitive date, Miyamoto said, "We think that by this summer, the system is going to be very much improved over how it's performing currently."Miyamoto recently told press that Nintendo is working on at least one project that will utilise the Wii U GamePad's built-in NFC (Near Field Communication) functionality as a matter of high priority....
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...ved-by-summer/by Published on March 10th, 2013 21:18- Categories:
- Retro Consoles/Translation News
There's few things more heartbreaking to gamers than an Atari 2600 whose original components have given up the ghost. UK craftsman Peter Morris must not want all that faux wood to go to waste, as he recently converted two broken 2600 systems into speaker docks for the iPad and iPhone. Both include digital amps to improve the tunes, a line-in jack and both on-device as well as remote controls. We'd love to have either of them providing the soundtrack to our Pong sessions, although pure logistics may work against us: the iPad and iPhone docks are unique examples that ship from Morris' UK homeland at respective prices of £180 ($269) and £150 ($224). As such, there will likely be just a few Brits who'll get to mix modern sound with their childhood Combat memories.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/09/c...ind-ios-docks/
...by Published on March 10th, 2013 21:08- Categories:
- PC News
Valve's entry into the console market is a thrilling prospect, but this isn't about a war between Open and Closed ecosystems
Valve Corporation
Steam Box prototypes will be in the wild for customer testing in the next three to four months, according to Gabe Newell. Valve has given up on pretending that it's not interested in the hardware game; its ambitions are now pretty clear, and somewhat wider than we expected. Where once the concept of a Steam Box was thought to be simply a minimum set of specs for PC manufacturers to follow in order to get a "Steam Powered" sticker on their boxes, now Newell talks openly about the nitty gritty of hardware challenges like heat and noise management, or building biometric sensors into the custom controller for the console.
"While Steam is an amazing distribution platform that has massively boosted the reach of PC gaming, in many ways it's just as much a walled garden as any of the consoles"
A great many people are hugely excited about the Steam Box. I'm one of them, I confess - I think it'll be just the thing to ease me back into PC gaming, which is where my roots as a gamer lie, but from which I've become increasingly (if unwillingly) estranged. However, I think there are some tough questions and unhappy realities about the Steam Box - whatever final form it may take - that still need to be addressed, especially by the most outspoken proponents of the system.
The crux of the problem is this - Valve's console is already being lauded as a chariot of openness, a triumph for all those who love things that are Open as opposed to Closed, even if some of them aren't very good at defining what those terms actually mean. The box will presumably run either Windows or some Linux variant, and if you want to, you'll presumably be able to leave the Steam environment and pop back to the desktop of that OS and run whatever games or other software you want. (That's the assumption, anyway; we shall see.) That's certainly Open compared to, say, a PlayStation 4 or an iPad, which won't run anything Sony or Apple respectively don't want you to run.
However, there are other facets to this which look less convincing. For a start, while Steam is an amazing distribution platform that has massively boosted the appeal and reach of PC gaming, in many ways it's just as much a walled garden as any of the consoles. Indeed, when I wrote a column recently calling on Sony to lower the barrier for indie studios and small firms wishing to publish PSN games (something they seem intent on doing with PS4), many people pointed out that Steam can actually be an even tougher place to publish a game than PSN - and with the advent of a PS4 based on PC architecture and seemingly more open than ever to self-publishing, that contrast may become rather stark. It's already a stark contrast with the iOS App Store and Google Play, which both place only the smallest of barriers in front of creators who want to put their games in front of consumers.
As such, the question I'm asking myself is this; to an average consumer, who doesn't really want to dig around in another OS that sits behind the "console" interface, is Valve's proposed console really all that different to what Sony are suggesting? It seems to me that while Valve and Sony have started out on very different ideological and technological ground (and as such, are bringing along vocal supporters who originate in diametrically opposed viewpoints), they've converged significantly towards a midpoint. Sony, a company whose consoles have been totally closed ecosystems that were extremely difficult to publish on, has made huge strides towards welcoming self-publishing and liberalising its pricing and business models. Valve, a company with its roots in the open free-for-all of PC distribution, has gradually erected taller and taller walls around its garden and will, in the final analysis, build something that's rather more like a games console than most PC gaming fans are comfortable admitting.
That's fine, of course. If anything, it's a triumph for common sense. The companies that used to build totally closed systems are recognising the immense benefits of more open platforms and loosening the reins accordingly. Companies who were ideologically wedded to the concept of openness, meanwhile, are recognising that a certain degree of gatekeeping helps to ward off malware, fraud, viruses and a host of other damaging software. Perhaps the best thing about Steam, from a personal perspective, is that I trust implicitly that both it and the software it hosts will not damage my computer, which is a very major step for PC gaming but not one that could be taken without first stepping back a little bit from the concept of "openness".
