General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Intel's Ivy Bridge: The Maximum PC Review

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 11:24 AM PDT

The world's smallest-process consumer CPU comes out in a big way

You are, no doubt, quite familiar with Intel's CPU-release "cadence" of tick-tock by now. If not, the short story is that every tock brings a major breakthrough, while ticks are decent upgrades but nothing to Twitter home about.

That's not necessarily the case with Intel's latest tick, the Ivy Bridge CPU. Sure, the performance enhancements on the x86 side of the aisle won't exactly knock you on your tuchus, but they're still decent. The upgrades to the graphics core, however, make Ivy Bridge more noteworthy.

As we know, Intel found religion through graphics and has been progressively improving on it ever since. The Clarksfield CPUs moved graphics directly into the CPU package, and Sandy Bridge CPUs moved graphics directly onto the CPU die itself. With Ivy Bridge, Intel says it outdid itself by doubling the graphics performance of Sandy Bridge.

If you're ready to write off Ivy Bridge as an incremental chip that you, the enthusiast, doesn't give a damn about, you're wrong. There's a lot more to Ivy Bridge that makes it the default CPU for an enthusiast who doesn't want to jump into the bigger, pricier LGA2011 socket. Don't believe us? Read on to find out why you want this CPU instead of Sandy Bridge.

Meet the Ivy Bridge Lineup

Click to enlarge

World's First Chip with '3D' Transistors

Despite its revolutionary tri-gate design, Ivy Bridge doesn't do much to advance x86

We've long dubbed Intel the "Master of the Fab." The company's prowess in chip fabrication is the envy of the world. Yeah, there was that little thing with the Pentium 4, which hit the process wall like a freight train, but for the most part, Intel's mastery of chip fabrication has always made its new CPUs a tour de force of technology that makes you wonder if the company doesn't have a crashed flying saucer hidden at 2200 Mission College Boulevard.

With Ivy Bridge, Intel again amazes with the world's first use of tri-gate, or 3D, transistors. Also called finFETs, for fin field-effect transistors, the 3D transistors literally rise up off of the die to dramatically reduce power consumption while increasing performance. 

In a traditional planar transistor, current flows on a flat surface like a river. A gate, which ostensibly controls that flow, lies across the top of that river with contact only along a small surface. With a finFET, or 3D tri-gate, the flow of power spans a fin that juts from the surface. Instead of just contacting the surface along one dimension, the gate encircles it and makes contact on three sides.

Intel says this gives it far greater control of power and enables it to drive the signal harder while adding only a small amount to the build cost. Despite having similar architectural underpinnings to Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge should provide better performance while consuming significantly less power than an equivalent SB processor. So far, that seems to be panning out. A typical performance Sandy Bridge chip, such as the 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K is rated at 95 watts. The new 3.5GHz Core i7-3770K is rated at 77 watts. And those are higher-performing processors. The promise of tri-gate should pay even more dividends at lower power thresholds. Right now, Intel is only detailing its quad-core parts. Dual-core CPUs haven't been announced yet but we'll be curious to see how aggressively Ivy Bridge performs in notebook.

Ivy Bridge isn't just a process story, though. It's about keeping the chains moving. If, after all this investment in 3D transistors, the damned CPU isn't any faster, no one would care if it were made out of the purist shimmering samite. Fortunately, that isn't the case, which you can see in the chart on the third page. But first, let's break it down two ways: Even Intel says Ivy Bridge isn't a big step forward for pure x86 performance, as it's largely a die shrink of the Sandy Bridge core. The cache remains the same and the base clocks are similar. Where Ivy Bridge appears to have an edge in x86 performance is in its lower power envelope. As you know, Intel essentially overclocks, or "Turbo Boosts," the chip based on how much power it's eating and how hot it's running. So if a chip can run cooler and consume less power than its counterpart, it can run at a higher turbo clock for longer. 

Where Intel seems to have put most of its focus this time is in the GPU side. In fact, Intel says it has achieved roughly a doubling of the graphics performance over the Sandy Bridge processors. The improvement is good enough that the company says Ivy Bridge processors are capable of playing 100 games out of the box while Sandy Bridge could only play 50. Detailed info about Ivy Bridge's graphics capabilities is on the second page, but suffice to say, it's obviously better. Is it enough to forego a discrete GPU?

For certain uses—such as an HTPC or all-in-one PC that won't be used primarily as a gaming machine, yes. Of course, notebook users will also be pleased to get more graphics performance from the newer Ivy Bridge parts.

Overclocking

With Ivy Bridge, Intel maintains the "K" versions that it introduced with its Lynnfield procs and continued on with Sandy Bridge. Like Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge isn't hugely tolerant of bclock, or base clock, overclocking. Intel says the most you should expect is a 7 percent bclock nudge before things go sideways. Instead, overclocking will continue to rely on upping the Turbo Boost or clock ratios. Intel has enhanced Ivy Bridge a bit by increasing the maximum core ratio overclock from 59 on Sandy Bridge to 63. Ivy Bridge also now lets you change the core ratios in real time. Graphics support a greater range for overclocking, too, and Ivy Bridge will let you run the RAM up to DDR3/2667 through overclocks (DDR3/1600 is the official speed.)

Compatibility

We've long railed against Intel for releasing new sockets with new CPUs (remember the short-lived Socket LGA1156 and Socket 423 and numerous LGA775 versions?), but the company has stepped up to the plate for the Sandy Bridge-to-Ivy Bridge transition. As Intel promised, most LGA1155 boards will support Ivy Bridge procs if the firmware and BIOS are updated to support the chip by the board maker. However, not all chipsets will make the Ivy Bridge cut. Intel has intentionally left out support for the business chipsets Q65, Q67, and B65 while supporting consumer H61, H67, P67, and Z68. Why leave some out? Intel believes the day of an IT shop getting down and dirty and upgrading processors in an office-drone PC are long gone, so there's just no reason to expend the resources on unnecessary support. Besides getting the latest core technology from Intel, switching to Ivy Bridge on older 6-series boards should also give you PCIe 3.0 support on some slots. 

Ivy Bridge vs. Sandy Bridge: Beneath the Surface

The 22nm-based Ivy Bridge processor is considerably smaller than its predecessor. It has nearly 400 million more transistors yet is about 25 percent smaller. What's more interesting, however, is how much real estate is dedicated to each task on the new Ivy Bridge vs. Sandy Bridge. These die shots (not to scale) show that the almost 2x performance bump in graphics comes at the price of die space. Intel, however, discounts any criticism regarding how much emphasis it placed on graphics over x86 functionality and says just because it looks like more space was expended on graphics doesn't mean it's more important. Um, OK.

Sandy Bridge

Ivy Bridge

Next up: The 7-series chipset and graphics benchmarks!

 

 

 

7-series Chipset Brings Few Changes 

 Gigabyte's GA-Z77X-UD5H features out-of-the-box Ivy Bridge support and USB 3.0 ports powered by Intel!

Conspiracy theorists, unite: If you're one of the tin-foil hat wearers (this means you, Nathan Edwards) who was absolutely certain Intel was trying to sandbag USB 3.0 in order to push Thunderbolt, the new Z77 chipset puts your suspicions to rest. The Z77, you see, finally brings native USB 3.0 support to the world of Intel. Why all the fuss over native support? First, it cuts the cost of a board, slightly, since the board maker has one less chip to supply. Generally, performance and compatibility of integrated USB 3.0 tends to be better, too. Finally, native support means USB 3.0 in just about every new PC going forward. That means more devices and lower costs, which, as Admiral Kirk says, is better for me, better for you, and (pause) better for them.

Native USB 3.0 won't extend to all ports on a motherboard, though. The Intel PCH supports up to four USB 3.0 ports, so on motherboards that offer more than that, it'll be a mix of USB 2.0, Intel USB 3.0, and third-party USB 3.0 support. On the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H that we used, for example, it had four USB 3.0 ports on back with an additional three USB 3.0 headers. This was done by using the Intel chipset support and a discrete controller from VIA.

