Netflix stuffed its video service into an NES cartridge
Netflix’s experimental Hack Days often lead to wonderfully off-the-wall projects, but its latest might have produced the best example yet. Engineers Guy Cirino, Carenina Motion and Alex Wolfe have whipped up DarNES, a hack that turns the original Nintendo Entertainment System into a Netflix playback machine. The ’80s-era console is unchanged — the real trickery is inside a special 256KB cartridge. You probably wouldn’t want to go on an Orange is the New Black marathon given the chunky 8-bit graphics, but it’s nice to know that you can.
There are some other sweet projects emerging from Hack Day. BEEP harasses you into focusing on the TV, Netflix Earth shows activity around the world, Net the Netflix Cheats makes sure you only watch what your partner also wants to see, and Say Whaaat!!! shows subtitles for missed dialogue. Few if any of these will reach official apps, of course, but that’s part of the point — Netflix is taking the pressure off so that engineers can rejuvenate their creativity.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Nintendo
Source: Netflix Tech Blog
JXE Streams: Sex, violence and ‘DmC: Devil May Cry’ on PS4
Devil May Cry, in addition to sounding like a scrubbed Pablo Neruda poem, was an evolutionary leap from the clunky 3D action games of the ’90s when it hit the PS2 back in 2001. Capcom’s game delivered a heady blend of The Evil Dead and anime flash, while redefining how free-flowing action felt in a video game. Oh, and it looked cool as hell. When it was announced that 2013’s DmC: Devil May Cry would both reboot the series and come from the drastically different creative culture of the UK rather than Japan, fans balked. How could it possibly live up to the legacy? Now DmC is getting another shot with a PS4 and Xbox One definitive edition which we’re playing on JXE Streams.
Starting at 3PM ET on Engadget.com/gaming, Twitch.tv/Joystiq, and right here in this post, we’re playing a solid two hours of DmC: Devil May Cry Definitive Edition on PlayStation 4. Dig on the improved visuals, faster speed, and the wholly bad ass brawling and platforming that made the game great the first time around. Most of the JXE Streams crew will be hanging out as well so come by and ask questions!
Enjoy the streams? Follow us on Twitch to know whenever we go live and bookmark Engadget.com/gaming to check out our upcoming schedule.
[We’re playing a digital copy of DmC: Devil May Cry on PlayStation 4 streamed through an Elgato Capture HD via OBS at 720p.]
Your Xbox One now takes game screenshots and suggests friends
The long-teased Xbox One March update is finally here, and it’s bringing some features that you may have missed if you’re familiar with the PlayStation 4. You can now take screenshots of whatever you’re doing, whether it’s to brag about your score (through messages or Twitter), set a custom background or save it to OneDrive for posterity. It should also be easier to both find and recognize friends. There’s now a suggested friends list, and you can share your real name if buddies wouldn’t know who you are based on your gamertag alone. Between these and more Xbox-specific updates (such as tile transparency controls and spam reporting), you’ll probably want to upgrade your Xbox as soon as you can — if just so you can rub your victories in your rivals’ faces.
Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft
Source: Major Nelson
What makes Samsung’s mobile VR consumer-ready? Marketing
A consumer release is en route for Gear VR. Hey, alright! If you’ve been paying attention, you might realize the problem with that first sentence, though. Think for a few minutes, I’ll be here. Give up? Well, here’s the answer: Unlike Oculus’ still-in-prototype Rift headset, you can go to Best Buy’s website today, throw down $200 and, boom, you’ll have a head-mounted virtual reality display. Just like that. Okay, you’ll need a Galaxy Note 4 too. But still, it already exists.
What’s largely separating the “consumer” Gear VR from the currently available Innovator Edition is a marketing push from Samsung. “We’ve got a plan now; we’ve got a date,” Oculus Chief Technology Officer John Carmack said during his lengthy (and dense!) presentation at the Game Developer’s Conference this week. “You can kind of mark it on the calendars. Oculus is going to go for it as hard as we can [with] broad consumers, trying to sell as many units as possible, unleashing Samsung [marketing] with the next Gear VR.”
