Archive for Technology
BioWare Licenses Perpetual’s Online Technology Platform for MMO
Perpetual Entertainment announced today that BioWare’s Austin studio has licensed Perpetual’s online technology platform for an upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) title. The agreement gives BioWare the platform to deploy and support its online titles utilizing Perpetual’s industry-leading technology for online game operations, deployment, infrastructure development and community support.
“We evaluated numerous technology solutions to serve as the service backbone of our first MMO title and feel Perpetual’s online platform is the best fit,” said Gordon Walton, Co-Studio Director of BioWare Austin. “The Perpetual team has years of experience building infrastructure and tools for online games and we are thrilled to be working with them.“
“BioWare is one of the leading developers of AAA games in the world and we know they will find the Perpetual platform provides both the functionality and ease-of-use they are looking for to support their upcoming title,” said Joseph Keene, Co-Chairman and CEO, Perpetual Entertainment, Inc. “With the Perpetual platform, BioWare’s Austin studio can focus on making great games while minimizing the time and effort required to deploy and support their titles.”
The Perpetual online platform provides a technology backbone of modules necessary to deploy and operate any modern online game, as well as a collection of in-game features and services. Incorporating tools for player management, billing, customer relationship management, game feature extension, load-balancing, lobby servicing, patching and community management, the Perpetual online platform gives developers and publishers the tools to bring the next generation of online games to market faster, and with lower technological and logistical restrictions.
Click here for more information.
Tags: bioware, kotr, perpetual entertainment
Dream Arcades Introduces 100-inch Home Video Arcade Center
Dream Arcades, the leader in home video arcades and kits has done it again. Make room on your holiday wish list for the world’s largest video arcade for home use, with a whopping 100-inch screen.
Just in time for the holiday season. This video arcade has every option to make you feel like a kid again this Christmas. It includes hundreds of classic games like Pac-man, Centipede and newer hits like House of the Dead III and Street Fighter. It is a present the whole family will be looking for under, well maybe next to, the Christmas tree this holiday season.
“When we designed this arcade we sat down with our staff and asked; if you could have everything imaginable on a video arcade what would you want.” says Michael Ware, Founder of Dreamarcades.com.
And everything a gamer could want is included:
- High powered projector - for daytime use
- 100-inch Portable projection screen - makes it simple to set up, move, and store
- High power PC - Allows you to play modern PC games using authentic arcade controls
- Over 100 classic arcade games including Ms. Pac-man, Centipede, Dig Dug, and more
The ultimate arcade control panel:
- Lighted trackball - For authentic gaming action on games like Centipede and Missile Command (both games included)
- Spinner - To play retro classics like Warlords, Breakout and Pong (these games are also included)
- Light gun - Enjoy heart pounding games like House of the Dead 3 and Mad Dog McCree (again, these games are included)
- Wireless video and sound - For easy setup
- Removable control panel - Gives you the ultimate versatility
This is more than a single arcade; it is a video arcade center. Designed to be the center of your home entertainment center. The arcade center allows you to not only use your arcade like a music jukebox, but also watch movies on a big screen just like at the theater.
Wireless video and audio connections means the only wire you’ll need to run is for the power. It’s even compatible with Playstation and Xbox consoles. Best of all everything is included to turn your family room into the ultimate entertainment experience.
Tags: dream arcades, michael ware, 100 inch, arcade center, trackball
Alienware To Feature Blazing-Fast NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 Graphics Card
Alienware, the leading manufacturer of high-performance desktop, notebook, media center, and professional systems will offer the new NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2, the fastest single graphics card in the world, in its Area-51 7500 and the Aurora 7500 desktops. The GeForce 7950 GX2 delivers the power of two graphics processing units (GPUs) on a single graphics card while allowing Alienware gamers to enjoy extreme high-definition gaming.
With 1GB of onboard graphics memory, the GeForce 7950 GX2 delivers ultra-realistic visual effects that engross users in the complex worlds of the latest games. The GeForce 7950 GX2 also includes dual dual-link DVI connectors to power high-definition displays at incredible resolutions up to 2560×1600. Ideal for video as well as games, the new card comes loaded with NVIDIA PureVideo technology, which provides a fully HDCP-capable solution that supports HD DVD and Blu-ray disc playback. Click to Read the Full Post »
SteelSecurity For Online Gamers
SteelSeries, a leading manufacturer of innovative professional gaming gear, announced today a new partnership with BullGuard, specialists in user-friendly PC & Mobile security solutions. The two brands, specialists in their respective areas of business, are together creating the world’s first dedicated security solution for online gamers.
