Is Sony Being Upfront With The PS4 Used Game Policy?

Analysts seem to believe that Sony’s DRM claims regarding PlayStation 4 were nothing more than a clever use of word games by Sony’s marketing department to get the reaction that we have seen from the community. Still, sources are indicating to us that Sony really has no finalized DRM policy for the PS4 and that what has been said so far leaves the door wide open.

While some might suggest that this is sour grapes coming from the other side, the reality is that while Sony may choose not to use or introduce DRM on the titles that it releases and publishes from its internal studios, the door was left open for 3rd party publishers to implement DRM on the PlayStation 4, in a similar way to the method that works on the Xbox One.

While publishers and developers believe that strict DRM is necessary to protect their bottom line, it would seem that how the DRM will be implemented in the end continues to change. We think that it isn’t done changing yet. It is very likely that more changes, or tweaks if you will, will happen on both sides prior to the release of the console.

Transition to the new business model will be that software licensing, rather than ownership of the disc, is something that developers and publishers are going to force us to adopt. The reality is that it is better for their business model; and the freedom we have enjoyed with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 we will remember in passing as the gaming industry takes another turn.

Courtesy-Fud

Microsoft Will Open Windows Stores Within Best Buy

Microsoft Corp said it plans on opening 500 special stores within existing Best Buy Co Inc stores in the United States selling exclusively Windows-based tablets and computers and other Microsoft products in an effort to revitalize sales of its flagship operating system.

The world’s largest software company, which already has a chain of 70 or so of its own Microsoft Stores and kiosks within shopping malls, said on Thursday the initiative would add more than 1,200 Best Buy Microsoft-trained sales associates to help customers.

Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system has sold more than 100 million copies since launch in October, but sales of new tablets and PCs running the software, and its own Surface tablet, have not been as strong as it hoped. An updated version called Windows 8.1 is scheduled for release later this year.

Part of the problem has been that Microsoft has struggled to get the attention of shoppers at large retailers such as Best Buy due to the profusion and popularity of Apple Inc’s iPad and tablets running Google Inc’s Android system.

The new store-within-a-store approach “offers a large-scale, hands-on customer experience” of Microsoft products, said Tami Reller, head of marketing at Microsoft’s Windows unit.

Microsoft’s plan comes just two months after Samsung Electronics also unveiled plans to install its brand shops in more than 1,400 Best Buy stores this year.

The store-within-a-store effort is a key plank of Best Buy’s turnaround plan, which includes dedicating more space to more-profitable products like tablets and mobile phones.

Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer electronics chain, has also been trying to use its clout with suppliers to fight online and discount rivals and boost in-store traffic, sales and profitability.

 

 

AMD Debuts New Eight Core FX CPUs Based On Piledriver

As rumored earlier, AMD has now officially announced two new FX-Series CPUs based on the Piledriver CPU architecture, the FX-9590 and the FX-9370. Both announced CPUs are eight-core SKUs and a part of AMD’s Vishera series with 32nm Piledriver CPU architecture and AMD managed to bring the maximum Turbo clock speed of the FX-9590 to 5.0GHz.

According to AMD, these new CPUs, including the 5.0GHz FX-9590, are an emphatic performance statement aimed at those gamers seeking ultra-high resolutions wiht AMD Eyefinity technology. Both are unlocked for easier overclocking, feature AMD Turbo Core 3.0 technology and, although not officially confirmed, should have the same 220W TDP.

Unfortunately, AMD did not announce the precise specs but since they are pretty much the FX-8350 on steroids, we are looking at 4x2MB of L2 and 8MB of L3 cache and 1866MHz DDR3 memory support. AMD only announced the Turbo clocks for both parts set at 5.0GHz for the FX-9590 and 4.7GHz for the FX-9370 but if they share that much details with the FX-8350, you can expect the base clock to be set at 4.8GHz for the FX-9590 and 4.5GHz for the FX-9370.

AMD also did not shed any light on actual retail availability or the price of the new FX-Series CPUs as these will be initially available only for system integrators.

We will surely keep an eye out for them and hopefully we will see a benchmark or two soon.

Courtesy-Fud

Hacker Threatens To Release Un-Encrypted Game Code

Next gen hacker SuperDaeE, who breached Sony, Microsoft, Epic, Valve, Blizzard and other gaming companies, has released an encrypted 1.7TB FTP download of source code.

