Author: Sean Patterson

A new studio founded by ex-Zynga employees today announced its official opening. The studio, named Proletariat Inc., has been working on an iOS game called Letter Rush, which will launch for Apple devices next week.

This comes just one day after Zynga announced yet more layoffs and studio consolidations.

The five founding members of Proletariat were employees at Zynga’s Cambridge, Massachusetts branch, which was unceremoniously closed in late October 2012 after the company announced poorer-than-expected third-quarter financial results. The team had worked on the Facebook game Indiana Jones Adventure World for Zynga, and now hopes to find mobile gaming success on their own. Individual members of Proletariat have worked on projects as diverse as Guitar Hero and Lord of the Rings Online.

“We have all known each other and worked with one another for so long that we’ve developed an organic way of making games together,” said Seth Sivak, CEO of Proletariat. “We all want to make successful games, both creatively and as a business. This team has been on both sides and knows how to find that balance.”

Proletariat’s Letter Rush will be a word-find game featuring leaderboards and multiplayer gameplay. The studio has already released another game called Hug The Sloth for iOS, which tasks players with hugging a sloth to earn different hats for the sloth.

Perhaps as a veiled criticism of Zynga, Sivak stated that the goal at Proletariat will be “to keep teams small and let highly skilled groups of creative people innovate.”

(via Joystiq)

Epic Games today announced the details of its “Season Pass” DLC bundle for Gears of War: Judgment.

For 1600 Microsoft Points ($20), gamers will get two DLC packs that will be made up of six multiplayer maps, two new multiplayer modes, and exclusive armor and weapon skins. Purchasers of the Season Pass will also get early access to new multiplayer maps.

In addition to this in-game content, Epic will be offering Season Pass subscribers a permanent multiplayer XP boost.

The junk-food extra XP tie-ins for shooters such as Halo were sketchy, but were limited by their physical nature and limited-time offers. Weekend XP bonuses don’t discriminate among players who don’t have extra cash to spend on DLC. Paying for this permanent double XP offer is, according to Epic, a way “to accelerate your ascent through the ranks.”

That’s the way Epic is promoting it, at least. Another way to look at it would be to say that players who don’t pony up a $20 tribute will only earn half XP.

True, extra XP in this case may not confer any winning advantages (unless you consider being a high rank winning), but regardless of whether Judgment‘s XP boost amounts to a pay-to-win scenario, it’s another in a long line of incremental DLC offers that are moving in that direction. While these types offerings are normal and accepted in low-cost mobile games and free-to-play games, seeing them pop up for AAA, $60 console titles is more than a bit disconcerting.

NASA this week announced that Mars rover Curiosity has successfully placed two small samples of rock powder into its “compact laboratories” for analysis.

“Data from the instruments have confirmed the deliveries,” said Jennifer Trosper, Curiosity Mission Manager oat NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The rock powder comes from the inside of a rock on Mars – the first sample of its kind to be collected. The powder was taken from a small hole that Curiosity drilled in a rock earlier this month. Last week NASA researchers were able to confirm that the rover had actually collected the powder.

The powder had now been placed into Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments. The CheMin instrument will examine the sample’s mineral composition, while the SAM instrument will determine its chemical composition. The analyses will take place over “the coming days and weeks.”

Both instruments were tested in late 2012 as Curiosity took several scoops of Martian soil while exploring the sandy “Rocknest” area.

The testing of the rover‘s hammering drill the successful rock powder sample gathering were described at the time to be “the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August.” Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) researchers at JPL have now declared Curiosity to be “fully operational.”

(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

It’s not quite Star Wars: Battlefront III, but today Sony will be releasing the Star Wars Pinball downloadable content (DLC) for Zen Pinball 2.

The add-on will cost $10 and includes three different tables: “Star Wars Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back,” “Boba Fett,” and “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” The content is available as “Cross-Buy,” which means it can be bought once and played on both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Zen Pinball 2 can be downloaded for free via the PlayStation Network.

It seems that Sony really is getting serious about cultivating free-to-play experiences on PlayStation platforms. The company today released the multiplayer portion of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception for free as well.

A preview for the “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” table has been posted by Sony. It shows Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano battling their way through the clone wars. 3-D animated sequences, or “main missions,” are activated by progressing through the game (in this case, lighting the “council” lamps in the table’s center).

