Tecmo to offer free-to-play Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate on PS3

The free-to-play model of gaming is most prevalent on the PC, and in particular has been embraced by MMO developers. But well-known publisher/developer Tecmo has decided to embrace it for the next iteration of Dead or Alive on consoles, and will offer a free-to-play version of the game on the PS3.

Released this coming September, DOA5 Ultimate has been developed by Team Ninja and will be available as a full, paid-for game on disc for both the PS3 and Xbox 360. However, a limited basic version will also be offered as an experiment only on the PS3 as a download. It will only include four characters alongside all the game modes with the exception of story mode.

If you want more content, you can either buy the disc version, or pay to unlock certain features. New characters will be 400 yen each (US$4) and the Story Mode will cost 1,500 yen (US$15). The disc version will most likely carry the usual new game cost of $60. In return you get everything, including every character and costume.

Deciding to experiment with free-to-play on consoles doesn’t come without risk, though. Players may choose to stick with the free version of the game until the disc version drops in price. That typically happens within a few weeks of it being available. Offering the disc version with everything unlocked also suggests Tecmo won’t be releasing any DLC for the game. And if they do, will it also be made available to those playing the free version?

Other publishers will definitely be watching this experiment with interest. If it ends up boosting sales or seeing revenue brought in from free-to-play players buying content, it won’t take long for other games to embrace it. I’m skeptical, however, and predict this will cut into Tecmo’s profits from lower sales of the full game.

ARAIG: A sensory feedback suit for video games, so you can feel every painful bullet

As the gaming industry moves along, it continues to tackle adding the five senses to the medium. It’s now had motion control so precise, that we quickly grew bored of waving around our 1:1 virtual tennis rackets. The Oculus Rift is attempting to bring pseudo-VR to the household for a relatively cheap cost. Smell-o-vision, though it doesn’t exist as any kind of major (or minor) peripheral, has been successfully attempted here and there throughout the industry’s life in form of a unit that releases scented oils. The realm of taste has been thankfully left untouched. Though the industry has provided very basic tactile feedback via vibrating controllers and peripherals, there isn’t yet any device that allows us to really feel our games. A new Kickstarter project, the ARAIG suit, is attempting to bring us those very feelings.

The occasional haptic feedback suit has been attempted before — notably the Aura Interactor, essentially a subwoofer in a backpack — but the consumer market hasn’t been able to, for example, walk through the rain in a game and feel the patter of raindrops on their shoulders. The ARAIG — standing for the somewhat on-the-nose As Real As It Gets — suit aims to deliver a multi-sensory experience that a booming base in a backpack never could.

The suit is composed of three main parts. Residing in the suit, the Decoders receive information from a game, then translate that information to an appropriate corresponding feeling, which in turn is sent off to the Exoskeleton. The Exoskeleton is the bulk of the suit, and with the Decoders’ information, creates all of the appropriate feelings on your body. It also houses the majority of the components, including the removable battery pack. The Sim Skin is an aesthetic customization option for the suit, so you can look fashionable while gaming and don’t necessarily have to wear a drab black ARAIG.

The ARAIG is promising three different types of sensory feedback. The first type of feedback is surround sound, but since it’s coming from the suit, it follows you wherever you move. It aims to make you feel like you’re right in the middle of the audio action, since you literally will be. The second form of feedback will be a host of vibration systems that cover most of the torso and upper arms. The third feedback system, STIMS, is made up of what is essentially that machine you see in informercials that claims to work out your abs for you. You hook diodes up to your muscles, and little stimulations cause your muscles to automatically contract and relax. This kind of system will provide more sophisticated feelings that a host of vibration sensors couldn’t, but in conjunction with the vibration units could create a new sensation.

A pledge of $299 is the minimum pledge that would nab you an ARAIG, but at the time of writing, all 100 slots are already taken. The next step up, to a pledge of $325, will net you the same ARAID unit, but without the cheaper early-access fee. If you’re interested in feeling like you just got shot by a bunch of a bullets while playing video games, head on over to the Kickstarter campaign page.

Google Glass turns paintball into a real-life FPS

Of the many fun things that you can capture from a first-person point of view with Glass, this paintball match is certainly now high on the list.

