Posted 11/20/09 at 11:00:20 AM by Paul Lilly

Whoever is the first to market with a next-gen handheld tablet will have accomplished what's becoming a tremendous feat: shipping the freaking thing. Michael Arrington insists that his CrunchPad hasn't entered the realm of vaporware, and Apple still continues to deny the existence of its own tablet, which the most recent rumor says will ship sometime in the second half of 2010.

And then there's the Archos 9 PC Tablet, which went up for order on October 22nd, but is still a few weeks away from shipping, SlashGear reports. If you plan on picking one up at retail, expect to wait even longer. According to Archos, the 8.9-inch Windows 7 UMPC won't arrive in stores until sometime in the first quarter of 2010.

Archos didn't say what's causing the delay, and it will be interesting to see how the pushed-back launch affects sales. By the time the tablet ships, Intel will be churning out next-gen Atom chips, making the Archos' 1.1GHz Atom Z515 even more unappealing.

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Posted 11/19/09 at 11:27:38 AM by Paul Lilly

It looks like the ever-elusive Apple tablet will stay out of sight a little longer than last planned. According to the latest chatter from component makers, Apple plans to postpone the launch from next March to sometime in the second half of 2010.

Apparently Apple has decided to fiddle with its component selection, including a model that will launch with a 9.7-inch OLED panel from LG. Another model said to be in the works will sport a 10.6-inch TFT LCD panel.

Outside of the rumored panel choices, we still don't have any information on what hardware Apple plans to use, but the chatty sources were able to estimate a price. Most 9.7-inch OLED panels run about $500, which typically makes up about 30 percent of the device's total cost. That being the case, Apple's tablet could end up commanding $1,500 to $1,700, the sources say. However, those figures are based on today's prices, and OLED panels are dropping in costs. By the time the second half of 2010 rolls around, the Apple tablet could drop to $1,200 to $1,500, based on the above scenario.

As for the 10.6-inch LCD tablet, sources expect the device to cost anywhere from $800 to $1,000.

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Posted 11/09/09 at 10:25:05 AM by Paul Lilly

Like everyone else, we're chomping at the bit to see what Nvidia's next-gen Fermi graphics chipset (GT300) brings to the table, so we're a little bummed it's been pushed back until Q1 2010. The delayed launch, however, isn't expected to negatively impact Nvidia's sales for the remainder of 2009, DigiTimes reports.

When Fermi does ship, Nvidia will position the GPU into three different product lines, including the GeForce brand, Quadro, and Tesla, according to company CEO Jen-Husn Huang.

While the delay is unlikely to hurt Nvidia's bottom line, that could change if Fermi gets pushed back a second time, some analysts warn. They say Nvidia could start to lose some of its market share should Fermi arrive in April 2010, as AMD will in all likelihood have already started shipping its entry-level Radeon HD 5600 and 5300 GPUs.

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Posted 10/06/09 at 10:31:43 PM by Nathan Grayson

Our spies may have failed to infiltrate Sega’s innermost info-santcum – or even make it through Sega’s PR minefield, for that matter – but it doesn’t matter anymore. The word’s out: Alpha Protocol’s delay is official.

Sega’s website now lists the game as launching in “Spring 2010.” Originally, it was supposed to be out around – oh – today.

As you can imagine, we’re pretty bummed. From what we saw, Alpha Protocol was set to sneak behind the holiday season’s jam-packed frontline and surprise everyone. Now though, the wait continues. Also, our small army of Bothan spies is in various states of exploded-ness. That’s kind of disappointing too, we guess.

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Posted 09/29/09 at 12:33:11 AM by Nathan Grayson

We were pretty thrilled by what we saw of Obsidian’s spy RPG Alpha Protocol at E3, so obviously, we’re not-so-thrilled to hear that the game might be facing a rather large delay. Originally scheduled to launch this month, Alpha Protocol’s now listed as infiltrating consoles and PCs in June 2010, according to both GameStop and Amazon.ca.

We contacted Obsidian in an effort to confirm the slippage, only to be pointed in Sega’s direction without a solid “yes” or “no.” Sega has yet to respond to our – or anyone else’s – queries as of this time.
 
Our guess? It’s been delayed. Not necessarily all the way into June, but Sega’s silence reeks of an upcoming announcement. And as much as we hate to see it happen, we actually think the delay will be good for Alpha Protocol. Sega’s under-the-radar promotion of the game is befitting of the game’s stealthy spy theme, but sadly, that’s not how you sell a videogame. Maybe by the time 2010 rolls around, Sega will have drummed up some more hype around the game.

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Posted 09/26/09 at 01:36:00 AM by Nathan Grayson

Assassins like Altair and Ezio love shrugging off The Law by slipping into bustling crowds, so it’s only fitting that the PC edition of Assassin’s Creed II has shoved its way into the most crowded spring gaming season in recorded history.

“Assassin’s Creed 2 PC has moved to the first quarter of 2010. A bit more time for the dev team to deliver the best quality game to you,” reads a tweet from Ubisoft.

The console versions, meanwhile, are still on track to release on November 17.

If it’s any consolation, though, Mac users can finally look forward to the long-awaited release of BioShock. Next month. See, PC faithful? Things could be a whole lot worse.

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Posted 08/21/09 at 01:22:36 PM by Paul Lilly

Don't worry about your swank new motherboard soon being outdated by new models boasting PCI-E 3.0 support, the new specification is running into some unexpected snags, Fudzilla reports.

The main issue boils down to backwards compatibility and getting the PCI-E 3.0 specification to play nice with current PCI-E standards. Before the third gen PCI-E can get a stamp of approval, PCI SIG needs to verify products in the lab, and this is taking longer than expected.

"In this particular case, with pushing the technology so hard, and with PCI gen 3 providing so much more capabilities but with the need to be still backwards-compatible, we had to do the diligence required to move the date," said Al Yanes, president of PCI SIG.

The PCI-E 3.0- specification was originally supposed to be released this year, but now it looks like the second quarter of 2010 at the earliest. This would push shipments of products based on the new spec to 2011.

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Posted 08/21/09 at 03:49:04 AM by Nathan Grayson

Another week, another game calls in sick for 2009. So, Battlefield 1943, what’s your excuse? After all, it feels like you’ve been out on consoles since, well, 1943. What’s the hold up? Said producer Gordon Van Dyke:

“We haven't released a Frostbite [DICE's game engine] built game on PC, so going into this project we lacked a starting foundation we had on Console. There are also many different and unique only challenges to the PC that has lead to us pushing the release even further to Q1 CY 2010 [early next year].”

“This was a hard pill to swallow, but it was absolutely needed to ensure the features and functionality that PC Players have come to expect from Battlefield on PC are not missing. Things like support for DirectX 9 and 10, higher player count (up to 32-player matches), wide peripheral support i.e. Joysticks for flying, VoIP, and ranked server provider hosting. So it was and still is the absolutely right decision, for quality sake, to not release until it is ready.”

Disappointing as it is, you can’t really argue with that. See you front-and-center in 2010, Battlefield 1943. Until then, at ease, soldiers.

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