2012
Latest
Never say Neverwinter: Cryptic forced to delay D&D RPG
Fans -- and general looky-loos -- anticipating Cryptic's next game will have to wait a little while longer. Neverwinter has been officially delayed following a bout of legal mumbo jumbo involving Atari and Hasbro struggling over the Dungeons & Dragons license. While the two companies have finally settled this long-running dispute, Atari's sale of Cryptic to Perfect World Entertainment has come with a catch regarding its Neverwinter project. Due to the new ownership, Perfect World is demanding Cryptic work on "a more immersive experience" for Neverwinter and is thus pushing the cooperative RPG's release from the formerly announced 2011 launch window to late 2012. The settlement means that Hasbro will regain the digital licensing rights to D&D, but Atari can still sell and develop some titles under that umbrella. Cryptic Studios was acquired by Perfect World earlier this month for a whopping $49.8 million.
PlayStation Vita coming to US, Europe in early 2012
Sony is adjusting its PlayStation Vita launch plans and rolling back to an earlier claim: that the new portable system would be out in "at least one territory" by the end of 2011. According to an AP report, Japan has been selected as 2011's sole recipient of the Vita. Speaking to the press in Tokyo, SCEI Chairman Kaz Hirai clarified that the PlayStation Vita would miss the holidays in America and Europe, instead rolling out in those regions during early 2012. [Update: Previously, Sony said it would be available in the global market "starting" at the end of 2011.] Hirai insisted that the launch would not be accompanied by a lowered price, despite Nintendo's hasty and reactionary price drop on the Nintendo 3DS. "We packed so much into the device and made it very affordable," Hirai said. "There is no need to lower the price just because somebody else that happens to be in the video game business decided that they were going to lower their price." The PlayStation Vita will start at $249, alongside a 3G-enabled version for $299.
Borderlands 2 rolling in sometime after March 2012
Borderlands 2, which Gearbox described as a "no-brainer" sequel following the success of the first title, has been officially announced. The game will head to Xbox 360, PS3 and PC during 2K's next fiscal year, which begins on April 1, 2012. The sequel will bring to the unexplored regions of planet Pandora, and introduce "all-new characters, skills, environments, enemies, weapons and equipment." Borderlands 2 will be shown for the first time two weeks from now at Gamescom, and then come stateside for a PAX Prime presentation August 26 - 28.
Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee to start Leaf production by late 2012
No worries Nissan EV fans, more Leaves are on the way -- that's according to Bill Kreuger, the head honcho of Nissan's manufacturing and supply chain division. Kreuger tells Automotive News, the catastrophic earthquake in Japan that shut down several large plants was just a small speedbump in the release of the flagship electric vehicle. Nissan North America has been preparing a 1.6 billion dollar production complex in Smyrna, Tennessee, to begin rolling out EVs in the masses by late 2012. The plan is to have the plant assemble about 200,000 battery modules and as many as 150,000 Leafs each year, and we're guessing it'll have quite an easy go finding names for each and every one.
360 MacDev Conference registration now open
360|MacDev has opened up registration for its next Mac developer conference in Denver, Colorado. Originally, they had wanted to schedule something this year, but due to conflicts of various kinds, the date has been moved out to next February, in 2012. That's a ways away, but it'll just give you lots of time to prepare, right? The early registration fee is in effect until September 9 or until they sell through the first 50 tickets, so if you're set on going already, now's the time to sign up. I haven't been to a 360|MacDev event, but we did visit the 360|iDev conference a while ago, and it was full of great information and networking around the iOS developer community. I'm sure the Mac side of things will be no different. And if you actually want to present at the show, you have that chance, too -- there's a Call for Papers out right now, so if you've got something interesting to share with the Mac community, let them know!
