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Pokemon Bank launches in Europe, Australia, New Zealand
The Pokemon Bank finally opened branches in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand today, but there's no word yet on when it'll deposit in North America. Nintendo delayed the X and Y Poke-storage add-on after the chaotic launch in Japan, when servers crumpled beneath unexpectedly high traffic back in December 2013. The service lets you store and carefully sort up 3,000 Poke-things in an online bank, ready to transfer to and from your X and Y collection. Meanwhile, a linked Poke Transporter app lets you move 'mon from Pokemon Black, White, Black 2, and White 2 into the Bank. The Pokemon Bank carries an annual fee of £4.49/5 euros in Europe, and $5 in North America. The EU version offers a 30-day free trial redeemable before March 14, and if you sign up before September 30 you get the adorable and adorably free Celebi as a bonus - Pocket Gamer has a handy guide on how to add the new critter to your roster. [Image: Nintendo]
Namco Bandai taking The Witcher 3 to Australia, New Zealand
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is planning to stalk its most dangerous prey yet, with Namco Bandai serving as its Bear Grylls publisher in the poison-filled land of Australia. Oh, and New Zealand too. Namco Bandai will also be handling Wild Hunt's excursion through Europe, but Warner Bros. will lead the expedition across North America. Wild Hunt is planned to conduct a simultaneous scavenge for wildlife across the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 sometime in 2014. Though Wild Hunt will conclude the saga of Geralt of Rivia, CD Projekt Red will leave an opening for a possible return to the Witcher's world in the future.
Kickstarter coming to Australia and New Zealand next month
Kickstarter will be available beginning November 13 for inhabitants of the lands down under. The crowdfunding platform will open its marsupial pouch to Australia and New Zealand, with interested parties open to start incubating projects now. For those in Australia, Kickstarter is holding "school" in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. Signing up early would be prudent, since similar classes before the platform's launch in Canada topped out. Head over to the Kickstarter site for dates and details.
Possible Blizzard trademark: "Heroes of the Storm"
A potential new trademark for Blizzard Entertainment has been filed in New Zealand, according to posters over at MMO-Champion. The trademark, Heroes of the Storm, is currently listed as being under examination on the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand's official website. This means that the trademark has not been officially filed as of yet -- and given the back and forth about the legitimacy of the supposed trademark filed for "The Dark Below" that turned out to be a hoax, one should probably keep that in mind when discussing the possible legitimacy of this trademark. However, the trademark is filed for computer game software, and we still haven't heard a peep as to just what the next expansion is going to be. Does Heroes of the Storm sound like the next Warcraft project? Or perhaps an upcoming expansion card set for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft? It certainly doesn't sound like a title for anything Diablo or StarCraft related, and Wrathion's made his fair share of references to fire raining from the sky, which sounds pretty stormy to me. While we don't have a definitive on whether or not this trademark will be approved and filed, it definitely gives us some more food for thought.
Kickstarter coming to Australia and New Zealand 'soon'
Clue's in the headline, really. Fresh from tours of the UK and Canada, Kickstarter is ready to land in Australia and New Zealand. The move will enable domestic pitches from Aussie and Kiwi inventors looking for your patronage -- not to mention the odd plea for cash from an established company that feels no shame. The site is preparing for the launch with some training events in Sydney and Melbourne on the 1st and 2nd of September ahead of a yet-to-be-confirmed start date. Notice how we got through that whole post without trotting out any tired stereotypes of shrimps, barbies or Harold Bishop? We thought you'd be proud.
