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Super Smash Bros official roster revealed – Release date confirmed for Nintendo 3DS

Sep 12, 2014 By

In today’s day and age, it is next to impossible to maintain a hundred percent secrecy in any large scale project.

There always shall be some or the other ‘insider’ who leaks out some aspect of the internal secrecy, thereby effectively spoiling months of precaution one might have taken.

In one such case of a large scale spoiler, a user who managed to get a pre-release edition of Super Smash Bros 3DS, as there is one user who has been live streaming all the character details and secrets about the game using twitch.

Nintendo is about to officially reveal the roster tomorrow, and this twitch user, “Hamayama”, has been acting as a major spoilsport for Nintendo, as he already spoiled the game before its launch.

A total of 43 characters have been unlocked by Hamayama so far, including the dog from duck hunt and dark pit from kid icarus. Some of the fans who were following the streaming session by hamayama have been sharp enough to notice that there is no copyright information regarding Konami, and hence this might mean that Solid Snake will be absent from this game.

Various other gamers have also come out with their streams, thereby bringing into the picture, the characters of Dr Mario, Wario, Ganondorf, Falco and Ness have been confirmed as well.

This, however is a sad happening of events for Nintendo, as they were intending to launch it tomorrow on a grand stage and show it off to the world. This streaming has been done in bad taste and we expect that there will be actions taken against this streamer.

The game is officially supposed to launch on the 3rd of October, which is less than a month away now, and the game will be released for the European and the American markets. However a date for the Wii U has not been announced yet.

EA Access to feature NFS Rivals for Xbox One – Sony PS4 edge over

Sep 4, 2014 By

When the EA Access was first announced as an exclusive deal for the Microsoft owned XBOX One.

There was a lot of positive buzz about it from within the company.

Microsoft had stated that this deal with EA could potentially be a ‘game changer’ and were expecting it to give them an edge over their competitor, the PS 4 by Sony.

Slowly but steadily, after some outrage by PS users, and by those who are the typical naysayers, XBOX as a brand has managed to claim that their association with EA is in deed, a profitable association, as Electronic Arts said today in a major announcement that they are ‘expanding’ the XBOX One subscription program, in terms of content as well as in terms of reach.

In a major aspect of the announcement, Electronic Arts have said that ‘Need for Speed – Rivals’ will now be added to the vault. The vault, for those who are living under a rock, is a collection of games, which one can play for free, provided they have a subscription to the EA Access program.

This is a win-win situation for both, the EA and Microsoft. EA benefits by making the gamers ‘taste blood’ by providing them with games for a short period of time, the gamers benefit because they are exposed to a lot more when we compare the value with the offerings, Microsoft benefits by positive PR as well as by gamer interest and brand conversions.

NFS Rivals will accompany a set of heavyweights in gaming industry which are already a part of vault, i.e., Battlefield 4, FIFA 14, Peggle 2 and Madden NFL 25. The subscription for the EA Access program is available for $5 a month and $30 a year.

The inclusion of NFS Rivals, however came as no big surprise for the hardcore gamers, as it had been observed back when the EA Access art came out that the rivals logo was featured in it. The future looks good for both, the EA and Microsoft with their alliance.

Rise of Tomb Raider might be released on XBOX, but Sony doesn’t care about it

Aug 16, 2014 By

Recently a news had broken out, which had caused a lot of chaos and outrage from the PS4 users.

When it was announced during the gamescom conference, where Microsoft, along with Square Enix had announced that the latest game in the tomb raider series, Tomb Raider: Rise of the tomb raider, will release ‘exclusively’ on XBOX during holidays 2015.

It was later cleared that Microsoft has a deal of exclusivity with the studios and it does not mean that the game will not release in any other consoles.

The game will indeed be released for all consoles, but it will be launched for XBOX first, and will remain on their console for a time till the ‘exclusivity’ lasts. Phil Spencer, the ‘boss’ at XBOX finally cleared that confusion up.

A reaction was awaited from Sony since long, and it finally came out, when Jim Ryan, the head at Playstation EU came out with a statement saying that Sony ‘doesn’t need exclusivity’ as they already have a large variety of titles out for their console, as well as a vast network which features an amazing relationship with their third party partners.

Jim Ryan, like any sensible man would, came out with a strong statement, and quote the example of Sony’s deal with Activision, which is for the launch of Destiny this year, and he had the following to say regarding it : “I think the partnership we have with Activision on Destiny is a good example of where it makes really good sense for them, it makes good sense for us and it benefits our consumers–when you complement those two things we think that gives us a pretty complete position in the market.”

The words of a very wise man, Jim Ryan, came calmly at a time where a chaotic audience awaits the game, which has been one of the most awaited games of the year : Tomb Raider – Rise of the tomb raider.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.5 or Galaxy Tab S Launching in June

Jun 2, 2014 By

Even as Samsung’s latest tablet experiment, the Galaxy Tab 10.5 (or Galaxy Tab S) is all set to launch on June 12, one does not have to wait that long to get a glimpse of the latest model in all of its official-looking glory.

Recently a series of polished press renders of the new, so-called ‘super tablet’ were leaked ahead of the rumoured New York media gathering which is supposed to be held in less than two weeks.

However, the shots do not give away much information. Even though Samsung might have boosted the display from 10.1-inch to 10.5, the overall design language remains extremely consistent.

One can judge by these recent leaks that a lot can be expected from this latest model in the specs department.
Spec-heavy

Display: Rumours seem to suggest a 2560 x 1600 AMOLED display (the first of its kind in a Samsung tablet since the Galaxy Tab 7.7 in 2012) –
Memory: 3GB of RAM
Camera: 8-megapixel camera
OS: Android 4.4.2 KitKat on board.
Processor: Probably an Exynos 5 octo-core processor with four 1.9GHz Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 cores, doing the grind beneath the surface.

Special Feature: A recent trip through the FCC in the United States has confirmed the oft-rumoured fingerprint scanner.

The ground is all set to make the latest model Samsung’s most solid slate yet.

Apple: iOS 7.1.2 update Release Date is end of last week

May 30, 2014 By

The iOS 7.1.2 release date is not so coming soon as Apple is reportedly working on rolling it out in the near future.

The latest update is round the corner. According to the MacRumors pages, near the end of last week, there are various devices which have started showing up running this slightly updated software.

The activity level is not too high which means that it could still be in the early stages of testing.

The update is expected to focus on bug fixes and other tweaks. According to the site, it will probably not be put through a developer testing period.

The two main issues that seem to be worrying iOS users at the moment include certain problems with email attachment encryption and glitches with iMessage users. Apple obviously promised to fix both of these issues.

The iMessage issue stems as users lose messages when they switch away from the iPhone to a different device. This is not because they have their phone numbers disassociated from iMessage. The problem has worsened recently due to server problems.

iOS 7.1.2 should be aimed at correcting these issues as it will be the first software upgrade to roll out since the time Apple has promised to correct the problems.

Apple is expected to unveil iOS 8 at this year’s World Wide Developers Conference starting June 2.

The new software builds should be available around that time. However, the official public roll out will take place when the new iPhone is introduced.

Even as the device is rumoured for a fall launch, there have also been murmurings of it hitting the market during the summer.

iOS 7 featured a completely renewed and redesigned layout for the software whcih brought Apple up to date with its most fierce competitor, Android.

iOS 8 is rumoured to bring new music identification software to devices. This is currently being developed by Apple and Shazam.