This is the first in our series of reboots that need the boot. Look for the next installments this Saturday and Sunday on Ars Technica.
There’s no movie franchise closer to my heart than 20th Century Fox’s Aliens series of movies—I grew up watching Alien and Aliens, and for better or for worse the movies helped make me into the upstanding individual I am today (Ha! Take that, child psychologists!). The best thing that can be said about the Aliens vs. Predator series of spin-off films is that they are at least fun popcorn fare—no one, not even the studio executives, could argue that the films are good by any stretch of the imagination.
But Aliens vs. Predator has for decades been a pairing that makes the fanboy heart race. Pairing two unstoppable killers against each other is a fun idea, and even I have to admit that it makes for an exciting video game. The AvP concept has been tried out many times on many different systems, but by far the best iteration of the formula was Monolith Productions’ 2000 title Aliens vs. Predator 2. It has a great single-player story split across three separate but equally interesting campaigns: one each for the titular alien and predator and a third for the humans, because it’s not AvP without some gun-toting Colonial Marines bringing the rock and roll to the party. The game also has a well-balanced multiplayer, but it’s not too well-balanced; I have plenty of not-so-fond memories of one particular LAN party where someone dominated an entire afternoon by expertly bouncing grenades around the map (cough-cough-JUSTIN-cough).
If you were among the select few that signed up for NVIDIA’s Shield newsletter then you’ve been able to pre-order the company’s curious handset for a few days now. The remainder of the gaming masses originally had to wait until Monday for their own turn, but that’s no longer the case — NVIDIA’s retail partners have jumped on the pre-order bandwagon too so you can now stake your claim on a Shield from Newegg, Gamestop, and Canada Computer starting today.
MicroCenter will also sell the Shield in June but it hasn’t yet gotten its pre-order page set up. Get yourself together, MicroCenter.
I’m still not convinced that the Shield will find a foothold outside of the geekiest mobile gamers, but our own Darrell Etherington recently took the thing for a spin and came away rather impressed. He even went as far as calling it “the way Android games should be played,” a sentiment I don’t completely disagree with — we’ve seen the quality of mobile games surge by leaps and bounds these past few years, to the point where they easily eclipse consoles of years past. While those mobile games have slowly come into their own, the control schemes that are forced upon us thanks to the advent of the touchscreen leave much to be desired. There’s still something limiting and unsatisfying about effetely pawing at a piece of glass (or worse, a resistive display — yuck), a sentiment that others have championed, too. Early reactions to the Shield are generally positive, at least where the hardware and control layout is concerned, so at least there’s that to look forward to.
But in the end, will the Shield sell? And what does NVIDIA hope to get out of it? As it happens, NVIDIA may not care all that much about pure sales volume anyway. Time’s Jared Newman spoke to NVIDIA GM of mobile games Bill Rehbock at I/O, who pointed out that the Shield was designed to highlight the sorts of high-end gaming experiences developers have crafted for Android, not to mention the power of the company’s Tegra 4 chipset. There’s little question that NVIDIA’s newest system-on-a-chip has got plenty of horsepower to play with, but it’s still hard to see the Shield as much more than an incredibly niche device that raises more questions than answers.
NVIDIA brought its new Shield handheld gaming system to Google I/O this year and showed off a near-production device. The Shield made its debut at CES this year, surprising most since it’s a consumer handheld device from a company that generally makes internal components. But it has some neat tricks up its sleeve, including a Tegra 4 chipset, 2GB of RAM, a 5-inch 720p display and 16GB of internal storage.
The Shield units available at I/O this week were all running Android and showing off Android games with hardware controller support, and none were demoing the PC game streaming that NVIDIA said would be coming to Shield as a beta when it comes to retail in June.