The idea of a real-life killcam is a little too exciting not to try. Paintball games are one of the many places where a first-person POV video isn’t easy to capture, though. You could strap a GoPro to your helmet, since those cameras are just about as durable as they get, but it’s not really first-person and in a paintball match, you don’t really want a camera strapped to your head to cause you to stick out. The ideal camera would be right beside your eye, capturing everything you see and allowing you to both look at your mistakes and share your glorious victory later.Glass, as it seems, is exactly what the doctor ordered.

The Titanium band that hugs Glass to your head makes this camera ideal for something like paintball. You don’t have to worry about it moving around much, and you don’t have to worry about accidentally turning off the video. The only downside to this is battery life, as Glass can only record for about 20 minutes on a full charge before needing some juice. You could go all-out and rig a battery pack to your suit with a USB cable snaked up to Glass under your helmet, which would give you the ability to record until you ran out of storage on your Glass.

As long as you’re alright with putting yourself and your $1,500 face-computer at risk, there’s really no limit to what you can capture through Glass. That probably shouldn’t be taken as a “challenge accepted” statement, but if you happen to capture something even more fun, then who are we to judge?

IBM uses custom, ever-vigilant Roombas to protect its data centers

We live in a time when automated robots that slink around the floor while eating all of your unswept refuse is a common, socially accepted occurrence. Yes, the Roomba provides a must-have service for those that would rather have an adorable robot slave do the housecleaning, but IBM has found another use for the cute little guy. Taking your cat’s favorite motorized toy, IBM transformed the Roomba into the watchful eye of a data center, monitoring the level of heat, which could raise cooling costs, or even damage or destroy the hardware if left unchecked.

Using iRobot’s customizable Roomba platform, iRobot Create, IBM built a Roomba that moseys around a data center with sensors and a webcam attached, measuring temperature and humidity, and creating maps of their distribution. IBM uses the resulting maps to see where hot spots are developing and endangering the hardware, as well as to figure out if any cold air is being wasted and how to better distribute it. These maps not only help cool the hardware, but also help save energy via increased cooling efficiency.

Along with temperature mapping, the autonomous cartographers can scan RFID tags, so they can also do a bit of inventory while they’re seeking heat. Just like menial vacuuming, the IBM Roombas alleviate a once-manual task, where people had to push a mobile cart around the data centers in order to create the temperature maps. However, as any Roomba owner knows, the little vacuums aren’t completely autonomous, as their favorite activity seems to be getting stuck under things, or falling prey to an infinite loop of bumping back and forth between tight spaces. So, the attached webcam allows an operator to pilot the device just in case it runs into any obstacles.

IBM currently has nine of the Roomba cartographers up and running in its data centers, but plans to add to that population by the end of this year.

Intel thought to be dropping Atom branding for Silvermont chips

The budget end of Intel’s desktop processor range is covered by the Celeron and Pentium brands. But in recent years Atombranding has been used for the very low power chips you find inside netbooks and soldered on to cheap mini-ITX boards. We’re about to hit a new generation of low-power Intel processors though, and it looks as though the Atom brand may disappear.

Atom chips get a mixed reaction from the consumer. On the one hand they offer a cheap, low power solution for small screen netbooks and inside nettops. But they also aren’t exactly fast, with most variants running single or dual cores at 1.6, 1.8, or 2GHz. They will run most things, bit don’t run anything great.

So it looks as though Intel has decided not to use Atom as a brand for the new Silvermont processors. That decision is not just because of Atom’s historical reputation, but also because Silvermont chips are genuinely fast and therefore deserve to carry the Celeron and Pentium brands instead.

Indeed, Intel is promising that the 22nm Silvermont microarchitecture will offer 3x the performance of the latest Atom processors while using 5x less power. If they deliver on that, you can see why the Atom name may be dropped.

Intel has yet to confirm this of course, but we should expect to see laptops, all-in-ones, and convertible laptops/tablets running Windows 8 with Silvermont Celeron and Pentium chips inside later this year. Silvermont parts will also be used for Windows and Android tablets, but won’t use the same chip branding.

