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hardware posts

NPD: Wii reclaims lead in US sales, but console gaming market shrinks by a fifth

by Vladislav Savov posted Nov 13th 2009 at 11:23AM

The NPD has released its US video game industry figures for October, which reveal that total monthly revenue from hardware, software and accessories among all manufacturers fell to $1.07 billion, constituting a 19 percent drop from what the American gamer spent over the same period last year. After being toppled from its chart-leading ways in September by a price cut-boosted PS3, the Wii has regained its sales throne by chopping $50 off its own entry fee, making itself buoyant in the US, if not the world. The PS3's own sales have suffered a slump after the September euphoria, while the 360 is still wearing the dunce cap in third place. Microsoft's response has been to keep banging that drum about being the only console to show year-to-date growth, but when you're selling less than half as many consoles as Nintendo, you have to grasp at whatever straws are nearby. Speaking of Nintendo, its DS sales so far this year have continued at such a rate as to threaten its own 2008 hardware sales record -- set by the Wii -- with ten million units sold. So there you have it: Sony fails to maintain its September lead, Nintendo keeps churning, and Microsoft keeps hoping for better times ahead. Full list of figures after the break.

Read - Wii regains hardware top spot following US price cut
Read - Xbox 360 leads in year-to-date growth
Read - DS poised to break US hardware records

Continue reading NPD: Wii reclaims lead in US sales, but console gaming market shrinks by a fifth

Boxee inks deal with first hardware partner: a 'Boxee Box' is coming

by Darren Murph posted Nov 12th 2009 at 11:48AM

Color us shocked and elated. Boxee, the white-hot startup that has risen from nothing to everywhere thanks to its internet TV software portal, has just announced that a deal has been inked between it and an undisclosed "hardware partner." If you'll recall, we actually heard that the outfit was mulling the production of its own set-top-box back in January, and now it looks like Roku, Apple TV and a host of other mini PCs will have yet another formidable rival vying for space underneath the tele. The firm isn't spilling any details whatsoever on the so-called "Boxee Box," but we are told that mockups and the like will be presented at the Boxee Beta Unveiling on December 7th. Oh, and as if you aren't excited enough already, chew on this -- the company has informed us that they believe "this will be the first of several living room devices you'll see running Boxee in 2010," so don't be shocked if your favorite game console or Blu-ray player gains an embedded Boxee app in the near future.

EVGA GeForce GTX 275 Co-opts a GTS 250 for PhysX duties

by Vladislav Savov posted Nov 3rd 2009 at 5:14AM

Ready for some more dual-GPU madness, only this time in the resplendent green of NVIDIA? EVGA has gone and concocted a special Halloween edition of the GTX 275, which has sprouted an entire GTS 250 appendage solely for PhysX gruntwork. Dubbed a new form of Hybrid SLI, EVGA's latest combines -- for the first time, from what we can tell -- two different GPUs and assigns them with specific and mutually exclusive tasks. Whether this concept takes off will depend to a large extent on the effectiveness of PhysX acceleration and whether it can show more efficient scaling than regular old SLI with two boards or more conventional dual-GPU setups like the GTX 295. Color us intrigued, either way.

P.S. - That's what the actual card will look like, we're not making it up.

[Via PC Perspective]

Gallery: EVGA GeForce GTX 275 Co-op PhysX Edition

Nintendo's Miyamoto: next-gen Wii hardware could be "more compact, cost-efficient"

by Darren Murph posted Oct 23rd 2009 at 2:19PM

There ain't much to glean from Shigeru Miyamoto's recent sit-down with Popular Mechanics, but in the never-ending quest to learn more about Nintendo's next-generation Wii, a few tidbits of interest have been highlighted. Miyamoto, who is responsible for creating the likes of Mario and Zelda (amongst others), spoke at length about current titles, the future of video games as a whole and on his view of the not-yet-named Wii 2. In answering a question about the future of motion-sensing in the Big N's consoles, he ran off topic a bit and noted that "it would be likely that we would try to make that same functionality perhaps more compact and perhaps even more cost-efficient" when speaking about future hardware (which honestly may have been talking strictly about accelerometers). Of course, this is about as predictable as it gets -- hardware tends to always shrink and get cheaper as technology improves -- but hey, there it is! Now, let your imaginations do what they were born to do.

