Xbox to flash steel in new console war

xbox

Yannick LeJacq NBC News contributor

3 hours ago

Microsoft

Microsoft will introduce its contestant for the next generation of the video game console wars next week.

It's like a seven-year storm: High-pressure fronts from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft come together creating high winds and stormy seas, with the world's gamers sitting ? and grinning ? right in the eye of it all. Yes, the next console war is on.

Nintendo started it. Last November, the House of Mario released the quasi-next-generation Wii U console to middling results. Sony made the next move, officially announced the next PlayStation system in February, promising it for the 2013 holidays. But nobody outside of the company even knows what the device looks like, much less what it will cost.

The Internet has been devouring itself with hype and rumors about the next Xbox, but Microsoft itself has barely made a sound. Finally, on May 21, the company will reveal its game plan ? and hopefully the system itself.

While it's not clear what it will be called, the three leading contenders are "Xbox Infinity," the painfully logical "Xbox 720" and the minimalist "Xbox." The rumor mill's consensus has settled around a few key features ? compatibility with Blu-ray, social-media integration, revamped motion control that builds on the Xbox 360's wildly successful Kinect add-on. The system is likely to have integrated Skype video chat as well, since Microsoft owns it. Controversially, the device is also expected to feature some kind of "always-online" requirement, meaning that users will need a stable Internet connection to access both gaming and non-gaming content.

Though there has been discussion about Microsoft also building an "Xbox TV" set-top box, it seems that the company is focusing, for now, on turning the new game console into an entertainment hub, one that can connect to cable boxes, and also feature original content. Microsoft has been tight-lipped about what's coming from its first-party entertainment studio, but the very existence of such an operation shows that it wants to better compete with Amazon and Netflix, which both offer non-broadcast shows.

Stacking up
Will these new features be enough to keep Xbox competitive with its peers? Sony hasn't said much about entertainment features in its PlayStation 4. And while the company is championing social features ? even adding a "Share" button into the PS4 controller ? it didn't go into details of motion control. Instead, Sony is highlighting its starting line-up of AAA and indie games.

Microsoft will be talking up games as well. Activision has teased the fact that it will reveal the next title in its juggernaut "Call of Duty" franchise alongside the new Xbox. Meanwhile, rumor has it that Microsoft may have an exclusive deal with EA's upcoming "Call of Duty" rival "Titan."

Sony

Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 this past February. While the company spent a lot of time showing off its redesigned controller, it still hasn't let anybody know what the actual console box is going to look like.

Both Sony and Nintendo have larger fleets of in-house studios to turn out original and exclusive games, which could leave Microsoft scrambling to find the next "Halo." But whatever the case, experts say Microsoft has a large enough install base to court any serious console developer.

"The biggest challenge this time is that Microsoft isn't getting a head start on Sony. And the second biggest one is that they're highly likely not getting a big price advantage over Sony," Michael Pachter, a prominent game industry analyst at Wedbush Securities, told NBC News. "Their advantage last time was that Sony was a year late, and the PS3 was $200 more expensive."

In 2005, Microsoft released the Xbox 360 a year before the Wii or PlayStation 3 hit shelves. Microsoft also priced its console much lower than the PS3. That advantage kept Xbox 360 sales a nose ahead of PlayStation 3's until just last winter, when they caught up overall. Now, it sounds like both consoles are coming out at the same time ? possibly even on the same week ? and are likely to be priced the same.

Pachter said that the only thing that might drive the new Xbox's price higher than the PS4's would be a mandatory Kinect add-on in every box, which he thinks would bump up the cost by $50. Otherwise, he said the two devices have "similar architecture" that would make them "comparably priced."

"We don't know about the Xbox yet, but if they both have this AMD chipset ? essentially the same power and the same graphics capability ? then they're both spending about the same to make their boxes. What else in the box really has cost?" Pachter also thinks the systems will have "big-ass hard drives," in the 1- to 2-terabyte range.

Oh, Nintendo
Pachter said that since Microsoft and Sony make remarkably "similar products competing for similar users," he doubted that either one would best each other in any substantive way. Rather, both stand to gain from the comparative weakness of Nintendo's faltering Wii U.

Nintendo's oddball inventions haven't always been an Achilles heel. Although the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sold 76 million and 77 million consoles total worldwide by December 2012, according to an IDC report, Nintendo Wii blew both its competitors out of the water with 99.84 million units sold as of March 2013. Alas, Nintendo's streak is not likely to continue.

Nintendo

Nintendo was the first of the "big three" console developers to release a new console with the Wii U. Being the first to the punch hasn't done Nintendo any favors, though.

Game exclusivity, Nintendo's strong suit, can only take a console so far. Nintendo had the strongest brands known to the game industry behind the Wii U, and industry commentators have still written it off as a failure. Just last week, a developer at DICE all but dismissed the possibility of bringing any of its new games (including the wildly popular "Battlefield" franchise and any new "Star Wars" games that will come out of EA's recent partnership with Disney) to the Wii U.

