Bioshock Infinite Trailer Contest

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Fans of the BioShock Infinite will recognize Nico Vega from the “Infinite Beast of America Trailer”. Register now on the official Facebook page for a chance to win a copy of the game, a copy of Nico Vega’s “Fury Oh Fury” EP, a Bioshock “Murder of Crows” T-Shirt, and an autographed Nico Vega “Fury Oh Fury” poster.

iPhone Finally Comes To T-Mobile

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T-Mobile announced that it will start carrying Apple’s iPhone on its service. The iPhone 5 will come under the company’s new no-contract plans starting April 12 and can be pre-ordered starting April 5.

The company’s The Simple Choice plan drops two-year contracts for subsidized mobile devices in favor of wireless plans and full-price phones paid over installments. The iPhone 5 will sell for $99.99 down, plus $20 a month for 24 months.

T-Mobile will also carry the iPhone 4S for $69.99 down and $20 monthly for two years while the iPhone 4 will go for $14.99 down and $15 a month. “This is an important day for people who love their iPhone but can’t stand the pain other carriers put them through to own one,” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile USA,

The announcement comes as T-Mobile rolls out its new smartphone plans that will have users pay the full price of a phone over two years, but aren’t under contract. Plans start at $50 a month for 500MB of 4G data, plus unlimited talk and text; consumers can also choose a 2 GB plan for $60 monthly or unlimited 4G for $70 a month.

T-Mobile also announced its 4G LTE network is expanding to seven areas: Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Jose, and Washington, D.C. T-Mobile estimates more than 100 million Americans will have access to the 4G network by mid-year and reach 200 million by the end of the year.

Source: USAtoday.com

BioShock Infinite Gets Audio Mode For Pulse-Elite Edition Headset

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BioShock Infinite is here and with it will come the a new audio mode for the Pulse-Elite Edition Headset designed especially for BioShock Infinite. The first ever specially crafted audio experience exclusive to PlayStation is free for those that own the headset.

“Why a custom audio mode Irrational Games wanted to elevate the dark world of BioShock Infinite to a new level by providing a richer gameplay experience,” explains Todd Tokubo, Hardware Engineer at Sony Computer Entertainment. “We worked with them to take advantage of our new BassImpact technology embedded in the Pulse-Elite headset to create a sound profile that enables players to feel gunshots and explosions in a much more dynamic and powerful way.”

“Engineers on both teams worked together to tie the pulses from BassImpact to key audio elements in the game, creating a more immersive experience as you fight your way through Columbia as Booker DeWitt,” he continued. “We examined characteristics of sounds such as frequency and amplitude as well as gameplay data like attack times, then tailored the strength of the BassImpact actuator responses to complement those in-game sounds. This means that the pulse you feel from a gunshot will be different than the pulses you feel from an explosion. Irrational’s audio director Patrick Balthrop was overheard remarking that the game sounds ‘excellent’ on the Pulse-Elite. You can download the BioShock Infinite audio mode at no cost from the free Pulse-Elite Manager App which launched in December. You can find both on PlayStation Store.”

Also, from now until to April 9, 2013 when you buy BioShock Infinite you’ll get $20 off the purchase of the Pulse-Elite headset at participating retailers.

Source: Blog.PlayStation.com

King.com Has Over 100 Million Players Every Month

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King.com announced that the company’s games see 108 million players a month with 50 million daily active users. The company, which is celebrating its 10 year anniversary, also announced that it is rebranding itself simply as King.

“We have had lots of fun over the last 10 years making great games and we are honored to have acquired such a loyal fan-base,” said King CEO Riccardo Zacconi. “The exceptional growth of our mobile, Facebook, and cross-platform audience is a testament to the care and craft that goes into our games. We’re pleased to announce two new Saga games on Facebook with Papa Pear Saga and Farm Heroes Saga. These games build upon our Saga portfolio with new concepts that players are sure to enjoy.”

