Dear Veronica: Is this the end of portable gaming devices?
First things first, I wanted to let you guys know that you can now subscribe to Dear Veronica on iTunes! We’ll have an RSS feed up soon for you non-iTunes people, so don’t think we forgot about you. These things just take time.
Episode-wise, I’m excited to welcome onto the show my friend and my former Tekzilla co-host Patrick Norton of TekThing! He’s going to set you straight on the best home automation setup. Plus, we talk about following (or not) awkward acquaintances on Instagram.
Keep sending in those questions to me via email, or on Twitter using the hashtag #DearVeronica. See you next time!
Pay What You Want to become a mobile game developer [DEAL OF THE DAY]
Today’s deal allows you to “Go from Gamer to Game Coder with Stone River eLearning’s Complete Training“. With three different courses, valued at over $500, you won’t have to pay anywhere near that amount to become a game developer.
The Game Development for Non-Coders will teach you the ins and outs of coding, starting from the ground up. Even if you’ve never looked at a string of code in your life, this course will walk you through the process so that you can create games for Windows, Linux, Android and more. This course will also serve as a foundation for the latter courses, so you won’t be lost along the way.
The Unity 3D Game Development & Design Course bundle will build upon what you have already learned, and help turn your sites on 3D gaming. In addition to teaching you how to create 3D games, you will also be able to improve your existing 2D games to create something absolutely awesome.
Finally, the HTML5 App & Game Development bundle will teach you how to build games that will be used on all platforms with the help of basic HTML & HTML5 code. This course will also teach you how to code in JavaScript to add more dynamic options to your games, as well as showing you how to create games with 2D physics, parallax effects and more.
As we mentioned above, this bundle of courses is worth over $500, but your cost is comparative to pennies on the dollar. Grab this deal here, and head on over and NAME YOUR PRICE for this awesome set of deals.
You can find this, and many other great tech bargains through our Deals page. Backed by Stack Commerce, there are daily promos, giveaways, freebies, and much more!
The post Pay What You Want to become a mobile game developer [DEAL OF THE DAY] appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Xbox One will eventually stream your PC games
Xbox One streaming on Windows 10 is nice and all, but how about getting the power of your PC on the console? Xbox head Phil Spencer has confirmed to the Verge that Microsoft is working on Windows 10 streaming to the Xbox One. He already hinted that such a feature would happen after tweeting that Microsoft would support mice on the Xbox One. He said that “it’s actually a little more challenging doing the encoding on the PC side to Xbox,” since PC hardware varies widely from user to user, unlike the Xbox One. He added, however, that “challenge is good.”
Spencer emphasized that Windows 10 features are an “incredibly strong” part of the Xbox One’s roadmap, and that “(gamers) want to play with their friends… on the device they want to play on.” He said getting a mouse and keyboard working on the Xbox One is a prerequisite, but it looks like that’ll happen soon. There’s no timeline on PC to Xbox One streaming, however — so I wouldn’t make any definitive plans until Microsoft officially launches the feature.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: The Verge
GAME to host its own UK gaming tournament in stores
It’s not quite Evo or The International, but today British video game retailer GAME has taken its first tentative steps into the eSports scene. The company is holding a gaming competition called “The Great UK Game Off,” which will culminate in a tournament at the Insomnia gaming festival this November. Players can roll up to more than 30 stores next month and take part in six challenges based around FIFA 15, Forza Motorsport 5, Super Smash Bros, Trials HD, Mario Kart 7 and LEGO Jurassic World. The top scorers in each region will be put forward for the North and South quarter finals, with the eventual winners competing for the “ultimate champion” title and a £5,000 gift card at Insomnia.
The selected games suggest that this will be a casual, amateur-friendly event. While it’s nothing like Gfinity’s leagues, it does indicate how GAME could bring more competitive and community-based gaming into its stores. It acquired Multiplay, a specialist in gaming services, live events and eSports, for £20 million back in March and this is the first evidence we’ve seen of their new partnership. “We’ve been looking at ways of bringing grass roots eSports to our stores and this is the perfect opportunity to give one lucky gamer the recognition of a lifetime,” Fred Prego, marketing and insight director for GAME said.
GAME is one of the few dedicated video game retailers left on the high street. It faces growing competition from online-only businesses such as Amazon, so it needs a way to differentiate and keep customers walking through its doors. Doubling stores as eSports venues — the modern day equivalent of an arcade — could be one way forward.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: GAME
Microsoft has a trick for making holograms from live video
We’ve seen Microsoft’s HoloLens do an awful lot of different things so far, but Halo, Minecraft and even medical applications are just scratching the surface of what the augmented reality headset is capable of. In a new research paper, Redmond outlines how it plans to grab live video that’d work as fodder for the device’s holographic capabilities. Perhaps most importantly these holographic video feeds would be streamable over the internet, as Road to VR points out. By taking advantage of some 106 RGB and infrared cameras and a green screen, Microsoft says that it’s able to capture, compress and recreate pretty lifelike results.
