Author: Zach Walton

Look, I love Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. The Dark Knight Rises was probably my favorite movie of 2012, but Nolan’s “realistic” take on Batman meant that the fights couldn’t be as ridiculous as they sometimes are in the comics. That’s where WB Games and NetherRealm’s new fighter – Injustice: Gods Among Us – comes in.

WB Games have released two new “trailers” for Injustice today that shows a full fight between some of DC’s best. The first is a matchup between Batman and Bane, and the results are glorious. I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s just say that the Watchtower is going to need some major repair after all of this.

Next up is a matchup between Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn. This one is a lot more interesting, mostly due to Quinn’s arsenal of guns and toys. The real highlight of this match, however, is when Quinn is knocked into a separate room of Arkham, and accidentally bumps into one of the prison’s more violent inmates.

These first two fights are part of a larger series of trailers called “Battle Arena” that will presumably be showing off fights between all the characters thus far confirmed for Injustice. I really hope one of these fights will match up Deathstroke and Cyborg.

Injustice: Gods Among Us launches on April 16 for PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U.

Earlier this week, we heard that the House Intelligence Committee was going to reintroduce CISPA after working with the White House on a revised bill that sufficiently addressed the Obama administration’s concerns. The news of a reworked, and potentially privacy friendly, CISPA was good while it lasted because the bill’s co-sponsors aren’t going to change a thing.

The Hill reports that House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers and ranking member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger said that they will be reintroducing CISPA into the House next week. This new CISPA, however, will not be any different from the old one. You know, the bill that the White House supposedly hates and threatened to veto.

So, why did Ruppersberger say he was working with the White House on CISPA if they didn’t change anything? In a new statement, the Committee says that CISPA was “developed in close consultation with a broad range of private sector companies, trade groups, privacy and civil liberties advocates, and the executive branch.” If this is the same CISPA as before, I have a hard time believing the latter two groups had any kind of say at all in the formation of the bill.

Of course, the White House might be totally behind CISPA this time around. Privacy was a big buzzword last year, and standing in defense of it could have easily net Obama some votes in November. Now that his job is secure for the next four years, his administration might be more open to at least considering controversial bills like CISPA.

Oh, and for those privacy and civil liberties advocates that will undoubtedly come out against CISPA, Chairman Rogers thinks you got it all wrong:

“We’re talking about exchanging packets of information, zeroes and ones, if you will, one hundred millions times a second. So some notion that this is a horrible invasion of content reading is wrong. It is not even close to that.”

Good thing nobody knows how to capture and decode packets of information.

Windows Phone 8 has faced an uphill climb since it launched late last year. One of the many obstacles on its way to greatness was a lack of quality apps, but that’s been slowly changing.

Microsoft announced that popular music streaming service Spotify has finally launched on Windows Phone 8. Just like its apps on other devices, Spotify for Windows 8 will bring a premium music streaming experience to users for $9.99 a month.

Unlike its app for other devices, Spotify has received a noticeable redesign for Windows 8 to fit in with the design theme seen across all Windows 8 products. It now sports a clean design that’s only marred by a putrid yellow background. Here’s hoping you can change the colors.

Spotify is also offering its usual one month of free mobile service for Windows Phone 8 users who want to try it out. You can download the app for free here and start listening to what passes as popular music these days.

We brought you word last month that The Pirate Bay documentary – TPB AFK – would be launching sometime in early 2013. That day has finally come, and the film is now available to all those who want an inside look at the origins and continued operations of the most notorious site on the Internet.

The really interesting thing about TPB AFK is that the filmmakers are not only releasing the film for $10, but also releasing it for free via The Pirate Bay. It’s not like the filmmakers don’t want people to buy their film though. Instead, releasing the film for free ensures that more people watch it. Those viewers may even end up buying it if they like it.

So, how’s that going for them so far? In less than an hour, the $10 film has earned $21,641 according to the Web site. The majority of that has come from the 1,826 paid downloads thus far, but others have just contributed to the film through donations. The filmmakers are also selling pre-orders of the DVD for $23.

