Real Madrid host Barcelona later today in the first of I think 87 classics to take place over the next few weeks. In other news, I’m leaving CrunchGear.

Yup, my time here has come to an end. I’d be shocked if 90 percent of you who read this have any idea who I am, even so much as to recognize the name “Nicholas Deleon,” and I’d be equally shocked if the remaining 10 percent could give a toss, but there it is: I’m off.

“What gives?” maybe three of you will ask. Well, next week I’ll be moving over to The Daily, the fancy iPad newspaper deal that launched a few months ago. Peter’s there, too, so it’s sorta like a reunion. I’ll be writing about more or less the same topics, though presumably with less Ron and Fez references sprinkled throughout. Incidentally, the News Corp. building in Manhattan is right next door to the Sirius XM building, so that’s sorta neat.

We had some laughs (such as when I became the first person after the year 1999 to publicly perform the Macarena) and we had our fair bit of controversy—the Blizzard Real ID fiasco was a particularly dicey situation—but the most important thing is that I helped you waste a few minutes of your day while fiddling about on the Internet. A fine legacy, to be sure.

I do have a Twitter account, @nicholasadeleon (mind the tricky “A” in the middle there), but I barely use the thing. In fact, my last tweet wasn’t even in English, so I don’t know what to tell you. Follow it and see what kind magic happens. (Note: magic is not guaranteed.)

So, yeah, that’s it. Adios~!

What’s going on here? Over at aperturescience.com a fancy countdown timer just counted down, and now there’s a message up top that says “Help release Portal 2 early! Play the 13 games in the potato sack to reboot GLaDOS.”

Presumably if enough people play the games in the potato sack Valve will unlock the game before its scheduled Tuesday release date. (Considering pirated console versions have already leaked, it’s only fair that law abiding gamers get early access, too.)

We now have a mission: play these games immediately. I’d like to play Portal 2 this weekend if at all possible.

Actually, here’s what Valve has to say on the matter:

This weekend is the last chance to pre-purchase Portal 2. Get your copy now, save 10% and be ready to play the moment it is released.

Help release Portal 2 early: From now until release, play any or all of games in The Potato Sack to expedite the launch of Portal 2. Your efforts will be tracked on the official GLaDOS@home page.

Each game in The Potato Sack has received a massive Portal-themed update, making a collection of 13 hit indie games even better. So why not get a taste of Portal 2 now while you help launch it?

John Carmack, the id Software co-founder who essentially created the modern first-person shooter genre from scratch, has once again said that the iOS platform is the best mobile platform out there when it comes to game development. He said as much last year at QuakeCon, but here we are one year later and iOS is still king. Sorry, Fandroids.

The reasons for the superiority are largely the same as they were last year: Android is far too fragmented to develop for, both from a hardware and software point of view. How many Android devices out there still don’t have Froyo? Mine doesn’t! (It’s the Samsung Fascinate on Verizon Wireless, by the way.) And how many different hardware configurations are there between the various HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc. devices?

Compare that to iOS. An iPhone is an iPhone and an iPad is an iPad. (Nothing stops developers from saying “you need an iPhone 4 or higher to run this.”) Plus, Carmack says developing for iOS is just “fun.” Can’t beat having fun, can you?

Carmack also says that he’s still constantly evaluating both mobile platforms, so, if for whatever reason, things change, well, he’ll be there.

Wiki’d

There’s a good chance that your office or home is more tricked out, tech-wise, than the Oval Office. President Obama complained yesterday, in what the AP calls “off-the-cuff remarks,” that what the Oval Office lacks is a “really cool phone.” Can someone get the president a Droid or something?

We’ve known from some time now that Obama is a bit of a BlackBerry addict, but apparently his technological nous doesn’t transfer to the Oval Office. He expressed remorse at the lack of “fancy buttons and stuff.”

It’s like, come on! I’m the president here!

Even if the president had to endure this technological nightmare—where are the buttons?!—at least he had a working phone, something that couldn’t have been said about the mighty TechCrunch office.

And here’s a free public relations tip: any company out there that makes “cool phones” would be absolutely foolish to not offer President Obama a completely free, tricked out phone. He doesn’t even have to accept it—are you allowed to accept gifts that come about as a result of your office?—but think of the tweets. “lol some-company sent obama its cool phone #awesome #followfriday #realtalk.”

Things are going great for Sony. It settled that icky business with GeoHot, and now it’s flying high on the sales of its PS3 and accessories. The Move, which came out last September, has now sold 8 million units as of April 3. Compare this to Microsoft’s Kinect, which sold a cool 10 million units as of early March.

