The Morning After: Monday, November 7, 2016
While you were weekending, you might have missed Roku’s cheap, entry-level video streamer, our first 24 hours with Olympus’ intriguing new camera and Samsung’s attempts to hype up its next smartphone way in advance. What’s going on this week? Well, there’s a certain election happening on Tuesday…
The time is now for cheap set-top boxesReview: Roku’s new $30 player is more intriguing than its high-end siblings
The Roku Express is a streaming marvel thanks to its low price. If you can live with some speed issues, it’s perfect for bringing streaming video to screens all over your house — and could well be your first set-top box.
The Mark II is all about speed, image stabilization — and heft24 hours with Olympus’ new OM-D E-M1 Mark II
After a day of using Olympus’ OM-D E-M1 Mark II, Edgar Alvarez says capturing moving subjects is a breeze, especially compared to its aging predecessor. He’s crediting the performance to the new AF system and improved tracking performance. However, a bigger battery ensures it’s heavier than the original E-M1. Intrigued? Then take a look at the sample images — and expect a deeper rundown later this week.
Samsung starts to hype up its next smartphone‘Forget about the Note 7, let’s talk about the Galaxy S8!’
It’s unusual for Samsung to start discussing its future smartphones months in advance. However, given its recent exploding phone issues — it’s not hard to see why the company is already teasing what’s coming next. Following the purchase of Viv, an AI platform from the makers of Siri, it looks like artificial intelligence will be a major feature of Samsung’s next flagship phone.
Tips and cheats, but only for a weekendNintendo is reviving its NES’ hint phoneline
Alongside the launch of the NES Classic Edition on November 11th, Nintendo is resurrecting its Power Line tips hotline next week weekend. Call 425-885-7529 between 9AM and 10PM Eastern each day (until the night of the 13th) and you too can pretend that the internet doesn’t exist, and listen to hints for “several” NES games as well as tales from those who manned the phone-lines back in the day.
But wait, there’s more…
- Pokémon Go’s daily bonuses begin! (And it’s expanded its ‘Nearby’ test areas.)
- In this week’s After Math: Politics in numbers
- US is totally ready to hack Russia if it interferes with the election
Akuma is coming to ‘Street Fighter V’
Bulldog-faced bad-asss, and Street Fighter regular, Akuma is joining the Street Fighter V roster. The latest DLC character addition will be playable for the first time at PlayStation Experience on December 3rd at the Anaheim Center, as part of this year’s Capcom Cup competition. The tease (and it’s really merely a tease) was broadcast during Red Bull’s Battle Grounds competition this weekend, offering not much more detail — although I’m going to assume his V-Trigger special is going to be awesome. I mean, he’s the man that brought us the mid-air fireball. C’mon.
As Event Hubs has spotted, some Akuma graphics have already surfaced on Capcom’s Fighters Network portal, although this could well be an early concept or one of several alternate costumes. That said, I’m all for white, sleeveless, hoody-robes. We’ll have to wait til early December to see.
Google snaps up the creators of a game-focused Android emulator
You can already run Android apps on a Chromebook, but would you run games and other intensive mobile apps on it? Probably not. However, Google might be taking steps to make that practical. The creators of LeapDroid, an Android emulator that specializes in games, have revealed that they’re joining Google just months after releasing it to the public. The team isn’t discussing “specific plans,” but they’re halting both development and support for LeapDroid. You can continue running the latest version, but you won’t get anything more than that.
It’s not clear just how the deal went down, although the team suggests that this isn’t a straight-up acquisition: LeapDroid is “not affiliated” with Google despite the move. We’ve asked Google for more details and will let you know if it can shed light on what’s happening.
