Back at MacWorld, we chatted with the guys over at SlingMedia about their upcoming plans for an iPhone release of their SlingPlayer.

They've just announced they've submitted the app to the AppStore, and we're all now just waiting for approval. We've learned by now that Apple's approval process is about as predictable as the next episode of LOST, but here's hoping the app will be approved within the week or so.

I know I've been excited about shredding through some 3G network to catch up on 24 while I'm away from home.

For those of you who don't know - SlingMedia retails the SlingBox, a device which lets you watch your DVR and cable TV from any browser on supported platforms (including OS X and Windows, sure) and many smart phones as well.

http://www.modmyi.com/forums/iphone-...-appstore.html ...

AT&T recently started selling contract free iPhone at their stores country-wide. Now, it seems that Apple has joined them as well! The prices for unsubsidized iPhones are $599 for 8GB model and $699 for 16GB model, the best part being no quantity limits like the AT&T store (and a better staff)!

This also means no in-store activation. Though the phone is still technically locked to AT&T, it can be unlocked (think yellowsn0w ).

This move by Apple and AT&T seems to be a great move to clear the inventories and make space for the expected new iPhone models that might be announced at the upcoming WWDC,

http://www.modmyi.com/forums/iphone-...ity-limit.html ...

AT&T recently started selling contract free iPhone at their stores country-wide. Now, it seems that Apple has joined them as well! The prices for unsubsidized iPhones are $599 for 8GB model and $699 for 16GB model, the best part being no quantity limits like the AT&T store (and a better staff)!

This also means no in-store activation. Though the phone is still technically locked to AT&T, it can be unlocked (think yellowsn0w ).

This move by Apple and AT&T seems to be a great move to clear the inventories and make space for the expected new iPhone models that might be announced at the upcoming WWDC,

http://www.modmyi.com/forums/iphone-...ity-limit.html ...

The GDC panel "Stretching Beyond Entertainment: The Role of Games in Personal and Social Change" brought together some of the great minds in gaming. Moderated by Rusel DeMaria, author of "Reset: Changing the Way we Look at Games," the panel featured Lionhead Studios' Peter Molyneux, The Sims creator Will Wright, former EA Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon, Oddworld Inhabitants' co-founder Lorne Lanning and one of the forefathers of Xbox, Ed Fries. Over the course of an hour, the group discussed the potential games have for affecting society and the responsibilities of game designers to promote such change.

Will Wright kicked things off by stating that he felt designers are actually more responsible for furthering the medium than pleasing the players when creating games. Wright later clarified his statement, calling videogames an "infant medium" that needed to be nurtured. The things developers do today centered on helping the medium grow will "have a positive affect on gamers" in 5-10 years. That's not to say developers shouldn't make games fun, but that games shouldn't be made without consideration as to how they are progressing the medium.

Part of that nurturing involves making games that have an additive value to society. Lanning compared entertainment to food. "We could make Twinkies or something" or we can fill the package with healthy content. So long as you have an "attractive enough wrapper" the support will be there for the product. Lanning added that the very notion that games "have to be profitable is absolutely ass-backwards." In fact, Lanning asserts that the games industry could do great things, such as redefining the education system -- making it console-based -- but the government has no interest in investing in the industry or even engaging the industry in such talks.

The government has been more interested in finding ways to censor videogames. While censorship wasn't touched on, violence and immorality in videogames was a major talking point for the panel members.

Wright summed up the argument best, stating that showcasing the worst in games is actually the best way to affect change in people. He noted that, historically, social change through media almost always comes from cautionary tales. In many of the city planning documents he'd read (likely as research for Sim City) were notes of concern that certain proposals might turn the city into Blade Runner. Moby Dick, written in 1851, can be seen as a warning against Nazi Germany (many good men following a charismatic, but obsessed mad man). People want their books, movies and games to "represent states we want society to avoid." One good example is GTA, which Wright admits to playing "a lot" because it is a "sociology simulator."

Molyneux added that if you want to teach lessons, then you can't sugarcoat the message. The idea is to have someone walk away from a game saying, "this must never happen in my world."

Consequences for immoral actions are important and while most of the panel felt that games failed to show the negative effects of immoral behavior, Molyneux disagreed. The Fable creator said that he felt many games provided adequate punishment for poor actions.

Wright and Lanning were the most vocal against this. In fact, Wright (with tongue in cheek), said that a proper shooter should be "10% first-person shooter, 90% life in prison." Lanning was particularly disappointed in war shooters. "The things that give people shellshock are taken out of war games," Lanning said. Developers are "distilling war down to the fun parts." He went on to suggest that it was time developers started "breaking some paradigms" of design and make games that don't fit into the mold.

It wasn't all doom and gloom. In fact, the panel was fairly positive about the influence games had on society. Bing Gordon called games the new MBA and that cooperative games teach leadership qualities. "Kids spend 25 hours a week in a jail that we call school," Gordon said to applause, "but games are a better place to learn skills." The world's youth has a better social relationship with the international community than their parents because of social networking and videogames, according to Gordon. He also noted the success of the industry and declared, "games don't need a bailout. Videogames need to bail out the culture."

"Everyone is connected together through cooperative games," Molyneux said, calling co-op games a "good social bonding message." He believes cooperative play will become predominant in videogames and combative game modes will because far less of a focus over the next few years.

Wright did caution that many games miss out on important opportunities to bring people together. After all, you manage to connect young people from different continents who have different religious beliefs, backgrounds and world views. Then you make them both orcs, essentially stripping them of their unique qualities and diluting the cultural exchange.

...

