Nintendo has confirmed this afternoon that it will announce details of the European Wii U launch this Thursday, to coincide with the US event in New York.
All will be revealed via a Nintendo Direct broadcast, which you can watch on the Nintendo Direct website, from 3pm UK time (that's 4pm in Europe and 6am PST). We'll be reporting everything as it happens.
It will be hosted by Nintendo of Europe President Satoru Shibata.
Today at a media event in Santa Monica, Amazon announced an assortment of heavily-rumored products, including a new Kindle eReader.
The backlit 'Paperwhite' Kindle reader will surely tempt to eReading aficionados. The new eReader sports a white background that is reminiscent to paper, easier on the eyes, and is gently backlit.
The new Kindle has 25% more contrast, 212 PPI, 62% more pixels. It also has a more accurate touch capacitive screen. Light Guide took 4 years of research and development. "It's exactly like ambient light."
They're going to leave it on all the time, so they worked on 8-week battery life even with the light on.
The new Kindle is 9.1mm thin, 7.5 ounces.
The new Kindle also comes with a brand new feature, called "Time to Read." By clicking the bottom left corner, the Kindle will tell you how much time is left in the chapter, and how much time it will take you to finish the book. The Kindle tracks your average reading speed, adjusts the timers based on your individual reading speed.
The new touchscreen paperwhite Kindle will sell for $119, and will ship October 1st. The 3G version offers free 3G at $119.
The $79 Kindle has also received a minor upgrade, with faster pageturns a black body, a price drop, and a "new name: the $69 Kindle."
Amazon updated its Kindle Fire with a faster processor, doubled the RAM, and cut the price by $40. For only $159 you can get a pretty serious 7-inch tablet.
But the Kindle Fire bump was small news when compared to the Kindle Fire HD, Amazon's new tablet, which has an 8.9" HD IPS display, at 1920 x 1200 resolution at 254 PPI.
The Fire HD has an OMAP 4470 processor, made by Texas Instruments.
Amazon has updated their display, which features 25% less glare with a laminated screen. The Fire HD also has dual stereo speakers, two antennas, and a MIMO-capability, which supposedly makes the internet 41% faster internet than the iPad, and 54% faster WiFi than the Nexus 7.
Amazon also unveiled a feature across their tablets capabilities, called Whispersync. Whispersync will save your progress in a book, even if you're listening to it as an audiobook. For Games, Whispersync saves your progress, unlocked levels, and more. If you ever have to reinstall your games you won't have to start over.
Both of the Kindle Fire HD versions will start at 16GBs.
The 7" Kindle Fire HD will cost $199, while the 8.9" HD display will cost $299.
Developing...
Nic is the Editor of IGN Tech. He loves technology almost as much as The Great Gatsby, The Idiot, and Life of Pi. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Beginning at 9pm Pacific Time at the Irvine Spectrum Center in Irvine, California, Blizzard will be hosting an evening of presentations, entertainment, giveaways, and special guests as eager fans converge to celebrate the birth of a new land in Azeroth.
Members of Blizzard's crew will also be on-hand at launch events in US, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the UK, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Taiwan. You can check out the official list here.
It was also announced today that Blizzard has gained permission to publish Mists of Pandaria in China, which will gain them access to hundreds of millions of potential customers.
At today's event with Microsoft in New York, Nokia announced its new top-of-the-line Windows Phone 8 device, the Lumia 920.
A cut above the Lumia 900 (Nokia's current top-end Windows phone) in just about every way, the 920 looks to be competitive with the rest of the US smartphone market, not just other Windows phones. So before we get into the details here's the bottom line: if you're looking for a Windows Phone 8 handset this fall, then (pending a price announcement, and maybe HTC's Sept. 19 hail-mary) the Lumia 920 should make your decision easy.
Nokia has packed the 920 with a bevy of novel, exciting features; but first let's talk about speed. With a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor and 1GB of RAM, the 920 leaves previous Lumia generations in the dust. More importantly though, it's as fast as the Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X, at least according to Gizmodo's hands-on report. And unless the rumor mill has been underestimating Apple, it's not unlikely the Lumia 920 will be able to keep up with the iPhone 5 too. All that power requires, well, power, but Nokia assures us the 920's beefy 2,000mAh battery is up to the task.