TV Guide this week reported that Gillian Anderson, best known for her role as Dana Scully in X-Files, has been cast in a TV pilot for NBC.

Cast alongside Anderson is Rachael Taylor, known for her work on Grey’s Anatomy, Charlie’s Angels, and 666 Park Avenue. According to TV Guide, Anderson and Taylor will play sisters in the new show, with Taylor starring as an FBI agent and Anderson starring as the CEO of a major company.

The show, which doesn’t have a title yet, will involve Washington D.C. blackmail, conspiracy, and law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and Secret Service. It’s a conceit that sounds vaguely similar to Showtime’s hit show Homeland. The show is being headed by Rand Ravich, known as the writer/director of The Astronaut’s Wife and the executive producer of the NBC series Life.

NBC had better hope that their Ravich project or other pilots, such as Hatfields & McCoys, turn out well, because the network’s peacock feathers are beginning to fade. Just last week NBC was projected to come in fifth in the ratings sweeps that took place between January 31 and February 19. Though shows such as The Biggest Loser and The Office received modest ratings, failures such as Do No Harm and 1600 Penn pulled the network below the ratings for Spanish-language network Univision.

With the release of LEGO City Undercover just weeks away, Warner Bros. today announced that LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes will be coming to the Wii U console.

LEGO Batman 2 builds on the classic LEGO Batman by allowing players to take on the role of other D.C. Comics super heroes, such as Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Superman. It was also the first LEGO game to feature voice acting for the characters, instead of using mime routines and movie references to get the story across.

The Wii U port of LEGO Batman 2 will be using the Wii U GamePad to display an interactive map of Gotham City, and players will also be able to select characters on the GamePad. Players can also play the entire game on the tablet controller alone, or with another player that can have the TV to themselves. That’s a nice feature for everyone who knows one of the most frustrating things about LEGO video games is sharing same screen with a partner.

Even if LEGO Batman 2 is nearly one year old, its release on the Wii U is good news for Nintendo, which has had trouble convincing customers to buy its new console with its existing lineup of games.

Today Rovio, the creators of the Angry Birds and Bad Piggies games, announced that a new animated cartoon Angry Birds series is coming soon to computers everywhere. From the Rovio announcement:

What makes Bomb Bird so angry? Why is the King Pig the King Pig? And are those mischievous piggies ever going to get hold of the eggs?

It’s time to find out!

The cartoon, which evidently takes place on “Piggy Island” and stars both the pigs and angry birds, will premiere on the Angry Birds Toons website on March 16 and 17. New episodes in the series will be coming weekly.

A trailer for the series was also released by Rovio today. It shows that, thankfully, neither the pigs nor the birds will be speaking in the cartoon. Also, breakdancing piggies.

Back in January Sony released a teaser trailer for the single-player campaign in God of War: Ascension and announced that a demo for the campaign would be released in February. With only four days left in February, Sony has kept its promise.

The campaign demo for God of War: Ascension will be released via the PlayStation Network “later today,” according to a Sony blog post. The demo will feature a taste of the game’s new combat, new combos, and new systems.

In addition to the demo, Sony has also released a proper single-player trailer for the game. It contains a bit more detail and a few more monsters that haven’t already been seen, so it could be considered a bit spoilery. Really, though, Ascension is a prequel – there probably aren’t going to be any earth-shaking revelations revealed during the game.

[Warning: one possibly offensive word appears in this article]

On Sunday night, while the movie industry was celebrating its biggest night, satirical publication The Onion started a Twitter-tantrum by posting a no-holds-barred tweet meant to shock docile red carpet watchers. The tweet involved nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, who was up for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild. The tweet was vulgar and quickly deleted, but read:

Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013

The tweet was obviously meant to be shocking, but it seemed to have touched that American nerve that is super-sensitive to certain words, especially those that imply racism or sexism.

Though The Onion issued the internet version of a retraction by deleting the Tweet (why bother?), the sentence had already spread and the flame war had started. Sensing the need to go even further than retraction, The Onion CEO Steve Hannah has issued an apology on the publication’s website and Facebook page. From the apology:

On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.

No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.

Hannah also stated that The Onion has put in place “tighter Twitter procedures” and that the publication is “taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.”

Sales of Nintendo‘s Wii U haven’t haven’t been quite as high as the company had been hoping. In January, fewer than 100,000 Wii U’s were sold worldwide and Nintendo recently revised down its quarterly sales estimates.

