This Friday, we the editors of CrunchGear will be hosting our Gala Online Awards Ceremony complete with dancing bears, punch, and whirling mirror balls. Until then, we invite you, the reading public, to select your favorite – and least favorite – gear of 2008 in our formal 2008 Reader’s Choice Awards. Click through to make your end-of-year picks. → Read More
What is it about today? First hunter-killers, then Terminator spare parts, and now the machines are infiltrating our armed forces. Actually, it’s not such a big deal; the United States Army is simply continuing to take advantage of its contract with iRobot, which provides the Army with hundreds of Packbots, small robots suited for dirty or dangerous jobs. They’re pumping out about 100 a month with a total of 1800 shipped, which doesn’t seem like a lot unless you see them all together, rushing at you in a body, crushing you under their tiny treads and tearing at you with their tiny arms, as their cold, unblinking eyes look on with a mechanical indifference. Individually, though, I’m sure they’re very helpful. I’ve heard stories of army engineers who have cried upon seeing their robot destroyed or irreparably damaged by a mine or RPG blast. Noble as it is, it is precisely that kind of emotion that will lead humanity to defeat in the coming Robocalypse. Update: Yeah, that was autoplaying. Sorry. Video now inside! → Read More
We’re reporting to you live from Apple’s “Let’s Rock” Event in the Yerba Buena Center in sunny SFO. Click through to start viewing the live feed. → Read More
I find myself on AA flight #3 headed to LAX from NY’s JFK. Today marks the first day of Aircell’s Gogo inflight service going live for the masses. It will be available on flights from NYC to LA, Miami and San Francisco. The 8AM flight to Miami from JFK is not a 767-200, so those going south won’t be privy to Aircell’s Gogo service. The flight is full from what I’m told and Aircell had plenty of people on hand at the gate to promote the service. Exactly how many folks will utilize the service is unknown at this point. I’ll be using my MacBook Pro, iPhone 3G and T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve along with one other smartphone that’s Wi-Fi enabled. I’m in economy so it’s going to be a tight squeeze. Hopefully the lady sitting in front of me won’t lean her seat back, but that’s doubtful. I’ve already got my laptop on my lap as is and it’s not pleasant. I wish one of the manufacturers who I requested a sub-notebook/netbook from had gotten back to me. I’m looking at you Lenovo, HP, Asus, MSI and Dell. The service unavailable splash screen reveals that Gogo won’t work below 10,000 feet and is only available within the continental U.S. I will individually test all my devices and then simultaneously to see what sort of bandwidth I’m getting. Speed tests after the jump. → Read More
Our own Greg Kumparak is live at the Bigfoot press conference we told you about the other day. Remember? They found and captured Bigfoot? Hit the jump to watch… → Read More
http://qik.com/player2.swf?streamname=c89c603b836b45388abe59bfaeb7191d&vid=155737&playback=false&polling=false&user=patphelan&displayname=patphelan&safelink=patphelan&userlock=true&islive=&username=anonymous I’m getting the dirt on this right now but it seems that Pat Phelan of MaxRoam just unlocked his iPhone 3G and will be giving away the app shortly. UPDATE – False alarm. It wasn’t a software unlock, it’s the old physical SIM card unlock. → Read More
Rich is apart of the Virgin America and Virgin Galactic exchange program that allows VA captains the opportunity to pilot the Virgin Galactic flights when they start in 2010. He’s pretty stoked to have been picked from the VA fleet and who wouldn’t be?! Rich has an extensive resume in aviation with over 16,000 hours clocked and he overlooked the testing for Virgin American flights before launch. There is no word on what the training will entail since it’s still in the early stages, but Rich is excited at the prospect of going up into space and says some of the training will involve flight simulators. He wasn’t notified before hand that he was one of few pilots chosen for the exchange program and found out when it was announced internally to the whole company. Good luck, Rich. Save me a seat. PS- Due to some technical difficulties resulting from live blogging in the Mojave, the video interview we took is FUBAR at the moment, but we’ll see what we can do to fix that once we get back to LAX. → Read More
