Digital Trends offers its picks of the best products featured at E3.
Best of Show was awarded to “Dishonored” from Arkane Studios: “The steampunk world was meticulously crafted to allow a variety of approaches, and the gameplay options were varied and complex enough to allow you a huge amount of freedom in the way you played. Any game that allows you to string things together and come up with new attacks that even the developers hadn’t thought of is a success.”
The Best Nintendo Exclusive went to “Pikmin 3” for the Wii U; Best Sony Exclusive was awarded to “The Last of Us” (makers of the “Uncharted” series); and, not surprisingly, “Halo 4” earned Best Xbox 360 Exclusive, Best FPS and Best Multiplayer.
“When Bungie left the ‘Halo’ franchise in the hands of 343, people wondered what to expect,” notes the post. “They wondered if the new studio could live up to the staggeringly heavy burden of taking charge of one of the most iconic franchises in gaming history. Not only does it look like they can match the previous ‘Halo’ games, there is a very good chance they will blow the rest away.”
Additional winners include Best Action Game: “Assassin’s Creed 3,” Best Digital Download: “Quantum Conundrum,” Best MMO: “Planetside 2,” Best RPG: “South Park: The Stick of Truth,” and Best Sports Game: “NBA 2K13.”
The Best Sleeper of E3 was awarded to “Beyond: Two Souls”: “Developer Quantic Dreams has been known for taking risks and creating games that play with the conventions of gaming. This game is just astounding. The facial animation is arguably the best ever to grace a game, and with the main character being created by Academy Award Nominee Ellen Page, this game promises to be an exhibit in the ‘games as art’ discussion.”
Check out the Digital Trends post for a full breakdown of the winners and each category’s runners up.
Asus unveiled the 18-inch Transformer AiO tablet at Computex last week. For many, the device may seem heavy and awkward next to popular tablets such as the 9.7-inch iPad.
“However, it also showcases what an ideal Windows 8 product might look like, and this product has an interesting twist: In tablet mode, it acts as an Android tablet,” notes Rob Enderle for Digital Trends. “Now, getting Windows and Android to play nice is likely a losing game, but what if this product instead ran Windows 8 and Windows RT (the ARM version of Windows 8)? Then it actually could be very interesting.”
“The Asus Transformer AiO is designed to boot two operating systems, and appears to shift from Windows 8 to Android when you pick up the display and turn it into a tablet,” adds Enderle. “If you were to replace Android with Windows RT, it would then switch from Windows 8 x86 to Windows RT, giving you a dedicated tablet experience in tablet mode and a PC experience when it is in its docking platform.”
Enderle also comments that the screen size may not be such a bad idea, since it falls between current tablet and desktop PCs — and may open up new possibilities for the use of tablets, especially if Asus considered replacing Android with Windows RT.
“Like most of you, I doubt this will happen,” he writes. “But were it to have the right backing, the right software, and the right user experience, bigger could be better. Asus, which is a rapidly rising star, could surprise the market.”
Food and beverage operator OTG plans to include 7,000 new iPads at airports over the next 18 months. The company has been testing the service at LaGuardia Airport by offering use of 300 iPads to its diners.
The planned roll-out includes dining locations at LaGuardia, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and Toronto Pearson International Airport.
“Using OTG’s custom browser, diners will be able to use the iPads to order meals through a visual menu, surf the Web, check their Facebook and Twitter accounts, get up-to-date flight information and play games,” reports Digital Trends. “Security is assured by simply hitting the home button, at which moment any personal information and browsing history will be wiped from the tablet.”
“We believe this to be the largest deployment of consumer-facing iPads in the world, and for us, it’s just the beginning,” explains OTG chief exec Rick Blatstein. “We’re marrying culinary excellence at the airport with new media. In addition to the content we are already offering, we see this as a significant opportunity for broader deployment of digital content from movies to news to games.”
In related news, Scoot Pte has replaced two tons of its bulky in-flight entertainment systems with iPads in an effort to save fuel. “The tablets helped the carrier cut 7 percent off the weight of planes obtained from parent Singapore Airlines Ltd. (SIA) even after a 40 percent increase in seating,” reports Bloomberg.
