MSI ships AMD Richland A10-based GX70 and GX60 gaming laptops
Just as we knew it would, MSI has formally announced pricing for its newfangled GX70 and GX60 gaming laptops -- the worlds first machines to ship with AMDs Richland A10-5750M (2.5GHz - 3.5GHz) within. The 17.3-inch GX70 offers up a 1,920 x 1,080 native display resolution, AMDs Radeon HD 8970M on the graphics front, a 750GB hard drive, 8GB of DDR3 memory, a Blu-ray Disc drive, Bluetooth 4.0 and Killers E2200 networking technology. Youll also get a SDXC card slot, HDMI 1.4 socket, 720p webcam, a 9-cell battery -- likely good for about 89 seconds of use -- a backlit keyboard and a frame thats 2.17-inches thick and 8.6 pounds. If none of that frightens you, you can plan on parting ways with $1,399.99 to call one your own. The (slightly) more petite GX60 boasts a 15.6-inch panel (still 1080p, though), a 7.7 pound frame and a $1,299.99 price tag. Otherwise, the specifications are essentially identical from its big brother, and both should be shipping any moment now.
State’s gaming market ranking suggests GOP should heed Moak (Sid Salter)
In this age of hyper-partisan politics at every level, Democrats and Republicans generally torpedo the political initiatives of their partisan opponents on sight and if a Democrat is fori, the GOP is against it and vice-versa.
But in terms of how Mississippi policy makers deal with the question of online gaming, perhaps Mississippis Republican majority might be well-served to review the pass theyve taken on a Democratic lawmakers initiatives in online gaming. Thats a matter of economic impact and tax revenue.
Back in the 1990s, Mississippi ranked third in nation behind Nevada and New Jersey in terms of consumer spending on commercial casinos. According to a 2013 American Gaming Association report, that ranking has slipped to sixth in the nation by 2012 with Nevada at $10.56 billion, Pennsylvania at 3.16 billion, New Jersey at 3.05 billion, Indiana at $2.6 billion, Louisiana at $2.40 billion and Mississippi at $2.25 billion.
The AGA report showed that New Jersey clearly lost market share when Pennsylvania got in the gaming business and Atlantic City was hit by Hurricane Sandy. With Nevada and New Jersey now in the online gaming business, the threat of additional market erosion for all other state gaming markets is clear. Commercial casinos employed 23,377 Mississippi workers in 2012.
The Mississippi Gulf Coast gaming market is ranked eighth in the nation at $1.095 billion and the states Tunica/Lula casinos comprise the nations 10th best gaming market at $821.9 million. Gaming brings 24.77 million visitors or customers, according to the AGA data.
According to the Mississippi Department of Revenue, gaming in the last fiscal year generated $279.7 million in taxes in the form of $91.7 million to county and municipal governments and the states portion of $152 million. Overall, gaming provided 3 percent of general fund revenues.
For the past two years, state Rep. Bobby Moak, D-Bogue Chitto, introduced online gaming legislation. In both years, Moaks legislation failed. The bills - virtually the same legislation - died in committee both years after being double-referred.
The bill proposed to regulate, license and tax online gaming at 5 percent of gross revenues. The bill would have restricted online gaming licenses to those companies already holding land licenses to operate in the state.
Moak wrote the legislation in reaction to a 2011 US Justice Department ruling which clarified that the ban on interstate betting in the Wire Act of 1961 applied only to a sporting event or contest and that all other gambling operations are outside the purview of the act. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the DOJ decision opened the door to any form of online gaming over the provided it isnt the so-called sports book.
Under the ruling, states can sell lottery tickets online and authorize online poker, roulette, blackjack and other casino games, as long as the actual betting takes place within a respective states boundaries, even if out-of-state credit cards are used to finance the gambling.
According to the Mississippi Department of Revenue, gaming in the last fiscal year generated $279.7 million in taxes in the form of $91.7 million to county and municipal governments and the states portion of $152 million. Overall, gaming provided 3 percent of general fund revenues. Tobacco taxes generated $157 million or 3 percent of the general fund. Alcoholic beverage taxes generated $75 million, but $9 million went to county and municipal government, leaving $66.6 million or 1 percent of general fund revenues for the state.