My experience with the NVIDIA was limited to just a few games, including the Epic Citadel demo that always gets trotted out to demonstrate amazing graphics capabilities on mobile devices. There were also a couple of playable cart racers in action, and all of the above performed well and really showed that the hardware is capable of rendering high-quality video smoothly and without any apparent effort. For a device that’s essentially a smartphone without the actual phone powers, but with more physical buttons for $349, that’s an important achievement to be able to claim.
Shield does its Android job well, and the hardware feels great to these gamers’ hands. Buttons are slightly clicky and the ergonomics are solid, and the thing doesn’t take up too much more space than an Xbox controller when the screen is folded down and it’s in travel mode. There’s mini-HDMI, which was outputting gameplay to a small HD television, and a micro-USB slot for charging. The onboard screen boasts “retinal” quality 294 PPI pixel density, which means video and games look silky smooth.
Maybe the best part is that NVIDIA has gone for a pretty near stock Android Jelly Bean experience, which a rep from the company told me was a conscious choice they made after first trying a more involved widget overlay that ended up making for a much less pleasant experience. Navigating the stock Android with hardware controls (you can also always use the touchscreen) is also surprisingly intuitive.
All that said, this is a strange device with a market that’s probably going to be pretty niche. Really, it almost seems like a reference device designed to show off the power of Tegra, but NVIDIA is actually shipping the thing, so those of us like me who actually have a hankering for this kind of hardware will really be able to buy it even if it doesn’t become a runaway success.
Remember NVIDIA’s kooky Project SHIELD tablet? The one it unveiled to an unsuspecting public at back CES? Well, it’s officially not just a “project” anymore — it’s a full-fledged product, and NVIDIA is aiming to get the SHIELD out the door this June complete with a $349 price tag.
To help manage demand for the curious gaming portable, NVIDIA is also preparing to take pre-orders. If you’ve been eagerly devouring what Shield details you could and have subscribed to the Shield newsletter, you’ll be able to lock down your unit starting today — the rest will have to wait until next Monday to get their pre-orders in.
What with all the flashing screens, dinging bells, and glazed-over customers absorbed in the games at hand, a Chuck E. Cheese arcade bears quite a resemblance to the slot machine section of a casino. Are kids, in fact, gambling in between their pizza and soda? Thanks to new legislation in Florida targeting Internet café sweepstake gambling operations, there’s an argument to be made that some Chuck E. Cheese games involve gambling and are therefore illegal. Since kids are the chain’s main clientele, that’s a problem for more reason than one. Many states have cracked down on Internet café gambling in recent years. Last summer, the Wall Street Journal reported on the efforts in places such as Ohio, South Carolina, and Michigan to shut down—or at least regulate—these cafes, which are filled with simulated slot-machine games and often operate totally out in the open in strip mall locations. While the games vary, most involve plastic swipe cards that are purchased by customers and give users a certain number of “sweepstakes” entries in games of chance played on video screens. The games, which offer cash prizes, have been especially popular among the elderly. “It has become my world,” one 70-year-old woman told the WSJ while inside her neighborhood gambling café in Ohio. Such Internet cafes began appearing in Massachusetts in large numbers around 2009, and in the summer of 2011, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley affirmed that these operations were illegal. “This kind of activity, gambling, is not allowed under Massachusetts law,” Coakley said at the time, according to the Boston Globe. “They are totally unregulated, there’s no oversight, and there is no protection for the consumer.” (MORE: The Real Reason We Should Cheer the Cellphone Unlocking Law) Business owners have argued that the games are legal sweepstakes because they allow anyone to participate for a few rounds without spending any money. “It’s not gambling,” the lawyer for one Internet parlor in western Massachusetts explained to the Springfield Republican. “It’s really paying for computer time.” Nonetheless, two of the largest such Internet
The Ouya is making its way out to backers even now (though my shipping notification still hasn’t arrived. Grrr.) and judging by early impressions, it’s no silver bullet to take down behemoths like Sony and Microsoft. The $99, Android powered console still isn’t fully formed exactly, but it’s doubtful that between now and June 25 it’ll take on giant-killer proportions. Likewise the recently-announced BlueStacks Android gaming console, which features a subscription-based pricing model, probably won’t alone topple the giants.