Of course, you may not want to pay $10 just yet to support a film you may not like. You also may not like the idea of downloading it via The Pirate Bay. For you, the filmmakers have also released it on YouTube in its entirety. Check it out:

When the Wii U first launched in Europe, it got a ZombiU bundle that included Ubisoft’s excellent launch title and a Wii U Pro Controller. That bundle is now coming to North America with an added value in the hope that more consumers pick up Nintendo’s latest console.

Nintendo announced today that a ZombiU bundle which includes a physical copy of ZombiU, a Wii U Pro Controller, a 32GB Wii U and a digital copy of Nintendo Land will be hitting retailers across the U.S. and Canada on February 17 for $389.99. To sweeten the deal a little more, the bundle will also come a ZombiU art book.

All in all, it’s a pretty good deal when you consider what you’re getting. Nintendo even points out that consumers are saving $70 with the bundle versus buying everything separately. That being said, it’s still $389.99 for a console that has very little in the way of quality launch titles. Sure, Nintendo Land and ZombiU are both fantastic, but the other great promised launch titles for Wii U have been delayed past the initial launch window.

The problem was made even more apparent yesterday as Ubisoft announced that Wii U darling Rayman Legends was being delayed to September to launch alongside versions being built for the PS3 and Xbox 360. It’s totally understandable from a business perspective, but it only means that the Wii U’s game library is going to remain dried up and devoid of anything resembling quality until March 18′s release of LEGO City Undercover and March 19′s release of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate.

Until then, we’re stuck with a bundle that only highlights the fantastic launch of the Wii U. It does little to remedy the Wii U’s now barren launch window, but the Nintendo faithful have only to wait until Spring when the deluge of quality games start to hit retail once again. Those buying the bundle can have fun waiting with us.

LEGO has proven its versatility time and time again with projects as impressive as a working jet engine to a complex ball delivery machine that still blows my mind to this day. One thing that LEGO has not yet conquered, however, is the 3D printer. One 15-year-old boy is ready to change that.

Marios Papachristou, a high school student from Greece, is working on an open source 3D printer made completely out of LEGO bricks. As expected, the machine is being built with LEGO Mindstorm parts. Here’s some additional details on the project:

This is a project aims to develop a special 3D printer made of LEGO Mindstorms(R) pieces. Inspired by the GNU RepRap Printer (open-source based 3D printer) and Arthur Sacek’s Milling Machine, this project combines both techniques resulting in a machine that, even though resembles the RepRap design, it drills floral foam so as to make three dimensional objects. The chosen programming language is about to be LeJOS NXJ (GNU). Currently in development stage (designing and building)….

Here’s a video of an early digital prototype:

Of course, the video only features a 3D model of the printer. Here’s what the actual LEGO printer looks like in its current, unfinished form:

According to the Google Code page for the printer, Papachristou’s plans for his LEGO 3D printer is to first complete it, and then build software to operate it. After that, he’ll write some documentation so that anybody can build their own.

If you want to follow the project, check out its Google Code and Google+ pages.

[h/t: 3ders]

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, the next game in the StarCraft II trilogy, is quickly approaching. Some players may be content to keep playing Wings of Liberty, but others will want to jump on board the latest title to see where the story goes or check out the newest additions to competitive multiplayer. Those who fit into the latter category will want to check out all the new features coming to matchmaking as detailed in a new trailer.

In a new “Ways to Play” trailer, Blizzard walks players through all the new features coming to matchmaking in StarCraft II. This is what players will be spending most of their time in. As such, Blizzard wants to make it super accessible for new players, while keeping the same highly competitive environment that made Wings of Liberty so popular.

Competitive players will definitely want to check out next week’s video as Blizzard will be going through all the enhancements its making to the multiplayer portion of the game, as well as what it’s doing to support the eSports community.