Analyst ups AAPL on strong projected iPad, iPhone sales
Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley remains bullish on Apple pointing to strong iPhone and iPad sales in June. He's so confident in Apple that he boosted his iPhone sales estimate from 75.5 million million to 77.3 million in 2011. He also predicts Apple will sell a whopping 100.2 million iPhones and 55.1 million iPads in 2012. As others have said before him, Walkley notes that Apple will continue to lead both the tablet and smartphone market. So what does these numbers mean for the average joe? More iPhones and iPads in circulation, greater incentive for developers to jump into the iOS ecosystem and extra cash for Apple to pump into research and development for the next generation iOS devices. Sounds good, doesn't it?
Isis mobile payments coming to Austin in 2012
Certain to "Keep Austin Weird," Isis has selected the home of SXSW as its second market for a mobile payment tryout. The joint-venture backed by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless (with help from MasterCard and Visa), will work with local merchants and the Chamber of Commerce to deliver what it calls a "comprehensive mobile experience" by mid-2012. Isis' latest metropolitan recruit joins Salt Lake City in this experiment that will compete with Google Wallet (which is endorsed by Sprint). Quick advice to Austinites: when out-of-towners begin gawking at you for getting "free" lattes and concert tickets by waving your phone about, be sure to explain the wonders of NFC -- it'd be a shame for them to attempt the same -- only to be taken into custody by the Austin PD. Jump the break for the PR.
iTunes Match not coming to the UK until 2012?
Music collectors in the US will be able to subscribe to Apple's iTunes Match service this fall, but it looks like our friends across the pond will have to wait a little longer before lofting their libraries up to the cloud. According to sources within the British recording industry, licensing negotiations between Apple and the country's major labels have only just begun and likely won't be concluded until 2012. A spokesman for the Performing Right Society, an organization that protects the rights of musicians and songwriters, likened the situation to the launch of iTunes, which only spread to international markets some 14 months after launching in the US. Speaking to the Telegraph, Forrester Research vice president Mark Mulligan echoed these predictions, while offering some insight into the industry's approach: "Apple's cloud music service will not launch in the UK until at least quarter one of 2012. These types of negotiations take a long time... For one thing the UK arms of all the major record labels are biding their time and waiting to see how the service affects download sales in the US before they sign up to anything." Neither Apple nor any of the major labels have commented on the negotiations, but if things drag on we'd be willing to share our cloudy iTunes in exchange for a crack at Spotify.
Sega's Australian studio making London Olympics game
For its last Olympics game, set in Vancouver, Sega employed the development talents of the UK-based Eurocom. The 2012 Olympics will be held in London, and Sega has consequently moved development of the tie-in game to Brisbane, Australia. Obviously! Today, Sega announced London 2012 - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games, coming out next year for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC (Mario and Sonic are the chosen Olympians for the Wii and 3DS platforms). It's developed by "the newly rebranded SEGA Studios Australia," formerly The Creative Assembly's Australian studio. Sega namechecked the studio's "state of the art motion capture facility" as a potential reason for the choice. As for the actual game, it features 30 events of unspecified Olympery, with online leaderboards.
Heroes of Ruin officially announced for early 2012 release
We got a slight heads-up about Heroes of Ruin a couple of days ago thanks to developer n-Space. Now, Square Enix has decided to spill the full complement of beans regarding the co-op action RPG for 3DS. Starring "four unlikely heroes" (presumably the four hero-looking people seen in the artwork), Heroes of Ruin features drop-in, drop-out co-op for up to four players locally, and connectivity for both StreetPass (which builds a shop out of items found by other players) and SpotPass (which provides "rare items or unique challenges" through discovered wi-fi hotspots). Players discover " new layouts and routes each time they play," suggesting the presence of randomly generated dungeons. Descend into our gallery to find the first screenshots. Heroes of Ruin is scheduled for an early 2012 release.%Gallery-124874%
5th Cell's Hybrid bumped to 2012
Hybrid, developer 5th Cell's unique XBLA shooter, originally slated for a release sometime this year, can now be expected to provide an unexpected experience in 2012. 5th Cell announced the delay today, with creative director Jeremiah Slaczka explaining that "with an additional year, we can take what we've learned and really drill down on our ideas to hopefully transform this game into something great." When we saw it a couple of months ago, it was a tactical shooter with movement mapped to the buttons. It's already a transformative experience. We kind of can't wait to see how the company is going to "transform" it further.
