| Valve to Showcase Redesigned Steam Controller at GDC Posted: 14 Mar 2014 02:39 PM PDT  Valve's controller adds more buttons
Valve has revealed a new version of its Steam Controller that will be shown at the GameDevelopers Conference next week. Revealed back in September 2013, the original prototype was going to have a touchscreen in the middle of the controller. Since then, Valve scrapped the idea altogether but has retained the two trackpads. With the new design, the Steam Controller now has two diamond-patterned analog button layouts. One layout features directional buttons while the second layout features the recognizable X, Y, A, and B button layout. In the area where the touchscreen was, is a Steam logo with a button on either side. Valve plans to have ten of the new prototypes at its booth at GDC for visitors to try out and provide feedback on. Maximum PC's own Gordon Mah Ung offered his opinion on the original Steam Controller. Does the new design of the Steam Controller look better than the previous incarnation? And would you want to use it? Sound off in the comment section! Follow Sean on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| The 10 Best Unreal Engine 3 Games Posted: 14 Mar 2014 11:49 AM PDT  10 great games from 10 years of Unreal Engine 3
Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) turned 10 years old this month, so we took a look back at some of the best games using the engine. Available for licensees since March 2004, UE3 represented a huge leap for the Unreal Engine. It boasts support for pretty much every platform—mobile, Windows, OS X, and all of the consoles. It's so popular with developers that even the FBI decided to license the engine for a training simulator. We had a hard time narrowing the list down to only 10 choices. Games like Unreal Tournament 3, Red Orchestra 2, Rising Storm, and plenty of others didn't make the cut. Then again, 10 years is a long time in the gaming world and most of our picks are games that aren't just fun, but changed how we play games forever. Tell us what you think of the list in the comments! What were your favorite Unreal Engine 3 games? Follow Ben on Twitter and Google+. |
| Gigabyte Releases Several Gaming Laptops with Nvidia GTX 800M Series Graphics Posted: 14 Mar 2014 10:08 AM PDT  A gaggle of gaming laptops by Gigabyte
Nvidia paved the way for new gaming laptop releases earlier this week when it introduced its new GeForce GTX 800M Series of mobile GPUs, and sure enough, we've been bombarded with announcements coming in every which direction. One of the companies getting in on the action is Gigabyte, which today announced an array of gaming laptops built with Nvidia's latest 800M GPUs. For the crowd that prefers a slim and light laptop, Gigabyte now offers its 14-inch P34G and 15-inch P35W. The smaller of the two wields a GeForce GTX 860M GPU with 4GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory. At just 21mm and 1.67kg, Gigabyte claims the P34G is 27 percent thinner and 15 percent ligther than the class average. Look for it to ship in late March. As for the slightly bigger P35W, it features a GeForce GTX 870M CPU with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. It also features quad-storage and a hot-swappable HDD/ODD slot. You can fill the slots with up to two 512GB mSATA SSDs and two 1TB HDDs. This one will also be available in late March. Another 15-inch model is the P15F. It has a GTX 850M GPU and 4th Generation Intel Core i7 processor options. Other features include dual-storage slots with rapid SSD support and Sound Blaster Cinema technology. This one will ship in mid-April. Moving along, the P27G v2 is a 17-inch laptop with a Core i7 quad-core processor, GTX 860M GPU, up to 24GB of RAM, tri-storage slots with RAID 0 support, and a 1080p resolution. The P27G v2 will ship in mid-April as well. Finally, Gigabyte announced the P25X v2, a premium laptop equipped with Nvidia's flagship GeForce GTX 880M GPU with 8GB of GDDR5 memory. It has three storage slots with RAID 0 support, a Full HD IPS display, backlit gaming keyboard, a subwoofer, and a Blu-ray writer. It will ship in mid-April. No word yet on prices. In the meantime, check out our photo gallery of the upcoming laptops below. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Samsung and HP Reportedly Have Chrome OS All-in-One PCs on Tap Posted: 14 Mar 2014 09:37 AM PDT  More Chrome OS hardware is coming
It's still early in the year, but perhaps one day we'll look back at 2014 as the year Google's Chrome OS made head roads in the desktop PC market. A quick look at the landscape shows that Chromebooks are already pretty popular, but that could be only the beginning. By the end of the year, you may start seeing a few more Chrome OS all-in-one (AIO) PCs, including ones from Samsung and Hewlett-Packard (HP). Citing supply chain makers in Taiwan, news and rumor site Digitimes says both OEMs are planning to launch Chrome OS AIOs later this year. It wouldn't be much of a leap for Samsung, which already offers 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch Chromebook models, and HP is the only OEM that currently offers a 14-inch Chromebook. AIOs based on Chrome OS wouldn't be entirely new, either. LG kicked this things off with its Chromebase earlier this year. It's not yet available in the U.S., though word on the web is that it will launch in Australia in April for $599, and perhaps for $499 in the U.S. sometime after. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| AirSign Takes to the Sky to Celebrate Pi Day Posted: 14 Mar 2014 08:50 AM PDT  Happy Pi Day, math fanatics!
For many employed Joes and Janes, Friday signals the end of the work week and is reason enough to celebrate. However, if you're looking for an additional reason to get your groove on heading into the weekend, go out and celebrate Pi Day, otherwise known as March 14th, or 3.14 (get it?). Some even began celebrating yesterday, such as AirSign, an aerial advertising company, which was forced by Mother Nature to get things going early. AirSign partnered with artist ISHKY to write Pi in the sky, but they didn't stop at 3.14. They continued writing out hundreds of numbers of the mathematical constant using five aircraft. According to CNET, it was part of a public art project. "We partnered with artist ISHKY, who specializes in grand-scale projects. ISHKY's 'Pi In The Sky' explores the boundaries of scale, public space, permanence, and the relationship between Earth and the physical universe," AirSign stated in a blog post. "Our team of five synchronized aircraft equipped with dot-matrix skywriting technology follows a flight pattern that forms the first few hundred characters of pi's infinite sequence at SXSW. Each number will measure more than a quarter-mile in height." Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter that's often abbreviated to 3.14, though its decimal representation goes on forever. Lest you feel silly for filling up with suds in recognition of Pi Day, it's actually a real thing -- the House of Representatives passed a bill in 2009 officially recognizing March 14 as National Pi Day. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Hey Look, PC Gaming Alliance Forums are Now Live Posted: 14 Mar 2014 08:08 AM PDT  Another online hangout for gamers
It can be difficult to establish yourself in online communities that already exist, and if you've always dreamed of being part of one from the very beginning, here's your chance. We just received an email from the PC Gaming Alliance letting us know that the non-profit organization has flipped the switch on its new forums. In addition to being one of the first members of what's surely to be a growing community, you might also want to pop in from time to time to share your thoughts on PC gaming and what the PCGA is up to. The PCGA was founded with the intent of providing an open forum where companies can cooperate to develop and promote solutions in the best interest of PC gaming. It gives PC gamers a collective voice and is made of up of members that include Dell, Corsair, Intel, AMD, Epic, Capcom, Razer, GameStop, Digital River, Arxan, Logitech, PyxelArts, Qualcomm, and the EMA. In regards to the web forum, topics are wide open, "In the PCGA forums you can talk about everything from different games, to hardware and software, to the politics and business tha go into the industry," PCGA explains. It's a pretty clean layout at present, with nine sub-forums spread out over four categories. That said, we'd be remiss not to mention that Maximum PC has its own forums as well, and so does our sister gaming site, PC Gamer. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Western Digital 1TB VelociRaptor, Kingston SSDNow V300 240GB SSD, and More! Posted: 14 Mar 2014 07:11 AM PDT |