Moak argued that the legislation was necessary to allow Mississippis existing gaming industry to have more control of its own destiny and to allow the state to regulate what will already be taking place online and to tax it as other competing states are doing.
Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware now allow online gambling. Lawmakers in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts and Texas are considering online gambling proposals. Every additional state that enters the online gaming market threatens Mississippi current traditional gaming sales, tax revenues and jobs.
Democrat, Republican or whatever, Moaks right that online gaming is a threat in Mississippi to tax revenue that isnt easily replaced.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
Disney’s Aireal: A tactile feedback device to enhance the gaming experience
Motion and gesture control, the Kinect and PS Eye, and the Oculus Rift have all joined forces to create a tech industry capable of a new level of immersion. Despite the sophistication of new inputs and displays, the industry is still lagging behind in one area of immersion: feel. With a new device, Disney Research aims to add tactile feedback to our gaming experiences with something that’s much more than another vibrating controller.
Called Aireal — the pun, and a name that sounds very similar to that of one of Disney’s most prized characters, is not lost on us — the device creates tactile feedback in what is being referred to as the free air. Every Disney theme park has attractions that are shows instead of rides. A large portion of these shows are interactive, but in the way where it interacts with you while you passively sit there and get poked, blasted, and hit by things — like tubs of confetti, streams of water, or even a little prod that sticks your lower back to simulate a bee sting.
Some of these attractions employ the use of blasts of air — not just directly to your body, but used to create certain sensations. During one point in the 3D Honey, I Shrunk the Audience in Epcot, the show simulates mice breaking loose and running throughout the auditorium. In order to simulate the sensation of a pack of escaped mice, air is pumped through a little plastic tube causing it to wildly flail and mimic the sensation of mice tails brushing your legs. Though simple, Disney has been in the business of creating tactile sensation with simple air rigs for quite some time.
Aireal dispenses with the thin tube being pumped full of air, but ultimately provides a similar sensation — air targeted to pinpoint locations, creating the sensation of feel at those locations.
Aireal will appear at SIGGRAPH 2013, along with the other projects seen in the above video. We also see a quick demonstration of someone using Kinect to knock digital soccer balls away from what seemed to be a simulated goal — as each ball flies at the goalie, air is blasted from Disney Research’s device in the direction it is flying. The device can not only track the user with the help of Kinect, but shoots out the air in a vortex, which is a shape that is able to travel longer distances (than other air-blast shapes) and keep the majority of its force throughout its travel.
Currently, the most sophisticated kind of physical feedback available to the average consumer is a rumbling controller. There have been attempts at something more dynamic in the past, such as the Aura Interactor — basically a backpack with speakers in it that rumbled your back in tune with a video game’s sound effects — but none quite caught on. At fancy arcades that have a virtual reality rig or two, you might find sleeves or gloves that poke or lightly shock the user in tune with whatever action is happening in-game, but those devices generally aren’t sitting on store shelves. Aireal aims not only to bring more sophisticated physical feedback to the living room, but dispense with having to put on specialized clothing.
One thing I’d like to see as the product develops is how forceful the vortex of air will actually be. The vortex losing force over distance isn’t the only factor Disney Research needs to take into account, as thickness of clothing should mitigate the force of impact. If it’s cold and you’re wearing a sweater over a t-shirt, will you even notice the blast? Will Aireal be a strictly shirtless affair, making it the ultimate college party game device?
Unfortunately, there are no details as to whether or not Aireal will hit the market, but Disney Research says the device is not only scalable, but inexpensive, which are certainly two qualities a technology should have before being designed for consumers.
Now read: Disney Touchà turns everyday objects into multi-touch, gesture-recognizing interfaces
Big banks are still gaming the state, but who’s got the courage to say it?
For four and a half years our leaders have beheld the threat posed by our handful of enormous banks and averted their eyes. Among politicians, this has produced strange forms of denial. Among the public, it has fuelled a deepening cynicism that what we sense to be true - these banks are holding us all hostage - cant be officially acknowledged.
