PAX Prime Part 1: Intel and Square-Enix

Let me tell you, I was glad to get to Seattle a night early before the festivities of PAX 2013 started Friday morning.  After the flight from east coast to west it was weird (yes, weird) to see the Pacific Ocean on the weather map on the local news instead of the Atlantic hazing on the time difference but hey, I was there for PAX so it was cool.  The Penny Arcade Expo spanned the total volume of the Washington State Convention Center with exhibits, vendors and meeting rooms scattered not only throughout the place, but the nearby Sheraton for panels and another building across the street for BYOC gaming (yeah, that’s “bring your own computer”) and press.

Intel

The day picked up early – instead of taking advantage of media getting an hour early access to the floor, I opted to go across the street and check out Intel’s press event showing off some gaming laptops and mobile devices from partners that were packing Intel parts.  The Razer Blade we’ve already seen, but this was the first time I got to get my hands on its rival from MSI, the GS70.  The GS70 has all the bells and whistles of a gaming machine at 17″ – nVidia graphics, the latest i7 inside, 16GB memory and huge storage space – but weighs less than 6 pounds with its ultralight aluminum chassis.  Before i got to play with it i picked it up and kind of moved it around in the air (under the watchful eye of the Intel folks) and can tell you the weight’s no joke.  And they had it running Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, which looked all sorts of candy-like delicious.  The chips inside ran with Intel’s Iris graphics built in, which are reported to support 4K Ultra HD (on up to three screens) and much quicker video editing and processing than the 3rd generation i-core chips that came before.  I can’t really vouch for how well my eyes can tell that precisely, but they can tell that the screens looked pretty damn good.

They were also showing off their Next Unit of Computing (NUC) devices – tiny little boxes (as you can see from the image) that pack some power and seemed to have grown since I saw them at PAX East earlier this year.  Instead of Ivy Bridges, the guts of these units were running i3 and i5 Haswell core chips (with turbo) and Intel HD graphics 5000, which isn’t bad for starting at $400.  The outside featured network, USB 3.0, HDMI and DisplayPorts.  So what did they do after showing us the specs on these units?  We got to game on them.  There were a few stations there that were driven by a NUC stuck to the back of the monitor, that still provided a high-grade gaming experience that I would expect from a desktop build.  They mentioned that they were going to release a Pro edition, which we’ll keep an eye out for.  To be honest I’d consider using these in the enterprise too in pro mode. On a personal note, what was probably the nicest part of the Intel show had nothing to do with going over specs or gaming on their ultrabooks – it was the business card raffle from which I won an i7 4770K processor.  So guess what kids? It’s build time.

Square-Enix

S-E had a decent amount of stuff lined up for PAX goers – I didn’t check out all of them because there were a couple reruns from PAX East but there were still some things worth seeing.  First and foremost we know they’re big on remakes and remasters, so there’s no surprise thatKingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix, Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remaster and Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut all made appearances at their booth.  KH 1.5 and Deus Ex were reruns from PAX East, so I started by taking a look at the remasters of Final Fantasy X/X-2.  The gameplay graphics are definitely sharper and a cut above how they looked on the PS2, when back then they were amazing.  The CG cutscenes also looked pretty good, but not as much of an improvement from S-E’s PS2 edition of the game.  Otherwise, I heard mumblings of rumors that the remaster would be delayed from this year to next.  While it makes sense, I’m not going to say it’s true since I didn’t hear it straight from Square-Enix.

The other game I was glad to finally get my hands on was Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns.  Having played the first and second one through, the series kind of grew on me, and Lighting became one of my favorite Final Fantasy characters of all time.  I knew the gameplay on this one was going to be a little bit different than the previous games in the XIIIuniverse, and did like what I saw.  Lightning is a solo player (at least in the demo) and the overworld work that has to be done is more than just walking around and only being able to jump where there’s a flashy spot on the ground.  The demo featured a slice of the game where you have to chase Snow down, of course learning the mechanics of the game on the way.  Similar to paradigm shifts Lightning can switch between classes on the fly to unleash a broad range of attacks.  These classes each have a different orientation – in the case of this demo it was defense/life, attack power and magic.  It almost reminded me of the dress spheres in Final Fantasy X-2, just done a lot better in the combat style of the XIII universe.  Staggering your opponents changes a little bit, but the core concept is similar.  I for one enjoyed it, and as I am a glutton for completion, will definitely be picking it up to close out the trilogy.

They also showed some trailers for Thief, Final Fantasy XV and the Kingdom Hearts 1.5/2.5 HD Remixes in the theater section they had set up.  I’m going to link you the one for Final Fantasy XV.  It’s a rerun from E3, but boy is it delicious.