SuperDaE said he would release the files, which are believed to contain sensitive information about unreleased games, should he be arrested. SuperDaE, whose real name is “Dylan” and who is an Australian citizen, was the bloke who leaked loads of accurate new info to Kotaku about the then unnamed Xbox One and PS4 earlier this year. When the FTP went life, SuperDaE tweeted, “Insurance up.”

The “insurance file” supposedly contains material grabbed by SuperDaE’s hacks into Gears of War and Unreal Engine developer Epic, World of Warcraft studio Blizzard, Sleeping Dogs dev house United Front Games and the now-shuttered publisher THQ.

The FTP also apparently contains software development kits for the PS4, Xbox One and Wii U as well as possible old code for unreleased games such as Company of Heroes 2 and WWE 14. He said that the FTP had enough files to change the video game industry for better.

The encrypted file is currently live on SuperDaE’s site SuperDaE’s website also has an Australian bank transfer number and a BitCoin link. Currently, it’s unclear how the downloader gets the seemingly necessary key to open the file.  It is possible that SuperDaE, a 17 year-old minor, is facing a few charges which are not hacker related. These include “possession of cannabis and drug paraphernalia”, “possession of a prohibited weapon”, “possession of identification material with intent to commit an offence”, and “possessing and copying an indecent or obscene article, possession of child exploitation material”.

Courtesy-Fud

Office 365 Users Can Now Replace SharePoint With Yammer

Microsoft has taken the first step in its integration roadmap for SharePoint and Yammer, allowing Office 365 customers to swap SharePoint Online’s activity stream with Yammer’s.

This first, modest integration point will let SharePoint Online users click on the Yammer link and launch a separate browser window where they’re asked to sign in.

Later this year, Microsoft will deepen the integration with a single sign-on and the addition of Yammer to the main Office 365 interface, which will begin to merge the two products’ user experience.

Next month, Microsoft will release a Yammer application for SharePoint that will let users embed a Yammer group feed into a SharePoint site. The application will work both with SharePoint Online and with the on-premises version of the server SharePoint 2013.

Also in July, Microsoft will provide instructions for replacing the SharePoint 2013 newsfeed with Yammer’s.

For now, the first integration step in optional, but Microsoft is strongly suggesting that Office 365 customers make the activity stream switch to Yammer.

“Our recommendation is to use Yammer, since it’s our big bet for enterprise social, and we’re committed to making it the underlying social layer for all our products,” wrote Christophe Fiessinger, a Microsoft Office Division product marketing manager, in a blog post.

Customers should also accompany the technical change with an outreach effort to promote the benefits of using the enterprise social networking features of Yammer, according to Fiessinger.

“To drive adoption and really get the value out of Yammer, you need a strategy, advocates, and openness to the way it will transform the way people in your organization work and communicate,” he wrote.

Microsoft bought Yammer for $1.2 billion in mid-2012 in order to boost the development and availability of enterprise social collaboration features in SharePoint and in other Office and Microsoft business software like the Dynamics applications.

Microsoft makes a convincing case for the benefits of integrating Yammer with SharePoint and its other software to provide a common social collaboration layer, but the process is clearly complicated and will take years.

 

Will Carl Icahn Attempt To Boot Dell’s CEO Be Successful?

Carl Icahn reportedly is drawing up a shortlist of potential Dell CEO replacements for Michael Dell should his bid for the company be successful.

Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management have made a bid to rival that of Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners in the high stakes fight over Dell and its board. Now it is being reported that Icahn has already started drawing up a list of candidates that he and Southeastern Asset Management will propose as replacements for Michael Dell as CEO of Dell.

Icahn has previously warned that should his offer for Dell be accepted by the shareholders he would look to not only oust Michael Dell as CEO but replace the firm’s board of directors. Reuters reports that Icahn is casting his net far and wide, including consideration of former HP CEO and current Oracle co-president Mark Hurd.

According to Reuters’ sources Cisco director Michael Capellas, IBM services head Michael Daniels and Oracle’s Hurd are all in the frame, although none of the individuals would confirm having been approached by Icahn.

Michael Dell’s initial plan to buy back the company he founded has met with strong opposition by existing shareholders, some of whom think they are getting shortchanged. According to Michael Dell, the firm’s reorganisation into an enterprise IT vendor will be easier if the company goes private and doesn’t face investor and market scrutiny.

So far Dell’s board is backing Michael Dell’s and Silver Lake Partners’ buyout offer, suggesting that Icahn’s offer is short of cash. However some of Dell’s investors might like the drastic action that Icahn is promising, along with the fact that his offer allows existing shareholders to maintain a diluted stake in the company.