The group Im involved in, Occupy Economics, has now begun a campaign to break these banks up and make them serve the real economy. Why have those honest enough to challenge the megabanks been either archbishops or technocrats? Sitting on the parliamentary commission on banking standards set up in the wake of the Libor scandal, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, confronted the chancellor:
Big complex banks are not only too big to fail, they are too big to manage, yet ... we have heard you continue to defend the idea of a small group of absolutely colossal banks. Is that lack of will to break them up ... not simply a recipe for a repetition of disasters?
Senior regulators will tell you much the same thing. If you listen to them, youll learn that there is not so much as a scintilla of evidence of bigger being better in banking. And youll hear that our big banks consume eye-popping state subsidies, sometimes greater than the supposed contribution of their sector to GDP.
Senior Bank of England figures are also apt to observe that the public interest can diverge from the private interest of a firm in profit maximisation and that banks need to prioritise the public interest. In Downing Street, Francis Maude has been considering the ownership structure of public service institutions, talking up the potential of mutualisation to make them more responsive and efficient. He has declared: We all know the dangers of private sector monopolies.
But do we? If you listen to the government, youd think megabanks were doing us a favour just by sticking around. Suddenly the problem is no longer the structure of the institutions themselves but that of their regulators who, revamped, will assuredly restrain them. Most recently, their criticism has focused not on the structure but only the ethics of individual employees, or - above all - culture, that irksome ghost in an otherwise groovy machine. Government appeasement of the big banks shows how the mood music of economic liberalism can play as defensive apologia for the interests of the powerful.
Yet if Osborne seems already to have decided what the commissions conclusions should be, its members have looked friskier. If we come out with a code of practice, is that pretty lightweight stuff?, asked one. Pushing their remit, theyve discussed industry structure. Welby, especially, has asked some clear-sighted questions. Has the overall contribution of the banking industry to the UK over the past 50 years actually been positive or negative? Mervyn Kings answer: excluding basic bank services, its debatable.
And the commission has been reminded of the limits of regulation. Former Barclays chief Martin Taylor: I dont believe that regulators can outwit necessarily determined traders. The traffic wardens dont break up the drug cartels.
Yet trying to address culture alone is similarly forlorn, like trying to catch a vapour in a butterfly net. Who do you think let the culture genie out of the bottle? Trading desks that infected the high street banks? Yes, but that wasnt the only legacy of 80s deregulation. Demutualisation left the sector in thrall to stock market pressures, which duly pushed it off a cliff. In 1998 bank shareholders were holding on to their shares for around three years, on average, before selling them on. By the time of the crash 10 years later, it was three months. Public limited company banks are a permanent invitation to cheap risk-taking, then getting out while the goings good.
Successive governments have misunderstood the nature of international competitiveness in hosting large, universal banks. They arent really independent institutions at all: they exist to convert public support into private profit. Other things being equal, they go wherever they can extract most value, just as the larva of the spider-wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid in Martin Wolfs memorable image.
Are the reforms taken forward by this government sufficient to solve the too big to fail problem? To quote Andy Haldane, the Bank of Englands executive director for financial stability: No. (Appearing before the parliamentary commission on banking standards, economist John Kay added: I would be slightly surprised if anyone really thought they were.)
Rate-fiddling, mis-selling and money-laundering might seem like natural exuberances if your core business is gaming the state. Barclays new boss, Anthony Jenkins, may have closed the banks structured capital markets tax-dodging unit. But an ex-employee, testifying anonymously to the commission, suspected that many of the banks tax structurers have simply embedded themselves elsewhere in the business.
Indeed, Jenkins seems stuck between the public and the pressure from many shareholders for a quick buck. He wants Barclays to be socially useful, yet with equity still at only 4% of its assets, promises shareholder returns in the high teens on its UK retail and business division alone. HSBC et al are pursuing similar targets.
Who do they think they are? Were in a recession. Theyre a utility, not some genius new technology start-up. This is money theyre only able to make at our expense - with the NHS budget pledged, in effect, as security for their borrowing. As long as were letting them get away with it, those guys are making hay while the sun shines.
