Awful Wii U sales could force Nintendo to do the unthinkable

Right now Nintendo is sticking to its plan of cutting the Wii U's price and hoping that big-time games such as Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart 8 will propel sales of the console in 2014. But what happens if the plan falls through and sales of the Wii U are still awful in six months' time? As The Associated Press notes, continued poor Wii U sales could force Nintendo to do what had once been unthinkable to the company: Make its popular gaming franchise available on other companies' hardware.



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Posted in 2013 at 06:05PM, December 19

Video: Amazon smacks iPad Air and Jony Ive in latest Kindle Fire ad

Taking advantage of Black Friday, Amazon released an ad comparing the iPad Air unfavorably to its own Kindle Fire HDX, making Amazon the latest in a long line of tech giants to set its sights on Apple's tablet in an ad. Amazon's ad takes things a step further, however, by making things personal and mocking Apple design chief Jonathan Ive. The Kindle Fire HDX has a 2560 x 1600 resolution display, which amounts to about 1 million extra pixels over the iPad Air's 2048 x 1536 display. The HDX is also 20% lighter than the iPad Air, weighing in at just 13.2 ounces as opposed to the 16.8 ounces of the iPad Air. And the kicker: Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX costs just $379 while the iPad Air starts at $499. Amazon is obviously not the first tablet vendor to attack Apple -- in fact, both Microsoft and Nokia released commercials last week in order to convince shoppers to rethink that iPad purchase this holiday season. With tablets expected to take over the market as early as next year, every company is doing what it can to carve out its place. The HDX advertisement follows below.



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Posted in 2013 at 06:05PM, December 02

Samsung is building an army to take on Android

Samsung will soon take its frenemy relationship with Google and Android to the next level. The company reportedly plans to launch its first Tizen smartphone early next year and while its efforts with this new platform will initially be local to the Far East, Samsung undoubtedly hopes it will grow into something more — and reinforcements will definitely help. Headed by both Samsung and Intel, the Tizen Association announced this week that it has added 36 new partners from "all segments of the mobile and connected device ecosystems" to help bolster the platform moving forward. New additions to the Tizen camp include eBay, Konami, McAfee, Panasonic, Sharp and TrendMicro, and the Association's full press release follows below.



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Posted in 2013 at 06:05PM, November 13

Xbox One hosts a collection of impressive entertainment apps at launch

On Thursday, we got our first look at the full lineup of entertainment apps that will be appearing on PlayStation 4 next week. It's a competent list of video streaming apps that seem to come standard on basically every electronic device under the sun. Now Microsoft has unleashed its own list on the Xbox Wire , and the options seem far more appealing. The full list of "first wave" entertainment apps on the Xbox One (in the U.S.) is as follows:



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Posted in 2013 at 06:05PM, November 08

Windows 7 adoption still growing at a faster rate than Windows 8

Although Windows 8 has been steadily increasing its share of the market over the past few months, a recent surge by Windows 7 has put the old OS back on top, at least temporarily. The most recent data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 is up 0.61% from last month, which means Microsoft's new operating system is on 8.02% of machines hitting the company's network, but the Windows 7 adoption rate increased at a rate of 0.80%, bringing it up to 46.43% of the market. Windows XP continues to fall off the charts, dropping from 33.66% to 31.41%, though it is worth noting this is a slightly less precipitous drop than last month's. Perhaps the release of Windows 8.1 and the retooled Start button will bring users around to the new OS as the year ends.

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Posted in 2013 at 06:05PM, October 01