So essentially, when the Note 5 gets its multimillion-dollar marketing blitz, the consumer version of Gear VR will too. This all sounds a little like double-talk, though, considering how well-received the current Gear VR’s been to this point. And Carmack’s aware of that. He seems hopeful that older hardware will get a retroactive boost from the new awareness. It’s what he sees as hitting an “infection vector” for VR. In so many words, he means that it won’t be sitting in your “VR cave” where you’re tethered to a high-end PC that’s going to push virtual reality into the mainstream; it’ll be tech like Gear VR.
The current Note 4 Gear VR (left) and Galaxy S6/edge Gear VR (right) — not many differences!
“When we say we’re ready, which is really on Oculus from a platform structure, software and content level, we’re going to be able to sort of back-unlock the promotion and sales of multiple products there,” Carmack said. He continued that Samsung’s hardware “probably” could’ve gone wide with the Gear VR available currently, but that Oculus is taking the hit for not having enough stuff that everyone would expect to be there at launch. Namely, more software, more paid apps, in-app purchases and internationalization.
“We’re still not ready for Samsung to go out and do their blitz,” he said. “We expect when everything is ready, Samsung can go out. You’ll see ads everywhere; [Gear VR will] be in all the cellphone stores, all these things that we really wanted and sort of expected to do in the beginning” will be in place.
So don’t worry that the Gear VR you might already own, or the Galaxy S6-powered Gear VR, is somehow deficient (Carmack says there’ll only be “minor tech improvements”) compared to the one you’ll be inundated with later this year — that’s just Samsung’s marketing department talking. Carmack’s entire speech is just below, and the Gear VR bits run roughly from the 15-minute to 30-minute mark.
Don’t miss out on all the latest from GDC 2015! Follow along at our events page right here.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Home Entertainment, Wearables, HD, Mobile, Samsung
How serious are you about virtual reality?
The absolute best/worst virtual reality stock photo we could find
Are you prepared to dedicate a room in your house to virtual reality? Perhaps you’re a little less crazy than me, but you’re okay with a wire running across your living room to a headset? Or maybe both of those sound crazy to you, but a headset that can plug into your phone is okay?
These are the emerging options for virtual reality: a medium finally coming into its own, that’s poised to disrupt industries and hairdos the world over.
Polygon‘s Ben Kuchera sent me this fascinating piece last week, written by Robert McGregor, which compares virtual reality to swimming pools. Stay with me. The long and short of the analogy is this: Both concepts are incredibly compelling, and both require a very serious investment for maximum impact. You can have fun with a kiddie pool (Google Cardboard), but you can have a lot more fun with a multi-level, ornate swimming pool (HTC Vive).
With VR, as it stands right now, there are distinct tiers. I’ve broken out four here, but I’d love to hear arguments for more distinct tiers. And no, I’m not including augmented reality solutions; VR and AR are, currently, distinct mediums.
TIER 1: Google Cardboard
The kiddie pool analogy with Cardboard is apt: It offers a great taste of VR, with none of the comfort, fidelity or depth that other headsets offer. It also costs next to nothing and works with nearly any phone (Android, and some apps also support iOS). The benefits of Cardboard are ease-of-use (accessibility) and price (accessibility).
It is the ultimate trade-off of low barrier to entry versus depth of experience — no one is spending more than 15 minutes in a Cardboard. Zero people. Even if you could, you wouldn’t; go figure, it’s not that comfortable pushing a piece of cardboard to your face.
Those aren’t knocks against Cardboard, but a comparative measurement. Putting someone in Cardboard remains the easiest way to give an interested person a quick VR demo. That cannot be oversold: Cardboard is very easy, and that’s a crucial component for the adoption of a new medium. It works with basically any smartphone! There aren’t any headstraps or controllers! It doesn’t cost very much money!
And hey, if you’d never experienced a pool of water, a kiddie pool is a pretty exciting first experience.