Should Icahn manage to get his takeover offer accepted by Dell’s shareholders, it will set up a sensational return to the PC industry for Hurd and give Dell renewed momentum to compete with HP.

Courtesy-TheInq

 

Will MS And Sony Detail Their Used-Game Policy @ E3?

Microsoft and Sony are unlikely to share any details of their policies for used games on the new Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles at E3 this week, instead focusing purely on video game content.

That’s the opinion of Cowen & Company’s Doug Creutz, who said that both companies have a lot to prove at the annual games show, as they continue to feel the pressure with increased competition from mobile and PC gaming.

“For Sony, the challenge is how to differentiate the PS4 from what Microsoft is offering, given how badly the PS3 has lagged the 360 in Western markets”

It’s expected that Microsoft and Sony will charge consumers who buy games second hand to access the content, ensuring the hardware manufacturers and the publishers receive a cut of used games sales.

However, Microsoft’s message has been mixed, while Sony has stayed relatively quiet on the subject. While consumers and the press have pushed Microsoft, and to a lesser degree Sony, to lay out their plans, both have been reluctant, leaving many to assume costs to activate second hand games will be high.

GamesIndustry International has been told by Microsoft that it will not be offering press any time with senior executives to discuss the Xbox One business during E3, suggesting it wants to focus purely on games experiences.

“We doubt either Microsoft or Sony will address pricing for current- or next-gen consoles at E3, though we do think there is a chance that Nintendo could announce a (badly needed, in our opinion) price cut for the Wii U in an attempt to steal some thunder,” Creutz told investors.

“We also don’t expect to hear any official word on what the used-game policy will be on next-gen consoles.”

Microsoft’s imperative at E3 will be to prove the Xbox One as a video game console, after a big reveal last month that focused on TV, sports and entertainment. Sony’s needs to show consumers – particularly in the US – that it has a machine capable of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Microsoft in terms of games, and differentiate the PlayStation 4 in terms of variety of content and services.

“For Microsoft, the key will be to strongly reach out to the core gamer audience given that its early messaging has been more focused on the Xbox One’s capabilities as an all-around media device,” said Creutz.

“While we believe a mass market strategy is the correct approach for the long term, Microsoft still needs the gamer crowd to show up on launch day to ensure it keeps the positive momentum it has gained through the latter years of the 360′s life cycle.

He added: “For Sony, the challenge is how to differentiate the PlayStation 4 from what Microsoft is offering, given how badly the PS3 has lagged the 360 in Western markets.”

Courtesy-GI.biz

 

Viber Gets Banned

The freedom loving kingdom of Saudi Arabia has banned Viber, the popular voice and text messaging application used by millions worldwide.

According to Reuters, Saudi regulators blocked the service because it was too difficult to monitor and because it sucked revenue from telecom outfits. The fact that Viber was created by an Israeli probably didn’t help much, either.

Earlier this year the Saudi Ministry of Interior complained that Islamist militants were taking advantage of social media to encourage unrest, but it did not recommend imposing stricter controls. In the end it might have a bit more to do with the three Saudi telecoms wanting to squash competition than militants or personal freedoms.

But it is a good example of how tech is bringing the world together – Islamist militants using an Israeli app to bring down the Wahabi House of Saud, what more could you ask for?

Courtesy-Fud

Is M$ Concerned About Windows 8 In The Enterprise?

Microsoft is undaunted by figures that reveal a disappointingly low adoption rate for Windows 8 on enterprise computers.

The firm admitted that it might take a while, but insisted that the benefits of its latest churn of the Windows operating system will eventually win over businesses that have been ignoring it.

Sysaid Technologies, a provider of IT Service Management (ITSM) tools, claimed that its IT Benchmark data shows that only 0.53 percent of enterprise computers running Windows are on Windows 8. The firm said that this contrasts with the uptake of Windows 7, which was installed on 11.3 percent of enterprise PCs six months after launch.

Brad Anderson, corporate VP of Microsoft’s Server and Tools division told The INQUIRER that he could not comment on the figures because he had not seen them, but said he is confident that Windows 8 eventually will be accepted.

“With Windows 8, we’ve sold over 100 million licenses and we showed how big customers like Emirates Airlines are using the tablets and Windows 8 in their environment. It offers a significant overhaul in the experience, built with touch in mind,” said Anderson, who was speaking at the Microsoft TechEd conference in New Orleans.

Anderson said that with Windows 8, Microsoft is offering consistency across its operating systems with the Modern user interface (UI), although this is one aspect of Windows 8 that has divided users.