However it happened, the move raises a few possibilities. On a basic level, it could help with Android’s performance in non-native environments — something as fast as LeapDroid could help developers testing Android apps, or give Chrome OS devices an extra boost running mobile titles. In the long term, though, it could be important for that oft-rumored Android/Chrome union. If you’re going to merge two largely disparate platforms, you want to eliminate as many potential hiccups as possible. While there’s no certainty that you’ll see conspicuous uses of LeapDroid’s tech, it won’t be surprising if the extra talent makes Google’s vision of computing that much more realistic.
Via: LeapDroid (Twitter)
Source: LeapDroid
Nintendo is reviving the NES’ hint line for one weekend
When Nintendo releases the NES Classic Edition on November 11th, it won’t limit the nostalgia to the hardware you take home. The company is marking the launch by resurrecting its classic Power Line for that weekend. Call 425-885-7529 between 9AM and 10PM Eastern each day (until the night of the 13th) and you can get both hints for “several” games as well as stories from people who manned the phones on the original line back in the 1980s. The tips are pre-recorded, alas, but this could easily rekindle memories of a pre-web era when your best bets at help usually involved calling the Power Line or asking a friend. Our main question: will the phone line stick to the same tips you got as a kid, or offer a few juicy secrets?
Via: Kotaku
Source: Nintendo
Ben Heck’s Atari junk keyboard, part 1
Time for Ben and Atari to make beautiful music together — almost. The team creates an instrument inspired by the sounds you’d hear on an Atari console, using a technique called circuit bending. This means Ben gets his digital flip-flops on and creates the digital circuits from scratch, combining it with an almost full-size piano keyboard and a lot of analysis using an oscilloscope. If you’re interested in how this might sound, Felix connects variable resistors (potentiometers) with the circuit and gives it a test run. Be sure to check out the next part to find out how the build comes along, and join the element14 Community to tell us about your music hacks.
Pokémon Go expands ‘Nearby’ test areas, rolls out daily bonuses
Every time there’s a Pokémon Go update, the number one thing its remaining players ask about is access to a tracker to help locate the little critters. This weekend Niantic Labs announced it’s expanding the test area of its Nearby Pokémon feature from San Francisco to parts of Arizona, Seattle and the rest of the Bay Area. While we wait for that to roll out nation and world-wide, an update that adds the previously-announced daily bonus/streak bonus scheme is about to arrive on Android and iOS.
Beyond the bonus, it also fixes an annoying aspect of Pokémon Go, where once a gym was defeated, anyone nearby could quickly take it over, even if they didn’t defeat the previous owner. Now, the person who defeated the gym will be the only one who can insert a Pokémon and take it over for their team “for a short period of time.”
Also, in a move that probably serves to balance out recent changes that make training at friendly gyms easier, now defeating a gym member will take away more Prestige points, and the amount of Prestige gained from training has been lowered. The cumulative effect is that while it’s easier to get a Pokémon into a gym, it will also be easier to take down gyms maxed out by other teams. If players can actually get some bonuses without using up all of their items or wasting an hour sketchily posted on a street corner, maybe they’ll stick with the game. Maybe.
Trainers in parts of Arizona, the Seattle area of Washington state, and the rest of the SF Bay area can now test the Nearby Pokémon feature.
— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) November 5, 2016
Source: Pokémon Go Live
It sounds like Facebook Messenger will soon have more games
Facebook’s gaming aspirations are deeper than its Gameroom app and quick rounds of basketball, soccer (football to the rest of the world) and chess in Messenger. Zuckerberg and Co. are shopping a development kit to, well, third-party developers to bring more distractions to Facebook Messenger. The “Instant Games” toolset will launch later this month, according to a report from The Information.
Aside from those details, all that’s known is the social network is pushing for more asynchronous games than stuff where you’d be playing in real-time with another player. Which makes sense considering Words With Friends or Catan lends itself much more to the mobile platform than a Facebook game like Racing Legacy probably would. Hopefully when this launches it fares better than Messenger’s chatbots have.
