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Shuttle SPA and Micro SPA notebook motherboard standards launched at CES
Shuttle's just announced the SPA (Shuttle PCB Assembly) and Micro SPA notebook form factors to create a "new notebook ecosystem." The SPA currently covers 13-inch to 17-inch laptops while Micro SPA does 10 to 15 inches. This horizontal integration targets the small local OEMs as it would purportedly reduce production cost while simultaneously boosting green credit. Parts like fans, chassis and trackpad can be reused for new models or even just across one product generation -- you'll notice that all the ports and components are thus identically positioned, as pictured. While you question whether this will be just another another attempt headed to Mount Doom, Shuttle is confident as it's "standardizing the whole thing" rather than just one or two components. Word has it that several European vendors have already placed orders for a February launch, and US laptop fanatics will see SPA products in the following month. Anyone wishing to jump in can make minimum bulk orders of around 200 units and expect a two to three week production cycle in Shuttle's Taiwanese and Chinese factories. Press release after the break. %Gallery-82351%
Casio busts out updated Exilim point and shoots
Casio's just outed four new Exilim point and shoots. The High Speed Exilim EX-FH100 is a 10.1 megapixel, high speed affair with a wide-angle 24 mm 10x optical zoom, and it can shoot at 40 shots per second for still images, and up to 1,000 fps video recording. The other three, the 14.1 megapixel Exilim EX-H15, EX-Z2000, and EX-Z550 all boast Casio's new Exilim Engine 5.0 and the Dynamic Photo function, which allows you to cut images of a moving subject out and paste them into a different background -- sounds like some hijinks are in store for owners of these bad boys! The EX-H15 features a 3-inch, high resolution LCD, a wide-angle, 24 mm 10x optical zoom, and a 1,000 shot battery life. The EX-Z2000 has a 26 mm, 5x optical zoom and the EX-Z550 has the same, with a 2.7-inch LCD. All four models will be available this spring. The FH100 will run $349, the Z550 will be $169, the Z2000 will be $199.99, and the H15 will be $299.99. The full run down of specs on all four cams is in the press release after the break. %Gallery-81380%
Mirror's Edge coming to the iPhone
EA has announced that they're bringing Mirror's Edge, the inventive "first-person jumper" title that intrigued gamers last year, to the iPhone and iPod touch via the App Store. I was disappointed to see that it's not actually just a straight port (it would be interesting to see how the topsy-turvy platformer would fare with some gesture and accelerometer input), but instead it's more of an isometric platformer. In fact, the screenshots kind of remind me of Canabalt, though this will probably be more complex, with occasional combat and a story. Looks like it'll be fun, especially for Mirror's Edge fans looking for a little extra gameplay before the eventual sequel comes out. The game boasts 14 levels run by the game's original protagonist, Faith, and while there's no price mentioned yet, I'm guessing EA will start it out around $6.99, and then probably bring it back down to $4.99 once sales level off. Gallery: Mirror's Edge (iPhone)
New Super Mario Bros. Wii coming down the pipe Nov. 15
Though the recent Nintendo press release announcing the Wii's new $199 price point was, for the most part, completely devoid of surprises, one new nugget of info was embedded in the stuff we already knew -- the release date for New Super Mario Bros. Wii has transformed from the ever-ambiguous "holiday 2009" to a decidedly more rigid "November 15." We can think of one mustachioed plumber who's not afraid of a little Modern competition. Bold, sir. Rather bold. %Gallery-64968%
Update: 38 Studios sets facts straight on Copernicus
In a follow-up to our story posted yesterday, 38 Studios has contacted us with a response on the issue of the game's cost to be between 50 million and 100 million and their "tenative release date" as reported by the Boston Globe.According to 38 Studios, the 50 to 100 million figure came from the Boston Globe and not 38 Studios, as finances were never disclosed to the newspaper. Production costs were never mentioned as well during the interview. What was noted in the interview was that MMOs can be quite expensive to build, sometimes costing tens of millions of dollars to put together. As said to us by the company, "38 Studios is a private company and does not, and has never, disclosed financials."Furthermore, the company wishes to stress that the supposed "December 2010" release date is not a date they wish to acknowledge. The company will release the game codenamed Copernicus when it is ready, currently wishing to not set any dates for their upcoming game.Follow after the break for the full release from 38 Studios regarding the release date of Copernicus.
