Kinect for Xbox One coming to PC
Xbox One does not provide any built-in DVR capabilities
Xbox One increases friends lists to 1,000
Xbox One achievements dynamic, not limited to single games
Evening Reading
by Garnett Lee, Jan 12, 2011 5:00pm PSTI played Uncharted 2 as one of my catch-up-over-the-holidays games and finished it off the other night. After such a fun adventure--one of the best I've played--the last few combat encounters and then the boss fight felt like a tremendous punch to the gut. Someone on Twitter asked if I was suggesting that there shouldn't be boss fights at the end of games. Hell yes I am.
Boss fights grew as a logical extension of the control mechanic-heavy nature of video games in earlier generations. Since then, the content in and way we play games has dramatically evolved. In many games, like Uncharted 2, they no longer feel like an epic showcase and payoff for all the skills mastered in the game. Instead, they become a distracting--or often worse yet, annoying--anachronism. Sure, at the end of God of War III I wanted--nay, needed--a massive boss fight. But at the end of Uncharted 2, all I could think while running the patterns to beat that boss was "God, I wish this would end," and that's not the last feeling such a great game should leave.
No such suffering to get to chatty and the top video game news stories from today on Shack:
- StarCraft 2 Patch 1.2 Launches with Chat Channels, Balance Tweaks
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Dev: PC is Primary Platform
- LIMBO, Red Dead Redemption, and Mass Effect 2 Most Nominated Games for 11th Annual GDC Awards
- Dragon Age 2 Pre-orders Get Extra Sword and Shield; All New Copies Get 'The Black Emporium'
- Capcom Accused of Ripping-off 'Splosion Man in 'MaXplosion
Mute switch options - People who complained about the change from orientation lock to mute in 4.2 for the iPad may rejoice. There is currently an option to have the hardware switch either mute system sounds or do orientation lock. At least on the iPads. No guarantee that this will stick around until the full release, but Apple are at least willing to consider it, so that's a good sign.
Personal hotspot - The new iOS includes options to use your GSM device as a personal hotspot, like the Verizon iPhone announce yesterday. It'll still be up to carriers like AT&T to decide if they'll allow the use of it and how much to charge. I think that this probably means that the full release of iOS 4.3 will be on or before the release of the Verizon iPhone.
New multitouch gestures - The iPad will have four and five finger gestures that will control opening the home screen, bringing up the multitask bar and switching programs faster, which all sounds like some pretty cool enhancements and might eliminate the need for a physical button on the iPad 2.
Facetime on the iPad - Nothing usable yet, but from what I've heard, a new Facetime icon appears in some places in the iPad interface, further hinting at some kind of camera with Facetime use in the next iPad and probably some backwards compatibility with the current one.
Public Airplay APIs - Apple will finally allow developers to start to include Airplay in their iOS apps, even extending the connectivity to Apple TVs. However, there are no indications that there will be Apple TV apps included in this.
The beta is so far only available for iPhone 4, iPads and 3rd and 4th gen iPod Touches, but I don't think that this means that older iPhones will be dropped from support - at least not iPhone 3GS, would be my guess. Apple often puts out the first beta for a limited selection of devices before opening it up to the full line.
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But Apple also understands the idea of sensible defaults, and the default SMS sound is arguably the best of the bunch. It's so good, in fact, that most people don't change it. Whereas most people do want to customize their ringtones, they tend to leave their SMS sound alone, and that's caused it to become pretty easy to recognize. From Apple's standpoint, it's great for them that when someone hears that sound coming from someone's pocket, they know that that person has an iPhone. Even better, everyone around them who reaches into their pocket at the same time to check their phones all know that the other people around them have iPhones, too. Most of us probably still remember Nokia's signature ringtone before customizable multi-tone ringtones were commonplace, and I think Apple realized that that factor was important to their brand. So, like it or not, no customizable ringtones.
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