The Sharp Shooter, the little gun-thing for the Move that has no relation to the Bret Hart maneuver, has a 40 percent attach rate with sales of Killzone 3 at “key retailers.” Who are these “key retailers”? C’est un mystère!

Oh, and there’s now 50 million PS3s out there worldwide.

Just a sales tidbit, is all.

And slightly unrelated, I’ve also noticed that the console versions of Portal 2 have leaked, but it’s PC gamers that are killing gaming, right? (Wrong.)

You’re looking at the lightest shoe in all of basketball. It’s the Adidas adiZero Crazy Light, and it weighs a mere 9.8 ounces. With the Crazy Light, Adidas now has the market cornered on lightest-footwear in three sports: basketball, football, and soccer, soccer being the best sport of the three, of course.

The adiZero Crazy Light follows the path led by the other two lightest bits of footwear: it’s 15 percent lighter than its nearest competitor, and it took two full years to develop. What have you been doing for the past two years, because I’ve certainly done nothing of note.

Derrick Rose, of Chicago Bulls fame, has given the shoe his stamp of approval, saying that “it will no doubt make [him] faster on the court for [their] playoff run.”

High praise from someone who would know a thing or two about the sport.

I should probably say that it’ll be available from June 3 for $130.

Comcast is about to nationally roll out its 105Mbps (!) Internet service. The ISP hopes to have the service in several of its top markets, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Miami, bringing the total number of potential subscribers up to 40 million. Considering so much of legitimate media consumption these days is based on streaming, having a super fast Internet connection will only help to a point.

I remember when I ordered Cablevision’s 101Mbps service two years ago, and the tech that installed it told me flat out, “You’re going to be faster than the services you’re trying to tap into.” YouTube was still dog slow, for example. In fact, the only time I’ve regularly topped out the connection, which costs $99 per month (to Comcast’s $105 per month), is when using BitTorrent or Usenet.

Comcast says a 4GB iTunes download takes about four minutes with the service. That sounds about right, given my own experience.

The only issue, of course, is if Comcast decides to implement bandwidth caps. What’s the point of having a 105Mbps connection if you’re given a ceiling?

The Advocate General of the European Union Court of Justice, Cruz Villalón, says [PDF] that national courts there should not have the ability to tell Internet Service Providers to filter their connections in order to prevent copyright infringement because such a move would conflict with the Charter of Fundamental Rights. That was a mouthful, yes. It should be noted that the Advocate General’s opinion isn’t binding in the least, so this shouldn’t be read as EUROPE BANS INTERNET FILTERING. Hardly. It’s more for the Court of Justice to consider as it goes forward than any sort of official, or even unofficial, ban.

This all stems from a case in mighty Belgium where an artists’ rights group, the Société belge des auteurs compositeurs et éditeurs, or Sabam, took issue with copyright infringement occurring via a local ISP, Scarlet Extended SA. After a series of court actions, the ISP was eventually told to install filtering software on its network in order to prevent the continued infringement of copyright.

Today we learn that, in the opinion of the Advocate General, this should never have happened in the first place.

Get ready for a wall of text!

…the Advocate General proposes that the Court of Justice should declare that EU law precludes a national court from making an order, on the basis of the Belgian statutory provision, requiring an internet service provider to install, in respect of all its customers, in abstracto and as a preventive measure, entirely at the expense of the internet service provider and for an unlimited period, a system for filtering all electronic communications passing via its services (in particular, those involving the use of peer-to- peer software) in order to identify on its network the sharing of electronic files containing a musical, cinematographic or audio-visual work in respect of which a third party claims rights, and subsequently to block the transfer of such files, either at the point at which they are requested or at the point at which they are sent.

Stripping that down a bit, the Advocate General is saying that EU law should have prevented the filtering system from being installed, or ordered to be installed, in the first place. Such a filtering system would amount to “a restriction on the rights and freedoms of internet users” and that it could only be legal if it “were adopted on a national legal basis which was accessible, clear and predictable.”

So the idea of a filtering system isn’t 100 percent verboten, just that it’d have to be done in such a way that would happily co-exist with the laws on the books.

Again, none of this particularly means anything particularly here in the U.S., but it does show the evolution of courtroom understanding of some of the technologies involved in our lives.

Intel now says it will support both its Thunderbolt interface, which first appeared on the recent MacBook Pro revision, and USB 3.0 sometime in 2012. Presumably if it supports USB 3.0 then it will support all previous versions of USB.