So what’s Nintendo to do now that it appears to have a console flop on its hands? It could release exclusive games, of course, and the company did announce an exciting lineup at the end of January, but that doesn’t solve the problem in the near-term. There’s simply no compelling reason (other than maybe LEGO City Undercover) to buy a Wii U until titles such as the Yoshi Yarn game, Bayonetta 2, and the mysterious “X” are out.

In the meantime, it appears that Nintendo will be leaning on its consoles that have actually sold well. More specifically, Nintendo today announced that the redesigned Wii Mini will be released in the U.K. on March 22. The red, top-loading console was released in Canada last holiday season.

Despite the slim design of the box, the Wii Mini comes with a huge drawback: it has no Wi-Fi, and no other way to connect to the internet. That means no Virtual Console and no online Mario Kart. The Wii Mini is only for consumers who are fine with local multiplayer only, or who are only looking to catch up on the Wii’s singe-player experiences, such as Mario and Zelda titles or Xenoblade Chronicles.

In conjunction with the console announcement, Nintendo has also announced that it is adding new games to its Nintendo Selects titles. Mario Party 8, Wii Sports Resort, Mario Power Tennis, and Super Paper Mario will be available at the Nintendo Selects price when the Wii Mini launches.

Last spring Team Meat, the developers behind indie hit Super Meat Boy, announced that Super Meat Boy would be coming to iOS. Unfortunately it seems that a mobile port of the fast-twitch platformer is proving harder than expected. Earlier this month Team Meat announced that it would be suspending development on the title to work on its newest game, Mew-Genics.

Mew-Genics was announced last year as having something to do with cats, but the details were sparse until now. This weekend, Edmund McMillen, co-founder of Team Meat, detailed the game in a post to the Team Meat blog. The game is a bit hard to describe, but it can be boiled down to “cat lady sim.” From the blog post:

I think most would describe Mew-Genics as a cross between The Sims and Pokemon with a sprinkling of Animal Crossing and a dash of Tamagotchi , but at its core the game really isn’t like anything we’ve seen before.

McMillen goes on to relate a story from the testing phase of the project that involves cat violence, a cat that is afraid of food, a narcoleptic cat, and feline AIDS. Obviously, Mew-Genics will be imbued with the same twisted sense of humor that can be seen in Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac.

No release date for Mew-Genics has been announced, but with the new Meat Boy game on hold it seems that the game will hit Steam, iOS, Android, and possibly other platforms very soon.

Square Enix today announced that Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMix will be coming to the PlayStation 3 in North America and Europe. The game will be released sometime “this fall,” but no specific date was given.

The original Kingdom Hearts is an action RPG that became a hit for the PlayStation 2 due to its mix of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy-style characters and cartoon settings inspired by classic Disney movies such as Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. The main character, Sora, travels through these Disney-inspired worlds with Donald Duck, Goofy, and other classic Disney characters.

The HD 1.5 ReMix of the game will include improved HD graphics, new audio, and content from the Japanese-only release Kingdom Hearts Final Mix. The new contend includes new abilities, missions, cutscenes, and a “secret movie.” The game will also include the sequel Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories and the cut scenes from Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days.

The Japanese trailer for the game seen below gives a good idea of how the game’s new HD graphics look:

Mini-tablets may be the most popular announcement at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), but Sony still believes it has a chance at challenging the full-sized iPad.

Sony today announced that the Xperia Tablet Z will soon be available throughout the world. The 10.1-inch tablet will be available worldwide “from spring 2013.”

The Tablet Z is only 6.9mm thick, which Sony claims makes it the thinnest LTE tablet ever made. The tablet’s screen has resolution of 1920 x 1200 and 224 pixels per inch. It also features a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of ram and either 32GB or 64GB of storage. The front camera is 2MP, while the back one is 8MP. It includes all the connectivity options one would expect from a full-sized tablet, including LTE capabilities, NFC, and Bluetooth.

Meanwhile, Sony also announced that its Xperia Z smartphone, which was announced at this year’s CES, is now available worldwide. The smartphone has a 5-inch 1080p display, a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, and 2GB of RAM. In many ways it is similar to the Tablet Z, only smaller. The “neat” feature of the device, though, is that it is dust and water resistant. It’s a feature that is touted in the new ad campaign that Sony unveiled during its conference at MWC.