Hands and faces (high-detail spots) get more polygonal attention, while other, not-as-important areas are a bit less precise. The video embedded below says that the current target is a 12 Mbps MPEG file, and the sample footage contained therein is actually pretty impressive so far. Here’s to hoping that Microsoft can expand the headset’s narrow field of view, though: As it stands, the illusion of an awkwardly dancing astronaut in your living room would break pretty easily.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Wearables, Microsoft
Via: Road to VR
Source: ACM Digital LIbrary
The latest ‘King’s Quest’ adventure starts today
In case Shenmue 3 and a Castlevania spiritual successor were a bit too recent and console-centric for your nostalgia kick, maybe the new King’s Quest will tickle your fancy. The hand-painted adventure game’s first episode is out today across a wide swath of platforms (PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 an Xbox One, Windows). Creative director Matt Korba writes on the PlayStation Blog that the aim was to make a family-friendly game in an effort to bridge the gap between players of yore and today. What’s more there are apparently quite a few references to the original games hidden here and there. Should you want to try and find ’em for yourself, it’s $9.99 per episode or $39.99 for the season pass.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: PlayStation Blog
Nintendo sells 10 million Wii Us, still not making much money
Nintendo has posted yet another slim profit as it moves beyond the financial difficulties of the past few years. The slow launch of the Wii U and the stagnation of its handheld sales caused Nintendo to fall dramatically from grace after the runaway success of the Wii. After recording its first annual profit since 2011 earlier this year, though, it’s proved it can stay in the black in spite of the Wii U’s meagre popularity, making just over $9million in the latest quarter.
Nintendo only managed to sell 470,000 flagship consoles over the past three months, down slightly from last year’s 510,000. That at least pushes the Wii U’s total sales above the 10 million barrier. For context, it took over 30 months for Nintendo to sell what Sony managed in less than a year with PS4. Software sales were still remarkably strong — 4.55 million over the quarter — proving that, while the Wii U may not be a big seller, its gamers definitely love Nintendo games. Splatoon sold 1.62 million copies, and Wii U owners now own (on average) six games for their console.
While the Wii U still languishes in third place, Nintendo had a very strong quarter for 3DS, with sales of 1.1 million. That’s up 23 percent from last year, likely due to the availability of the new 3DS, and software remained fairly steady at a shade under 8 million. It’s worth noting that the first quarter is historically a tough one for Nintendo, and these figures actually represent the company’s strongest showing in a few years. But with no big releases on the horizon for either system, the company is unlikely to see a huge leap in sales next quarter. That’s curious, given it’s predicting around a $400 million profit for the year, and has so far managed less than 3 percent of that figure. It’s hoping that the release of Super Mario Maker, Star Fox, and Mario Tennis will pick things up for the holiday season, before it’s ready to show us something totally new in 2016.
Source: Nintendo (PDF)
Cult film ‘Hawk the Slayer’ gets a sequel with help from Rebellion
When Hawk the Slayer came out in 1980, Jason Kingsley became an instant fan. The film features magic swords, elven mindstones, giants, dwarves, sorcerers and a massive battle between pure evil and noble good. Think Dungeons & Dragons in real life, on the big screen. For weeks after Hawk the Slayer‘s release, Kingsley would borrow his dad’s wind-up 8mm cine camera and attempt to recreate the movie in the woods of his hometown. Now, as CEO of UK video game company Rebellion, Kingsley has the opportunity to produce Hawk the Hunter, the official sequel to Slayer. If the movie’s Kickstarter succeeds, Kingsley will be working with original director Terry Marcel and actor Ray Charleson (above). It’s a fantasy come true.
Kingsley got involved with the sequel through a series of happy coincidences. A while back, he was in the middle of a move and already thinking about old franchises that might be ripe for renewal within Abaddon Books, one of Rebellion’s book imprints. As Kingsley was rifling through a box of “those things you keep but only ever look at when you’re moving,” he ran across his copy of Hawk the Slayer on VHS.
“That’s probably where the spark of the idea to get in contact with Terry Marcel came from,” he says. “These things seem to pop up out of nothing sometimes.”
Kingsley tracked down Marcel via Google voodoo, reached out with a call and an email, and things progressed fairly quickly from there. It probably helps that Kingsley is a tried-and-true fan of the original film. Hawk the Slayer was a catalyst of the fantasy boom in the 1980s, paving the way for successes like Conan the Barbarian and Willow, and its sincere dedication to a magical universe has kept the film alive for decades. Rifftrax, the people behind Mystery Science Theater 3000, riffed on Hawk the Slayer this past October.
“It’s a classic in my opinion because the pure spirit of sword and sorcery rises above its limited budget to build something wonderful and uplifting — somehow greater than anyone expected,” he says. “Sure, you can watch it a bit cynically and laugh at the low budget effects and cheesy arch dialogue, but my lasting memories come from a purer place of high adventure.”
