Hot electronics

Phillips 3D TV, Asus Netbook, Apple IPod, Sony E-Reader, Creative Labs MP3 Player, HTC F3188

Consumer electronics are again at the top of many shoppers' gift and wish lists. But this year, it's the small stuff that's creating must of the excitement.

Smartphones, tablet computers, netbooks and e-readers are muscling out last year's hot laptops and high-definition televisions as this season's top electronics gifts.

Many of hot gifts this year, such as Apple's iPad tablet computer, the Motorola Droid X smartphone and Kinetic for Microsoft's Xbox 360, weren't available last Christmas.

Other electronic products that were new last year, such as the Amazon Kindle, cost substantially less this year and are in high demand.

In order to give consumers a chance to get their arms around a "robust pipeline of new products," electronics-retailer Best Buy started its holiday promotions almost two weeks earlier this year than last.

As a result, consumers can expect to see steep discounts on laptops and LCD high-definition televisions as retailers seek to close out slower-moving products.

Some of the hottest electronic products this year include:

Tablet computers

These hand-held devices allow users to surf the Internet, watch videos, read newspapers and books, manage photographs and more.

- Apple's iPad tablet computer, which came out in April, is one of the hottest electronic gifts this season and starts at $499.

- Samsung Galaxy Tab, iPad's biggest challenger, is the first tablet computer with Google's Android operating system and is now available in the U.S. for about $650.

E-readers

The devices allow users to download books from the sellers' proprietary online bookstores.

- Amazon Kindle is the market leader and lets users read anything anywhere for about $100 less than last Christmas. $139 for Wi-Fi; $189 for 3G.

- Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader is Kindle's biggest competitor and is a Best Buy doorbuster on Black Friday this year for $100, or $50 off.

MP3 players

These fit in your pocket, play music, videos and games, and have come along way since Apple introduced the iPod Mini.

- Apple's latest version of the 32-GB iPod Touch holds 7,000 songs, 40 hours of video and can play up to 30 hours of music or six hours of video. $299.

Video cameras

Clunky camcorders have evolved into pocket-size video cameras that can hold hours of video.

- Flip Ultra HD is a pocket-size high-definition camera that holds up to two hours of video on its built-in memory. From $99.

Smartphones

These phones allow users to surf the Internet, take pictures, listen to music, check e-mail, send text messages and make phone calls.

- iPhone 4, the fourth generation of Apple's game-changing wireless phone, has an improved 5-megapixel camera and a front-facing video camera for video calls. $199 for 16 GB with a two-year service contract.

- Motorola's Droid X is a top iPhone competitor, with 4.3-inch display and an 8-megapixel camera. About $200, also with a two-year contract.

Video-game sensors

These sensors allow users to integrate their body movements into the games they are playing. Microsoft and Sony challenge the dominance of Nintendo's Wii this season.

- Kinect for Microsoft Xbox 360 brings video games to life without a controller. $150.

- PlayStation Move for PlayStation 3 video consoles is like Kinect and Wii, only with a handheld wand. $100.

Internet TV devices

These set-top boxes allow users to bypass cable and access television programs and movies on their high-definition televisions via the Internet.

- Apple TV brings TV shows, movies, videos photos from your computer to your television. $99.

- Logitech Review with Google TV streams video and music to your television and interfaces with regular cable TV. $300.

- Roku allows users to stream movies from Netflix to their televisions. $60.

Netbooks

These small, portable, relatively inexpensive computers can be used for e-mail, surfing the Internet and word processing.

- Lenovo IdeaPad S10, has a 10.1-inch screen, 512 MB of memory and battery life of 2.7 hours. About $400.

- Asus Eee PC 904HA has an 8.9-inch screen and battery life of 5.5 hours. Also about $400.

GPS devices

Navigators help users find their way on foot or in their cars.

- Garmin Nüvi portable GPS navigator features an auto navigator, calculator, currency converter, voice-prompted turn-by-turn directions, world travel clock and more. From about $90.

Blu-ray disc players

These players accommodate next-generation Blu-ray format high-definition CDs and DVDs that hold significantly more content.

- Sony BDP-S550 1080 is Sony's newest Blu-ray disc player and offers excellent image quality and a solid feature set. About $500.

3-D televisions

Separate glasses are required and are sometimes included in the price of the TV.

- Panasonic plasma models exhibited the best 3-D picture quality and the least amount of ghosting, according to Consumer Reports. From $2,000 for a 50-inch screen.

- Sony Bravia is an LED-LCD 3-D model that is about $2,000 for a 55-inch screen.

by Max Jarman The Arizona Republic Nov. 24, 2010 12:00 AM





Hot electronics

Latest Call of Duty sales set new mark

A screen shot from Call of Duty: Black Ops from Activision, in which players fight around the world in the cold war. The game shattered the industry’s one-day sales record when it was released on Tuesday.

NEW YORK - Call of Duty: Black Ops shattered entertainment records this week when it raked in $360 million in its first 24 hours on sale, once again proving that video games have cemented their place in our lives as mainstream entertainment on a par with movies and music.

For the hordes of devoted fans who waited in line at midnight Monday to get their hands on the military shooter, this is hardly a surprise. For them, popping the new Call of Duty into a game console is the equivalent of turning on the TV to watch the Super Bowl or the World Series - except here, they control the outcome.

The game, from Activision Blizzard Inc., sold 5.6 million units the day it went on sale, according to the company. Its predecessor, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, meanwhile, sold 4.7 million copies to reap $310 million during its first day on sale last year.

Black Ops went on sale Monday in North America and the U.K.

It costs $60 and works on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles. As such, games have an easier time setting dollar-sales records than, say, movies or music because fewer people need to buy them in order to bring in big bucks.