Tales of Graces F coming to North America and Europe in 2012
During Namco Bandai's "Level Up Dubai 2011" press event last night, the publisher announced some welcome news for the very patient Tales fans in Europe: The PS3 version of Tales of Graces F will be released in that region. Community manager Rich Bantegui live-tweeted news from the event, revealing that the "mothership" Tales RPG will be out in Europe in 2012. In addition, the newly opened page for the game on the company's North American site shows a 2012 date. Bantegui also confirmed reports that the 3DS remake of Tales of the Abyss would be released in Europe, though no date was provided.%Gallery-123358%%Gallery-123357%
Smithsonian announces titles for Art of Video Games exhibit, snubs Mario Paint
GoldenEye 007 is certainly a fun way to waste your childhood...but is it art? According to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, yes. The game was one of 80 selected for an upcoming exhibit, The Art of Video Games, and the venerable museum drew on fan expertise, using online voting to winnow the field of 240 nominees. The selections span the last four decades (!) of gaming, from the days of the Atari VCS and ColecoVision all the way to today's modern time-sinks like Portal and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The exhibit won't open until next spring, but in the meantime check out the source link to argue about who got left out.
Nintendo confirms next Wii coming in 2012, will preview it at E3
Nintendo has just announced it plans to introduce a successor to its Wii console next year, a "playable model" of which will be shown off at the E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles coming up on June 7th. No details are available as to how the next Wii will improve on the first one, though we imagine Nintendo will be happy if it simply matches the success of its current-gen home entertainer -- the brief note publicizing the new roadmap also comes with a total of Wii sales accumulated between its launch in '06 and the end of last month: 86.01 million. That's said to be on a "consolidated shipment basis," so maybe Nintendo is mixing its definitions of sales and shipments the way Sony likes to, but it's a mighty big number either way. Bring on E3, we say! Update: Bloomberg has provided the first official hint about Nintendo's next console with a quote from company President Satoru Iwata. Nintendo will "propose a new approach to home video game consoles," though it won't be a simple move to 3D, as Iwata notes "it's difficult to make 3-D images a key feature, because 3-D televisions haven't obtained wide acceptance yet." Given that motion gaming is no longer new and 3D is off the table until 3DTVs go mainstream, we're now left facing only one potentiality -- Nintendo is planning on bringing genuine innovation to our living rooms. We suppose it also adds fuel to the rumor of a crazy next-gen controller to go with this next-gen console.
ARM predicts dual-core Cortex-A15 devices in late 2012, quad-core variants 'later on'
Smartphones and tablets, the two hottest categories of consumer devices right now, are dominated by ARM processor designs, so when the company speaks up about its product roadmap, we're inclined to listen in close. The next generation of ARM system-on-chip has been dubbed Cortex-A15 and was expected to ship in 2013, but that's now been accelerated slightly to late 2012, which is when we're told to expect actual devices on sale with A15 silicon on board. Single- and dual-core variants will get us started, before quad-core options start filtering through in 2013. ARM promises a stunning fivefold improvement in performance over current Cortex-A9 SOCs and already has NVIDIA, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments signed up as licensees for that new hotness. So now even Samsung's "desktop-class" 2GHz dual-core chip that's slated for 2012 has a reason to look over its shoulder. Happy times!
