Latest news

The next instalment of the legendary saga of Master Chief will land in Xbox One in the form of Halo 5: Guardians, it has been revealed.

343 Industries General Manager Bonnie Ross revealed Halo 5: Guardians today in a piece she wrote about bringing Halo to Xbox One. In the past, Halo has pushed forward Xbox and 343 has been working to ensure that Halo will return on Xbox One and will showcase its capabilities.

"Making a 'Halo; game that runs at 60 frames per second, on dedicated servers, with the scope, features and scale we've been dreaming of for more than a decade, is non-trivial," wrote Ross.

"It's a task that we, at 343 Industries, are taking very seriously to ensure we deliver the 'Halo' game that fans deserve, and a game that is built from the ground up for Xbox One."

You don't need to rush out and buy an Xbox One now to be prepared however, as Halo 5: Guardians is not slated to launch until the fall of 2015. According to Ross, 343 will work hard to get it right, using everything learning from the development of Halo 4, while admitting that Halo 5 will be a much bigger effort than it.

Next year will also witness the Halo television series that counts Steven Spielberg among its creators.

Rockstar Games has announced that its upcoming next-gen game is planned for release in the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2015.

Parent company Take-Two made the revelation during their quarterly earnings report.

Outside of that time frame, the company did not reveal anything about the game, or even whether it will be a sequel to one of their franchises or a whole new IP.

Rockstar has not had a new project announced since Grand Theft Auto V's launch in September of last year.

GTA V, which has sold 33 million copies for PS3 and Xbox 360, is not available for the next-gen PS4 and Xbox One consoles. There have been rumors that a sequel to Red Dead Redemption is likely the next in line for the gaming studio.

Source:
CVG

Google has revealed new updates to its Google Wallet payment system, including the addition of PayPal support.

Reads their post: "Starting today, we're making it possible for people to choose PayPal for their Google Play purchases in 12 countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Canada. When you make a purchase on Google Play in these countries, you'll find PayPal as an option in your Google Wallet; just enter your PayPal account login and you'll easily be able to make purchases. Our goal is to provide users with a frictionless payment experience, and this new integration is another example of how we work with partners from across the payments industry to deliver this to the user."

In addition, carrier billing has been expanded to seven more countries, and now totals 24. Google says about half of Google Play users can now utilize the carrier billing option.

Finally, developers from 13 new nations including Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey can now sell apps, bringing that total to 45.

Adrian Wong, Google Glass' top electrical engineer, has left the company for VR headset maker Oculus, reports Crunch.

The engineer had been working at Google X, the company's division for future projects like Glass, self-driving cars and more since 2010.

On Facebook, Wong wrote "#FreshStartFridays - Surprise! Today is my last day at Google. Three rollercoaster years with Google[x] and Glass. What amazing memories. Now, time for the next great adventure!"

Wong worked on systems, camera and RF for the consumer version of Glass and was a Senior Hardware Engineer on the Explorer edition. Perhaps most notably, Wong has 10 patents, many relating to Glass-esque headsets such "Wearable Computer with Nearby Object Response", "Wearable Computer with Superimposed Controls and Instructions for External Device", "Method to Autofocus on Near-Eye Display", and "Unlocking a screen using eye tracking information."

Oculus VR was recently acquired by Facebook as the social networking company looks to the future of gaming and entertainment.

Source:
TechCrunch

Sony has started its 'May Madness' PlayStation Store sale this week, dropping the price of 100 games for European and Australian gamers.

Many of the games have significant price cuts and PSOne, PS3, PS4 and PSP/Vita games are included in the sale. Some games are down 70 percent, especially on the PSP side.

