pricing
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Huawei aims high with $800 gold-plated Watch
Huawei may have accidentally revealed that its Android Wear Watch will cost as much as $799.99 and be compatible with iOS. Earlier today, the company teased a September 2nd arrival at IFA 2015 via Twitter, but a tipster pointed us to a legit-looking Amazon listing that shows four flavors of the wearable. The basic version in stainless steel starts at $349.99 with a leather strap, but the highest-end model in gold-plated stainless steel goes for $799.99, making it one of the pricier Android Wear devices out there. Intriguingly, the listing also mentions that the Watch is compatible with iOS 8.2 or later devices.
Using your old gear with 'Rock Band 4' on Xbox One will cost you
Rock Band is rising from the dead this fall, and as such we're starting to get finer details about different prices and packages for the forthcoming game. Unfortunately for Xbox One owners, the "disc-only" version of Rock Band 4 will cost $79.99, $20 more than the PlayStation 4 version. Harmonix confirmed that's because the Xbox version will come bundled with a legacy adapter that'll let buyers use their old instruments with the new game and hardware. PS4 owners won't need that -- the existing USB adapter that PlayStation owners have always used with Rock Band will continue to work just fine. If you're new to the series and buying one of the bundles that includes instruments as well as the game, though, the pricing will be identical: $249.99 will get you a mic, guitar, drum set, and the game regardless of which platform you're playing on. If you just want the game and a guitar, you'll be shelling out $129.99. Mad Catz also plans to sell the adapter standalone for people who purchase the game digitally. Rock Band 4 is set to launch on October 6th.
AT&T tweaks mobile data plans to match T-Mobile
With T-Mobile now behind it as the nation's third largest carrier, AT&T has updated its wireless data plans (below) to give you a bit more data for a bit less money. Unsurprisingly, the benefits get juicier if you spend more -- there's 5GB more data if you spend $100 for 15GB, but the 5GB plan is just a dollar per gigabyte less than the previous $70/6GB one. In total you'll now spend $75 per month for 5GB including the access charge, compared to $70 with T-Mobile. That might stop some folks from straying to Legere's flashy network, especially given AT&T's overall superior coverage.
Senators want the FCC to look into broadband pricing
The net neutrality rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission back in February permit it to examine cable and broadband pricing to ensure customers are treated fairly. Four Senators are urging Tom Wheeler and the FCC to do just that. The group, led by Senator (and Democratic presidential candidate) Bernie Sanders (I-VT), cites the limited options as a cause for price increases, asking for the FCC's help in "empowering Americans with more information." The effort looks to offer customers the details about rates and how their monthly bills are calculated by their service provider. In a letter sent by the group this week, the Senators use the example of Time Warner Cable increasing modem rental fees by 203 percent over a three-year period -- a change that customers may not have been aware of when their monthly bill went up.
Uber 'reviews' its own app to justify London surge pricing
Uber often defends its "surge" price increases by explaining capitalism, but it took a new tack after a controversial surge in London. The city was gripped by a tube strike yesterday that brought train service to a standstill, forcing commuters to find other ways to get to work. The sudden demand for buses, taxis and ridesharing services kicked Uber's app into surge mode, causing fares to triple at one point. That produced a lot of righteous anger in social media and the press, prompting the company to release an article "reviewing" its own app against others to show that surges are a good thing.
Apple Watch bands will cost between $49 and $449
An Apple Watch won't do you a ton of good without a band to hold it to your wrist and Cupertino has plenty of options to choose from. Let's start from the bottom: A 38mm sport band runs $49, and a 42mm one is the same price. It starts getting more expensive from there, though. The 38mm Milanese Loop (which looks an awful lot like chainmail if you ask me) is $149. Same goes for the 42mm large leather Loop. The smaller, 38mm Modern Buckle costs $249. The Link Bracelet will set you back the most, however, at $449 for a 42mm band (just over the price of two Pebble Time watches). Of course, none of them are available to ship at the moment despite how much you might want one -- you'll have to wait a few weeks for that.