“The interface that is in Windows 8 is also on Windows Phone and Xbox, it’s a consistent experience across all of the things that we’re building at Microsoft, and I think people are getting more comfortable with it,” he said.

Anderson said consumer power will help to drive uptake of Windows 8, as pressure from employees will galvanise IT departments into adopting the software that their users are bringing into the workplace as part of the bring your own device (BYOD) trend.

“Consumers are pushing IT to embrace technology and enable them to do things that IT would have taken a lot longer to do. I think as more Windows tablets and Windows Phones are sold around the world, that will help to push IT to embrace these things at a quicker pace,” he said.

At TechEd, Microsoft showed features that are still to come in the Windows 8.1 service pack that it will release later this year, and also showcased some devices that are likely to ship with it.

Courtesy-TheInq

 

Lenovo Debuts Cloud Storage Service With Social Networks Access

Lenovo this week offered a sneak peek of a new consumer cloud storage service called Lenovo Reach, which it said will allow users to securely access their cloud-based files and applications from any device via a single login ID.

Expected to go live later this year, Lenovo Reach will offer 5GB of free capacity.

Beginning June 22, Lenovo said it will offer the Reach storage service to a limited number of users in order to garner feedback.

Customers interested in a preview of Lenovo Reach can sign up now for the beta test.

The Lenovo Reach personal cloud service will offer a single-sign on ID that allows users access to social networks, their online applications, as well as a search engine to help them find files, photos and other digital media across their online storage accounts.

The new service can encrypt and remember all user IDs and passwords, offering users a method of accessing favorite websites with a single click.

“The intuitive interface is consistent across all user devices and is designed for touch as well as keyboard and mouse interaction,” Lenovo said.

Lenovo Reach supports Microsoft Windows, Google Android and iOS operating systems across Lenovo and non-Lenovo branded PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

“Lenovo Reach makes it incredibly simple and convenient for people to interact with their growing libraries of digital content and apps from virtually anywhere, at any time, on any device through a consistent interface,” Mark Cohen, vice president of software and cloud solutions at Lenovo, said in a statement. “Lenovo Reach plays a fundamental role in our plan to expand cloud services to consumers around the world.”

 

Does The Gaming Industry Need More Exclusives?

The job of creative director at a new studio is pretty much the industry dream gig. Add to that the bonus that it’s owned by the biggest name in the fastest growing market and run by an old friend and you’d be a fool to walk away. For Patrick Liu, leaving his previous home of Dice wasn’t easy, but knowing that he could take on a new challenge in a studio where he’d have major input on staffing and almost complete control of the creative output certainly helped to make his mind up.

Obviously, there’s a big shift in what he’ll be working on, despite that creative freedom. He tells me that he “probably won’t be making too many military shooters,” with a quick grin, but he’s clearly thrilled with the move. With Dice having shed a few high-profile members in the last few months, including Battlefield 3 lead David Goldfarb, I ask Patrick if there’s been an exodus from the EA-owned studio, or if it’s just market forces at work.

“I think some guys moved to other AAA studios like 343 or Bungie, so I think it was just coincidence that so many people moved to other places at that particular time. I think also these things happen all the time. Projects change, roadmaps change – it was probably just a good time for people to be leaving.”

Presumably a lot of people ended up with a chance to take a fresh perspective once work had been completed on the DLC for Battlefield 3, then?

“Yeah, exactly,” he replies. “For me specifically, I need to keep on top at all times, to try and do something fresh and new. In a way it was EA that taught me that. EA has openly pursued digital for a very long time now but I kind of felt that I wanted to get there more quickly. Rovio is a purely digital company – there are no packaged goods at all if you don’t count the toys, basically. So I wanted to kickstart that, work with something fresh.

Especially when an old colleague and friend is going to be your boss. Still, though, Liu’s talent is not something you attract with the promise of friendly management and a nice office alone. Was he really given carte blanche to work on whatever he wished?

“Basically, yes! It’s the best of both worlds,” the friendly Swede tells me. “The first time I heard about it was about this time last year – I remember coming by Rovio’s booth at Nordic Game. There was funding, much more say in what I’d be doing. When Oskar (Burman) announced he was leaving I didn’t know he was going to Rovio. We’d been friends for some time but we hadn’t worked together properly.

Battlefield 4 hasn’t shown a lot of clear creative ground between it and its predecessor yet – has the series become entrenched?

