Star Wars: Uprising will fight its way to the Google Play Store this fall
Lucasfilm and Disney have just announced that they’re teaming up with video game publisher Kabam to bring a new Star Wars game to Android this fall. Entitled Star Wars: Uprising, the new role playing game takes place after Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and before Episode VII: The Force Awakens, following the fall of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine.
Players will get to create and customize unique characters, go on missions, develop skills and collect gear, all while building up a powerful crew and cartel to fight in large-scale sector-wide battles. The game will take place in the Anoat Sector in Hoth and Cloud City, which follows the Battle of Endor and the death of the Emperor. Kabam explains:
Players will learn hundreds of abilities and collect iconic Star Wars gear to create their own takes on the next generation of heroes: Smuggler, Bounty Hunter, Rebel Guerilla, Diplomat, Gambler or something completely unique.
Players interested in the game can visit the official Star Wars: Uprising website, where they can pre-register and vote on exclusive in-game rewards that will be gifted to all who pre-register. A beta version of the game will also be made available in select regions within the coming weeks.
Photos of Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 leak and show a beautiful tablet
Samsung released a set of high-end tablets, Galaxy Tab S line, in 2014 which set the bar for all other Android tablets. Not only did the tablet have an incredibly thin design with high-end specs to match, but it also had a Super AMOLED display in which no other tablet could match the color range or contrast ratio of the S line. Quite simply, the Tab S was a hit, in both 8″ and 10″ versions. I would argue that Samsung shot itself in the foot by offering way too many tablets last year, which confused consumers, and most don’t even know the Tab S even existed.
Now that the Tab S has been out for about a year now, we are anticipating the next generation to be released soon. Photos have leaked onto a foreign website, and if the pictures are of the actual Galaxy Tab S2, we are going to in for quite a treat. Samsung appears to have done away with those ugly dimples(they were functional for grip), and went with a smooth back which makes the device look like an enlarged version of the Galaxy S6. The photos also show two clips in the back of the device for clicking in a keyboard case or just simple protective cover.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 is rumored to come with a QHD display with Super AMOLED, 3GB of RAM, an Exynos processor, 16GB of internal memory, an 8-megapixel camera, and it is supposed to be the slimmest tablet ever created by Samsung at a super thin 5.4mm. One major downside in owning the Tab S(I have both sizes, 8″ and 10″) is the battery life. The Tab S gets maybe 5-7 hours of on screen time which just isn’t that great for a tablet. If Samsung does release the Tab S2 and it is 5.4mm, I sure hope they optimize battery life to be more efficient.
The post Photos of Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 leak and show a beautiful tablet appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Minecraft Pocket Edition scores a major update
Minecraft Pocket Edition has been updated to version 0.11, which adds features such as boats, fishing, and purchasable character skins, all of which are found already in the desktop and console variants of the game. When it comes to character skins, there is a free selection available, and you can import skin files from your photos gallery, too.
The game is now available in multiple languages, as well. You can change your world from creative to survival and back, rename it, and so forth.
The Minecraft Pocket Edition update is available on Google Play, the App Store, and on Windows Phone.
Source: PocketGamer
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King brings its first word-based game AphaBetty Saga to Android
The developers behind the wildly popular game Candy Crush Saga and its spinoff Candy Crush Soda Saga has delivered its latest mobile game. Available in Google Play Store now, AlphaBetty Saga relies more on player wits than in its other titles.
“AlphaBetty Saga sets players off on a bold new quest as Betty, a young mouse living in the 1930s, follows her grandfather, Professor Alpha, and his loyal assistant, Barney, to discover lost words to complete the “Encyclopedia of Everything”. “
The word-based game tasks players with creating words by connecting to adjacent letters. As you traverse through more than 140 levels you’ll touch down in three locations: London, Egypt, and New York.
Indeed, you’ll also find familiar King features such as boosters, leaderboards, and sync to Facebook. If you’re a fan of casual games that can be picked up and dropped at a moment’s notice, this one will likely speak to you.
To keep things fresh and replay value high the game includes five different modes of playing.
- Scoring: Simply create words and achieve the target score
- Cheese Falls: Bring cheese chunks down to the bottom of the game board
to collect them - Bubble Pop: Include a letter inside a bubble in a word to make it pop
- Word Frenzy: Create and collect the target number of words containing
the target number of letters - Cheddar Spreader: Spread the cheese under multiple tiles on the board
The post King brings its first word-based game AphaBetty Saga to Android appeared first on AndroidGuys.