TIER 2: Gear VR
One gigantic step up from Cardboard, in both experience and cost, is Samsung’s Gear VR. The South Korean phone giant teamed with Facebook-owned Oculus VR on a phone-powered experience that offloads some functionality to the headset: a touchpad, a gyrometer and lenses (among other bits). There’s a strap, and you’ll need to do some fiddling to get it set up, but it’s mostly plug-and-play with your Galaxy Note 4 phone (and soon the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge as well).
Sure, you need to own a very expensive, brand-new phone to use Gear VR. And sure, you need to shell out another $200 to buy the headset. And yeah, after that, real games cost money in Gear VR. But the games are such a tremendous step up in depth and engagement from the experiences you get with something like Cardboard that it’s all worth it.
If we’re sticking to McGregor’s simile, Gear VR is the gym/sports club membership that grants you regular access to a swimming pool. A full, real pool! But it’s not yours and there’s limited access and other people are in it and whatever else. There’s no depth-tracking in Gear VR, and your experiences are limited by the Note 4’s processing power, but it’s a great second step in the VR continuum. And a pretty accessible one at that!
TIER 3: Morpheus
Yet another massive step up from Gear VR and similar experiences is Sony’s Project Morpheus: a highly capable VR headset with a high-res built-in screen, powered by the fairly capable PlayStation 4 game console. We’re getting into “I’m buying an out-of-ground pool” territory here.
With Morpheus, when it launches in 2016, you’ll need:
- A PlayStation 4 game console
- A PlayStation 4 camera
- A Morpheus headset
- Space to run a wire from your PlayStation 4 to the Morpheus processing box — a separate, small unit that has onboard processing and acts as a go-between from the console to the headset
- Space to run a wire from the processing box to the headset
- (Optional) PlayStation Move controllers
Ideally, you’ll also have some space to move around, and nothing getting in the way of any wires. This is a much more serious commitment to VR, and one that’s going to pay off tremendously in terms of experience.
Project Morpheus just got an update this week at the Game Developers Conference, where Sony revealed beefed-up specs and new software demos. The experiences you’re able to have in Morpheus are far deeper than in Gear VR: I ducked and dodged bullets in The London Heist, and my colleague Joseph banged his head into the wall dodging a murderous shark.
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Not only is it a gorgeous screen, but also the PlayStation 4 is simply capable of delivering more processor-intensive experiences. The camera tracks movement in three dimensions and Move controllers approximate hands far better than anything you can use with Gear VR. Morpheus is admittedly limited by the PlayStation 4 hardware, but that’s a pretty high limit.
TIER 4: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and bleeding-edge VR
Call up the construction crew and go all in: It’s fantasy pool time. If you’re getting Oculus VR’s Rift or HTC and Valve’s Vive, get ready to dedicate a full room in your home to VR. Or maybe you’ve got a massive open area with a spare 15 x 15-foot chunk?
Wherever that space is, get ready to outfit it with a bleeding-edge PC. It’s not required, but why bother going this far and not all the way? The trade-off here is that every single time you use it, you’re going to be transported.
What Oculus and Valve are promising is the future of the medium: presence. I spent five minutes this week walking around and painting in three dimensions, with a virtual palette in one hand and a magical paintbrush in the other. It was an unbelievable experience, like nothing I’ve ever done before. I could have the same experience on the previously discussed VR solutions, but none would compare in depth.
Valve’s tracking solution — Lighthouse — enables an incredible ability to interact with the virtual world. While wearing HTC’s Vive, I was able to carefully articulate strokes in between a flower’s petals. It felt real. It was eerie.
For me, that is “presence.” The sense that I am actually somewhere else, not just allowing my brain to be tricked into believing I’m somewhere else. So I’m all in. I’m getting the in-ground pool. How serious are you about virtual reality?
Don’t miss out on all the latest from GDC 2015! Follow along at our events page right here.
