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Anime Studio 9 for Mac arrives in pro, debut versions
Anime Studio is a really popular animation system for illustrators and animators, and there's good news about the app for Mac users: Anime Studio 9 has now arrived on our platform, in both pro and debut versions. You can see the full comparison of pro and debut features over here, but both versions offer a really impressive Bone Rigging system that allows animators to simply create a skeleton and then pose it for different frames. Other features include an animation timeline and even an included physics engine to help artists make quick and easy physics-based animations. You can also work with audio right inside the app and there's a whole set of vector drawing features for artists to use as well. Anime Studio is an excellent resource for anyone looking to make animations, and it's now available on your favorite OS as well. You can pick up the pro version for $149.99 right now (on sale for $50 less than usual), or the debut version for $29.99.
EchoStar HDX-410 set-top box runs native ICS, supports terrestrial broadcasts (hands-on video)
You may be familiar with EchoStar's satellite-based (Dish Network) and Sling Media (Slingbox) products, but the company also manufactures set-top boxes for third-party providers, as well as free-to-air services in the UK. It's this last grouping that'll be able to take advantage of the Android-based device we saw today, assuming it does in fact make its way to market. The HDX-410 runs native Ice Cream Sandwich, and is available in two versions -- one supports IP content and local storage exclusively, while a second can also accept terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) programming, letting you play back live TV shows in addition to content from a local server, pulled from the web or stored on attached media or an inserted microSD card. It connects to the web using Ethernet or WiFi, and includes USB ports on both the front and the rear, Bluetooth, HDMI out, digital audio out and a standard-definition connection. It's also paired with a QWERTY keyboard-equipped remote manufactured by Philips with gyroscopic or directional-pad curser control, along with pinch/zoom gesture capability. We had a chance to check out the ICS box at EchoStar's IBC booth today, where the device was running Android 4.0.4 and an early version of the company's hybrid app, which groups "favorited" content alongside terrestrial channels, letting you use the standard channel up/down button to navigate through stored TV shows, IP content or live programming quite seamlessly, as if all of the media was playing from the same source. It's clearly not yet ready for primetime, but the interface was sleek and speedy -- the set-top box performed very well overall. EchoStar reps were unable to confirm whether or not the HDX-410 would be coming to market at all, but they did add that the solution may be made available to third-parties in the future. Click past the break to take a closer look in our hands-on video.%Gallery-164692%
Card Hunter combines tabletop gaming with digital magic
Jon Chey is a co-founder of Irrational Games, who recently formed up a brand new studio called Blue Manchu, to work on a new game called Card Hunter. Card Hunter might easily be mistaken for many similar games of much lower quality: It's a Flash game that runs in your browser, and it's going to be a free-to-play title monetized by microtransactions, using collectible cards to fuel the gameplay.While Card Hunter may look shallow on the surface, it's anything but. Chey and his team have crafted what's essentially a love letter to tabletop gaming, combining mechanics usually meant for traditional board gaming (like game boards, cardboard cutouts, dice, and action cards) with a high-quality and well-designed video game.%Gallery-164200%
Netflix coming to future Freesat satellite TV boxes
Netflix making good on those investment promises for its UK viewers, with the streaming service set to be included in a new set-top box coming tomorrow. According to The Telegraph, the new device will link straight into Netflix services. Freesat's satellite TV offering launched back in 2008, with both BBC and ITV behind the project, while the new set-top box is rumored to add on-demand downloads and the ability to view programs up to eight days since they first air -- catching up to similar services from BT, Virgin and Sky. We're likely to hear more tomorrow, but Freesat's hoping it will be enough to make Brits reconsider those wallet-thumping Sky subscriptions.
Kodak announces 'asset protection' cinema film, thumbs nose at your digital movie collection
Kodak may not be beloved by digital filmmakers, but it's not fallen out of love with the talkies. It's new "asset protection" cinema film is designed to save motion pictures from being lost if your digital-storage-medium-of-choice is rendered obsolete. It's designed for long-term archive storage, with your Hollywood blockbuster stored in a "human-readable" format that'll remain usable "well into the future." As such, the reels are loaded with dyes that will reportedly remain stable for "decades," but the company thinks will remain viable for over a century -- in stark contrast with the short life of your average hard-drive. It'll add a monochrome offering to the range later in the year, but if you want the color version now, your people will have to talk to Kodak's people, Mr. Producer.