As for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, S-E seemed have a good (maybe?) problem, actually suffering downtime because they weren’t expecting as many western players as they have.  Director Naoki Yoshida admitted this freely, that he thought players would let others giveFFXIV:ARR  a try first before jumping in.  The server loads were supposedly spread out properly as of today, and more importantly to some, the restriction on YouTube playthroughs and videos has been lifted.  Other than that, new updates will bring more Primal fights, the Gold Saucer in-game (once they get three mini games to kick it off, woot!), and maybe some new jobs and classes.  On that as far as class mounts go for the hopeful, not much more information has been revealed  - but if you want a unicorn, roll a conjurer.

Stay tuned for the next segment tomorrow featuring my faves from the Indie Megabooth and a gameplay review of Dying Light.  Also later in this series will be the 2K roundup featuring X-COM and Borderlands 2, as well as my pick of the litter for the best of PAX 2013.

Takeaways from CES 2012

[Article first published as Takeaways from CES 2012 on Blogcritics.]

Time for everybody to pack it in and head home.  CES is done for 2012 – all the tech is being packed up and shipped back, and attendees were probably trying their last minute luck on a couple of slots before they fly out. But they didn’t leave without onlookers being able to check out a couple more digital goodies. Even though there were hundreds of things to share from the show, over the course of this feature I really focused on stuff that I could picture purchasing for myself.  So today I’m only going to highlight a couple of items, one of them for mobile media and the other as something that could make you the Obi-Wan Kenobi of your television. 

Macrovision and WOWee join forces

I love all the things my mobile device is capable of doing, including the ability to view media on the go and store it in my pocket.  But what would be really nice is to be able to project that media onto a screen or a wall and get not only decent picture, but some deep sound too. Yesterday, a little tech teamwork from WOWee and MicroVision may make that possible. MacroVision already manufactures the PicoP laser projectors, which provide some pretty nice picture for a pocket-sized portable device. WOWee already manufactures the ONE speaker, which is one of the better devices on the market that claims to be able to turn any surface into a speaker. But as of the end of this show, both companies have entered into a partnership, and will begin bundling their devices together to provide mobile users with “an immersive viewing experience virtually anywhere.”  The new partners are advertising that mobile and tablet users will be able to use these bundles to watch media on a 200” diagonal projection with booming sound. They may be only bundled devices for now, but I can see this partnership eventually making one hybrid unit that provides both video and sound. Something like that would definitely be a traveling media junkie’s best friend, and doubles in usefulness with some business potential – an easy set up for client presentations on the road or board meetings too.

Jedi mind tricks on your TV

We already took a look earlier this week about controlling Windows 8 navigation with your eyes, now how about controlling a TV with your mind?  We’ve all wished it at one point or another – sometimes those remote controllers seem to just grow legs and hide.  To initiate mind control, Haier has developed their Brain Wave headset that puts a little metal pad on your forehead and a clip on your earlobe to translate your thought power into control.  Unfortunately Haier didn’t have a traditional TV interface for doing regular TV things like volume control and changing channels.  Instead, they had a little game where you use the controller to guide a bird through a maze.  But so far it doesn’t look like it may be very easy to use. In Engadget’s hands-on video, you can see that there was a little bit of trouble doing much more than making the bird float and move up and down. I’m sure there’s more improvements to come with this technology, but it still doesn’t remedy one problem versus a standard remote control – if you’re not wearing it, you can still misplace it.  So I guess you can put the lightsabers away for now.

CES Takeaways

CES always sets the tone for the kind of consumer tech we’ll see over the year.  There’s still a number of trade shows yet to come in 2011 and a lot of stuff we haven’t seen yet –  we still have the Mobile World Conference in February, E3 later this year, and of course Apple’s WWDC always has some interesting stuff.  Nevertheless, there are still some themes set at CES, specifically two main ones in my eyes.

Not surprisingly, the first clear theme is mobile.  There were an overwhelming number of products that are aimed at being useful on the go.  Ultrabooks got more exposure than both tablets and traditional laptops over the four days of the show.  Manufacturers really focused on showing off notebooks with super-thin form factors that don’t force users to have to trade portability for power the way current-gen netbooks do.  For me personally that tradeoff is a big problem, and I imagine I’m not the only one.  There’s one very prominent problem that prevents me from buying a tablet or a slim netbook right now – they just don’t do everything my laptop does. There’s no sense in me spending that kind of money (and even more on peripherals) when I’m not getting everything I want.  HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung and Vizio have tried to remedy that problem by putting out some really sleek units that use the strength of newer construction materials to lower unit weight – carbon fiber, glass, gorilla glass and magnesium alloy.  And if there’s one thing I like more than power, it’s power that weighs in at 3 pounds.

Thankfully, another theme was that no one really cares about 3D in their living rooms. Well, not as much as the industry was banking on (I do so love it when industry agrees with me). Instead of televisions that attempt to provide huge strides in 3DTV technology, what we saw instead were units that enhance the 2D HDTV experience with newer technologies that finally made it to larger screens. Samsung and LG showed off some excellent units using OLED technology and Sony showed us a prototype of their Crystal LED televisions – both technologies that take backlight out of the picture, providing true blacks and sharper picture. As we already looked at though, it wasn’t just about beauty.  There were also some enhancements in the “brains” department.  Integrated voice command technology, built in receiver boxes and built in DVR’s were touted to make television sets not only brighter, but smarter.  All of this is made possible by TV sets that speak to the outside world, thereby connecting the user without any other tech necessary.  And again, none of that was in 3D.

