Razer Dominates CES With New Tech

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Razer is no stranger to accumulating a strong, loyal audience of gamers, between its release of devoted computers, laptops and accessories that really dial in to the gamer/broadcaster experience. For this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, however, it’s really gone all out, with the introduction of three new projects that will no doubt help it push forward into 2015.

First off, the company has introduced the Forge TV, an Android-based microconsole that connects to a television and provides players the opportunity to play their mobile games on a viable, affordable new platform (it’s due to sell for $99, or $149 with the controller). However, the real key component here is the Cortex: Stream technology, which will enable players to stream their PC gaming sessions as well, capable of working with supplementary Razer peripherals. The device will launch this spring.

Next up, the Open Source Virtual Reality platform will make it much easier for developers and gamers to access their favorite programs, using a certifiable platform that supports a number of game engines, including Unreal Engine 4. The device will launch sometime this spring, for the very affordable price of $199, and should no doubt be a key entrant in the forthcoming virtual reality battle – especially with its support of supplementary VR devices (like the Oculus Rift) and platforms like Windows, Linux and Android.

Finally, the Nabu X provides the company with its less expensive entry into the wearable tech market, with a smart-band that delivers notifications from smartphones and tracks fitness data through a number of light-up indicators and a small OLED private message screen. The device will launch at $49.99 later this spring, although key Insiders on the company’s forums can pick it up for as cheap as $19.99 much sooner.

Min-Liang Tan, the chief executive of Razer, had a chance to speak with VentureBeat about the forthcoming devices, which he feels will provide the company with a huge push through 2015. His full interview with the site is below, and features some of the new tech in action.

Valve Announces New ‘DOTA 2’ Tournament

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Last year’s International DOTA 2 tournament, which was hosted by Valve when it took place in Seattle last year, was a triumphant success for both the company and its fans, as players battled for four days before Chinese team Newbee was awarded the top prize of $5 million – the highest ever given in an eSports-related tournament.

Now, it looks like Valve is ready to do it all over again. Polygon has reported the official dates for the next International DOTA 2 tournament, which will take place once again in Seattle from August 3rd through the 8th – an expansion of six days over the original tournament’s four.

Once more, 16 teams will take part in sessions surrounding the MMO-based DOTA 2, with a chance to win big money and prizes. Team invitations are expected to be sent “shortly after” May 1st, according to the company.

Although venue details and a prize pool weren’t mentioned as of yet, the high popularity of the original event could see an even bigger amount of money offered as the grand prize to the best DOTA 2 team. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the top honors granting something along the lines of $7 million – or perhaps even more.

Valve hasn’t provided ticket details as of yet, but the International is likely to be broadcast online again for those who want to watch the action. The company has already provided the release date “so that you’re able to start making room in your schedules.”

One interesting fact with the International 2015 is that it will coincide with another popular game event, the Gamescom convention, which takes place in Cologne, Germany around the same time this year. The original International tournament, also hosted by Valve, originally took place at this venue back in 2011. (Obviously, it’s a much, much bigger deal now.)

There’s no question that this year’s International will once again push the growing activity of eSports to a whole new level, just as 2014’s tournament did.

‘Puzzle & Dragons’ Adds Mario For 3DS Version

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For several months now, GungHo Online Entertainment’s Puzzle & Dragons has been a worldwide mobile hit, drawing in millions of players and a booming revenue for the company. However, its latest move will see the series expand outside of the mobile front, moving to a whole new platform – and with a unique partner in tow.

Nintendo will team up with the mobile publisher to bring Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition to its newer 3DS game system on April 29th in Japan, for the price of around $33 (4,000 yen), according to VentureBeat. This mega-partnership should be a financial boon for both companies, with Puzzle & Dragons gaining new attention on a different platform, while at the same time featuring the highly popular Mario and company in a new setting.

GungHo has released a previous version of Puzzle & Dragons for the platform, titled Puzzle & Dragons Z, but obviously the Super Mario edition is a much bigger deal, featuring the famous plumber and a few of his friends and foes, who take part in each of the match-3 battles. As you can see in the video below, which was unveiled last night during GungHo’s most recent presentation in Japan, there are plenty of familiar characters to go around.