Associated Press Nov. 12, 2010 12:00 AM



Latest Call of Duty sales set new mark

DJ Hero | Buy

The follow up to the award-winning #1 new videogame IP of 2009, DJ Hero® 2 will transform living rooms into nightclubs all over again with an entirely new music-gaming experience. Friends & families can become mix masters and singing sensations to experience hit music like they've never heard it before. With a host of new DJ and vocal multiplayer modes, including innovative DJ Battles, and 80+ mixes featuring the biggest dance, pop and hip-hop hits, DJ Hero 2 delivers the new standard in music gaming.

DJ Hero | Buy

Hulu - The Future of Video Games

Hulu - The Future of Video Games

Gamers Welcome "Left 4 Dead 2" to a Growing Mac Library

The zombie-killing video game Left 4 Dead 2 launched on the Mac today. It’s available for download through Steam, a computer gaming platform that aims to elevate Mac gaming from its past reputation as second-rate to Windows-based gaming.

Left 4 Dead 2 was developed and published by Valve Software, a video game company famous for the Half-Life series and Portal. Most recently, Valve has dedicated most of its efforts to promoting Steam, which includes a direct download store and Xbox Live-like community features.

Valve released Steam for Mac computers earlier this year — a big event for gamers on a platform that has for at least two decades played second fiddle to Windows-based machines when it comes to gaming. Other than the critically acclaimed Portal and the pseudo-indie Diablo clone Torchlight, the initial library of Mac titles on Steam was unimpressive, but it’s growing.

Valve’s own Half-Life 2 was added to the Mac version of the service in May while third-party support has been limited to smaller games with just a few exceptions like Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. Even though Steam has been slow to take off, Mac gaming overall has become more impressive than ever in recent months.

Major titles available on the Mac in addition to other platforms include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age Origins, StarCraft II, The Sims 3, The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition, BioShock and Spore. The Mac library still doesn’t rival those that Windows, Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 gamers enjoy, but it’s been steadily gaining steam — no pun intended!

Mac Gaming: We Still Have Problems, People
Valve has been vocal with criticisms for the platform even as it commits resources to support it. Most importantly, Valve insists that the Mac’s overly standardized video drivers — the software that operates the computer’s graphics processing unit (GPU) — are ill-optimized for gaming, and that Apple and GPU manufacturers will have to take action.

I noticed this myself when I took Left 4 Dead 2 for a whirl on a MacBook Pro from early 2009. I had previously played the game in Microsoft Windows 7 on the same machine at max graphics settings. The 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, four gigabytes of RAM and GeForce 9600M GPU ran the game very smoothly in Windows with the default drivers from the GPU’s manufacturer.

I was forced to disable anti-aliasing and other graphical bells and whistles to achieve a playable state in the Mac version of the game, and even then I experienced frequent errors and crashes, as depicted in the image below.

In theory, a standardized platform like the Mac should be better optimized for gaming. Game developers are forced to consider an infinitude of hardware configuration options when optimizing and testing their products for Windows users, so PC gamers have always been plagued with technical problems simply because their unique configurations were not considered.

Those same developers could focus on only a few standardized hardware configurations with Mac machines, but Apple’s strong grip of control prevents drivers optimized for gamers from being easily available.

We’re thrilled to see all these games coming to the Mac, but we’ll be even more thrilled when Apple dedicates the same amount of effort to Mac gaming as it does to gaming on the iPhone and iPod touch.

Gamers Welcome "Left 4 Dead 2" to a Growing Mac Library

The Hottest Games of the Tokyo Game Show [VIDEOS]

Last week was the 2010 Tokyo Game Show (also called TGS 2010) and the games on display came from some of the brightest minds in the industry. Here you’ll find 12 trailers from the hottest games at the show, including The Last Guardian, Devil May Cry and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

TGS 2010 was the most attended TGS yet, but that didn’t prevent some Japanese developers and pundits from bemoaning the quality of Japanese games as compared to titles produced by Western studios like BioWare, Bungie and Blizzard.

Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, who had a hand in creating both Mega Man and Dead Rising, said at the show that Japanese developers are “at least five years behind.”

The man might have a point. Looking at some of these trailers, the core developers outside the Nintendo world are definitely not making an effort to break barriers or challenge stereotypes about video games and gamer culture.

Nintendo, however, is in another class. That company’s Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS consoles have outsold the competition from Microsoft and Sony at every turn and expanded the audience for video games far beyond the 20-year-old males who traditionally form the core market. But these games and consoles belong in a different world from the industry that makes graphics-intensive and complex games for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

The Games
There are some stand-outs. The art-house development studio that made Ico and Shadow of the Colossus for the PlayStation 2 showed a trailer for PlayStation 3 title The Last Guardian, and it looks absolutely beautiful. It turns out the game will be playable in 3D. The studio is also releasing a bundle for PS3 that includes remastered, high-definition versions of the two PS2 classics.

RPG developer Level 5 teamed up with master animator Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli (best known for films such as Princess Mononoke, Sprited Away and Ponyo) to make a PS3 game titled Ni No Kuni. It looks gorgeous and touching, capturing the look and feel of the animated films, but it hasn’t been confirmed for North American or European release yet.

Also notable was the lineup for the Xbox 360’s Kinect motion controller and camera. The games and developers Microsoft featured at the show sought to demonstrate that traditional gamers will enjoy games with the new interface, not just families looking for play-and-forget party experiences.

Here are the trailers. Most are Japanese games, but a few Western games made appearances at TGS — most notably Deus Ex: Human Revolution.


























by Samuel Axon Mashable Entertainment September 21, 2010

The Hottest Games of the Tokyo Game Show [VIDEOS]

PS3 Game of the Year