Crytek's Cevat Yerli launches GFACE social networking beta
GFACE launched back in 2007, and until now it has been in "MAXIMUM STEALTH" mode. GFACE has been formed as a separate company headed by Crytek chief, Cevat Yerli. GFACE is designed to offer gamers a social networking site where they can communicate, collaborate, and play. GFACE's motto? 'Play. Together. Live.'
GFACE doesn't really bring anything new to the table, and it has some seriously hard competition in the form of Facebook, Google+, Steam, etc. Members do have the ability to view ongoing games live within their browser, all while they chat in both voice and text modes.
GFACE will be a freemium business model, where the core functionality of the new social networking service to remain free.
Continue reading: Crytek's Cevat Yerli launches GFACE social networking beta (full post)
Metro: Last Light delayed, won't see the light of day until 2013
THQ are going through some rough times, and those tough times are now pushing back to sequel to Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light. The game has been pushed back to an early-2013 release.
Developer, 4A games has said in a statement:
[The release] may be a little later than you were expecting, but trust us - the wait will be worth it! You'll be hearing a lot more about Metro: Last Light closer to E3, so please be patient. We can't wait to show you what we've been up to.
Continue reading: Metro: Last Light delayed, won't see the light of day until 2013 (full post)
Thermaltake Level 10 GT COD case mod video at Taipei Game Show 2012
We hunted high and low for hardware at the Taipei Game Show earlier today when we were there, but being a game show, it was obviously dominated with a strong gaming focus. Along side the Razer Blade eyes-on video we just posted, one of the other really hot bits of hardware was the Thermaltake Level 10 GT case mod by Brian Carter.
Brian named it the "COD" and it follows a really kick-ass Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 theme with a motorized and spinning gun at the front of the case, a rocket launcher at the top and on the side panel you'll find the medic kit for your war wounds as well as an ammo pack to keep on killing.
Back in the day we would just had some neon lights to our cases and call it a day when it came to case modding, nowadays they are doing crazy good stuff like this. I love it!
Continue reading: Thermaltake Level 10 GT COD case mod video at Taipei Game Show 2012 (full post)
AMD's future products to include ARM cores, also steamrolling toward mobile market
AMD's client roadmap has revealed Hondo, a 4.5W APU with 1-2 low voltage Bobcat cores as well as an on-die DX11 GPU built on a 40nm process. Windows 8 will be the OS to receive some of AMD's Hondo lovin'. AMD is wanting to get serious of entering the sub-2W market, with mobile being a very important path for AMD.
AMD has talked about being "ambidextrous" when it comes to architectures, implying that AMD's future products will include chips with ARM-based CPU cores for markets where it makes sense. AMD have also said they will take advantage of all sorts of ecosystems, including Windows 8 and Android.
The AMD 2013 Client Roadmap unveils some interesting things indeed, with 2013 mobile chips "Kaveri", "Kabini", and "Tamesh" being three new APUs to be introduced. Kaveri will sport 2-4 "Steamroller" CPU cores, as well as a GCN-based GPU with HSA Application support. Kabini will feature 2-4 "Jaguar" cores backed up by a GCN-based GPU, and finally, Tamesh sports 2 "Jaguar" CPU cores, and a GCN-based GPU.
Alan Wake arrives on PC February 16, "looks absolutely beautiful"
Alan Wake on PC has finally gotten a firm release date, just two weeks from now. February 16th is the day you should buy some batteries for your flashlight, and it has a decent price of just $30. Remedy have been putting a nice amount of polish on Alan Wake for PC, where it includes not just improved graphics, but multiple monitor support, and 3D.
Remedy's CTO, Markus Mäki has said:
We've done our best to do justice to the PC version and do things the way they should be done for PC. The PC version looks absolutely beautiful. We're bringing the game to life in a whole new way.
Continue reading: Alan Wake arrives on PC February 16, "looks absolutely beautiful" (full post)
Apple spotted browsing around for TV parts, shall we call it iBrowsing?