Lets hope the commission will have sinews stiff enough to take on the banks when it reports in early June. It has heard serious evidence for doing so.
Gadgets MSI’s AMD Richland (A10)/Neptune (7/8xxxM) Gaming Notebooks Start …
First -- a quick recap on whatRichlandis;Richland(in this case the quad-core AMD A10-5750M) is AMDs second generation 32 nanometer APU design. Likeits predecessorTrinity, it is basedon thePiledrivercore design. AMDs experience with the 32 nm node has allowed it to bump clock speeds roughly 10 percent. Richlandalso gets a newNeptuneon-die graphics processing unit (dGPU) --Radeon HD 8970M.
Like thenew Iris dGPUsset to launch shortly, the Radeon HD 8970M has its own dedicated memory -- 2 GB of GDDR5, to be precise. However, the memory in the AMD Neptune GPUs is likely slightly slower as its in an MXM module, versus directly on-die with Iris.
Unfortunately, its not a true Graphics Core Next GPU like its HD 8000 series counterparts. Instead it uses a reduced version ofHD 7000 series core designs(not true GCN), with a bumped clock.
Here are the full specs on MSIs pair of G Series models:
Microsoft and Sony Diverge on Gaming ‘Cloud’
Microsoft and Sony have taken diverging approaches in their expanding war for the hearts and minds of gamers. Yes, their next-generation consoles both offer high-fidelity games, and they can both play music and movies. But the rest is rather different.
In particular, the companies have taken different approaches to Internet services, or the cloud. Sony, for its upcoming PlayStation 4, dove head-first into technology that allows customers to play a game on a server far away, and then stream the images and button presses to the device over the Web. That technology, called cloud gaming, was popularized by companies like OnLive and Gaikai, which Sony purchased last year for $380 million.
The technology also plays into Sonys larger vision of a videogame console that would melt into the network, more easily linking players together. This approach has generated quite a bit of buzz, particularly for one feature that allows gamers to play high-end titles on the companys PlayStation Vita handheld game console.
But Microsoft doesnt see it that way. It says the Xbox One, and revamped Xbox Live service, is designed from the ground up to allow game companies to use Microsofts servers to better their games.
We created something that understands how to be performant for all scenarios and all combinations, said Don Mattrick, head of Microsofts interactive entertainment business, in an interview.
So what does that mean? Imagine a typical game: there are characters in the foreground that interact with the player, and a background landscape with trees, hills or an ocean. Mattrick said Microsofts new servers, which the company increased to 300,000 from 15,000 currently used by the Xbox 360, will be able to do some of the work creating images for that background landscape and then stream them back to the console and TV, while the Xbox One focuses on making the characters look as impressive as possible.
There are disadvantages to both approaches. Gamers will need to have steady and strong Internet connections to ensure the images streamed to them from servers far away look good and perform well on their screens.
Compatibility between software and hardware is also a challenge. For example, nether the PlayStation 4 nor the Xbox One can play game disks made for their predecessors. Sony said it is working to make its gaming system offer customers a way to play older games made for the PlayStation 3 (and earlier) by streaming all the information from servers. Microsoft indicated it isnt planning to offer that type of service.
Microsofts Mattrick says he doesnt think compatibility is really a problem. He said only 5% of customers play older games on a new videogame system anyway, so spending time and money to develop technology to allow them to play older games isnt worth it.
If youre backwards compatible, youre really backwards, he said.
Social media research firm Fizziology said its surveys of potential customers before the Xbox event showed 12% of them would be unhappy if there wasnt backwards compatibility.
Michael Olson, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, said in a note to investors that negative sentiment could hurt sales in the short term, but it could also help drive sales for the new devices, as gamers rebuild their entire library for a new console.
Xbox One Makes The Console Gaming Experience Less Lonely
Gaming has evolved from single-player to head-to-head to massively multiplayer, but its also retreated from public arcades to isolated homes. Todays launch of the Xbox One makes the whole console experience social, not just the gaming itself. Youll still be battling other humans, but how you communicate with them and choose what to play is about to change.