Source: The Information
‘Hearthstone’ is going to Gadgetzan
The next expansion for Blizzard’s wildly popular digital card game goes out into the desert. But it’ll be a bit different than when you checked out out in World of Warcraft. “Mean Streets of Gadgetzan” is a bigger, more populated city now, but executive producer Hamilton Chu said that it has some seedy back alleys and underworld elements to it.
In terms of what this will mean for gameplay, Chu said that there’s a card coming called “Piranha Launcher” which is exactly what it sounds like: a weapon that shoots vicious fish. Then there’s the Lotus Assassin which gains stealth points with every kill. The Kabal Talonpriest gives friendly cards three health.
These cards are from three different races, the Grimy Goons, the Kabal and the Lotus. Following that delta theme, there are tri-class cards as well, with the Kabal’s Courier able to play within mage, priest and warlock decks.
Like new Overwatch hero Sombra, these will be playable on the Blizzcon show floor.
Source: Blizzard
Blizzard is building ‘Diablo’ inside ‘Diablo 3’
The big news for the saviors of Sanctuary has been announced at BlizzCon 2016: Diablo is coming back! The original game, that is. For its 20th anniversary, Blizzard is re-releasing the original dungeon delver that started its massively successful franchise, recreated within the engine of the latest in the series, Diablo 3. And you can play it next week on the game’s test realm.
The game will be delivered in a downloadable patch titled “The Darkening of Tristram,” sending players down the Cathedral dungeon they delved in the original game. The recreated Diablo will get special graphics filters to add grain to resemble the gloomy, gothic look of the original, as well as piping in the soundtrack from the original game. To seal the low-fi deal, they’re restricting players back to the 8-direction movement of games of yore. Hope you love retro controls with your old-school looks.
Sure, we were all looking forward to Diablo 4 instead of more content for a game released in May 2012, but given the decade between the second and third iterations, we probably have a few years before Blizzard even hints at a fourth installment. To help with the GRRM-length gap, the studio also announced two new free zones for players who bought the game’s expansion Reaper of Souls, accessible through Adventure Mode.
But the real cream is the announcement of a new(ish) hero for Diablo 3: The Necromancer, a class first appearing in the second game in the series, which will be available in 2017 as part of a microtransaction-style content pack called “Rise of the Necromancer.”
Command a new army of the dead. The Rise of the Necromancer pack is coming to Diablo III in 2017. pic.twitter.com/7R2Qj455S1
— Diablo (@Diablo) November 4, 2016
Details of the new class, the pack’s cost or its actual release date are nil. But given the Necromancer’s addition to Blizzard’s MOBA Heroes of the Storm back in January, it’s a good bet that some of those skills will transfer back to its Diablo 3 incarnation.
Source: BlizzCon 2016
Overwatch League is Blizzard’s eSports incubator
Blizzard has its own official eSports league for Overwatch, aptly dubbed Overwatch League. It works a lot like traditional sports. Major cities in North and South America, Europe, China, Korea and the South Pacific will have a team. Those teams are comprised of the best players coming out of a sort of open competition called a “combine.” From there, they’ll be drafted and sign contracts with a guaranteed salary and benefits. The team spots will be secured, according to developer/publisher Blizzard, as a way to foster local fans and talent “for years to come.” And at season’s end, the best teams will play against each other live, in front of a global audience. Sound familiar?
Team owners will play an active role too, and like stick-and-ball sports, are expected to actively monitor and develop their team’s skills. The big thing here versus other eSports leagues is that it seems Blizzard wants to ensure players know how everything works on the business end, and how to go from amateur to pro.
“Our hope is to establish the Overwatch League as a professional career path open to any and all of the world’s most competitive players,” the video below says.
“We’re building a league that’s accessible to players and fans, sustainable and exciting for everyone involved,” Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said in a press release.
This looks like a natural progression from the World Cup that started last month (and concluding at Blizzcon today), but with a more local focus. The first season starts in early 2017, with Blizzard promising more info on teams and the league itself before competition starts.
AIVAnet 