Java and Internet Explorer have both been rocked with some pretty nasty zero day exploits earlier in the year, but they’re not the only software that gets hit with exploits. Adobe’s Flash is frequently targeted by hackers as well, and said hackers have been having their way with it recently thanks to two zero day exploits.

Computer World reports that Adobe has issued a patch ahead of schedule that fixes the two zero-day exploits that hackers were using to hijack Windows PCs and Macs. Here’s the report from Adobe:

Adobe is aware of reports that CVE-2013-0633 is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks designed to trick the user into opening a Microsoft Word document delivered as an email attachment which contains malicious Flash (SWF) content. The exploit for CVE-2013-0633 targets the ActiveX version of Flash Player on Windows.

Adobe is also aware of reports that CVE-2013-0634 is being exploited in the wild in attacks delivered via malicious Flash (SWF) content hosted on websites that target Flash Player in Firefox or Safari on the Macintosh platform, as well as attacks designed to trick Windows users into opening a Microsoft Word document delivered as an email attachment which contains malicious Flash (SWF) content.

If you don’t want to be hit by something that nasty, you might want to update to the latest version of Flash now. Most Flash users probably have automatic updating turned on, however, and won’t need to worry as the update will take care of itself. For those who do not, you’ll want to download the latest version from Adobe’s Web site.

There might be other zero-day vulnerabilities floating around in Flash for hackers to find and exploit users with. Always stay on guard and only use Flash on trusted Web sites. You can do this by installing a plugin that disables any Flash content from automatically playing unless you authorize it. This technology is built into Firefox. Chrome users can grab the popular FlashControl extension here. If you’re using Internet Explorer, especially IE8, you should probably just stop.

D.I.C.E. 2013 is well underway. It’s opening keynote was delivered by none other than Gabe Newell of Valve, but other industry figures are on hand to talk about the future of gaming and interactive entertainment. If you fancy yourself a gamer or game developer, you’ll definitely want to check some of these keynotes out.

First up is Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman. Her company recently announced that it would be shipping out the new Ouya console in June. Listen in to find out what she thinks the future of console gaming holds for us all:

Next up is David Cage, CEO at Quantic Dream. His studio has been pushing interactive storytelling more so than any other AAA studio with games like Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. Expect a lot of talk on how the industry gets storytelling all wrong:

Amir Rao, Supergiant Games’ studio director, is up next to talk about Bastion, an indie darling from 2011:

Rounding out the keynotes is Glen Schofield, founder of Sledgehammer Games. Before helping out Infinity Ward on Call of Duty, he was VP of Visceral Games and creator of Dead Space.

Despite what some may say, we’re still far away from a completely 3D printed gun. That being said, the team at Defense Distributed is making more progress towards its goal of making the first fully 3D printed gun. This week’s update includes a newly designed AR magazine.

Defense Distributed calls its latest creation the “Cuomo.” It’s a high capacity 30-round AR magazine. You can see a video of it’s build quality below:

Next, the team tested the magazine with an AR rifle to see if it could withstand natural forces. In the video below, they fire sixty shots and the magazine is apparently still intact:

According to the team, their next goal is to print an AK magazine. By the end of all this, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a 3D printed magazine for every kind of gun. At least, that seems to be what they’re working towards at the moment as other parts of a gun aren’t exactly plastic, and therefore 3D printer, friendly just yet.

2013 is the year of the truly open smartphone. Android kind of fits the bill, but some OEMs lock down their devices. Instead, this year will see the launch of two truly open mobile platforms – Firefox OS and Ubuntu.

While we don’t know when Firefox OS will launch, but the Wall Street Journal reports that Canonical will launch the Ubuntu smartphone in October. Canonical says that it will launch the new smartphone in two geographic areas at that time. It’s unknown at this point if the U.S. is one of those launch markets so hardcore Linux fans may not want to get their hopes up.

Leading up to the October launch, Canonical has to make sure developers are on board building apps for the new mobile Ubuntu platform. To that end, the OS will be going out to developers in late February. The WSJ report says that the current developer OS is optimized for the Galaxy Nexus hardware.