Beyond USB 3.0, the 7-series chipsets is a fairly incremental update. SATA support, for example, is the same weak-sauce mix of two SATA 6Gb/s and four SATA 3Gb/s. When we critically asked why not all 6Gb/s ports? Intel threw it back in our face by saying that backward compatibility with the 6-series boards was important to keep costs down on the 7-series boards. And since we're always whining about backward compatibility, isn't that important? Well, yes—but this is the last time, Intel. The 5-series, 6-series, and now 7-series have all shared the same SATA 6Gb/s configuration, so we better not see the 8-series with it, too.

Other key differences between 7-series and 6-series are support for three displays using Ivy Bridge's graphics chip, and of course, support for both Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips out of the box. Is there a performance difference? Frankly, no. For our tests, we used a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H board, first with the Core i7-3770K, which we then swapped out for a Core i7-2600K. We then re-ran our benchmarks and compared them to our Z68/2600K numbers. The difference? Nada, other than the weird, unexplainable bogies we had with a couple of benchmarks. The two, frankly, are essentially indistinguishable. Even the Intel USB 3.0 support didn't prove to be superior to any of the discrete USB 3.0 chipsets we've seen. So if you're considering whether to move from Z68 just to upgrade, we don't recommend it. However, if you're building a new box on an Ivy Bridge processor, we'd build on Z77 just to have the latest chipset.

Ivy Bridge Graphics

It's what everyone's been waiting for. Does Intel deliver?

We're all Charlie Browns when it comes to Intel graphics. Intel, of course, is Lucy, pulling the graphics eye-candy football away after promising that this time will be different. Once again, Intel is promising that this generation of the GPU built into the upcoming Ivy Bridge 22nm CPU will be different. Honest!

Several years ago, Intel promised to speed up its graphics core by 10x per generation—and that 10x speedup would start with Ivy Bridge. With Ivy Bridge almost upon us, it's worth diving in to its internal architecture to understand what's really changed.

Based on what we know about DirectX 11 compute shaders and the OpenCL 1.1 implementation, it looks like Intel's new GPU is getting a pretty robust set of compute-capable shaders. That's an encouraging sign, as is support for hardware tessellation.

Those are the gross differences. Internally, the GPU has been redesigned from the ground up. The GPU is partitioned into five domains. The global asset area takes care of geometry. It includes geometry, vertex, and hull shaders, plus the tessellator. Setup is also in this section. The resulting output is fed into the thread dispatch engine to the execution units (EUs), which do a lot of the heavy lifting. After the EUs are done, the render section takes over.

Intel's hardware tessellation engine is fixed-function, but can accept different cues for setting the overall level of tessellation. The EUs have been beefed up, with each EU offering 2x the performance per watt of Sandy Bridge. The higher-end HD 4000 has 16 EUs, up from 12 on Sandy Bridge's GPU. Intel also added an L3 cache to the GPU, which improves overall throughput, since data doesn't need to be fed to the GPU from the ring bus as frequently. This also saves on overall power.

One of the key performance-enhancing features is co-issue of instructions to execution units. Sandy Bridge supported this on some operations, but Ivy Bridge extends this to many more operations. 

How does this affect actual performance with PC games? We ran a few tests on very early drivers. What we saw was definitely encouraging.

Even with early drivers, we're seeing about a 25 percent or better increase with 3D games. You'll still need to sacrifice some detail levels, but you'll get acceptable performance in all but the most bleeding-edge games. Titles like StarCraft II, Civilization V, Modern Warfare 3, and Portal 2 will probably run fine, if you're willing to dial back resolution, turn off AA, and run at medium or lower detail levels. It's probably best to steer away from highly demanding titles, though, such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution or The Witcher 2.

Note that 3DMark 2011 actually runs, giving clear evidence that Ivy Bridge is indeed DirectX 11 compliant. That's not a big score, but the fact of the score is encouraging. As with Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge includes a dedicated, fixed-function video encoder. Intel is claiming a nearly 2x encode advantage over Sandy Bridge, but that will depend on the application and workload. We saw only a 6 percent gain over Sandy Bridge when encoding an HD video file for iPhone using CyberLink's Media Espresso 6.5 (295 seconds for Ivy Bridge versus Sandy Bridge's 311 seconds.) Encoding performance is likely to be better with stereoscopic content, for example.

Finally, the new GPU, in conjunction with motherboards using Intel's 7-series chipsets, will support up to three simultaneous displays. As with Sandy Bridge, DVI support will be limited to single link only, but that will only affect a handful of users with older 30-inch monitors. Full bandwidth support for very high resolutions will be available through DisplayPort 1.2 or HDMI 1.4a.

Overall, Ivy Bridge's graphics are clearly better. Desktop users who are regular PR gamers will definitely want to stick with their favorite discrete graphics card, but owners of Ivy Bridge ultrabooks might be able to get a reasonable gaming fix now—provided the unit is built with the HD 4000. It's unlikely that the HD 2500 will be much use for gaming. –Loyd Case

Next up: The benchmarks!

 

 

 

Ivy Bridge vs. the Benchmarks 

New kid proves itself to be the new standard bearer

For our testing, we used a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboard using the new Z77 "Panther Point" chipset. To this, we added a 3.5GHz Core i7-3770K and installed a fresh copy of 64-bit Windows 7 Professional along with 8GB of DDR3/1600, a GeForce GTX 580 card, and a 150GB Western Digital Raptor. For benchmarks, we reached for the same set of mostly CPU-dependent benchmarks that we've used to review the last few rounds of processors.

For direct comparisons, we decided to pit the new 3770K against the Core i7-2600K and Core i7-3820. Why not the Core i7-2700K, which is the same clock as the Core i7-2600K? First, there's but a 100MHz difference between the Core i7-2600K and the new Core i7-3770K and both are priced the same. The Core i7-2700K has always been a bit of an odd duck part to us. You pay $25 over a 2600K and really only get 100MHz more megahertz. Why bother? Obviously, the LGA2011 Core i7-3820 can't be tested in the same board as Core i7-3770K, so we used our old standby: the Asus P9X79 Deluxe.

For reference, we also included in our chart the performance numbers of the Core i7-3960X, AMD's octo-core FX-8150, and the classic Corei7-990XE "Gulftown." While the last two platforms also had to use different motherboards, we tried to normalize as much as possible by clocking the RAM the same and using the same graphics cards and drivers.

The test suite includes everything from 3D modeling tests, to video editing and video transcoding, to several synthetic benchmarks and a few gaming tests with the resolutions cranked down low enough to take the graphics card out of the equation. 

While we included six-core and eight-core processors in the chart, this is really about Intel's quads. Three scenarios come up: Do you buy a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge for your new build? Should you upgrade from your Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge? Should you just bypass Ivy Bridge for Sandy Bridge-E or a hexa-core chip?

Click to enlarge

Let's dig into the numbers

When we look at all three quad cores it's clear that Ivy Bridge has a performance advantage over the Sandy Bridge part in just about every benchmark. Across the board, we generally saw from 5 to 15 percent in favor of the Ivy Bridge. In fact, the only place where Ivy Bridge was slower was in 3DMark's GPU test and Dirt 2. Why? Frankly, we don't know. We actually expected the scores to be fairly close, with Ivy Bridge slightly ahead of the pack, but for baffling reasons it was slower in these tests. Even more baffling, an exact duplicate of our configuration at Gigabyte HQ put the numbers where they should have been. What's going on? We're not sure, as we swapped every component possible in an attempt to find out where the gremlin was but could not root it out.

