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Mark Zuckerberg thinks this looks like a home office
The Meta CEO’s vision of a VR home office leaves a little to be desired.
Comedy Central, BET, MTV, more Viacom networks will hit Sling TV
Viacom networks Comedy Central, BET, MTV, Spike, Nick Jr. and others will land on Dish's streaming service, Sling TV, in the coming months. These channels will be available in single-stream and multi-stream packages, though there's no word on specific bundles just yet. It's all part of a deal Viacom and Dish hashed out last night, just before their previous contract expired, and it ensures Viacom's current lineup of 18 channels will remain on Dish satellite TV.
T-Mobile adds more services to Binge On and Music Freedom
T-Mobile's Binge On and Music Freedom plans for streaming video and music without gobbling up your data add new services to the data-free initiative on the regular. Today, the Un-carrier is adding even more. Amazon Music and ESPN Radio are the two notable additions to Music Freedom while Binge On video now includes Nickelodeon, Spike, TV Land and Epix. Legere & Co. have been preaching this version of streaming for a while, and today the company says the options for streaming that won't cut into your monthly allotment now tally over 100. And that includes porn.
Spike supersonic business jet swaps windows for a wraparound live-view display
We're pretty excited about the Spike S-512 supersonic business jet, but this latest feature could potentially make a three-hour Mach 1.6 hop from New York to London a bit nerve-wracking for uneasy fliers. A post on the company's blog this week describes one of the cabin features, a "thin display screen" that's embedded in the wall. Cameras mounted around the jet's exterior will power a panoramic view, which can also be swapped for other images or content that's more conductive to sleep, such as a solid dark color or a starry night scene. Removing the windows helps Spike trim the plane's weight while also reducing drag, enabling faster speeds and boosted fuel efficiency. We don't expect commercial airliners to follow suit, however, so if flying 1,218 mph in a windowless tube is something that strikes your fancy, you'll need to hop aboard an S-512 after the supersonic jet takes to the skies in 2018.
Tonight's VGX lineup features GOTY in the middle of a world exclusive sandwich
If you plan on camping out with us during our liveblog of tonight's three hour VGX 2013 awards show, you can get a head start on the evening's activities by checking out the schedule of events. Among the noteworthy events for the evening are 12 "world premieres" for games like Quantum Break, Titanfall and Broken Age. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime will also take the stage for a game demo during the show's first hour. Given that an ad for a next-gen Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition showed up today, it would explain the slot for tonight's Tomb Raider-centric announcement during the first hour. Those that are in it for the awards will be interested to know that the Game of the Year winner will be crowned during the early parts of the show's second hour. Additionally, the Best Indie Game will be determined near the end of the show's second hour and Character of the Year announced during the third hour. A few of the awards segments will be determined by fan vote, dictating whether the the Best Action Adventure or Best Sports Game will be announced in the first hour and Best Shooter or Best Studio award will presented in the third hour.
Ad suggests Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for Xbox One, PS4
An ad for Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition has appeared on Spike's VGX website, noting a release date of January 28 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It encourages viewers to "watch the trailer," but clicking through to the game's site does not currently lead to a trailer for Definitive Edition. This year's reboot was supported with multiplayer DLC, but developer Crystal Dynamics noted in March that it did not have plans for single-player DLC. The contents of Definitive Edition will likely be revealed during tonight's awards show.
Joel McHale co-hosting Spike VGX live show tomorrow
The Spike Video Game Awards, this year called VGX probably because it's so extreme, will be co-hosted by Joel McHale, the lovably sarcastic guy from Community and The Soup. He's not entirely new to the gaming circuit, having hosted Ubisoft's E3 press conference in 2009 and starred in Nintendo's pointedly viral 3DS ad last year. McHale joins Geoff Keighley on stage for a barrage of new game trailers and announcements, starting at 6PM ET on Spike TV and across a number of streaming services, including Steam. We'll be liveblogging the entire show and posting the news as it breaks, so think of us as another group of co-hosts. Less famous, silent, but still really cool co-hosts.