The Lumia 920's NFC chip and Qi-standard wireless charging support should make for some pretty awesome accessories, and ought to keep the device (foreseeable-)future-proof as mobile payment infrastructures expand and wireless charging becomes more commonplace.
The phone's 4.5-inch screen, which boasts a resolution of 1,280 x 768 pixels, is super responsive in more ways than one. Hands-on reports are reporting no detectable touch latency, and Nokia's Kevin Shields demonstrated the 920 this morning while wearing a pair of fuzzy mittens.
The 8.7-megapixel PureView camera will likely be one of the Lumia 920's top selling-points. Integrated image-stabilization and 1080p video is all well and good (okay, it's awesome), but what got us most excited is the Cinemagraph app, which promises to make it just as easy to waste entire days making your own animated gifs as it's always been to waste entire days looking at gifs.
For the smartphone mortals among us, Nokia has also updated its mid-range Lumia 800. The Lumia 820 looks to be the 920's scrappy younger brother. A slightly smaller (4.3-inch) display with half the pixel-count and no PureView upgrade for the camera are the chief differences, though on the 820 wireless charging becomes an optional feature.
When the time comes to make calls from your Lumia 920 or 820, both phones will support HSPA+ or LTE, presumably depending on carrier availability.
Whether you love the Windows Phone 8 UI or hate it, there's no denying that the current state of the Windows Phone marketplace will probably be the Lumia 820 and 920's main shortcoming. This is the catch-22 of device adoption: developers won't make Windows Phone 8 apps until everybody buys Windows phones; but lots of folks won't buy them until the app selection improves. Preloaded apps like Nokia Maps and Nokia's ESPN app are great; but Apple's App Store and Android's Google Play store will definitely have a leg up for a while.
Can sweet hardware compensate for a limited app market? Let us know in the comments.
Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Final Fantasy’s 25th anniversary celebration is in full effect over in Japan, and a rather interesting tidbit was revealed leading up to the main event. Andriasang reports that Square Enix will be releasing something called the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Ultimate Box, which includes the 13 core Final Fantasy games in one handy compilation.
The games in the collection include the following:
It was initially unclear if Square Enix would actually be releasing PSone discs (and PSP UMDs) along with PS2 and PS3 discs, but according to its listing on Square Enix’s website, it appears that is the case. All told, the collection will contain 21 discs (18 PSone, 3 PS2, 1 PS3) and a single UMD.
It will also include a “special anniversary video disc,” a soundtrack spanning two discs and more.
The collection reportedly costs ¥35,000, or $447. It comes out in Japan on September 30th. Whether or not it will be released anywhere else remains to be seen.
Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.
New Metal Gear Solid! New Metal Gear Solid! Listen all about it.
On this week's podcast we talk about all the news that came out of the exciting 25th Anniversary event held by Konami this week, from Ground Zeroes to the movie adaptation to, erm, the social game.
On this week's podcast, we also get round to talking about:
If you want to catch up with the Metal Gear news ahead of this week's podcast, watch Luke in the video below being all informative (and Welsh):
IGN UK Podcast #151: Metal Gear Me - 53.1 MB
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Hideo Kojima has unveiled a brand new Metal Gear Solid game at a Metal Gear Solid 25th Anniversary Event in Tokyo. The game is subtitled: Ground Zeroes and was demoed running on a high-end PC running Konami's next-gen 'Fox Engine'. No screenshots were officially released, but Famitsu has this piece of artwork for us to ogle:
Muttered words aroudn the internet from attendees at the event suggests the game's demo was set around a base at night, in the rain, with open world gameplay following an in-engine cinematic that is, reportedly, amazing - and there's no change in the graphics as the cut-scene moves to gameplay.
