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The iPad mini has the fastest touchscreen of all the most popular tablets
App-streaming company Agawi is at it again. Just a few weeks after announcing that the iPhone 5 absolutely destroys the competition in terms of touchscreen responsiveness, Agawi returns with a similar benchmark survey for today's most popular tablets. The result? Well, once again Apple comes out on top, but it may surprise you to learn that the touchscreen on the iPad mini is in fact the overall winner, with just a 75-millisecond average response time. The fourth-generation iPad came in second with an 81-millisecond average response time, followed (somewhat shockingly) by the NVIDIA Shield gaming handheld at 92 milliseconds. The rest of the list, in order, consisted of the Surface RT, Kindle Fire HD (2013), Nexus 7 and finally the Galaxy Tab 3. Of course, milliseconds rarely matter in everyday tablet usage, but when it comes to responsiveness, it's clear that Apple has the edge in both smartphones and tablets.
Agawi and Marvell team up to bring cloud-based gaming to Android set-top boxes
It's like a match made in heaven. Agawi and Marvell have partnered up to combine a cloud-based gaming platform with the equipment that powers many popular Google TV devices. Together, both companies will offer a white-label Android gaming solution to OEMs, internet and cable providers, game publishers and retailers. As a result, we may see a number of smart TV devices begin cropping up that support Agawi's CloudPlay gaming service. Whether this solution poses a legitimate threat to the console business remains to be seen, but we're going to scour the floor at CES to bring you a demo of the system in action. In the meantime, full PR follows the break.
Cable, IPTV providers reportedly testing cloud-based HD gaming for launch next year
The next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft haven't even been announced yet but their best competition may be from your cable TV / internet provider, according to a report from Bloomberg. The only-too-eager-to-talk people familiar with the matter named AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS and Time Warner Cable as services preparing tests before the end of the year with general availability planned for 2013. Comcast and Cox were also name dropped as potential candidates to bring console-quality HD games directly to customers, based on tech from startups like Playcast, CiiNOW and Agawi. Of course, while we've seen this sort of setup before (as seen above, check out an awesomely 90s Sega Channel ad after the break) and recently from OnLive and Gaikai, cloud gaming has yet to catch on in a major way. Whether this potential approach is all smoke or will actually turn into reality has yet to be seen, but after TV Everywhere we wouldn't be surprised to see providers toss in gaming as another incentive for subscribers not to cut the cord. [Image credit: Sega Retro]
Agawi brings game streaming to Windows 8
Game streaming platform Agawi has announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring cloud-streamed games to Windows 8. Leveraging Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud platform, the service will bring "social Facebook games as well as mid-core and hardcore titles" to devices that run Windows 8, including tablets, phones and, of course, PCs. Perhaps most important to the Joystiq audience, Agawi promises that "Popular AAA games" will be playable within "the coming months."Just how will these AAA games work on a tablet? Executive chairman Peter Relan tells Engadget that decision is up to the publisher. Agawi supports, according to Relan, everything from virtual D-pads to "touch and tap" to actual controllers.There is a caveat, however, in that Agawi is tied to x86 architecture. That means, for example, that it won't run on Microsoft Surface for Windows RT tablet, which uses an ARM processor, whereas it will run on the Surface Pro, which packs an Intel i5. Relan says the tech should run on Windows 8 phones, though it sounds like those phones will need some beefy processing power.Agawi has not announced any publishing partners, though a fourth quarter announcement seems to be in the works. In the meantime, you can see a demo of Agawi above, which shows off Assassin's Creed, among other titles.
Agawi cloud game streaming headed to Windows 8, focused on 'mid-core and hardcore' games
Cloud streaming provider Agawi (formerly "iSwifter") is making a second major push with its cloud-based game streaming service alongside Windows 8 this October. Beyond the social content it already brings to the iPad -- "more than 12,000" Facebook games -- Agawi's second run at streaming is more focused on what it calls "mid-core" and "hardcore" games. But what does that mean? Executive chairman Peter Relan says "mid-core" means "web-based MMOs with a PC download," versus PC downloads representing the "hardcore." The example video (below the break) shows Agawi working with a variety of games, though none of the titles in the video confirm potential content partners for the service (Relan teases a fourth quarter reveal of more news). And today, Agawi announced its collaboration with Microsoft Azure, resulting in cloud game streaming across the world of Windows 8 -- tablets, PCs, and even its phones. "Popular AAA games will be made available in the coming months for instant play on Windows 8 devices with no additional work required by developers," the launch PR promises. Input methods for games vary dramatically by platform, and we've already seen what happens when you shove tablet-based touch controls onto a console/PC game (it ain't pretty). "That's a publisher decision," Relan says. "We support the idea of d-pads on the tablet itself. We support pure touch gesture on the tablet. We support point-and-click on the screen -- touch and tap. We support swipe for scrolling. We support a full controller, like an Xbox console controller," he adds.
