Game Over! Giant Robot has the video game culture art you crave
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While getting ready for the E3 Expo I decided to stop by Giant Robot in the Los Angeles Japanese cultural district of Sawtelle. There, Giant Robot Owner/Publisher Eric Nakamura was hosting a show of video game culture influenced art.
Techies, June will be the most amazing month EVER
Save your greenbacks now. During these thirty days you'll hear about lots of innovative and imitative products coming for the holidays. There's no coal in Santa's stocking this year, just too much tech to fit your gift list.
Not since the late 1990s, when seemingly every day some vendor announced a new PC that was ever-so-better than the one you bought the week before, is there so much new tech coming so close together. The cloud connected-device era ushers in a storm of tech. Save up now so you don't break the bank account or exceed credit card limits later.
What's in game at E3 Expo? You wanna know, and we're gonna tell you
Follow me, Patrick Roanhouse, as I cover major press news from the E3: Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the the biggest video game trade show in the United States. Developed and birthed when the video game industry outgrew the once gigantic consumer electronics tradeshow Comdex, E3 expo first pressed the start button in 1995.
Historically Los Angeles based, E3 Expo marks the start-off point for the titans of the video game industry to sell their newest wares to retail corperate buyers for the Latin, American, and European markets in Las Vegas-level neon showcases. An industry, journalism, and buyer only tradeshow, attending E3 Expo typically is the the dream for most video game nerds eager to see the next big thing.
Space Invaders OpenGL is all retro fun
If you’ve played a few PC-based recreations of Space Invaders then you’ll know they can be, well, more than a little basic. And that’s a shame. Sure, we know the 1978 arcade original wasn’t exactly a visual feast, but that’s no excuse for the basic graphics and dull soundtrack you so often see in more modern versions.
At first glance, it didn’t look as though Space Invaders OpenGLwas going to do much to change our views. A portable game, its single executable is only 662KB in size, which doesn’t exactly leave much room for extras. (To put that in perspective, Civilization V’s music files alone require more than 1,500 times as much hard drive space.)
Nvidia's GPUs in the cloud will shake up virtualization, gaming industries
GPUs first revolutionized visual computing, and now may revolutionize cloud computing as well. Nvidia introduced its GPUs for the cloud Tuesday at the annual GPU Technology Conference, an innovation it calls the third important milestone for the industry since the introduction of the GPU in 1993.
Nvidia's cloud GPUs are based on the company's Kepler architecture and has been in development for the past five years. The virtualization capabilities of Kepler make it ideal for use in large datacenters, and allows it to be shared by multiple users at the same time. Lag is reduced by built-in streaming capabilities, and Nvidia claims power efficiency and processing density enhancements will keep costs down.
The Xbox console will soon be free
Microsoft wonk Tom Warren reports that a new Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle will be offered at $99 with a two-year Xbox Live Gold subcription beginning next week. If this proves true, it will be the first example of a video game console using the mobile phone carrier subsidy model.
According to Warren's sources, the deal will only be available at Microsoft Stores, and it will include the 4 GB Xbox 360 console with a Kinect Sensor. The cost of a two-year Xbox Live Gold subscription is approximately $120.
What happens when your online game does too well?
Indeed, these are the kinds of problems we would love to have, but when they actually occur we need solutions nonetheless. So, how do you handle the issues that occur when audience demand overwhelms the infrastructure you have provisioned to serve your content?
A few years ago, my company was approached by Latin Interactive Network (LIN), a publisher of online games across Latin America, including countries like Peru, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. LIN handles several successful MMOs in these territories, including the Spanish-language version of Audition Online, a unique free-to-play dance battle game. Audition is a big favorite, and in Latin America alone, the game is now played by half a million players per month. This is welcome news for LIN, of course, but not always so welcome for Audition gamers who may be stuck using outdated and underpowered infrastructure...
What is the most popular household gadget?
Surely it's no surprise that nearly nine out of 10 American adults owns a cell phone. But would you believe that 19 percent own an ebook reader or tablet? Or that one in five dosen't use the Internet? These are among the fascinating findings from a fresh Pew Internet report "Digital Differences".
