When I look at this odd, immersive screen, called the jDone, I’m reminded of Coleridge’s epic poem:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately jDome decree:
Where guns roared out, soldiers ran
Through caverns measureless to man
In a boot of Battlefield 3.
The J-Dome costs $1,200 and sets up in a few minutes. It fits in a package about as big as a pack ‘n’ play playpen for kids and works with any projector, creating a nearly immersive gaming experience by adding peripheral vision effects to otherwise 2D games. → Read More
The cool cats at A Dangerous Business recently visited a seemingly forgotten Russian arcade museum in Moscow featuring some of the greatest old video games you could ever imagine coming out of a totalitarian worker’s state circa 1983. For example we’re introduced to a game…
called “Репка Силомер” (Repka Silomer) or “Turnip Strength Tester.” Later that night, we showed the photos to our homestay host, hoping for some sort of explanation. She had never played the game but told us that the concept was based on an old Russian children’s story.
Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Sleep! Go visit a hobby shop to play D&D Encounters! This kinder, gentler version of D&D is designed to allow relative noobs to experience the thrill of pretending to be a paladin. D&D Encounters is, in essence, a way to play a quick, single adventure in one or two hours with a dedicated DM. You type your ZIP code here and reserve a slot. Then you head into the game store and play. The closest one to me in Brooklyn, for example, is the Twenty Sided Store, a place I’d never heard of until now. → Read More
When I was growing up, games were played offline — whether it was Number Munchers on an Apple2GS, or Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo’s NES console. But, needless to say, that 8-bit world is miles behind us.
Like it has done to every other industry, the Web completely altered the course of gaming. It brought connectivity and scale to video games, allowing huge groups of people to play each other in a single game, simultaneously. Even so, most video game users continued to get their gaming offline; as is often the case, online adoption was mostly limited to geeks in solitude. → Read More
China’s got game. A lot of game. In fact, the Eastern power is rapidly becoming the world’s leader in the online games market. According to a study released by business and consulting firm Pearl Research, the online games market in China will exceed $8 billion by 2014.
Though the Chinese gaming market experienced somewhat sluggish growth in the first part of 2010, by year’s end it had rebounded to 25 percent overall growth, reaching $5 billion in sales. Thus, it seems that it is no longer even remotely outlandish to predict that China will make up a quarter of the industry’s total global sales by 2014, with the U.S. falling to 22 percent, as forecasted by The Financial Times, via investment bank Digi-Capital in February. → Read More
BeyondReality’s Jeroen Mol has an interesting concept for his new Augmented Reality game slated to go live in the Android Market in the next month or so. His clever idea of using paper money notes as AR targets (you know, those little black and white designs you usually have to print out first and view with your mobile device) eliminates the need to have a printer around before playing the game. Of all the “mobile money” concepts I covered at the Mobile World Congress, this was the most fun. See the video below for details. → Read More
Apple seems to be taking over everything these days — they’ve done a remarkable job so far — however, there is one major lacking from their lineup: console games. There is a great opportunity for media delivery by way of the TV, and Apple certainly knows this. PS3, Xbox, streaming boxes and even Google TV have been making moves in this area for awhile; if Apple wants to make long-term success of the iTunes Stores, they need people buying into Apple TV. The gaming consoles have had a 1-up on the Apple TV for a while, just by offering games. Now, it appears that there are traces of gaming on Apple TV in the latest release of the iOS 4.3 beta. Could Apple be coming out with a gaming system and controller? → Read More
According to WSJ report, HTC has purchased at $40 million stake in streaming game company OnLive, a move that points to HTC’s impetus towards content distribution alongside their standard handset manufacturing business.
HTC also bough Saffron Digital, a streaming video business that specializes in sending DRM-protected video streams. The idea, then, is for HTC’s Sense UI to move from the handset to the television, an optimistic move that could place HTC branding on more than just phones. → Read More
Ushering in the new era of touch panels come the lack of feeling any mechanical feedback. Just when we thought it was too late, Ten One Designs comes out with Fling, a tactile game controller for the iPad.
Read on for more plus a video! → Read More