Softbank prices its Pepper robot out of some developers' pockets
Softbank's adorable robot may be short and cute, but it'll still cost the price of a secondhand car to bring one into your home. The Japanese network has revealed that the first Pepper devices on the market will cost just over nine grand to buy. Similar to Google's Glass Explorer project, Softbank will sell the first proper production run of 300 units to developers in the hope that they'll build apps for the automaton.
ASUS' super thin UX305 laptop will be a relative bargain in the US
We've already seen what Intel's Core M chips can do to a laptop -- all of the specimens we've seen have been impossibly skinny and lightweight. The problem is, that brand of thin-and-lightness doesn't come cheap: Samsung's new ATIV Book 9 starts at $1,200, for instance, while the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro is currently going for $1,299 and up. Leave it to a slightly lesser known brand, then, to shake things up. ASUS is about to start selling that skinny, 0.48-inch-thick Zenbook UX305 we saw last fall, and the price is actually quite reasonable, especially considering its specs more or less match the competition.
The Elder Scrolls Online answers player questions on its buy-to-play model
Even if you were among the many players predicting a business model shift for The Elder Scrolls Online, a change in business models can be kind of disturbing. Suddenly the game doesn't behave according to all of the same rules you've been familiar with since launch. To help alleviate that confusion, the ESO dev team hosted a quick question-and-answer session with players over the weekend to help answer some of the major questions about the change, the next major patch, and balance issues moving forward in the game. To start with, if you've still got time cards for the game on your desk, fret not; you can still use them after the model transition to add the equivalent amount of subscription time to your account. You might want to use them ahead of time, though, since there are plans to add in a special veteran reward for players who stayed subscribed during the game's entire subscription lifespan. DLC prices are not finalized, but they are intended to be around the normal DLC price points for other games. Take a look through the whole of the answers for more details on balancing and issues like controller support.
Amazon and Hachette call a truce in their e-book pricing war
Well, that was anticlimactic. Online retail titan Amazon and the publisher Hachette have been sniping at each other for months because they couldn't see eye to eye on how much e-books should cost (and how much revenue Amazon should get off of them). Now, just when it seemed like the war would stretch out even longer, both sides have announced that they've brokered a peace to end the Great Book War of 2014. The most frustrating part? Neither side seems willing to disclose the juiciest details of the deal. Still, the official PR blast mentions that Hachette got what it really wanted all along -- once the terms of the agreement take effect in early 2015, it "will have responsibility for setting consumer prices of its e-books, and will also benefit from better terms when it delivers lower prices for readers."
Alienware puts its new gaming desktop and 13-inch laptop up for sale
If you liked the looks of Alienware's new thin-and-light 13-inch laptop or its bigass, futuristic-looking Area-51 desktop, then listen up: Both are on sale beginning tomorrow, with shipments starting in November, and we finally know the full specs. Starting with the Alienware 13, it goes from $999 (£949 in the UK) with a dual-core Core i5-4210U processor, 8GB of RAM, a 2GB NVIDIA GeForce 860M GPU, 1TB 5,400RPM disk and a fairly low-res 1,366 x 768, non-touch matte display. If you like, you can step up to 16GB of RAM, either a hybrid hard drive or up to a 512GB SSD, and either a 1080p non-touch display or a 2,560 x 1,440 touchscreen. It would seem, though, that despite those various upgrade options, there's only one choice for the CPU and graphics card. Regardless of the configuration you get, the whole thing comes wrapped in a slimmed-down package that weighs about four and a half pounds and measures an inch thick.