After HP bought Palm in 2010, the company promptly proceeded to run the webOS operating system into the ground with a series of lackluster products. The HP TouchPad was the company’s final official webOS product, and the company ended up dropping the tablet’s price to $100 after it became a marketplace failure.

In December of 2011, HP announced that is would publish the webOS source code and open-source it for developers who might want to use it. It was an honorable, yet disappointing ending for a mobile OS that was generally well-loved.

Today, as the Mobile World Congress is just beginning, CNET has broken the story that webOS may have been resurrected: LG has bought webOS from HP. According to the report, LG has purchased the webOS source code and all webOS-related patents, as well as webOS web sites, “related documentation,” and “engineering talent.”

LG isn’t looking to switch its smartphone lineup to webOS, though. Instead, the company told CNET that webOS software will be repurposed to power LG’s lineup of smart TVs. LG stated that a new location in Sunnyvale, California called LG Silicon Valley Lab will be headed by whatever is left of the “webOS team.”

No price has been mentioned for the deal, and HP has not yet commented on it. It is also unknown whether the Chubby Checker lawsuit will be affected as a result.

Nokia is to be commended for sparing everyone the groans a mini-tablet announcement would have caused. Instead of launching itself into that quickly-flooding category, the company decided to focus on what it is good at: budget-priced phones.

At the Mobile World Congress event today, Nokia announced several new Windows Phone 8 Lumia devices, including the Lumia 720 and Lumia 520, as well as budget phones called the Nokia 105 and Nokia 301.

The Lumia smartphones are similar in design to Nokia’s premium Windows Phone 8 devices, the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 822, but feature less expensive hardware. The Lumia 720, for example, features a 1GHZ processor and 512MB of memory, while the Lumia 520 has a smaller 4-inch display. The 720 will sell for €249 and the 520 will sell for €139. Both will be out in March.

The really interesting portion of Nokia’s announcements was the reveal of very inexpensive feature phones the company hopes to push in developing nations such as China.

The Nokia 105 will sell for just €15 and offers the bare minimum of features. It offers support for phone calls and SMS, and also features an FM radio, flashlight, and 35 days of standby battery power. The Nokia 301 is a small step up and offers a camera and more feature phone perks such as social media apps. It will retail for €65.

It seems that mini-tablets are the product that tech manufacturers have decided they need to sell in 2013. While Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad Mini dominate the category, the new flood of 7-inch to 8-inch tablets announced at this week’s Mobile World Congress will soon be lost to time as newer versions of popular tablets are announced.

The latest mini-tablet entry from the conference is the Slate 7 from HP. Instead of putting impressive components into their tablet, HP has cobbled together a low-cost entry that compares to Amazon’s original Kindle Fire, which was released in the fall of 2011.

The Slate 7 has a 1.6GHz dual core processor, a 7-inch screen with a 1024 x 600 resolution, and only five hours of video playback before needing to be recharged. The tablet comes with 8GB of internal storage and has a microSD card slot. The back camera is 3MP and the front one is VGA. It will come running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

The Slate 7 will come in one of two colors, silver or red, and will cost $169. Considering the older components in the tablet, $169 isn’t a terrible price, but it does raise the question of why HP didn’t go ahead and price the Slate 7 at $159, which is the price the original Kindle Fire, with similar specs, now sells for. If Amazon announces a Kindle Fire refresh soon and manages to drop the price of the Kindle Fire HD, the Slate 7 will look like a very poor offering in comparison.

Earlier this month is was rumored that Samsung would be unveiling its new flagship Android smartphone, the Galaxy S IV, on March 14 in New York City. It turns out this particular rumor was solid, as Samsung has now announced an event that will take place in New York on March 14.

The event is called “Samsung Unpacked” and is labeled as “Episode 1″ for 2013, implying that other “Episodes” could be scheduled for later this year. The event will begin at 7 pm EST and will be streaming live on the SamsungMobile YouTube channel.

Samsung isn’t playing this cagey the way Sony did with its recent PlayStation 4 announcement, however. The invitation photo posted to Samsung’s Facebook page plainly invites people to “come and meet the next galaxy.” Also, the story first broke when Samsung’s J.K. Shin, head of mobile communications, reportedly stated that the Galaxy S IV would be the subject of a March 14 announcement.

The Galaxy S IV is expected to be a big seller for Samsung, which last year began to dominate the high-end Android smartphone market. The device is rumored to have a 4.99-inch AMOLED display with a 1920 x 1080 resolution, a eight-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 13 MP rear camera.