Despite these two anomalies, it's pretty clear that Ivy Bridge is faster over the similarly priced Sandy Bridge part. The real shocker was its competiveness with the Core i7-3820 in some benchmarks. We thought the Core 7-3820's base clock advantage of 200MHz and quad-channel memory would put it in front, but that wasn't always the case. In some benchmarks, the Core i7-3770K was ahead by a small, but measurable margin of 3 to 6 percent.

One interesting benchmark to examine here is the Cinebench 10 Single Core test. That's where we have Cinebench 10 render runs only on a single core instead of across all cores. This is probably the best indication of how efficient Ivy Bridge's cores are against the different generations of chips here: Sandy Bridge, Westmere, and Bulldozer. It's just no contest. Ivy Bridge's core is about 15 percent faster than Sandy Bridge's, 9 percent faster than Sandy Bridge-E's, 34 percent faster than Westmere's and an incredible 73 percent faster than Bulldozer's here. Don't think that gives Ivy Bridge a definitive edge over the big boys, though. Despite each core being faster, more cores still matter if your application uses them. Even the ancient Core i7-990XE has an edge over the Core i7-3770K in many of our multithreaded benchmarks. We will be honest, though—the margin isn't as great as we would have expected.

But let's get back to our questions: Do you buy a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge for your new build? This one's easy. Ivy Bridge, my friend. With the price of 2600K and 3770K exactly the same, there's really no reason to buy a 2600K unless you're limited by your motherboard's support for it. 

Should you upgrade from your Sandy Bridge to an Ivy Bridge? No. It would be foolish to think that just because Ivy Bridge is here your Sandy Bridge chip is a piece of junk. The only reason we could see upgrading is if you're coming from a lower-end, limited Sandy Bridge chip or need better integrated graphics, but otherwise, Sandy Bridge has plenty of life left in it.

Should you just bypass Ivy Bridge for Sandy Bridge-E or a hexa-core chip? That question can't be answered by us. It has to be answered by your computing needs. While we think Ivy Bridge is a hell of a chip, it's not faster than a hexa-core, even an older one, on thread-heavy tasks like 3D rendering and modeling, video encoding, and other content creation jobs. We still recommend that if you compute for a living, using thread-heavy tasks, it's worth the stretch for a hexa-core chip such as the Core i7-3960X or Core i7-3930K. All that aside, we think the Core i7-3770K is the new king of the midrange. Yes, it's hard to have the same enthusiasm we had when the Core i7-2600K first arrived and wiped the floor with all other CPUs, but you shouldn't discount Ivy Bridge. It's fast, it's cheap, and it's cool. What more could you ask for? 

Sophos: 20 Percent Of Macs Hide A Chlamydia-Like Risk For Windows PCs

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 10:52 AM PDT

The Flashback botnet scare may have thrust Macs' supposed invulnerability to antiviruses claim under a microscope, but Sophos decided it wanted some numbers to go along with the heaping of hype. So the company studied feedback from 100,000 Apple computers with Sophos antivirus installed and surprisingly discovered that the Macs were fairly teeming with malware. Before you start laughing, consider this: the vast majority of the malware found didn't affect OS X at all. It targeted Windows PCs.

Only 2.7 percent of the infected Macs contained malware that was harmful to Apple computers, Sophos reports in both a press release and a post on its Naked Security blog. However, a whopping 20 percent of Macs -- that's one in five, if math isn't your strong point -- were riddled with "one or more instances of Windows malware." Most of the Mac-targeting bugs were either Flashback or fake antivirus scams, while the top Windows malware found on Macs turns PCs into spam factories. 

Yes, Macs can often transmit that malware to PCs.

Sophos says that some of the PC malware infected the Macs as far back as 2007 and could have been easily removed at any point if the hardware owners would have installed an antivirus program rather than buying into the whole "Macs don't get viruses" thing. Sophos' Graham Cluley also says PC malware on Macs is a lot like Chlamydia:

Just like malware on your computer, Chlamydia commonly shows no obvious symptoms. But left undetected Chlamydia can cause serious problems, such as infertility… The good news is that Chlamydia is easy to treat. And, if it isn't too tacky to make a parallel, so is malware on Macs.

Cluley then went on to plug Sophos' free antivirus product for Mac users. Keep that in mind while you're contemplating these numbers. The study also drew its sample from 100,000 Macs that "recently" installed Sophos antivirus, which means the stats could be skewed somewhat, as you aren't likely to install a new antivirus program unless you're worried that either a) you're Mac is infected or b) the Flashback boogieman is going to get you.

NoFan's New All-Copper CPU Heatsink Cooler Is Pretty, Big And Whisper Quiet

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 10:32 AM PDT

Sometimes, you don't want to hear about a CPU's manufacturing process, or its cores, or the strength of its integrated graphics. Kidding! Of course you want to hear about all that. What you don't want to hear is the sound of a heavy-duty fan trying to keep your heavy-duty proc from getting hot under the collar. Enter this amazing all-copper beaut of a heatsink from Nofan. It's massive, it's purdy, and it's silent.

Engadget pointed us towards FanlessTech.com, the first site to find the copper behemoth. (Check out the FanlessTech link for even more pics.) The Nofan CR-95C heatsink clocks in at roughly 7.09 inches by 5.83 inches and weighs 2.25 lbs. That massive size and stylized "IcePipe" design help it keep CPUs with a TDP rating of up to 100W cool and calmly running; that's not quite enough for a Core i7 with a beefy overclock, but more than capable of handling any stock Trinity or Ivy Bridge processors with ease.

FanlessTech doesn't expect mass shipments until June, but Britain's QuietPC.com expects a batch of 50 in tomorrow and is accepting preorders now for $107.50 a pop. It may not fit the needs of hardcore system builders (unless you have a big ol' HTPC with a side window, that is), but we thought you should bask in the CR-95C's beautiful glory nonetheless.

Image credit: QuietPC.com

AMD Launches Energy-Efficient Radeon 7000M Mobile GPU Series

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 10:11 AM PDT

AMD's Radeon 7000 series GPUs have officially been out for, what, just over four months now? Time sure flies! But even though you've been able to shove next-gen Radeon cards into a desktop build for over a third of a year, laptop users haven't been quite as lucky, as mobile variants hadn't been announced -- until today. This morning, AMD announced the Radeon 7000M series with three new GPUs built around the 28nm manufacturing process.

The chart above lays out most of the pertinent specs for the enthusiast-grade 7900M ("Wimbledon"), the mainstream 7800M ("Heathrow") and the Ultrabook-friendly 7700M ("Chelsea"), the new 28nm GPUs. The other entries in the 7000M lineup are based off the older 40nm process.

TheVerge reports the flagship 7970M hits 70fps in Skyrim at 1920x1200 resolution, blowing away the 49.3fps put up by the Nvidia 675M. Keep in mind, however, that the 675M is basically a rebranded 580M and isn't based on the Kepler architecture. The 7870M and 7770M hit 41.4fps and 36.9fps, respectively. AMD claims the mobile GPUs are powerful enough to run up to six monitors using Eyefinity.

Energy efficiency is oh-so-important in this slim-and-light notebook days; the 7000M series lays off the juice thanks to AMD's new "Enduro" switching technology, which behaves like Nvidia's Optimus technology and swaps the graphical load between integrated and discrete graphics depending on need. Radeon 7000M series cards can also shut down unused portions of the GPU to save even more energy and disable the GPU entirely when integrated graphics processors are handling the workload.

Google Drive Goes Live With 5GB Of Free Cloud Storage

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 10:02 AM PDT

After years of rumors, whispers and supposed false starts -- and a week of anticipatory service upgrades from competitors like Dropbox and SkyDrive -- Google Drive is finally here. Yep, Google's getting into the increasingly crowded cloud storage game and it's bringing wallet-friendly price points and a bevy of features swiped from Google Docs and others.