Well that’s all I have for you for CES 2012. Part of me is a little upset that I didn’t take some vacation time and just go myself, but another part of me is relieved after reading about the experiences ZDNet’s Ed Bott shares with us about the hassle, sea of humanity, the secondhand smoke, and the invariable colds and flus that get passed around when that many people are crammed together like sardines in a jar. But oh, all the toys! 

CES 2012! Toys for the Living Room and Your Mobile Life on Day 1

[Article first published as CES 2012! Toys for the Living Room and Your Mobile Life on Day 1 on Blogcritics.]

It’s CES time!  That’s right folks, nerdkind from around the globe descend upon Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show.  Every year CES brings us a bevy of new tech, from mobile to gaming to crazy kinds of media, waiting to be snapped up and fawned over by the masses.  Now unfortunately I’m not able to be there myself because my job description doesn’t have a bullet point that says “go to CES and see awesome things.”  But I can do the next best thing.  Through all the coverage and videos and liveblogs I can still see everything that’s going on, and show you fine folks what I thought was cool.  Day 1 didn’t disappoint, and of course provided toys needed to fight the war for your living room and the war for your mobile life.

We’ll start with the living room first – which is nothing without a TV.  We’re at an interesting time in television tech – after the big push manufacturers made with 3D sets I’ve never really seen them take off.  And to be quite honest they’re really not all that impressive.   Manufacturers seem to agree, and are going in different directions to try to sell more units.  They’re making them smart, they’re making them big, and they’re making them super sharp.  Samsung and LG have finally brought OLED (organic LED) tech to larger 55” screens.  OLEDs are awesome because it takes backlight out of the picture, making the blacks purely black – giving the user better black level and picture.  Not to be left behind, Sony unveiled their Crystal LED TVs today – something new that runs on completely different tech.  They showed off sets featuring 6 million crystal LEDs that give brighter and crisper color, and at the same time have a response time 10 times faster than traditional LEDs.  So the result?  Super thin screens with super sharp images.  The OLED TVs will be available later this year, while Sony’s Crystal model is still a prototype.  You can see a side by side LCD / Crystal LED video on Mashable and see for yourself.  Like I said though, the TVs weren’t just about pretty faces.  Vizio introduced TV models with a Chrome browser and VIA (Vizio Internet Apps) and built in Google TV.  Samsung went the same route, partnering with DirecTV to provide a boxless, minimalist TV experience.  Both with some slick design.

Next came the strike on our mobile world.  While tablets are flying off the shelves, from king iPad to Amazon's Kindle, consumers are more and more beginning to adopt mobile solutions for videos and music.  But for me I'd rather have a mobile unit that can do more.  something with a keyboard and hot specs that can do everything i need to do.  something... ultra, perhaps?  More than the much anticipated Nokia Lumia 900 and Verizon’s 4G LTE hotspots, “ultrabook” seemed to be the phrase of the day when it came to mobile.  Dell, Lenovo, HP and Vizio all introduced light, powerful and super thin mean machines, entering the fray against the Macbook Air.  Adopting the philosophy of "thinner, lighter, faster" and ditching plastic for aluminum and carbon fiber, these machines don’t sacrifice weight for performance.  Packing solid-state drives, gorilla glass for strength and processors up to Intel i5’s and i7’s each of the devices provide almost instant-on.  Still, with how cool the Dell XPS 13, HP Envy Spectre and Vizio’s offerings are, Lenovo’s IdeaPad YOGA caught my eye with its design.  With a 2-hinge edge, it can be flipped to function as a 13” tablet, and has been confirmed to come metro style with Microsoft Windows 8 – not to mention a 10 point capacitive touch screen.

While those ultrabooks were coveted by CES gamers, it wasn't the only thing by a longshot. Possibly the coolest device at CES today was Razer’s Project Fiona – which turned out to be a tablet with some weird flightstick style functionality.  Razer really set us up for this one, dropping teasers that Project Fiona was going to be gaming in an all new form factor.  Well, here it is.  Funky, isn't it?  Project Fiona is a 10.1” tablet with what looks like 2 PlayStation Move-style controllers on the side.  It’s not lacking in specs either – it will have Intel’s Ivy Bridge Core i7 and have the ability to play full PC games.  Razer plans to release Fiona toward the end of 2012 with Windows 8 for the touchscreen interface. That wasn’t the only toy that brought with them though. The PlayStation Vita also made a splash for gamers, with Sony announcing AT&T data plans for next month’s release.  But there were no hardware changes from the version foreign to our shores.

So that's what I thought were the highlights of day 1.  I'll be back tomorrow to see what day 2 has in store for us in the deserts of Nevada.