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Razer’s $399 Enki is better than most office chairs, period
Razer's Enki chair is designed to keep your butt comfy and your back straight while you game.
There's now an official 'Minecraft' gaming chair
Microsoft, Mojang and Secretlab have collaborated on an official 'Minecraft' gaming chair.
Razer's first gaming chair improves your posture
Razer has unveiled its first gaming chair, the Iskur, that promises to improve your posture for long game sessions.
Logitech and Herman Miller team up to design ergonomic gaming furniture
Plenty of gaming chairs look cool, but whether or not they're actually good for your back is another question. Furniture company Herman Miller and Logitech's gaming hardware brand Logitech G want to change that. They're teaming up to create a line of ergonomic furniture for gamers, starting with a gaming chair that could arrive as soon as this spring.
Nissan envisions car-themed esports gaming chairs
Nissan's connection to gaming might extend beyond the occasional car in a racing sim. The automaker has joined with FaZe Clan and OpTic Gaming to design a trio of "esports gaming chairs" themed around (what else?) some of its more iconic cars. The GT-R Nismo is a "performance" chair with a thin carbon fiber shell, a racing seat shape, Nismo leather and an audio system built into the headset. The Armada chair echoes the SUV with extra-comfy lumbar support, posh leather and its own climate control. A Leaf chair, meanwhile, mimics the EV with "eco-friendly" materials and a USB charging port.
Epic pulls its 'Infinity Blade' mobile games from the App Store
Ever since being introduced as Project Sword alongside iOS 4.1 back in 2010, the Infinity Blade games have shown the kind of graphics and action that are possible on Apple's mobile devices -- until now. At the same time owner Epic Games is launching its own game store and pricking Apple over App Store policies that impact its Fortnite juggernaut, the company has decided to pull all three games without warning. In a post the company said "it has become increasingly difficult for our team to support the Infinity Blade series at a level that meets our standards."
Nissan's autonomous chairs politely carry you through queues
Back in February, Nissan took a break from rolling out electric vehicle chargers to develop intelligent office chairs that pushed themselves in. It wasn't a new product, but a proof-of-concept stunt to demonstrate their assistive parking technology. But with new developments to show off comes a new seat demonstration. Voila: The Nissan chair that queues in line for you.
A VR massage chair made me both happy and sad
One of the delights on show here at IFA was Medisana's VR massage chair, which pairs one of its high end devices with an Oculus Rift. Rather than sitting in a shopping mall and viewing your fellow patrons as a robot paws at your back, you can be transported somewhere more romantic. The VR headset is used to play 180-degree videos of beautiful foreign locations that correspond to a pre-programmed massage routine. The five-minute demo loop that I experienced was moderately relaxing, although I worry about its implications for the future.
The 'Station' desk cradles your body and gut-punches your wallet
Our computers have rapidly shrunk from room-size behemoths to hulking desktops to the svelte laptops that now dominate modern offices. What haven't changed much are the tables and chairs that the computers (and we) sit on. A new integrated workspace from the Altwork company, appropriately named the Station, has been designed to replace both pieces of furniture while giving you more flexibility in how you interact with your computer. I was recently able to get a butts-on demo of the Station, and the only contortion I had to perform was wrapping my mind around its massive price tag.
Nissan's self-parking chairs keep lazy offices tidy
While motorized human transporters have yet to truly take off, the folks over at Nissan have come up with something more practical for the time being: self-parking office chairs. With a single clap, these futuristic furniture will automagically tuck themselves back into their rightful positions, thus keeping your office or meeting room neat and tidy. And of course, it's also fun to watch, as you can see in the video after the break. Nissan says these modified Okamura chairs are actually tracked by four motion cameras on the walls, and then they are simultaneously controlled via Wi-Fi.
JJ Abrams is working on a game with the makers of 'Infinity Blade'
JJ Abrams' attempt to conquer the gaming world isn't just limited to a partnership with Valve. His Bad Robot studio is teaming up with Infinity Blade creator ChAIR on Spyjinx, an espionage game hitting both PCs and phones in 2016. The two are saying precious little about the title right now, but they're promising a blend of action, role-playing, strategy and even world building -- this is far more than just a Team Fortress 2 game mode. It's as if players will be in the "brainstorming session" with developers, Abrams teases. If that whets your appetite, you can sign up for chance to participate in a closed beta test that kicks off next year.
How a spinning chair made virtual reality feel more real
When donning a VR headset, it's easy to be awestruck by whatever 3D world you find yourself in. It's a whole new medium that simply can't be replicated on a TV. Still, there are reasons the likes of Oculus and Sony aren't selling headsets to the masses just yet. While Samsung's Gear VR and other smartphone-powered headwear are filling the void, headsets that tap into the processing might of PCs and consoles will ultimately deliver the most immersive experiences. But, the technology isn't quite there yet. Stereoscopic 3D can be jarring, with complicated worlds often appearing slightly out of focus. Then there are issues like nausea that can strike when moving through virtual surroundings. Also, how we interact with virtual spaces will continue to evolve, moving beyond the gamepad and keyboard to more natural and hopefully intuitive methods of control.