Watch the video above to get the basic details, then wander over here to claim your own 5GB of free cloud storage space. Upgrade options range from $2.50/mo for a 20GB upgrade all the way up to $800/mo for 16TB worth of Google's servers. $5/mo nets you 100GB of space. (Note; I just edited those numbers, which changed between now and the initial posting of the article.)

Files stored in GDrive are available for easy sharing via Gmail or Google+; each file also has sharing options for individual users. Apps are already available for PCs, Macs and Android devices, with iOS support "coming soon." There are also robust file-searching capabilities in place. I just installed the desktop PC client, and it supports drag-and-drop functionality.

Once you sign up for Google Drive, it basically absorbs your Google Docs. In fact, "Docs" gets replaced by "Drive" in the black nav bar at the top of Google sites. All of the features available in Docs are also available in Drive, right down to the awesome real-time collaboration mode. Google Drive tracks file revisions for up to a month, though you can opt to have it track a file's revisions eternally if you so desired.

One thing I don't like off the bat is that opening a file stored as a converted GDocs document in the GDrive PC client boots up your browser and opens Google Docs, rather than opening the file in a local word processing program. Not only is it irritating, it introduces a decent amount of lag time between clicking on the file and having it actually open, at least on my Core i5 notebook. It's understandable, though, as GDocs converts files to a new GDocs format for editing. (I guess I'm grumping more about Docs than GDrive, here.) Standard .doc files and the like that haven't been converted to Google's proprietary GDocs format open locally in Word or LibreOffice just fine, though.

While SkyDrive and Dropbox's file support is fairly limited, Google says GDrive's file support chops are comparatively beefy: Open over 30 file types right in your browser—including HD video, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop—even if you don't have the program installed on your computer. Nifty!

It's free, so go check it out if you want. The lack of Linux support may bum out some, but Google Docs fanatics especially will find a lot to like in Google Drive.

Dropbox Adds 'Get Link' Feature for Easier Sharing

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 08:45 AM PDT

Freemium cloud storage service Dropbox today announced "a whole new way" of sharing files, which it says makes it ridiculously "easy to share your stuff from the web, your computer, or mobile device." To be honest, though, the said feature is far from being novel (perhaps Dropbox is happy about beating Leonardo da Vinci to the punch). While unprecedented it most definitely isn't, you're likely to find it very useful. Hit the jump for more.

Sharing of files using their URLs has for long been the bread and butter of the cyberlocker industry, but Dropbox has taken its own sweet time rolling it out to all of its 50 million-plus users. Hitherto, this feature was only available in beta.

"Anyone with the link gets access to a snazzy page where they can view (but not edit) your stuff," wrote Dropbox's Jon Ying in a blog post announcing the new feature. "Our gallery pages give your photos, videos, and even docs the gorgeous, full-browser view they deserve. This means that people who follow your link can see pictures, look at presentations, and watch home videos without having to download and open them separately."

Making a link for a file or folder is as easy as right clicking and selecting "Get link." When on mobile, you simply need to open the file and press the link icon on the bottom left corner.

New Screenshots and System Specs Emerge for Max Payne 3

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 07:27 AM PDT

The third installment in the Max Payne series is set to ship for PC on May 29th in North America and June 1st in Europe, but is your system ready? To help you determine that, Rockstar Games has coughed up a list of system specifications, including hardware and software, with what appears to be both minimum and recommended configurations (the list's layout is a bit vague).

Max Payne 3 will run on 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Vista Service Pack 2, and Windows 7 Service Pack 1. As for the hardware, you'll need at least an Intel dual-core 2.4GHz or AMD dual-core 2.6GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, Nvidia 8600GT 512MB VRAM or Radeon HD 3400 512MB VRAM, 100 percent DirectX 9 compatible soundcard, and 35GB of hard drive space.

On the upper end, Rockstar Games recommends or supports an Intel Core i7 3930K or AMD FX8150 processor, 16GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 or Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, and DirectX 9 compatible soundcard supporting Dolby Digital Live.

"Developed in parallel with the game's console versions, Max Payne 3 for PC supports DirectX11 including tessellation, as well as a number of additional advanced graphics options and is optimized to run across a wide range of PC setups," Rockstar Games said.

A Special Edition SKU will be available exclusively through GameStop in the U.S. (and throughout Europe from select retailers). Alternately, you can pre-purchase the digital download version and receive pre-order bonus content such as character and weapon packs.

Image Credit: Rockstar Games

Mark Your Calendar, Windows 8 Release Preview Arriving First Week of June

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 06:48 AM PDT

Microsoft's next generation desktop operating system, Windows 8, inches closer to release with each passing day. In fact, barring any last minute snags and/or delays, Microsoft will make available the Release Preview of Windows 8 in early June. How early? Within the first week, which is less than seven weeks away. What this tells us is that Windows 8 is nearly ready for prime time.

It's important to remember when playing with the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 that it's basically beta code, an unfinished build that won't fully resemble the final product. But come June, the Release Preview will likely be the last sneak peek before Windows 8 goes gold, and for the most part, what you see is what you're going to get, presumably in October.

Microsoft announced the June release window during a Windows 8 Developer Day event in Japan and posted a picture to its @BuildWindows8 Twitter account. One of the people who commented noticed that Microsoft used an old Windows logo on the announcement slide, though it was probably just a simple oversight.

There are still tons of questions Windows 8 (and Microsoft) need to answer, however we do know that Microsoft is paring down the number of versions consumers will have to wade through. There will be two main versions for x86 users, Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro, and a seperate version for ARM users, Windows RT.

Image Credit: Microsoft

Vint Cerf, Al Gore Among First Inductees into Internet Hall of Fame

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 06:27 AM PDT

The Internet Society announced last month the creation of an annual Internet Hall of Fame program to honor leaders and luminaries who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the global Internet, and on Monday, the group inducted more than 30 people during an awards ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland. Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, and Vint Cert, the father of the Internet, are both among the inaugural class, and so are a few surprise names.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is Al Gore, though not for inventing the Internet. Rather, he was honored for being a "key proponent of sponsoring legislation that funded the expansion of and greater public access to the Internet." According to his bio on the Internet Hall of Fame's website, Gore was one of the first government officials to foresee what kind of impact the Internet could have beyond the realm of academia.

"There are extraordinary people around the world who have helped to make the Internet a global platform for innovation and communication, spurring economic development and social progress," the Internet Society said in a statement. "This program will honor individuals who have pushed the boundaries to bring the benefits of a global Internet to life and to make it an essential resource used by billions of people. We look forward to recognizing the achievements of these outstanding leaders."

The Internet Society convened an Advisory Board made up of some pretty big names to vote on the inductees for the 2012 class. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, and Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired are among the dozen board members.

You can view a list and bios of all 33 inaugural inductees here.

G.Skill Hurls New TridentX DDR3 Memory Kits at Ivy Bridge

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 05:53 AM PDT

With Intel having finally and officially launched its much anticipated Ivy Bridge platform yesterday, the floodgates have been opened for a new generation of parts and accessories designed to play nice with the Santa Clara chip maker's 3rd generation Core processors. One of those companies is G.Skill, makers of high performance system memory like the new TridentX DDR3 series.

Anyone is welcome to pick up a TridentX kit and run with it, however the new sticks are really designed for overclocking enthusiasts. To prove it, G.Skill posted a couple of screenshots showing a 16GB DDR3-2800 TridentX memory kit running at 3,320MHz and a 32GB DDR3-2666 kit running at 2,933MHz.

TridentX memory kits range in stock frequency from 2,400MHz to 2,800MHz in 8GB to 32GB capacities. Each kit sports a removable top fin for added flexibility when installing the RAM into cramped systems with large CPU coolers.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: G.Skill
Posted by Shri Krishna

MMO News

MMO News

Auto Club Revolution launches BMW Experience

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 12:03 PM PDT

Auto Club Revolution has launched the new BMW Experience, connecting BMW enthusiasts with the game.