With the game running on PC, it's highly likely the demo was yet another glimpse at what the next generation of console games will look like. Fox Engine is, after all, Konami's next-gen engine. But to know now there's a brand new MGS prequel headed by Kojima himself being made for it is an incredibly mouth-watering prospect.
Tweets about the game have since been deleted due to restrictions put in place at the event itself, but we expect full details to be released shortly. But not before more leaked pics like this one:
Source: CVG
It seems the Metal Gear game fans have been waiting for has been finally announced at Konami's Metal Gear 25th Anniversary event: Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.
Moments after attendees began to report on Twitter that they had just seen something they were not permitted to post about, several guests at the event begun posting references to the new game on Twitter. Many of these posts were hastily deleted within minutes, but according to attendees Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes is an open-world game and was reportedly demoed on current-gen PC.
The game is running on the new FOX Engine and has left attendees amazed.
@kazamatsuri said, "Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes demo was truly amazing, running on a PC at current-gen specs. Wow."
@markmacd tweeted, "Demo of "Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes", started w cutscene (all realtime), went into gameplay, open world, night, raining, base. AMAZING," followed by "Snake crawled @ avoiding searchlights, killed guard, rode jeep, called in heli for evac. Sounds like MG, but the scale & atmosphere... Wow."
@ItCameFromJapan chimed in with more details, saying, "Ground Zeroes on Fox Engine - rich detail, open world, and Old Snake is back!"
It is not known when Konami will reveal the Ground Zeroes to the rest of the world.
Earlier this week, during the latest Kojima Productions podcast, Kojima Productions' Chris Johns claimed announcements made at the Metal Gear 25th Anniversary event would "shake" the industry.
Famistu has the first artwork for the title:
Image courtesy of Famitsu.
A new Metal Gear title for smartphones has been announced at Konami's Metal Gear 25th Anniversary event this evening.
Social Ops for GREE, a leading mobile social gaming network worldwide, is being built with the Unity Engine and is fully 3D.
GREE CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka was on hand to announce the game himself and confirmed a worldwide release between fall and winter this year, as reported by andriasang.com.
Metal Gear Solid Social Ops will playable at this year's Tokyo Game Show.
A Metal Gear movie has been announced at Konami's Metal Gear 25th Anniversary event. It will be made in association with Columbia Pictures.
Avi Arad (X-Men, Iron Man, The Amazing Spider-Man) will be producing and was on stage at the event.
"For many years I fought to bring comics to theaters - and video games are the comics of today," Arad said, as reported by attendee John Ricciardi on his Twitter feed.
There are no further details at this point, but Famitsu has some photos from the event.
2012 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Metal Gear series; the 'Tactical Espionage Action' series was first launched on MSX back in 1987.
The first and second place teams in MLG's Summer Championship League of Legends Event have been disqualified. A "collusion" between Team Dignitas and Curse NA has been led to a violation of the Major League Gaming Pro Conduct rules. As such, neither team will be awarded Circuit points, and the third and fourth place teams will earn the first and second place points and prize money, respectively.
Neither team denies the allegations or is fighting against the ruling. In fact, according to MLG's website, "Both teams have agreed that the disqualification was warranted," although the specifics of the pro gaming conspiracy remain unknown.
Developer Riot Games recently created its own league for professional League of Legends play, and is in agreement regarding the collusion decision.
Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor for IGN's Xbox 360 team. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.
While Nintendo prepares for its Wii U Preview Event in just 2.5 weeks, more leaks continue to suggest the publisher is planning on launching the system November 18. This time the information comes from the GameStop Manager's Conference, where peripheral maker PDP reportedly revealed it plans on releasing Wii U accessories on the Sunday date.
This isn't the first time we've seen suggestions of a November 18 release date. Furthermore the weekend timing and proximity to Black Friday/Thanksgiving in the United States fits Nintendo's pattern of home console debuts for the past decade (Wii launched on November 19; GameCube on November 18).
To add a healthy bit of skepticism to the mix though, PDP's plans do not necessarily have to align with Nintendo's. Accessories frequently ship prior to console launches, and there's nothing to say that PDP might arrive after the system arrives at retailers. Until Nintendo outright reveals its plans, we won't know for sure. Fortunately we don't have long to wait.