[Via TechRadar]

Palm quietly improving Pre build quality, tweaking hardware

by Nilay Patel posted Aug 12th 2009 at 6:23PM

It's not the most comprehensive survey, nor is there any official confirmation, but the crew at PreThinking has checked in with a number of new Pre owners and discovered that Palm's apparently building its webOS handset better lately -- and what's more, it's even made some minor improvements. The biggest change appears to be a fix for that nasty bug that caused the Pre to reset or turn off when the keyboard was closed -- that bit of grey foam pictured was added to the battery compartment to tighten up the battery connection. There's a also word that the screen cracking and unintended rotation issues have been addressed, although time will tell on those, and the button color has changed from pearl to silver. As for improvements, well, there's a new battery model, and the Palm logo is now embossed on the carrying case. Yep, just little stuff, but it's good to see Palm addressing the build issues on the Pre, which are by far the most common complaint about the device. Let us know if you've spotted anything else, would you?

Pressure-sensitive keyboard lets you express fury, tenderness

by Nilay Patel posted Aug 6th 2009 at 12:51PM

Microsoft's hardware division has always pushed the envelope, and its latest prototype is no exception: this pressure-sensitive keyboard looks exactly like a normal 'board, but each key can register up to eight levels of pressure, opening up all kinds of interesting possibilities. Sure, there's a gaming demo, where pushing buttons harder makes you run faster or jump higher, but that's sort of old hat -- we're super intrigued by the typing corrector, which uses the pressure difference between keys you mean to type and keys you accidentally graze to fix your mistakes. Definitely interesting stuff, and we're sure to see more novel uses in October when Microsoft opens its first Student Innovation Contest by showcasing student projects made using keyboard prototypes. Videos after the break!

Continue reading Pressure-sensitive keyboard lets you express fury, tenderness

Poll: How's your Palm Pre holding up?

by Laura June posted Jul 3rd 2009 at 5:04PM

It's been nearly a month since the launch of Palm's newest handset, the Pre. Since then, we here at Engadget have heard some vague and hard to substantiate claims of hardware failures -- cracked screens, a little broken plastic here and there -- but nothing on a large scale, so far as we can tell. We thought it was about time to turn it over to you the readers (the ones lucky enough to have a Pre, anyway), to tell us how the phone is holding up physically. Is it tough as nails or is it falling apart? Poll is after the break.

Miyamoto: Super Mario Bros. Wii could be better, but the Wii's too weak

by Darren Murph posted Jun 4th 2009 at 1:31PM

Look, it's no secret that the Wii is comparatively weak. It always has been, and unless some magical, unicorn-approved firmware update hits in the near future, it always will be. The Big N's Shigeru Miyamoto sat down at E3 this year with GameDaily and confessed as much, stating that he "would like to use Wii Speak more, but [in Super Mario Bros. Wii], the Wii processor is already being taxed." He added that this was all "part of being a developer to work with the tools you have to create new and interesting projects," but it certainly makes us wonder just how much more awesome this console could be with a specifications list fit for this millennium. Ah well, maybe we can actually look forward to native 1080p games from Nintendo next decade... if we're lucky.

boxee's App Box and API go live, could come to other hardware soon

by Darren Murph posted Apr 9th 2009 at 9:24AM

Not that there should be any shock surrounding the formal introduction of boxee's App Box and API -- after all, both were teased sufficiently during last month's bleeding edge alpha release -- but we're still thrilled to see things moving along nicely. This week, the open source media platform launched both an API and an application portal, both of which will act to bring all manners of third-party gems to the media browsing world. boxee doesn't plan on being any sort of gatekeeper (at least for now), which hopefully will spur innovation and get more developers interested. In related news, ArsTechnica has also found that boxee is currently in talks with a few big players in the hardware space, essentially hoping to get its 1s and 0s onto game consoles, Blu-ray players and other set-top-boxes. There's no clue as to the whens and wheres, but we suspect this means there will be no dedicated STB in the near future -- for better or worse.

[Via ArsTechnica]

Zeebo heading to Brazil in May, India and Russia next year, China in 2011

by Ross Miller posted Mar 24th 2009 at 1:14AM

We've talked about the Tectoy-backed Zeebo before, but now we've got a little more insight into its plan of attack straight from its presentation at this week's Game Developers Conference. The Qualcomm-powered, 3G-equipped game console is heading to Brazil first a little earlier and cheaper than initially anticipated -- it'll launch in May for the US equivalent price of $200, about one-third the cost of buying a Wii locally. It'll come bundled with a handful of titles and give you the option of download the original Quake and a few others for free. All the rest will presumably fall under that US $3 to $13 price range they announced in November. Following that, expect it to show up in Mexico later this year, India next year, and Eastern Europe sometime in the middle of 2010. China is expected to follow sometime in 2011. No word yet on when or if the company's planning to try its luck in other regions.