People who visit BMW’s websites will be able to drive BMW’s latest M Sports performance car, the BMW 1 Series M Coupe, in an introduction to Auto Club Revolution. The car can be customized and raced on the new Victoria Harbour race track, which was designed and built with the help of BMW designers to help showcase the car.

Auto Club Revolution is developed and published  by Eutechnyx.

50946 420x310 autoclubrevolution bmw 1 series m coupe

Auto Club Revolution Gameplay Screenshot

 Source:

Auto Club Revolution launches the BMW Experience

The online racing game and car community reveals bespoke game experience for BMW Cars.

24th April 2012, BMW M Sport Studio, Munich. Auto Club Revolution today launched the BMW Experience, allowing players the opportunity to drive BMW's latest M Sports performance car,  the BMW 1 Series M Coupé.

The BMW Experience offers visitors to BMW's websites and social media channels a unique opportunity to drive the car in a specially built introduction to the Auto Club Revolution game. Players have the chance to customise their very own BMW 1 Series M Coupé which they can race on Victoria Harbour, the brand new race track, specially designed and built in conjunction with the BMW's designers and designed to put the car through it's paces.

Auto Club Revolution is a free-to-play online racing game and car community built in collaboration with the motor industry. Featuring officially licensed cars from BMW and over 50 of the world's leading motor manufacturers, it delivers a console quality racing experience to the free-to-play market while providing a social platform for owning, customising and enjoying cars online.

Andreas-Christoph Hofmann, Vice President Brand Communication BMW, Marketing services BMW Group: "Our customers are tech-savvy and love to be able to put their dream car together the way they want. Auto Club Revolution allows us to make our models accessible to a large number of car enthusiasts. It was extremely important to us that our models be portrayed realistically. In Eutechnyx we found a partner who shares our high quality standards – and we worked well together right from the start."

"It is always a real challenge to render a vehicle's distinctive handling accurately in a game Рgenerating the models from CAD data is just not enough. To reproduce the handling of the BMW 1 Series M Coup̩ in ACR in an authentic manner, we first took it out on the real racetrack. That is the only way to know exactly how the car corners, for example," said Doug Wolff, ACR Team Lead.

Auto Club Revolution already features licensed content from over 50 car and over 150 upgrade parts manufacturers plus a raft of licensed race tracks including Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Daytona International Speedway[SJ3] , Silverstone, Infineon Raceway and the game's range of custom race tracks.
Auto Club Revolution's progression model unlocks free cars at regular player levels and allows them to be upgraded using credits, which are earned during in game activities (such as racing).

MMOHut Weekly Recap #82 Apr 22 – DotA 2, Waren Story, League of Legends, & More

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 05:04 PM PDT


A quick look and discussion for every major announcement and update during the week! This week we discussed updates from the following games: Dota 2, Champions Online, Waren Story, Soul Captor, League of Legends, Digimon Masters Online, Brawl Busters, BrickForce, Super Monday Night Combat and CrossFire.  The biggest news this week comes from the announcement that Dota 2, a MOBA game from Valve will be F2P. There has been speculation for quite some time now that Dota 2 will be F2P since its main competitors, HoN and League of Legends are also F2P. You can view all the individual news articles mention over at the MMOHut.com News section.

MMOHut World of Warplanes Pax East Preview!

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:54 PM PDT

Our last video interview of Pax East came is now live on our Youtube page. This time we had a chance to talk to a developer from Wargaming.net about their new title, World of Warplanes. We got a chance to find out just how different this title will be from World of Tanks, Wargaming’s successful Tank MMO.
Posted by Shri Krishna

Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates

Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates

Eternal Blade (KR)

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 07:10 AM PDT


I am guessing gPotato is more well-known in the West as a MMO publisher, but not many knows that its parent company, Gala-Net, actually has development studios (Gala-Lab) in Japan and Korea. 2 of the more famous games include Fly For Fun (Flyff) and Rappelz.


Coming up next will be Eternal Blade, which was hiding at the Business to Business (B2B) area over at G*Star 2011 I believe. There is not much info I can dig up about this, but enjoy the debut trailer~!

Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2011/11/eternal-blade-kr-debut-trailer.html

OP-ED: It’s Too Soon for a PlayStation Vita Price Cut

Posted: 24 Apr 2012 04:27 AM PDT

Vita

PlayStation Vita has now been available for two months in North America and Europe, and twice as long in Japan. In that time it’s failed to make any sort of significant splash as far as sales go — in Japan, where we receive weekly updates courtesy of Media Create, the system sold less than 9,000 units in each of the first two weeks this month, and it wasn’t as if it was doing gangbusters prior to that. Software has done poorly as well, rarely making the top 50 sales charts in Japan; in the U.S., only MLB 12 has been seen in the NPD’s top 10, and that is with sales of the PlayStation 3 and Vita versions being combined. All of the Vita’s games are also available through the PlayStation Store, so it is unfair to judge the performance of software purely on sales charts that only account for retail. The amount of hardware that has been moved so far, however, does feel like cause for concern.

Sony is in a less-than-desirable position right now, as outlined in a recent New York Times piece. Vita not exploding out of the gate is relatively low on the list of problems for the company, which hasn’t turned a profit in years. But with new president and CEO Kaz Hirai recently pronouncing gaming as one of the pillars upon which Sony will turn things around, bigger things have to be expected from Vita. A middling success (if it can be called that) is not enough.

Gamasutra‘s Chris Morris has suggested the company consider dropping the system’s price — in the United States it retails for $249.99 and $299.99 for the Wi-Fi and 3G models, respectively. In examining the issue, he doesn’t see it as especially likely, and with good reason, in my opinion. It’s too soon for a price cut.

The most immediate question is whether Sony could even afford to slash the price of the system. While many feel it and its games are overpriced, especially with the 3DS being available for $169.99, Vita is being sold at a loss. In other words, Sony loses money on each and every one it sells. This is nothing new for Sony, as it was also true of previous platforms, including the PlayStation 3. Increasing the hit Sony takes on every piece of hardware it moves, particularly at a time where its television business in particular is struggling mightily, may not be feasible.

As Morris notes, the early days of Vita’s life seem to be mirroring what the 3DS went through last year. Sales were unnotable in the first half of 2011; it wasn’t until an $80 price cut happened and an influx of software was made available during the holiday shopping season that Nintendo turned things around. It’s difficult to say what deserves most of the credit for the shift. The system was lacking quality software, a situation which was largely resolved between the release of Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 (and Monster Hunter 3G in Japan). At $250, the price was likely too high, especially for a system with nothing that looked as good as a $7 iOS game (Infinity Blade II) playable on multiple platforms with one purchase. And the holiday shopping season is traditionally where videogame hardware sees a big boost. All three played some role in the turnaround; I don’t think anyone would try to argue it was the price cut alone that was responsible.

Vita had the benefit of a much stronger launch lineup than 3DS. Whereas the best offerings for 3DS were Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars and Super Street Fighter IV (the eShop was unavailable until months after launch), Vita had Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Lumines: Electronic Symphony, Wipeout 2048, and Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack to offer gamers. Uncharted was clearly the headliner, and that largely remains true even today, which explains why the system hasn’t made it big in Japan. Since then there hasn’t been a great deal to speak of in terms of original games; Unit 13 is fun but deeply flawed, and it won’t be until the end of May and June that Resistance: Burning Skies and Gravity Rush hit in the United States. A constant flow of software is sure to help the Vita’s case, and in Japan a single Monster Hunter title could turn things around in a hurry.

There is also the possibility that Vita’s lackluster start is due in part to the lull the entire industry is currently going through. Total industry sales in the U.S. in March were down 25 percent as compared with the same period last year; hardware was down 35 percent. That’s continued a recent trend of sales being down worldwide. If and when that comes to an end, Vita may benefit from that. Allowing time to pass will almost certainly help to boost Vita sales, both because more software will be available and because we’ll be approaching the holiday shopping season, the significance of which should not be underestimated.