Future finally arrives as Martin Jetpack approved for manned test-flights
Every morning, we wake up knowing that the writers of the '60s, who promised us pill-sized meals and flying cars by the year 2000, had lied to us. But now, a New Zealand-based avionics company has been granted permission to start manned test-flights on the ultimate piece of retro-futurism: the jetpack. The Martin Jetpack, which successfully carried a dummy 5,000 feet above sea level in 2011, has been given a test license by New Zealand's Civil Aviation Authority -- and inventor Glenn Martin is hopeful that a military version of the device will be ready next year. After that, the ambitious engineer plans to release a general-purpose edition in 2015 and although the price has skyrocketed from $86,000 to around the $200,000 mark, we'd probably pay double that amount just to re-enact that moment from Thunderball.
iBook Lessons: Beyond the Story ships interactive book app for Almighty Johnsons, the best show you're not watching
The Almighty Johnsons is probably the best show you're not watching -- unless you live in Canada. Although the show airs in New Zealand as well, the viewer numbers there are roughly enough to put together a basketball team. On a good day. Crude, vulgar, hilarious and touching, the show is surprisingly well made, with a shoestring budget and a very real desperate sense of on-the-bubble/will-it-be-canceled-soon because of those pesty Kiwis who are failing to watch it. To put it in Canadian terms, it's as smart as Orphan Black, a lot funnier and more risk-taking than The Lost Girl. The show plays in Canada, the UK, Australia and, of course, it "airs" (not that anyone watches) in New Zealand. Today, Syfy announced a deal to debut the show in the US in 2014 (hopefully without too many edits for American tastes). Sadly, that air date means that the renew/don't renew decision might happen long before the US gets its first glimpse of the Johnson family. (You can still write letters of support to TV 3 in New Zealand, South Pacific Pictures or tweet a note of support/drop off a Facebook like.) That all said, the show has just jumped from the screen to iOS devices. Expatriate Kiwi developers Beyond the Story, based in London, but with Aotearoa accents, have been working with South Pacific Pictures, just recently delivering a show-specific app to the New Zealand and Canadian iTunes app stores. Their custom, enhanced-book platform was built over several years, with a 2.5 million pound development investment. Able to transform any long form text into an interactive experience, Beyond the Story has previously produced the quite noteworthy Diary of Anne Frank and the somewhat less noteworthy After Earth: Kitai's Journal. They have worked with Penguin and Harper Collins on additional titles. When visiting New Zealand, this past February, a meeting with South Pacific Pictures gave rise to the Almighty Johnsons app project. Offering script novelizations, behind the scenes insights, interviews with the actors, character sheets and more, the app includes a great deal of fan-centric material. On the geeky technical end of things, the app provided some interesting implementation details. Apparently, this is the first-ever TV novelization that's delivered live as the series premieres. As each broadcast goes to air, the app enables each "chaptersode." This was a bit tricky when dealing with multiple geographies, and multiple screening times. The developers focused on not ruining the experience for anyone. You cannot access a chaptersode until that program has gone to air. (When the app goes live in the UK and Australia, it will coordinate to the local broadcasts there for the third series.) Is it a great app? It... feels a little like DVD extras. This includes the hokey background music and tap-to-jump menu structure. The novelization is, well, what it is. It's not horrible, but I'm a little confused as to why it was included. The writing is fairly stiff, bringing little extra insight or liveliness. The background text material, too, feels like it's been repurposed, although I'm not entirely sure of that as a fact. The app presentation itself and the underlying engine, on the other hand, did show great promise. I'd very much like to check out the Anne Frank app now after seeing this one. I'm told the Anne Frank book/app will release globally near October. The best bits, in my opinion, are the behind-the-scenes video snippets, even though some of them are extremely spoilery at this time, especially James Griffin's discourse on Yggdrasil (although I do adore his shirt-of-radio-art). So be warned. I did not encounter any of the instability that users have mentioned in iTunes reviews. I tested the app on a somewhat geriatric iPad 2 running iOS 6. Is it worth the Canadian $3.99? I can't see why not, although spoilerphobes will want to wait until the entire series has aired before picking up a copy. It's as cheap or cheaper than a TV show magazine might be, and probably will offer at least as much enjoyment.
Plants vs. Zombies 2 makes soft landing in Australia, New Zealand today
The recently delayed Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time will soft-launch in Australia and New Zealand shortly, giving it some time for testing. PvZ 2 Senior Producer Allen Murray told Polygon, "With Plants vs. Zombies 2 we're taking advantage of a lot of newer technologies ...if you're connected to the internet, you can save your progress and share accounts across multiple devices - and we need to make sure those systems, along with our ability to stream that content to players works." The game was delayed globally in June to "later in the summer," presumably to make room for this window of testing.