Rich is an Executive Editor of IGN.com and the leader of IGN's Nintendo team. He also watches over all things WWE, Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed and much more. Follow him on Twitter, if you dare!
We reported a month ago on the "five or six" new tablets Amazon is rumored to release this year. The company has invited press to a media event in Santa Monica, CA, scheduled less than a week before Apple is expected to announce its next iPhone. A clear effort to keep us guessing, the press invitations simply state, "Please join us for an Amazon Press Conference."
Amazon announced the Kindle Fire at a similarly furtive press event last fall, so while it's not 100% certain this will be a tablet announcement, it probably is. And not a moment too soon: with Google's vastly superior Nexus 7 now on the market and the iPad's market share still basically unchallenged, Amazon has some catching up to do.
Everything's speculation for now; so what do you think? Will Amazon announce a 10" iPad killer? - just an updated seven-incher? - an out-of-left-field smartphone? Cast your bet in the comments.
Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Avengers vs. X-Men #9 was easily one of the high points of what has been a frustratingly uneven event overall. Unfortunately, that burst of improvement turned out to be short-lived. Issue #10 loses much of the momentum that had been built up coming into Act 3. This is one of those chapters that makes you wonder whether Avengers vs. X-Men really needed 12 issues to be told in the first place.
With all but two of the Phoenix Five out of the picture, issue #10 narrows its focus down considerably. Cyclops' one-man assault on K'un-Lun is the primary focus, while Emma's descent into Phoenix-induced madness and Xavier's attempts to undermine his former pupils are briefly touched upon. It's a shame these latter two plot points aren't explored more heavily, as they're far more interesting than Cyclops' rampage. Emma in particular is the most fascinating of the Phoenix Five in terms of how her possession is affecting her. I wish the series would provide her with a little more screen time.
The real problem with this issue is that Cyclops' battle just isn't very interesting. As powerful as the character is right now, there should be ample opportunity to depict heroes making heroic sacrifices and struggling against insurmountable odds. Jason Aaron did an amazing job with Spider-Man in that regard last time. Unfortunately, Ed Brubaker doesn't do the same with characters like Iron Man and Thor. Too much of this issue is merely a series of brief encounters. Cyclops encounters resistance, dispatches it, delivers a bit of Phoenix-y bravado, and moves onto the next target. There's surprisingly little sense of urgency or importance to anything. The entire issue reads mainly like a stall tactic, biding time until the true final showdown.
Again, this issue lacks emotional weight because Brubaker doesn't dig into any of the characters. Where there's generally been a Wolverine or Spider-Man or Black Panther to provide some sense of context and perspective to the conflict, issue #10 only has Hope. And unlike her material in New Avengers, Hope is never presented in a way that allows readers to properly latch onto her. Her mindset and her reaction to the transformation she experiences her are ignored. It's this lack of emotional depth that so often ensures that event comics are less enjoyable than their more significant tie-ins.
Another drawback to issue #10 is that Adam Kubert's artwork suffers a bit compared to the previous few chapters. Kubert's flair for dynamic, dramatically framed action isn't as apparent this time. The clashes between Cyclops and his foes are generally no more visually interesting than they are from a storytelling standpoint. There are exceptions, though, particularly when Iron Man charges into the fray. But often, it's Laura Martin's coloring and the way she depicts the clashing energies and magical auras of the various combatants that impresses more than the pencils. Kubert's facial work is also wonky at times, and some of his female characters take on a decidedly masculine look.
I had hoped issue #9's strong showing meant we could expect a rousing finish to Act 3 and AvX as a whole. That didn't prove to be the case. However, there is still hope that this chapter was merely one last, unnecessary pit stop in an overly drawn out conflict, and that the remaining two issues will pick that lost momentum back up again.
Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and IGN Movies. He can't wait until he's old enough to feel ways about stuff. Follow Jesse on Twitter, or find him on IGN.
