Blizzard sure knows when to time a huge product launch, right at the cusp of a long weekend! The much awaited demon-hunting action RPG Diablo 3 is out today which means fans of this franchise will likely want to take a sick day to indulge in the new and improved gameplay, character classes and online play offered by the new version. The last Diablo, Diablo II was released 12 years ago in 2000! That's quite a long drought for fans of the game. From the video teaser above, it looks like this game has been worth the wait.
If you head on over to www.tgeltaayehxnx.com you will see a countdown timer from Samsung, presumably for an as of yet unnanounced new Galaxy device.
The buzz started when Samsung Tweeted "Destination: tgeltaayehxnx" -- an anagram for "The next Galaxy" which seems to be all about the Samsung Galaxy S III or maybe something else. Some members of the press were also invited to a launch event on May 3rd in London — those invitations were labeled simply, "Come and meet the next galaxy." What's Samsung up to? Hopefully a groundbreaking new device that will live up to all this hype.
-Update: Well, no device was actually launched or shown. The countdown was for an even more cryptic teaser video. The video (see below) doesn't give us much, but it does continue Samsung's tact of poking fun (or insulting) iPhone users, which began in the "Next Big Thing is Already Here' Superbowl adverts. Now, they are calling users of a competing product sheep!
Seriously, is that any way to endear yourself to your potential clients?
As per Amazon Germany's Samsung Galaxy S III pre-order page, the specs of that model are expected to be the following.
-4.7-inch Super AMOLED touch-screen with 16 million colours -12-megapixel camera with auto focus, LED Flash and face detection -Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Operating System -16 GB of internal memory, expandable to up to 32 GB
Some rumors also hint that the Samsung's Galaxy S II successor could be powered by a quad-core Cortex A9 Exynos processor which would be amazeballs. We'll get back to all this when there's an actual product to discuss in early May.
Apple will have an iPad related event next week on March 7 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (where iPad 2 was revealed a year ago).
The invite states 'We have something you really have to see. And touch.' This 'something to see' could be the much awaited Retina Display (4X the resolution of the current model) similar to the iPhone 4 and 4S' super dense screen.
As for the touch part...well there doesn't seem to be a physical home button on the image above which means that maybe we will see some functionality from the bezel a la RIM's PlayBook.
All will be revealed next Wednesday! So stay tuned.
Canadians will finally get their hands on Sony's next generation handheld gaming console the PS Vita. The successor to the PlayStation Portable, the PS Vita is a chock-full of new technology and innovative features. Dual cameras, a multi-touch OLED screen, rear trackpad, dual analog sticks, a quad core processor plus the ability to pick up on PS3 games and continue them on the move.
Sony is going back to the cartridge (or disc) paradigm it abandoned with the PSP Go (which was a download-only device), so while these games are all downloadable titles for the PS Vita, they can also be purchased ones in shrinkwrapped discs costing $30-$50 apiece.....Expensive!
The PS Vita itself retails for $249 and will offer various content streaming and access features such as Netflix and Sony's vast movie rental and music offerings.
I had a few opportunities to try the PS Vita during Sony events as well as at CES 2012. Having owned all the PSP variants through the years, the PS Vita offers a lot of improvements over its predecessors. The large 5-inch OLED screen is simply sublime and we found the graphics quality to be 'near' PlayStation 3 levels on some games. I liked the rear trackpad controller, the dual control sticks and the sixaxis motion control as well as the touchscreen. There's definitely a lot of potential here, not just for games but for other forms of entertainment like Netflix.
We had a chance to speak to some PS Vita developers last year as they demoed their innovative musical platformer Sound Shapes, see the video below.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 8:49AM 