5.2-inch ZTE Nubia Z9 Borderless Smartphone announced for US market
ZTE just let the wraps off the Nubia Z9, a very neat 5.2″ device with absolutely no borders on the sides. And they have not just done this for aesthetics, there is a bunch of functionality built-in to make use of the ability to make inputs on the screen from the edge of the phone. Very clever ZTE. It looks like the Samsung S6 Edge may have been 1up’d here.
ZTE is dubbing this functionality as Frame interactive Technology (FiT). They have implemented a multitude of gestures and shortcuts, claiming “With FiT technology, users will reduce the average smartphone process to 2.7 steps as compared to traditional smartphones.”
Here’s some of things you can do with FiT:
- Unlock the phone with your grip.
- Scroll through the screen by swiping on the edge.
- Launch the camera by turning the phone sideways.
- Take a selfie by squeezing the phone.
- Gripping the phone twice has recognition to tell which hand (left or right) is holding it and shrink the screen appropriately for one-handed use.
ZTE is playing in the US market with this one, stating that the Nubia Z9 will be available in Q3 of 2015 (black and gold colors).
Base specs for the Nubia Z9 are a modest 5.2″ 1080P display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC, 16 MP (OIS) rear and 8 MP front cameras, 2900 mAh battery, and Android 5.0. Interestingly, there are going to be three tiers to this phone, at different prices. The Classic base model will have 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage at $564, the Elite model will have 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage at $645, and the Exclusive model will be an Elite with an added fingerprint sensor at $725.
This is certainly an impressive (and dare I say, innovative) offering by an unfamiliar brand in the US.
The post 5.2-inch ZTE Nubia Z9 Borderless Smartphone announced for US market appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Video Review: A Look at Speck’s Cases for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus [iOS Blog]
In today’s review, we’re talking a look at iPhone 6 Plus cases from Speck, a well-known accessory company that sells its products in dozens of retail stores. Speck has been in the case-making business for many years now and it offers several iconic cases like the CandyShell and the MightyShell.
All of Speck’s cases provide a reasonable compromise between protection and thickness. They can keep an iPhone safe from wear, tear, and minor drops, and don’t add a lot of bulk to Apple’s ultrathin devices.
The CandyShell Grip, the first case we looked at, has a hard shell with soft rubber grips on the outside to make it easy to hold. It comes in two variations: with a faceplate for the front of the phone, and without. The CandyShell Grip comes in several colors and is priced at $39.95 to $49.95 (with face plate).
Speck’s MightyShell, the second case we looked at, is similar to the CandyShell but is more durable with three layers of rubber for better protection. It also comes in multiple colors and in two versions, with a faceplate ($69.95) and without ($54.95).
Speck also makes a CandyShell Card case that’s able to hold credit cards and cash ($39.95). It’s exactly like a CandyShell, but it’s a bit thicker with the wallet portion. Finally, we looked at the CandyShell Inked, which is a CandyShell ($44.95) that includes unique, super colorful designs.
Speck’s iPhone 6 Plus cases can be purchased from the Speck website, and many of them are also available from Amazon.com at a lower price. Speck also sells the same cases for the iPhone 6 at slightly lower prices.
MacRumors received no compensation for this video review.
Airbnb rolls out a pricing recommendation tool for hosts
If you try to book a hotel room in San Diego in September, you can probably get one for around $200-300 a night. If you try to do the same in mid-July during Comic-Con? You’ll likely have to cough up close to $1000 a night, and that’s if you can get a room at all. If you’re an Airbnb host, it’d behoove you to know about these sorts of surges in demand, so you can price your room appropriately. Today, Airbnb has rolled out a tool called Price Tips that’ll let you do just that. It utilizes Airbnb’s own machine learning tool called Aerosolve that’ll suggest room pricing based on the demand for rooms, its location, travel trends, the listing type and so forth.
In an example shown at the company’s own developer conference in San Francisco (seen in the GIF above), if your pricing is too high, the calendar dates will be red, prompting you to drop your listing price so that your place is more likely to get booked. According to Mike Curtis, Airbnb’s VP of engineering, pricing is one of the biggest issues for hosts to get right. But they’ve found that if it’s priced within five percent of the suggested price, it’s about four times likely to get booked. And if you want to gift someone an Airbnb stay? Well good news: Airbnb has also unveiled the ability to give and redeem gift cards starting today.
Filed under: Internet
JXE Streams: Blending ‘Advance Wars’ and ‘Hearthstone’ in ‘Duelyst’
Keith Lee and his partner Emil Anticevic have some serious gaming cred on their resumes. Lee was one of the project leaders on Diablo 3 and Anticevic is responsible in part for the cloud based technology that makes League of Legends work. Together they formed Counterplay Games, the studio currently developing an intriguing mashup called Duelyst. Halfway between Final Fantasy Tactics and Hearthstone, Duelyst blends card gaming with the spatial manipulation of tactical role-playing and tops it off with some truly fetching art. At 3:30PM ET/12:30PM PT we’re going to stream an alpha version of Duelyst alongside Lee himself on JXE Streams.
