Items tagged with Orbis
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Samsung has been extremely quiet on the smartwatch front for the past year following the launch of the Gear S. After releasing a flood of smartwatches during 2013 and 2014, the company has been relatively quiet on the smartwatch front while Android Wear devices and the Apple Watch have started to gain some traction. The lack of new product releases doesn’t mean that Samsung has abandoned the category; quite the contrary in fact. Samsung is hard at work on its Gear A “Orbis” smartwatch, which could be revealed as soon as this September at IFA in Berlin. Up until this point, all that we have learned about that device’s hardware specs is that it will feature...
Read more...
You didn't think Samsung would let Apple hog the wearable spotlight with its Apple Watch, did you? Rather than concede defeat, Samsung this week released its next-generation Gear smartwatch SDK to developers, along with documentation, sample applications, images, and an explanation about the forthcoming wearable.In looking over the bundled extras, we know the next Gear will feature a 1.18-inch round display with a 360x360 resolution. That will give it a pixel density of 305 pixels per inch, the most of any Samsung-brand smartwatch to date. You can also expect a healthy assortment of sensors -- ambient light, magnetic, pressure, UV, heartbeat, gyro, and acceleration.Samsung's next Gear will feature...
Read more...
AMD has yet to make an official statement on this topic, but several unofficial remarks and leaks point in the same direction. Contrary to rumor, there won't be a new GCN 2.0 GPU out this spring to head up the Radeon HD 8000 family. This breaks with a pattern AMD has followed for nearly six years. Starting with the HD 3000 family, which debuted in November 2007, each successive generation appeared 9-13 months later. The HD 4000 series debuted in June 2008, the HD 5000 products launched in September 2009, the HD 6000's in October 2010, and the HD 7000 family in January, 2011. By that calendar, we should have seen a new HD 8000 GPU within the next few months. AMD recently refreshed its mobile...
Read more...
Last year, an enterprising fellow with access to an Xbox Durango early development kit got himself into trouble by trying to sell it on Ebay. Now, the same mole has popped up with early data on the next-generation Xbox that confirms some rumors we've heard, shoots down a few others, and tosses in a new twist. The source in question is one SuperDaE, and he's passed accurate data to journalists at Kotaku before, accounting for the high profile behind these latest leaks. According to SuperDaE, the Xbox Durango will ship with a more capable version of Kinect. That's not particularly surprising, in and of itself -- but what will raise eyebrows is the assertion that Kinect must be calibrated and turned...
Read more...
For years, Sony's game division has been one of the major revenue earners at the beleaguered company; in 2011 gaming provided more operating income than any other division. That leg was rudely kicked out from under the company this past quarter; Sony's gaming revenue fell 17% while operating income dropped by 86%. Yearly sales for the PS2 and PS3 are now projected at 6.8 million units, down from the 7.4M devices the company moved in 2011. The really ugly story, however, is in handhelds. Sony counted all of its PlayStation Vita sales as part of 2012, but only expects to move seven million PSPs and PlayStation Vita's by the end of the year. In FY 2011, Sony sold 6.8 million PSP's. That means Vita...
Read more...
Sony's next-generation PS4 unveil is just two weeks away, which means leaks concerning both it and Microsoft's next-generation Xbox Durango (sometimes referred to as the Xbox 720), are at an all-time high as well. Unfortunately, not all the news is good. Rumors continue to swirl that the next iteration of Xbox will lock out used games entirely and require a constant Internet connection. The used games angle is something we've covered before. New games would come with a one-time activation code to play. Use the code, and the game is locked to the particular console or Xbox Live account it's loaded on. Physical games will still be sold (the Durango reportedly supports 50GB Blu-ray Discs), but the...
Read more...
If you're unfamiliar, this is generally how the rumor / leak process works. First comes Sony's actual announcement that a PlayStation-related event will go down on 2/20, and now, sources close to the situation are starting to chatter when asked incessantly about what's coming in just a few weeks. The code-named Orbis has been circling the Internet rumor boards for well over a year, but now things are getting a bit more serious. The trailer itself doesn't show much, only confirming that the "shapes" on the SIXAXIS controller buttons will still be a part of whatever's coming next. But for those reading between the lines, more could be at stake. Edge is reporting that the new machine will have a...
Read more...
Most of our console coverage tends to focus on hardware, rather than software, but with Sony's PS4 unveiling just weeks away, we want to consider the greatest threat facing the console industry: mobile gaming. Console sales (hardware and software) have tumbled for the second year in a row, even as game purchases from tablets and smartphones have soared. These factors would be troubling in any context, but the economics of new console launches are particularly brutal. Sony and Microsoft historically take a bath on console launches and hope to make up the difference in software sales. A few weeks back, we delved into Microsoft's video game operating income since 2005 -- let's take another...
Read more...
The next PlayStation is coming. Soon. Out of nowhere, Sony has finally responded to the stockpile of rumors by announcing an event on Feb. 20th that'll tell the tale of the PlayStation's future. While little is detailed in the teaser video, it's clear that the public at large is being invited to learn more about the next steps in the brand's legacy. The typical Triangle + Circle + X + Square is seen numerous times in the video, hinting that the tried-and-true PS controller may not be dead after all. While motion gaming had its time, Move never took off for Sony the way Kinect did for Microsoft. It's quite possible that Sony sticks to its roots with the PlayStation 4 (codenamed Orbis), but all...
Read more...