Think back 20 years ago, before home gaming devices became the powerhouses they are today. Youd go to an arcade, and the way youd discover what was fun and popular was looking for which game cabinet drew the rowdiest crowds. I remember discovering Street Fighter 2 in a hotel arcade while on vacation. I couldnt even see the machine, as it was surrounded by older boys swearing like sailors at every Haduken and thousand-hand-slap.
I knew I wanted to play that game. And when I finally got my turn to get beaten mercilessly as the mob swelled around me, it didnt feel like I was doing anything nerdy. I was partaking in a new culture, a new community.
Thats the promise of the new Xbox Ones trending section. It surfaces games, apps, video on demand, and other media popular with your friends and the whole Xbox user base. Gamers wont have to go searching for reviews to see whats the hot new first-person shooter. The wisdom of the crowd will clue you into what game has captured the zeitgeist, even if youre playing alone in your basement. Microsoft also hopes to turn word-of-mouth recommendations into an algorithm that shows you what to play next. Because the suggestions come from friends, you might trust them enough to buy a new sports game like NBA Live 14, listen to a classic album, watch Firefly, or try out a fresh app like Hulu.
Microsoft is also bringing these custom recommendations somewhere that was never really social: television. Live TV can be piped into your living room through the Xbox One; its TV guide features a trending section too. While weve gotten used to intelligent suggestions for video-on-demand thanks to data crunchers like Netflix, Xbox one could show you what sports match or awards show your friends and the whole world are watching right now.
Microsoft will have to figure out who your real friends are, possibly through social network integrations, and how to use other factors like geography to massage the trending picks. There will also be privacy design challenges to face, as not everyone wants to share what they do with their controller. But if Xbox One Trending succeeds, it could make games and television viral in a whole new way.
Snap back to the arcade, and 10-year old me is learning all the naughty four-letter words. Each time someone sees their health bar go red, they let out a stream of angry obscenities while onlookers let loose cuss-modified cheers for the victor. But it wasnt just the sounds. You can hear kids swear at each other all day on Xbox 360 Live. It was the look of anguish in a defeated combatants face, the relieved body language of the winner whose reward was one more game and a new challenger!
Xbox Ones new Skype group video chat feature means you can play face to face with friends around the world. Its infinitely more vivid than the audio and text chat capabilities of the Xbox 360. Smile at each other after a successful dungeon raid, or dance around as you brag about your touchdown in Madden. Skype for Xbox goes beyond games so you can watch TV, use apps, and more while having a conversation. Social doesnt even need to be banished to a second screen. Xbox One Snap Mode lets you use voice commands to open video chat in a slide-out, overlaid window on the edge of your TV.
Skype for Xbox takes video chat and puts it in your comfiest chair. Rather than hunching over your laptop, leaning back on your couch could inspire long conversations over your console. You might *gasp* even pause your game to chat full screen with your little brother back home. Or it could usher in a new era of simultaneously consumed content, where you having distributed viewing parties for sports and movies rather than cramming your friends in the same room.
Xbox One also comes equipped with automatic, background matchmaking that lets you watch TV or play another game while you wait for a new opponent with a gaming DVR so you can record and share videos of your greatest triumphs or most gruesome game-overs. More people posting those videos to Facebook and Twitter could push serious console gaming ever further into the mainstream.
Of course, some gamers might not want social invading their safe space. Some may use it as a safe space to turn off their good graces, be a bit more primal, and just relax. Pings from friends wanting to Skype chat might be an interruption. Fighting alongside or against other people is all the social interaction they want. But the occasional eye-to-eye encounter could make gaming more fulfilling. If youve ever stayed up late playing only to feel a bit empty afterwards, you see the hole a more social Xbox could fill.
Gaming has become a bigger industry than movies. Mobile phones and social networks are bringing games to a wider audience than ever. Yet theres still a stigma that its the realm of unwashed shut-ins and anti-social misfits. The Xbox One and the next generation of social consoles could change that, so even if you play games alone, youre not a loner anymore.