[Image credit: Mediacolors/Alamy (stock lead image)
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Wearables, Software, HD, Mobile, Samsung, Sony, HTC, Google, Facebook
Dive into a sci-fi game anthology full of stars and weird games
Game jams are marathon sessions where game makers put together a game in a short period of time, typically just one or two days. Naturally they’re unpredictable — as likely to conclude in quick interactive jokes as they are substantive games. Sometimes 48 hours of game development ends with Broforce. Other times it ends with Kitty Punch. Rather than invite all game makers to come together for a non-stop creative session, Antholojam founders Zoe Quinn and Alex Lifschitz invited creators to pitch ideas based around a theme and then gave them a month to complete their vision. Now there’s Antholojam 1: A Golden Age of Sci-Fi Anthology, gathering together 15 beautiful and strange games resulting from the first of these curated jams.
How strange is the set? Consider Killing Time at Lightspeed by Gritfish, an old-style adventure game that has you traveling from Mars to a distant planet on a commercial ship over 30 years. You pass the time reading email, news stories and talking with other passengers to fill in the gaps on who you are and why you’re making a trip that requires you to live a third of a life in transit.
If you still want to ponder how space and time travel go hand in hand, you can also check out The Lost Chrononaut. Watercolor illustrations and ambient electronic music straight of a ’70s sci-fi movie count among its charms. Chrononaut‘s story, meanwhile, sends you to the year 2060 to explore and the whole thing is presented as card game. Once you’ve wrapped it up there are still 12 more games to explore in the anthology. It can be played for free at the Antholojam homepage.
Source: Motherboard
Nintendo Wii U lineup stars fan favorites from PS4, Xbox One, PC
Nintendo’s digital store is beefing up with some top-notch independent titles in the coming months, and the company showed off a few familiar games during a presentation at GDC 2015. We’re talking games headed to the Wii U eShop that have already launched on other platforms, including Klei Entertainment’s Tim Burton-esque survival game, Don’t Starve: Reign of Giants, Young Horses’ PS4 launch title Octodad: Dadliest Catch and the beautiful, educational platformer Never Alone from Upper One Games. Our list below includes the freshly announced Wii U games and a bit of information about each one, so you can make platform decisions in peace.
- Octodad: Dadliest Catch (summer): A game for the paternal cephalopod in all of us. Octodad is funny and super silly, best played with a group of friends watching as you attempt to control the titular character’s flailing limbs. It’s already on PS4 and PC, but now that the game is coming to Wii U, Young Horses founder Phil Tibitoski is already brainstorming more places for Octodad to infiltrate.
Now to convince everyone he should be in Smash Bros.
– Phil Tibitoski (@PTibz) March 4, 2015
- Don’t Starve: Giant Edition (spring): The title is a good start, but there’s so much more to Klei Entertainment’s quirky survival game. This is specifically the Giant version, which is sold as a separate expansion on other platforms — and the Wii U version will follow suit, Klei clarified for us. That means Don’t Starve is coming to Wii U, and the Giant expansion is along for the ride, for an additional (but generally worthwhile) price. We checked it out briefly on Wii U and found the second screen made for a handy map.
- Never Alone (June): It’s tricky to create an educational game that allows its audience to enjoy the larger message and gameplay in equal measure, but Never Alone does so beautifully. The game tells a legend of the Iñupiat, a native Alaska tribe, and puts players in the shoes of a young girl and her fox as they brave snow, ice, animals and monsters while attempting to save her village. Gameplay includes discovering short documentaries about the Iñupiat, and these films will be viewable on the Wii U gamepad, while the game continues running on the main screen, Upper One Games said.
- Swords & Soldiers 2 (May): The second installment of Ronimo Games’ strategy franchise is exclusive to Wii U, and it’s a treat to play locally — one person gets the Wii U gamepad and the other controls the entire main screen. Rest assured that the gamepad’s touch controls are intuitive, though players can turn them off and play with buttons, too. Studio founder Jasper Koning is aware that, as a Wii U game, Swords & Soldiers 2‘s install market is limited: “Chances of it becoming a million-seller are very low,” he said. But, he noted that it’s easier to stand out on the Wii U eShop than on a platform like Steam, which has nearly 4,000 games and more added each day.