World of Warcraft addresses upgrading to the Warlords of Draenor CE
Were you one of the people who pre-purchased Warlords of Draenor as soon as the digital option was open? Do you have a mighty need to pick up the physical collector's edition but no clear process for upgrading from the digital copy? The good news is that Blizzard Entertainment has World of Warcraft fans covered with a new post detailing how you can upgrade to a physical collector's edition. Just buy another copy, contact Blizzard's customer support, and then give a friend the code from the digital upgrade that you no longer need! Yes, that's what it says. Just buy another one. Which is a system that works out pretty well for your friend, at least. If you were hoping for a simpler way to use the level 90 character boost and still get the physical doodads, however, you are apparently out of luck. The Collector's Edition is priced at $89.99 and includes both digital items and physical bonuses.
Apple's new iCloud pricing: Better, bigger, still not much for free
Apple has announced new iCloud pricing, kind of an important thing when you consider that the company will soon be asking us to take more of our images and documents off of our devices and entrust them to the cloud. The new pricing strategy starts off the same -- a measly 5 GB of storage for free -- but then quickly ramps up both in capacity and price. The monthly price for 20GB is now just $0.99, 200GB weighs in at $3.99, 500GB is $9.99, and a whopping 1 TB will put you back $19.99 per month. That pricing is much lower than it used to be and the maximum available storage is now in the range that it would make even someone like me happy, but the pricing for the high end is still a bit high. Dropbox, for example, made the Pro plan (1 TB) $9.99 per month or just $99.99 annually. Google is charging about the same as Dropbox for Google Drive -- that same 1TB of cloud storage will cost you just $10 a month. Still, it's an improvement. Apple should, in my opinion, bump the minimum level to 20GB for free so that more iPhone/iPad users will take advantage of the service. What do you think? Leave your comments below.
Captain's Log: Star Trek Online's expansion and communication
So we finally know what the next expansion is going to be for Star Trek Online, and my speculation regarding the Xindi and points related turned out to be way off. Nope, we're heading into the Delta Quadrant, which is less interesting to me than the Gamma Quadrant, but I suspect the powers that be are exploring all the angles of existing content first. It's coming with a level cap increase, a new tier of ships, a bunch of new tricks, and apparently some bonus communication misses. Delta Rising is really on track to be a pretty divisive expansion anyway. It was inevitable, really; raising the level cap now was going to lead to problems no matter how it was handled. Unfortunately, Cryptic Studios hasn't done a great job communicating what's in the works for players, nor have the first few things that we've heard exactly countered some early suspicions. It was a minefield that's thus far been navigated largely with a push and a blindfold.
RIFT addresses player auction house concerns
RIFT brought some major changes to its live servers yesterday, but one change wasn't mentioned in the patch notes and produced more than a little player irritation. Along with all of the other auction house changes, helpfully compiled by RIFTJunkies, the transaction cost was changed from a flat fee to a 5% scaling tax. That's kind of a big change if you're used to only having a minor hit whether the auction sells or not. According to the development team, this change will not be reversed, but modifications will be made to help make the shift feel less punishing to players. The goal is to both recover some money from the economy and cut down on unnecessary auctions for trivial sums. Players can expect to see a hotfix next week to make the taxes both lower and dependent upon the length of the auction; read the full auction house breakdown for more details as well as an in-depth look at the other changes.
LG's first big 4K OLED TV may have a non-ridiculous price tag
If you're set on an OLED Ultra HDTV instead of LCD, you can now put a price and date on your idealism: LG's 65-inch 65EC9700 4K model will reportedly ship in September with a sticker price of $8,999. Apart from those deep OLED blacks, the model also features passive 3D, Miracast/MHL and nearly invisible bezels. The first 4K OLED models, including that one, arrived earlier this year at CES, but so far none have hit stores. We also haven't seen any pricing, other than for a few exotic models like LG's $30,000 curved 77-inch UHDTV. Though the 65-inch model is far more reasonable, according to HD Guru, the lowest possible price (UPP) set by LG is $6,999 -- still more than double LG's 4K LCD model.