The second biggest Facebook developer sees 12 billion game plays per month; 49 million are accessing their games on mobile devices.

PS4: Mark Cerny Explains The Developer-Centric Approach

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Mark Cerny, the lead system architect for the PS4, said he wanted a developer-centric approach to the design of the system. After polling developers starting in 2008 on what they wanted, he got responses on unified memory and the use either 4 or 8 CPU cores.

“The biggest thing was that we didn’t want the hardware to be a puzzle that programmers would be needing to solve to make quality titles,” said Cerny, adding, “When I started talking to the development community, prominent middleware companies were in the mix at that time. It’s very important to us to have those engines on our platform. I have to say, also, the insights that you can get by talking to their top technology people — It’s quite nice to have those insights when doing the hardware design.”

Source: Gamasutra

Google Blocks AdBlock On Google Play Store

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Google has pulled the AdBlock Plus and other ad-blocking apps from the Google Play store. The web company says that such apps violate the Play Store’s terms of service, causing “interference with another service or product in an unauthorized manner.”

Wladimir Palant, creator of AdBlock Plus, isn’t happy with the move and sees this as “a course change at Google. Until recently the main distinction between Android and iPhone was that Android allowed you to install any app as long as it wasn’t malicious (meaning that it’s obvious what the app does). Google Play still allows apps stating ‘for rooted phones only’ but I wonder whether these are next on the list to be removed — each of them performs ‘unauthorized actions’.”

Source: WebMonkey.com

Android Continues To Outpace iOS Globally: StatCounter

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StatCounter Global Stats says that Android controls a 37.16 percent share of the mobile OS market in March 2013. By contrast, iOS saw its share of the mobile OS market at 27.2 percent this month.

Android platform is widely used in China, Mexico, Russia, across South America, the Middle East, and most of Eastern Europe. Usage of iOS, by contrast, is popular in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, U.K., and the U.S.

While Google has control of the worldwide market, iOS still controls 52.44 percent of the U.S. smartphone sales in March compared to Android’s 40.05 percent. Series 40, BlackBerry OS, and Windows Phone rounded the top five, respectively.

Samsung Electronics Co. CEO J.K. Shin is trying to expand the Android marketshare in the U.S. with its devices. “Innovation is what will get consumers to buy new devices. I don’t dwell on market share numbers, but I’m not satisfied with our market share in the U.S,” said Shin.

Source: LatinosPost.com

Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Sees 350,000 Downloads

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Uncharted 3‘s multiplayer has been downloaded over 350,000 times since going free-to-play. To celebrate this milestone, Naughty Dog community strategist Eric Monacelli outlined the studio’s monthly content release strategy, starting with the upcoming Oddball DLC pack.

“To keep that momentum going, as promised, we’re making new DLC available for purchase every month until June 2013. This month we’re recognizing Extraterrestrial Abductions Day – or a day around it anyway – by unveiling our Oddball themed character parts for your Uncharted 3 Multiplayer characters,” wrote Monacelli. “Why Oddball Well, these character parts defy classification as they don’t quite fit among the numerous other parts we’ll have coming out over the next few months, and Extraterrestrial Abductions Day is a bit of an odd holiday anyway.”

Source: Blog.PlayStation.com

Facebook Generated $2.8 Billion Via Games In 2012

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Facebook has announced that game developers generated $2.8 billion through the site in 2012, with more than 100 of them bringing in more that $1 million. It is also claimed that game installs have risen by 75 percent since this time last year, with a growth of 24 percent year on year in the number of people who actually pay to play games on the site.

“Anywhere in the games business we are investing heavily,” said Facebook’s head of game partnerships Sean Ryan.

Ryan also said that there are now more than 200 games on Facebook with over 1 million monthly active users, with 20 percent of daily visitors to the site also using it to play games. In the mobile realm, 55 percent of the top 400 iOS apps have Facebook integration and 263 million clicks to the Apple App Store and Google Play were directed from Facebook’s news feed.

Source: CNET