"Valve isn't smashing consoles; it's building one. Open isn't obliterating Closed. All the major players are cherry-picking the best bits of both models"
What I'm trying to challenge here, I think, is the notion that whatever Valve does with the Steam Box is necessarily going to ride roughshod ...by Published on March 10th, 2013 20:46- Categories:
- Retro Consoles/Translation News
This is [Wpqrek's] Commodore 64 modified to go on the road with him. The elderly machine has a special place in his heart as it was what he learned to code on. He performed a series of hacks which house everything necessary to use the machine inside the original case.
Obviously the hack that has the most effect when it comes to portability was swapping a display for the small LCD mounted above the number keys. This was a pretty simple process because the screen, originally intended for a rear view camera in a vehicle, already had a composite video input. To emulate the floppy disc drive he’s using an SD card via an sd2iec board which he laid out himself. Rounding up the alterations is a stereo SID. The second channel uses the pre-amp circuit cut from a second C64. This audio hardware will let him do cool things like playing some classic Zeppelin.
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/08/makin...e-64-portable/ ...by Published on March 10th, 2013 20:28- Categories:
- DCEmu
UK games execs were left scratching their heads last month after a string of big budget action games failed to lift games retail out of the gloom.
Last month UK games stores sold 1,854,954 games, a drop of 19.9% over February 2012. And that’s despite big name releases including Dead Space 3, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Crysis 3.
In fact, the combined sales of those four games managed less than 275,000 units last month.
In total, stores generated £45.3m from software sales, a slightly softer drop of 17.6 per cent.
The turmoil on the High Street, driven by store closures at Blockbuster and HMV, will not have helped.
But the poor performances of new titles has still surprised many corners of the trade.
“It’s bleak out there,” said one UK publisher boss. “Nothing is selling as it should. Let’s hope next month’s titles can break through.”
Aliens: Colonial Marines was the top seller last month. The action title was not well received by critics, but the title managed to find an audience, driven by Sega’s marketing campaign.
Sega was the second best performing publisher of February, nestled behind EA – its top seller was Dead Space 3 at No.2.
Retailers will now be looking to March’s blockbusters to help arrest the market slowdown. The first is Tomb Raider, which was released this week. Square Enix says it wants the action title to be a Top Five title of 2013, so expectations are high.
BioShock: Infinite is also due later this month, and the 2K game is subject to huge press attention.
Meanwhile, there’s some overdue big titles for PC, 3DS and Wii U games this month, including the likes of SimCity, Luigi’s Mansion 2 and LEGO City Undercover.
All data is courtesy of UKIE/GfK?Chart-Track. And is for the four weeks ending February 23rd, 2013.
THE FEBRUARY TOP TEN
1. Aliens: Colonial Marines – Sega
2. Dead Space 3 – EA
3. FIFA 13 – EA
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops II – Activision
5. Far Cry 3 – Ubisoft
6. Crysis 3 – EA
7. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance – Konami
8. Assassin’s Creed III – Ubisoft
9. Need for Speed: Most Wanted – EA
10. Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch – Namco Bandai
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/febru...-shine/0112133 ...by Published on March 10th, 2013 20:22- Categories:
- PS4
Hideo Kojima has described PS4 as a logical evolution of the PlayStation platform and welcomed its social aspects, but stressed the importance of quality software for the next-gen console.Speaking to us after the launch of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Kojima said that he was too busy to actually watch Sony’s PlayStation Meeting, but when we described it to him, he responded: “Of course, I know what the hardware is, but I want to see how other companies are using it. First of all, I think that’s great, but it’s nothing special; you could see it coming. It’s the logical evolution of the platform and I think it has to head in that direction, hearing what you said is not surprising.”“Honestly, I think all of that is good and great,” he continued. “Social aspects, the multidevice direction: that’s correct, that’s the way to go. But just because it has these features doesn’t mean it’s going to be a success. What will really determine whether or not it sells is what titles will be available for the platform. And unfortunately, even though I am friends with Mark Cerny, he’s never told me what other studios are working on. I even ate a meal with him recently and he didn’t tell me anything.”You can read the full interview in the next issue of Edge magazine, on sale March 14th....
http://www.edge-online.com/news/hide...nys-ps4-plans/- Search DCEmu
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