New ‘Pokémon Go’ creatures include a limited edition Pikachu
Niantic promised more creatures in Pokémon Go on December 12th, and it’s delivering… with an interesting twist. It’s not only adding “several” new critters from the Pokémon Gold and Silver games (such as Pichu and Togepi), but also releasing a limited edition holiday Pikachu. The Santa cap-wearing creature is available “all over the world,” but only until December 29th at 1PM Eastern. If you don’t find one by then, you’re out of luck.
The expansion caps a busy week for Pokémon Go, which included turning Sprint and Starbucks stores into PokéStops. It’s not surprising that Niantic is going all-out as the year comes to a close, though. The company had a runaway hit with the mobile game, and has done everything it could to keep you coming back and ride that success for a little while longer. That’s especially important in December. Winter weather makes it harder to go Pokémon hunting, and visiting family during the holidays is probably more important than evolving your Eevee. An update like this could make the difference between playing in 2017 and letting your mind wander.
Source: Pokemon Go
Celebrate the SNES with Hyperkin’s mechanical keyboard
If you grew up in North America during the early 1990s, there’s probably one color you associate with Nintendo: Purple. The SNES had a distinctly violet tinge in the region, while European and Japanese customers were treated to a grey, slightly more curvaceous model (the controller had multi-colored face buttons too.) If the purple model has a special place in your heart, you might be interested in the Hyper Clack Tactile Mechanical Keyboard by Kyperkin. It costs $99.99 and comes with Gaote Blue switches, which should suit serious but not too serious gamers and writers.
While Nintendo’s classic consoles have always been iconic, they’ve recently found new prominence in the cultural zeitgeist. The NES Classic Mini has been a smash hit (even if people can’t buy it), re-introducing fans to the company’s 8-bit games and design ethos. There’s also the SNES-inspired 3DS — one of the better limited edition variants — and countless other merchandise inspired by the system. Hyperkin isn’t known for its keyboards, having built its brand on retro consoles and replacement controllers instead. The Retron 5 is a decent bit of kit, however, so maybe some of that hardware expertise will translate to PC peripherals.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Hyperkin
Dropbox is now available on the Xbox One
Dropbox has long said that it wants to be available on whatever platforms people use to get things done. That’s why it has done so much to integrate with Microsoft Office over the years, for example. But the latest place you’ll find Dropbox is nonetheless unexpected: The company just launched an app for the Xbox One.
Sure, the Xbox One is, at its core, a Windows 10 computer you hook up to your TV, but it’s still surprising to see a productivity app all about sharing your files show up there. However, Dropbox doesn’t think users will be collaborating on Office docs through their TVs. Dropbox has come up with a few features that make sense for the platform. “We wanted to solve an issue that we all have: making it easy to access and share your content from the biggest screen in your house,” Dropbox staff engineer Rudy Huyn said in an email. “That meant giving users the ability to access files without the need to plug in an HDMI cord or connect to their laptop.”
Once logged in, you can upload screenshots and pictures taken with Kinect straight to your Dropbox. You can also stream any video files in your Dropbox to the Xbox One — something that’ll definitely be handy for those of us who have a large video library but no seamless way to play it on the big screen. You can also upload files from USB drives connected to the Xbox One or upload files from other universal Windows 10 apps you may be running on your console. And other applications (Dropbox specifically mentioned VLC) can see flies in your account and access them.
The rather unusual project was born at Dropbox’s annual hack week, when the entire company takes 5 days to build and show off a wide variety of projects. Some have nothing to do with actual shipping projects, but many others end up making their way into Dropbox in one way or another. “At this year’s event, one of our engineers decided to prototype the app, and demo’d it to other Dropboxers, showing how we can bring a new Dropbox user interface within Xbox that is optimized for TV screens and for gamepad navigation,” Huyn said.
And it turns out this wasn’t just a random pet project but something that users were asking for but in Dropbox’s support channels and on social media. “Given what we heard from our users, we knew that there was demand for this app, and so we decided to make it available to everyone as a full blown offering.”
As for the development process, the universal nature of Windows 10 made it fairly simple. “The simplicity of building this app is part of why we decided to transform the prototype into a real product,” Huyn said. “A big reason that it was so easy to build is that Microsoft makes it easy to develop applications for Windows 10.” But the Dropbox team still had to change a number of things to make this work, as the user interface naturally needs to be different when dealing with an Xbox controller and a TV 10 feet away. Specifically, Huyn noted that the difference in how TVs display colors compared to monitors necessitated a new, darker theme with more contrast “to make the app easier on our users’ eyes.”
There are benefits to having Dropbox on the Xbox One that should extend to app developers as well as your average console owner. “We heard from Xbox developers that they needed a file explorer on Xbox that allowed them to access their files for the cloud, because many of the apps that they were building were useless without having access to files,” Huyn said. “Now developers can easily access files stored directly in Dropbox.”