Intel made the announcement at a developer conference in Beijing, calling the technologies (ThunderBolt and USB) “complementary.” This won’t be HD DVD vs. Blu-ray all over again.

This comes only one day after AMD made a big splash by announcing that at least two of its upcoming APUs will support USB 3.0 right out of the box, meaning motherboard manufactures won’t have to add a separate USB controller to offer USB support. Helps keep costs down.

The addition of USB 3.0 support to its Ivy Bridge platform—you’ll recall that Sandy Bridge was recently launched—means peripheral makers won’t have to fret over the increased adoption of USB 3.0. In other words, if you’re Company A and you make Device 1, which connects via USB 3.0, you know there will already be a potentially big userbase to work with.

This is pretty great. You know Garry’s Mod, right? It’s basically a sandbox “game” built on the Source engine. It’s only $10, but apparently there are people out there who feel the need to pirate it. The mind boggles. Anyhow, the developer of the mod, Garry Newman, created an error message that would only manifest itself in pirated copies of the game. Go ahead and search Google for the “unable to shade polygon normals.” The people complaining are using pirated copies of the game. For shame.

Why did Garry do this?

I don’t think the error isn’t going to boost GMod sales. I just like to give people that paid something to be smug about.

That’s quite excellent, giving people something to be smug about. There’s nothing wrong with smugness. In fact, it’s very much encouraged.

Attention! Valve has announced exactly how Portal 2‘s Steam features will work on the PS3. PS3 gamers can look forward to cross-platform (with the PC) matchmaking and gameplay, real-time chat, Steam achievements, and access to the Steam Cloud for game saves.

PS3 gamers will have to link their PSN account to the Steam account. If you don’t have a Steam account you can create one right from inside Portal 2.

The Steam overlay is there, too. And let’s not forget that the PS3 copy comes with a code to play on your PC or Mac, too.

In short, it’s Steam, but on your PS3. Not hard to figure out.

Valve has a big FAQ here if you’ve any further questions about how this whole thing works.

A few details have emerged at MIX11 regarding Kinect for Windows—“few” being the operative word. For example, the beta SDK will include support for two-person skeletal tracking, making two-player games or Windows applications a distinct possibility.

What else? Microsoft says the beta SDK will support “advanced audio capabilities.” Echo cancellation and support for Windows speech recognition. Oh, and support for XYZ depth perception.

All of this is leading toward Windows applications that “use” like you’d use a Kinect game. Maybe a version of Internet Explorer that works with the flick of a finger. Flailing about with Microsoft Virtual Earth, that kind of thing. I know it’s trite at this point, but a Minority Report-like interface, but for genuine applications that you’d use on a daily basis.

Coming soon to an Nvidia-powered computer near you: 3D Web video! Cheers all around, half-slices for everyone. Nvidia made the announcement at NAB 2011, the same place where Apple announced Final Cut Pro X. The 3D video will be delivered via a plugin for the Microsoft Media Platform, aka Silverlight.

Nvidia will provide the 3D tools for free. Naturally you’ll need an Nvidia 3D Vision-compatible monitor and the appropriate glasses to partake, but think of the possibilities. Maybe 3D sports highlights? 3D movie trailers? 3D unboxing videos!

Good thing you kept all your old SNES cartridges, right? Hyperkin, the accessories manufacturer, has developed the SupaBoy, a portable SNES. Fingers crossed, it should be available this summer.

The SupaBoy plays plain ol’ SNES cartridges (though only North American cartridges). Battery life is said to be around 5.5 hours per charge. That powers a 3.5-inch LCD.

There is a video output so you can connect it to your TV, and two real controller ports built-in. Though the thought of playing SNES games on an HDTV makes me shudder.

No price listed as yet, but a similar product, the FC Mobile that plays NES cartridges, currently goes for $60. So there’s that.

UPDATE: Video hands-on from E3 2011!

Looks like a Wii price cut is incoming. Reports late last night surfaced about a May 15 move to $150 (down from $200), and today internal documentation~! from K-Mart also shows the console moving down to $150.

Nintendo’s been fairly lax with Wii price cuts, but that’s probably because the thing keeps selling no matter the price. And considering the Wii is more or less a GameCube with a coat of shiny new wax applied then it’s safe to say the company has made a few yen this generation.

AMD will add USB 3.0 to its AMD Fusion line of APUs. Huzzah! That makes AMD the first chipmaker to support the interface (though it’s been available in higher end motherboards from the likes of Asus and Gigabyte for about a year now). Yes, yes, Intel invented the spec, but its newfangled Thunderbolt interface seems to be getting all the love. Why would you bother with USB 3.0, then?

