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HP teams up with another giant watchmaker on smart wristwear
HP isn't done reviving its smartwatch partnerships just because it's helping Movado -- far from it. The tech pioneer has unveiled a smartwatch deal with Titan, the fifth-largest watchmaker in the world and a powerhouse in its native India. The two aren't saying much about what their new wearable entails beyond a design that's "responsive, but not intrusive" (what does that even mean?) and its support for both Android and iOS. However, it's safe to say that HP is doing most of the heavy lifting. Like with other Engineered by HP smartwatches, it's supplying the underlying hardware and software while the watch brand focuses mostly on design and manufacturing.
Apple poaches NVIDIA's artificial intelligence leader
Apple's widely rumored electric car may not be fully autonomous, but it may well have some smarts. The company has hired Jonathan Cohen, who until this month was the director of NVIDIA's deep learning division -- in other words, a form of artificial intelligence. Cohen's LinkedIn profile only mentions that he's working on a nebulous "software" effort at Apple. However, his most recent job at NVIDIA centered around technology like Drive PX, a camera-based autopilot system for cars that can identify and react to specific vehicle types. While there's a chance that Cohen could be working on AI for iOS or the Mac, it won't be surprising if he brings some self-driving features to Cupertino's first car, such as hands-off lane changing or parking. [Image credit; NVIDIA, Flickr]
Apple car targeted to launch in 2019, says WSJ
Details have been rather scarce on Apple's rumored electric car project, but there's some new info today. Wall Street Journal reports that Cupertino is "accelerating" the codenamed Project Titan effort, internally calling it a "committed project." What's more, WSJ's sources indicate Apple is aiming to ship the first vehicle in 2019. Yes, that means you'll have to wait a while to get behind the wheel, but we should be hearing more detailed info soon enough, especially when the company begins testing on public roads. Perhaps what's more interesting, though, is the report says the first car won't be fully autonomous, despite that type of system being part of the long-term plan.
Apple and BMW have been exploring partnerships on cars
Apple and BMW may eventually have more in common than just some features in your car's infotainment system. Sources for both Reuters and Manager Magazin understand that the two companies have had "exploratory talks," including a trip by Apple executives to Leipzig to see how BMW builds the i3. Apple reportedly likes that BMW rethought the conventional car manufacturing process for its electric vehicle, and might use what it learned to help make its own EV. While BMW claims that there aren't any active talks about jointly developing a car, a Reuters tipster hears that the firms may revive talks (not necessarily to co-produce a vehicle) later on.
Apple hires Chrysler's quality lead to help make its electric car
Apple isn't done hiring top talent for its electric car project -- in fact, it just scored one of its biggest hires. The Wall Street Journal understands that 1 Infinite Loop recently recruited Doug Betts, the manager for Fiat Chrysler's global quality efforts from 2007 to 2014. It's not clear what role he'll take, but his former position suggests that he'll help Apple put everything together in a solid piece of machinery. Let's just hope that the result is more reliable than Chrysler and Fiat cars -- neither brand has performed well in recent dependability rankings.
Google's urban tech lab is working on free, city-wide WiFi
When Google unveiled its urban improvement initiative, Sidewalk Labs, it left one big question: what was this new outfit actually working on? As of today, you should have a good idea. Sidewalk and a group of investors have bought and merged two key companies behind LinkNYC, an effort to offer free, public WiFi across New York City. The combined entity, Intersection, will extended LinkNYC's internet-for-all technology to cities worldwide. Ideally, you'll one day "walk down any street" and expect to get fast wireless data. That sounds more than a little ambitious, but it makes sense given Google's sheer clout and desire for a ubiquitous internet. The easier it is for you to hop online, the easier it is for Google to serve up its money-making ads.
Bloomberg: Apple has 200 working on a car it can launch by 2020
In today's Apple Car rumor update, Bloomberg has chimed in with sources spouting more knowledge about the "Titan" electric vehicle project supposedly under way in Cupertino. According to the report, the team is up to about 200 people, with experts on batteries and robotic technology joining recently. While A123 and Tesla may have an idea where some of those battery experts came from, even this rumor has the caveat that execs could scrap or delay it, but that the team is working on having a vehicle ready by 2020. This has been your daily Apple Car rumor update. [Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Ex-GM CEO has unsolicited advice for Apple and the auto industry
In the bid to produce the hottest take on Apple's rumored automotive project, former CEO of General Motors Dan Akerson has submitted himself for the "telling people why Apple can't do it" award. In an interview with Bloomberg, Akerson pointed out that the car industry is "harder than people realize", with low margins and tough safety regulations. Of course, as many have pointed out, this hill is littered with the remains of execs who have said what things Apple can't do or dominate, like phones (Ed Colligan, Palm; Jim Balsillie, RIM; Steve Ballmer, Microsoft) and we know how that story went.