Thinner MacBook Pro using a Haswell processor expected at WWDC

On June 10 Apple kicks off its 4-day Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, better known as WWDC. Last year’s conference saw a new MacBook Pro unveiled complete with a Retina Display and a resolution of 2560 x 1600. And this year the focus is yet again expected to be on the MacBook Pro and Apple’s thinner and lighter laptop the MacBook Air.

Of course, Apple isn’t saying anything until WWDC begins, but that doesn’t stop analysts taking educated guesses as to what we can expect to see. This year, Intel’s Haswell processors are expected to allow Apple to make a few changes to their laptop line up. More specifically, it’s expected the Pro models will get even thinner.

Currently, both the MacBook Pro and Air use Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors. Haswell improves upon Ivy Bridge in a number of ways, but most significantly for Apple, reduces power consumption and adds an advanced power saving system. That means less heat production and the same battery life from a smaller battery.

If Apple embraces Haswell early, which it is expected to do, we could see a new MacBook Pro unveiled that’s even thinner than the current 0.95-inch 2012 version. Alternatively, we could see the thickness stay the same, but the battery life extended beyond the existing 7 hours Apple quotes.

KGI securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple will opt for a thinner MacBook Pro. The FaceTime HD camera is also expected to improve from the existing 720p part to a 1080p-capable solution. As for the MacBook Air, alongside a similar move to Haswell processors, it’s also expected that dual built-in microphones will be added for improved voice quality.

Such improvements are just speculation, but I’m sure many would argue the MacBook Pro is already thin enough and improved battery life is more desirable. Apple shipping a new Pro that looks the same as the existing model, but achieves 10 hours of battery life surely wouldn’t lose it any fans. A similar battery life improvement for the MacBook Air would also no doubt be welcomed.

Surface RT’s now-free keyboard nicely sums up Microsoft’s tablet failure

In their latest bid to get anybody to buy a Windows RT tablet, Microsoft has turned in desperation to the worst option imaginable: it will sell a complete product without gouging its customers for a hundred (or so) extra dollars. For a “limited time” (likely ending whenever their internal threat level has decreased from red to orange) customers in the US and Canada can pick up a Surface RT tablet with a Touch or Type keyboard cover for no additional cost. Since the cover is one of Surface’s defining features, and one of the few that’s received near-universal praise, this move proves that corporate desperation really is the best thing for consumers.

When the Surface RT was first unveiled, it seemed like Microsoft was finally learning. The company had designed a sleek product with some truly impressive capabilities — and so what if it was expensive? Fans were convinced that this would be to the iPad as the PC was to the Mac: a powerful and open-ended alternative to Apple’s polished, closed systems. Many fantasized about running a near-full-fledged, ARM-based version of Windows on a tablet, which was also the world’s most convenient laptop once the keyboard was attached.

Many factors have contributed to the poor sales of Surface RT, but Microsoft’s tenacity in pushing the poorly Windows RT has certainly contributed to its near-total rejection by the very crowd that has historically been its most dedicated consumer vanguard.

The keyboard covers, arguably the only real innovation in Microsoft’s line of tablets, have been almost universally praised as responsive, well-made devices that simply work the way you’d want a tablet keyboard to work. Microsoft found a way to make this virtue into a disadvantage, of course, taking an already expensive product and asking customers to pay another $100-$140 for its most defining feature. At the outset, if you wanted a full-fledged Windows experience on Surface Pro, with the all-but-necessary keyboard add-on, you could look forward to a price tag in excess of $1200.

This latest promotion applies only to the Windows RT versions of Surface, it should be noted. Giving away a high-quality keyboard for “free” is only worthwhile to Microsoft if they can use it to funnel you into an environment they control completely, and one that likely hasn’t reached any of its modest sales goals. This is both an attempt to increase sales of the Surface line, and to salvage the RT-first strategy.

If the Surface RT can fulfill your tablet needs, then it might finally be the time to pick one up. With dramatic drops in price in the last few months, this deal finally gives consumers a reason to pick a Surface over an iPad or an Android tablet.

The question now is, if even this doesn’t make Surface RT into a real contender in the tablet space, what will Microsoft do?