Blockbuster announces new initiative, looks to game hardware sales

by Darren Murph posted Apr 29th 2008 at 8:54AM

Just weeks after the rental giant announced an expanded dedication for Blu-ray and even tried selling HDTVs in a test location in Dallas, now the firm is attempting to boost profits by digging into the surging video game market. Presumably in hopes that rental junkies and casual gaming fans alike will actually venture into Blockbuster in order to buy their next Wii, DS, Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, the outfit has announced a new focus that will push the retail video game / game hardware aspect in all of its US-based corporate-owned stores. This includes consoles, a more fleshed out array of games and all the accessories your wallet can handle. Heck, it's even offering up an exclusive 40GB PS3 bundle ($499.99) with the Spider-Man 3 Blu-ray Disc, a PS3 remote, Transformers (the game) and a rental card giving purchasers a free PS3 game / BD rental per week for 12 weeks. Color us completely enthralled.

[Via Joystiq, image courtesy of Portfolio]

Researchers crafting hybrid material to hasten computing processes

by Darren Murph posted Apr 7th 2008 at 8:13AM

There's been no shortage of fantasmical ideas to speed up our everyday computers, but a team of researchers from a variety of universities are working to do just that not by encouraging gamers to slap NOS stickers on their cases, but by combining magnetic and semiconductor components. Respectively, each of the aforesaid parts handle memory and logic functions, but this team is purporting that processes could be completed quicker and in a more power efficient manner if a hybrid material -- which combined both functions -- were created. The team has already received a $6.5 million grant from the Department of Defense with the overriding goal being to "explore new ways to integrate magnetism and magnetic materials with emerging electronic materials such as organic semiconductors," and while it's suggested that these so-called hybrid devices would be fairly inexpensive to produce in the future, it's too early to determine how close we are to seeing any breakthroughs slip out to consumerland.

[Via Gearlog, image courtesy of University of Missouri]

New Google Phone rumors get real specific

by Joshua Topolsky posted Sep 4th 2007 at 9:29AM

As any avid Engadget reader knows, the persistent Google Phone rumor -- begun so many eons ago (er, last year) -- has been on the fast track as of late, with varying reports coming in concerning specific information such as launch date, OS, and the existence of prototypes. Well, now it looks like we've got another handful of data to add to the veritable mini-mountain of specs / info we've ascertained about the presently-vaporous device. According to "reliable sources," specific aspects of the GPhone are coming to light -- the first suggesting that the phone will run on a Linux variant (which is nothing new), and will be Java Virtual Machine-capable. Additionally, the OS of the phone will be Java-based (as well as the all phone apps itself), and performance is said to be "very responsive." The browser for the phone will be new (though some say it's based on the WebKit core, which Safari is built atop) and will tout "pan-and-browse" capabilities. Finally, the word is that HTC is manufacturing the handsets, and instead of a single form-factor for the prototype, there are a variety of phones, all with QWERTY keyboards (one article suggests the phone will be "simpler" and less "flashy" than the iPhone, with less screen space, and a BlackBerry / Treo form-factor). Certainly a lot of information, though -- just as certainly -- speculation and rumor right now, and if the past year has taught any lesson, it's to proceed with extreme skepticism.

Read -- Five Facts About Google Phone
Read -- Introducing the Google Phone

iPhone hardware unlock tutorial goes live

by Sean Cooper posted Aug 23rd 2007 at 9:26AM

Well, looky what the internet has for us this morning friends, Geohot and crew have gone ahead and spilled the beans several days early. Apparently today is unlock tutorial day chez iphonejtag.blogspot.com, and not next week as he originally promised. Geohot is liveposting the unlock tutorial step by step with pause for Q&A sessions in between the steps. Hurry over, he just hit step three, so most of the mystery is still intact and the fun is just beginning. Be warned though, you'll need to bring some steady hands and your best eyewear as this is pretty detailed business. Hit the link to "free" your iPhone.

Dell's XPS Motherboard Exchange Program goes live

by Darren Murph posted Aug 16th 2007 at 5:51AM

Those who have stuck with Dell through the ups and (mostly) downs that have revolved around the XPS 700 are finally in luck, as the XPS Motherboard Exchange Program has officially launched. Notably, all XPS 700 and 710 purchases made through June 30th, 2007 are eligible for this program, and while XPS 700 customers will receive the 720 hardware kit gratis, those with a 710 can snag the same package for $250 (plus shipping). The kit itself includes a XPS 720 motherboard, red or black front panel I/O assembly, all applicable cabling, a mouse pad (huzzah?), and an installation sheet for those who decide to pass on the on-site installation -- which, by the way, is free for XPS 700 owners and up to $150 for 710'ers. Furthermore, current 700 clients can snap up the Intel QX6700 CPU "at 25-percent off the then-current price," but you better get a move on, as the program expires promptly at midnight (CST for those cutting it close) on October 13th.

[Via Direct2Dell, thanks David]