The Queue: The day the music died
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Long long time ago...I can still rememberHow that music make me smile, Alex.And I knew if I had my chanceThat I could make those people danceAnd, maybe, they'd be happy for a while, Alex. Tim asked..."When discussing new content coming out, why does Blizzard always play so close to the chest? For example, the mount changes are due to be "in the next major content patch" which everyone knows is going to be patch 3.2, why don't they just say it?"
Turbine appoints new chief financial officer
Let's take a break from all of the E3 crazy for a moment and bring it back down to Earth, as Turbine has announced today that they're putting a new man into the chief financial officer's seat. Their choice for the position has been M. Beau Paradowski, an experienced 17 year financial veteran who has previously held the CFO chair for Optasite Inc. and Clearwire Technologies. Paradowski is excited to step into his new position at Turbine, which will oversee all of the company's global financial operations and everything related to Turbine's three big IPs -- Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Asheron's Call.
Aventurine speaks on Darkfall's "trial," forums, and pre-release patches
Darkfall's developer, Aventurine, has released a press statement that answers some of the questions swirling around the upcoming MMO. This update has given us some insight into what's going on with their forums, the status of the stress testing during their "trial" period, and what's changing and being added to Darkfall before their launch next February.The Darkfall forums have been under various Denial of Service (DoS) attacks which cripple their bandwidth, forcing Aventurine to take down the forums and re-work them to be stronger and more durable. As for the "trial," Adventurine has found issues with the patcher and login servers and is working to correct the sluggish download speeds.However, much of the release has covered the updates to the game, such as the addition the core attributes, a reskinning of the interface, more monsters, and the ambience/weather system is now enabled.With the NDA still in place, very little information has been released on Darkfall and the overall status of the game. It seems that with this release the NDA will continue to stay in place for a bit longer. For the full press release, check it out over at the Darkfall forums.[Via MMORPG.com]
The winner of the Mark Jacobs Award for Corporate Community Achievement is...
Yes, you didn't blink when you read the title. Of course, the award was made by Alex Litel of "Bell, Game, and Candle" at GameSetWatch and it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but it really shows how connected Jacobs is with all of the Warhammer Online hype.Litel's article showcases the many press release quotes that just make you tilt your head in confusion and wonder why exactly someone wrote that for marketing purposes. Quotes such as Cliffy B calling the original Gears of War "...just a tease, an appetizer to Gears of War characters and new style of gameplay" just to ramp up marketing for Gears of War 2.Litel inserted the Mark Jacobs award because he thought it would be unfair to include Mark Jacob's quotes in with the other quotes he gathered. With all of the passion Mark puts behind his marketing promises, including Jacobs's quotes would turn the article into a countdown of Mark Jacobs moments. So, the quotes were left out, but the spirit of Jacobs remained alive and well.If you want to see all 50 quotes, and which quote got the coveted award, head on over to GameSetWatch and check out Litel's article. We certainly got a few chuckles out of it.
World of Warcraft hits 11 million subscribers worldwide
Even in the middle of zombies, nerfs, and Death Knights, World of Warcraft has continued to grow. Blizzard announced today that World of Warcraft has achieved 11 million subscribers. To help with perspective, that's as many people as had been employed by the construction industry last year, or just slightly under the population of Greece. When WoW hit 10 million back in January, Blizzard acknowledged how big the holiday season had been for them. Now consider that we're going into a new holiday season with a brand new expansion on the way. Even if other games are looking to get a piece of the action, we should expect Blizzard to keep steamrolling with their great success. Word of mouth from the recent zombie event might be exciting older players to return, and programs like Recruit-a-Friend will keep growing their active base. We should expect to see the 12 million landmark sometime in 2009. WoW had hit 9 million subscribers back in July of 2007. Like we said, 10 million subscribers was reached in January of 2008. It took a little longer to grow from 10 to 11 than it did to get from 9 to 10, but if they keep up this rate, we should see the 12 million announcement around February or March.