Right now, the game is only slated for a Japan release, and there’s no word on a release in other markets yet. However, with the Electronic Entertainment Expo around the corner – and Nintendo’s penchant for making announcements through online Direct presentations – it’s likely to be made official in just a few weeks’ time, probably around the same time that the new Nintendo 3DS model gets a release date in the USA and other parts of the world.

And given Puzzle‘s success in the U.S. market – it’s doing fairly well in its own right on our shores – it’s not likely that Nintendo would dismiss the idea of releasing it worldwide. Considering Mario’s popularity with previous crossovers – like his appearance in EA Sports’ NBA Street Vol. 3 and SSX On Tour – it’s bound to happen.

 

Creative Assembly Declares ‘Total War’

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A few weeks back, we reported the news that Creative Assembly was expanding its Total War franchise to include a new real-time strategy twist, in a new product titled Total War: Arena. It’s a unique move for the company, and one that’s likely to increase its audience with both a free-to-play approach and multiplayer support for up to ten would-be gladiators.

In an interview with VentureBeat, creative director Mike Simpson provided a few more details about the expansion, and also talked a bit about its latest expansion of the series, Total War: Attila, which should also be making the rounds this year.

When it comes to development, Simpson explained, “We have five teams. The original core team is working on the main game, Attila, at the moment, and it’s still the same size as it was, or just slightly larger than on the previous project. So it’s not like we’re diluting the main team in order to do more projects. The main team will always be focused on single-player historical strategy games. All of these offshoots, though, we’ll try different things. Some will work well, some not so well, and we’ll just keep going.”

Regarding longevity, on the same level as Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, Simpson noted, “One of the unusual things about the original Shogun is that it sold more copies in its second three years than in its first three years. The rest of the brand has grown and people would go back to pick up a copy of Shogun. These games last a very long time. People play them for four, five, six years after release. Out of that 850,000 player base that we have every month, some will be playing Empire, Napoleon and so on.

“As we keep going, one that that we’ll end up doing is supporting games for much longer than we have in the past. It’s not like it was five or 10 years ago where you release a game and once it’s out the door that’s it. One of the five teams is now dedicated to ongoing support for previous products.”

Moving over to Attila, Simpson stated, “The idea is that playing the Romans is an epic difficulty in that game. In the real world, of course, they failed, or the Western Romans failed. The Eastern Romans succeeded and lasted another thousand years. It’s doable, but it’s difficult.”

The team is certainly large enough across both projects to keep the studio busy for some time. “In the whole studio, there’s more than 300 of us now,” said Simpson. “100 or so are the console team who just finished Alien: Isolation. We’ve always had two separate halves of the studio. There’s always been a console action game side. In fact, they were there first. When I joined there were six people doing sports games for EA. Total War is about 170 people now.”

No doubt both Arena and Attila will make big waves for the company when they’re published by Sega for PC later in the year.

The full interview can be found here.

China’s Console War May Have To Wait

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Don’t mark your calendars for the impending Chinese console wars just yet: Sony, scheduled to release their PlayStation 4 in Asia’s largest economy on January 11, has delayed its launch indefinitely due to “various factors”.

Reasons for the delay were unclear; though Sony’s Computer Entertainment division has declined to give a new release date nor specifics, a source in China pointed to difficult negotiations with local authorities as the culprit.

The PlayStation 4’s announced release was seen as a major milestone in China’s slowly opening gaming market, as the country had recently lifted a 14 year ban on foreign gaming consoles in time for Microsoft’s September launch of the Xbox One.

Even if Sony does manage to release the PlayStation 4 at a later date, they are expected to face an uphill battle against the country’s love of PC and mobile games. Over 527 million Chinese citizens own a smartphone; advertisers are flocking to handheld devices, following trends seen in the United States and elsewhere around the globe.

Though Sony says they are ready and willing to work with Chinese censors on releasing a region-appropriate product, they will still be faced with the task of bringing consoles to an entire generation largely unfamiliar with their existence, a task Microsoft is already trying their hardest to accomplish.

Facebook Flexes Their Video Muscle

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Facebook, eager to sustain their position as the world’s biggest social network, released a post today designed to remind consumers and brands of their video prowess.