The new product, named SteelSecurity, is specifically designed for online gamers, and offers complete anti-virus and firewall protection that has been enhanced with an advanced spamfilter and online backup system, ensuring that the user’s online game experience will never be interrupted by malware or virus attacks.
SteelSecurity automatically transitions into “game mode” each time the user launches a supported online game. In “game mode” the application uses only minimal system resources, never initiating system scans and halts auto-updating of virus definitions to allow the user to focus completely on their games. The security application offers integrated support for most popular PC games, and auto-updates with new game profiles as new PC game titles are released.
“We are extremely exited about SteelSecurity and the opportunity to use our extensive knowledge about online gaming to create a unique piece of software,” said Tom Reese, Managing Director at SteelSeries North America. “The combination of our gaming know-how and BullGuard’s first class knowledge about security, have resulted in an amazing product.”
“We can’t think of a better partner for a venture into the gaming market” said Heini Zachariassen, Chief Executive Officer at BullGuard. “SteelSeries dedication and focus towards complete enhancement of the users gaming experience, combined with our knowledge about security software and easy-to-use interfaces, is a match made in heaven.”
SteelSecurity’s advanced anti-virus software proactively screens incoming and outgoing e-mails, Internet downloads, ZIP, hard, and network drives, and more for viruses and malware, offering dynamic protection against malicious computer programs. The application’s easy-to-use interface provides intuitive control over security settings, automatically updating to combat new viruses at a frequency that surpasses almost all anti-virus software that is currently available. In addition, the application’s firewall monitors for port scans, Denial of Service attacks, MAC address spoofing, and more, all the while supervising application Internet access to prevent hacker and Trojan attacks.
Tactile Feedback Console Gaming Peripherals
Immersion Corporation (Nasdaq:IMMR - News), a leading developer and licensor of touch feedback technology, has granted eDimensional a patent license for advanced vibro-tactile, spinning-mass gaming technologies for use in PC and Sony PlayStation and PlayStation 2 gaming peripherals. eDimensional will include Immersion’s TouchSense tactile feedback technology along with next-generation, virtual-reality motion-sensing in the upcoming G-Pad Pro Gyroscopic Game Pad designed for use with a PC or with the Sony PlayStation 2 game console.
Under the terms of the license, the eDimensional G-Pad Pro product line featuring vibration feedback will now bear the Immersion Feel The GameTM TouchSense Technology logo.
“Our products are designed for the gamer who demands the most realistic game play experience possible,” said Michael Epstein, eDimensional CEO. “Immersion’s touch feedback, and our next-generation motion sensing technologies, are a natural pairing to improve game performance. We’re delighted to be able to offer both of these exciting features in our peripherals.”
“Adding eDimensional as an Immersion licensee means that we’re supporting the combination of touch feedback along with motion sensing,” said Mark Belinsky, Immersion vice president of marketing strategy. “Together, these technologies define what most gamers would call ‘next-generation,’ and we’re pleased to be working with eDimensional to make it happen.”
Voice Buddy v. 3.0 Demo Version Now Available
eDimensional, Inc., a leading manufacturer and distributor of innovative gaming accessories is now offering a free 15-day trial of the popular Voice Buddy software for the first time ever.
What is Voice Buddy?
With Voice Buddy, forget about using tedious keyboard commands to play and navigate through today’s complex PC games and simulations. The Voice Buddy software will allow you to keep your hands at the controls while directing the game or simulation with voice activated commands. Best of all, Voice Buddy 3.0 comes with over 50 of today’s hottest game voice profiles, pre-configured and ready-to-go. What’s more, now with Voice Buddy 3.0 you can create your own game profiles for any game of your choice through our powerful custom profile wizard. In addition, registered Voice Buddy users will get free downloads of new official game profiles as they are released. Voice Buddy puts thousands of key commands instantly and intuitively under your voice control!
“We are grateful to our many customers who have purchased Voice Buddy and provided us with excellent feedback,” says Chris Guerrieri, sales and marketing executive at eDimensional. “We now want to help spread the word even more about this revolutionary new game enhancement by offering anyone the opportunity to try Voice Buddy for free.”