Apple don't have a TV on the market, where their biggest competitor in the smartphone market, Samsung, sure do have that market with their fist around it, tightly. The latest coming from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, has said that the Cupertino-based company has been checking out the TV component supply chain, in preparations of entering the TV market.
Munster wrote in a note to clients today:
In January we spoke with a major TV component supplier who has been contacted by Apple regarding various capabilities of their television display components. We see this as continued evidence that Apple is exploring production of a television. This latest data point follows January 2011 meetings in Asia that led us to believe Apple was investing in manufacturing facilities for LCD displays ranging from 3.5" mobile displays to 50" television displays.
Battlefield 3 DLC to be revealed next week
In a conference call with EA's Vice President of Investor Relations, it was said to analysts:
You're going to hear some announcements from us on Battlefield actually as early as next week in an event we've got in New York. We've got plans for all of our major franchises to turn them into more of as we're seeing with FIFA and with Battlefield more as games for service that have constant flow of downloadable content.
The rumor of an 'all-American DLC' has come from some YouTube comments where they've stated:
Continue reading: Battlefield 3 DLC to be revealed next week (full post)
Crackle has launched an Xbox Live app, gives US, UK, Canadian and Australians access to TV shows, movies, for free
I've never heard of Crackle until now, so I've just pushed that rock up off my back and thrown it to the side for now. Crackle is part of Sony Picture Entertainment's video entertainment network, and now gives UK, US, Canadian, and Australians access to a bunch of TV shows and Hollywood movies, all for free.
For free! Free, as in, nothing? Well, Crackle is ad-supported, but it's not a direct competitor of paid-for video-on-demand services such as Netflix, which is also available on the Xbox Live hub, but instead Crackle offers a range of old movies, TV shows and animated series.
Phil Lynch, VP Digital Networks and Games at Sony Pictures Television says:
Lake Vostok, Antartica: Russian scientists have been radio silent for 5 days
First off, some back story. This will end up as a mini-editorial, but some of you will find this very interesting. Lake Vostok is a large (10,000km2), presumably fresh water body located under some 4km of ice in East Antarctica. The lake is not some little pool of water, its a gigantic, 250km long and 50km wide.
Because the lake is under kilometres of frozen ice, it has been untouched by todays technology and hence, the hands of man. The contents of this secret under-the-ice lake, have not seen the light of day for more than 20 million years. Because of this long period of pure isolation, it is believed that the water inside Lake Vostok could contain new, never-before-seen lifeforms, and unique geochemical processes.
For the past five-plus years, Russia and the United States have been seeking to probe Vostok in order to discover its underlying secrets from this pure, pristine body of water. The problem associated with such an untouched body of water is that as soon as it is discovered, tested and exposed, we would have contaminated it in multiple ways. Because of its long period of isolation, it cannot be explored without the introduction of the outside world, i.e. us.
RumorTT: Apple iPad 3 to sport quad-core A6 chip, available in LTE
We started the day off with a RumorTT about the iPod Nano, and toward the end of the news posting day, another RumorTT is here, about the iPad 3. I did originally say that it was weird posting a RumorTT piece about an Apple product that wasn't an iPhone or iPad... but mere hours later, here we are.
A "source claiming to be in possession of an iPad 3 prototype" provided BGR with images that contained juicy details on Apple's next-generation iPad. From the above photo, which contains the output from an iPad 3 using a development and debug tool called iBoot, we can see tonnes of information on the iPad 3.
First, J1 and J2 (iPad3,1 and iPad3,2) are two different models, not different devices. A single iPad 3, available in Wi-Fi-only and another that sports GSM/CDMA/LTE for all carriers. Also spotted in the photo is the first news of the chip being slapped into the iPad 3: an A6 processor with the model number S5L8945X. To compare this to previous Apple chips, the Apple A4 model was S5L8930X and the Apple A5 is the S5L8940X.
Continue reading: RumorTT: Apple iPad 3 to sport quad-core A6 chip, available in LTE (full post)