“I just had a gut feeling that he was doing something exciting so I said, “let’s do this!” He convinced me that we’d have the freedom to do what we wanted. Finns are much closer to Swedes in terms of work ethics, too, so that was a big plus. We still wanted to share the same core values – we wanted to make family friendly games, to get into mobile, all that. So as long as we share that core, we can pretty much do what we want.”

That morning we’d both sat in the main hall of the event’s venue, listening to Tim Schafer talk about Double Fine’s famous Amnesia Fortnight event – the internal brainstorming process which gave rise to a raft of new game ideas and reportedly rescued the company from potential bankruptcy. How does that process compare to what Liu has been doing at Rovio?

“I obviously have some aspirations about how we should work – we’re looking at other studios which are very popular amongst developers – Valve or Naughty Dog for example. At this stage we’re still exploring what we’re doing but it’s basically a constant Amnesia Fortnight. That’s all we do. We did some work on the last Angry Birds Seasons update, so we do work with that but otherwise it’s just having people do what they want. I haven’t told anyone: you should be working on this or that. We set up guidelines, so we’ll say we want to make a game that’s a bit like this, or another one with these rough criteria, then people figure out what project they think they should work on. It’s pretty much autonomous.

That luxury of creative freedom which a well-stocked warchest provides is one that few can (literally) afford, and even Rovio must be keen to turn some of these ideas into revenue. Is there a timeframe to getting Stockholm’s first game to market? Will they be working on a single project once that target is set?

Working for Rovio on new IP must be something of a mixed blessing. When your flagship product is a global household name, but your company’s is not – how do you go about leveraging your success to promote new games? Although it has obvious advantages, putting your new project into the world under a flashing neon banner saying “from the makers of Angry Birds” surely tarnishes a little of the glint of independence…

“I think you just have to do what you do best and not listen too much to what other people say – just really focus on the next thing,” says a thoughtful Liu. “Rovio is very humble about that, I would say. Yes, we’re recognised more for Angry Birds and we’re probably not going to achieve that massive success again any time soon, so let’s invest in something else, things we think we can make the best we can. Both external and internal projects. We’re focusing really hard on doing new stuff – we have a mission to do new things, work with new concepts.

If you’re going to indulge in a cross-branding exercise, there are worse bedfellows to choose.

“We need to grab the opportunities that we have now and not just stay with Angry Birds forever. I mentioned in my talk that I don’t think the slingshot game is going to be around for ever, but I do think that the brand is going to be around for a very long time in new contexts. It’s a similar situation to Dice and Battlefield. Battlefield has become bigger than Dice – again, they need to find a way to handle that in case the game is taken away. Obviously Rovio is independent so no-one can take Angry Birds away – we own the IP and there are no other publishers so we’re in control of our own destiny.”

The company is in a fine balance. With one runaway, transmedia IP and a couple more which are less established but still successful in their own right, isn’t it tempting to take the best ideas which bubble to the top of Liu’s think-tank and skim them off for the proven winners?

“It’s something we think of from day one,” Liu admits. “Obviously we want to work with the strengths that Rovio gives us. They have the incredibly strong Angry Birds brand, so if we come up with something that fits perfectly with the brand then we’ll use it – it’s not like we’re not allowed to make them. If we do find a concept that doesn’t fit, though, then obviously we make a new brand. One of the things that really attracted me to them was the cool stuff like the cartoons, the animation studio and the toys. Using all that capacity is something I’m really excited about.”

Inevitably, the name of Disney comes up not long after we start discussing Rovio’s approach to transmedia. Liu is a big fan, and well aware of the parallels. I ask whether Uncle Walt’s empire is ever seen internally as a goal to aim at.

“I would say that Disney is a very good aspiration”

“I would say that Disney is a very good aspiration,” he grins. “The wide-appeal and reach of their brands is incredible. It’s a childhood dream come true to try and create a new Disney.”

Rovio is certainly well on its way up that path, with fingers in the pies of cinema, merchandising, books and even F1 sponsorship. That sort of success doesn’t go unnoticed and many credit Rovio with turning the heads of the established industry and proving that mobile gaming is quite capable of spawning successful multinationals. In the wake of the recent next-generation console reveals, does Liu feel that Sony and Microsoft are turning their eyes towards the casual market?

“It certainly seems so to me,” he asserts. “A question a lot of people asked before the reveal was just that: will they focus more on the core market or widen it to appeal to the mass-market? It seems to me that Xbox One was very mass-market appeal during the conference, we’ll see what happens at E3. The offering so far is very mass-market.