The impact of a price cut also goes beyond the sales of PlayStation Vita. If it comes too soon, early adopters may feel shafted. And while that’s a risk you run by purchasing any new piece of technology, that truth doesn’t mean gamers will be any less resentful. Nintendo dealt with this by offering 20 free games (10 NES, 10 GBA) to anyone who purchased a 3DS prior to the price cut going into effect in August. Regardless of whether that was enough to satiate early adopters’ frustrations, cutting a new system’s price so soon could cause consumers some hesitation when that company launches its next piece of hardware. Whatever the Wii U’s price ends up being, there will inevitably be those questioning whether or not a slow start will result in its price being slashed soon after. Sony is no doubt aware of this, just as Nintendo was when making its decision regarding the 3DS.

“With regard to the influence on the Wii U, what we have to take most seriously is that the price markdown could damage the trust of the consumers who bought the Nintendo 3DS just after the launch. I feel greatly accountable for it,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said last summer. “Our decision of the price markdown this time has a side effect that, at the launch of the Wii U, people may feel that the price might drop in the near future if they wait. Nevertheless, we have decided to cut down the price of the Nintendo 3DS as we consider it as a necessary decision now. What we will be able to do to recover the consumers’ trust before the launch of the Wii U is very important to us.”

Although it has yet to be announced, there are no shortage of rumors about the PlayStation 3′s successor. Just last month it was reported that the PlayStation 4 could be out toward the end of 2013. That would not be a long time for consumers to forget about how the Vita’s slow start led to a price cut. After the PS3 had trouble initially selling at its exorbitant price tag, Sony would rather not give people any reason to wait on a purchase.

On the other hand, a Vita price cut might convince those who are waiting for its price to drop to buy one to go ahead and do just that, though I think the potential of this is not worth the possible benefits considering all of the negatives laid out above.

The software will come in time; there’s little Sony can do to speed that along without sacrificing quality. That doesn’t mean there is absolutely nothing it can do to make a Vita purchase more attractive. Those pricey proprietary memory cards could use with a price cut of their own; as one is all but necessary with the purchase of a system, they automatically increase that $250 (or $300) price by somewhere between $20 and $100. And the recent launch of an open beta for the PlayStation Suite SDK is a good start in trying to convince independent developers to create software for the system; from here it would be wise to do all it can to support such development. For all of the praise heaped upon Lumines and Uncharted, it is Mutant Blobs Attack, a small downloadable game, that many feel is Vita’s best game to date. Encouraging developers to bring more projects of its size to the platform will be important to the Vita’s long-term health. In this age of digital distribution, not everything has to be a $40-plus retail title, and the combination of offering cheaper games and cheaper memory cards could make Vita more attractive to consumers without Sony having to touch the price of the system itself so soon after launch.

Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/playstation-vita-price-cut-too-soon

Incoming search terms:

3DS Ambassador GBA Games Still on the Way in 2011

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 07:11 PM PDT

Metroid Fusion

The price drop may have resulted in the 3DS’ much-improved sales in recent months — leading to it already surpassing first-year sales of the DS — but it also left early adopters feeling like they had made a mistake by choosing to pick up the 3DS so quickly. Luckily a gesture was made to keep them happy: a selection of 20 classic games would be given to them for free. Nintendo still plans to make good on that promise by the end of the year despite rumors to the contrary.

Ten of those games were NES titles released at the end of August. They are (eventually) planned for public release on the eShop, complete with additional features. 3DS Ambassadors– the name assigned to anyone who bought a 3DS before the price drop and enrolled in the free program — will be able to upgrade to these enhanced versions for free once they are made available.

The other ten are Game Boy Advance games which Nintendo says it will not sell on the eShop. A release date was never given for their release to Ambassadors; they were simply said to be coming later in 2011. We’re now approaching the year’s end and it was rumored this week that their release may have slipped into 2012.

Not so, says Nintendo. Speaking with the Official Nintendo Magazine U.K., a company rep stated, “The forthcoming 10 GBA Virtual Console titles available for registrants of the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador Programme, will be available before the end of December 2011. We will make further announcements in due course.”

Similar to what was done with the NES titles, only five of the ten GBA games have been revealed at this point: Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi’s Island, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong represent half of what early adopters will get for free.

It’s difficult to complain about a freebie — particularly a freebie that can’t be had otherwise — but the GBA games will be somewhat gimped as compared with other downloadable 3DS titles. Upon release they will lack support for Restore Points, Sleep mode, or any of the system’s wireless functionality like StreetPass or SpotPass.

Of the remaining five games, what are you hoping ends up on the list? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: VG247

Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/3ds-ambassador-gba-games-still-coming-11

The Five Things Silent Hill Downpour Got Right

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:21 PM PDT

March 2012 became known as Konami’s “Month of Horror”, with three major Silent Hill entires set to spook series fans and newcomers alike: Silent Hill HD Collection and Silent Hill: Downpour on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and Silent Hill: Book of Memories for the recently released Playstation Vita. Unfortunately, March turned into a “Month of Disappointment” for many fans with Book of Memories’ release pushed back to a vague “Spring 2012″ while the much anticipated HD Collection turned out to be a technical downgrade instead of the high-definition upgrade fans were promised. But some would say that being disappointed by a release isn’t anything new for Silent Hill fans; for many, it’s even expected.

These fans believe that the quality of the Silent Hill series has been in steep decline ever since development moved out of the hands of Konami’s in-house, Japanese “Team Silent” and into the hands of American and European developers after Silent Hill 4: The Room. Many claim that the new developers don’t “understand” what really makes a good Silent Hill title, pointing out that Silent Hill: Homecoming‘s horror was less cerebral and more “typical Hollywood,” suggesting that the developers took too many cues from the 2006 Silent Hill movie. Couple that with the recent re-imagining of the original game in the series, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, which many felt failed to provide even the most basic scares, and you begin to see many fans now feel the series has become a mockery of its former glory.

With so much negativity in the air, it really didn’t help matters that the third game in Konami’s “Month of Horror”, Silent Hill: Downpour released last month to mixed reviews. A number of critics faulted the game for its cumbersome combat and technical issues (e.g., frame rate drops, glitches and texture popping). Despite this criticism, however, I truly see and rank Downpour as the best post-Team Silent game to date, because it brings the series back to its roots. Before I continue, a warning is in order:

For those who haven’t completed the game, please note that while I don’t reveal any major elements of the plot, there are some minor game spoilers below.

That being said, here are the five ways I think Downpour succeeded as a Silent Hill game:

Silent Hill Downpour Spot Art

1) It’s an original stand-alone story anyone can play.

Downpour tells a well-crafted tale that doesn’t rely on continuity with the previous Silent Hill games. Anyone can pick it up and play the game without having to know the full mythos of the series to appreciate the story. More importantly, it’s not a simple rehash of the tropes we’ve seen used in previous Silent Hill titles. This was one of my bigger gripes with Silent Hill: Homecoming — the series’ first foray into next-generation consoles — which basically just copied the plot structure of Silent Hill 2, in which the protagonist suffers from amnesia about a violent act he committed in the past.

That’s not to say that retreading is always a bad thing. One of the other Western-developed offerings, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, rehashes the original Silent Hill but presents it as a reimagining of the same plot and plays on fans’ expectations from the original story to present familiar characters with new agendas. But as fun as surprise twists can be, they still rely on familiarity for their impact.