Apple reportedly has 'hundreds' working on an electric car (updated)
Those ages-old rumors of Apple working on its own cars may have some merit after all. Wall Street Journal sources report that Cupertino has "several hundred" staffers working on an electric car project nicknamed Titan. It's supposedly early days (a release would be "several years" away), but the current effort apparently resembles a minivan. There's no mention of whether or not Apple's camera-toting vans are linked to this EV effort, although it's certainly tempting to make that connection.
Watch how a NASA sub could explore Titan's biggest methane sea
NASA has long announced that it wants to create a tough-as-nails submarine that can withstand extreme conditions, because it's going to explore the largest liquid methane/ethane sea on Saturn's biggest moon Titan. Now, the agency has released a concept video of the robotic submersible and also revealed more details about the potential mission at this year's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium. Despite being a natural satellite, Titan is pretty Earth-like with a dense atmosphere, and the agency likely wants to see if life once existed there or to look for clues on how life on Earth began. NASA envisions sending the unmanned vehicle on a 90-day mission exploring the depths of Titan's largest body of liquid ominously named Kraken Mare, collecting and analyzing samples the whole time.
Perfect Ten: Looking back at the biggest MMO news of 2014
Well, my chums, here we are at the tail-end of 2014, having achieved all of our goals and new year's resolutions. Even better, we've survived what's turned out to be one of the wildest, rockiest, and most exciting years of MMO news in recent memory. This was the year of high-profile game launches, even more popular expansions, layoffs, and some epic-level studio face-palming decisions. It's easy to sit here and say that we predicted everything that was going to happen this year, but c'mon, you have to admit that you were surprised by at least one or two events in this industry. It's incredibly difficult to sum up the biggest news of the year without coming to grips with the fact that many stories aren't one-and-done; a lot of what I'm going to be talking about in this list happened over the course of weeks or months and still may not be fully over. That's how news stories are sometimes!
Massively's Best of 2014 Awards: Biggest Story of the Year
Massively's end-of-the-year awards continue today with our award for the Biggest MMO Story of the year. We're not talking about a single article or a game's plot here; we're looking for dominant, ongoing news arcs in the MMO space that had a big impact on the genre. All of our writers were invited to cast a vote, but not all of them chose to do so for this category. Don't forget to cast your own vote in the just-for-fun reader poll at the very end. The Massively staff pick for Biggest MMO Story of 2014 is...
BlizzCon 2014: Blizzard takes on superheroes with Overwatch
Blizzard announced its newest game today at BlizzCon -- and it might just make you forget all about Titan. The game is Overwatch, a superhero-themed "team-based multiplayer shooter" that is very reminiscent of Team Fortress 2. The studio revealed the new title with a pair of trailers, one giving a Pixar-esque introduction to the world and the other showing off in-game footage. Blizzard said that Overwatch will be "very approachable" for audiences. So when is Overwatch coming out? "It is nearer than you think," teased Chris Metzen, following that with news that the beta is coming in 2015 and the title will be playable at this week's convention.
NYC now has hundreds of ad beacons in phone booths (update: mayor orders them removed)
Buzzfeed has learned that New York City allowed hundreds of bluetooth beacons to be installed without public consultation, a decision that has roused the ire of privacy groups. Outdoor ad outfit Titan installed around 500 Gimbal beacons in phone booths around Manhattan, skirting normal red tape by saying they were deployed for maintenance purposes only. However, it admitted it's also using them to decide when to rotate ad panels and recently pushed smartphone ads to Tribeca Film Festival participants. The devices can also pick up location and time data, though Titan told the NY Daily News that it is "absolutely, categorically not" doing so unless users opt in and install a third-party app.
Last Week on Massively: Path of the Titan
This post originally appeared on Massively from Editor-in-Chief Brianna Royce. At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO story last week, you've come to the right post This week, Blizzard made Titan's cancelation official, sending analysts scurrying to make bold statements of doom and/or apathy and leaving MMO fans to ponder what Titan's death really means to our genre. Read on for a look at the rest of this week's top MMO stories.