Swiss startup creates a wearable chair so you can rest anywhere
Most of the wearable gadgets getting people hot and bothered either strap onto your face or your wrist, but Swiss startup noonee has cooked up a little something that straps to your legs instead. Well, fine, maybe it's not exactly little: in a bid to keep factory line workers more alert and more comfortable during their shifts, the five person team has developed a locking leg support device they call the Chairless Chair. Once you get strapped in, all it takes is a press of a button to get settled -- the aluminum and carbon fiber frame holds whatever position your legs take and essentially becomes, well, an invisible chair. The secret sauce here is a battery-powered dampening system eases the load on your lower back and legs by supporting the your body weight and directing it down into your heels. Noonee's curious wearable is still firmly in the prototype phase (though Audi and BMW will soon take the thing for spin on its production lines) but if it works as well as the team says it does, expect every haggard commuter -- or frenzied blogger cranking out stories at a trade show -- to own one soon enough.
Equip an Infinity Blade for free this week
We may be up to Infinity Blade 3 now, but you can explore the first game in Chair's smash hit series for absolutely nothing. The official Infinity Blade account tweeted this morning the swipey iOS brawler is going for free on the App Store all this week. Infinity Blade is famous for being the first to bring Unreal Engine 3 to iOS, as well as doing Infinity sales, but it's also a great game. As our five-star review put it back in 2010: "You might find games that are a more perfect fit for the platform, but in terms of recreating a console-level experience on the iPhone, you simply will not do better than Infinity Blade."
Infinity Blade 3 launches alongside iPhone 5S on Sept. 20
Infinity Blade 3 will launch on September 20, right with the iPhone 5S, Chair co-founder Donald Mustard revealed during Apple's conference today. Infinity Blade 3 is the conclusion of the series. Players will embody two characters in eight worlds, each of which is bigger than the entire first game, Mustard said. We got the first look at Infinity Blade 3 on Engadget's Apple liveblog. Infinity Blade: Dungeons, a dungeon-crawling iteration in the series, was canceled this year when developer Impossible Studios was shut down. Sales of Infinity Blade 2, which launched in December 2011, hit 50 million units in July 2013.
Infinity Blade III to launch alongside iPhone 5s (update: video)
Donald Mustard, co-founder of Chair Entertainment (owned by Epic Games), just hopped on stage at Apple's hardware reveal and pulled back the proverbial curtains on Infinity Blade III, the final installment in the series. The game's making use of the iPhone 5s' new 64-bit architecture, and it has the graphics prowess to prove it: combinations of rendering effects including depth of field, blur and full-screen vignettes. Not to mention lens flares "that would make J.J. Abrams proud." According to the developers, converting the game to 64-bit took just two hours, so developers with apps of their own need not fret. Infinity Blade III is slated to be "available alongside the new iPhone 5s," which should get a release date of its own in a few minutes. Update: The iPhone 5s will be hitting shelves on September 20th, so Infinity Blade III should break into the App Store with it. Update 2: Chair's published the game's trailer, which you can find nestled after the break. Check out all the coverage at our iPhone 'Special Event' 2013 event hub!
Infinity Blade 2 on sale for $0.99
Infinity Blade 2 is kicking off the summer by slashing, and cutting, and chopping its price down to $1... sorry, it's cut another penny off to make it $0.99. The sequel in the infinitely successful iOS franchise is regularly priced at $6.99, and has gone on sale for $2.99, but this is the first time it's dropped to that App Store sweet spot of a buck.%Gallery-161653%
Watch this smart foam chair 'grow' and unpack itself
Sometimes we dream. We dream of a world with no more flat-pack furniture, no more obtuse construction manuals and no more missing screws. Smart foam tech might get us closer to those admittedly small-time dreams. Using cross links within the foam's particle arrangement, regardless of how much the structure is compressed, it'll spring back to the predesigned shape. Designer Carl de Smet adds that the product would expand at a set temperature getting a little doughy in the middle, then more solid at room temperature. He also demonstrates another smart foam structure which changes when a current is fed through it. Electricity provides the heat that transforms the rolled-up structure into a flat one, with the current experimental version taking around five minutes to completely settle. Commercial products which are apparently only about a year to 18 months away and as de Smet details in the video, could land on store shelves in a compacted rolled-up form for "unpacking" back home. These early examples can even be adjusted, if for some reason you suddenly decide you wanted a coffee table, not a chair. Sit back and see how it literally unfolds after the break.
Steelcase Gesture chair adjusts to support our smartphone slump (video)
As advanced as office chairs can be, they're still based on one increasingly bad assumption: that we're sitting upright in front of a traditional computer. Steelcase's upcoming Gesture chair at last acknowledges that we're living in a world of smartphones and tablets. Its back and seat shift in tandem to maintain support in any number of real-world postures, whether it's leaning back to check text messages or curling up for an e-book. The armrests are equally flexible to save us from the added strain that comes from holding a gadget in-hand. As long as habitual mobile device users can wait until the fall release, and aren't worried about the eventual price, the Gesture might literally have their backs.
Robotic wheelchair concept adds leg-like movement, tackles stairs with ease (video)
Why choose between legs and wheels when you can have both? Well, that's the theory behind a robotic wheelchair concept from the Chiba Institute of Technology, which uses leg-like motion to conquer obstacles a run-of-the-mill wheelchair can't. The key is the five axes its base rotates on, allowing individual wheels to be lifted off the ground and moved in a walking style. It can tackle steps and various other obstacles whilst remaining stable, and can even turn 360 degrees around its center with the help of some onboard stabilizers. A gang of sensors on the chair detect incoming obstructions and deal with them automatically, but changes in wheel torque can act as substitute triggers, should the sensors fail. Judging from the video below, it's pretty advanced for a concept, but its creator wants a bunch of people to try it out so he can "fine-tune the user experience." It may not be quite as cool as Stompy or the mighty Kuratas, but it's definitely more practical for a trip to the shops.