What to expect from Xbox One next gen gaming: Persistent worlds, biometrics …
Microsoft has brought the next generation of video gaming that little bit closer with the long-awaited official unveiling of their new games console, Xbox One.
At the global reveal in Redmond, Washington, executives were at pains to portray the machine as an all in one entertainment solution, focusing on its ability to integrate with your TV while saving all the juicy gaming info for next month's E3 expo in Los Angeles.
Xbox One is still very much a gaming powerhouse to rival Sony's PlayStation 4 , however, and we caught up with Matt Booty, the General Manager of Redmond Game Studios and Platforms, at the event to find out what we can expect on that front.
Sony's PlayStation 4 reveal back in February was all about games. Are you concerned the lack of games at this first Xbox One reveal means fans will see it as an inferior gaming proposition?
Matt Booty : I can't comment on the reactions because I've been busy all morning at the show and doing interviews. What I can say is the phrase we have is 'all in one'. So it is about TV, and it is about entertainment, but the first part of 'all in one' is games. And at least the teams I work with, their focus has been front and centre about games.
We're getting into a world where we don't have to pick 'either/or'. The technology that we've got in Xbox One is built for a new generation. And building it to deliver the best entertainment also means you're building it to deliver the best games. It's not as if there's pieces in the box that do one or the other, right?
So if you're a gamer, this is going to be a fantastic gaming box. If you're somebody who also likes to spend time watching sports or watching TV with interactive things that we can add to the experience, it's going to be great for that too. I don't think we're going to be in a world where we have to pick and choose one or the other.
In gaming terms we could easily differentiate the previous two console generations in terms of SD and HD. What will differentiate this generation?
MB: We going to get into really focusing on persistent worlds, so tapping into the power of the cloud - both computational and storage functions that exist off the console - means there's going to be living, breathing, complicated, huge scale worlds that the game you're playing can take place within.
We're going to start seeing what I call a multiplicative effect, where there might be current gen things like particle systems and hair and cloth and physics, and some games might do any one of those well, but we're going to be in a world where all of those things are turned on at once. You'll have this dynamic multiplicative effect where you have volumetric lighting and cloth simulation and fluid simulation and massive scale of troops and people, but it can all exist in one game at the same time.
Also, just as there were advancements in this last gen with animation and motion capture, and advancements in streaming so you didn't have loading blocks in games, there are things that we haven't even really encountered yet that people are going to think of once they get their hands on Xbox One, or we get further into this new generation that are going to set it apart. They're going to focus on striving towards greater cinematic realism and greater visual fidelity.
Gamers are hungry for next gen gaming experiences as well as graphics. What developments will we see on that front?
MB: It's exciting to know there's this open frontier out there of experiences that we don't even know about that. When I started to think off the top of my head about bringing the power of Kinect, where developers can now count on that being there as an integrated part of the system, with a very known set of specs they can write to, we're going to see a lot of things with natural interfaces and voice interaction. And I wouldn't take that to mean just skeletal tracking games, but more the ability to react to what you're doing.
We've got a sensor that by tracking with infrared can actually read your pulse and how your face is reacting to things. There's a whole game there waiting to be developed! How frightened are you really? Did you pulse go up? Guys that are smarter than me are probably out there waiting to make games with that stuff.
How else will biometrics advance gaming?
MB: When I think about raw building blocks you have the ability to understand and recognise your voice, the ability to track up to six people in a room, a very wide field of view, a 1080p camera, infrared that can detect a bit more about the state of your body... That's just a lot of exciting building blocks and I've got to imagine there's a lot of cool stuff people are going to do with that. That comes back to that theme of personalisation, and the system understanding more about who you are. That you're not just a set of thumbs with a joypad.
It was extremely hard to get Kinect to work at home. Have you managed to solve that problem?
MB: Right, right. It's going to be a much more advanced experience, and I also think more importantly, the amount of thought and design that has gone into making it an integrated part of Xbox One will really be evident and you'll see that in the experience.
Can you talk about how Xbox Live is expanding?