Firaxis' Haunted Hollow appears on, disappears from the App Store
There's good news, bad news, and the best news on this one, and I'll give you the good news first. Firaxis' Haunted Hallow appeared on the App Store this morning, which means the game is just about ready for prime time. The free-to-play strategy title was one of my favorite games I got to see at GDC a few months ago. It's a board game, basically, in that you move various monsters around a board trying to claim and conquer space as best you can, though there's a fun house-building mechanic as well, in the way you choose which monsters to summon and fight for you. Firaxis, the creators of Civilization and the recent hit XCOM: Enemy Unknown, are some of the most experienced strategy developers out there, and Haunted Hallow is a free-to-play gift from them straight to the App Store, so it's great to see the game is almost done. The bad news, however, is that while I was writing this post to let you know the game was out, the title has disappeared from the US App Store. It is still available on the New Zealand App Store, so if you want to change your country to download the app from there, you can do that. But presumably this means the app wasn't supposed to be live on the US Store yet, so either there's more testing to be done, or we'll have to wait until this evening, as new App Store titles go official across the world. The best news is that Haunted Hallow is just the beginning. Firaxis has also announced that it's porting XCOM to the iPad in the future, and there are some other, not-yet-announced exciting strategy titles on the way as well. Firaxis has some great things planned for iOS, and this game is only the first. At any rate, Haunted Hallow is almost ready, and that's worth getting excited about. It's free to play (you get a certain number of monsters to start with, and you'll be able to buy more via in-app purchase), so whenever it is ready to download in your region, it'll be a must grab for sure. Update: 2K has confirmed that this was an accidental release. The game will be available worldwide next Thursday, May 2. So we just have a short wait until then!
The Hobbit will be first movie to support UltraViolet in New Zealand and Australia
Peter Jackson's homeland hasn't been too hot on UltraViolet until now, despite the cross-platform library tool's growing popularity in the US and UK. That'll change with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which is set to launch on DVD and Blu-ray in New Zealand on May 1st and will allow both Kiwis and Aussies to purchase the movie on disc and then watch it on PC, Mac, iOS, Android and hopefully even Xbox via a redemption code and a Flixster account in the cloud -- with no DIY required. In wider UV-related news, the technology is also scheduled to reach France and Germany by the end of Q3 of this year, which should add a few names to the 12 million account holders around the world who've already used UltraViolet to watch 9,000 different titles.
Final Fantasy V out on iOS in New Zealand today
Square Enix's questionably upgraded iOS version of Final Fantasy 5 has arrived on the App Store in New Zealand, which suggests it'll propagate throughout the world as the day goes on, likely arriving in North America late tonight. Square Enix had previously announced plans to release the port on iOS in March, but only in Japan, so the localized release comes as something of a surprise.Final Fantasy 5 retails for $19.99 NZD, which is equivalent to $16.69 USD. Yeah, that seems a bit high, but Square Enix could use the money.
BioShock Infinite pre-orders in EU, AU, NZ can get Steelbook case
GameStop, EB Games and Micromania locations in Europe, Australia, and New Zeland will have a special, exclusive preorder item for the upcoming Bioshock Infinite. Players who pre-order the game at the specified retail chains in those regions will be rewarded with a special "Fink Manufacturing SteelBook case," emblazoned with the Fink Manufacturing logo.In America, GameStop already offers the "Industrial Revolution" pack with a preorder, as well as a special in-game weapon. But it looks like the SteelBook case is just for GameStop International customers. Bioshock Infinite is due on March 26.
Daily Update for February 14, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
New Zealand police department will distribute 10,000 iOS devices to officers
Businesses are not the only entities handing out iPhones and iPads to their employees. In New Zealand, police officers are also being outfitted with the iOS device en masse. According to a report in The National Business Review Online, government and police officials have announced a new program that would outfit 6,000 officers with iPhones and 3,900 officers with iPads. The iOS devices will operate on wireless carrier Vodafone, which has negotiated a 10-year deal with the government department. NZ Police Chief Information Officer Stephen Crombie told NBR that the department chose iOS over Android based on police officer feedback.