The gaming industry has surpassed Hollywood in overall revenues, but the group of journalists who report on the industry remain an elusive group. The industry's most prominent watchdogs are an eccentric mix of enthusiasts, bloggers, and trained reporters. In a session called "Meet the Gaming Press" at GDC today, three prominent members of the gaming press were on hand to face the questions from the industry they report on. Sam Kennedy of 1up, Brian Crescente of Kotaku, and Brandon Sheffield of Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra fielded questions from an inquisitive group of developers, PR representatives, and fellow journalists.

One of the biggest issues facing the gaming press is the distinction between hard journalism and co-operation with PR. Several PR managers in the audience were interested in how to motivate game journalists to cover their games. How can they get the attention of a busy game journalist? How can they find an appropriate story angle to get our projects covered? "There's a mentality that PR is PR. You can do it the same way for a game as you can for a candy bar or a soda," said Sheffield. "Game news outlets are run by enthusiasts. The first hint of disingenuousness will turn off a games journalist."

Crecente noted that there is an inherent fallacy in journalists and PR reps working together. "Sitting in their seats, I wouldn't gear my message to journalists," he said. "They're trying to get around journalism." To date, the biggest gaming news outlets are ones that host previews, trailers, and screenshots, while placing secondary emphasis on generating independent news stories. The gaming press has expanded on the back of its ability to leverage exclusive access to promotional material for games that aren't on the market.

"Exclusivity is a great foot in the door with us," said Kennedy. When asked about the paucity of hard journalism about larger issues in gaming, such as violence and censorship, Kennedy blamed publishers. "The industry as a whole is unwilling to go there," he said. "It's hard to get support and information from publishers to do those kinds of stories."

Crencente said part of the problem is the ugly truth that most readers aren't interested in reading that kind of content. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him read interesting news," he said.

Recent developments in the industry have seen the growth of aggregate sites that compile news stories from other sites. "I think exclusives are almost out of style," Sheffield said. "There are all these scanners now, everything gets picked up instantly. An exclusive is only exclusive for a few minutes."

Crecente spent twelve years working as a police reporter and remains dubious about securing exclusives through PR. "I don't care about exclusives," he said. "I want to work for my exclusives" Sheffield shared this sentiment. "I would rather know I had an exclusive because my story was better," he said.


As always, the ultimate question lies with the readers. What stories do you want to see?

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/966/966949p1.html ...

Sony Online Entertainment's massively multiplayer online games The Agency and DC Universe Online are now expected to be ready sometime in 2010. Joystiq is reporting SOE president John Smedley let loose the details during a talk entitled 'An industry perspective on how new online games will reach the masses.'

Both The Agency, a spy-themed MMOG, and DC Universe Online, a superhero-themed MMOG, are expected to be released for Windows PC and PlayStation 3 platforms.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/965/965891p1.html ...

Ubisoft today revealed R.U.S.E., a new real-time strategy game from Eugen Systems (Act of War: Direct Action) for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC platforms. It is currently being readied for a release in the fiscal year 2009 / 2010.

The hook of this RTS title is how it offers systems that allow players to trick each other during play. According to an official release, R.U.S.E. is a game "where the ability to deceive and mislead the enemy determines success." A technology entitled the IrisZoom engine will allow players to seamlessly move the view of battle from the unit level to the entire battlefield.

The official line goes something like this: "With R.U.S.E., Ubisoft is once again shaking up a genre, offering an RTS with a twist that will thrill gamers," said Ubisoft senior vice president of sales and marketing Tony Key. "Ubisoft is known for innovation and R.U.S.E. continues that tradition, offering the most immense and detailed maps ever seen in an RTS. Players can explore the maps using IRISZOOM Engine, which provides an aerial, smooth interaction unlike anything ever seen before."

The game will be optimized for newer processors, including Intel's Core i7s.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/965/965718p1.html ...

Ubisoft today revealed R.U.S.E., a new real-time strategy game from Eugen Systems (Act of War: Direct Action) for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC platforms. It is currently being readied for a release in the fiscal year 2009 / 2010.

The hook of this RTS title is how it offers systems that allow players to trick each other during play. According to an official release, R.U.S.E. is a game "where the ability to deceive and mislead the enemy determines success." A technology entitled the IrisZoom engine will allow players to seamlessly move the view of battle from the unit level to the entire battlefield.

The official line goes something like this: "With R.U.S.E., Ubisoft is once again shaking up a genre, offering an RTS with a twist that will thrill gamers," said Ubisoft senior vice president of sales and marketing Tony Key. "Ubisoft is known for innovation and R.U.S.E. continues that tradition, offering the most immense and detailed maps ever seen in an RTS. Players can explore the maps using IRISZOOM Engine, which provides an aerial, smooth interaction unlike anything ever seen before."

The game will be optimized for newer processors, including Intel's Core i7s.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/965/965718p1.html ...

Recent patent fillings by Apple that AppleInsider has dug up point to the company adding several new methods of insuring the security of its devices for users. The new filings cite biometric authentication methods that would excite Ethan Hunt -- including installation of a hidden sensor behind the screen that would recognize the user's fingerprint when touched, and / or a front-facing camera for retinal recognition. The filing also suggests further possibilities, such as the device being capable of recognizing the user's voice, or collecting DNA samples for recognition via genetic code. We've heard plenty of semi-speculative tech tales in the past, so we always take this stuff with a grain of salt, but Apple seems to be moving forward at least into the research phase of such endeavors. To the future we go! There's one more fantastic scribble after the break, hit the read link for more details.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/27/r...tric-security/ ...