Nukotoys digital apps and physical cards available now
Back in January at CES, one of the most magical things we got to see was these new cards from Nukotoys, physical collectible cards that somehow interacted with Apple's capacitive touchscreens (probably with an invisible pattern, if I had to hazard a guess). The project seemed very cool, and Nukotoys told us that it hoped to release by year's end. They're ahead of schedule apparently, because the apps are now available on the App Store, and I'm told that the physical cards are out at retailers available to buy right now. That link above goes to the Monsterology-branded app, and there's also an Animal Planet-branded Wildlands app out, with specific "Nuko Cards" also available for each. The idea is that kids can buy packs of the cards, which will then interact with the apps when touched to the iPad or iPhone's screen, adding an animal or monster directly into the app. Nukotoys is sending some cards along to TUAW shortly, so we'll have a look at how it all actually works when those show up. In the meantime, if you've been waiting to see the product in action, you can run out and grab some cards right now. This interaction between the physical and digital is fascinating to me, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see exactly this kind of toy be very popular heading into this year's holiday season. Nukotoys has done a lot of work leading up to this release, so here's hoping it all pays off well for them.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion sells 100K, breaks Stardock records
Stardock has announced that Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, the latest stand-alone expansion of the acclaimed RTS hit, has broken company records and become its fastest-selling release to date. The game has sold over 100,000 units since its launch last month, which is not only a solid number for any indie game but also beats the first 30 days of the original Sins of a Solar Empire.Though the original Sins was also released at retail, Rebellion was not, and the digital plan ended up working better than any of the company's PC retail releases. Stardock's CEO, Brad Wardell, said he believed that selling the game on Steam would take sales away from other channels, but Steam sales of the expansion "didn't cannibalize its GameStop or direct sales."Releasing digitally had other benefits as well, like letting Stardock announce the release at the last minute. Wardell says both of Stardock's other games this year, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress and Political Machine 2012, will follow the same launch plan.
EU court rules it's legal to resell digital games, software
Buying and reselling any form of digital software is perfectly legal, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled. Software authors – or in the gaming world, publishers – can not stop customers from reselling their games, even if the publisher attaches an End User License Agreement prohibiting resale."The exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by such a licence is exhausted on its first sale," the court has found.This ruling covers customers in European Union member states, and games bought through services such as Steam or Origin. The initial purchaser is now entitled to sell the license of a game and allow someone else to download it directly from the publisher's website. The tricky part now is selling the actual license, since there is no system in place for any such transaction. The initial buyer would need a code for a game's license and upon selling it, he would no longer be able to access that game on his account.The ruling applies to the broader scope of software, covering items such as Windows and Adobe downloads. There is no word yet on whether game distributors will change policies or services to enable a license-selling process, but that would make Steam sales much more interesting in the EU.
Gibeau says EA mostly ignores NPD reports; NPD knows 'for a fact' major publishers use them
Last year EA went on record calling the NPD's sales reports "a misrepresentation of the entire industry," and this year EA Labels president Frank Gibeau is taking that sentiment one step further, saying EA largely ignores NPD reports."An occasional bad report from NPD, which measures a sliver of what's actually happening in gaming, gives people an erroneous impression," Gibeau tells Games Industry International. "My point is it's an irrelevant measure on the industry. It's totally irrelevant. We don't even really look at it internally anymore."NPD reports track retail games sales from stores such as GameStop and Wal-Mart, but don't provide a comparable breakdown of digital sales. In Q4 2012, EA saw digital sales generate $419 million, while packaged goods made more than double that, with $949 million.David McQuillan, president of NPD Games, is "surprised" by Gibeau's comments for a few reasons, provided in a statement to Joystiq. The first: "While we will not comment on the specifics on our long-standing relationship with EA, we can say with confidence that we have daily dealings with all of our major publisher clients. And we know for a fact they're using the data."The second reason McQuillan cites is the continued prevalence of physical sales, making up 56 percent of industry sales in 2011. "The current games industry is still largely rooted in retail and any industry player involved with AAA content simply can't take their eye away from the retail environment," he writes.NPD Group's David Riley adds, "We do cover digital. Granted, it's not near the level of granularity that we provide via physical point of sale, but physical POS is still huge and needs to be taken seriously. In my opinion, you do a disservice to our industry when you dismiss the value of retail sales research."EA's Digital sales are growing rapidly, Gibeau says, and EA is focused on riding that streaming, cloud-based, downloadable wave into the future, with or without NPD sales reports."We're going to be a 100 percent digital company, period," he says. "It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable."