Economy passengers will be charged a rental fee of $17 U.S. to rent iPads loaded with movies, TV shows, music, and games. Business class passengers will have free use of iPads.
Twitter has made some significant improvements to its Facebook integration including support for business pages, images, and links to hashtags and usernames.
“We have fixed many issues with the Twitter for Facebook integration, including the ability to post to Facebook Pages, and added some new features,” a Twitter spokesperson explained to The Next Web. “The updated Twitter for Facebook integration now includes additional rich media experiences related to the first photo, URL, @mention or #hashtag in the cross-posted Tweet.”
Those who have already linked their accounts will need to update the connection via their Twitter profile settings page.
“The resulting integration is pretty impressive. When a tweet includes a photo, for example, the corresponding Facebook status update includes a thumbnail and link to click through to view the full photo, and other images from the user, on Twitter,” notes TNW.
The post suggests that the integration may be significant in that it is likely to send many of Facebook’s 900 million users to Twitter. Additionally, it could leave Google+ in the cold: “The Google API requires services to reciprocate the data share and, since Facebook does not, a disconnect between two of the world’s most influential sites — which know more about Internet users than almost any others — has developed.”
A new study from online measurement company comScore debunks the notion that Facebook ads are ineffective.
According to comScore, the recent Reuters survey that says 80 percent of users do not purchase products based on Facebook advertisements is inaccurate because “people generally don’t like to believe that advertising actually has an effect on their behavior.”
“ComScore, meanwhile, says it can measure both online behavior and offline purchases, and can connect the two,” notes AllThingsD, adding the disclaimer that Facebook is a comScore client (the two produced a study last summer analyzing how brands use the social network).
Additionally, while Reuters suggests that Facebook users are using the site less than they were six months ago, comScore counters that “time spent per user is actually up a few percent in that period.”
“ComScore says that Facebook ‘earned media’ ads — the kind that Facebook users distribute on their own, via ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ — do help sell stuff,” explains the article. “In their words, the ads have a ‘statistically significant positive lift on people’s purchasing of a brand.'”
Netflix recently announced that it will provide its video streaming services through the company’s own content delivery network (CDN). The network of in-house servers currently handle 5 percent of Netflix streaming traffic.
“Called Open Connect, the service will help Netflix cut the umbilical cord to commercial CDN providers like Limelight and Level 3 and will bring it closer to the cable and telco ISPs ultimately responsible for delivering its movies and TV shows,” reports GigaOM.
Open Connect will offer ISPs the option of connecting directly to Netflix or caching content on their own servers. The company hopes to coax ISPs to use its CDN by waiving Internet exchange fees and sharing open source designs for server hardware and software.
“The world’s other major Internet video provider, YouTube, has long had its own content delivery network,” explains the Netflix blog. “Given our size and growth, it now makes economic sense for Netflix to have one as well. We’ll continue to work with our commercial CDN partners for the next few years, but eventually most of our data will be served by Open Connect.”
GigaOM notes that some ISPs have their own CDNs and charge content providers to cache content, while others “actually earn a paycheck from commercial CDN providers to host content servers on their networks. With the Open Connect, those revenue streams would go away. But if ISPs were to take Open Connect into their networks they could save considerably on network transport costs by moving the source of Netflix’s enormous traffic flow closer to their customers.”
Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, believes 3D movies will eventually prosper and impact the way stories are told, despite a recent downturn of the format’s popularity in the U.S.
“Slowly but surely, it is regaining the regard it was first held in. Internationally, it continues to explode,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.
Katzenberg cites a better sensory experience as the technology’s driving force. “It amplifies all of the feelings,” he noted. “There is better engagement and involvement with all of the characters.”
The cost of 3D remains a challenge — and in the wake of “Avatar,” consumers experienced a flood of disappointing 3D films. “There was some crummy stuff put out there for a while,” Katzenberg said. “People only like it when it’s really good.”
“While he didn’t name any movies, many of the about 125 3D movies released in modern times have been panned,” notes NYT. Production costs and bad scripts are not the only issues. Katzenberg suggests new editing techniques need to be employed.
Noting that 3D glasses are an additional hindrance for some moviegoers, he predicted: “When science delivers, it will be ubiquitous.”
