To celebrate the release of Forza Motorsport 2, Microsoft made a big deal about its Wireless Racing Wheel, a cable-free force-feedback controller for racers that was only really wireless if you didn’t want force-feedback. It was a reasonable compromise and a reasonably good wheel, but it just didn’t compare to the high-end stuff supported by that other great console racing series: Gran Turismo. In GT5 you can hit the track while gripping things like Logitech’s G25 or G27, either of which make Microsoft’s offering look like a toy. With the release of Forza 3 there’s a new contender available, the Porsche Turbo S from Fanatec. It’s a much more serious offering with more capable feedback, proper shifters with a clutch, and a rather more impressive design. But it also has a rather more impressive price tag: $249 to start and, like a real Porsche, going way up from there with options. Is it worth the entrance price or are you better off putting your money toward race tires? Read on to find out.
Continue reading Fanatec Porsche 911 Turbo Wheel for Xbox 360 review
Filed under: Gaming
Fanatec Porsche 911 Turbo Wheel for Xbox 360 review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sony’s said to be launching its PS3 motion controllers sometime early next year and, while that company isn’t always the most reliable when it comes to shipping things on time, Microsoft must surely want to get its competition out sooner than later. Last we heard, though, the 360 Natal attachment wouldn’t be ready to compete until next holiday season — but would at least sell for an attractive “impulse buy” price point as low as $50. Now Microsoft’s Neil Thompson (the same guy who told us Xbox2Go was a lie) is shattering your 2010 wish list already, denying last week’s report and saying the company has “a lot of things” left to figure out before its release. Something tells us MS will handle this a little better than the Wireless N launch debacle.
Filed under: Gaming
Microsoft compulsively quashes Natal ‘impulse buy’ rumors originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The PSP may be a lot of things to a lot of people, but it’s not capable of pumping out images in 3D — cross your eyes all you want but nothing’s going to leap off of that LCD. We’ll have to wait for at least another iteration of portables before we can start expecting any miracles in that department, but until then there’s the V-Screen! It’s a big, silly-looking attachment that pledges to add depth to your PSP games despite the system’s distinctly two-dimensional screen. Is it magic? Is it sorcery? Is it complete bull? You might be surprised.
Continue reading RealView’s V-Screen for PSP review
Filed under: Gaming
RealView’s V-Screen for PSP review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It’s a sorry state of affairs when a media player like the Zune HD has more polygon-pushing power than the latest handheld videogame consoles on the market. If rumors are to be believed, Nintendo and Sony will set things straight with their next-generation portables — at least for a little while. We’ve already heard that the successor to Nintendo’s DS will have Tegra power, but the current speculation is that it’ll be a Tegra 2 chip, promising twice the power of the current iteration. On the Sony side the PSP2 is apparently shaping up to use an offspring of the IMG PowerVR graphics found on the iPhone, said to be theoretically superior to what the DS2 will be able to achieve but costing more, being more difficult to develop for, and not shipping until sometime in 2011 — potentially a year later than the DS2. In other words it’s standard operating procedure if these rumors are to be believed, but even if there aren’t any surprises in this showdown we’ll be there in the front row with popcorn to watch the bloodshed.
Filed under: Gaming, Portable Audio, Portable Video
Hardware battle looms for theoretical successors to Nintendo DS and Sony PSP originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Okay, we admit to still being a little bit unsure about OnLive’s pledges for high-end, high-resolution, lag-free gaming on any ‘ol device with bandwidth, but we want to believe, and so it’s with skeptical optimism that we report on news of mobile implementations. The company has demonstrated an iPhone app in which users are able to play against gamers on a PC or on the company’s MicroConsole — despite not having a single button to press. It’s interesting stuff but, according to OnLive’s CEO Steve Perlman, it’ll be awhile before we see this in the wild, as plans for initial mobile apps will be limited to checking game stats and watching live gameplay. However, we presume it’ll be a small step from there to flip the switch and two-way communications, meaning that perhaps by the time Modern Warfare 3 hits the wires you can keep gaming even while you’re commuting.