Avengers Blu Ray release getting companion iOS app
The Avengers, after rocking movie theaters around the country, is headed to a Blu Ray release. Marvel Studios is trying something interesting with the presentation: The company will be releasing an iOS app designed to be used along with the movie itself. The Avengers Initiative: A Marvel Second Screen App will feature new information on the movie, its characters and production crew, and even interactive comics and other video content designed to work with the film itself. The app will be updated with new content every other week at first, and then weekly leading up to the release itself. "Second screen" viewing is a growing trend in mobile tablets. It doesn't sound like this app will specifically interact with the movie while you're watching it, but it's definitely meant to be used while watching, and there are technologies around and on the way to make that type of multiple-interaction viewing happen. The Avengers broke all kinds of records at the box office, and that makes it an ideal candidate to tie in to a relatively new tech trend like this. The Blu Ray disc should be out on September 25, with the app coming sometime this month.
Assassin's Creed 3 gets Limited Edition in North America, with colonial flag, statue, and more
Just in time for Independence Day, Ubisoft has offered up a way to show a little national pride, Assassin's Creed 3 style. The company has announced the Assassin's Creed 3 Limited Edition, which will retail for $119.99 and come with extra goods, including a huge 24" by 48" Assassin's Creed-inspired colonial American flag. Ubisoft sent a flag fitting this description to the press last week, and we've placed a picture of it after the break. (see update)There's also a 9.44" statue of new assassin Connor, and a metal belt buckle, presumably used for holding up your pants while carrying out cold-blooded murders. The Limited Edition is an exclusive to retailers in North America and Latin America, so Europeans are out of luck on this one.There's also a Digital Deluxe Edition available straight from Ubisoft for the PC. For $64.99 you'll get a notebook featuring "George Washington's true story" (we hope wooden teeth are involved), three extra single-player missions, two extra in-game outfits, and an Assassin's Creed soundtrack collection. %Gallery-159585%Update: Ubisoft has confirmed that the flag in our picture below is not the flag available in the Limited Edition.
Blizzard: Diablo 3 patch restriction to Act 1 an 'unintended consequence'
Blizzard's patch 1.0.3 for Diablo 3 restricts anyone who buys a digital copy of the game to play the Starter Edition for up to 72 hours, limiting them to play only Act 1 to the Skeleton King, and only to level 13. While the restrictions themselves aren't a bug, the limitation to Act 1 and level 13 is an "unintended consequence" and will be corrected in another update "as soon as possible," Blizzard tells Eurogamer.Access to the complete game will remain limited for digital purchasers, a move that Blizzard says is "to help ensure the integrity of the game and auction house service." Blizzard uses the wait time to verify payment on digital-game purchases, and most transactions are verified and the restrictions lifted within a day, but this process can take up to 72 hours."Similar to World of Warcraft, these restrictions were put in place to deter credit card fraud, which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone," Blizzard says.Below find the complete, intended list of initially restricted actions for digital purchases:
Visualized: Swiss newspaper goes digital, prints front page in binary
Those newspaper types, give them an idea and they don't half run with it. Swiss (Zurich) daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung just went digital, and to celebrate thought it'd go whole hog and print the entire front page (bar the essentials) in binary. Crazy. We've not had chance to decode it all just yet, but if there was a day to be breaking bad news to the city, today might be it.