But combined, these and a slew of other devices including the GameStick, smart TVs from manufacturers, Steam Boxes, and even Google and Apple hardware are eating away at what was once a fairly exclusive field. It seems a lot of people are waiting for a watershed moment to signal a significant shift away from traditional console gaming to a new paradigm, but increasingly, it looks likely that what we’ll see instead is an erosion that more closely resembles glacial shift, but on a less geological time scale.
Slower Kinect sales are a good bellwether for the industry’s overall health, if only because it and devices like it are where console makers are turning to try to inject some fresh life into a market that had recently started to look fairly stale. To some extent, Kinect, Move and other gimmicks like the screen of the 3DS are an answer to incursions by mobile gaming and other alternatives. Just like point-and-shoot cameras needed differentiating features like long zooms to prove themselves relative to smartphone cameras, video games needed something new to reel in new buyers.
The new crop of challengers to the console gaming market, including Ouya and the new BlueStacks GamePop console, risks getting discounted by critics as just another round of devices like the GP2X Wiz or the Gizmondo, which had limited appeal and then faded into the background of video games history as little more than a minor footnote. But that’s taking too short-term and dismissive a view on what’s currently happening in the video game space. It’s true that, as ardent console gamers continually remind me, there will always be a demand for that type of content.
Increasingly, however, there’s a growing contingent of players that are fine saying, “if I can get it on my phone, why do I need it anywhere else?” and that’s a market that’s ripe for a living room transition like the ones being attempted by Ouya and BlueStack. It’s easy to discount these ahead of their full consumer launch, and I don’t expect them to have an immediate impact on console sales, but they are signs of a sure shift, and one that won’t go away, even if doesn’t provide the sort of bomb shock disruption that we’re so fond of identifying and championing.
Yahoo has just been gobbling up startups. In the last week or so, it has announced the acquisition of Astrid, GoPollGo, and Milewise. In fact, in a tweet today, Yahoo said that it has “added 22 entrepreneurs to our growing mobile team,” thanks to the three aforementioned companies — plus a mobile gaming startup called Loki Studios.
I’ve reached out to both Yahoo and Loki Studios for details about the deal, but the news seems to be confirmed on the Loki website, where the front page currently announces that the team is joining Yahoo:
It has been a difficult but immensely rewarding journey. We collaborated closely with an incredibly supportive community to continuously iterate and improve upon [Loki Sutdios' game] Geomon. We were fortunate to have been advised by some of the best mentors in the industry and befriended many of our peers along the way. We surmounted immense obstacles, formed tightknit bonds, and worked through a few too many sunrises.
Now, our journey continues. We are thrilled to be joining the exceptional folks at Yahoo!. We believe fully in their commitment to creating outstanding mobile products. We are excited to learn from, work with, and contribute to one of the most well-known pioneers of the tech industry.
The note is signed by seven Loki team members, so it sounds like they’re all joining Yahoo.
The startup had backing from DCM’s Android-focused fund and it was also part of the inaugural class at the StartX incubator for the Stanford community.
It’s not clear whether Yahoo will actually be doing anything with Loki’s technology, but in case you’re curious, the company says it was working on location-based games, starting with its title Geomon. The idea is to incorporate data about the user’s location — “including the weather, temperature, time of day, season, and geographic region” — into the game: “Therefore, playing our game on the beach on a warm, sunny day provides a different game experience from playing at home in the city on a cold, winter’s night.”
Update: Yahoo just sent me a statement announcing the deal.
Today we welcomed Loki Studios to the Yahoo! mobile team. Their experience in community and location-based mobile services is impressive and we’re excited to have them on the team.
The company said that it’s not disclosing the terms of the deal, and that Geomon will be shut down.