For one, it’s backward compatible with previous USB specs. What happens when you plug a USB 2.0 device into a USB 3.0 port? It works—handy. What happens when you plug a USB 2.0 device into a Thunderbolt port? Nothing—not as handy, no.

USB 3.0 tops out at 5Gbps (versus USB 2.0′s 480Mbps), so it’s mighty fast. Connect a hard drive there and you’re good to go.

AMD will brand USB 3.0′d APUs as “Superspeed USB” chipsets. The first APUs to be christened thus will be the A75 and A70M.

Exciting times, yes.

You may have heard that the Dutch Government now plans to outlaw music and movie (and whatever else) downloading. That seems pretty prosaic: since when was it legal to infringe on someone’s copyright? Isn’t that the whole point of copyright? No matter, for in the lead up to the Dutch announcement’s announcement a survey was taken. “What about the survey?” you may ask. Well, said survey reveals that a good number of artists believe that they’re not hurt financially by piracy, and that it’s about time to re-think the artist-fan relationship with respect to DRM.

The survey asked 4,000 artists (musicians, authors, photographers, etc.) for their views on all sorts of piracy-related subjects.

For example, only 12 percent of respondents said they believed file-sharing hurts them financially. Artists with more schooling’ under their belt tend to be among those who don’t believe file-sharing hurts them financially. So much for the claims by certain organizations that artists are being put in the poor house because of BitTorrent.

What else? Oh, that file-sharing helps spread the word about their work. So says just north of 50 percent of respondents, though this number may change as more and more streaming options break into the mainstream. A sort of, “Online music services help spread the word about my work.”

All of this being said, the Dutch artists aren’t a bunch of hippies who think everything should be free forever. Nope, with a majority saying that the penalties from illegal file-sharing should be more serious that the current penalties on the books.

The next big PC game will be The Witcher 2, which should be released on May 12 (and if you’re cool like me you will have already pre-ordered). Unlike a certain other big RPG this year, it actually looks like it was developed within the past few years. If you order it from Good Old Games (the company behind GoG, CD Projekt, also developed the game) it will be completely DRM-free. That is to say there will be no DRM whatsoever. No having to worry about limited installations, no having to worry about your Wi-Fi connection dropping and thus cutting you off from the all-powerful authentication servers, none of that nonsense. What a concept—treating your customers like customers and not potential evildoers!

The game’s devs talked to Bit-tech, and argued what so many people have said over and over again, that DRM merely pushes people to piracy. Does this scenario sound familiar?

I know people that buy an original copy of the game just so they don’t feel guilty, and then they will play a pirated version which is stripped of all DRM. That’s not how it should be. Let’s treat legitimate customers with respect and they will give that back.

That was the game’s PR and marketing manager, Lukasz Kukawski, making all kinds of sense. The lack of DRM (at least from the GoG version; the retail version will include DRM because of contractual obligations) won’t create a rush to pirate the game. How many times have we seen games wrapped in 85 layers of DRM leaked online weeks before their retail release? Many times, thank you.

Tick tock, tick tock. What are we waiting for? No, not for Fernando Torres to finally score for Chelsea (although we are, in fact, waiting for that to happen), but for AMD to release its latest GPU, the Radeon HD 7000. Digi Times, which is about as solid as source as you can get, says mass production will begin in May. That should put retail availability at July 2011 at the earliest.

The bad news is that there’s very little info out there about what to expect from the 7000 series, code named Southern Islands. One report says that they’ll derive from the same 28nm core as the 6950 and 6970.

As with all Radeon cards, the hardware is really quite nifty (and, at least with the current generation), but there’s always something wrong with the drivers. 99 percent GPU use on the desktop? What is that about?

Activision now says that Guitar Hero hasn’t been outright cancelled, but merely placed on hiatus. The publisher had said in February that it was going to disband the Guitar Hero business unit, and that the 2011 edition of the game had been cancelled. What gives?

Activision tells GamesIndustry.biz that rather than canceling the series outright, it’s simply changing the way the franchise works. It will no longer be a yearly release à la Madden, but that Activision will still support the brand. Maybe a release every two years? Maybe a different way to support the franchise, with special DLC and the like?

Somewhat related, Ubisoft recently said that the world needed new game consoles in order to facilitate innovation and whatnot, to tap into the newly developed technologies and techniques that have popped up since the Xbox 360 was designed.

I suppose Ubisoft is unfamiliar with something called a PC? Seems to me there has been plenty of technological development there, and I don’t see Ubisoft treating the PC with anything but contempt.