“I’m not predicting the death of consoles, as a lot of peers are doing, but I do believe that the growth is happening in other markets. I still think that there’s enough demand to see AAA consoles continuing, it’s just not going to grow as much. I think the console makers realise that and that’s why they’re concentrating more on other stuff like TV, so they become more relevant as machines. Mobile and PC do so much else and people only have so much money to invest. So they have to remain relevant, but that upsets the core gamers. It’s a dilemma.”

And if they fail to do so, or indeed if the machines they’re making fail to capture the public spirit, will we see the brightest and best developers begin to call mobile their primary outlet? Will this generation be the one that sees studios like Double Fine, PlayDead or even Mojang launch a mobile only IP?

“Absolutely. I think now is the best time to be an independent, especially on mobile, because you don’t have the packaged goods costs, the distribution costs, manufacturing costs. You can reach customers directly, through digital or social media. It’s a great time and market for an independent.

“Even amongst veterans there’s still an attitude that mobile and casual games are not really games”

“For the big companies it makes sense to hang around a bit longer in the console market, people like EA and Activsion. It makes sense for them to be there a little longer because that market is still there and there will only be room for two or three publishers. They get to keep the rest of the cake. But for everyone else, they need to move to digital as quickly as possible. That’s partly why I moved – I think most of the innovation is happening on mobile – it’s the most exciting market to work in.”

The money men and executives are clearly taking note, then, and have been for some time, but is Liu seeing young talent streaming into mobile development, or are they still bedazzled by the perceived glamour of working for the big publishers?

“Actually, I think they are still aspiring to AAA,” he says, his brow furrowing. “They still have the image that those are the coolest games. Even amongst veterans there’s still an attitude that mobile and casual games are not really games. I think that’s a problem for the industry, to not admit that they’re real games. It makes an elitist group saying ‘oh, we are the real gamers, we make real games.’ That’s really concerns me – we could kill this industry if we don’t get more inclusive.

“We have a new generation of gamers coming in that are learning and growing up with the current IPs and we need to teach them, I think it’s our responsibility as developers to show them all the other stuff we’ve been making for 25 years to see what they’ve got to look forward to. I think mobile developers, especially in Stockholm, there are so many veteran developers who know all the tricks of the trade, how to make really good games. At the same time, they’re embracing the new platforms, the new business models. Marrying those two things, that’s going to create something really really good, something fantastic.”

Courtesy-GI.biz

IBM Acquires SoftLayer, To Accelerate Cloud Buildout

IBM has signed an agreement to purchase SoftLayer Technologies, as it looks to accelerate the build-out of its public cloud infrastructure. The company is also forming a services division to back up the push.

The financial details of the deal were not announced, but SoftLayer is the world’s largest privately held cloud computing infrastructure provider, according to IBM.

IBM already has an offering that includes private, public and hybrid cloud platforms. The acquisition of SoftLayer will give it a more complete in-house offering, as enterprises look to keep some applications in the data center, while others are moved to public clouds.

SoftLayer has about 21,000 customers and an infrastructure that includes 13 data centers in the U.S., Asia and Europe, according to IBM. SoftLayer allows enterprises to buy compute power on either dedicated or shared servers.

Following the close of the acquisition of SoftLayer, which is expected in the third quarter, a new division will combine its services with IBM’s SmartCloud. IBM expects to reach $7 billion annually in cloud revenue by the end of 2015, it said.

Success is far from certain: The public cloud market is becoming increasingly competitive as dedicated cloud providers, telecom operators and IT vendors such as Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard all want a piece. The growing competition should be a good thing for customers if it drives down prices. For example, Microsoft has already committed to matching Amazon Web Services prices for commodity services such as computing, storage and bandwidth.

Not all hardware vendors feel it’s necessary to have their own public cloud. Last month, Dell changed strategy and said it would work with partners including Joyent, instead of having its own cloud.

 

Will Ending Second-Hand Games Help Developers Bottom Line?

We’re far from the end of the story regarding second-hand games and the next generation of consoles. Microsoft promises to have more information to reveal and implies that gamers will be placated by these further revelations; the only reasonable reaction to this nudge-and-wink follow-up to last week’s public relations disaster is to raise an amused eyebrow and imagine the chaos within the company as they try to figure out exactly what the hell they’re going to reveal when the time comes. Sony, meanwhile, may well be watching with some trepidation – it’s entirely possible that the PS4 also restricts second-hand sales in some fashion. Sony has always said that PS4 will play second-hand games, but hasn’t been drawn on detail regarding that stance – and the halo the company is presently wearing (no pun intended) will evaporate rapidly if it transpires that it’s also planning such an unpopular move.