In contrast, Murphy Pendleton (the protagonist in Downpour) isn’t like the protagonists we’ve seen before as he deals with his own issues and unique reasons for being called to the town. I don’t want to give away the plot, but I will say this much: I was very surprised when I learned the true reason Murphy had been called to Silent Hill — and it goes beyond the simple “inner demons” justification we’ve seen before. I’ve seen discussion in online discussions where other players were able to guess where the story was going from a mile away. Personally, I was gripped by the story right up through the end, and my engagement had a lot to do with the storytelling mechanics used in the game. Murphy’s story doesn’t just unfold in cut-scenes; it unfolds bit-by-bit through flashbacks, character interactions, and even in the notes you pick up throughout the game. Even better, Murphy’s character arc isn’t rushed or crammed into the climax of the game, either. Instead, we learn his back story and discover his motivations all throughout Downpour. I appreciated the fact that many of the details explaining Murphy’s actions weren’t revealed in cut-scenes (as is the case with previous games in the series). If you want to know the full story of what’s going on, you have to take the time to piece together the snippets of information you’ve gleamed from notes scattered throughout town, keep a keen eye on the environments you explore, and pay attention to some of the side quests you complete.

Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/features/five-silent-hill-downpour-right

The Hysterical History of Portable Consoles

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:21 PM PDT

Not to sound like an old fogey, but — oh, what the hell: kids these days are spoiled, what with their Nintendo 3DSes and their iPads. The best portable games are now only a notch or two below the quality of console and PC games, to the point where the average person probably couldn’t tell them apart. In the ’80s and ’90s, though, handheld gaming was a luxurious novelty, on par with staying up late on weekends and birthday parties at Discovery Zone. While Nintendo’s Game Boy was a somewhat affordable system that had plenty of good games and eventually dominated the market, some kids had to wrest them from their parents’ hands. Many just didn’t have one at all, and had no choice but to settle for cheap, dinky LCD games from Tiger Electronics and its contemporaries.

But those early days of portable gaming were also when a grand fantasy started to become real. Gamers with wild imaginations dreamt of portable systems that could play their console games — NES, Super NES, Genesis, and whatever else — and instantly leapfrog the Game Boy. Wild as it was, some manufacturers decided to give it a try, shrinking home consoles down into handheld units with color LCD screens that would, ostensibly, provide the same quality of entertainment, only on the go. Though they all failed in their own ways, the idea (and the technology) slowly advanced through to the present day, when games of the ’90s are now “retro,” and carry the same sense of novelty as portable-only games once did. This is the story of the utterly weird evolution of the so-called portable console.

Pardon the ‘Express’ion

In 1990, the first commercial portable console was NEC’s TurboExpress (PC Engine GT in Japan), a handheld version of their TurboGrafx-16 system in a Game Boy-like form, but with an almost-three-inch color screen and, like the Game Gear, supported a TV tuner accessory for catching local broadcasts. The screen itself was an “active matrix” LCD, which at the time provided a reduction in screen blurring that made the Game Boy look almost unplayable in comparison. The compromise was that the screen didn’t display every line of resolution that the TG16 did, meaning that games looked literally rough around the edges. And like seemingly every handheld that wasn’t the Game Boy, it required six AA batteries to run. Top that with the system’s overall round, rubberized look, and the TurboExpress resembled a piece of game-playing diving equipment.

TurboExpress Spot Art

On paper, the TurboExpress made perfect sense just by virtue of the TG16 game cards, which truly were plastic wafers that could hold some good-looking games and easily fit in a wallet (though actually sticking them in your back pocket wasn’t advisable). And the original PC Engine was tiny to begin with, so it would have been silly not to try to shrink it down further and slap an LCD screen on it. NEC seemed to have a knack for coming up with hardware that was at least a few years ahead of its time, and producing and selling it, too. The TG16 was the first console to get a CD-ROM drive (unusable with the TurboExpress, naturally), a five-player adapter, and a few additional system models at least in Japan that all padded out the product line.

The TurboExpress was probably the most appealing of all of them, but being ahead of its time also meant a price from the future: it debuted at $299, the same number for a 3G-enabled PlayStation Vita from 2012, but technically more, considering inflation. NEC not only priced the Express out of the market, but cemented it as the handheld system of choice for discerning adult gamers who were probably already madly in love with the TurboGrafx to begin with, or rich kids who wanted to attract friends the easy way. (A price drop to $199 did little to relieve that.) Some years later, NEC gave the idea another go, and made the Japan-only PC Engine LT, a bulkier, flip-top unit that still played the same game cards and could get TV signals, but now had a bigger, comparatively better screen, plus the ability to connect to a PC Engine CD-ROM drive. But it, too, was a couple of years too early, and NEC made a relative handful of units. Now it’s one of the holy grails of TurboGrafx fans, but those with their heads on their shoulders will probably just stick with the Express.

PC Engine LT Spot Art

But what about Nintendo? Sure, the Game Boy was cute and inexpensive and introduced millions of people to Tetris, but the prospect of taking your existing NES or Super NES games on the go would, on the surface, be more appealing than spending extra money on a Game Boy and its own games. The problem is that Nintendo game cartridges were the biggest of all, particularly the NES ones, so any portable-ization of their systems would have to compensate for the relatively huge carts.

Nevertheless, some companies tried to do just that in the early ’90s, to varying (yet still low) degrees of success. For a brief moment, there was Biederman Design Labs, a tiny industrial design business — quite possibly just one guy in a garage — who developed a prototype portable NES called the “Express” (no relation to NEC’s). The Express was shown to Electronic Gaming Monthly in 1991, but even calling it a “prototype” would be too generous, because the Express looked like nothing but the guts of an NES stuffed into a wooden box and fitted with a screen and two controller ports (because plugging in the pads was more practical than trying to wrap your hands around the thing). That’s fine if you’re doing it for fun like well-known console modder Ben Heckendorn; not so much if you’re trying to take the thing national.

Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/features/hysterical-history-portable-consoles

Finding an Edge Against Steam

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:21 PM PDT

Impulse

Steam is top dog when it comes to the digital distribution of PC games, and for many people it’s the one and only way to purchase PC games. Although it was maligned by most everyone when it was first released and made playing Half-Life 2 at its launch a real hassle, Valve was smart to enter the market when it did: it’s had the better part of a decade to figure out what does and doesn’t work. And being as early as it was, it’s become the definitive example of how digital computer games should be distributed.

That puts everyone else at a fairly significant disadvantage. Because it’s not as if Steam was merely the first; it is, in many ways, the best option available as far as these sorts of services go — as long as you can look past the inherent DRM of using something like Steam. As other companies launch competitors, they have to worry about getting the fundamentals right. While they’re doing that, Valve is free to spend its time developing things like the Steam Workshop that make the competition look bush league by comparison.

While playing catch-up — cloud saves, mod databases, and other Steam features are not likely to be included by any competitor right out of the gate — it becomes necessary to find some sort of feature or reason to compel people to use a Steam alternative. Good Old Games, now known as GOG, made its name by selling classic games without any DRM and with bonus features such as soundtracks, wallpapers, and artbooks. After finding success with that, it’s now expanding into the realm of selling new games, hoping the combination of its devoted userbase, strong customer support, and lack of DRM will help it to compete. EA’s Origin is still fairly new and so far does not offer any unique features — if you use it, there’s a good chance you’re only doing so because EA requires you to in order to play its games. Beyond that, it’s not doing much of interest, save for its integration in a limited number of mobile games.

Even Valve’s Gabe Newell openly shares the opinion that Origin has yet to stand out in any way. “I don’t think they’re doing anything super-well yet,” he said on podcast Seven Day Cooldown (as transcribed by Gamasutra). “They have a bunch of smart people working on it but I think they’re still playing catch up to a lot of people who have been working in the space for a while. I think they’re recognizing what the challenges are with building and scaling out this kind of system.”

He did say Origin may end up doing something “that is useful to software developers or to gamers but they haven’t done that yet.” And it’s true — years from now Origin may do something of some value you can’t get elsewhere. For the time being that is not the case, and with the exception of those who have a particular issue with Steam or Valve, it’s hard to imagine someone opting to use Origin over Steam if everything else is equal.