Apple launches back-to-school promo in Australia, New Zealand
Apple is back again with its annual "Back to School" promotion to kick off the school year in Australia and New Zealand. The promotion offers gift cards for a Mac or iPad purchase and is similar to the one offered last year in the US and Europe. The promotion is open to any student, faculty or staff member from any grade level. It'll give each educational customer a AU$100 or NZ$125 (US$100) gift card for a Mac purchase and a AU$50 or NZ$65 (US$50) gift card for an iPad with Retina display purchase. An app and accessory buying guide will help students get all that they need for the upcoming school year. [Via MacStories]
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy shows up on iOS App Store
An unannounced iOS port of the 3DS music game Theatrhythm Final Fantasy has shown up on New Zealand's iOS App Store, which usually portends a worldwide release throughout the day.The iOS game adds a "Quest Medley" mode, which puts you through a random pairing of "field" and "battle" levels, different each time you play. It also adds some kind of composition mode, along with the ability to share creations via Twitter.Unlike the 3DS version, the iOS release is free to download. As reported by NeoGAF users, it comes with just two songs, with the rest purchased as in-app bundles. Even additional characters are sold via IAP. In fact, user Goli notes that, when the NZ release of the game is opened in a US account, the prices for in-app purchases show up in US denominations ... and add up to around $150.In any case, Theatrhythm is worth a try if you have even the slightest appreciation for Final Fantasy music. The 3DS version retails for $30.
Pandora Radio now fully live in Australia and New Zealand, complete with iOS and Android apps
Folks that call Australia and New Zealand home aren't exactly strangers to the internet-based radio goods Pandora has to offer -- however, these have been very limited to the public, with the tunes only being available on the desktop and on a trial basis. As of today, though, things are about to change for those living in Oz and Kiwiland, as Pandora announced via blog post that its new-era radio stations are now "fully live" in both countries, making this the first time the service has been available in its entirety outside of the US. Naturally, this means users in Australia and New Zealand can also start enjoying the Pandora Radio Android and iOS applications, both of which are up for download now from Google Play and the App Store, respectively.
iBookstore lines its shelves with paid content in New Zealand, 17 Latin American countries
iDevice owners in New Zealand and 17 Latin American countries are no longer restricted to a diet composed of free content when it comes to their respective iBookstores. A quick search of the storefronts will reveal virtual shelves stocked with paid-content that haven't yet found their way to the shops' homepages. Reside in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru or Venezuela? Head on over to the appropriate store and books with price tags will be available for purchase. If this is any sign of what Apple has up its sleeve for tomorrow, we suspect that "a little more" will involve a bit of reading.
PlayStation Store redesign goes live in Australia, Europe and New Zealand with a rocky start
Sony vowed a long (long, long) overdue PlayStation Store remake starting this week, and it delivered just that today with launches in Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand. As promised, the PS3 shop's cleaner design scales more elegantly from standard to high definition, brings more intelligent searching and makes it easier to find everything related to a given game. We still wouldn't be too eager to dive in just yet, as there's been hiccups early on -- the sheer amount of traffic has reportedly brought the new store to a crawl, on top of teething issues with adding funds and recognizing PlayStation Plus memberships. Sony has promised fixes, but we're suddenly not feeling so bad about having to wait for that October 23rd North American launch.
Kobo to buy Aquafadas, get magazines, academic texts, comics and children's books in the process
Canadian-born, Japanese-owned e-reader maker Kobo announced its intentions to acquire digital publishing company Aquafadas today, an agreement that'll bring rich content like magazines, academic texts, comics and children's books, amongst others, to Kobo users. The deal also builds out Kobo's self-publishing offering, bringing more tools to the table, along with additional languages like German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch. Kobo's also taking the opportunity to announce exapanded offerings in New Zealand, thanks to partnerships with Booksellers NZ and The Paper Plus Group. Back in September, the company announced a trio of new devices set for release this month and next in the States.