Perfect Ten: What Titan's death means for the industry and you
Blizzard's fans are in mourning this weekend and its competition is no doubt rejoicing after the World of Warcraft developer finally cancelled its seven-years-in-the-making Titan MMO. Word on the street is that Titan was a little too similar to what Bungie came up with in Destiny, although all the studio itself will say is that it ultimately wasn't fun. So Titan joins Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures in the Blizzard graveyard. It's a loss for those who were hoping to see what Blizz could do outside of World of Warcraft in the MMO space. But what does this cancellation mean for Blizzard, the industry, and us as MMO gamers? I have a few thoughts, although I'll pre-empt them by predicting that your life will most likely go on just the same it did before this momentous announcement.
Nissan's built an electric pickup that it'll never sell
There are probably lots of justifiable reasons why carmakers haven't got around to making an electric pickup that anyone can buy (range and demand would be just two), but that doesn't mean such vehicles don't exist. Engineers at Nissan, with a little too much time on their hands, wanted to create a neat way of ferrying people and parts around their Test Center in Stanfield, Arizona. Using the project as a team building exercise, designers Roland Schellenberg and Arnold Moulinet took a Leaf EV, cut off its roof, replaced it with the top of a Titan pickup and added a shortened rear bed from a Frontier. The end result is "Sparky," a stylish little electric pickup that won't ever leave Nissan's 3,050-acre test facility, but gives us hope that we'll one day see a little more EV variation on our roads.
Analysts estimate Blizzard's lost investment after Titan's cancellation
Titan's official cancellation notice yesterday didn't come as much of a surprise to MMO players; after all, the game had been backburnered more than a year ago, its staff transferring to Warlords of Draenor and other Blizzard projects. But the cancellation means Blizzard might never fully recoup its seven-year investment in the game, and that has some analysts worried. "Development costs for Titan may have amounted to tens of millions, perhaps $50 million or more," says one such analyst, Billy Pidgeon, as quoted in a GamesIndustry.biz piece yesterday. Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter upped that estimate: "My guess is 100 - 200 people at $100,000 per year, so $70 - 140 million sunk cost. It's pretty sad that it took so long to figure out how bad the game was. I expect them to go back to the drawing board." Still another industry observer, David Cole, argued that the current games market simply no longer tolerates seven-year development cycles and high overhead. Pidgeon stresses that it's not all doom and gloom, however: "Blizzard has cancelled several games in various stages of development in the past. Costs for unreleased games can be significant, but launching substandard games can harm the reputation of a successful publisher such as Blizzard. Expenses for development can be considered R&D, and benefits can include invaluable training, IP and technology that can be applied to other games."
Blizzard cancels its next-gen online game despite seven years of work
Have you been anticipating Titan, Blizzard's first online role-playing game since World of Warcraft? Unfortunately, you're going to have to pin your hopes on some other title. The studio tells Polygon that it has cancelled Titan despite pouring seven years of effort into the project, which was never officially announced. As Blizzard's Mike Morhaime explains, Blizzard just "didn't find the fun" during a reevaluation -- the game was extremely ambitious, but it "didn't come together" as a cohesive work that you'd want to play. The developers were also nervous about defining themselves as an online RPG company. They want to build "great games every time," even if that means switching genres.
Blizzard officially cancels Titan
If you were holding onto hopes that Titan would be the next great thing from Blizzard, it's time to douse yourself with a cold bucket of reality. Polygon is reporting that Blizzard has officially canceled the Titan project, saying that it ultimately wasn't fun. "We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs, so we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine," CEO Mike Morhaime commented. "And it didn't come together. We didn't find the fun. We didn't find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that's the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no." Senior Vice President Chris Metzen said that the decision was necessary as the studio goes forward: "We were losing perspective and getting lost in the weeds a little. We had to allow ourselves to take that step back and reassess why the hell we were doing that thing in the first place." The studio didn't put out details on what Titan was going to be, except that it had "some cool hooks." Blizzard also said that it isn't going to be working on another MMO at this time, but won't rule out the possibility of a follow-up to World of Warcraft in the future. If you want to tease yourself with "what if," you can read Massively's summation of the Titan project.