There may be concern among developers, however, that building applications for an untested platform would not be a wise decision. That’s where the real magic of Ubuntu mobile comes in. Canonical says that any application built for Ubuntu will work across both desktop and mobile. Even if Ubuntu smartphones don’t immediately take off, developers still might earn a following on desktop.

Of course, it doesn’t look like Ubuntu will have any trouble finding acceptance among carriers at least. Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth told the WSJ that carriers are liking what they’re seeing from Ubuntu smartphones.

All of this leads up to a potential growth spurt for Linux adoption. Desktop Linux is getting more and more support everyday from major players like Valve and maybe even Microsoft. The addition of a mobile ecosystem that shares applications between itself and its desktop counterpart is all kinds of genius. It may just be what Ubuntu, and Linux, needs to become a mainstream player in personal computing.

Gabe Newell is pretty busy these days. Just last week, he was at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs talking about the business of video games. Now he’s at the annual D.I.C.E. Summit where he gave two separate talks – one with director J.J. Abrams and one on the future of Valve.

Unfortunately, the video of his talk with Abrams has not been uploaded just yet. From reports out of the show, it sounds like it was pretty entertaining. As a bonus, the two announced their plans to work together on Portal and Half-Life films.

Today, Newell delivered the opening keynote on the future of Valve and the industry as a whole. Fortunately, that has been uploaded, and you can watch it all below. There’s some fascinating insights into how Newell views PC gaming as the next big thing, and what Valve is doing to capitalize on it.

For a company as secretive as Valve, it’s been nice to see Newell speaking so frankly at so many events over the past few months. That being said, I don’t think we’re going to start seeing Half-Life 3 details sprouting up anytime soon. Still, it’s nice to hear industry insight from one of the most ambitious and innovate men in the business.

With all the theatrics surrounding the life of Kim Dotcom and the launch of Mega, it’s easy to forget that the startup is a legitimate file sharing business. As such, the company was in need of a permanent CEO as current CEO Tony Lentino was only in the position on a temporary basis. After some searching, it looks like Mega has found its man.

Mega announced today that former CEO of InternetNZ, Vikram Kumar, has joined on as the CEO of Mega. The appointment of Kumar to the CEO seat is a good choice as he headed the non-profit InternetNZ, a group dedicated to an “open and uncapturable Internet.” An ideal that Mega founder Kim Dotcom holds dear.

“Mega is delighted to welcome Vikram Kumar as its new CEO”, said Lentino. “I have assisted Mega since its inception, putting time and energy into finding investors, setting up support staff and general overview of the company in its initial stage. Now Mega runs on a day-to-day routine, and I am pleased to hand the role of CEO to Vikram who is an experienced leader in the Internet industry.”

In his new role as CEO, Kumar says that he looks forward to building on the “initial success” of Mega and developing it “into a significant company on the international Internet stage.” His profile says that he takes great interest in “the challenges the Internet is facing such as privacy, security and openness.” Once again, another sign that Kumar and Dotcom are a match made in Internet heaven.

As for former interim CEO Lentino, he’ll still be on Mega’s board of directors while overseeing his own company, Instra Corporation. He said that he’ll be working alongside other Mega executives to make the new startup a “global success.”

The Wii U’s impressive launch window has slowly become a barren wasteland. The one shining light of hope was February 26 – the launch of Rayman Legends. Now that title has even been pushed back further into the year, but hey, at least more people get to enjoy it now.

Ubisoft announced today that Rayman Legends has been delayed to early September. The reason being that the game is now being retooled and developed for the PS3 and Xbox 360. It seems that Rayman fans didn’t particularly like the idea of having to buy a new console to enjoy the latest game in the franchise.

“We heard from many Xbox & Playstation owners and Rayman fans who told us they really wanted to play Rayman Legends on their current system”, says Geoffroy Sardin, EMEA Chief Marketing & Sales Officer. “We decided to give the fans what they wanted while at the same time broadening the audience exposed to this innovative and memorable game.”

