Gadgets and Video Games

The iPhone isn’t the only touch-controlled mobile platform to get a baffling port of Unreal Engine 3. Palm announced that a version of UE3 on WebOS — that’s what the Palm Pre uses — is on display at GDC. According to the announcement, licensed Unreal Engine developers will soon gain the ability to create games for the mobile platform, using both UE3 and Palm’s new Plug-in Development Kit . The more mobile platforms support Unreal, the more cost-effective it will be to develop games for them using the technology. After all, once you’ve got an Unreal iPhone game, you now have the basis for a WebOS game too.

Excerpt from:
Unreal Engine 3 coming to Palm WebOS soon

The image above could serve as kind of robotic Rorschach test. What do you see? A cute little tripod help-o-bot, whose head is cocked curiously to the side, as though it’s studying its new master to better serve his or her robotic needs? Or is it a three-legged killing machine, who’s observing his new master’s weaknesses, which it plans to exploit with its now-charging eye lasers? Sadly, the answer’s not as provocative as either of those two choices — its actually a photo of a Project Natal prototype, as nabbed by the Seattle Times .

Go here to read the rest:
Natal prototype model revealed (it’s either adorable or terrifying)

Dragon Age: Origins presents strong evidence that great games can overcome gawd-awful graphics, but BioWare isn’t about to test that theory — and the limits of our forgiveness — again in the sequel. “I think one of the key things we’re working on in Dragon Age 2 is the technology,” BioWare VP Greg Zeschuk recently told Joystiq. “I can confirm that we’re doing a lot of work on the Dragon Age engine, and doing a lot of stuff to pump it — to make it visually super hot.” Now, to clarify, frisky rogue foursomes and lesbian alien sex are measured on different “super hot” scales, as Zeschuk conceded, ” Dragon Age is, in the structural sense, a fundamentally different game than Mass Effect … You have to make different technical considerations.” Certainly, with Dragon Age: Origins , those considerations were designed to benefit the superior PC version.

Read the original post: 
BioWare says Dragon Age 2 to look ’super hot’

While God of War III will conclude the trilogy, it won’t spell the end of the franchise, Sony Santa Monica’s John Hight reveals in a recent interview with Joystiq. With the third game “capping off what we started with God of War ,” Hight says we should expect more God of War games to follow, but the decision on where to take the franchise after the initial trilogy (and portable prequel ) won’t be taken lightly. “We’re going to be really careful about what we do next,” he assures. The full interview can be viewed in its entirety above.

Here is the original post: 
Interview: God of War III ends trilogy, but not franchise, Sony’s John Hight says

Three years after being unveiled at CES, Microsoft’s Mediaroom software is finally coming to Xbox 360 (in the form of Mediaroom 2.0 ) “later this year” thanks to AT&T’s U-verse service. But, that’s all the details we had .

View original post here: 
Details, limitations of Xbox 360 Mediaroom 2.0 IPTV support

Avatar may be the big buzz in 3D flicks these days, but for many, the technology is always going to be associated with monster movies and those red-and-blue anaglyph lenses. For those of us hopelessly infatuated with those ridiculous-looking lenses and cheesy movies, Majesco is publishing Attack of the Movies 3D for Wii. The on-rails shooter features set pieces heavily inspired by movies, for up to four players to blast point-and-click their way through. With your friends, you’ll “battle large alien space cruisers, shoot underwater monsters, join the resistance against the machines and more” against enemies “culled from the annals of film history.” And you’ll get to do it in glorious red and blue — the game includes four sets of 3D glasses! Attack of the Movies 3D is expected for release this spring.

Continued here: 
No Wii is safe from ‘Attack of the Movies 3D’

If you’re the type of person who spends the weekend stuffing wads of cash into your Skeet shooter, only to blow ‘em to pieces with your golden shotgun once they’re airborne, then the $250 Omega Music Technology’s GM-1 may be the perfect accessory to your expensive hobbies. The system is essentially an intermediary between Guitar Hero or Rock Band gaming drums, allowing you to play along with the games’ drum tracks on the real thing ($500 drum set sold separately). As Ars Technica points out in a recent hands-on with the product, “It’s an interesting idea, but you need to be willing to put some serious time and money into the project to get worthwhile results.” Aside from owning a set of real drums, you’ll need the “fake” ones, too — the GM-1 sensors send feedback from your drum set to the attached Guitar Hero or Rock Band drums, which then send the in-game cues to the gaming console. Sure, it might work, but who’s got the time and money

View post: 
GM-1 connects real drums to Guitar Hero, Rock Band

Older readers out there might think that the 3D gaming revolution began with the advent of consoles like the PlayStation, N64 and the Sega Saturn, but the real 3D gaming revolution is just beginning, according to Ubisoft. 3D gaming doesn’t refer to three dimensional graphics anymore; nowadays it means that the game jumps out of the screen and into your eye holes. Beginning with the game adaptation of James Cameron’s Avatar , Ubisoft Montreal’s Yannis Mallat tells the Financial Post that he sees the company becoming a “360-degree entertainment content provider.” As the wording suggests, Ubisoft’s future won’t necessarily be restricted to games. Mallat hopes that future game consoles will be able to render photorealistic graphics, enabling Ubisoft to create games and films using the same assets — similar to what the company did with the Assassin’s Creed: Lineage short films

See the rest here:
Ubisoft envisions a future of 3-D movies, games

With Project Natal on schedule for a 2010 arrival, it’s no surprise that Microsoft’s annual Gamefest conference will offer programming tracks designed to get developers up to speed on how best to design for and implement the technology in their Xbox 360 games. The tech summit, which runs from February 10 and 11 in Seattle will offer two types of Natal-themed sessions.

See the original post here: 
Devs to get Project Natal tips at Gamefest in Feb.

“Thank you, to the people of Earth, for embracing our mission of cooperation and understanding. Furthering our efforts, we’ve decided that we will also share the interactive entertainment interface system of our home planet. Through the diplomatic initiatives employed on our world between what Earth knows as ‘corporations,’ we have but one entertainment product. The interface is placed on the back of the user’s neck and connects directly to the brain through a harmless transfer of chemicals and electrical impulses

See the original post:
WRUP: We game in peace. Always.