Of course, Microsoft’s own OneDrive has been available on the Xbox One for some time now, but millions of people are using the service, so giving them an option to easily get their files on the Xbox is a smart move, even if it’ll likely be something of a niche app. If you want to give it a shot yourself, the app is live today in the Xbox Store.
Source: Dropbox
Twitch uses machine learning to moderate your stream chats
Sure, you can already take steps to keep your Twitch chat friendly, but it’s a lot of work if you don’t have a team of moderators. Do you really want to watch conversations like a hawk in case someone gets around your meticulously crafted filters? You might not have to after today. Twitch is introducing an AutoMod feature that uses a mix of machine learning and natural language processing to keep “inappropriate content” out of your stream chats. It not only screens for offensive language, but can spot attempts to dodge your filters through clever uses of characters and emoji. You can even set a general filtering level to determine just how profane you’d like chat to be.
If a message does run afoul of your settings, AutoMod will hold it in a publishing queue for you or moderators. You can make exceptions, in other words, or allow messages that clearly should have gone through.
The AutoMod app is available right now for English broadcasters, and as a beta in 12 other languages (including European languages, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Turkish). No, it won’t be as comprehensive as having a good set of human mods, but it could make the difference between focusing on your stream and distracting yourself when a viewer gets unruly.
Source: Twitch Blog
Unreleased ‘Akira’ title for Game Boy resurfaces
Akira, still one of the most definitive manga and anime ever made, never really got a game to do the source material justice. While that’s probably not going to change, Patrick Scott Patterson, retro game hunter-gatherer, managed to pick up four slightly different copies of the mid-development Akira title on the Game Boy. They are all experiment builds, so all that mid-test gaming nougat is housed in open-air cartridges — which makes me nervous.
The title is primarily broken into two (pretty broken) parts: Bike-based levels where you dodge static obstacles and an awkward-looking platform section where you punch and kick enemies that are, for some reason, much shorter than you. There’s also a bunch of jumping which will be familiar to anyone that played handheld games that were Hollywood movie tie-ins back in the 90s. You do, however, get to run around as protagonists Kaneda or Tetsuo — which is cool. There’s even a brief hovercraft shooter level and mutant bosses that Patterson was able to try through debug level options.
The ideas are all very Akira, but the game is severely unfinished. There’s a single cloying soundtrack and only a few sound effects repeated constantly. Level design is all delightfully broken up too, but what are you expecting from a collection of decades-old mid-development cartridges? Patterson plans to pull together the workable parts of each cartridge, pulling them into something vaguely playable for fans that probably don’t even care how the game plays.
Via: Kotaku
China forces game producers to reveal loot box odds
Using addictive animations and other psychological tricks, games like Overwatch and Hearthstone hook you on free loot boxes, then make you pay for the rush with real money. That sounds like gambling to China’s Ministry of Culture, so it’s instituting some new rules starting in May 2017. The government will force publishers to post the probability “of all virtual items, props and services” available in loot boxes, along with recent results, on the game’s official website, according to the ruling.
As Joystiq noted in a 2012 explainer, most people hate loot boxes, but that doesn’t stop them from using them. And while they tarnish games, publishes can’t wean themselves of them either, claiming it makes them too much, well, loot to ignore. The Chinese government says the ruling protects “the rights and interests of consumers … [while promoting] the healthy and orderly development of the online game industry.” Reading between the lines, that probably means “be happy that we’re not banning these things altogether.”
China only opened up the country to console games a short while ago, so such regulation isn’t that surprising. However, the market is increasingly important to film and game publishers, so it might trickle over to other regions. After all, other types of in-game purchases have caught the eyes of US and European regulators before. Companies could also just change the odds per region, though, and as Las Vegas has figured out, knowing the terrible odds never stopped anyone from gambling.
Via: Kotaku
Source: China Ministry of Culture
Super Nintendo World coming to Universal Studios Japan
Nintendo will launch the Super Nintendo World park attraction at Universal Studios Japan, the two companies revealed. The themed area will open in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, with similar attractions coming later to Hollywood and Orlando in the US. Nintendo first revealed news of the attractions last year, and in November announced the three locations. It has now added more details, saying the park attraction will have “state-of-the-art rides, interactive areas, shops and restaurants, all featuring Nintendo’s most popular characters and games.”
Naturally, that means Super Mario and associated friends, along with other “globally popular Nintendo characters,” according to Nintendo. The teaser image in the tweet below shows Mario and Luigi, and if you zoom in a bit, you can see Disney-like mascots for Peach and Toad. It also shows the castles of Princess Peach and Bowser on each side of the park. The characters and attractions will be developed “at the highest level of quality” by Universal Studios and Nintendo’s creative fellow (and gaming talent judge) Shigeru Miyamoto himself.
The price of the development is expected to exceed 50 billion yen, or around $433 million, the companies say. The attraction will use Universal Studios Japan land currently designated for parking and future expansion. Nintendo optimistically estimates that Super Nintendo World will bring over a million jobs to Japan within a decade after it opens.