Report: FBI forming new cyber intelligence research unit, focus on digital surveillance
According to a report filed by technology site CNET, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is forming a new cyber intelligence and research unit dubbed the Domestic Communications Assistance Center (DCAC). The briefing states that the DCAC's purpose will be "to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications" (initially focusing on VoIP services, social networks, and wireless communication mediums) . Via a prepared statement, the FBI explained that the unit's modus operandi will be to "assist federal, state and local law enforcement with electronic surveillance capabilities." Congress has appropriated over $54 million for "lawful electronic surveillance" in fiscal year 2012; the DCAC has been earmarked just north of $8 million from that pie. The Bureau's full statement is after the break.
UK gets official Top 100 music streaming chart next week, Billboard seen crying in the corner
Used to be, musicians were judged (commercially speaking, of course) by how much radio play they got and how many albums and singles they sold. The UK's answer to Billboard, the Official Charts Company, has seen a future filled with streaming music from services like Spotify, Napster and Deezer and decided that it needed a streaming chart to truly judge the success or failure of today's, and tomorrow's, top tunes. Thus, a Top 100 streaming chart was created and is set to launch next Monday, May 14. So, who rules the web across the pond, sonically speaking? You'll have to wait for the full list, but a preview of the top ten artists awaits in the PR below.
Comixology hits 65 million downloads, lands exclusive Marvel digital deal
We've posted about Comixology's domination of comic book content on iOS before -- it's certainly not the only app that lets you read and even buy comic books, but it's by far the most popular, and keeps getting even more so. The company has just announced that it's reached 65 million downloads across the platform as a whole, which is just a huge amount of content delivered. And Comixology keeps locking down plans to deliver even more -- their latest deal is with Marvel, and allows Comixology to exclusively release Marvel's single issues digitally through the app. That means every single issue English comic that Marvel puts out is available digitally only through Comixology. This is just one of a few such deals Comixology has worked out to deliver both exclusive and non-exclusive content right through their system. The company has made deals with most of the main comics producers already, so that almost any comic you want is now available in their database, directly via in-app purchase. There's clearly a market here -- you'd think that maybe Apple would have gone after comic books with iBooks by now, or maybe incorporating them as periodicals in Newsstand. But no. At this point, Comixology is cornering the market on digital comics, and it seems to be paying off handsomely for them.
Google celebrates Nelson Mandela with virtual museum
Google today announced the grand opening of the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive, an online collection of digitized photos, videos and documents centering around the former South African president. The site, based out of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg, South Africa, was developed with the help of $1.25 million in funding provided by the software giant. The collection includes unseen drafts of Mandela's work, letters to friends and family members and diary entries made during his 27 year imprisonment. The multimedia archive is available for view now. You can check it out by clicking the source link below.
Harry Potter books now available for iPad, other eReaders
It's been a long time coming, but the Harry Potter books are finally available from the Pottermore store in eBook form. This means you can finally put Potter on your iPad! There are also audiobooks available, but the CD's were out long ago and these are just digital downloads. Still, it's very nice to have these in a digital format at last.
Digital gaming soars nine percent, still knows nothing of rarity value
It's already chewed up some big names on the retail scene, but the game-downloading trend shows no sign of being sated. Fresh figures from market research firm NPD show that American digital game sales (including rentals and DLC) amounted to $2.04 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, which represents a nine percent year-on-year hike at a time when physical game transactions fell three percent. Things are going the same way across the Atlantic, with the UK, France and Germany adding a further $1.29 billion to the burgeoning click-to-buy market. Industry types will surely welcome the news, since digital titles rake in higher margins (hello, PS Store) and reduce the trade in used discs, but what about those of us who'll one day want to swap our dusty copy of Fight Night Round Four for something more subtle?
New York Times nears half-million online subscriber mark, halves free article allowance to celebrate
The New York Times just gave you more reason to consider making the jump to a paid online subscription -- beginning in April, that free article allowance will see a 50-percent cut, from 20 monthly articles to just 10. This modification comes one year after NYTimes.com launched its infamous content paywall, and following an announcement that the publisher has signed up 454,000 digital subscribers. Paying readers will receive a 12-week subscription that they can gift to anyone on the fence about swiping for access, and smartphone and tablet app users will continue to have access to the "Top News" sections for free. You'll also be able to read articles linked from other sites on the web, including your inbox, and can access five free posts a day that appear in search engine results. Completely unfettered access will range in price from $15 to $35 per month -- you'll find full details in the PR just past the break, and at the source link below.