Voice Buddy 3.0 gives users instant voice control for over fifty of today’s hottest games and simulations including Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Battlefield Vietnam, Age of Empires, IL-2, Sturmovik Pacific Fighters, and many more. New official profiles are available free to registered Voice Buddy users as they become available through the eDimensional.com website.
Special Bonus Offer - FREE AudioFX Force Feedback Gaming Headset.
As a special bonus, eDimensional is offering users who download the demo and create a new game voice profile a FREE license for Voice Buddy as well as a FREE AudioFX Force Feedback Gaming Headset (a $100 total value!) Profiles must be for a game not already pre-configured and must be of official release quality as deemed by eDimensional.
Additional features of Voice Buddy 3.0 include:
- A full set of 53 voice command games sets for today’s hottest games
- Exclusive interactive commands that acknowledge you and even talk back!
- Automatic edition switching. Voice Buddy knows which game you’re playing and switch the voice command sets instantly, on-the-fly.
- Fast and easy installation and upgrading.
- Full support for chat applications such as Teamspeak.
- Powerful new features in Command Manager make creating, customizing and printing voice command lists easier than ever before.
Alienware Gaming Systems Equipped With AGEIA PhysX Processor
MIAMI - March 22, 2006 - Alienware - the leading manufacturer of high-performance desktop, notebook, media center, server and professional systems - is now featuring the highly innovative new AGEIA PhysX Processor on select Alienware desktop systems, including Area-51 7500, Aurora 7500, and ALX systems. A revolutionary advancement in gameplay dynamics, the AGEIA PhysX Processor is the first and only physics processor to power an entirely new game experience of pervasive real-time physical motion and interaction.
The AGEIA PhysX Accelerator dramatically improves gameplay dynamics, powering a level of pervasive motion and interaction never before experienced, while maintaining blazing-fast frame rates. Now, huge numbers of objects are capable of interacting with every other object in an environment, and the corresponding reactions mimic the real world with astounding accuracy. With hardware-accelerated physics, games can now feature cause-and-effect motion and interaction on a massive scale so that fluids ooze and flow and explosions scatter debris of tens of thousands of pieces, each of which can cause collateral damage.
“Opening up a totally new category in gaming innovation, the PhysX Accelerator is the critical hardware element required for the next great leap in gameplay - pervasive optimized game physics,” said Mark Vena, Vice President of Marketing at Alienware. “Alienware systems loaded with PhysX processors, powerful CPUs and graphics processors have the three required hardware elements to electrify the gaming experience gamers have come to rely on from Alienware.”
“Alienware leads the way in bringing the most powerful systems that drive the best game experiences to the gaming public,” said Manju Hegde, CEO of AGEIA “Now with the addition of the AGEIA PhysX accelerator in its lineup, Alienware is pushing the envelope again with the first-ever dedicated physics accelerator, to change the face of gaming by blurring the line between virtual worlds and reality.”
Tags: processor, alienware, ageia, physx, gaming pc, manju hegde
No Unified Format from Sony and Toshiba
SCE President Ken Kutaragi has confirmed that negotiations between Sony and Toshiba on a unified next-generation disc format have come to an end.
Sony (which supports Blu-Ray) and Toshiba (which backs HD-DVD) have failed to reach an agreement. Negotiations began in February, but failed to reach an agreement on the storage capacity of the format. Blue-Ray can hold up to 50GB of data, while HD-DVD stores only 30GB, but, the backers of HD-DVD cite lower production costs as a distinct advantage. Click to Read the Full Post »
Virtual Vs. Reality: Can You Tell The Difference At 150 MPH?
Popular Science Test Drives Microsoft Game Studios’ Forza Motorsport.
Just how real have video games become these days? The folks at Popular Science magazine aimed to find out by putting Microsoft Game Studios’ highly anticipated and critically acclaimed Xbox driving simulator, Forza Motorsport, to the test in the cover story of their April 2005 issue, which hits newsstands March 15, 2005. The story examines the blurred lines between reality and virtual reality by comparing and contrasting the performances of two drivers on the real-life and virtual American LeMans Series track Road Atlanta.
