General Gaming Article |
- Zombies, Crowbars And Breadboxes (But Not Vegetables): Just What Is Nvidia Unveiling Tomorrow Night?
- Portal 2 Level Editor Coming In May As "Perpetual Testing Initiative" DLC
- Maingear Picks Up Where Alienware Left Off, Readies 11.6-inch "Pulse" Gaming Notebook
- Google Searches Fall Prey To A Devastating ZERG RUSH!
- AMD Quietly Slashes A-Series APU and FX Series CPU Prices Following Ivy Bridge Launch
- New Version of Dropbox Adds Automatic Photo and Video Uploads
- Opera 12 Beta Browser is Smarter, Faster, and Theme Friendly
- Nintendo's First Loss in Three Decades is a Doozy
| Zombies, Crowbars And Breadboxes (But Not Vegetables): Just What Is Nvidia Unveiling Tomorrow Night? Posted: 27 Apr 2012 11:23 AM PDT Whatever Nvidia plans on announcing at the GeForce LAN/NVIDIA Gaming Festival in Shanghai tomorrow, it's going to be hard-pressed to live up to the hype leading up to its unveiling. The PC gaming community has been a-flutter since the first ominous "IT'S COMING" message hit Nvidia's Facebook page over a week ago. Nvidia's just sent a kick-ass custom crowbar and some cryptic confirmations to the Maximum PC offices in anticipation of tomorrow's big news.
Just what the heck is it supposed to signify? We have no friggin' idea. The mixture of zombies, crowbars and Nvidia is definitely intriguing, though. Gordon managed to pry some additional information out of Nvidia representatives, and no, he didn't need to ironically threaten them with their own crowbar to do it. Here are some key characteristics of the Big Secret that Nvidia would own up to:
In any case, Nvidia plans on making the official announcement and sending us an update sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 P.M. PST tomorrow night. Stay tuned for details. |
| Portal 2 Level Editor Coming In May As "Perpetual Testing Initiative" DLC Posted: 27 Apr 2012 10:50 AM PDT Last year, Valve teased gamers around the world with the promise of eventually releasing a level editor for Portal 2. The company's been frustratingly close-lipped about details since then -- until yesterday, that is. Valve announced that the level editor is shipping as a DLC offering called the Perpetual Testing Initiative, coming to PC and Macs on May 8th for the low, low price of absolutely free. The "Perpetual Testing Initiative" allows players to easily create, share, and play Portal 2 puzzles. The Initiative comes with a simplified puzzle maker that allows that creation of mind-bending puzzles without ever leaving the game. The puzzle maker can directly publish maps to the Steam Workshop where users can browse, vote on, and select to play them. Selected puzzles will automatically be downloaded and installed inside Portal 2. So, yeah, that's about that. Be sure to watch the awesomely humorous video above to get a better feel for the Perpetual Testing Initiative. Will a level editor coax you into blowing the cobwebs off of Portal 2 and taking it for a whirl again? |
| Maingear Picks Up Where Alienware Left Off, Readies 11.6-inch "Pulse" Gaming Notebook Posted: 27 Apr 2012 10:28 AM PDT
Don't worry; even though it sports the same name as an older (and ill-fated) tower/box PC produced by Maingear, this Pulse is a totally different beast. Engadget reports it'll pack in an Ivy Bridge CPU, an Nvidia GT650M with 2GB of RAM, an 11.6-inch 1366×768 display, THX TruStudio Pro audio and up to 16GB of dual-channel RAM. The base model rocks 8GB of RAM, a 320GB hard disk drive and a Core i5 for $1,099. Of course, this is Maingear we're talking about, so expect a flood of customization options to be available. Look for these portable powerhouses to start shipping on June 3rd. Image credit: Engadget |
| Google Searches Fall Prey To A Devastating ZERG RUSH! Posted: 27 Apr 2012 10:04 AM PDT
Just search for "Zerg rush" -- minus the quotation marks -- to get the party started. Legions of little red and yellow "O"s swarm in from the edges of the screen, determined to demolish your search results. (Amusingly, most of those search results talk about the Zerg Rush easter egg. How meta!) Each search result has a life bar, as does each "O"; left-clicking on an "O" two or three times brings it down.