There have been a number of spec leaks around the PS4 and Xbox 720 in the last few days, including updated information on what the latest dev kits from Sony contain. We'll cover these first, courtesy of Kotaku and then offer our own analysis, HotHardware style. According to Kotaku, the latest dev kits for Sony's PS4 contain: 8GB of video RAM 2.2GB of GPU memory 4x "Dual-Core Bulldozers" (this is nonsensical as written but presumably refers to BD's "dual-module" design) GPU: AMD R10xx (aka GCN, aka the Radeon HD 7000 family) EuroGamer, meanwhile, says that the new device is built around an eight-core "Jaguar" CPU married to a cutdown variant of the 7970M. That makes sense as far as floating point...
Read more...
It's not often that a console company sticks with a controller design for three straight generations, but sure enough, the PlayStation controller that ships with the PS3 is largely the same as the original that shipped with the first PlayStation so many years ago. There's a saying that folks shouldn't worry with fixing things that aren't broken, and we suspect that this is the mantra Sony has been following. The PlayStation's DualShock design is one that's largely beloved, but as the years have passed, controlling a console has become a new art form. Nintendo ushered in a sea change with the Wii Remote, and Microsoft's Kinect placed even less emphasis on the handheld controller. Of course, Sony...
Read more...
One of the biggest questions swirling around the Kickstarter-funded Ouya console is whether the device would be able to build an adequate game library. Ouya explicitly eschews the vendor lockdown imposed by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, in favor of a hackable architecture. You're encouraged to buy the product, take it home, and modify it to your heart's content -- and therein lies the problem. Publishers are notoriously wary of piracy, and Ouya is designed for the kinds of modifications that make piracy a cinch. Today, the cloud gaming service OnLive answered a substantial portion of that question. The company's announcement reads: OUYA is rethinking the console business, making waves by using...
Read more...
Bob Feldstein, AMD's VP of strategic development and former overseer of the company's console relationships and licensing agreements has left Sunnyvale for greener pastures in more than one sense of the word. Feldstein has taken a position with Nvidia, AMD's archrival in the graphics business. Every time AMD has announced a major departure since the beginning of the year, we've had a conversation with company representatives to discuss the impact on AMD. Thus far, the company's explanations for these losses have made a reasonable amount of sense, and we've described them in fairly neutral terms. We've given AMD the benefit of the doubt on this uncertainty. This is different. Feldstein was the...
Read more...
A leaked presentation from circa 2010 has the tech world buzzing. The original document and mirrors have been pulled, but we saved a copy before that happened. While there's no confirmation from Microsoft on whether the document is accurate, it lines up extremely well with what we've seen Microsoft announce so far this year, as well as previous speculation on the company's next-gen Xbox 720, codenamed Durango. At 56 pages long, there's quite a bit of data -- we'll hit the most salient points. Future Platform Hardware - The slide below doesn't explicitly call out AMD's architecture, but other slides have a "Radeon" logo in the corner; a not-so-subtle hint at who's providing the GPU. Xbox 720 High...
Read more...
When it comes to Star Wars, the gaming industry has a long history of cranking out titles of uncertain quality. For every brilliant title like Knights of the Old Republic, we've seen several clunkers (Kinect Star Wars anyone) and a few outright failures like Republic Heroes. LucasArts demonstrated a new Star Wars game at E3 this week -- Star Wars: 1313 -- and despite the brand's uneven history, we're cautiously optimistic. The 1313 moniker refers to a specific level of Coruscant that's a haven for criminals, bounty hunters, and crime lords. You take on the role of a bounty hunter looking for information on an unspecified criminal conspiracy who descends to 1313 in search of data. This will be...
Read more...
At GTC 2012 today, Nvidia disclosed some details on its upcoming GPU, GK110 -- the beast that will power the GK20 Tesla chip and possibly an option or two at the very highest end of the consumer market. A new white paper published by Moore Insights & Strategy also disclosed some facts on the company's cloud gaming strategy in a more coherent fashion than the game demo we saw yesterday. Let's start with GK110; courtesy of PC Perspective. There's some very useful information on this slide, starting with the transistor count. 7.1B transistors is a huge figure -- fully twice the number of transistors in GK104. The slide strongly suggests that Nvidia is taking a page out of GF100's book and launching...
Read more...
Game designer Richard Browne has come out swinging in favor of the rumored antipiracy features in the next-gen PlayStation Orbis and Xbox Durango. "The real cost of used games is the damage that is being wrought on the creativity and variety of games available to the consumer," Browne writes. "The real cost of used games is the death of single player gaming." Browne's comments echo those of influential programmer and Raspberry Pi developer David Braben, who wrote last month that "pre-owned has really killed core games... It's killing single player games in particular, because they will get pre-owned, and it means your day one sales are it, making them super high risk. I mean, the idea of a game...
Read more...
The rumor mill is still churning out quite a bit of information on new consoles this week, including new data on Nintendo's upcoming Wii U. According to unnamed developers, the Wii U actually isn't as powerful as the Xbox 360 or PS3, despite boasting HD graphics and significantly improved hardware. According to Nintendo's public statements, the new console will have 8GB of onboard Flash, a new, Power-based CPU built on a 45nm process. IBM has hinted that the Wii U chip leverages technology found in its own Watson, which would make it a derivative of the Power 7 architecture. There's a substantial disconnect between the tech specs being floated and the claim that the Wii U won't measure up to...
Read more...
Rumors about next-generation consoles like the Xbox 720 (codenamed Durango) and the PlayStation 4 have been milling about for several months, but the Sony side of the equation has just gotten a significant update. New information suggests that the PS4 is codenamed Orbis, will be built around an AMD x86-64 CPU and GPU, and will require all new games to registered with a PSN account. The codename likely means something to Sony; the orbis.scedevnet.com address resolves correctly whereas ps4.scedevnet.com does not. Let's tackle the report, starting with the hardware specs. Rumors that AMD would provide the GPU tech behind all three consoles date back to last June. Of the three, only Nintendo has...
Read more...