More Physics in Video Games
Now before you roll your eyes and scroll down to the next story, hear me out. Physics isn’t just that boring class you slept in anymore. There are actually several cool ways that physics have been blended in with video games to make them seem more real. Yeah, I said it. Physics and cool in the same sentence. My high school science teacher would have been so proud. Click to Read the Full Post »
Play GameBoy On Your iRiver iHP-140
I don’t personally have an mp3 player. I’m a guy who likes to stay behind the times I guess. After reading this story though, I am seriously thinking about picking up the iRiver iHP-140. Why? It seems somebody has figured out a way that you can port old GameBoy games over to play on the little music box. Click to Read the Full Post »
Atari Flashback Game Console
Man, I used to spend hours and hours playing Space Invaders as a child. Heck, I even figured out a hack when I was only 8 years old that allowed me get ten times the normal number of lives! For me, Atari is much more than some outdated game console. I think of it as an institution.
Want to relive the magic? Well if you are not a fan of those cheap little joysticks that you can buy that come pre-loaded with a set number of games, perhaps the feel of this newly styled console will be more your liking instead. Click to Read the Full Post »
Army’s Hollywood Sim
Is a really good war sim enough to prepare our troops for battle? Well, I think that it’s most certainly better than nothing. Having said that though, nothing will truly prepare them for the horror of real combat.
The article written so eloquently at Wired seems to miss that point. While there are times when a sim can help with cognitive training, it does nothing to prepare the soldier for what they could be facing in the heat of battle. Click to Read the Full Post »
Aspyr Updates Game Agent
Now here is a must have for anyone that takes their PC gaming remotely seriously. The Aspyr Updates Game Agent software is designed to make sure you have the hardware you need to enjoy the games you are wanting to play.
It may seem overly simple to some, but trust me. This software can come in handy as can be, folks. Click to Read the Full Post »
Gaming Projector Geared for Xbox Users
Yet, just another reason why I’m a fan of my Xbox. PCWorld reports that Boxlight is going to the birds with their Raven projector for the Xbox console. Sure, it may be a little pricey. But the idea of having my favorite games beaming onto the wall across the room is pretty darn cool if you ask me. Click to Read the Full Post »
Crucial Ballistix Tracer High-Performance Memory ‘Bling’
What’s the one thing that can make the stability and performance of
Crucial Ballistix high-performance memory even better?
Major “bling bling” of course!
Introducing Crucial Ballistix Tracer high-performance memory
featuring two rows of activity-indicating LEDs and blue ground effects
LEDs - all custom integrated directly into the PCB and stylishly cooled
with a jet-black heat spreader.
GeForce FX Users Have A Gripe With NVIDIA…
This letter is made by GeForce FX users, copied and pasted for you from the
official NVIDIA Forum.
Dear Sir,
We are the users of NVIDIA’s GeForce FX series of video cards and we need help from you.
Over the course of the last two years, certain issues came into light
regarding the inherent limitations of the GeForce FX chipset while performing
in DirectX 9.0 applications. Throughout this period NVIDIA continued to market
the GeForce FX card as having ‘industry leading performance’ in DirectX9 and
‘beyond.’
Viper gc : the Gamecube modchip
Two things to mention here. One, when did the Gamecube come out with a broadband adapter? And finally two, they have modchips for this system too? Cool! Now Nintendo can start suing people for modding their systems!
Seriously though, according to this article, you can add a modchip to your GC console in order to ‘enhance’ your gaming goodness. Got to be honest though, it does nothing for me personally, but more power to those who want to. :o) Click to Read the Full Post »
We’ve come a long way, baby!
Nelson Minar sums it up again with a point that I have been pondering a lot myself, actually. The statement was posted that ‘video games can recreate real cities’. Man, how true this is. With gaming technology continuing to soar forward, the recreation of an entire city complete with skyline is becoming commonplace.
Where will it end? Will we get to a point where the people in the game will reach the same level of complexity? Imagine playing a game in which your moves and actual long term goals were being interpreted by each AI character in the game? Hey, it could happen. Click to Read the Full Post »
On Drummania
My newest wacky controller acquisition arrived today: Topway’s Drummania controller for PSX and PS2.
As I’ve mentioned before, I love music games. You get the satisfaction of playing music in a short attention span-friendly format. These games still take time to master, but not nearly as much as conquering a real instrument.
Similar to Konami’s other Bemani titles, the object in Drummania is to monitor a series of scrolling drum indicators. When an indicator reaches the line at the bottom of the screen, the player must hit the corresponding drum pad (or foot pedal). The game can even be combined with Guitar Freaks into “Session Play” with up to three players. (One on drums, two on guitar.)
The Drummania series isn’t the biggest hit in North American arcades, but if you have a Japanese PS2 or a mod chip, you can import the game for some great drumming fun at home. (Game: about US$50, Third-party controller: about US$30)
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