GameStop is also a player in this space as the owner of Impulse. The company today announced it now has a catalog of more than 1,500 downloadable PC games available online and, more importantly, through its stores. We first heard about its plans to offer digital games in its stores last summer, something it planned to start doing with the launch of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Impulse, which the company acquired early last year, has been around for years now but, like Origin, doesn’t really stand out in any way. The ability to buy its games from a retail store is, however, an interesting feature, and one neither Steam nor Origin can match currently.

The thought of buying digital items in a store may sound unappealing or pointless to those with credit cards, but for those without a credit card, PayPal, or some equivalent, it does open the door for a new group of consumers to begin purchasing digital PC games. And if those people begin to amass a collection of games on Impulse without running into any issues, they may be encouraged to continue buying their games through it even when there is no longer a barrier to buying games on Steam or Origin. And just as intriguing for frugal shoppers is the ability to purchase digital PC games with credit earned by trading in used console and handheld games. While those PC games can’t be used to continue the cycle of buying games and then trading them in, GameStop is undoubtedly happy to have new ways of encouraging its customers to trade in their old games, as it’s the sale of these titles that is more profitable than anything else it is involved in.

I don’t expect that offering digital games at retail will suddenly have Impulse overtaking Steam by luring away its customers; instead, it’s more likely to expand the audience of people who purchase computer games digitally. In fact, it may result in Steam attracting new users as Impulse could act as an introduction to digital games. Bringing new people over to Steam is not what GameStop is hoping to accomplish here, but without coming up with some sort of unique features Steam doesn’t offer — and even that may not lead to Steam users flocking to Impulse, as many of them are now invested in their Steam friends lists/Achievements/libraries — this should serve as a way of generating sales on Impulse it would otherwise not be seeing.

Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/news/finding-edge-against-steam

Prototype 2 Review: Why So Serious?

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:21 PM PDT

See the child. Hear her beckon forth, surrounded by the carcasses of men harboring murderous intent. Men you ended. Their last breath whispering about the sweetness of a child, or the satisfaction of killing the interloper that you are. Save the child, who you thought was yourn, but she reveals herself to be Mei lost in the world of dust, not the daughter you left behind twelve months ago. The voice in your pocket sputters forth. The man named Henry asks, take her, take the lost child Mei, take her to the mall. Give her medicine left behind by those who never set foot in Haventown, those who drop foodstuffs and medicines from above and never look back. Not since The Event. The Event that scraped the loam off the earth and turned it into the dust that hugs and holds and kills all who wander within. The dust that chips and gnaws at your very stamina. The Event that dominates I Am Alive.

So you go, ever pressing on to find wife and child. Gone a year, but now you return, to climb and cobble and carry on. You cannot ignore Mei’s bleat for aid, but other survivors of the Event not so much as settle but subsist their meager existences in the dust covered Haventown. A man yearns cigarettes to pass on. Another man in an amusement park needs medicine to heal the leg that’s been crushed by another uncivilized man. Haventown also starves for supplies. Bottles of water, cans of fruit cocktail, a single inhaler, a handful of painkillers, these all turn into precious manna from heaven through scarcity. Give the emergency kit to the woman with the ankle sprain? What these bemoaning folk have to give, besides gratitude and perhaps a precious shotgun, is the Retry. Haventown harbors death by trial, not saves. It does not yield to the checkpoint that others call for. It takes away a Retry from your knapsack for every fall, stab, or shot you suffer. Deplete your store of Retries, and your journey resumes at the beginning of your current episode. A practice that leeches away minutes of your life. A practice that mocks you by depleting Retries and then flings you back to 45 minutes ago. What is worth more, the rat meat that can heal you, or the Retry that you get for giving rat meat to the gurgling man below? Every survivor, like the woman bound by handcuff to a bench, pleads for help while you mind debates.

Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/reviews?cId=3187021

Incoming search terms:

Republique and the Price of Bringing PlayStation’s Spirit to iOS

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:21 PM PDT

What’s so terrible about DmC? People sure were angry when Capcom revealed this Devil May Cry prequel/reboot last year. Not having particularly followed the series myself, I found the outcry a little baffling. Sure, it was being outsourced rather than being developed internally by Capcom, but the studio responsible for it is Ninja Theory, who have yet to make a poor game; on the contrary, their work — particularly the recent sleeper Enslaved: Journey to the West — have been quite nicely received by critics. In the end, the complaints mainly seem to boil down to the fact that protagonist Dante suddenly has dark hair and a coif that look an awful lot like that of Ninja Theory’s boss, Tameem Antoniades.

OK, so maybe it’s a little self-gratifying. But still, I have to ask: What’s so terrible about DmC? Now that I’ve had the opportunity to play DmC for myself, I have a hard time imagining that any fan of Devil May Cry fan wouldn’t enjoy Ninja Theory’s take on the franchise. Yeah, Dante has become something of a self-insertion character, and he’s a cocky twerp; but his brashness is offset by a delirious combination of over-the-top silliness and over-the-top action game excess. One moment, Dante is answering the door of his trailer home in the nude; the next, a massive demon is attacking and the hero dresses himself in slow-motion by free-falling through the air into his clothes. (Conveniently placed hovering free-fall objects such as slices of pizza manage to preserve his modesty to the viewer through an increasingly improbable sequence of events.) There’s a real sense of tongue-in-cheek absurdity to it all; were these events to simply flash past in a moment, they’d seem frivolous. Instead, they drag on just a little too long and become just a little too ridiculous, and that clearly deliberate excess amounts to a knowing wink at the audience. It works.

Find similar article at: http://www.1up.com/previews?cId=3187023

God Slayer (CN)

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:21 PM PDT



First announced last week (link), God Slayer is ChangYou’s answer to Tencent Game’s incoming Blade Soul. Do not miss out the other competitor as well, Dragon Blade (link). God Slayer is China’s first action MMORPG developed using CryEngine 3, and unlike games such as Mabinogi Heroes and Dragon Nest, it will feature an open world. I am really pleased the images and debut trailer all used in-game shots!

Various oriental myths and legends will be brought to live in God Slayer, boosted by the game engine’s potent power. But the lore just doesn’t stop in the East, as the main lore is mixed with elements from the West as well. Live weather system, day and time cycles, interactive environment are just some of the eye candies available.



A new highlighted feature will be the mount system. Unlike most games, different mounts in God Slayer will react differently in various environments. Some are more adapt moving across grasslands, some are faster in the air, some are equipped to swim… and more. There will also be mounts able to sit multiple players as well as aiding players in combat. More information when available!

Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2012/04/god-slayer-cn-chinas-first-ce3-action.html

Blade & Soul (KR)

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:20 PM PDT



I don’t normally air my views on certain topics as a separate post, but there will still be exceptions from time to time. NCsoft, to the surprise of many, revealed the Summoner class to much fanfare, but I can guarantee you that no one outside NCsoft would have foresee the kitty cat mania which followed. No doubt the over-cute design might be out of place and attract negative comments from everywhere, but when was the last time a MMO company pulled of such an amusing and entertaining “stunt”?

NCsoft really has got balls, and titanium-clad ones if I may describe. If you are NCsoft’s CEO, would you have dared to teased the Summoner class calling forth awesome ink demons, only to reveal they are summoning kitty cats instead? Normally, I would have been a detractor, but NCsoft actually has got the full package in place, including the skill system for the kitty cat summons, the various gliding, swimming and moving actions, and even a music video! This is not a half-baked system just to score some points with the ladies, but a full working feature.

My point is, if you want to pull off such a “stunt”, you must be prepared with the content to showcase and convince gamers it will work. This kitty cat mania is definitely a stroke of genius in my books. I am convinced, and totally in awe at the same time. Even my normally strict brother is hooked to the music video!

Find similar article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2012/04/blade-soul-kr-my-thoughts-on-kitty-cat.html
Posted by Shri Krishna
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Total Pageviews

statcounter

View My Stats