The full list:

PS4

EA SPORTS NBA LIVE 14 (PS4)
Was £54.99/€69.99/AU$99.95, now £44.99/€49.99/AU$69.95

Madden NFL 25 (PS4)
Was £54.99/€69.99/AU$99.95, now £44.99/€49.99/AU$69.95

Stealth Inc Ultimate Edition
Was £10.99/€12.99/AU$18.75, now £5.65/€6.59/AU$9.45

PS3

Capcom vs SNK 2
Was £7.99/€9.99/AU$14.45, now £3.99/€4.99/AU$7.35

Sonic Heroes
Was £7.99/€9.99/AU$14.45, now £3.99/€4.99/AU$7.35

3 on 3 NHL Arcade (not available in Bulgaria, Hungary, Qatar)
Was £6.49/€7.99/AU$11.75, now £2.39/€2.99/AU$4.35

Backbreaker Vengeance (not available in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, UAE)
Was £11.99/€14.99/AU$21.95, now £5.49/€6.99/AU$10.35

Xiaomi, the innovative Chinese company that appears to be able to undercut literally any price in the hardware world, has unveiled its smart MI TV 2, a 49-inch 4K 3D television that will sell for just CN¥3,999 ($640 USD).

The smart TV runs on an Android variant with the company's own TV user interface attached, and allows for sideloading of TV apps.

Powering the TV is a MediaTek MStar 6A918 chip (1.45GHz quad-core CPU, Mali-450 MP4 GPU), 2GB RAM and 8GB internal storage, although there is a microSD slot if you need more space. The TV is just 15.5mm thick.

Even the remote is innovative, as it uses Bluetooth LE, and the TV, if tapped on the bottom, will make the remote beep if you cannot find it around the house. You can also use an Bluetooth-enabled smartphone as a remote using Xiaomi's app, which includes voice and gesture control.

Being that the TV is so thin, the company says they had to separate the audio including a Bluetooth sub-woofer and a wired audio bar. The setup can be used with your mobile devices via Bluetooth, as well, which is very cool.

Major electronics maker Philips has sued Nintendo of America over alleged patent infringement violations.

The company claims that Nintendo has been wilfully selling infringing products for quite some time, and that the gaming company has ignored past requests from Philips.

In question are patents that relate to a "virtual body control device", one that allows users to control certain interfaces using "intuitive" motions and one for a "user interface system based on a pointing device."

Philips says it told Nintendo about the alleged infringement for the first patent back in 2011, but this is the first time it has brought up the second patent.

The company wants a full injunction on infringing products in North America, and it also wants damages. "Infringing products" would include Nintendo's full console lineup and accessories including the Wii, Wii Remote, Wii U, Wii U GamePad, and Wii Mini.

Dong Nguyen, maker of the blockbuster mobile game 'Flappy Bird,' is set to bring the game back in August with new multiplayer features.

Additionally, the game will be "less addictive" than the original, although it is unclear how the developer will make that happen.

Nguyen took the game down from the Android and iOS app stores in February following guilt that players were spending too much time playing the "addictive" game. At the time, the developer was allegedly making $50,000 a week from ads.

The game was downloaded over 50 million times, and is still played by tens of millions.

Microsoft may have inadvertently leaked that the Surface Pro 3 tablet is coming next week, a lot earlier than expected.

The company is holding a press event next week in which it is expected to launch the 8-inch Surface Mini but they could have some more surprises in store.

On one of their support pages, Microsoft notes that Windows 8.1 "adds support to the Surface Pro 3 camera." The Surface Pro 3 has been rumored in the past with a number of outlets guaranteeing a new 'Intel-based Surface' will be unveiled at the May 20th event.

The new device is rumored to have the latest Haswell processor for the best power optimization.

The Trichordist has posted a very interesting document this week, one that shows some in-depth figures about the Beats Music service that is set to be acquired by Apple for over $3 billion.

In the document it is revealed that the service has just 110,000 subscribers, 49,000 individual and 61,000 family plans (most likely through the service's partnership with carrier AT&T).