BlueStacks, the startup known for bringing Android apps to PCs and Macs, has been growing like a weed. Last week, the company announced that it had passed the 10 million user milestone, nearly half of which were added in the first quarter of this year. Today, hot on the heels of the news that OUYA has landed $15 million from Kleiner Perkins to bring its affordable, $99 Android-friendly gaming console to the masses, BlueStacks is firing back with some news of its own.
Looking to tap into a huge new audience, BlueStacks is today bringing those 750K-plus Android apps not just to PCs and Macs, but to TVs as well with its own gaming console and subscription service. The new package, called “GamePop,” includes a custom console and game controller for free, as part of its $6.99/month service. Well, actually, the console is free through the end of May, at which point BlueStacks will slap on a price tag.
The price of the console has yet to be determined, but the company tells me that GamePop has an “estimated value of approximately $100,” so one can probably expect the pricing to fall in that range — or five times that, depending on how saucy BlueStacks is feeling. Of course, $100 is the “estimated” value, and gamers can get their hands on the whole package for $84 (for a year of the service) now, so take that for what it’s worth. After May, it will probably be more like $184 for 12 months of gameplay.
Right now, gamers can pre-order GamePop from BlueStacks’ homepage (which redirects to gamepop.tv), with consoles expected to ship this winter. Naturally, for this early flight, BlueStacks is selling GamePop exclusively through its own site, but after the first round of shipments, likely beginning next year, expect GamePop to begin showing up in stores.
As for who is responsible for manufacturing and producing BlueStacks’ new gaming console, the company isn’t revealing the man behind the curtain yet. But considering the startup has already struck distribution agreements with several recognizable names in the PC ecosystem, like Intel, AMD, Asus, MSI and Lenovo, it’s probably safe to say that at least one of those companies played a hand in the design, production and distribution. Asus, for one, has the most Android experience, but that’s just speculation at this point.
BlueStacks unveiled GamePop at GDC, allowing developers to take an early look at the gaming service, but has yet to put any in the hands of either developers or reporters. Though, from the looks of it, the industrial design appears to bear some resemblance to D-Link’s Boxee Box.
In the big picture, with today’s announcements, GamePop and OUYA seem to be proving that there’s plenty of demand out there for an affordable gaming console. As Jordan said this morning, OUYA very deliberately set its price at $99 and will be offering games on a “free-to-try” basis, which founder Julie Uhrman says is a core tenet of OUYA itself. Unsurprisingly, that’s resonated with people.
OUYA has seen more than 12,000 developers sign up for its platform, 4,000 of which have signed up since March. What’s more, GameStop, Best Buy and Amazon have already agreed to sell its console, with availability expected to begin in late June. That gives the Kickstarter-born open console a head-start on GamePop in terms of availability and distribution partnerships. And, depending on the price of games after trial, a price advantage, too. So, depending on OUYA’s success this summer and fall, it wouldn’t be surprising to see BlueStacks tweak its pricing accordingly.
With some competition afoot, BlueStacks will be trying to incentivize potential customers with its content deals, which include a handful of top game developers, like Glu Mobile, Halfbrick and OutFit7, for example, as well as Intellijoy, Deemedya and Droidhen. More will be announced over the next few months, the company tells us.
The announcement of GamePop follows the startup’s move in February to bring its App Player software to Surface Pro PCs and other devices running Windows 8. BlueStacks’ arrival on Windows 8, combined with its existing deals with AMD, Asus and Lenovo, will see its software preloaded onto over 100 million PCs over the course of the year, which could potentially help BlueStacks find a reach and scale that’s unusual for a startup — in software or gaming.
Remember NVIDIA’s kooky Project SHIELD tablet? The one it unveiled to an unsuspecting public at back CES? Well, it’s officially not just a “project” anymore — it’s a full-fledged product, and NVIDIA is aiming to get the SHIELD out the door this June complete with a $349 price tag. 