The Society for Information Display has selected the winners for Display of the Year, Display Component of the Year, and Display Application of the Year.
Display of the Year goes to AU Optronics’s 55-inch, 4K x 2K, 2D/3D switchable glasses-free TV. According to Information Display: “AUO’s proprietary display made its debut in Japan in December 2011 and is currently the world’s first 4K x 2K TV display, as well as the largest glasses-free 4K x 2K 3-D TV display commercially available.”
“The display features a 4K x 2K (or ‘quad-HD’) resolution of 3840 x 2160 for vivid and lifelike 2-D images,” notes the article. “Meanwhile, a simple switch by the viewer converts the image instantly into 3D format, with 3D support for up to nine positions based on the TV’s built-in face-tracking camera.”
Qualcomm’s Mirasol Display Technology earned the silver award for Display of the Year.
Display Component of the Year was awarded to Nanosys’s Quantum-Dot Enhanced Film (QDEF), which uses quantum dots to create a pure-white backlight for LCDs. The backlight produces a wide color-gamut resulting in vivid colors that are more true-to-life.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note took Display Application of the Year. The Galaxy Note is a portable communication device that combines a smartphone and a tablet. The device includes a 5.3-inch, 800 x 1280 pixels AMOLED display that can handle deeper blacks than LCDs and 95 percent of natural colors.
The silver award for Display Application of the Year goes to Perceptive Pixel’s 82-inch Projected-Capacitive Unlimited Multi-Touch and Stylus LCD.
Mozilla launched a new version of Firefox on Tuesday that features a number of speed improvements and layout upgrades.
Firefox 13 includes new shortcut icons that offer direct access to downloads, add-ons, bookmarks and history, syncing across devices, and more.
Additionally, the “Restore Previous Session” icon opens previous tabs used the last time Firefox was open.
“Similar to Google Chrome, Mozilla plans to use the Start Page as a gateway to enter the Apps Market in order to help users find new extensions to install. The Start Page can be pinned as an App Tab in order to allow users quick access to the shortcuts,” reports Digital Trends. “Also similar to Google Chrome, Mozilla has added support for nine thumbnails that display recently viewed sites when opening up a new tab.”
Those interested in downloading the new version can do so via the Mozilla site “or simply wait until the browser updates the software automatically over the next week,” notes the post.
Broadcast service provider NHK recently demonstrated a 33-megapixel Super Hi-Vision-format camera at the NHK Open House event in Tokyo.
The company claims the camera can shoot 7580 x 4320 video at 120 frames per second (that’s about four billion pixels per second).
NHK opted to boost the frame rate from 60 to 120fps once it was determined that moving objects appeared too blurry on Super Hi-Vision wall-size displays. The company also created a new analog-to-digital converter to address the video’s higher bitrate.
“The craziest thing is that this camera uses a 1.5-inch CMOS sensor that’s actually smaller than what’s found on conventional Ultra-High Definition sensors,” reports PCWorld. “It sounds like an impressive piece of tech, if a little gratuitous at this stage, given current HDTVs top out at 1920-by-1080-pixel resolution.”
“This 1.5-inch CMOS sensor is smaller and uses less power when compared to conventional Ultra High Definition sensors, and it is also the world’s first to support the full specifications of the Ultra High Definition standard,” notes DigInfo in its video report included in the post.
At the E3 Expo in Los Angeles this week, Nintendo unveiled its new Wii U console and Wii U Gamepad. According to Nintendo: “at its core, Wii U changes gaming, how you interact with your gaming friends, and it changes the way you enjoy your TV.”
Nintendo’s Reggie Fils Aime announced during the keynote that new partners will provide content to the Wii U, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and YouTube.
The Gamepad features a pressure-sensitive touchscreen and directional pad. It will also include an NFC reader/writer and a gyroscope/accelerometer, as noted earlier by ETCentric. The new controller enables viewing of multiple screens — on the TV and the Wii U Gamepad.
This two-screen group play gaming experience could be the prototype for a new in-theater gaming and socializing experience. It could also create a new category of “third location” places in competition with Starbucks and other coffee shops.
“The company is also introducing MiiVerse, which Nintendo refers to as a Main Street for gamers,” reports TechCrunch. “Each of your friends will be displayed there in avatar form, and you’ll be able to share screen images, send text messages, and display your recent scores within the bubble hovering above your Mii.”
