New Oculus Rift, the Blackberry Passport and other stories you might’ve missed
It’s the weekend, ya’ll. So while you sit back and relax, check out our news highlights from the last seven days — we took the new Oculus Rift for a spin, went hands-on with the Blackberry Passport, made an Ello account, and more. Oh, and be sure to subscribe to our Flipboard magazine!
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Sony is shutting down PlayStation Home in North America, too
It was only a matter of time. When word came down that Sony was shuttering the PlayStation 3 virtual space, PlayStation Home, in Japan earlier this year, the service’s domestic days were likely numbered as well. Citing a “shifting landscape” as the cause (and likely no public outcry that the oft-laggy environment was missing from the PlayStation 4), senior community manager Paul Sullivan writes on the PS Blog that the last day to run around the hub will be March 31st of next year. Don’t start fretting just yet, however, as the electronics giant plans to release new downloadable content for the quasi-Second-Life experience ahead of that. Perhaps it’s time to do a mournful diva dance in your virtual domicile to commemorate this event. A bit rusty with the proper moves? Check the video after the jump for some inspiration, then.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Via: Gamasutra
Source: PlayStation Blog
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Playdate: We’re livestreaming ‘Forza Horizon 2’ on Xbox One!
Welcome, ladygeeks and gentlenerds, to the new era of gaming. The one where you get to watch, and comment, as other people livestream gameplay from next-gen consoles. Because games! They’re fun!
What do you do when there’s many hundreds of horsepower under your foot? Bounce on the pedal and put the devil to the floor, naturally. And that’s just what Microsoft’s latest racer allows you to do. We’re talking about Forza Horizon 2 on Xbox One, of course. The game that lets you live out nearly any auto-fantasy you might have, so long as it includes picturesque European landscapes, pristine cliff sides and electronic dance music. We’re just kidding on the last part — you can totally turn the radio off. Join us right here at 7:00 p.m. Eastern / 4:00 p.m. Pacific as we bring you a taste of what you can expect from the open-world arcade racer when it hits store shelves (or your console) next week.
Watch live video from Engadget on www.twitch.tv
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Transportation, HD, Microsoft
Source: Twitch
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Stroll through modern Paris as the voice of Gollum narrates its bloody past
Should you want to take a virtual stroll through Paris before neck-stabbing your way around the City of Love in Assassin’s Creed: Unity, the game’s publisher Ubisoft has you covered. With the Project Widow web app, you can explore La Ville-Lumière in a Google Street-View-esque fashion, picking up tidbits of trivia and watching game-themed rap videos (seriously) along the way. The disembodied voice of mo-cap master Andy Serkis cropping up, however, is the real treat. As noted by Joystiq, his in-character accounts of the Bastille and Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom from the view of a French Revolutionary are pretty great stuff. Maybe, just maybe, if the voice of Gollum had taught my world history class I wouldn’t need a video game to help me catch up on Louis the XVI’s excesses.
The app’s UI will be familiar for those who’ve played the games but it should be intuitive enough for just about anyone who doesn’t mind clicking around for a history lesson, too. Like the Destiny map tool before it, though, the purpose this serves more than anything else is to start the hype engine leading into AC:U‘s November 11th release date.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Internet, HD
Via: Joystiq
Source: Project Widow
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Engadget Daily: Internet security flaws, iOS 8 fixes and more!
The past 24 hours have been quite a ride, eh? We’ve seen just how easy it can be to pilfer goods from an Apple store, discovered that there’s yet another internet security flaw and Cupertino has a fix for the latest version of iOS’ problems. However, there are even more stories than that! For those, check out the gallery below.
Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Gaming, Household, Transportation, Mobile, Apple
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Ingress’ user-created missions give added meaning to your walking tours
Ingress certainly has a following among augmented reality gamers, but its relative lack of direction can be intimidating — especially if you’re a newcomer. Where do you go first? As of today, you’ll (usually) have an easy answer. Google’s Niantic Labs has added user-created missions to the game that give you an incentive to get moving. Effectively, they’re walking tours with objectives. You’re usually asked to hack portals or solve puzzles at each stop, with the promise of special medals at the end. Each mission includes both average completion times and ratings, so you’ll likely know in advance whether or not a given adventure is worth the effort.
Not everyone can take advantage of missions just yet. You can only access them on Android right now (iOS is due soon), and only a small batch of “experienced” players can create them; Niantic eventually plans to open up creation to everyone with a level five rank or higher. It could be a while before you see many missions near you, then. Even so, what’s here could keep you playing Ingress when you might otherwise have given up — and you’ll probably get some exercise in the process.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Mobile, Google
Via: The Next Web
Source: Ingress (Google+), Google Play
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Sony’s giving you a free taste of PS4 multiplayer this weekend
Want to check out Destiny‘s strike missions and raids but haven’t shelled out for a PlayStation Plus membership yet? Well, perhaps you can rally a few similarly-leveled buddies this weekend and give The Devil’s Lair or Vault of Glass a shot on PlayStation 4 — even if they’re in Europe. Starting this Friday at 3:01 a.m. Eastern / 12:01 a.m. Pacific, you’ll have a chance at taking out Sepiks Prime with a little help from your friends in developer Bungie’s latest shooter, gratis. Sony’s PlayStation Network has grown by leaps and bounds since the PS3 days, and the outfit wants to show it off. If Destiny isn’t your game, as Joystiq writes, you can take any multiplayer title online until the free promotion ends Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific. We hear that Battlefield 4 is finally working, too, but if you aren’t into the whole pew-pew thing, there’s always FIFA 15. Regardless of what you play, there’s almost never a bad reason to spend a weekend on the couch enjoying the great indoors.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Via: Joystiq
Source: PlayStation Blog
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Steam Music Player does exactly what it sounds like
Valve’s game distribution service has been going through a lot of small changes recently: not only has Steam been given a fresh coat of paint and a completely redesigned storefront, but now it plays music, too. This isn’t a total surprise, of course — Valve has been testing music playback for months, and even rolled the feature out to beta users over the summer — but now Steam Music Player is available to anyone running the latest version of the client. It’s a pretty simple addition, too: Steam scrubs your PC’s common (or manually defined) music folders for MP3s and, well, plays them.
It does get a little more complex — the music player is accessible in the client’s game overlay, which means you can control and play music without alt-tabbing back to the desktop. It also offers an easy way to listen to soundtracks of supported games, but this part of the experience is a little clunky: since Steam offers soundtracks as game DLC, it appears that most of the service’s music can’t be downloaded separately from the game itself. If Portal 2 isn’t installed, neither is the game’s music. Need some music to test it out with? Valve at least has you covered here: Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and both Portal games are 75% off in celebration of the new feature, and all of those games come with free soundtrack DLC. Neat.
Filed under: Gaming
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Microsoft built a life-size interactive cube powered by Kinect
Third-party developers have grown very fond of building neat stuff with the Kinect, so it’s no surprise that Microsoft itself would create projects using this technology. Enter the Cube, a five-sided, Kinect-powered box which can interact with people around it — the company describes it as a “canvas for a new kind of creative expression” and a “technological sculpture that’s a venue for new types of interactive art.” You can dance, or make other random body gestures, in front of it and the Cube will project that image onto one of its panels, in a rather colorful way, no less; think of it as what you would see on a game like Just Dance, but minus the layer of flashy outfits. Microsoft’s Cube isn’t all about the Kinect, however. Inside, there are also five computers and five projectors which, paired alongside a total of four new Kinects, are what make the magic possible. You can watch the Cube in action after the break.
Filed under: Misc, Gaming, Alt, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
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The US gets its first professional gaming arena
[Image credit: Associated Press]
Filed under: Gaming
Source: SB Nation
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AIVAnet 