Stepping back to consider the wider picture, we’re looking at a very bleak future for pre-owned or sharing of software. Steam is already the de facto platform for PC games, and it offers no second-hand sales channel and no method of sharing software with friends (and I mean that in the traditional “borrow my game” sense, not the euphemistic “sharing” as in piracy). iOS and Google Play games are locked to the user account. Now Xbox One (and possibly PS4) games will also prevent you from sharing games with friends and place hefty restrictions (and costs) on second-hand sales.

This isn’t just going to impact on the racks and racks of second-hand games at game retail stores, it’s going to have a major impact on gaming culture overall. It means no more buying a game and lending it to a friend when you’re finished, or going halves on a copy of something both of you want to play. It means no more going over to someone’s house and browsing their shelves for something to borrow – and by extension, removes a major impetus for many people to collect games in the first place. It means no more Lovefilm or other rental services for games, no more communal caches of games in the office that colleagues can dip into. Eventually, terribly sadly, it could even mean authorisation servers somewhere being turned off and an entire generation of games becoming inaccessible – a grim scenario but one which has already happened on a smaller scale with the switch-off of other DRM-backed systems.

There’s little point in going into any huge depth about why this is all a bloody awful idea – suffice it to say that as a consumer myself, I don’t think I’ll be buying an Xbox One if its DRM system turns out to be as draconian, abusive and intrusive as it presently seems, and similar decisions by Sony would equally nix a PS4 purchase. Given that I’ve bought every console in every generation for almost 20 years, that’s a fairly significant departure, but it’s no idle chest-beating on my part. If you take out the ability to lend and borrow games, the process of sharing enjoyment and entertainment that’s been at the heart of my gaming hobby since it began, I don’t know that my time or investment in consoles is justified any more. It’s terribly sad to think that key decision makers in our industry are now apparently of the impression that “social” in terms of prancing around like a drunken tit in front of a camera is the future of the medium, while “social” in terms of pressing a game box into a friend’s hand with a gleam in your eyes and words of praise and enthusiasm on your lips is to be frowned upon and treated as criminal.

“The cost of developing AAA games has risen and will rise again, but the cost of marketing games has absolutely soared”

What’s more useful is to ask how on earth we got ourselves into this position, because an industry which thinks it’s reasonable to wage war on perfectly normal consumer behaviour in this way is an industry that’s seriously dysfunctional. It’s easy, and very tempting, to blame the avarice of publishers and platform holders. There’s no denying that some of this market’s biggest firms are – like so many modern companies – rather over-padded with MBA-toting examples of human mediocrity whose understanding of the creative industry they’ve joined is zero but whose capacity to string together meaningless corporate buzzwords into arcane incantations summoning forth utterly rapacious and awful business practices is practically limitless. This is not to say that creative and excellent business minds aren’t also at work in games, but they’re very outnumbered by sub-par chancers spouting corporate drivel, and as such this entire area of the industry effectively wears a giant “kick me” sign that lights up in bright neon every time something like the Xbox One reveal or an egregious abuse of IAP in a full-price game occurs.

Yet even if swearing about people with expensive suits, MBAs and not a jot of real wit or intelligence to share between them is cathartic, it doesn’t actually get us to the bottom of the problem. The reality is that the crack-down on sharing and second-hand sales is part of a wider malaise. A wide swathe of high-end game development is struggling to pay the bills – that’s a simple reality. The cost of developing AAA games has risen and will rise again as new consoles demand higher-quality assets and new technology R&D, but the cost of marketing games has absolutely soared – and as Square Enix’ Yosuke Matsuda pointed out in a revealing statement this week, the cost of actually getting games into retail and sold through to consumers has also soared. Everyone poked fun at Square Enix’ huge sales targets for games like Tomb Raider and Hitman: Absolution, but Matsuda’s assessment of what happened to those games is sobering – as are the frankly enormous figures the company had to earmark for marketing and retail-related costs such as returns allowance.

This is reality; something is utterly broken at the heart of the AAA business. It’s entirely possible to put a game on the market which sells millions of copies, easily covering its development budget, and still not make enough money to justify the outlay once you factor in all the other huge costs. Developers have always felt screwed when they looked at games selling millions of units while royalties failed to materialise thanks to the creative accounting methods many publishers borrowed from Hollywood. Now, publishers are starting to feel a similar pinch, as games which should have been a safe bet see their profits evaporate in a perfect storm of additional costs and revenue drains. The cost of making a game has risen a bit; the cost of getting someone to buy a game has risen a lot, and unless your franchise is a Call of Duty scale monster, the whole thing is looking increasingly unsustainable.