For the month ended March 31st, the service saw nearly 180 million plays and the service brought in a revenue of just $417,000. Labels collected $248,000 of that figure, while songwriters collected just $23,000 in royalties, good for $0.000126 per play. Market leader Spotify, with over 8 million paying customers, songwriters collect between $0.006 and $0.0084 per play, a significantly higher amount.

Although it is not official (yet), Apple's purchase of Beats is reportedly so the company can have its own streaming music service and the ability to sell high-margin headphone accessories with their devices.

Microsoft has confirmed it will refund Xbox Live Gold members on a pro-rata basis if they no longer want a subscription following the company's decision to allow entertainment apps (and Internet Explorer) to be used for free after years behind a paywall.

Until this week, you needed an Xbox Live Gold membership just to be able to use Netflix, Hulu and other apps. The membership costs $60 per year but is periodically on sale. Rival consoles like the PlayStation 3 and 4 did not have such a requirement, with subscriptions only necessary for multi-player gaming and other features.

The changes go into effect next month, and you will have to make the request before August 31st.

"Once the Xbox One and Xbox 360 system updates become available in June, Xbox Live Gold members who purchased a paid membership before that day can cancel and receive a pro-rata refund of any unused remaining days between the date of cancellation and the date their paid Gold membership ends," says the company.

Apple has seen its smartphone market share grow to 36.6 percent in Japan following release of the latest iPhones by DoCoMo.

Compared to the period ended March 31st last year, the growth is significant, as Apple had just 25.5 percent share. Apple shipped 14.43 million phones to Japan in the last fiscal year.

DoCoMo, Japan's largest wireless carrier by subscribers, began offering the iPhone in September. Other smaller carriers like SoftBank have been selling the iPhone for a number of years.

In the nation, Sharp was second with 5.14 million phones shipped (13 percent) and Sony next at 4.84 million handsets good for a 12.3 percent share. Samsung was low on the list at 5.7 percent share.

9to5Mac has put out an intensive roundup of rumors for the upcoming Apple iPhone 6, including its screen size, release date, resolution and other features.

As expected, the company will show off an iPhone with a larger display (rumored to be 4.7 inches), and the company is preparing for a larger resolution of 1704 x 960 to keep the ppi high enough to qualify for "Retina."

Of course, such a move will require software changes (here comes iOS 8) from Apple and also from developers.

The new move will keep the same 16:9 aspect ratio of the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, and iPhone 5c.

Apple is also rumored to have a 5.5-inch edition of the iPhone 6 in the works, but a 4.7-inch version seems much more plausible at this point.

Sony has reported another massive loss this year, 138 billion yen ($1.3 billion), thanks to a writedown for its sold PC business.

Additionally, the company has forecasted much more losses to come as it continues its turnaround efforts.

At $1.3 billion for the fiscal year ended March 2014, the loss tripled the 2013 fiscal year. The company forecasted a 50 billion yen ($490 million) loss for the next fiscal year with sales not expected to grow either.

Most of the losses came from selling their Vaio PC business, including major restructuring costs and the wind down of excess component inventory. In addition, Sony saw significant value loss in its battery and disc manufacturing businesses.

CEO Kazuo Hirai and 40 other senior executives have declined their entire annual bonuses, a show of faith for the poor performance of the company.

Sony also lost money in TV hardware, mobile, devices and video games for the year, while it was profitable in its music, TV production and movie divisions.

Not all was terrible, however, as sales rose 14 percent to 7.7 trillion yen ($76 billion) for the year.

George R.R. Martin, author of the hit 'Game of Thrones' series, still writes his books on a DOS machine using WordStar 4.0 as his processing system.

The author made the revelation on Conan's late night talk show.

"I actually have two computers," Martin said during the interview. "I have a computer I browse the Internet with and I get my email on, and I do my taxes on. And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the Internet. I use WordStar 4.0 as my word processing system."

WordStar was first released in the 1970s but had been mostly discontinued by the mid-1990s.

"I actually like it, it does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else," Martin added. "I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key."