Mario and Luigi can certainly help a new console get off the ground as they have many, many times for Nintendo, but they can't carry it for five to seven years. And given the sheer silliness of the Wii U's controllers, Microsoft could easily dominant motion-controlled gaming hardware with the Kinect alone.

"It's pretty obvious that Nintendo is going to sell fewer consoles this cycle," Pachter said.

Microsoft's main competition, then, will come from Sony's PlayStation 4, and once again gamers might be split pretty evenly. "If the next cycle is 300 million consoles, and Sony and Microsoft go from selling 85 million each to 110 million each, they're gonna be pretty happy about it," Pachter said.

The main question for gamers trying to choose between the two devices will mostly likely come down to which console has more of the games they want ? and more of their friends playing those games. Some people might be turned off by excessively draconian digital rights management, or wooed by better home entertainment options. But if pricing is even, the games are the thing.

Yannick LeJacq is a contributing writer for NBC News who has also covered games for Kill Screen, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. You can follow him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq and reach him by email at: ylejacq@gmail.com.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2c203bec/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Cxbox0Eflash0Esteel0Enew0Econsole0Ewar0E1C994820A9/story01.htm

Ebates lotto Illinois Lottery texas lottery Dell Levis Fireman Ed

Denmark's Emmelie de Forest wins Eurovision Song Contest

By Alasdair and Fotheringham CHERASCO, Italy, May 17 - A series of small but challenging climbs late on Friday's stage of the 2012 Giro d'Italia could not stop Britain's Mark Cavendish taking his fourth stage win and second in two days. Italy's Vincenzo Nibali remained overall leader but it was sprinter Cavendish who stole the show again after compatriot and pre-race favorite Bradley Wiggins failed to start the 254 kilometer stage, the longest in this year's Giro. In a bunch sprint finish Cavendish outgunned Italy's Giacomo Nizzolo and Slovenia's Luka Mezgec. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/denmarks-emmelie-forest-wins-eurovision-song-contest-224013558.html

bud shootout new orleans weather new orleans weather sparkle sacagawea new hope baptist church associated press

Mark Suster Talks Founder CEOs, The Acqui-Hire Frenzy, And Much More [TCTV]

Mark Suster of Los Angeles' GRP Partners is known for his unique insights on the tech and digital media worlds, having famously had success on "both sides of the table" as a repeat entrepreneur turned investor over more than a decade in the industry. And he hit headlines several times this week, with his viewpoints on acqui-hires (he says they're often very bad) and founders stepping down from the CEO role (he says sometimes, it's the best thing that can happen.)

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/QgYSEJ67IVA/

lottery winners april fools day pranks ohio state vs kansas daniel von bargen 8 bit google maps kids choice awards 2012 micah true

How Einstein's theory of special relativity helped find a new planet (+video)

To find the planet, astronomers used Einstein's theory as it pertains to the intensity of a beam of light. The method could add more exoplanets to a growing list, no 'wobble' or 'transit' required.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / May 14, 2013

Kepler space telescope is designed to search for Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy. The telescope has been in space since 2009, but scientists keep finding new ways to use it ? even using special relativity ? to find extra-solar planets.

Courtesy of NASA / AP

Enlarge

With a little help from Einstein's theory of special relativity, astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting a star some 2,000 light-years away using a new approach that was barely a gleam in its proposers' eyes a decade ago.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; // google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

The planet is a bit larger and about twice as massive as Jupiter. It orbits its sun-like star once every 1.5 days. The team making the discovery estimates the planet's temperature at a searing 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

On one level, such "hot Jupiters" are a dime a dozen these days. Because they are massive and close to their host stars, they are the easiest planets to spot with virtually every planet-hunting technique astronomers have used to date.

What sets this discovery apart, however, is that the planet is the first to have been found through a process that in some ways could simplify planet hunting, researchers say. Its effectiveness is limited to big planets orbiting close to their stars, the team reporting the discovery acknowledges.

But it also holds out the hope of finding such planets when the parent stars may be too faint for other, currently used techniques. This opens the possibility of adding many more extra-solar planets to a catalog that now tops 800 of them.

No need to hunt for the wobble a planet's gravity imparts to its star's spectrum. No need to wait for a planet to pass in front of its star, known as a transit.

Instead, the team looked for a combination of three relatively small effects that wax and wane throughout a planet's orbit around a star. This delivers a different signal to a planet-hunting device like NASA's Kepler spacecraft than the eclipsing planet, or transit method, delivers, notes David Latham, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a member of the team discovering the planet.

"The transits last just a short time, just a couple of hours," Dr. Latham writes in an e-mail. But the effects the team tracked "rise and fall continuously through the entire orbital period of the planet, roughly 36 hours, so it?s not hard to distinguish these phenomena."

And it can detect planets that don't transit their stars.

The approach was conceived 10 years ago by Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb and Scott Gaudi, now an assistant professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University in Columbus, who took a cue from Albert Einstein.

One prediction of Einstein's theory of special relativity is that when an object is moving at a pace close to the speed of light, any light it emits appears more intense along the object's line of motion, forming a beam. To an observer watching the object approach, the light looks brighter than it would if the object were stationary.