Activision-Blizzard reveals that it's sitting on a big pile of money
This year, Activision and Blizzard merged under French media group Vivendi (Blizzard's parent company) to become the biggest, baddest game publisher in the known universe. To make sure investors know just how awesome that event was, Vivendi sent out a press release describing its generally excellent financial condition.Earnings for Vivendi as a whole were reported to be up 10.2% for the first six months of this year. While game division earnings are still actually down compared to this time last year, that should be no cause for alarm. It can be attributed to the lack of a World of Warcraft expansion. By this time last year, The Burning Crusade had reached store shelves.Vivendi assured investors that it still plans to release Wrath of the Lich King by the end of this year, so that bump is still coming. But will Wrath be as big as The Burning Crusade? By definition it can't be any bigger, because you have to have played the TBC content to reach the point where you can enjoy most of what Wrath has to offer, right? Apparently we'll see soon. One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Silkroad Online boasts 7.2 million registered users
World of Warcraft is huge by pay-to-play standards. We know that. But if you want to play the numbers game, some free-to-play MMORPGs can stand toe-to-toe with WoW when it comes to registered users. Silkroad Online does, according to Korean publisher Joymax. The company just announced that it has reached a new milestone -- 100,000 concurrent users. That's out of 7.2 million registered users. And that's just on its own servers; Joymax boasts that 18 million people are registered for the game across all providers and regions.18 million users in a free-to-play MMO is not necessarily as good for business as 10 million paying subscribers, since F2P users are only potential sources of income. Joymax didn't share any information about revenues, and it didn't explain what percentage of registered users regularly purchase virtual items with real world currency.Silkroad Online spans the globe in both a virtual and a real sense. Users are registered in countries from Asia to North America, and the game's fantasy setting is based on the historic Silk Road trade route, which has connected Western and Eastern countries for centuries.
Activision shareholders to vote on Activision-Blizzard merger
In Blizzard company news, another major milestone for the planned Blizzard-Activision merger is now set for July 8th, when a special meeting of Activision's shareholders will vote on their merger with Vivendi Games, Inc., the parent company of Blizzard. The meeting will take place in Beverly Hills, CA. So far, Activision's been clearing the hurdles to the merger nicely, and executives from both companies seem pretty excited about the deal, so It seems unlikely that the shareholders will balk too much (then again, there is that lawsuit). The timing of this meeting is apparently later than expected according to sister site Big Download, but it is worth noting that it still beats out E3, which will take place on July 11th-13th. You'll recall that Blizzard and Activision dropped out of E3. Rumor has it that they are also planning to hold a press conference during E3, on the first day, and being able to reveal final details of when, where, and how the merger will complete during that press conference would be quite a coup, for sure. [Via Big Download]
Sprint and Samsung intro new XOHM PR, no actual service in sight
In a press release today, Sprint and Samsung "declared" that mobile WiMAX technology is "now ready for commercial service." Sounds exciting right? Well, it's kind of like saying that a car is "ready to drive" -- you still can't do much without the keys and a road. Since Sprint has seen recent delays, litigation, and various other forms of badness, this does kind of come off as an empty PR move. Nevertheless, they want to let everyone know that XOHM has "met Sprint's rigorous commercial acceptance criteria including overall performance, handoff performance and handoff delay." Honestly, we hope it gets off the ground soon -- we've got a pile of WiMAX N810's here we need to fire up.
Vivendi leaks a possible Wrath of the Lich King release date
In a strange case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, Vivendi Games, in its latest financial press release, has stated that "Blizzard Entertainment's second expansion, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, is scheduled to be released in the second half of 2008." While that's exciting, Blizzard themselves have not made any official announcement about the expansion's release date.Does Vivendi think that no one's reading these things besides their investors and business partners? Can this be true? If not, it's a serious error that shouldn't be on a financial press release. We're waiting for Blizzard's response to see if there's going to be any kind of spin control on this. In the meantime, revel in the impending release![Via BigDownload]
Vivendi earning statement hints WotLK to be released in second half of 2008
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/WoW_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King_to_be_released_2nd_half_of_2008'; Vivendi earning statements announced today hint that Wrath of the Lich King is expected to be released the second half of 2008. This would also fit into dates that we've seen on sites like Amazon and Gamestop. This is also significant in that it's the first time an official confirmation of a release time frame has come out. And being that this is the data sent to Vivendi investors, it comes with a good bit of clout.Additionally, the statement tells us that World of Warcraft now has 10.7 million subscribers, up from 10 million at the end of 2007.The exact paragraph in the statement is after the break. And of course, stay tuned to WoW Insider for all the latest Wrath of the Lich King news.