The findings are a blueprint for understanding Americans' digital lifestyles and what gadgets -- and supporting products and services -- fit in where. Major tech companies create distinct digital lifestyles people buy into, which is particularly true for Apple, Dell, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Sony among others. Apple, Google and Microsoft are in pitched lifestyle product competition, and should look to studies like this one to understand the stunning nuances connected, so-called post-PC devices bring to consumer behavior.
Want to code your own Android, Flash or iOS game? Try Stencyl 2.0 beta
Coding a game may be something you like the idea of but, much like putting together a website, without the right tools to work with it can seem like an incredibly daunting task. There is no piece of software that is going to create a game for you, but Stencyl is an incredibly intuitive game creation engine that can be used by anyone with the right idea -- it does not matter if you are able to code by hand or not.Stencyl 2.0 beta is the latest release of the software and it packs some serious impressive features.
Version 2 of the program, which is available not only for Window and OSX, but also Linux, picks up from where previous releases have left off, proving you with a set of tools that enable you to do everything from designing in-game graphics to using drag-and drop-action building to determine how different elements will interact with each other. This is an interesting approach to game production, and this is a tool that can be used to make Flash games as well as games for iOS and Android.
Game on with Adobe Flash 11.2 and AIR 3.2
Adobe Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2, major updates to its browser plug-in and runtime environments, are now available. Flash Player, which is built into Chrome and available as a separate download for Internet Explorer, was until the advent of HTML5 the de facto standard for accessing rich, multimedia content on the web.
Both updates are aimed very much at repositioning Flash as a rival gaming platform to consoles, focusing on providing developers with tools to produce immersive, graphically rich games across all supported platforms.
Take to the skies with Microsoft Flight
If you ever tried one of the old Microsoft Flight Simulator series then you’ll know that learning just the basics took time, effort and real commitment. Which, of course, was why some people liked it: there was a real challenge involved.
If you were more intimidated by the program’s complexity, though, Microsoft Flight, the free successor to Flight Simulator, may appeal as it’s far more accessible.
Blast to the past with Midway Arcade for iOS
Anyone who grew up in the `70s and `80s will remember the lure of the arcade and the thrill of pumping coin after coin into a machine to have one more go on a tricky level. Games have come a very long way since the days of Defender and Spy Hunter, but these are classic titles that still have appeal.
While recent games such as Need for Speed and GTA have found their way onto the iOS platform, iPads and iPhones are perfect devices for a little retro gaming. Enter Midway Arcade to enable you to relive your youth or discover it anew.
SaveGameBackup 2.0 beta supports 1,377 titles
When you’re thinking of files that you really should include in a backup, then saved games probably don’t rank highly on the list. But maybe they should. After all, in some cases your current game state will represent hours, days, maybe weeks of effort, and if for some reason this gets lost, will you really want to start again from the very beginning? (No. Didn’t think so.)
It can make sense to back up at least some of your saves, then. And there are few easier ways to do this than with a copy of SaveGameBackup. The program is portable, for instance, so there’s no need for installation: just unzip it and go.
Game Manager 3.0 -- the Windows Media Center of fun
In the world according to Microsoft, the Windows Games Explorer should provide everything you need to organize, update and manage your favorite games. And it’s not too bad: with a little work you can get a display that includes game information, ratings, cover art and more.
If Game Explorer just isn’t powerful enough for your needs, though, you might find the free Game Manager useful. It also provides a database of games that you can organize and view in several ways, but can do this via a Media Center-style full-screen interface, and includes plenty of extra functionality as well.
Line95 is simple, retro and addictive
As we wrote last week, you don’t need flashy graphics to create a great game: there’s plenty of retro entertainment to be had from the ideas behind old classics like Command & Conquer and the X-Com series.
If you prefer something even simpler, though, it’s a good idea to install Lines95. The Color Lines-based game may look about as visually exciting as the old Windows Minesweeper, but it gets everything else right, being simple to learn, yet with real strategic depth that could take a very long time to master.
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