Mobile World Congress is in full swing this week and it seems that the mini-tablet product category is set to be flooded in the coming months.

ASUS today announced three new devices, a 7-inch tablet and a 5-inch phone that can be docked within a 10-inch tablet.

The 7-inch tablet, dubbed the Fonepad, features a 1280 x 800 resolution screen and an Intel Atom processor. It will come with either 8GB or 16GB of internal storage and has an SD card slot. The front camera is 1.2 MP and the “optional” rear camera is 3 MP.

The Fonepad, in general is similar to the iPad Mini and the just announced Galaxy Note 8 from Samsung. ASUS is pricing the device competitively compared to the iPad Mini, starting a €219 ($249).

The other devices (or device) is the latest dock-able smartphone and tablet in ASUS’ PadFone lineup. The PadFone Infinity will be the successor to the PadFone 2, which was only just announced back in October 2012.

The Infinity’s 5-inch smartphone will have a 1.7GHz quad-core processor, 64GB of internal storage, and a 13-megapixel rear camera. Docking the device within the 10-inch “Infinity Station” will display the smartphone’s contents stretched to fit the tablet. ASUS claims the device will get up to 19 hours of 3G talk time before needing to be recharged.

The Infinity will be quite expensive, as the MSRP is €999 ($1,325, converted, though ASUS hasn’t stated a dollar price).

Samsung this week officially announced its newest tablet device, the Galaxy Note 8.

The 8-inch mini-tablet is the Korean manufacturer’s answer to the popularity of Apple’s iPad mini. The Note 8 features a similar size and hardware to Apple’s latest offering.

The Note’s screen features a 1280 x 800 resolution with 189 pixels per inch – slightly more than seen in the iPad mini.

On the inside, the Note 8 has a 1.6GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM. Different amounts of internal storage will be available, up to 32GB, and the device also has a microSD card slot. The front camera is 1.3 MP, while the back is 5 MP. The battery is 4,600mAh. There will be a Wi-Fi-only version of the Note 8 available, and a more expensive version with wireless data capabilities.

Since the hardware is so similar to the iPad Mini, Samsung is trying to differentiate the Note 8 by highlighting the difference in software. The Note 8 will, of course, come running a Google’s Android 4.1.2 mobile OS and come packed with all of Samsung’s proprietary software, such as the ChatOn app and Dual View, which allows users to use multiple apps simultaneously.

The Galaxy Note 8 will also ship with Samsung’s “S Pen” stylus. The tablet will feature heavy integration with the stylus using software that can detect the S Pen and offer contextual menus. The stylus can also be used to hover over different screen options to activate mouse-over-like capabilities.

Microsoft today revealed that a huge sale on Xbox LIVE Games on Demand titles will take place next week.

Over on his blog, Director of Programming for Xbox LIVE Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb revealed that the “Xobx Ultimate Game Sale” will begin on February 26 and run until March 4. During the sale, games could be on sale for “up to” 75% or 80% off.

Different games will be on sale each day of the week, and Hyrb will be tweeting out each day’s sale games through his Twitter account. Hyrb listed 61 games that will be going on sale sometime next week, but suggested that they were not the only ones. The games confirmed to be going on sale include some of the biggest titles of 2012, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Borderlands 2, and Halo 4.

What follows is the full list of titles already announced for the sale:

Assassins Creed, Assassins Creed 2, Batman Arkham Asylum, Batman Arkham City
Bioshock, Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Brotherhood (Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood), Call of Juarez, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Code Veronica, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements, Dead Island, Dirt 2, Dishonored, El Shaddai Ascension of the Metatron, Fable III, Fallout 3, Fallout 3 New Vegas, GRID, Halo 3, Halo 4, Halo Reach, Halo Wars, Kane & Lynch Dead Men, Left for Dead 2, Max Payne 3, Metal Gear Solid HD, Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat vs. DCU, Orange Box, Portal 2, Raccoon City, Rainbow Six Vegas, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6 , Red Dead Redemption, Revelations (Assassin’s Creed Revelations), Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution, Street Fighter IV, Street Fighter X Tekken, Super Streetfighter IV Arcade Edition, TC’s H.A.W.X., Tekken 6, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, The Darkness, The King of Fighters XIII, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, Tomb Raider Legend , Virtua Fighter 5 , and World at War (Call of Duty: World at War)