The delay is most assuredly due to the game having to be completely retooled for the other platforms. The Wii U version of Rayman Legends makes extensive use of the Gamepad for puzzles and other gameplay elements. The game will likely face some significant changes on other platforms.

It’s unfortunate that the Wii U version was delayed again, but this hopefully means the game will perform far better at retail. Being a Wii U exclusive means that you’ll get maybe a million units sold tops as Nintendo’s newest console hasn’t exactly been selling out. A delay and porting the game to other consoles will hopefully help the game reach its highest sales potential.

The Ouya is not a traditional games console. That much has been obvious since it first broke Kickstarter records last year. Now the company behing the console are saying it will do away with another vanguard of console gaming – the five to 10 year lifespan.

Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman told Joystiq that the company intends to adopt the mobile strategy for Ouya. They will be releasing a new $99 console every year to take advantage of cheaper components. One such upgrade could be seen in the form of the Ouya’s built- in flash memory, which is currently set at 8GB, being expanded.

Moving to an annual upgrade cycle may concern early adopters, however, as their initial investment may be obsolete after only a few years. Uhrman says that won’t be the case as games built for Ouya will be backwards compatible.

Uhrman also addressed concerns that the Ouya console won’t be able to output visuals that would please the console gaming crowd. It’s true that the Tegra 3 can’t compete on the same level as a PS3 or Xbox 360, but the chip is fairly competent when it’s not tied to a mobile device. Uhrman says that the Ouya’s Tegra 3 doesn’t “have to balance power for battery life. So when all four quads are running, it’s 1.6 GHz.” She then claims it’s going to be the best Tegra 3 device on the market.

Finally, those looking to upgrade their Ouya every year will be pleasantly surprised to learn that their profile and the purchases attached to it can be easily transferred between devices. That’s something that even the big guys have only started to figure out with Nintendo’s Wii to Wii U transfer tool being an adorable exercise in frustration.

Ouya will be launching at retailers across the nation in June.

After years of being ignored by major software vendors, Linux is starting to get the attention and respect it deserves. The open source OS has already nabbed a major partner in Valve as the company is working on bringing Steam over. Now Microsoft may be jumping on board by bringing its flagship productivity suite to the OS.

Phoronix, the site that broke the news of Steam coming to Linux, has heard from an anonymous source that Microsoft is taking a “meaningful look” at bringing Office to Linux in 2014. This recent change of heart is apparently due to Microsoft finding that Linux may just a profitable platform now.

The past few months have been good to the Linux community as more developers start to see the platform as a viable alternative to Windows and Mac OS X. We’ve already mentioned Valve making a native Linux version of Steam available, but other companies like Nvidia have also been working to bring better software drivers to Linux.

Microsoft may see Linux as being even more financially viable as Valve plans to launch its Steambox later this year. The mini-computers will run Ubuntu thus increasing the marketshare for Linux even more. The upcoming Ubuntu smartphones and Ubuntu for Android may also serve to get Linux into the hands of even more people.

Truth be told, Linux doesn’t necessarily need Microsoft Office as there is already a great open source alternative. It’s more about the principle than anything else as it means Linux is finally starting to get some recognition. Games are one thing, but getting official support from Microsoft would hopefully make Linux far more mainstream than it already is.

Despite being one of the coolest features in Kinect, its voice recognition software was often overlooked in favor of arm waving shenanigans. That may not be the case with the next Xbox as Microsoft is rumored to be greatly expanding the software with new features and functionality.

The Verge reports that the next Xbox “will support wake on voice, natural language controls, and speech-to-text.” The current Kinect can only recognize simple speech patterns that are pre-programmed into the software. The next Xbox will greatly expand this to include natural interaction – the kind of voice recognition that you see in Apple’s Siri and other similar software.

So, what does this mean for games? The Verge uses the example of a user being able to ask the Xbox, “What are my friends playing?” and the system would immediately bring up the player’s friend list. Other examples include the user being able to ask questions with the system returning a relevant answer, no doubt provided by Bing.