Is the answer to crack down on customers sharing games with friends? No, of course not; that’s the frightened lashing out of a wounded animal. Is it to crack down on the second hand market? Again, no. There’s absolutely no question but that companies like GameStop and GAME have spent the past decade rabidly gnawing on the hand that fed them, but this ill-conceived crusade against second-hand sales punishes consumers for the industry’s own years-long failure to rein in the transgressions of its most cavalier and self-interested retail “partners”.

Is there, however, a problem that needs a solution? Yes. The AAA business simply has to change; the existing model is broken and a new one needs to be found. Matsuda says that Square Enix is going to experiment with ideas like Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight, among others, in the hope of finding a new approach to creating games that makes financial sense. I’m not convinced that crowdfunding is a viable model for big publishers in the long term, but I’m absolutely convinced that something new needs to be tried. How games are funded, created, distributed and ultimately enjoyed is going to have to change radically in the next few years, or there simply isn’t going to be a AAA market outside of a handful of established, ultra high-budget franchises. Killing off the second hand market isn’t even going to earn the industry a moment’s respite – if anything, I suspect that it’ll hasten the decline and death of the existing business model. I don’t expect that any company which isn’t rethinking its AAA funding, development and release model to still be in business five years from now.

Courtesy-GI.biz

Will Qualcomm Be The First With 20nm CPUs In 2014?

We could not get the right timeframe for the launch of Qualcomm’s successor to the high-end Snapdragon 800, but there is no doubt that Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia and other ARM supporters are thinking about 20nm products where some of them will be based on Cortex A57.

Qualcomm has its own Krait core that can be adapted to 20nm and follow up the success of Snapdragon 600 and the soon to come Snapdragon 800. It turns out that it traditionally takes 18 to 24 months for the mobile industry to shift from one process to another and Qualcomm had its first 28nm part in April 2012, with the Snapdragon S4, used in the HTC One S. The first ever 28nm part from Qualcomm was the Snapdragon S4 MSM8260A that is now more than a year old and a relatively obsolete product.

Less than a year after the first 28nm product Qualcomm followed up with the Snapdragon 600 that is shipping in millions of high end devices right now. In a month or two it plans to release Snapdragon 800 based on new Krait 400 core and add a new core and get even better performance.

The next step is the 20nm core that should start shipping before the end of 1H 2014. We would not be surprised to see 20nm Krait demoed at CES 2014 already in January, see more of it at the Mobile World Congress in February and the volume shipment to follow in early Q2 2014. This is the expected schedule and not something we got from Qualcomm.

The only official world we got is that the new generation traditionally comes 18 to 24 months after the first iteration of a current one. This can give you an idea that Tegra 5, codenamed Logan, should show up at a similar time, along with Samsung’s 20nm Exynos.

Courtesy-Fud

HTC Cancels Plan For Large Windows RT Tablets

HTC has put the kibosh on its plans to develop a larger Windows RT tablet because demand for tablets based on the Microsoft operating system has been weak, unnamed sources told Bloomberg.

HTC will still release an ARM-based 7-in. Windows RT tablet come this autumn, but not the larger one that was expected to sport a 12-in. display, the sources told the business website. The larger device requires more expensive components, which would have led to a higher retail price, the sources said.

HTC and Microsoft could not be reached to comment on the report.

Another Windows RT tablet maker, Dell, decided in mid-May to drop the price of its Dell XPS 10 tablet running Windows RT by $200, down to $300. A spokeswoman, however, said at that time that the company expects Windows RT to grow stronger over time.

HTC has reason to be wary about which products to bring to market as its sales have dropped and market share has declined, analysts said.

The trend in the tablet market is decidedly in favor of sub-8-in. tablets and also away from Windows RT but in favor of Windows 8, according to IDC analysts.

Just 200,000 Windows RT tablets shipped in the first quarter, about 0.4% of the total tablet market of 49.2 million, IDC said in early May, prompting many analysts to call on Microsoft to scrap the OS that’s built to take advantage of battery-efficient ARM chips. Intels x86 chips run Windows 8 tablets.

Despite HTC’s move to cancel the larger RT tablet, there are many proponents of the operating system, including ARM chip makers Qualcomm and Nvidia. Both companies supply chips for a few RT tablets.

 

 

 

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