Saturday, May 18, 2013

Nvidia Shield is Real, Fallout 4, Xbox News, ExerGaming!


The Midagedgamer Report for 5-17-2013

This week:

The Shield is real, Fallout 4? More Xbox leaks the dumbest meme ever and more!
So, have you been "High Intensity Exer-gaming"?"  The talking heads on your local news seem to think so.  I guess this is what happens when your ego won't allow you to admit that nobody really cares about your opinion.   Wii On Grandma!
Admit it, even if you're a PC gamer you're at least curious about the next generation Microsoft console to do battle with the much hyped but yet to be seen PS4.  With hardware closer to a PC than ever before what happens in the next 6 months will have repercussions on even the most rabid keyboard thrasher.

The latest news is that the next Xbox will have TV functionality built in.  Hmmm, shades of the old WebTV box Microsoft was pushing around the time people were complaining about the loss of "program manager" in Windows 95.  Come to think of it, it sounds kind of like a rerun of 1995...

Anyway along with the TV bits the user interface (UI) is apparently getting an upgrade on both the 360 and the new Xbox to have smaller tiles just like the upcoming Windows 8.1 (Blue) update coming later this year for Windows 8.  Oh yeah, and the points system is being replaced with gift cards and "currency".  I wonder if they'll use bitcoins...

We'll all know more next Tuesday (May 21st)

Remember that funny little game controller with an android phone glued to it.  You know, the one that kept showing up in hotel rooms during CES like a some Vegas escort.  At the time it was interesting but seemed like more of an engineering exercise than a product.  Well, it's a product.  Albeit one in search of a market. 
The price of entry is kind of steep too.  $350 on pre-order (starting May 20th).  It's going to launch in June around the same time as Ouya, which will now and forever be known as  "that other Android Gaming thing."  

Just watch, somebody will say it.  You can look forward to a 5 inch 720P touch screen, Tegra 4 CPU and a 72 Core Graphics processor.  It'll also support the streaming to PC feature that figured so prominently in the CES demos.   The game library is essentially what you already own so long as you have at least a 650 or better GTX GPU or 660M or better mobile GPU to hand off the rendering duties.  It runs android 4.2 and has access to Google Play, TegraZone  and of course PC games.

Great! but why?

Rumor mill, rumor mill, rumor mill!

There may actually be a Fallout 4!  Bethesda has re-released the trailer for Fallout 3 on YouTube and disabled comments.  Speculation amongst the Fallout forum faithful is that Bethesda is trying to drum up hype for yet another Fallout sequel.  On the other hand it could be the work of a disgruntled employee on his way out.  It's not to far-fetched since it seems Bethesda might as well change their name to "Sequels R us."

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