Authorized Steve Jobs biography due in early 2012
As we reported in February of 2010, Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine, has been working on an authorized biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs for some time. Over at Apple 2.0/Fortune, Phil Elmer-DeWitt reports that iSteve: The Book of Jobs has been completed and will be published in early 2012. It may be surprising that someone as intensely protective of his privacy as Steve Jobs would authorize anyone to tell his life story. After reading Elmer-DeWitt's profile of Isaacson, though, it's a little clearer why Jobs has finally opened up. Isaacson's résumé is very impressive indeed, as are his biography subjects to date: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger and Albert Einstein. There's a one-degree-of-separation TUAW connection to Isaacson, as it happens. Our lead editor Mike Rose was in charge of new media at Entertainment Weekly in the mid-1990s when Isaacson was running Time Inc.'s Pathfinder web portal for the company's magazine titles, and they worked together on occasion. Mike says he doubts that Walter will see fit to send him advance galleys of the Jobs biography for old times' sake, but it never hurts to ask. With Isaacson behind the project and Jobs as its subject, iSteve sounds like it should be a fascinating read. For an alternate take on the choice of Isaacson as the official iBiographer, see Michael Wolff's piece here.
Isis NFC payment system gets its first market in Salt Lake City, Utah, launches in 2012
Like 3D on high-end HDTVs, NFC-based payment systems seem set to invade our mobile lives whether we like them or not. Isis, a collaborative venture between AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and a bunch of banking big timers, has today announced the first market for its rollout of a contactless payment scheme, and it's none other than Salt Lake City, Utah. That'll surely raise eyebrows in locales that may consider themselves more tech-savvy, but we reckon starting off with a city of a smaller scale might be good for getting this "mobile wallet" system off the ground. And then there's the added benefit of Isis snagging a deal to enable compatibility with the entire Utah Transit Authority footprint. If all plans are executed properly, that should mean that by summer 2012 the good people of SLC will be able to NFC their way around town with just their smartphone in hand, while also swiping it through checkouts like some form of highly advanced techno-humans.
London scraps plans for cellular coverage on the tube, bums Huawei out
Technical complexity and financial naiveté have meant that London's ambitious plans to cover its underground train network with cellular signal by the 2012 Olympics are hitting the scrapheap. In spite of Huawei's most generous offer to provide £50 million ($81m) of equipment for the project for free, the London Mayor's wish that UK mobile operators be the ones to foot the installation bill -- without a penny coming out of public coffers -- has unsurprisingly found little favor. Compounded with the logistical hellride of trying to get everything up and running by next summer, that's now led to a mutual agreement among all parties concerned to abandon the project. Mind you, the plans to get WiFi up at 120 stations in time for the Olympics are still on track, so at least we'll be able to pull down some data before diving into those dark, damp tunnels.
Samsung and Visa join forces to enable NFC mobile payment at 2012 Olympics
From a gadgeteer's point of view, one of the best things about the Olympics is its tendency to bring in new technologies to the hosting city. Take the 2012 games, for example: not only are the London Underground stations getting WiFi hotspots, but news has it that Samsung and Visa are holding hands to deliver NFC mobile payment solutions to the city. In fact, more than 60,000 locations in London are already geared up with contactless payment systems, and right now Visa is negotiating with banks to get its contactless cards and mobile phones approved. For the latter, one such device will be Samsung's Olympic and Paralympic Games mobile handset that comes with a Visa-enabled SIM card, and it'll be made available to sponsored athletes as well as various retailers. Furthermore, this alliance will continue after the Olympics, and Visa is rolling out its mobile payment system in many other countries as we speak, so it shouldn't be long before we hear more Visa handset announcements.
UK 4G spectrum set to be auctioned off next year
Ofcom, the UK version of the FCC, is currently sitting on two fat bands of prime 4G spectrum, at 800MHz and 2.6GHz, but it won't be doing so for long. This morning has seen an announcement from the independent regulator that it's looking to sell off those airwaves to the highest bidder, as early as 2012, pending the conclusion of a consultation on how to ensure the auction helps promote, rather than stifle, competition. The 800MHz band comes directly from spectrum freed up by the country's transition to digital television, and together with the 2.6GHz is equivalent to three quarters of all the mobile spectrum the UK uses today. The usual suspects of O2, Vodafone and Everything Everywhere will be vying for prime position in the next wave of superspeedy internet ... we just wonder how 3G-centric network Three will react to the news. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