The effect is most pronounced in powerful astronomical events such as gamma-ray bursts, in which matter emitting the gamma rays is accelerated to 99.9 percent of the speed of light, Dr. Loeb explains.

Indeed, to an astronomer looking directly into the beam, the effect can lead to the illusion that the light is traveling faster than its 186,000-mile a second speed limit. Such beams emanate from the poles of supermassive black holes that have gone on feeding binges. Researchers call them superluminal jets.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/bF2TBtyKJE8/How-Einstein-s-theory-of-special-relativity-helped-find-a-new-planet-video

rod blagojevich rod blagojevich uconn vcu mario williams unlv sam young

IRS Scandal: Celia Roady Planted Question - Business Insider

Washington tax lawyer Celia Roady acknowledged that at the behest of the IRS, she asked a question at a May 10 conference that would ignite the controversy over inappropriate targeting of conservative groups.

Four days before a damning Inspector General's report was due to be released, the IRS wanted to get out ahead and potentially defuse some of the backlash.?

Roady serves on the IRS Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities. She?asked the planted question to Lois Lerner, the IRS' director of the tax-exempt division. Within minutes, it sparked shock and a firestorm that the IRS had revealed it inappropriately targeted certain groups, particularly with the words "Tea Party" and "patriot" in their title.

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, the firm that employs Roady, released a statement on her behalf explaining her role in asking the question:

?On May 9, I received a call from Lois Lerner, who told me that she wanted to address an issue after her prepared remarks at the ABA Tax Section?s Exempt Organizations Committee Meeting, and asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks.? I agreed to do so, and she then gave me the question that I asked at the meeting the next day. We had no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question, nor had we spoken about any of this before I received her call. She did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question.?

Outgoing Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller confirmed during testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday that the question had been planted.

That led to intense questioning from members of Congress, who wondered why Lerner did not reveal the news during testimony before the committee on May 8, two days before the conference.?

Miller said that the plan had been to simultaneously notify Congress after Lerner's public admission, but acknowledged that "didn't happen."

"She has been directly involved in this matter," Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said on Friday. "She failed to disclose what she knew to this committee, choosing instead to do so at an ABA conference two days later.

"This is wholly unacceptable."

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/irs-scandal-celia-roady-planted-question-tea-party-conservatives-obama-2013-5

daniel tosh Jason Kidd All Star Game 2012 directv rashard lewis curacao curacao

Electric and magnetic characteristics of a material which could be used in spintronics: Promising doped zirconia

May 17, 2013 ? Materials belonging to the family of dilute magnetic oxides (DMOs) -- an oxide-based variant of the dilute magnetic semiconductors -- are good candidates for spintronics applications. This is the object of study for Davide Sangalli of the Microelectronics and Microsystems Institute (IMM) at the National Research Council (CNR), in Agrate Brianza, Italy, and colleagues.

They recently explored the effect of iron (Fe) doping on thin films of a material called zirconia (ZrO₂ oxide). For the first time, the authors bridged the gap between the theoretical predictions and the experimental measurements of this material, in a paper about to be published in The European Physical Journal B.

Spintronics exploit an intrinsic property of the electrons found in semi-conductors called spin, akin to the electrons' degree of freedom. This determines the magnetic characteristics, known as magnetic moment, of the material under study. The challenge is to create such material with the highest possible temperature, as this will ensure that its magnetic properties can be used in room-temperature applications.

To study iron-doped zirconia, they examined its magnetic properties and its electronic structure from both a theoretical and experimental perspective. They then compared theory and experiments to find the most stable configuration of the material. Theoretical work included first-principles simulations. In parallel, their experimental work relied on many different well-established analytical techniques, including X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and alternating gradient force magnetometer measurements.

Sangalli and colleagues therefore gained a better understanding of doped zirconia, which features oxygen vacancies, playing a crucial role in providing its unique electronic and magnetic characteristics. They have also predicted theoretically how the deviation from the standard structure influences this material's properties. They are currently investigating, experimentally, how the magnetism evolves with changing concentrations of iron and oxygen vacancies to confirm theoretical predictions.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Springer Science+Business Media.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Davide Sangalli, Elena Cianci, Alessio Lamperti, Roberta Ciprian, Franca Albertini, Francesca Casoli, Pierpaolo Lupo, Lucia Nasi, Marco Campanini, Alberto Debernardi. Exploiting magnetic properties of Fe doping in zirconia. The European Physical Journal B, 2013; 86 (5) DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2013-30669-3

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/GcElie8Nbh8/130517094600.htm

proflowers Susannah Collins George Jones funeral Jeff Hanneman twerking Camarillo fire Amanda Bynes Topless

Obama travels to Baltimore as part of his 'middle class jobs and opportunity tour' (Washington Bureau)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/306423597?client_source=feed&format=rss

Justin Bieber Anne Frank will ferrell coachella zack greinke zack greinke jackie robinson Coachella 2013