Brother, can you spare a charge? ChargeBite goes indiegogo
We've all been there. Out, carousing, maybe having too good a time, when suddenly it hits. Not in our wallet, no ... where it really counts. Our iPhone is wasted as we are. Its battery icon flickers with a hint of the red in our bloodshot eyes. Surely no white night can end well with a phone that isn't working. So what do you do? Find an outlet and hope you've brought an adapter? That's so 2009 of you. Instead, turn to a friend. With ChargeBite, you transform your phone from a meek and mild Xander into a merciless power-thirsty Vampire (before-he-got-boring) Spike. Just hook your iPhone to a couple of "volunteer" phones; it will begin to leech power from the donors, and soon (for variable levels of "soon"), you'll be able to call again. The indiegogo site says that with two powered devices, your iPhone charges as fast as if it was attached to a USB port, or in about an hour or two. We can only imagine the awkward conversations as you wait for your phone to charge while not one, but two "volunteers" impatiently sip their lattes and wonder if they'll ever get to work on time. There's also that embarrassing feeling when you leave fully charged up, knowing that both of those lovely people now have to find someone else to suck power from. ChargeBite is the first "social" charger. Instead of bringing a small plug, ChargeBite truly allows you depend on the kindness and amperage of strangers. After all, sharing phones is gross, but sharing current, well, that's not quite as gross. By the way, as of publication time ChargeBite has just 4 backers for a total of $80 ... but there are 47 days left in the campaign to get the $45,000 needed for it to go into production.
Must See HDTV (March 11th - 17th)
This week is surprisingly 3D heavy, with basketball tournament action on ESPN and a pair of movies (Life of Pi and Rise of the Guardians) on Blu-ray, but a blast from the past has caught our eye. Look below for the highlights this week, followed after the break by our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames. Australian Grand Prix Formula 1 is finally back, and for the first time in the US, on NBC Sports. We'll have to wait and see if their presentation can match or surpass what we've been used to from Fox / Speed, but a just-released broadcast schedule that shows every race airing live is a great start. (March 17th, NBC Sports Network, 1:30AM) Who Framed Roger Rabbit For its 25th anniversary this pioneering live action / animated combo is coming to Blu-ray. Besides the movie starring Bob Hoskins as toon-hating detective Eddie Valiant, it also packs three restored Roger Rabbit shorts -- our nostalgia will not allow us to pass on this one. ($16.99 on Amazon)
App downloads spike over the holiday, though not as high as expected
The Christmas holiday saw a record number of iOS device activations, and as usual, a nice spike in app downloads for developers (thanks to all of those new devices on the market). But Distimo just shared a report that says Christmas might not have been as merry as we thought for app developers this year. While iPhone app sales and downloads did spike, up to 87 percent above the average for December, that spike is nothing compared to last year's 230 percent spike. In other words, the trend of big sales around the holiday season appears to be leveling off just a bit. The iPad fared slightly better, with downloads seeing a 140 percent spike. That's sizable (and it speaks to how popular the iPad mini especially has been this holiday season), but it's not the kind of jump we saw just a few years ago, when all of this holiday commotion started. So what does this all mean for the big picture? I suspect it means that we might not see developers quite so eager to go for big holiday sales in the next year -- there were some incredibly huge sales in the past few weeks, and those were put in place partly because developers expected this big spike in downloads. But if the spike isn't as big, devs might be more convinced to hold to their standard prices, or try other tactics to drum up sales over the holiday season. This trend of big sales and spikes over the Christmas holiday has been growing for a few years now, but this is the first sign we've seen that it may be heading in the other direction. [via BGR]
Samuel L. Jackson is a big baby about hosting Spike VGA 2012
Samuel L. Jackson is hosting the 10th annual Spike Video Game Awards on December 7, which is awesome. We just hope he won't be forced to wear a giant baby suit for any part of the show. That would be almost as terrifying as the below promo video.