#SUPERNINTENDOWORLD featuring attractions based on many Nintendo titles is coming to Universal Studios Japan! pic.twitter.com/NcmxK0GAZ6
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) December 12, 2016
Via: Polygon
Source: Nintendo (Twitter), Universal Studios
Ben Heck’s Virtual Boy, part 2
Now that the Nintendo Virtual Boy has been torn down and we know how it operates, Ben and Karen get to work repurposing the console as a wearable virtual reality headset. To do so, Ben has to redesign the enclosure, which means it’s time to bust out some vector graphics software. It’s not all about 3D printing mounts and laser cutting, though. Karen steps in with her wearable know-how to help attach the Virtual Boy to the frame, allowing it to be mounted on your face. All designs encounter some flaws and problems, however, and this one is no different. What did you think of the build? And what else should the team turn into a wearable? Let us know over on the element14 Community.
The Morning After: Weekend Edition
Letter from the Editor
One of the pioneers of the modern smartwatch, Pebble, is no more as of this week. The company’s IP and some of its employees are now in Fitbit’s corporate hands, and the prospects of future hardware are officially (mercifully?) gone. This made many people on staff feel many things. Especially Nicole Lee, who’s having a particularly hard time accepting the death of Pebble’s gear.
Chris Velazco took a break from reviewing all the phones to check out Mozilla’s pop-up art exhibit in NYC and mourn our loss of privacy living in a connected world. The installations illustrate how data’s the currency of the digital realm, and the technology of our modern surveillance state mints the stuff. And, while the convenience that tech provides is attractive, it’s important to understand the risks — as companies continue to prove, they can’t keep information thieves from picking their pockets.
And if you’re looking to the US government to help improve our nation’s digital defenses, maybe you shouldn’t. At least not according to Violet Blue’s latest column, which examines Obama’s proposed cybersecurity plan. The plan has good points and bad points, but because it’s up to President-elect Trump to actually implement the recommendations, there could be no point to it at all.
Xbox One mode activated“Super Mario Run” won’t work offline
Nintendo’s new mobile game won’t be released until the 15th, but when it is, it will work only while players are connected to the internet. Assuming you plan on staying online, however, “Super Mario Run” should be a fun experience. Need a second opinion? Check out Nintendo’s “Tonight Show” appearance with Reggie, Mario, Miyamoto and our first live look at the Switch console.
Bluetooth: It will be better next yearBluetooth 5 has enough range for the IoT
The Bluetooth SIG announced a new spec, with four times as much range, twice the speed and eight times larger “broadcast message size.” That probably won’t make your wireless headphones sound much better, but it’s all-important for linking up Internet of Things devices around your house. Expect to see hardware based on it in six months or so.
TheranopeMagic Leap CEO says we will play that “jaw-dropping” demo game
Thursday’s takedown doesn’t mean Magic Leap is going away. CEO Rony Abovitz fired back at the haters, promising that the “best part” is coming. He didn’t dispute any of the charges leveled at its still-vapory augmented reality product and technology, simply saying the company is getting ready for an “exciting year.”
Are you experienced?All the news from PlayStation Experience 2016
Last weekend, Sony showed off some PlayStation heavy hitters. Relive the best of what we saw: From “The Last of Us Part II” to “Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite,” it’s all right here.
Our long national nightmare is overThe NFL will allow teams to post non-highlight GIFs and videos
A few weeks after rolling out some stiff social media policies, the NFL is slowly walking them back. Now, teams’ Twitter and Facebook accounts can post clips during the game, as long as they don’t actually show the action on the field. They can also use Snapchat and Facebook Live streaming, and are testing out a partnership with Giphy.
But wait, there’s more…
- Review: Oculus Touch
- Mini review: NES Classic Edition
- Technology is coming for your retail jobs
- Apple’s AirPods won’t be ready for the holidays
- Washington Post, New York Times: CIA concluded Russia intervened to help Trump
The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you’ll miss if you don’t subscribe.
Make your space fortune in ‘Astroneer’ on December 16th
If you felt a little let down by No Man’s Sky, perhaps Astroneer can restore your faith in procedurally generated universes. System Era’s space exploration game is finally nearing completion, and will be released on Steam Early Access, as well as Xbox One and Windows 10 Game Preview, on December 16th. The title actually has a lot in common with No Man’s Sky, apart from the third-person viewpoint reminiscent of Lifeless Planet. You are an explorer out to make your fortune, but to do that you must hunt down the resources required to build vehicles, bases and conduct research needed first for survival, then for prosperity.
Luckily, you have one invaluable tool at your disposal to conquer the many unforgiving and diverse worlds you’ll find yourself on — the ability to manipulate the terrain as you wish. You can build mountains and just as easily level them, create bridges across vast canyons and dig up long-lost ships to further your goal. You won’t have to Mark Watney your way through the harsh storms tearing across the somewhat lo-fi landscapes, though. Instead, you’ll be able to recruit up to three other explorers in co-operative multiplayer to survive the final frontier together.
Source: System Era
AIVAnet 