Hearthstone's Naxxramas will cost $24.99 to fully unlock
While the first taste of Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas will be free for all players, the rest will cost a good chunk of money. Blizzard announced its pricing for the solo adventure pack today, stating that players will have several options to purchase Naxxramas including a $24.99 package that includes the full deal. The first of five wings of Naxxramas will be offered for free, with the remaining four wings available to purchase separately at $6.99 apiece or together in bundles of various size. The only option to buy the wings using in-game gold (and the only potentially free path) is to buy the wings at 700 gold each. Once Hearthstone opens the doors to Naxxramas, the devs will unlock a new wing at the rate of one per week. Blizzard also announced that it will offer heroic versions of these wings -- and new card backs -- once they're beaten in normal mode.
Destiny reveals beta dates, expansion pass, and special edition pricing
It's open war across the cosmos, and your wallets look to be the first casualty in Destiny's interplanetary conflict. Bungie announced today that it will be pre-selling two DLC packs and revealed the contents of its special editions. The studio also said that the PlayStation beta will start on July 17th, with the Xbox beta kicking off a week later on July 23rd. Despite the name, the Destiny Expansion Pass isn't for full-fledged expansions but for the first couple of post-launch content additions. The first pack, The Dark Below, will explore an ancient tomb underneath the Moon's surface. Bungie is promising exclusive PlayStation content for both expansion packs. Players can buy the expansion pass for $34.99 or individual packs for $19.99 apiece. Alternatively, thrifty Destiny fans can pick up one of the special editions that come with the two DLC packs included. These packages include the Digital Guardian Edition ($89.99), the Limited Edition ($99.99), and the Ghost Edition ($149.99). While the editions each contain a different mix of goodies, by pre-ordering any of them players will have early access to weapons, gear, and emblems. Bungie also released the official beta trailer, which you can watch after the break.
Amazon admits it's limiting Hachette book sales to get better deals
Tried to pre-order JK Rowling's forthcoming The Silkworm on Amazon, only to find that no such option exists? The title is one of several victims of the company's very public spat with publishers Hachette, which Amazon is holding to ransom for cheaper pricing on e-books. Until now, however, the company remained tight-lipped on the tactic, but in a blog post, admitted that it was playing hardball with its rival. What that means for customers is that the retailer is only buying bare-minimum quantities of existing stock and will only offer new books for sale after their publication. In its mind, Amazon is fighting for better (i.e. cheaper) pricing for its customers, but we imagine that someone's forgotten about the poor authors who are likely to sell even fewer copies while this rages along. Update: Hachette, the victim in this stramash, has made a public statement saying that "Amazon indicates that it considers books to be like any other consumer good. They are not." It adds that it won't accept any cash to form an "author pool," a fund to compensate writers who are losing out during the conflict. In fact, the publisher has said that it'll wait until a fresh agreement is made, and then "discuss with Amazon its ideas about compensating authors for the damage its demand for improved terms may have done them." Full statement's after the break, but yes folks, this one is clearly going to run and run.
Netflix begins raising prices, but current users get a two-year freeze (update)
Remember that Netflix price hike we were warned about? Well, it's finally happening, and it's affecting potential streamers across Europe. We say potential because although the cost is rising by £1 and €1 in the UK and across Europe, to £6.99 and €8.99 respectively, it'll only affect those signing up for the first time. The good news is that if you're already a Netflix subscriber, you'll pay the same amount you always have for at least another two years. At this time, Netflix remains quiet over its US plans (it's not had the greatest of times when it's adapted packages and switched pricing in the past) but has said previously that it will raise subscriptions by $1 or $2. Chances are US customers will see prices rise by a dollar, giving Netflix the opportunity to sink more cash into future seasons of House of Cards. Update: US and Canadian users have now also begun receiving notification emails from Netflix and, as expected, they're seeing the same rise. New subscribers will now pay a dollar more at $8.99 a month, with existing customers enjoying a two-year grace period. Netflix is also making its single stream SD-only package official, and available for $7.99 per month -- $1 more than the test offers that popped up late last year.