The Wii U is expected for a holiday release. No pricing information was provided.
Boxee has launched Cloudee, its new cloud storage solution. The company is currently offering the service as a free beta app for the iPhone.
Cloudee allows users to privately share videos without posting them on YouTube or other sites.
“For a while now, it’s been painful to get our personal videos to the TV screen — our Road Trips, Boxee Meetups, family videos with our kids,” explains Avner Ronen, founder and CEO of Boxee. “Some of these videos were on our phones, others on our laptop or network storage, and the ones we really wanted to see were always taken by our friends.”
“Already a de facto leader in the cloud computing space, Apple offers a similar service through its iCloud photostream service, which the company is expected to relaunch shortly,” reports MediaPost. “As with Apple customers, however, Cloudee is not insisting that its users sync their devices to gain access across multiple platforms.”
Boxee plans to launch a future paid version of its cloud service featuring unlimited video storage. Subscribers will have access to their video content via a Boxee Box or any browser.
Just two months following the release of its new Excite tablets, Toshiba has unveiled its summer lineup of ultrabooks, featuring three new devices.
Expected to hit shelves by June/July for under $1,000 is the updated Portege Z935 and the new low-cost Satellite U845. However, it’s Toshiba’s super widescreen Satellite U845W drawing the initial buzz.
Set for a July 15 release at $1,000 and up, the U845W runs the latest Intel Core processors and touts a 500GB hard drive, up to 8GB of RAM, a 1792 x 768 display, and a 32GB or 256GB solid-state drive.
“Instead of a standard widescreen, Toshiba has built this guy with an extremely widescreen, with a full 21:9 aspect ratio; the world’s first laptop with a screen wide enough to fully display a fully widescreen film,” reports Digital Trends. “We found watching movie trailers and other video to be quite enjoyable on the 14.4-inch super widescreen, which has large speakers on either side, which provide louder sound than I’ve ever heard from a laptop.”
The Satellite U845W includes an Ethernet port, SD card slot, HDMI port and three USB 3.0 ports.
“Toshiba is also positioning this as a multitasker’s dream laptop,” notes the post. “New software lets you easily create Window layouts and snap windows into new formations and grids. We’re not sure why Windows doesn’t already have these features, but we like them.”
At the Society for Information Display’s Display Week show in Boston this week, Corning unveiled Willow Glass — a strong and flexible glass that the company plans to use for OLED and LCD displays in smartphones and other wireless devices.
Corning claims the new technology will enable devices that are lighter, thinner and possibly less expensive to manufacture.
“Corning expects Willow Glass will eventually lead substrates to be manufactured ‘roll-to-roll’ instead of ‘sheet-to-sheet’ — similar to how newspapers are printed,” explains Engadget.
The cousin to Corning’s Gorilla Glass, the new ultra-thin glass can withstand heat up to 930 degrees Fahrenheit, and could potentially lead to the production of curved displays that could be wrapped around a device or structure.
“Corning Willow Glass is formulated to perform exceptionally well for electronic components such as touch sensors, as well as leveraging glass’s natural hermetic properties as a seal for OLED displays and other moisture and oxygen-sensitive technologies,” notes the press release.
In addition to CE devices such as smartphones and tablets, the technology may be used for other applications including solar cells and lighting.
The Engadget post includes the Corning press release and a brief video demo.
The International Telecommunications Union has agreed to a new draft recommendation on tech details for Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV).
Interestingly, the ITU has agreed on a draft recommendation for two resolutions — 3840 x 2160 and 7680 x 4320.
“The resolutions will be called 4K and 8K,” reports SlashGear. “The 4K standard will have a resolution of 8-megapixels with the 8K version getting 32-megapixels.”
There is no timetable for the commercial release of UHDTV, but the post suggests it may not take too long, considering the recent decline of global TV sales and slow adoption of 3D TV.
“However, it could take much longer for broadcasters to adopt higher-resolution programming,” notes SlashGear. “The first place to see higher-resolution images would likely be from movies on Blu-ray or other formats.”
Digital Trends offers its picks of the best products featured at E3.