The post, released on the network’s Facebook Media blog, is long on both information and pure statistics. Noting that they are “increasingly seeing a shift towards visual content on Facebook,” Facebook drops their first takeaway by revealing that the number of on-site video posts per person has increased 75 percent worldwide and 94 percent in the United States in just the past year.

This shift towards video, of course, carries natural consequences for the composition of the News Feed. Facebook acknowledges this fact, stating that the number of clips “from people and brands” in the News Feed is up 3.6x over the past year.

Facebook now averages over a billion video views a day; 50 percent of American Facebookers watch at least one video every day, while 76 percent claim they “tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook.”

All these statistics are well and good and make Facebook’s place as a viable competitor to YouTube quite clear, but what does it all mean for content creators and marketers

Facebook has that angle covered in their post, too, offering advice for creators and brands alike by suggesting they take advantage of video’s meteoric rise and their autoplay feature to post timely, succinct clips capable of capturing someone’s attention from the start.

Indeed, creators and brands alike should take heed as the ever-increasing importance of mobile places a greater emphasis on to-the-point, shareable content.

Old To New Media, Rooster Teeth Does It All — and Better

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By Sahil Patel

Before multi-channel networks stormed YouTube, there was Rooster Teeth. Hell, before YouTube even existed, there was Rooster Teeth. The digital studio and network, founded in 2003, has been a fixture in online video ever since they thought it would be funny to create a series of animated videos using in-game player models from Microsoft’s dominant “Halo” franchise.

That show, known to many as “Red vs. Blue,” has since grown to 12 full seasons and a five separate mini-series — some of which have been financed by Microsoft itself. But that’s not why Rooster Teeth was the best network of 2014.

Since 2003, Rooster Teeth has grown from an online video production company to a multi-faceted business that includes original programming, branded content, a YouTube network, a podcast network, video games, and live events. Its seen “innovative, next-generation, disruptive” (pick your adjective) businesses rise and fall on the web, and it still stands, profitable and growing.

“We have gotten a lot of credit for having very progressive business models — live events, subscriptions, home video,” says Rooster Teeth co-founder and creative director Michael “Burnie” Burns. “But really for us, those are fundamentals. When we started this, there were no other ways to monetize content.”

Read the rest of VideoInk’s interview with Rooster Teeth…

This article was originally posted on VideoInk and is reposted on [a]listdaily via a partnership with the news publication, which is the online video industry’s go-to source for breaking news, features, and industry analysis. Follow VideoInk on Twitter @VideoInkNews, or subscribe via thevideoink.com for the latest news and stories, delivered right to your inbox.

Game Consoles Are The New TV

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For decades, if you wanted TV channels you either had an antenna or a cable subscription. In the last few years many shows have become available over the Internet or through streaming services, but they aren’t arranged in channels in the same way that cable TV presents the content. However, coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show this week, a pair of new services intends to bring TV programming to a new platform: Your game console.

First up, PlayStation Vue, which was initially announced last year, has finally been given the go-ahead to launch commercially in early 2015, according to Shacknews. The service has been in beta for the last few weeks, but Sony has confirmed it’s finally moving forward over the next few months, ready to be made available on PlayStation consoles first (both PS3 and PS4) before moving on to additional Sony and non-Sony televisions and other products. This includes tablets and mobile devices, like Apple’s iPad and iPhone line-up.

Pricing and availability details haven’t been revealed yet, but with Sony talking with several partners on the service, it’s likely to be worth it to those who are looking to do away with their skyrocketing cable bills.

Meanwhile, Microsoft will be getting its own shot at a broadcasting service. Dish Network’s Sling TV, which recently launched with a number of live TV networks across an Internet connection (for a convenient price of $20 a month), will be making its way to Xbox One in the months ahead, through a special app that can be downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

“Sling TV is an over-the-top, television service that will deliver live sports, lifestyle, family, news and information channels, Video-On-Demand entertainment, and the best of Internet video for $20 per month,” said the Xbox Wire announcement. “With Sling TV, there’s no commitment, contract, credit check, hardware installation or hidden fees. Confirmed channels include ESPN, ESPN 2, TNT, TBS, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network and Disney Channel, with more to come. And Xbox One will be the exclusive gaming console when it launches in the coming weeks.”