It doesn't matter if you click until your finger goes numb; the Zerg "O"s just keep on coming. (Protip: they attack the sections of the screen you can't see, too, so be sure to scroll up and down occasionally.) Eventually, your last search result will crumble beneath the onslaught, and the "O"s will swirl together to form "GG" -- Starcraft slang for good game. Then you can share your score on Google+ afterwards. Is the Zerg Rush easter egg a one-day event or here to stay? We're not sure, so you might want to get in on the action soon just in case. And when you're done, be sure to check out more of the easter eggs Google has sprinkled throughout its various services. |
| AMD Quietly Slashes A-Series APU and FX Series CPU Prices Following Ivy Bridge Launch Posted: 27 Apr 2012 07:27 AM PDT
Here's a look at how the FX Series shakes out:
Not all of those represent price cuts. The FX-4100 and FX-4170 are both unchanged, for example, while the FX-6100 and FX-6200 dropped by $10 each. AMD's eight-core processors saw bigger reductions; the FX-8120 dropped by $20 and the FX-8150 by $40. Here's the updated price list for A-Series APUs:
Depending on the processor, APU prices dropped by as much $30 (A8-3850). Bear in mind that these are wholesale prices in 1,000-unit tray quantities, so retail pricing will likely be a bit higher. |
| New Version of Dropbox Adds Automatic Photo and Video Uploads Posted: 27 Apr 2012 07:01 AM PDT
"Getting pictures off your camera has always been a huge pain. So we put our heads down and worked worked worked to ensure that automatic upload would play nicely with anything that might have a photo or video on it," Dropbox explains in a blog post. "With the newest version for Mac or Windows, you can just plug your camera, phone, or SD card into your computer and with a few clicks of the mouse all your photos and videos are in your Dropbox!" Photos and videos tend to take up more space than Word documents, so to sweeten the deal, Dropbox will give you 500MB of additional free storage space for your first automatic upload and will keep stretching the online container 500MB at a time, up to 3GB extra, pro bono. You can download Dropbox 1.4.0 here. Image Credit: Dropbox |
| Opera 12 Beta Browser is Smarter, Faster, and Theme Friendly Posted: 27 Apr 2012 06:36 AM PDT
Underneath the hood, Opera Software took a page from Chrome and gave plug-ins their own process. That means if a plug-in hangs or crashes, it won't bring down the entire browser. Opera 12 is also "smarter" and faster with optimized network SSL code and improved tab loading to accelerate start-up and shut-down times. Perhaps one of the more interesting changes is built-in support for getUserMedia, an API that lets Web apps tap into your webcam and other hardware. "Woo-hoo! After months of hard work, we're nearing the finish line on Opera 12," said Haakon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software. "There are so many new things to try. The paged media project has the potential to change the way browsers handle content, and camera support shows just how web applications can compete with native apps. With so many new features, especially for developers, Opera 12 is a platform to build upon. We're excited to share it with the world and see what people can create." Go here if you want to give the beta browser a test run. Image Credit: Opera Software |
| Nintendo's First Loss in Three Decades is a Doozy Posted: 27 Apr 2012 05:56 AM PDT
Nintendo actually sold 13.5 million 3DS devices, a nice number if not for the fact that it's losing money on hardware. Wii sales, meanwhile, totaled just 9.84 million units, down from 15 million units one year ago. The list goes on. Nintendo DS sales plummeted to 5.1 million units, down from 17.5 million units one year prior, and Wii software sales totaled 102.3 million after topping 171 million a year ago. Nintendo's $534.6 million loss is the company's first downward slide in its more than 30-year reporting history (as a company, Nintendo is well over a century old), according to The New York Times. It's also a huge turnaround from just one year ago when Nintendo posted a $960.5 million profit on $12.6 billion in sales. The company hasn't hit the panic button, however, and expects its upcoming Wii U console to turn things around to the tune of $10.1 billion in projected revenue and $246.6 million in net income. You can view Nintendo's consolidated financial statement here (PDF). |
Most notebooks that are capable of pulling off a true frag fest on the run are portable in name only, being heavy-duty 15- to 17-inch monsters with battery lives briefer than butterfly's lives. To make mobile matters worse, Alienware recently announced that its M11x is being put out to pasture. Fear not, traveling gamers: all is not lost. Maingear is, well, gearing up a new 11-inch gaming notebook of its own, the Pulse.
Few things in life are as frustrating as losing a Starcraft match to a Zerg Rush. Falling to a teeming wave of cheap, quickly produced Zerglings flat-out sucks. No matter how many cannons you fire, the fodder just keeps coming. A new Google easter egg brings the doomed gameplay of fending off an unending Zerg Rush to your Google Search results -- but unlike in Starcraft, it's actually surprisingly fun. (You're still screwed in the end, though.)
Throughout the years, AMD's strategy against Intel has been to undercut the Santa Clara chip maker in price, though that's not necessarily by design. Clock for clock, AMD's processors don't usually pack the same performance punch as Intel's silicon, and that's especially true with the launch of Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture. In response to Ivy Bridge, AMD decided another round of price cuts was in order.
Google Drive is the new online storage locker everyone is talking about, but lest anyone forget about Dropbox, there's a new version available that ups the stakes with the ability to automatically upload photos and videos from just about any digital camera, tablet pc, smartphone, or SD card. There's also a new Photos pages on Dropbox's website where you can view all of your uploaded snapshots.
Optionally, the latest version of Opera Software's online browser, Opera 12 (just released in beta form) is Opera like you've never seen it before. That's because Opera 12, or "Wahoo" if going by its codename, supports themes in case you want to change what's already a redesigned interface. From Cookie Monster to a cat wearing sunglasses, there are a bunch of themes to choose from, or you can 
If you're an investor who owns stock in Nintendo, you may have received a financial note that states, "Thank you investor! But our revenue is in another castle!" Not all of it, mind you, but a significant chunk of Nintendo's revenue was a no-show for the game maker's fiscal year ended March 31, 2012. Nintendo posted a loss totaling more than half a billion dollars on $8 billion in revenue, part of which is due to selling 3DS handheld consoles below cost.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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