Join us right here in this post, on Engadget.com/gaming or on Twitch.tv/Joystiq to check out the game and chat with one of its creators. How do you blend Magic: The Gathering with Advance Wars? Ask Lee yourself in the Twitch chat and make sure to click the follow button when you’re done.
[We’re streaming Duelyst at 720p on OBS.]
SoundCloud inks licensing deal with 20,000 indie labels
SoundCloud continues to lend a hand to independent artists, and today the streaming option announced a royalty agreement with Merlin. While the name may not ring a bell, Merlin works with 20,000 indie labels and distributors including Beggars Group (Vampire Weekend), Secretly Group (Bon Iver), Domino (Animal Collective), Kontor Records (Tiësto) and more. Merlin works with smaller outfits to negotiate things like royalties and licensing, which is exactly what it’s done here with SoundCloud. The deal means that on top of being able to pipe in content from labels and distro, the streaming repository will offer compensation when tunes are played. “You’ll also be able to discover and listen to more new tracks from the best independent label creators on the planet, safe in the knowledge they’ll now have the opportunity to get paid while you listen,” a blog post announcing the deal explains.
SoundCloud already signed a deal with Warner Music Group alongside a projected 2015 launch for its own streaming service. However, it’s having a hard time convincing Universal and Sony to join in as well. Before going after the proper paperwork, SoundCloud drew the ire of labels for hosting copyrighted material without proper permission. In fact, just last month Sony pulled songs from Hozier, Adele and others after talks stalled. The site currently offers a premium option for creators to publish and share their work with ad platform that sends revenue back to the labels and performers.
When the advertisements were announced in August, word of a paid tier that would nix the distractions also circulated. If SoundCloud is indeed prepping its own service, locking down a load of indie artists and one major label is a good start, but it’ll need the catalogs of Sony and Universal to become a really attractive option for listeners. Across the web and mobile, SoundCloud tallies 175 million monthly users so it certainly has some listeners’ attention.
Filed under: Internet
Source: SoundCloud
Drugs and dystopia in 1960s England: ‘We Happy Few’ hits Kickstarter
We Happy Few takes place in 1964 in the isolated English town of Wellington Wells. On the surface, it’s an ideal place, filled with smiling residents and all the conveniences of retro-modern technology. But Wellington Wells hides a dark and terrifying secret: During the German occupation of World War II, the citizens had to do something so awful that they devised a drug to make them forget their actions and guilt. The drug, Joy, makes the Wellies friendly and complacent, unless they encounter someone who isn’t dosing; that’s when they turn violent and beat any “Downers” into submission (or death). The town is on the brink of collapse and its residents are starving, but everyone keeps on smiling — or else.
We Happy Few is a first-person game where you play as a Downer trying to escape the madness by blending in with the happy crowds, crafting weapons and finding allies, and developer Compulsion Games is looking for $201,353 on Kickstarter to make this dystopia a digital reality. It’s a twisted kind of stealth game, since players have to hide in plain sight. Plus, any players that approach We Happy Few as a classic video game — randomly breaking into people houses or smacking people in the streets, for example — will be immediately targeted by the smiling, but violent, mob. We Happy Few is a procedurally generated roguelike, meaning that every time you restart, the game will offer different environments and scenarios, and when you die, you lose all progress. It features three playable protagonists with three sets of skills, flaws and personalities, meaning each character also changes the way the game is played.
“Our stories are definitely Not Appropriate For Children, unless your children are already reading Neil Gaiman novels, in which case, good on you,” the Kickstarter page reads. “But don’t worry, it’s not all frowns and sadness! It’s also laced with dark humour, hope and even a spot of redemption.”
We spoke with Compulsion’s Marketing Director Sam Abbott in February, right after the reveal of We Happy Few, and he said that the studio wanted to focus on community feedback for its second game. Its first game, Contrast, was artistically stunning but suffered from gameplay hiccups. “The biggest thing we took away from [Contrast] is that working in a vacuum for a long time can be great, but we’d have made a better game last time around if we’d had more people playing it right from the start,” Abbott said.
If all goes as planned with the Kickstarter, We Happy Few should launch in 2016 for PC first, followed by Mac and Linux, and finally consoles. Get a taste of the vibe in the video below and watch some live gameplay on Compulsion’s Twitch stream today.
AIVAnet 