Posted 06/12/09 at 04:28:07 PM by Andy Salisbury

While Asus ambitiously prides themselves on being innovators in design akin to Apple, they’re taking aim at Nintendo in the video game console market as well.

According to Jonathan Tsang, the Vice Chairman of Asus, they have “polished off” a video game system that they claim will rival the Wii. “We have a product we think is better than the Wii. But the content is complicated,” stated Tsang in an interview.

Asus’ problem isn’t with the hardware currently, but rather with the software. They have plenty of ways to design and produce a system, but their support on the software side is lacking. A console with no games isn’t bound to be very successful.

“Sometimes it is a chicken-and-egg problem,” Tsang continued. “We don’t have the chicken, so cannot have the egg.”

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Posted 04/03/09 at 06:51:24 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Acer might become one of the first manufacturers to jump onto the Ion bandwagon. According to Taiwanese website Digitimes, Acer is set to launch its first Nvidia Ion-based nettop computer called the Hornet. Industry sources told the website that the launch will happen in Beijing on April 8, 2009.

The Acer Hornet will have an asking price of under $300. The petite PC will also have a motion-sensing controller a la Nintendo Wii. The controller is not only meant for gaming but also for generic control. According to Nvidia, the first Ion-based notebooks, netbooks and PCs are just around the corner – to hit retail in the second quarter.

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Posted 03/20/09 at 03:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly

Nvidia has been quite the busy body in the console market as of late. Earlier this week the graphics chip maker announced it had signed a tools and middleware license agreement with Sony to offer its PhysX technology software development kit (SDK) for use on the PlayStation 3 console, and then two days later, made a similar announcement regarding Nintendo's Wii console.

"Nintendo has reshaped the home entertainment and video game market with the success of the Wii console. Adding a PhysX SDK for Wii is key to our cross-platform strategy and integral to the business model for our licensed game developers and publishers,” said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA. “With NVIDIA PhysX technology, developers can easily author more realistic game environments for the evolving demands of a broad class of Wii gamers."

Three months ago, AMD had painted a gloom-and-doom future for Nvidia's PhysX technology, saying "There is no plan for closed and proprietary standards like PhysX. As we have emphasized, with our support for OpenCL and DX11, close and proprietary standards will die."

AMD wasn't just being a wet blanket, as they weren't the only ones to question to closed standards when it comes to in-game physics. This makes Nvidia's latest partnership with two major console makers a particularly interesting one, which could very well end up seeing more widespread PhysX support trickling over to the PC as a result.

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Posted 01/06/09 at 03:00:00 PM by David Murphy

We're not going to make any comments about your multi-platform setup at home, because it's okay to accept that your PC can live alongside your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or Wii without major squabbling between the systems.  But what do you do when your devices want to interact with each other?  How do you get all of those movies, music albums, and Internet feeds on your PC to show up on your console and television set?

There are a bunch of solutions on the Internet today for streaming media from your PC to your console of choice. But that doesn't mean all of them are good.  In fact, you'll never know whether a given tool works for you unless you spend the requisite half-hour installing it, configuring it for streaming, firing up your console, trying to connect to your PC, et cetera.  It's a process.  But at least allow us to do our part in reducing your streaming nightmare.  We've rounded up a batch of our favorite freeware applications for streaming media from a PC to a console, as well as a handy encoding tool in case you still can't get your huge movies to work just right.

Click the link, press Start, and we're off to World 1-1 of media transcoding!

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Posted 10/25/08 at 02:22:18 PM by Will Smith

From the Maximum PC Archive - Odds are, you already have everything you need to turn that big TV in your living room into an movie and music jukebox that will put all your media at your fingertips and amaze your friends. Whether you ripped your entire CD and DVD collection, purchase DRM-free content online, or you acquire your media from less legitimate sources, we'll show you everything you need to know to stream your audio, video, and pictures to your Xbox 360, PS3, or any other UPNP-compatible streaming device!

Hit the jump for the full, unadulterated story. 

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Posted 08/07/08 at 11:09:17 AM by Paul Lilly

You knew it would happen sooner or later, and now it has; a Wii controller knockoff for the PC. Sort of. Asus has dubbed its new Wii remote lookalike as the Eee Stick, "an easy-to-sue use yet highly versatile Plug and Play wireless controller for the PC platform that translates users' physical hand motions into corresponding movements onscreen."

Interestingly Asus has no plans of selling the Eee Stick as a standalone peripheral and will instead bundle the motion controller exclusively with select models of the Eee PC and the Eee Box. Huh? We don't understand it either, but Asus justifies the move by saying the Eee Stick is "perfect for gaming on-the-go."

The vibration capable controller connects via a 2.4GHz RF dongle with a broadcast range of 10m. Two AA batteries are required to power the Eee Stick, which Asus claims will provide up to three days (72 hours) of continuous play.

Will the Eee Stick entice potential customers to pick up an Eee PC or Eee Box, or is Asus making a mistake by not offering the controller as a standalone device?

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Posted 07/19/08 at 02:09:13 AM by Pulkit Chandna

It was more a question of when than if: Wii sales leaping past Xbox 360’s in the U.S. The Wii has formally breached Xbox 360’s bastion by going past its US sales tally, according to the latest data from NPD. Wii is now the best-selling console in the U.S also. The month of June proved to be quite fecund for the Wii, as the headcount of US Wii owners rose by 666,000 in this month. Nintendo has sold 10.9 million units of its popular 7th generation console in the States. The month of June was great for the US videogame industry as a whole. The PS3 saw a massive increase of 94% in sales compared to the preceding month and also trounced the Xbox 360 to finish second.

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Posted 07/14/08 at 08:32:37 PM by Pulkit Chandna

After Microsoft had tantalized attendees with a few breathtaking glimpses of Gears of War 2 gameplay at its E3 2008 press conference, Microsoft devices division VP Don Mattrick took to the stage for the mandatory chest-thumping talk. He pompously announced that he expects Xbox 360 to trounce PS3 over the entire course of the current console cycle.

Then he triumphantly stated that Xbox Live had generated more than $1 billion in sales and dispersed 500 million pieces of content. Microsoft also announced that it has partnered with NBC and Universal who will now make their content available through the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Interestingly, Microsoft never made any statements regarding how it plans to wrest the no.1 spot from Nintendo. Has it relinquished all such hopes and desires? Have your say.

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