Between these services, gamers may never feel the need to click on a cable box again. That is, if they perform up to snuff once they get out of beta and onto the marketplace, of course . . .

New iPhones Grab Market Share

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Since their release last fall, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have been doing big business for Apple – and taking away some of  the market share Android phones have garnered, according to a report from TechCrunch.

Using numbers provided by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech’s yearly figures (based on the first three months to the end of November 2014), Android actually lost a share in the U.S. for the first time since September 2013, based on the strong sales of Apple’s new devices.

Android has had a huge hold on the “phablet” market for some time, but this is the first time that a real threat has emerged with Apple’s larger devices. Kantar reports that the rate of those switching from Android to iOS remained around 18 percent – a “stable” number – and while that’s not a significant enough number to cause complete worry, it does mark an interesting shift in the “phablet” market, even though they’re still generally phone devices.

Android had a 50.4 percent share of sales over the three months from November 2013, although since then, it’s dropped down to 48.4 percent. Meanwhile, iOS has managed to increase by 4.3 percent, to a total of 47.4 percent – just one percent away from its competition. Meanwhile, Windows Phone dropped 1.6 percentage points, and others (like BlackBerry) dropped an additional 0.4 percent around the same period.

Meanwhile, Android had a bigger drop overseas in the U.S., with a decline of 6.7 percent over the previous year, down from 56.4 percent to 49.7 percent for 2014. iOS, meanwhile, jumped a staggering 12.2 percent, up to 42.5 percent – not as close as the race in the U.S., but still getting there.

Across five of Europe’s largest economies (including the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain), the general percentage drop for Android was 3.2 percent (to 66.8 percent), while iOS rose 6.3 percent (to 23.8) percent. Windows Phone barely hung on in third with 8.3 percent.

More statistics can be found here. Could 2015 be the year that iOS turns the tide in the “phablet” market

Hollywood Preps For Virtual Reality

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Virtual reality is prepared to have its biggest year yet, with the likes of Samsung, Sony, Google and Oculus VR set to debut their hardware at some given point this year. But are Hollywood studios prepared to keep up with the technology

Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey already stated that content is just as vital to the experience as the headsets themselves. “Without content, nobody would be interested in this whole virtual reality thing.” So, obviously, having the right partners in tow would be a crucial move.

Video games will play a big part in that, but Hollywood studios need to keep up as well, with production studios ready to make the transfer to a whole new world. Variety recently reported on studios truly to make this jump, although some aren’t quite sure where it will exactly go.

“There are no real marching orders, because there’s no defined place where things will end up,” said Ted Schilowitz, leader of the Fox Innovation Lab for 20th Century Fox studios. “You have to be very nimble at this point.”

Consumers could play a big part in the virtual reality demand, especially with the introduction of new headsets on the market. But now it’s a matter of how effectively content is used to transport them into another world, based mainly on Hollywood franchises and/or original ideas.

Some have already experimented with this in the past, particularly at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, with Oculus-based demonstrations based on Pacific Rim, Batman, X-Men: Days of Future Past and Into the Storm, amongst other franchises. Studios are also stepping up with original efforts, like the virtual reality-based movie Zero Point, being produced by Condition One.

“There is a lot of energy in Hollywood around immersive video as a new content type that they’re interested in exploring,” said Nick DiCarlo, vice president/general manager of immersive products and virtual reality for Samsung. “That all looks like real investment and the risk-tasking necessary to get something like this off the ground, so I’m very encouraged.”

However, some studios have taken a cautious stance due to trends dropping off, including the fading-out of the 3D television fad, but virtual reality has a much different approach. “We’ve learned you have to create the content for the experience: just converting what you’ve got doesn’t work. You don’t get the immersion you’re looking for,” said Warren Mayoss, head of technology product development for DreamWorks Animation.

Cory Strass-burger, producer for VR who previously worked with NBC Universal and Lionsgate, added, “The market is nonexistent really, so you have a lot of creative people wanting to make stuff for installation-based things.”

With the introduction of the devices, however, things could certainly take a turn – it just depends what market shows the most interest. “If VR is only ever for gaming, it is a good business,” added DiCarlo. “Expand it past gaming, it will be a great business.”

More details on the push for virtual reality content can be found here.