The very exclusive Microsoft Gamefest conference is in full swing right now somewhere here in the Northwest, and they’ve dropped a couple of newsworthy items. First of all is the revision of the Games for Windows – LIVE system they’ve got going on. Starting today every multiplayer feature of LIVE is free on Windows: chat, shared friends lists with the 360, achievements, and so on. That’s nice; probably they needed more Windows folks to sign up. I personally don’t really enjoy the community aspect of gaming, but a lot of people do and this might make it a little more appealing. More importantly, they’re giving Windows users some love by redesigning the interface and adding a LIVE marketplace (soon, anyway) which will serve up games, demos, and presumably DLC. Sounds good. → Read More
Bioshock This isn’t a press conference, but I’m hearing about a whole new slew of games from 2K. I missed the beginning of the Bioshock demo, but it looks like there will be DLC very soon. Challenge rooms are the hot new item where you can solve a series of puzzles to unlock trophies. The demo I saw required the player to help a little sister get off of a ferris wheel using telekinesis and electro shock volts or whatever they’re called. There will be puzzles and a wide variety of gameplay we’re used to in Bioshock. Photos or taping aren’t allowed. Borderlands Upcoming co-op game with up to four players. The Borderlands is the lawless outlands of space. One certain section of the demo I just saw looked like Halo. You just walk around and shoot “Scags” and collect items from these spacey looking treasure chests. Kinda meh so far. This is actually kind of cool. Your player retains all weapons and skills built up even when you jump from one co-op game to another. They’re geeking out over the weapons. Shotgun dismembers enemies and spews body parts everywhere. Kind of cool. 2K Sports coming up NHL 2K9 Wii New fighting engine. “It’s fun!” Demo coming in a couple weeks. “It’s really fun!” Wiimote is your hockey stick. Duh. Wiimote and nunchuck are used when fighting and driving the Zamboni. Use the pointer to select which player you pass to and you can link passes in advance, which is exclusive to the Wii. I like hockey but I’ve never been into hockey video games. What about you guys? Xbox 360 September 2008 launch. NBA 2K9 I reviewed NCAA 2K8 a while back and it’s fun, so I’m looking forward to NBA 2K9. They’re showing a trailer right now. October 2008 launch. I wonder if 2K Sports can compete with EA’s NBA title? Dynamic DNA is a pretty rad feature. It’s 80 percent done. Haven’t had time to recharge from the Nintendo press conference, so I may be signing off a little prematurely. I’ll update this post when I have time to recharge. I guess that’s it. → Read More
Update: Full press release for GTA: Chinatown Wars after the jump. Reggie says the Wii was never a fad. Imitation is just around the corner, he says. 10:07AM I think we’re wrapping up. Miyamoto is going to play the cowbell in the 4-player demo. They’re playing the Mario theme. Awesome. Will have video shortly. → Read More
Oops! That’s all. We’ll set up a gallery with the shots in a second. New game is called Rage and it’s a combination “Action, exploration and driving” game, says John Carmack. Devin taking over. EA has teamed with id Software. 4:19 Left 4 Dead shipping…on PC and Xbox 360. Gameplay is different every time. “Director” dynamically changes atmosphere and gameplay. Devin will check this out tomorrow. Valve is up. Left 4 Dead splash screen. Co-op, first person horror game. Experience a scary action movie with your friends. Dynamic shared narrative achieved with procedurarlly generated character performance. 1-4 players. → Read More
http://qik.com/player2.swf?streamname=ffd6938a849d4e24a1139e5de5c4ec7e&vid=129636&playback=false&polling=false&user=c870e7b7af28f528a2ee5b9ad144f0ccbc0f8694&displayname=Qikker56606&safelink=c870e7b7af28f528a2ee5b9ad144f0ccbc0f8694&userlock=true&islive=&username=anonymous First 45 minutes of the press conference. Update: I’m updating with all the Qik videos I took. I’ll label them accordingly. 12:06 – And we’re out… Thanks for visiting. 12:04 – Final Fantasy 13. north america and europe coming soon. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