PSA: Fire Pro-Wresting resurfaces, now available on XBLM
After being announced at the 2010 Tokyo Game Show and scheduled for a 2011 release it never made, Fire Pro-Wrestling resurfaces and is now available on the Xbox Marketplace. Developed by Japanese studio Spike, the Avatar-ed version of one of gaming's oldest series is priced at 800 MSP.Apart from throwing you into 3D wrestling action, FPW uses the Avatar FameStar cross-game reward program. So while you can obtain suitably outlandish garb for your Avatar using in-game currency, you can also earn themed costumes based on other FameStar games like Full House Poker and Wreckateer. There's offline and online multiplayer for 2-4 players, with tag matches, team matches (2 on 2, 1 on 2, or 1 on 3), 4-way matches, and battle royals.%Gallery-166261%
'Project P-100,' a Wii U launch title from Platinum Games
It seems the folks at Platinum Games have enough bandwidth for something beyond Metal Gear Rising: Reveangence. Following Nintendo's E3 press conference, we saw mentions on Twitter of Project P-100, a Platinum Games title destined for the Wii U's launch window, yet oddly absent from Nintendo's press conference.The art style is highly reminiscent of Viewtiful Joe, but the gameplay looks to be inspired by Pikmin – players find citizens in distress on the stage then recruit them to grow in power.%Gallery-157137%
Storyboard: Three guys walk into a bar
My days of playing Magic: the Gathering are... well, they're not over, exactly, but I'm certainly not in my heyday any longer. Despite this, I've made no secret of the fact that I still avidly read Mark Rosewater's Making Magic column because the stuff he says in the column is applicable to game design in general. There are a lot of ideas that I've drawn out of there over the years, and one of the ones that's stuck with me is the Timmy-Johnny-Spike split that Rosewater's quite fond of explaining at length. For those of you not interested in reading a decade's worth of columns just to understand what I'm talking about, the three names in questions are the so-called "psychographics" for Magic's audience, three psychological snapshots of why people play and enjoy the game. They're useful tools for understanding the reason certain cards resonate well with some players and not with others. And they're applicable to almost everything -- even roleplaying.
Must See HDTV (December 5th - 11th)
All you have to do is look at the calendar to know we're suddenly going to be buried under a deluge of holiday-season-specific programming. Of course, it's not all Michael Buble's Christmas Special, with unlikely sources like Syfy channel tossing in their efforts. While cable shows like Sons of Anarchy, Boss, and Boardwalk Empire wrap their seasons up, we also have a few new entries in the form of Luck, Moonshiners, and Invention USA. Check below for the highlights this week, followed after the break by our weekly listings of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames. Sons of Anarchy It's been yet another explosive season for the boys of SAMCRO, and now it's coming to an end. As is standard for the show, main character Jax is finding himself caught between the law, rival gangs, and the loyalty to his mother, wife, and best friend, all pulling in different directions. We don't know if he will avenge his father's death in the season finale, or if the entire motorcycle club will end up in jail first, but you can bet we'll be watching to find out. (December 6th, FX, 10PM) Spike TV Videogame Awards 2011 We haven't been a big fan of the Spike Videogame Award's presentation in the past, but with the promise of a peek at BioWare's next project and an Advisory Council that again includes our good friend and Joystiq EIC Chris Grant voting on the winners, maybe this is the year things get turned around. Videogames and the people who make them deserve their due like any other industry, and Spike is at least making an effort to make sure that happens. One of the other tweaks for the 2011 show is a focus on augmented reality, so that's another thing to keep an eye out for during the broadcast. (December 10th, Spike, 8PM) Eureka / Warehouse 13 / Haven For some people it takes see It's A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, or Peanuts to get in the holiday spirit, but if you're a fan science fiction shows then you'll want to know these are all checking in with special holiday episodes Tuesday night. As silly as Syfy's name change has been, these shows have at least maintained, if not increased, their level of quality and have dedicated audiences. The special episodes are dropping in sort of out of the blue so we don't know what to expect, but we'll give them a look -- check out a sneak peek embedded after the break.