MB: We now have the power of the cloud so we should expect more and more Xbox will follow you. So whether you're playing on your console, another console or another device, it's going to know about what you've done recently, what you like to do... all your information is going to go with you.
Then because we have a massively upgraded cloud infrastructure - and you saw Marc Whitten talk about the number of servers and the capacity - everything from the number of friends you can have to how many people can play in a multiplayer game will be upgraded. It is very much a next generation of how that works.
What kind of multiplayer numbers are we talking about?
MB: I wouldn't put a number on that because it's going to depend on the game, just as it does today, If there's a racing game where I need to track interactions between cars, that might limit me to a certain number of players. If I'm playing a game that's a little more exploratory and it doesn't really matter if I register those frame-to-frame impacts, you could have tens to hundreds of people at the same time in a multiplayer game.
Also an important part of it is in terms of our Achievements, it's not just what you've done but it's going to be more about how you did it. That even stretches to things like game DVR. It's not just that I've got this Achievement, but here's this cool video clip of exactly how I did that.
So when I think about the next generation of Xbox Live, I think about bigger scale, I think about more personalisation, and I think about a lot more subtlety about how it keeps track of what you've done.
There was no mention in the presentation of Facebook or YouTube integration. What are the plans for that?
MB: Stay tuned for where we're at at E3. Xbox One is designed for the next generation of not just games and entertainment, but also apps and music and movies. And we're going to be talking a lot more about those functions in the future.
The TV integration was really interesting but seemed very US-focussed. What are the plans to bring these services to the UK?
MB: I'm absolutely certain as we hit E3 we're going to hear more about that definitively. Xbox One is designed to be a worldwide device and we want Xbox One to offer these features anywhere there is TV, and later this year we'll be rolling that out.
As I'm sure you know, TV is probably one of the more complicated things in terms of how people get it delivered to their houses so we have quite a lot to navigate there. But our goal is anywhere there is TV, and any way you can get TV, that Xbox One will be an additive and curated experience on top of that.
Which part of the TV integration most excites you?
MB: For me, it's the instant switching, the way it's always there. So you have HDMI in, which means your live TV feed and all your other devices are right there. The amount of work and technology that went in to creating an operating system that can do two things at the same time... The first thing it needs to do is still allow very high-powered, AAA games what I would call bare metal access to the hardware and at the same time manage a system that allows things that Skype and instant TV switching to always be ready and switch over - that's a complicated operating system ask.
I think it's an elegant solution, and it also matches personally my viewing habits. Which are you're bouncing around between different things, you might want to check in on something - it's the way we think and interact with our TV naturally. It's a real exciting feature and we're going to see a situation where the ability of Xbox One to jump back and forth between different applications and different modes is quickly going to become something people expect all their devices to do. They'll be like, why doesn't it work that way, right?
Cloud Gaming Startup Happy Cloud Raises $4.25 Million Series A Round
The Happy Cloud, one of a slew of cloud gaming startups trying to bring videogames to new and different platforms, announced Wednesday it had raised a $4.25 million Series A round of venture capital. The round was led by Avalon Ventures and joined by Jesselson Capital and Shaman Ventures. The Happy Cloud has been in stealth mode since it launched in 2011, but claims that users who download games through its partnerships with publishers can start playing them almost instantly while the full game download finishes in the background. The company also announced the appointment of a new CEO, Tamir Buchler.
Casino City Releases 2013 Global Gaming Almanac with Latest Worldwide and …
Newton, Massachusetts, May 22, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- May 22, 2013 - Casino City Press announces the release of the
2013 edition of Casino
Citys Global Gaming Almanac, which provides 664 pages of
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The Almanac is also available on CD with unique analysis tools
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Almanac and CD, visit www.CasinoCityPress.com/GamingAlmanac
or call 1-800-490-1715 x 610.
Casino City Press is a leading publisher and distributor of
reference books and directories for the gaming industry. Other
titles include: CasinoCitys Gaming Business
Directory, Casino Citys North American Gaming Almanac,
andCasino Citys Indian Gaming Industry Report.
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Contact:
Andrea Mullaney
Director of Marketing, Casino City Press
617-332-2850 ext 135