The real advantage here is if more games started supporting voice commands or interactions. The current Kinect’s voice sensor has only been used in a small selection of games, most notably Mass Effect 3. It would be far more interesting if something like Peter Molyneux’s ill-fated Project Milo were to launch on the next Xbox featuring natural interaction with an on-screen character.

This rumor is just the latest to hit the net in regards to Microsoft’s next console. Just yesterday, a rumor came out saying that the next Xbox would feature an anti-used game system in the form of always online DRM. The console’s specs, which paint the system as being fairly powerful, has also been leaked.

Halo 4 was one of the most critically lauded games of last year. It proved that 343 Industries has what it takes to carry the Halo torch. Of course, it can’t really be deemed a critical success until it gets a pass from the toughest critic of them all.

Clueless Gamer, Conan’s insanely delightful game review show, takes on Halo 4 in the latest episode. Of course, the game doesn’t get much of the attention as Conan is too busy invested in Cortana, Master Chief’s AI companion. He does get in a few good jabs, however, including a particularly insightful comment on how games focus too much story at the expense of gameplay.

Personally, Clueless Gamer is wasted on Conan’s late night show. The latest episode only further proves this point. In fact, just get him into focus groups and game testing from now on. I’d love to play a game that was built around his expectations of what a good game is.

Samsung has effectively taken control of the Android smartphone market by becoming the most successful Android OEM in the world. That’s particularly true in the U.S. where its marketshare continues to grow. In fact, the latest comScore numbers show that the U.S. is no longer an iOS vs. Android market, but rather a Samsung vs. Apple market.

December’s smartphone market statistics came out of comScore Wednesday, and the results show the U.S. market warping into a battle between the giants of mobile where there’s increasingly no room for the little guys. In fact, besides an anomaly from LG, every major smartphone manufacturer’s market share declined except for Apple and Samsung.

It should come as no surprise that Apple was the top smartphone maker in December. The company commanded a 36.3 percent share of the 125.9 million smartphones in use in the U.S. Its great adversary, Samsung, is catching up, however, as its share increased to 21 percent from 18.7 percent in September. HTC and Motorola both saw declines, while LG saw a small increase to 7.1 percent. LG’s growth is probably due to the relative success of the Nexus 4.

As for smartphone platforms, Android reigns with a 53.4 percent majority of the smartphone market. It may have a majority, but it also little growth as its control only grew by 0.9 percent. In comparison, iOS grew 2 percent from September to December to have 36.3 percent of the market. BlackBerry and Microsoft both saw declines while Symbian stayed flat.

The U.S. smartphone market is slowly becoming the battleground for Apple and Samsung as other smartphone manufacturers continue to lose more marketshare to these behemoths. I wouldn’t be surprised if consumers started associated Samsung with Android as one in the same instead of two separate entities.

The Chromebooks of today aren’t exactly cutting edge. The budget notebook PCs are intended to bring the power of the Web to as many people as possible through affordable hardware. That all may be changing in the future if a leaked video is to believed.

Android Authority nabbed a fascinating teaser video that references a new Google project called the Chromebook Pixel. It features a 2560×1700 display. The only thing better would be the 15-inch MacBook Pro which sports a 2880×1800 retina display. Check out the leaked teaser video below:

New ChromeBook – Next Generation Concept… by androidauthority

The leaked video doesn’t tell us much about the Chromebook Pixel’s hardware, but we do know that it will sport a touchscreen. Adding to the legitimacy of the leak is that it originally came from François Beaufort, a developer who has leaked previous Google products on Google+.

Google hasn’t made any formal announcement in regards to the Chromebook Pixel yet, or even hinted that such a thing exists. The company only just recently partnered with HP for the Pavilion 14 Chromebook.

Still, the idea of a high-end Chromebook is exciting. The only thing holding the Chromebook back with power users, besides Chrome OS’s incompatibility with traditional applications, is that they’re usually underpowered devices. The Chromebook Pixel could go a long way in increasing adoption among power users, especially with that glorious screen.