Uncharted 3 gets its own Spike TV special, contestants needed
Do you take breaks from long sessions with Uncharted 2 to wonder why you're so, so good at it? Perhaps your other hobbies include "being an on-air presence" and "having perfectly coiffed hair?" Then you're a shoo-in to participate in Spike TV's upcoming television "special" dedicated to this November's Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. According to a listing that seeks show participants, you must be available in early October for taping, be a fan of adventure, or a "video game enthusiast," a "puzzle solver," or a "risk taker." Presumably, risk-taking adventurers with a taste for video games will be given first priority. In order to prove your worthiness for inclusion, shoot an email to Spike with a "link to a video, picture or paragraph explaining why you are the ultimate Uncharted fan who deserves to be featured on the show." And no, scaling the Spike TV corporate building and making your way to the company head's office undetected is not a good way to prove yourself, regardless of the theme.
Namco Bandai leading boxed retail sales in Japan for 2011 (thus far)
Namco Bandai is leading the pack in boxed retail software revenues in Japan, according to a surprising report in Japanese gaming mag Famitsu. Topping the likes of Nintendo, Square Enix, and Sony Computer Entertainment, Namco Bandai (known as Bandai Namco in Japan, where Bandai is king) is finding success with giant robots -- namely, Super Robot Wars Z 2, a PSP strategy game that sold well in April, and Ore no Imōto, a PSP adventure game. Second and third place are occupied by Nintendo and Square Enix, respectively, with the former representing 15.5 percent of Japanese software revenues and the latter taking 8.2 percent (a massive decline for both companies compared with last year). Meanwhile, Sony Computer Entertainment and Spike make up the bottom of the list, likely due to their total lack of games about super robots and the wars that said super robots continue to fight.
New Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm, Dragon Ball games coming from Namco Bandai
Two new games in longtime Namco Bandai anime franchise series are on the way. People who either love Naruto or love CyberConnect2's brand of cinematic fighting will be delighted to hear that a new Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm game is on the way next year, called Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations. The PS3/Xbox 360 game includes a "number of playable and support characters far beyond any Naruto game" and promises some kind of updated online functionality. In other Namco anime license news, the game formerly known as "Dragon Ball Game Project Age 2011" has been named by fan feedback. Proving that they fear change, the community decided upon "Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi" for the new fighter, which is coming out on Xbox 360 and PS3 October 25.%Gallery-127534%
Microsoft's E3 briefing will air on Spike, Facebook and in HD VOD on Xbox Live
A few years ago we were happy just to get a few trailers in high definition from the E3 videogames conference on our Xbox 360s, but this year Microsoft and Spike TV have teamed up to bring the company's entire briefing in HD (via video on-demand) to the console. It will air live on Spike TV June 6th at 12:30 p.m. ET, with streams also available on GameTrailers.com (in high definition), Facebook, MTV.com, Spike.com and Xbox.com as well as being broadcast in Times Square. You can bet we'll be back to liveblog the proceedings yet again but if you want to get your own eyeful of Xbox 360: The Future Revealed (hint: Gears of War 3, Forza Motorsport 4 and Kinect) there will be plenty of ways to do it.
Microsoft's E3 2011 briefing will air live on Spike
During every E3, the internet is thrown into a full-blown panic as it desperately searches for a stable livestream of the Big Three's press conferences. This year, Spike will make this task far less intimidating for those who want to watch Microsoft's briefing. Tthe network has announced that it will air the Xbox 360-centric show live at 12:30 pm PT on Monday, June 6. Of course, we'll be breaking out the most important announcements of the show here on our humble gaming news blog -- but sometimes, our words can't capture the magic of the events that unfold on that stage. For instance: Kudo's Magic Foot Dance.