[Via Engadget Spanish]
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming
OnLive demonstrates iPhone app, set to redefine mobile gaming? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you ran out last year and bought one of Sanyo’s
Eneloop Wiimote chargers, the first to be officially approved by Nintendo and to allow charging whilst that ludicrously thick rubber cover was still in place, you were probably a bit bummed when it was obsoleted by the
Motion Plus. Sanyo has a fix: you can now run out and buy a
new charger! Yes, you too can help fuel the economy by tossing a perfectly functional yet now useless accessory into the trash and replacing it with something that does exactly the same thing with a little extra room at the bottom. Like before it’s USB-powered and charges via induction, so no contacts are required, though there are now cavities for two Wiimotes rather than just one. No mention of a US release, but it’ll be hitting Japan sometime next month for ¥7,400 — about $80.
Filed under: Gaming
Sanyo releases new, Motion Plus-approved, contact-free Eneloop Wiimote charger originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you’re a child of the ’80s and a gamer to boot you surely remember
OutRun, the game that rocked a generation with only some parallax effects and pixelated blonde hair — though the giant arcade cabinet with gold wheels certainly didn’t hurt. Now “contemporary artist” Garnet Hertz (creator of the
twitching, crunchy frog server) is proposing to give that very cabinet a new lease on life, and a motorized one at that. Hertz wants to take an arcade machine and merge it with an EVT America Electric Trike, making those stylized five-spoke rims actually move. But that’s only half of it. He plans to power the display with an
iPhone 3GS and use it to render a sort of halcyon 16-bit view of the world ahead, with every road a 64-color dream lined with palm trees. A recent video showing off some of the tech is embedded below, and while we think this is about as likely to turn a wheel as a
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet is to travel in time, we’ll certainly be first in line with four quarters if it ever does.
Continue reading Ferrari-styled OutRun arcade machine set for crazy scooter transformation? (video)
Filed under: Gaming
Ferrari-styled OutRun arcade machine set for crazy scooter transformation? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Remember the “platform sales boost” that Sony was tauting after the PSPgo’s release in the US? The question on everyone’s minds was of course how much of that boost was buoyed by the new kid on the block, and while Sony still hasn’t given us any domestic figures (nor will it ever, probably), we now know that the thing sold 28,000 units on its first day of availability on its home turf in Japan. That’s certainly better than the measly 1,000 units moved in Australia over the same period, but hardly encouraging when you look at its predecessors. According to Media Create the original PSP sold 171,963 units in a day in Japan. The PSP-2000? 130,000. UMD may be hated by everyone, but it seems to still have legs.
Filed under: Gaming, Portable Audio, Portable Video
Sony’s PSPgo sells 28,000 units on first day in Japan, physical media points and laughs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It’s been a long time since ARM last bragged about its Mali line of high-end mobile processors, telling us back in March how the 200 and 400 models were going to bring high-def 3D performance to tiny gadgets. Finally we have some videos to go with the hype, two demonstrations showing the phone’s admittedly impressive polygon-shuffling tech. The demos feature the lower-end Mali-200 rendering everything at 720p, playing some simple videos and also handling a rather complex 3D contact navigation system that looks both flashy and painful to use. ARM says “play a game of bowling like never before and you’ll get hooked by the magic of Mali.” Click on through already, and prepare to be hooked.
Continue reading ARM shows off its Mali mobile processors with impressive 3D demos, also bowling (video)
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Portable Video
ARM shows off its Mali mobile processors with impressive 3D demos, also bowling (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We’ve seen some fancy applications for Microsoft’s Surface, the touchable, strokable, caressable computing device/big-ass table, but not a single one has made us twitter in nerdy glee like Surfacescapes. Created by a team at Carnegie Mellon University, it’s an implementation of Dungeons & Dragons in 3D, something that has of course been done dozens and dozens of times before, but this is different. Way different. It brilliantly brings the tabletop style of play to Surface, with players moving real figurines over virtual battlefields, rolling virtual d20s and d6s to deal real damage against digital dire wolves and the like, opponents who can move and attack automatically. Sure, it takes some of the imagination out of the experience, but it’ll also make re-rolling your character a heck of a lot easier — not to mention eliminating the dungeonmaster’s folder of magic, mystery, and crudely drawn maps.
[Via Microsoft Surface Blog]
Continue reading Surfacescapes puts Dungeons & Dragons on Surface, makes your d20 obsolete (video)
Filed under: Displays, Gaming
Surfacescapes puts Dungeons & Dragons on Surface, makes your d20 obsolete (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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