Nikon D60 DSLR press release leaked
Well folks, that Nikon D60 DSLR we'd heard whispers about way back in the crazy, carefree days of December 2007 appears to be on the verge of coming to light at this year's PMAs. Digital Photography Review has gotten a leaked press release from the company concerning the new shooter, and now we've got a sheet of specs to backup the rumors. It looks like the 10.2-megapixel camera will be sporting a number of improvements, including a 0.19-second power-up, continuous shooting mode at three frames per second, Nikon's 3D Color Matrix Metering II, compatibility with AF-S and AF-I Nikkor lenses, RAW image handling, in-camera retouching capabilities, and a slew of other, incredibly technical functions that the true camera-geek will surely salivate over. Our suggestion? Hit the read link, and take your good old time poring over the details.[Via Photography Bay]
Final beta date revealed for MMORTS Saga
Developer Silverlode Interactive issued a press release revealing the date for the final beta phase of Saga. The MMO real-time-strategy game will open up Beta 2 on December the 11th, with players from Beta 1 being offered places first, and the rest on a first-come first-served basis after signing up.The press release also explains a little about Saga's business model, which will be microtransaction based, with players purchasing 'booster packs' that have new units and spells to use, and a subscription fee will not be charged. We have not covered this game before, so a quick visit to the homepage's FAQ was necessary to learn a bit more. It is basically what you would expect from an MMORTS -- an RTS with a persistent world. The world is based on traditional fantasy (dwarves, elves, spells etc.) and you will be able to trade troops with other players. In-game activities include building armies, cities and kingdoms, taking over new lands, and multiplayer questing.If you want to be considered for this last Beta phase, visit the sign-up page and create your account.[Via IGN]
Big Fish Games reels in MMO developer Thinglefin
Big Fish Games have tossed their line in to the gaming industry, and pulled up Thinglefin, a team composed of people that worked on The Matrix Online and Asheron's Call. Awful puns aside, it would seem that Thinglefin's proposed in-browser MMO, covered by Worlds in Motion earlier in the year, is a good acquisition for Big Fish Games as it fits with their more casual lineup of games.The article from Worlds In Motion gave a few more details about Thinglefin's new game, including comments on the company's blog from founder Toby Ragaini (who was also the lead designer for The Matrix Online and Asheron's Call). He said that it will be free to play, will run in a browser without the need to download or install anything from them, and that there will be some premium features that people can choose to pay for.[Via Gamasutra]
Microsoft trumpets strong October sales
Despite dropping back to third place in overall hardware sales for October, Microsoft isn't crying too much over the latest NPD sales report. Why not? Well, a press release issued by the company lists plenty of reasons, including: Higher overall sales ($354 million in hardware and software combined) than the competition ($246 million for Wii, $116 million for PS3) New-gen software revenue ($162 million) that beat the Wii and PS3 combined ($90 million for Wii, $48 million for PS3) Halo 3 is still the best-selling game in the country, with 434,000 units sold in October The Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero III proved the most popular, with 383,000 units in sales The press release also includes the somewhat misleading claim that "PS3 and Wii combined had one third party title in the top ten console title list for the month, while Xbox 360 weighed in with two." While technically true, if you include the PS2, Sony's system wins with three games* in the top ten, and if you include first-party games, the Wii wins with four top-tenners. It's like saying your baseball team has the best left-handed pitchers born on Thursdays in February -- interesting, but kind of meaningless when you really look at it.* Including both bundled and standalone versions of Guitar Hero III