- Race the Sun (Q2): Race the Sun is a minimalistic, addictive, twitchy kind of flying game where you try to out-fly the sun. Yeah, it’s hard (and it’s a bunch of fun). This one comes from tiny studio Flippfly, and it got its start in the gaming market through Steam’s user-voted system, Greenlight, back when that was just taking off.
Don’t miss out on all the latest from GDC 2015! Follow along at our events page right here.
LG’s G Flex2 is the newest phone in our buyer’s guide — what should be next?
There’s nothing like new gadgets to step up your spring swagger and indeed, we’ve got a couple of fresh faces in this month’s buyer’s guide to help shake off those winter blues. After spending some time with LG’s G Flex2, we grew fond of its design, performance and display, making it a strong choice for your next handset. Meanwhile, if you’re in the market for a mobile sound system, Ultimate Ears stepped up the volume and specs with its new Megaboom speaker, offering a 100-foot Bluetooth range and up to 20 hours of battery life. Don’t worry, if you’re still looking for more suggestions, we’ll be flush in the coming months after we’ve had a chance to review all the stuff announced at MWC and GDC this week. In the meantime, there’s still plenty of gear to be had and we’ve always got a selection of top picks at the ready in our complete buyer’s guide.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Laptops, Portable Audio/Video, Tablets, Wearables, Mobile, LG
JxE Streams: Revisiting Rare with Xbox ‘Conker: Live & Reloaded’
Rare Ltd., the storied game developer Microsoft bought off Nintendo for a hefty sum at the beginning of the century, has started to stir again. After years of developing poorly received motion-control games like Kinect Sports, all while members of the original staff left for other studios, rumors were swirling that the team will return to its classic series from the ’90s. Conker, the foul-mouthed star of Conker’s Bad Fur Day on Nintendo 64, actually popped up as a guest star in Xbox One game creator Project Spark. Just today a Reddit poster, verified as a former Microsoft employee, said that the company has been trying to get a new Conker game off the ground for some time. No time like the present to dig into Conker: Live & Reloaded for the original Xbox on JxE Streams.
Starting at 3PM ET on Engadget.com/gaming and Twitch.tv/Joystiq, we’ll be playing two solid hours of the most juvenile, scatological game to ever make it out of Rare. Tim Seppala will play the game while Anthony John Agnello hangs out in the chat, answering your questions about how it feels to make a rodent smoke a cigar with a controller.
Want more streams? Make sure to check out the show schedule on Engadget.com/gaming and to follow us on Twitch.tv/Joystiq. Can’t catch the live broadcast? Check back right here after the show for a full archive of the stream.
[We’re playing a retail copy of Conker: Live & Reloaded on Xbox streamed through an Elgato Capture HD via OBS at 720p.]
Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft
Source: Reddit
Xbox Live and ID@Xbox are coming to Windows 10
If the news of Xbox games coming to HoloLens and Elite: Dangerous hitting Xbox One this summer wasn’t nearly enough, Microsoft has a few other tidbits to share from this year’s Game Developers Conference. First up: Redmond is bringing the Xbox Live SDK to Windows 10. It’s part of the universal apps push that the outfit’s making with its new operating system, and will give game developers of any size access to a “vast majority” of Xbox Live’s services. It wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft’s done something like this, but let’s hope it doesn’t turn into another disaster like Games for Windows Live was. The post on Xbox Wire also mentions there will be a new tier of the company’s online gaming service coming as well that specifically allows “any developer to engage with the Xbox Live community.” We’ve reached out for clarification of exactly what that translates to.
Next we have word that the ID@Xbox program is expanding to Windows 10 as well, meaning the amount of indie developers on the platform (most likely mobile) should see an uptick in the future as well. Oh, and from this point on, all Xbox accessories will be compatible with Win10, with a wireless adapter coming for the Xbox One controller later this year. In case you thought Microsoft’s dedication to melding its console with your PC via the Game DVR was the last you’d see, it seems like it was actually just the beginning. Where do we go from here? That’s anyone’s guess at this point, but Build and the Electronics Entertainment Expo aren’t far off.
Don’t miss out on all the latest from GDC 2015! Follow along at our events page right here.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Source: Xbox Wire
AIVAnet 