Kingsley and Rebellion (co-founded by Jason and his brother in 1992) are helping to produce Hawk the Hunter, much like they did with 2012’s Dredd. Rebellion will also do some CGI work for the film, and Kingsley is mulling over plans for a game and novels in the Hawk universe.
“I might even persuade Terry to let me be in the movie itself, maybe on my horse, Warlord — you never know,” he says.
All of this is in early stages of planning and a lot of it hinges on Hawk the Hunter‘s Kickstarter campaign, which launches on August 30th. The film’s budget is $5 million, and Marcel, Kingsley and company need to raise the final 20 percent, Marcel told The Guardian earlier this month. For now, Kingsley can dream big and hope for the best.
“Ideally, I’d like to inspire someone young to go into the woods with their video phone and try to make their own version again, completing the circle of inspiration,” he says.
Indie developers out thousands of dollars in OUYA-Razer deal
Once upon a time, it looked like OUYA would be able to support itself as an independent gaming company focused on the Android-based, microconsole experience. In 2013, it even offered up $1 million to OUYA developers as part of an initiative called Free the Games Fund, which promised to match crowdfunded cash for certain OUYA projects. Dozens of developers got involved and were banking on OUYA’s contributions to complete and ship their games, often tens of thousands of dollars per project. Now that Razer is officially purchasing OUYA, all of this cash is in question and the developers involved are not happy. “Razer/OUYA’s insistence that these deals are gone is causing us to have to majorly restructure our plans leading up to release,” one developer, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells Engadget.
This developer is owed more than $30,000 from OUYA’s Free the Games Fund. Razer reached out to the studio in mid-July to say the deal was off.
“We haven’t talked with anyone from OUYA about this,” the developer says. “Razer definitely stepped up for that part of the conversation and also insisted that we talk with them mostly on the phone. This makes me think that they might not want any of this written down.”
To make matters worse, any money that this studio already received from OUYA was used to make its game compatible with OUYA. “Now that the game is likely no longer being released on the OUYA, even that money and time feels like a loss,” the developer says.
“I’ve gone over a lot of contracts in my time and the one they sent us was just bad.”
Free the Games Fund already has a rocky history. The program unraveled soon after its launch — its rules were easily manipulated and there were few safeguards against non-legitimate developers looking to make some fast cash. OUYA overhauled the program and participating developers carried on with the assumption that Free the Games Fund would help offset some of their costs.
The above developer signed an “updated contract” with OUYA earlier this year that included a clause regarding the company’s potential bankruptcy or insolvency (provided below). The clause states that either party can void the agreement if one “files a petition in bankruptcy, reorganization or similar proceeding,” among other circumstances.
“From what I can tell, Ouya has made no effort as of yet to take the actions described in this section of the contract,” the developer says. “Rather, Razer has simply told us they didn’t purchase the part of OUYA that deals with the Free The Games fund.”
The relevant clause of OUYA’s Free the Games Fund contract
Another Free the Games Fund developer, who also wishes to remain anonymous, still expects to be paid as part of the initiative. That’s because this studio never signed the contract.
“I’ve gone over a lot of contracts in my time and the one they sent us was just bad,” the developer says. “On top of that, it was unnecessary; contest rules are legally binding, and we saved a copy of them. We figured that we had sufficient protection with just the contract rules and delayed on signing the contract until they stopped asking us. As of speaking to them, it seems as though we are still going to get paid, and we currently have an invoice in with them that is due in around a month. Whether or not we actually get the money due from the invoice remains to be seen, but we’ve got legal recourse if they fail to pay, so we suspect they will.”
This money is important to both of the developers that Engadget spoke with.
“The remaining money owed from the fund is essential to us in our last stages of marketing and QA, as well as a resource for continued content updates of the game after initial release,” the first, contract-signed developer says.
We’ve reached out to Razer and OUYA for comment or clarification on Free the Games Fund going forward and will update if either responds.
‘Dragon Quest XI’ may be one of the first Nintendo NX games
It’s been a long time coming, but another Dragon Quest title is on the way — and you’ll want to keep your eye on this one. Square Enix has announced Dragon Quest XI, a solo role-playing game (no DQX-style massively multiplayer experience) that will come to the PlayStation 4, 3DS… and, quite possibly, Nintendo’s future NX console. Yes, the publisher is at least “considering” a version for a system that exists as little more than a codename. There’s no mention of what that version will entail, although it’s clear that DQXI will take advantage of platforms’ strong points. The PS4 version is based on the pretty Unreal Engine 4, while the 3DS version makes good use of the dual screens to show 3D gameplay and 2D maps at the same time. As it stands, you’ll have to wait a while to try any edition for yourself. Square Enix hasn’t provided any release dates yet, so the odds are that you won’t be battling slimes until 2016 at the earliest.
Via: NintendoLife
Source: Square Enix (translated)
